Now we've got people in emergency accommodation for up to two years, substandard emergency accommodation where violence is a part of life.
Intimidation is a part of life. Gang activity is a part of life. It is no place for children or families. Homelessness became a key platform when Labour was on the campaign trail in 2017. Now we have one of the highest levels of homelessness in the OECD……
Just about everything they have done to improve the lot of people, they say they care the most for, has blown up in their faces. I have absolutely no doubt they care. They just haven't got a clue how to fix it, despite spending years in opposition, despite railing against a Government that they said was failing, they had the answers, vote for us, we'll fix it.
They have made it immeasurably worse.
It is easy to point out a problem. But much harder to find a solution, as Labour has discovered.
I agree that putting people in motels is at least putting a roof over their heads. But, it creates a terrible environment to bring up kids, and puts people at considerable danger. People are spending far far too long in that type of temporary accommodation. And the consequences are likely to be felt for generations to come.
It just could be that the homelessness problem is worse under Labour from Kerre Woodham’s perspective because she and her colleagues didn’t think it was much of a problem before. Like the housing crisis of pre-2018.
They weren’t spending any energy on those situations, certainly not making incessant noises about them.
After the election with Nat/Act on the Treasury benches she and her workmates will be in the mode of “They’ve been left with massive problems,” and defending a lack of progress in solving the situations.
It just could be that the homelessness problem is worse under Labour from Kerre Woodham’s perspective because she and her colleagues didn’t think it was much of a problem before.
But Labour certainly identified the problem, and made it a major part of their election platform as I recall. So, the lack of progress in five years is inexcusable. It sits right up there with 100000 houses IMO.
And, like Woodham, I am of the view that some of Labour's policies have actually made the problem worse. For instance, making it progressively less attractive to be a landlord.
And, like Woodham, I am of the view that some of Labour's policies have actually made the problem worse. For instance, making it progressively less attractive to be a landlord.
Having fewer landlords would reduce the demand for properties, and thereby alleviate the problems faced by first home buyers. So, making the market less attractive for prospective landlords to invest in would, I think, be rather a good thing.
More misinformation! There’s a disconnect between the traditional housing & rental market and Emergency/Transitional Housing provided by the State. People from State Housing will almost never go through the neoliberal wet dream transition of renting a nice house in a good area and then buying & owning their own first home – they are permanently stuck in Struggle Street in the Precariat. You can drop that silly urban myth right now and forever.
See my answer to Mikesh below. It is not just about the total amount of housing available. It is about how people are distributed around that housing.
So, I think the effect of the government's policy of toughening things up for landlords is actually reducing the average number of people in houses. Thus, creating a shortage overall.
In the end, if average people are struggling to rent a house due to this effect, then it ends up becoming the government’s problem.
So, I think the effect of the government's policy of toughening things up for landlords is actually reducing the average number of people in houses. Thus, creating a shortage overall.
Perhaps you should look at the reasons why formation of state housing was required back in the 1906 under Seddon, and then by Labour in the 1930s.
Landlords stacking massive numbers of people into damp, cold, mouldy, overcrowded, and unmaintained properties to increase their revenue yield was guaranteed to increase the probability of disease, the flourishing of pandemics, and the destitution of people and families as they become unable to earn a living.
It was then, and it still is now. It isn’t hard to find these kinds of properties now, still with a shift beds, rising damp, and lack of maintenance. Offhand I can think of several people or families that I know in exactly that situation.
All of these resulting conditions carry penalty costs for the rest of society – who are not receiving revenues from the rentals because the inadequete tax take from landlords.
It is reasonable for the government to place requirements on landlords about the standards required in rental accommodation, since all of the downsides from poor quality overcrowded accommodation will eventually wind up on them and on the hands of taxpayers. It increases costs and diminishes the economy of the whole of NZ to have people housed poorly.
Of course, I wouldn't be adverse to changing the laws for landlords. Make dereliction of duty as a landlord a criminal offence. My preferred sentence would be make any owner or property agent live in similar unreconstructed accommodation without any improvements and no maintenance at the same level of crowding for several years with an ankle bracelet on.
I'd point out that I have been a landlord for quite a few years, ridiculously made considerable un-taxed capital gain on it and no other taxable profit. I would have welcomed living in my rental – it was where I had lived for decades before my partner dragged me off to her similar apartment to help pay her mortgage.
Evidently I just have higher expectations about the duties of a landlords.
I don't have a problem with requiring landlords to meet minimum standards for liveability. However, I expect landlords would seek to recover their costs through increased rent.
I was thinking more about factors such as removing interest deductability. All other businesses are able claim their interest costs as an expense. So, why shouldn't landlords?
And, sure, you have likely incurred a strong tax free gain. But, what of landlords who have purchased at the top of the market and now have incurred substantial captial losses?
I was thinking more about factors such as removing interest deductability. All other businesses are able claim their interest costs as an expense. So, why shouldn't landlords?
And, sure, you have likely incurred a strong tax free gain. But, what of landlords who have purchased at the top of the market and now have incurred substantial captial losses?
I'd be more inclined to ask why should these "other businesses" be able to claim interest as deductible expense. As for those landlords who invested at the top of the market surely it would have been better if they had not invested in the first place.
TOP seems to have the best take on this problem. They would apparently insist on a 100% deposit when making a property investment. This would seem to take mortgage interest out of the picture altogether.
Having fewer landlords would reduce the demand for properties, and thereby alleviate the problems faced by first home buyers. So, making the market less attractive for prospective landlords to invest in would, I think, be rather a good thing.
That logic doesn't work. It actually makes the problem a lot worse. Here is why:
Many first home buyers are often young people who may have been living at home with their parents, or out flatting. In either situation, they are often comfortably housed, but open to opportunities to buy their own homes, if they are able to, and the opportunity comes up. Also, they often don't have kids, so may be only one or two people.
On the other hand, a landlord may be renting to a family of say five or six. They get sick of the government rules. So the landlord evicts the tenant as soon as possible so the place can be done up to sell, and not have the problem of organising open homes around tenants. Thus, a family is displaced before the house is even sold.
Then, the first home buyer/s of one or two people takes the opportunity to purchase that home.
The net result is that a large family might be out looking for a new home before the landlord even sells the home they were living in. And, a large family is replaced with first home buyers comprising one or two people. And the first home buyers were previously comfortably housed, so not part of the problem.
When that effect is multiplied across the whole nation it is easy to understand why the government's plan is nuts.
I believe there are advantages for land lords who build new rentals, surely that's a win win instead if landlords hovering up the cheaper existing houses
There are obviously two classes of renters: those who rent because they are unable to obtain a place of their own, and those who rent because they, for whatever reason, prefer to rent. The former are at a disadvantage when they have to compete in the market against prospective landlords who have interest deductibility and they don't.
PS: This would seem to have been Grant Robertson's purpose in introducing the measure; he wanted to create a level playing field in respect of the purchase of the property.
Now we have one of the highest levels of homelessness in the OECD … They have made it immeasurably worse
Umm – spot the contradiction in Kerre Woodham's opining. She doesn't even know the meaning of the words she uses. She gives a measure for something supposedly immeasurable and then uses a comparative 'worse' without using a measure that compares the same data series over time or looking at similar data series from elsewhere or considering external factors like Covid or inflation.
You lost me at "according to Kerre Woodham", though I forced down the rising tide of sick and read on a bit. What about "according to a random ZB/Herald propagandist" or "according to a dead seagull on the side of SH1 just south of Kaikoura"?
If we get past the person who gave the opinion (who I find to be fairly middle of the road politically), and the international comparisons, there is not much argument about the scale of the problem, I don't think. And that it appears to be a lot worse now than when Labour came into power.
So, I think my comments are valid. What the government has been doing doesn't seem to be working.
And, being on the boards of several trusts myself, good financial management is key to being able to continue to provide services to those in need in our communities.
Yes Tsmithfield that is clear. Good financial management is universal it is not something belonging to the left or right. It is one of the keys to being able to do more with what we have.
I worked in a health organisation where our operational funds to run ourselves were top-sliced from the millions we were given to allocate for public health. This did not mean we ran silly giving ourselves all sorts of baubles and neither did we penny pinched so far that it would have prevented us from having good people in their fields working for us.
It did impose a discipline to get bangs for bucks, to think small where we could as that would add up etc.
If health orgs ran themselves better financially then there would be more money to spend on items that matter including in some communities the exceedingly cost effective operation to insert grommets for glue ear in young children.
I am a little wary of the argument though about comms staff/nurses though. Much of the past spend on comms staff was against the back drop of Covid when good comms was essential. When crunching numbers in mergers etc unitl final numbers are known we do have to treat staff carefully and humanely and that includes comms staff. It is not their fault they applied for and got a job in an orgainsation tat was subsequently merged.
I see the article linked by Tsmithfield as yet again moaning about
a) something they know nothing about (optimum numbers in an organisation such as Te Whatu Ora)
b) moaning about people who by their contracts and work environments ie public servants are not able to go public and say….'hey this might not be quite right etc.
Going after Comms staff is an easy target, especially from the right. Such a pattern that I wonder if anyone ever wonders 'Haven't we done this line before, like 30 years ago, and did it work?' To which the answers would be 'yes' and 'no'.
"It appears to be a lot worse now than when Labour came into power?"
'Bad' and 'worse' are like beauty and all appearances, in the eyes of the beholder and dependent on individual circumstances. The same as "doesn't seem to be working."
A couple in our family would say things are considerably better and did work.
This morning I read on some overseas thing about the Fox situation in the US. A commentator said (generalisation) that media like people to be aggrieved, like there to be controversy, like people to be pissed off. That churns up business for them. Achieving that is an aim and anything in doing that is valid. Like Fox did with ruthlessly perpetrating lies to generate business.
That's the business of the likes of Woodham and her mates on her radio station. They would argue one day that something was black two days later argue it was white and three days after say it was red. Their audiences harvest the crap and disperse it further.
"After nine years, even Paula Bennett now admits National got it wrong but, truth is, they won't change," says Mr Twyford.
Ms Bennett told The AM Show she couldn't give "actual numbers" on how the Government's emergency housing build was going, because she "didn't know we were going to talk about it this morning. I haven't looked at it for about a year."
Nothing has changed with National and they still haven’t got a clue, which they’re trying to hide as desperate as they are to get their fingers on the controls again.
Woodham’s partisan rant was largely fact-free, of course. She and her employer are disinformation projects. Let’s have a look at some real data, shall we?
The number of Traditional Transitional Housing Places available in February 2023: 5,824
So, this Government is doing something and making slow progress, which is infinitely better than the socio-economic destruction wrecked upon NZ by National. Anybody who will vote for NACT is fooling themselves and others but we live in a free democratic country and we are allowed (and entitled!) to make personal choices that are bad for us and for others. The election of Wayne Brown is a textbook example and should serve as a strong warning but the tribal lights are too bright for some.
Someone can correct me if I have got it wrong, but didn't the Nats alter the criteria around figures for beneficiaries to make them look less than they really were? I don't recall the details but they likely made a difference to the number of homeless recorded as well.
My brain is showing signs of wear and tear due to longevity, but I seem to remember they stopped including those who were parked in motels as being 'homeless'. Something like that?
I agree that putting people in motels is at least putting a roof over their heads. But, it creates a terrible environment to bring up kids, and puts people at considerable danger. People are spending far far too long in that type of temporary accommodation. And the consequences are likely to be felt for generations to come.
It's not the motels that are the problem, it's the culture and the poverty. That could be changed without having to move everyone out within a certain timeframe.
Two years is a long lease in some parts of the country. There's no good reason why living in a motel couldn't be a good option for a few years while other housing is sorted, other than the real problems aren't being addressed.
That is what used to happen back in the 50s and 60s. They called them transit camps and every city had them. They were small wooden units and, from memory, the average time spent in them was six or so months. This was at a time when state houses were being built on steroids.
Mt elder sister and her husband lived in one as newly married with a baby coming, and I loved to stay with them because it was next door to the Auckland Zoo.
Ah, transit camps! In recent years I've referred to them in discussion about the need for temporary housing. We lived near the Auckland Domain complex when we were kids. I delivered many Heralds there.
Homelessness and housing has absolutely gotten worse under this government, but it would be exactly the same under National.
National and Labour are almost identical on housing with only slight tweaks separating them, they both adhere to a failed economic policy that is only good at destroying and selling things not building things.
Nz from the 1930s til the 1980s was able to build more state houses, with 1/5 of the population and worse technology.
we are told we can't look back at things that actually worked and have to keep trialling a failed experiment that has seen our living standards, education systems, health systems were once the best in the world and our wages once were nearly at parity with Australia.
The sixth labour govt has an absolutely appalling record on housing, as did the fifth national and indeed the fifth labour govts.
Both parties adhere to a failed economic belief where the govt should do as little as possible, leave it to the private sector, high immigration rates, rely increasingly in expensive NGOs, believe state housing stock should stay at 3% of total housing stock instead of above 5% prior to the experiment, both employ armies of consultants, advisors etc who all get a bit of the pie and make housing policies more and more expensive and deliver less and less results.
We have thousands and thousands of kiwis living in motels and the govts answer is more of the same.
We are experiencing poverty,cost of living, housing crises at rates we haven't seen since the great depression in some parts of this country and the answer is more of the same and focusing on social policies to distract.
What we are seeing in housing and poverty is class warfare and our almost exclusively upper middle class labour party blocks it's ears much like the liberal/united party during the great depression and when the shit really hits the fan labour will likely go the way of liberal/united.
I'd say to jt, that pakeha don't own/control water, government does/and should, seems to be plenty of Maori in government at the moment so stop playing the race card,gtfu, division is a dangerous path.
Even if we accept that the crown owns the water as you suggest, then as a signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi wouldn't it be obliged to implement some kind of co-governance arrangement?
Whichever way you slice it, the status quo on water is untenable (and is literally killing people). And the only way to fairly implement reform in a way that honours the actually-legally-binding document the government signed is to give Maori some kind of say in what happens.
As I said there's plenty of Maori in government, do they not have a say?
I think the treaty is not fit for purpose any more, and needs a modern rethink.
In any relationship where one party is the aggrieved partner, ones apologies and remediation is undertaken there comes a time for the other party to be forgiven,
If that doesn't happen the parties cannot move forward as one.
Well fuck it, let's change the Magna Carta, and the US constitution, the Bible and just about anything else some bunch of dickheads doesn't like while we're at it.
The US constitution that allows nutcase murderous loons to bare arms, and the Bible that has caused more misery and death than any other book !!! Might want to pick better documents there old mate.
No political system is perfect bwaghorn, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to make ours more fair and more just.
It reminds of a story I read about ancient Rome. They never updated the legal penalty for assault from a fine that was a lot of money when Rome was a small town populated by brigands and criminals, but was a pittance by the time the empire rolled around.
So young nobles used to go entertain themselves by running around town punching randoms in the face, then throwing what was essentially small change at them.
So yeah, the victim got their apology and restitution. But it was meaningless and nowhere near proportional to the hurt that had been done.
In the same way, yeah some Iwi have had apologies and a couple of million dollars. But how does that stack up against 160 years of economic alienation, political powerlessness, racism, poverty, and the attempt to dismantle an entire culture?
For those wondering why we don't have a new Ministry of Works or something similar, the answer is that temporary smaller government entities doing remarkably similar things have reinvented themselves into insoluble nationwide entities:
Witness the latest:
Otakaro, set up to do a series of signature projects in Christchurch, is now as of yesterday a nationwide delivery agency for projects for the Crown, called Rau Paenga
If one can recall Crown Fibre Holdings, which reinvented itself into Crown Infrastructure Partners and massively expanded during the pandemic as the conduit for the multi-billion NZUP rebuild projects
A few years earlier Hobsonville Land Company HLC became Houses Land Communities which is now absorbed into Kainga Ora as a simply massive delivery entity of land development
The there's Piritahi alliance, which is like a moon to the Kainga Ora Earth orbit
Then there’s Light Rail Limited; guaranteed that’s going to grow into a permanent entity delivering the tunnel and then light rail across the west and north of Auckland for at least three decades
We now have major temporary entities forming across local and central and regional government such as RiverLink in the Hutt Valley and the major new one being evolved for rebuilding the East Coast
Generally, temporary and limited state entities are reinventing themselves into new purpose and nationwide scale, often overlapping. They create their own permanent existence.
Overlap is not as undesirable as ‘cracks’ that nobody covers and wants to deal with. The UFB initiative aims for almost (?) complete coverage. One NZ (formerly Vodafone NZ) targets 100% mobile coverage but did a deal with the devil to make this happen. It is the areas & sectors that are ignored and left alone that need government attention (and funding!).
One of the most useless agencies is becoming a nation wide useless agency before their principal reason to exist is even halfway finished.
If NZ politicians who have visited Christchurch think its rebuild is a success or even remotely finished may god,Gai, Luke Skywalker,harry Potter, Budda etc help us when those same people try rebuild the rest of NZ from weather and quake events.
Several relations down there and friends who have visited. One commented that the way the building in the city centre has evolved with plain and brutal type architecture that the room for 'charm' or pockets of difference that suit people has gone.
He had heard that the 'wide boys' with the tall blocks with mirror and ordinary glass are back. Such architectural gems, not, and anyway sheets of glass slide off buildings in Wellington and why is this type of architecture being considered for Chch?
The knives are out for Elizabeth Kerekere from that hardy perennial, the “anonymous source”. Wonder how long it is before the Green factions start scrapping in public.
dunno about that, she looks like a bit of a loose unit and a liability for the party in election year. Hopefully the investigation will motivate her to pull her head in. I also hope she gets dropped down the final list.
Kerekere stepped down from her Covid-19 portfolio, but was reportedly unhappy with how the matter was handled. At the time, Stuff reported that Kerekere had strongly complained internally about a statement issued by the Greens and threatened to go to the media with her side of the story.
as far as I know she didn't apologise in a meaningful way about her texts.
The Greens lost my support after the way KereKere behaved in the select committee hearing about the bill allowing people to change their sex on their birth certificate. Her and Deborah Russell should both have been asked to resign over their actions on that committee.
ACT lost a lot of support when Seymour started twerking. I’d suggest that Kerekere does a little Irish dance (aka Riverdance) and Green supporters will flock back to the Green Pastures in no time.
"ACT lost a lot of support when Seymour started twerking".
Really? Would you care to explain how you come to this conclusion which I assume means that they lost support when he was on the Dancing with the Stars TV program.
That was broadcast between 29 April 2018 and 01 July 2018. Between the 2017 election and the end of April 2018 ACT averaged 0.4% in the polls. While it was on air they averaged 0.7% and in the rest of 2018 they averaged 0.5%. One could certainly argue that it actually improved during and after his appearance. Your proposal that theory lost a lot of support doesn't appear to have any support though.
Oh dear, you never seem to get my jokes. If you’d read my comment properly you’d have realised that nothing made sense what I wrote. It was not intended for you, obviously. Mind you, you’re undoubtedly in good company here on TS.
That was the beginning of my defection .Kerekere was incredibly disrespectful to submitters speaking in good faith , she behaved with hostility and disdain .I had no confidence that the public submissions would be taken on board.
Meanwhile the worthwhile gains that Shaw is getting on climate matters is being submerged by a policy that according to Greens out in the provinces (Nelson & Canterbury contacts) is not seen as important as the environmental concerns that many joined the party for.
Just have to hope that Kerekere gets voted down the list. Also that investigations are carried out into other cases of alleged bullying.
There were, at least in the past, some limits on the degree to which the party list could be altered. Unfortunately I can't remember the details, and I don't know whether it still applies.
It was either that the members couldn't move any candidate by more than 2 positions from their place on the initial list or that the party council couldn't make their final list order change the party member vote position by more than a couple of places. If it was the first than she can't be voted down very far. If it is the latter then anything goes.
Sorry but it is just a vague memory of the rule. Does anyone in the party remember how it was supposed to work?
The membership vote which is coming up soon has no restrictions on placement – the initial delegate-ranked list has no impact on the membership vote except that the members can choose to vote using the delegate-ranked list instead of voting themselves if they like.
A member assembly then selects the final list, which will be either the membership-voted list or the 'balanced' list based on applying balancing criteria, but nobody on the ifnal list can be moved more than 2 places than their position on the membership-voted list.
Thank you. It is the second, much more democratic option. Is that way they have the initial list. If you think it is OK it certainly makes it easier to vote.
I just remembered that there was a rule about the subject but I couldn't remember the way round it went.
As someone from a household that gave all their vote to the left, majority of votes to TG than Labour – Not sure that TG will this year receive any votes-So it is only a few votes not to worry. They abandoned their support over the last 5 years, over that time their was minimal creep (and that is being generous) in NZ's position in addressing climate change. The same govt that The Green party supported and accepted ministerial roles. NOW we get statements "The Green Party have told other parties to come to the table with faster, bolder climate action if they want their support at the election." Where were you over the last 5 years. Funny how an election focuses the mind on returning to your base values (???)and what is important. You WASTED 5 years all for a few babbles of office !!! and now you want action ??
The last few weeks have displayed that The Greens are still in amateur mode, and to take time out to see why they deserve any votes other than their staunch Green supporters base – To me currently they do not deserve consideration.
I’ve always been surprised that the more a group of people tell us they’re tolerant, and inclusive and stand up for people’s rights, the more they bully people.
[Please fix the typo in your e-mail address, thanks – Incognito]
The people being bullied don't count as those to whom tolerance and inclusivity are needed.
Also for some bullies in real life, and this probably explains the conduct at the Select Committe hearing, they are able to identify those who do not feel at ease, are overawed etc and home in on them unerringly.
Just as most/many women can identify a fella in a dress as male at a 1000 paces there are bully-type people who can do pick out 'weaker' ones.
As a labour electorate and green party voter in the past, I hadn't really been aware of her. On hearing more about her behaviour, if she's listed at anything higher than number 20, greens have lost my vote.
Thanks ARkie. Always good to read what is being said about gender critical feminists.
The gender critical movement is a loose international affiliation of people and groups who promote far-right ideas that have gained a degree of centrist respectability through their purported defense of women. The movement alleges that people cannot determine their own sex or gender, and that the genitalia observed by doctors at birth are the final determinants of biological sex as well as the permanent markers of gender belonging.
Do you agree with this? See most of the gender critical women I know are on the left, what ever that means nowadays.
While it may be a genuine question, it is also a very broad question Anker. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention explains itself well regarding the gender critical movement, however I will endeavor to answer your question broadly, and then with some specific examples.
Broadly, far-right ideas can be said to be those which think that pre-existing hierarchies (of power, of money, of race, of agency etc, etc.) are correct and natural. That is to say, from nature, ordained by God, or biological even. Any attempts to remove or level hierarchies represents an affront to what is natural and good.
More specifically, that there is a 'myth of trans vulnerability' or that it is good to vote for ACT, are a couple of examples just off the top of my head.
Act are far right? Really. What are their policies that are far right?
Which groups do you know that think that "pre-existing hierarchies (of power, of money, of race, of agency" (whatever you mean by the word agency?) are correct and natural"
I don’t know why arkie @ 7.1 provided that particular link to Anker’s question @ 7. Quite possibly, it was an honest mistake with no bad intentions whatsoever and no foul play was happening.
Anker asked another rather broad question @ 7.1.1.1.2 but said it was “GEniune question” [sic]. And arkie made a genuine attempt at answering the question in good faith @ 7.1.1.1.2.1.
If you or others don’t like arkie’s answers then you can ask why they gave those particular ones instead of and without reading maleficent intentions behind them. Treating another as a bad-faith commenter is not a good starting point for constructive debate and often a sign of a bad-faith actor.
PS that Lemkin link has come up quite recently here, but not as recently as that ‘fortnight’ starting at the 25th of March
I can see now why TS has become an unpleasant place for women concerned about male bodied people coming into wards, prisons, chnaging rooms and sports.
Chain of command? You really think that linking to one of the thoughts around the following of Nazism is appropriate?
Hierarchy of agency? Any spurious attempt to either fit this issue into shoes belonging to Nazis or putting shoes on belonging to a different time or people is Ok I suppose, as long as it stamps on the concerns we have.
I note that Dame Anne has this as one of her conclusions.
‘Would it be possible to bring together ideas of whakapapa and complex systems in designing new institutional forms of order in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as relations between people and the wider world?’
This seems to suggest that in doing this the concerns of one part are not expected to be dismissed by others in the ‘complex systems’.
I have told you before, a few times now, that you have the wrong end of the stick.
Both arkie and I have been answering questions in good faith. The fact that you’re trying to sheet this home to TS being an unpleasant place for some women and [because] our answers were intended (!) as ‘stomping’ on you concerns […] says a lot about your state of mind when you respond to our comments. As has become quite evident.
You and some others here with conspiracist tendencies and brimming with distrust and antagonism are entitled to your views and opinions of others here. However, you are not entitled to treat those others with bad faith because you believe that they’re acting in bad faith.
You do not control the narrative here unless you write your own Posts for which you can dictate your own ‘terms of engagement’, as weka does from time to time (or turn comments off altogether, which, of course, completely negates robust debate).
If you and some others here (e.g. the self-confessed TS ‘Nazi expert’) cannot handle robust debate without being triggered, offended, horrified, or otherwise upset then I’d suggest you avoid those flash-points and catalysts.
I am not sure who is the self confessed nazi expert. I only know of it recently in relation to its use by the trans community as the general words for any person they perceive as disagreeing with them.
I am heartened by Molly's response @9.10pm. She gets where I am coming from.
I do not understand why you, Incognito, are on my case.
I especially do not like the ad homs.
I am not aware of any response from Arkie other than the ones early today so as far as I know they have not seen or responded to my points.
I admit that my focus during the time from when PP was due to come to NZ especially has been on the women’s issues in relation to the trans issues. I don't see anything wrong about that. There are others who have many single issues. There is nothing wrong with that.
From Molly:
(It's up to you whether you spend time and energy on swatting away personal comments, but your contributions are valued.)
I had always thought that ad homs did not have a place here.
I agree that it would be good if you slowed down commenting and took more time to understand people’s comments.
Arkie’s link and Incognito’s later reply are thoughtful and thought provoking. Arkie’s comments have a pointed point, but this is understandable given their beliefs and feelings about the topic.
Incognito’s comments can be oblique or opaque. I think of them in the same way as Sabine
although the style is very different. But both write comments that aren’t necessarily immediately understandable, and both usually improve with multiple readings and taking time to think them through.
If you find yourself reacting, try stepping away for a while and waiting until you can come back and read comments to gain understanding of what they are actually saying. You know Kathleen Stock’s thing about being able to present the argument of your opponent in a way that is fair?
I don’t know how you got from either Arkie or Incog’s comments to TS being an unpleasant place for GC women. Because you didn’t say. This is why slowing down is useful, and making time to explain your thinking rather than throwing out reactive comments without context.
But also, we’re here for the robust debate, and there will be push back against GC positions. I don’t see anything in Arkie or Incog’s few comments here that came close to making it unpleasant here for GC women, in fact Arkie appears to be making an effort to not react but to present their ideas in ways that people can take or leave.
Likewise, how did you get to Nazis?
You and Incog are now in a pattern of sniping at each other. I strongly suggest that *you stop your side. For one, authors/mods take precedent here so if it gets out of control, you will be the one that loses. But also, you can’t force people to either accept your thinking, or change their behaviour to you. You can however change your own behaviour. There are lots of other people here to talk with. This is a really good strategy for the long haul, one I highly encourage people to learn as it brings multiple benefits. One immediate one I see is that you might enjoy TS more.
I’m saying all that because I don’t have time to go through the whole conversation, but believe it’s important to try and prevent hard polarisation on TS around the gender/ sex wars. I also think your presence on TS is a boon, so am attempting to give some guidelines on what would make it more sustainable.
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wingextremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being radically conservative, ultra-nationalist, and authoritarian, as well as having nativist ideologies and tendencies.
Historically, "far-right politics" has been used to describe the experiences of fascism, Nazism, and Falangism. Contemporary definitions now include neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, the Third Position, the alt-right, racial supremacism, National Bolshevism and other ideologies or organizations that feature aspects of authoritarian, ultra-nationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and/or reactionary views.
Far-right politics have led to oppression, political violence, forcedassimilation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, nation, state, national religion, dominant culture, or conservative social institutions.
ACT want to remove current benefit entitlements for most unemployed and solo mums and replace them with electronically monitored and controlled income. This is anti-libertarian, ACT's libertarianism if for well off people. It cements in beneficiaries as second class citizens. You can look at how this kind of scheme has played out in Australia to see the daily problems it causes.
The article is heavily focussed on the US where most observers know that the concerns about the loss of women's rights/issues by the self ID model is concentrated in the right & Christian communities.
In the UK it is the women from the left who saw the threat to womens issues and ran with it.
The concept for many women now though, I have found, is wider than lining up on party political lines.
I find the langauage used in the Lemkin article is intemperate. How can anyone bring genocide into it. It is as bad as likening some thing small & minor as a Holocaust. I am not sure if the article used the word Nazi but it would not surprise me if it did as this word is also in the trans playbook.
Not one woman I know and none of the readings I have seen have ever wished death ofr destruction on the trans community. We as women basically do not believe that science can be altered in such a way and neither do we wish for what are basically still men, in our sports, prisons, chnaging rooms or hospitals.
Arkie, you may be impressed by this writing. I am not. It is what I call reactionary and builds up a narrative, then calls it genocide. As it has not even got the key players correct worldwide I wonder what else it has incorrect?
Surely we can do better than this? Are there articles examining the opposition to self ID and men in women’s sport etc from a more measured starting point.
Otherwise Francesca has got it in one:
‘I wouldn’t even bother going there Anker.
Genocide now is it?
Snort
Tell it to the Armenians, European Jews,Native Americans ,Rwandans’ .
I find the langauage [sic] used in the Lemkin article is intemperate. How can anyone bring genocide into it. It is as bad as likening some thing small & minor as a Holocaust. I am not sure if the article used the word Nazi but it would not surprise me if it did as this word is also in the trans playbook.
Either you did read the article or you did not. If you had read it, you would have known the answer to your question and would not have needed to have asked it.
You would also have known that in that article there was no mention of the Holocaust as such. (NB there is no such thing as ‘a Holocaust’]
Your counter-narrative is becoming stale & predictable.
Repeating the same well-worn talking points doesn’t change or add anything to ‘the debate’.
I don’t want to pre-empt arkie’s reply but it seems that the link was proffered in response to the question regarding the dispelling of the myth trans vulnerability or something rather. I didn’t see it as a case being made regarding genocide as such. I have no idea why arkie decided to put up something with such obvious red flags but that’s for them to explain, if they wish.
If you read my note and have kept up to date with the anti woman playbooks you will know that the reference to Nazis was a sly reference to this being used ad nauseam against anyone who they perceive as not being on the side of the trans ideology.
I did say 'it is as bad as' ……that does not mean that the article included those words but to infer genocide to women not wanting males in their safe spaces is OTT. Other people advancing this type of trope are also the ones who use 'holocaust' left, right and centre. I know full well that there is only one Holocaust. Hence my point.
My thought is that Anker asked for a specific link to a reference that had been put up here on TS over the time we were talking about trans issues. I cannot remember seeing the link from Arkie before so my thought is that Arkie may just be stirring and this was born out by the subject matter. It was not about the point that Anker was talking about but some sort of elderly critique (this is a fast moving subject) on women who are concerned.
Thanks for your ad hom, once again. Do you use that against the Ukraine/Russia commentators? Several of them have positions that they espouse and while I don't know the ins and outs of all the approaches I don't leap into print and say 'stale and predictable'.
When it comes to it for women, it is difficult to do better than saying 'we don't want male bodied people in our safe spaces'. If that is 'stale and predictable' so be it.
Or perhaps for variety I could just say 'women don't have penises' and leave it at that knowing that I have Rishi Sunak on my side,as well as biology, and Sir Keir Starmer 99.9% on my side as well.
Your comment is again oozing bad faith and it contaminates almost everything else. And it is contagious.
It never seems to occur to you that others are not actually saying and meaning what you believe they are. This is your main problem here when you try entering robust debate and it clouds your judgement.
And contrary to your belief, not every response to you is about women, safe spaces, and the usual trigger words that are on the forefront of your mind and on your lips 24/7.
Nice diversions and deflections – you forgot adding in Trump and the USA.
You do realise The Critic has been called a "contrarian conservative magazine". The editor, who set it up because he is interested in culture war topics, has a funding history including far-right wing of the UK Conservatives and rather nasty right-wing think tanks. Culture war topics are used by the current British government to obsfucate their derelict administration.
I am omnivorous as far as good writing is concerned. I have my own sources to check and a well developed BS meter plus university quals in Womens Studies when Phillida Bunkle was head.
There is good stuff coming from the left women side in the UK and some from the Right in the US.
I think it is a mistake to believe that women's issues are divided strictly down Left Right political grounds especially for issues such as women's access to safe spaces including in sport, prisons & hospitals etc
You do realise The Critic has been called a "contrarian conservative magazine". The editor, who set it up because he is interested in culture war topics, has a funding history including far-right wing of the UK Conservatives and rather nasty right-wing think tanks.
You do realise that gender ideologist lobbyists started the culture of No Debate and neoliberal lefties picked it up and enforced it, which means that left wing gender critical people couldn't get published. So they give their left wing, progressive work to the places that will publish them. The added bonus of this is it makes conservative media more progressive.
Culture war topics are used by the current British government to obsfucate their derelict administration.
Yes, and last time I looked the neoliberal left was putting its energy into identity politics, seems to have abandoned class politics, and is wholly ignoring climate change which will make monkeys out of all of us.
The added bonus of this is it makes conservative media more progressive.
That’s naïve and more likely the other way round. Providing a platform is not necessarily bridge-building and this weird ‘experiment’ with platform-hopping has so far led to increased polarisation and aggression and it’s driving a huge wedge in what’s left of the Left. Proclaimed Lefties voting for ACT is a case in point.
how is it naive? Conservative people reading conservative media are exposed to progressive thought in a place where they feel comfortable reading.
What's the other way around? That the left wing, progressive writer is somehow influenced by being adjacent to conservative pieces? Does that happen in MSM where writers are next to opposing ideas all the time?
If this is platform hopping, it's not the progressive GC people that are causing the wedge, it's No Debate.
Besides, criticise the piece for what it says.
This has nothing to do with anker saying they will vote for ACT. That's a function of women feeling politically homeless because of No Debate and the steady removal of women's sex based rights and culture. I think it's a strategy mistake, quite a big one, and there is risk of radicalisation to the right, but I understand why women feel this way.
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
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The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
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Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
Workers at a major ASB contact centre in Auckland have voted to take strike action and withdraw their labour following disappointing pay negotiations with the employer and an "offer" to workers that would leave them worse off than the previous year. ...
The Labour Party is demanding Peters be stood down, saying "he's embarrassed the country" with a "totally unacceptable" attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. ...
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance, whose members were victims of a China-backed cyber attack, is discussing forming a standing committee to deal with foreign influence. ...
The PSA is concerned that the voluntary redundancies being offered to staff by Stats NZ will impact on the agency’s ability to deliver on its core functions. ...
Results ranged from surprisingly yum to soul-destroying. I love cooking. The kitchen is a hearth of culinary creation, of sensory delights, of gastronomic poetry. I also can’t afford anything nice. Why does a pack of instant noodles and some milk cost ten bucks? I love you, Aotearoa, but I miss ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Police in Solomon Islands are on high alert ahead of the election of the prime minister today. The two candidates for the top job are former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele at the head of the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation, which is ...
He’s fine but it feels like I’m losing a friend and it’s making me bitter. How do I say ‘enough is enough’? Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzHey Hera,I’ve recently moved in with a girlfriend, her partner Steve, and his friend. We all live in a lovely little house. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University ABC “Bluey mania” shows no sign of abating. Bluey’s season finale, The Sign, was the most viewed ABC program of all time on iView. A “hidden” follow-up episode, aptly named The Surprise, created ...
Labour market figures came in softer than the Reserve Bank had forecast, but they won’t be enough to move the needle on interest rates, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Unemployment ...
The campaign will engage the community and encourage submissions on the bill to the New Zealand government by the closing submission deadline of Friday 31st of May 2024 4pm. ...
The paper raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand's political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency plays in that. ...
The Urban Habitat Collective was an attempt to built an innovative new form of apartment building in Wellington. Here’s why it failed, and why the idea could still work, writes co-founder Bronwen Newton. When we started the Urban Habitat Collective in November 2018, we thought we were starting a revolution, ...
Two decades ago this week, a controversial law that attempted to define ownership of the foreshore and seabed prompted a formidable display of outrage and kōtahitanga as 15,000 marched to parliament. Jamie Tahana looks back.‘Hīkoi, hīkoi,” they chanted by the thousands as the biggest Māori march in a generation ...
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According to Kerre Woodham, the homelessness problem is far worse under Labour than it was under National. And as Woodham points out, Labour made such a song and dance about sorting this out before being elected five years or so ago.
From the article:
It is easy to point out a problem. But much harder to find a solution, as Labour has discovered.
I agree that putting people in motels is at least putting a roof over their heads. But, it creates a terrible environment to bring up kids, and puts people at considerable danger. People are spending far far too long in that type of temporary accommodation. And the consequences are likely to be felt for generations to come.
It just could be that the homelessness problem is worse under Labour from Kerre Woodham’s perspective because she and her colleagues didn’t think it was much of a problem before. Like the housing crisis of pre-2018.
They weren’t spending any energy on those situations, certainly not making incessant noises about them.
After the election with Nat/Act on the Treasury benches she and her workmates will be in the mode of “They’ve been left with massive problems,” and defending a lack of progress in solving the situations.
But Labour certainly identified the problem, and made it a major part of their election platform as I recall. So, the lack of progress in five years is inexcusable. It sits right up there with 100000 houses IMO.
And, like Woodham, I am of the view that some of Labour's policies have actually made the problem worse. For instance, making it progressively less attractive to be a landlord.
And, like Woodham, I am of the view that some of Labour's policies have actually made the problem worse. For instance, making it progressively less attractive to be a landlord.
Having fewer landlords would reduce the demand for properties, and thereby alleviate the problems faced by first home buyers. So, making the market less attractive for prospective landlords to invest in would, I think, be rather a good thing.
More misinformation! There’s a disconnect between the traditional housing & rental market and Emergency/Transitional Housing provided by the State. People from State Housing will almost never go through the neoliberal wet dream transition of renting a nice house in a good area and then buying & owning their own first home – they are permanently stuck in Struggle Street in the Precariat. You can drop that silly urban myth right now and forever.
See my answer to Mikesh below. It is not just about the total amount of housing available. It is about how people are distributed around that housing.
So, I think the effect of the government's policy of toughening things up for landlords is actually reducing the average number of people in houses. Thus, creating a shortage overall.
In the end, if average people are struggling to rent a house due to this effect, then it ends up becoming the government’s problem.
Have a nice day.
Perhaps you should look at the reasons why formation of state housing was required back in the 1906 under Seddon, and then by Labour in the 1930s.
Landlords stacking massive numbers of people into damp, cold, mouldy, overcrowded, and unmaintained properties to increase their revenue yield was guaranteed to increase the probability of disease, the flourishing of pandemics, and the destitution of people and families as they become unable to earn a living.
It was then, and it still is now. It isn’t hard to find these kinds of properties now, still with a shift beds, rising damp, and lack of maintenance. Offhand I can think of several people or families that I know in exactly that situation.
All of these resulting conditions carry penalty costs for the rest of society – who are not receiving revenues from the rentals because the inadequete tax take from landlords.
It is reasonable for the government to place requirements on landlords about the standards required in rental accommodation, since all of the downsides from poor quality overcrowded accommodation will eventually wind up on them and on the hands of taxpayers. It increases costs and diminishes the economy of the whole of NZ to have people housed poorly.
Of course, I wouldn't be adverse to changing the laws for landlords. Make dereliction of duty as a landlord a criminal offence. My preferred sentence would be make any owner or property agent live in similar unreconstructed accommodation without any improvements and no maintenance at the same level of crowding for several years with an ankle bracelet on.
I'd point out that I have been a landlord for quite a few years, ridiculously made considerable un-taxed capital gain on it and no other taxable profit. I would have welcomed living in my rental – it was where I had lived for decades before my partner dragged me off to her similar apartment to help pay her mortgage.
Evidently I just have higher expectations about the duties of a landlords.
I don't have a problem with requiring landlords to meet minimum standards for liveability. However, I expect landlords would seek to recover their costs through increased rent.
I was thinking more about factors such as removing interest deductability. All other businesses are able claim their interest costs as an expense. So, why shouldn't landlords?
And, sure, you have likely incurred a strong tax free gain. But, what of landlords who have purchased at the top of the market and now have incurred substantial captial losses?
I was thinking more about factors such as removing interest deductability. All other businesses are able claim their interest costs as an expense. So, why shouldn't landlords?
And, sure, you have likely incurred a strong tax free gain. But, what of landlords who have purchased at the top of the market and now have incurred substantial captial losses?
I'd be more inclined to ask why should these "other businesses" be able to claim interest as deductible expense. As for those landlords who invested at the top of the market surely it would have been better if they had not invested in the first place.
TOP seems to have the best take on this problem. They would apparently insist on a 100% deposit when making a property investment. This would seem to take mortgage interest out of the picture altogether.
That logic doesn't work. It actually makes the problem a lot worse. Here is why:
Many first home buyers are often young people who may have been living at home with their parents, or out flatting. In either situation, they are often comfortably housed, but open to opportunities to buy their own homes, if they are able to, and the opportunity comes up. Also, they often don't have kids, so may be only one or two people.
On the other hand, a landlord may be renting to a family of say five or six. They get sick of the government rules. So the landlord evicts the tenant as soon as possible so the place can be done up to sell, and not have the problem of organising open homes around tenants. Thus, a family is displaced before the house is even sold.
Then, the first home buyer/s of one or two people takes the opportunity to purchase that home.
The net result is that a large family might be out looking for a new home before the landlord even sells the home they were living in. And, a large family is replaced with first home buyers comprising one or two people. And the first home buyers were previously comfortably housed, so not part of the problem.
When that effect is multiplied across the whole nation it is easy to understand why the government's plan is nuts.
I believe there are advantages for land lords who build new rentals, surely that's a win win instead if landlords hovering up the cheaper existing houses
There are obviously two classes of renters: those who rent because they are unable to obtain a place of their own, and those who rent because they, for whatever reason, prefer to rent. The former are at a disadvantage when they have to compete in the market against prospective landlords who have interest deductibility and they don't.
PS: This would seem to have been Grant Robertson's purpose in introducing the measure; he wanted to create a level playing field in respect of the purchase of the property.
Umm – spot the contradiction in Kerre Woodham's opining. She doesn't even know the meaning of the words she uses. She gives a measure for something supposedly immeasurable and then uses a comparative 'worse' without using a measure that compares the same data series over time or looking at similar data series from elsewhere or considering external factors like Covid or inflation.
You lost me at "according to Kerre Woodham", though I forced down the rising tide of sick and read on a bit. What about "according to a random ZB/Herald propagandist" or "according to a dead seagull on the side of SH1 just south of Kaikoura"?
Glad you avoided throwing up.
If we get past the person who gave the opinion (who I find to be fairly middle of the road politically), and the international comparisons, there is not much argument about the scale of the problem, I don't think. And that it appears to be a lot worse now than when Labour came into power.
So, I think my comments are valid. What the government has been doing doesn't seem to be working.
Kerre, "Middle of the road" Lol You are further right than I even supposed.
She is worse than Duplicity Allen for bile. imo
Kerre is so Blue she would choke saying one pleasant thing about Labour.
Some have history of "parrot pieces" and she is a prime example. and thank you Incognito.
Kerre Woodham is National’s Liz Gunn
“Kerre is so Blue she would choke saying one pleasant thing about Labour.”
There was this backhanded compliment.
Made it through 2 paragraphs before nearly choking on my apple, she sound unhinged
That from Kerre Woodham is just a "You may as well vote Nat as Lab is the same!!" Not!!!! Choose better sources of info.
As I have said before, I am right wing economically, but left wing when it comes to social concerns. There are quite a few of us around like that .
OK…. so your heart says help people to step up, but your head says "Don't spend the money". You must get conflicted.
Really? How does that work?
Personally, I am of the view that efficient and effective management of financial resources is one of the keys to solving the social problems.
So, for instance, I would rather put money into nurses than into spin doctors in our hospitals.
And, being on the boards of several trusts myself, good financial management is key to being able to continue to provide services to those in need in our communities.
Yes Tsmithfield that is clear. Good financial management is universal it is not something belonging to the left or right. It is one of the keys to being able to do more with what we have.
I worked in a health organisation where our operational funds to run ourselves were top-sliced from the millions we were given to allocate for public health. This did not mean we ran silly giving ourselves all sorts of baubles and neither did we penny pinched so far that it would have prevented us from having good people in their fields working for us.
It did impose a discipline to get bangs for bucks, to think small where we could as that would add up etc.
If health orgs ran themselves better financially then there would be more money to spend on items that matter including in some communities the exceedingly cost effective operation to insert grommets for glue ear in young children.
I am a little wary of the argument though about comms staff/nurses though. Much of the past spend on comms staff was against the back drop of Covid when good comms was essential. When crunching numbers in mergers etc unitl final numbers are known we do have to treat staff carefully and humanely and that includes comms staff. It is not their fault they applied for and got a job in an orgainsation tat was subsequently merged.
I see the article linked by Tsmithfield as yet again moaning about
a) something they know nothing about (optimum numbers in an organisation such as Te Whatu Ora)
b) moaning about people who by their contracts and work environments ie public servants are not able to go public and say….'hey this might not be quite right etc.
Going after Comms staff is an easy target, especially from the right. Such a pattern that I wonder if anyone ever wonders 'Haven't we done this line before, like 30 years ago, and did it work?' To which the answers would be 'yes' and 'no'.
"It appears to be a lot worse now than when Labour came into power?"
'Bad' and 'worse' are like beauty and all appearances, in the eyes of the beholder and dependent on individual circumstances. The same as "doesn't seem to be working."
A couple in our family would say things are considerably better and did work.
This morning I read on some overseas thing about the Fox situation in the US. A commentator said (generalisation) that media like people to be aggrieved, like there to be controversy, like people to be pissed off. That churns up business for them. Achieving that is an aim and anything in doing that is valid. Like Fox did with ruthlessly perpetrating lies to generate business.
That's the business of the likes of Woodham and her mates on her radio station. They would argue one day that something was black two days later argue it was white and three days after say it was red. Their audiences harvest the crap and disperse it further.
QED
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/07/nz-s-homelessness-the-worst-in-oecd-by-far.html [article date: 21 July 2017]
Nothing has changed with National and they still haven’t got a clue, which they’re trying to hide as desperate as they are to get their fingers on the controls again.
Woodham’s partisan rant was largely fact-free, of course. She and her employer are disinformation projects. Let’s have a look at some real data, shall we?
The number of
TraditionalTransitional Housing Places available in February 2023: 5,824Net difference from June 2017: +4,701
https://www.hud.govt.nz/stats-and-insights/the-government-housing-dashboard/transitional-housing/#tabset
So, this Government is doing something and making slow progress, which is infinitely better than the socio-economic destruction wrecked upon NZ by National. Anybody who will vote for NACT is fooling themselves and others but we live in a free democratic country and we are allowed (and entitled!) to make personal choices that are bad for us and for others. The election of Wayne Brown is a textbook example and should serve as a strong warning but the tribal lights are too bright for some.
Someone can correct me if I have got it wrong, but didn't the Nats alter the criteria around figures for beneficiaries to make them look less than they really were? I don't recall the details but they likely made a difference to the number of homeless recorded as well.
I can’t remember – was it not hospital waiting lists?
As soon as Nats open a spreadsheet the numbers start changing.
Both?
My brain is showing signs of wear and tear due to longevity, but I seem to remember they stopped including those who were parked in motels as being 'homeless'. Something like that?
When Minister of Police Judith Collins fudged the stats. Does that help?
Sounds about right.
It's not the motels that are the problem, it's the culture and the poverty. That could be changed without having to move everyone out within a certain timeframe.
Two years is a long lease in some parts of the country. There's no good reason why living in a motel couldn't be a good option for a few years while other housing is sorted, other than the real problems aren't being addressed.
That is what used to happen back in the 50s and 60s. They called them transit camps and every city had them. They were small wooden units and, from memory, the average time spent in them was six or so months. This was at a time when state houses were being built on steroids.
Mt elder sister and her husband lived in one as newly married with a baby coming, and I loved to stay with them because it was next door to the Auckland Zoo.
Ah, transit camps! In recent years I've referred to them in discussion about the need for temporary housing. We lived near the Auckland Domain complex when we were kids. I delivered many Heralds there.
https://twitter.com/nzdodo/status/742829968267190273?lang=en
Homelessness and housing has absolutely gotten worse under this government, but it would be exactly the same under National.
National and Labour are almost identical on housing with only slight tweaks separating them, they both adhere to a failed economic policy that is only good at destroying and selling things not building things.
Nz from the 1930s til the 1980s was able to build more state houses, with 1/5 of the population and worse technology.
we are told we can't look back at things that actually worked and have to keep trialling a failed experiment that has seen our living standards, education systems, health systems were once the best in the world and our wages once were nearly at parity with Australia.
The sixth labour govt has an absolutely appalling record on housing, as did the fifth national and indeed the fifth labour govts.
Both parties adhere to a failed economic belief where the govt should do as little as possible, leave it to the private sector, high immigration rates, rely increasingly in expensive NGOs, believe state housing stock should stay at 3% of total housing stock instead of above 5% prior to the experiment, both employ armies of consultants, advisors etc who all get a bit of the pie and make housing policies more and more expensive and deliver less and less results.
We have thousands and thousands of kiwis living in motels and the govts answer is more of the same.
We are experiencing poverty,cost of living, housing crises at rates we haven't seen since the great depression in some parts of this country and the answer is more of the same and focusing on social policies to distract.
What we are seeing in housing and poverty is class warfare and our almost exclusively upper middle class labour party blocks it's ears much like the liberal/united party during the great depression and when the shit really hits the fan labour will likely go the way of liberal/united.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/opinion/131787113/who-owns-the-water-mori-do
I'd say to jt, that pakeha don't own/control water, government does/and should, seems to be plenty of Maori in government at the moment so stop playing the race card,gtfu, division is a dangerous path.
Even if we accept that the crown owns the water as you suggest, then as a signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi wouldn't it be obliged to implement some kind of co-governance arrangement?
Whichever way you slice it, the status quo on water is untenable (and is literally killing people). And the only way to fairly implement reform in a way that honours the actually-legally-binding document the government signed is to give Maori some kind of say in what happens.
As I said there's plenty of Maori in government, do they not have a say?
I think the treaty is not fit for purpose any more, and needs a modern rethink.
In any relationship where one party is the aggrieved partner, ones apologies and remediation is undertaken there comes a time for the other party to be forgiven,
If that doesn't happen the parties cannot move forward as one.
Well fuck it, let's change the Magna Carta, and the US constitution, the Bible and just about anything else some bunch of dickheads doesn't like while we're at it.
The US constitution that allows nutcase murderous loons to bare arms, and the Bible that has caused more misery and death than any other book !!! Might want to pick better documents there old mate.
Like declaring it a simple nullity like Justice Prendergast did in 1877?
You can't sign an agreement then arbitrarily repudiate it because it's inconvenient. More so if you're a sovereign government.
Also, you're making a bold assumption we all want to "move forward as one." if so, who's "one" are we moving forward as? Yours? Mine?
Missed the bit about re imagined he did,
Us as I was thinking , show me any country running to systems that works
No political system is perfect bwaghorn, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to make ours more fair and more just.
It reminds of a story I read about ancient Rome. They never updated the legal penalty for assault from a fine that was a lot of money when Rome was a small town populated by brigands and criminals, but was a pittance by the time the empire rolled around.
So young nobles used to go entertain themselves by running around town punching randoms in the face, then throwing what was essentially small change at them.
So yeah, the victim got their apology and restitution. But it was meaningless and nowhere near proportional to the hurt that had been done.
In the same way, yeah some Iwi have had apologies and a couple of million dollars. But how does that stack up against 160 years of economic alienation, political powerlessness, racism, poverty, and the attempt to dismantle an entire culture?
Listen to Clive Geddis on Morning Report this morning. He gives a clear and unbiased view on the 50/50 split in the Affordable Water proposal.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018886525/political-parties-scrap-over-three-waters-rework
For those wondering why we don't have a new Ministry of Works or something similar, the answer is that temporary smaller government entities doing remarkably similar things have reinvented themselves into insoluble nationwide entities:
Witness the latest:
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU2304/S00222/rau-paenga-established-to-support-crown-infrastructure-delivery.htm
Generally, temporary and limited state entities are reinventing themselves into new purpose and nationwide scale, often overlapping. They create their own permanent existence.
Interesting. Is there any overarching oversight of that? eg is housing being managed in the context of roading and vice versa?
For Auckland – certainly, The LGAAA legislation 2002 was all about the integration of Land use and Transport in Auckland.
This chap was on the panel that heard submissions.
https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/unitary-plan/history-unitary-plan/documentssection32reportproposedaup/appendix-3-1-8.pdf
Thanks for the insights, as usual.
Overlap is not as undesirable as ‘cracks’ that nobody covers and wants to deal with. The UFB initiative aims for almost (?) complete coverage. One NZ (formerly Vodafone NZ) targets 100% mobile coverage but did a deal with the devil to make this happen. It is the areas & sectors that are ignored and left alone that need government attention (and funding!).
Great response, Thanks Incognito. @ 1.3 I forgot to say 2017. old numbers.
Ad, Light Rail has made a huge impact on Gold and Sunshine Coasts of QLD.
Yes The G is awesome
One of the most useless agencies is becoming a nation wide useless agency before their principal reason to exist is even halfway finished.
If NZ politicians who have visited Christchurch think its rebuild is a success or even remotely finished may god,Gai, Luke Skywalker,harry Potter, Budda etc help us when those same people try rebuild the rest of NZ from weather and quake events.
Yes I've heard this too CH.
Several relations down there and friends who have visited. One commented that the way the building in the city centre has evolved with plain and brutal type architecture that the room for 'charm' or pockets of difference that suit people has gone.
He had heard that the 'wide boys' with the tall blocks with mirror and ordinary glass are back. Such architectural gems, not, and anyway sheets of glass slide off buildings in Wellington and why is this type of architecture being considered for Chch?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/454341/glass-falling-from-20th-floor-of-building-in-wellington-s-lambton-quay
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111617697/glass-panel-falls-from-building-onto-willis-st-sidewalk-injuring-a-person
The knives are out for Elizabeth Kerekere from that hardy perennial, the “anonymous source”. Wonder how long it is before the Green factions start scrapping in public.
dunno about that, she looks like a bit of a loose unit and a liability for the party in election year. Hopefully the investigation will motivate her to pull her head in. I also hope she gets dropped down the final list.
I mean, ffs, going to the media?
as far as I know she didn't apologise in a meaningful way about her texts.
The Greens lost my support after the way KereKere behaved in the select committee hearing about the bill allowing people to change their sex on their birth certificate. Her and Deborah Russell should both have been asked to resign over their actions on that committee.
ACT lost a lot of support when Seymour started twerking. I’d suggest that Kerekere does a little Irish dance (aka Riverdance) and Green supporters will flock back to the Green Pastures in no time.
"ACT lost a lot of support when Seymour started twerking".
Really? Would you care to explain how you come to this conclusion which I assume means that they lost support when he was on the Dancing with the Stars TV program.
That was broadcast between 29 April 2018 and 01 July 2018. Between the 2017 election and the end of April 2018 ACT averaged 0.4% in the polls. While it was on air they averaged 0.7% and in the rest of 2018 they averaged 0.5%. One could certainly argue that it actually improved during and after his appearance. Your proposal that theory lost a lot of support doesn't appear to have any support though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2020_New_Zealand_general_election
Oh dear, you never seem to get my jokes. If you’d read my comment properly you’d have realised that nothing made sense what I wrote. It was not intended for you, obviously. Mind you, you’re undoubtedly in good company here on TS.
That was the beginning of my defection .Kerekere was incredibly disrespectful to submitters speaking in good faith , she behaved with hostility and disdain .I had no confidence that the public submissions would be taken on board.
Yes,that sadden me too Francesca, I had to wonder which party she was representing for a moment.
As weka states/hopes,down the list she should go,and I say,"work for respect" from party members.
Yes that was very poor.
Greens lost my support over the sex stupidity.
Meanwhile the worthwhile gains that Shaw is getting on climate matters is being submerged by a policy that according to Greens out in the provinces (Nelson & Canterbury contacts) is not seen as important as the environmental concerns that many joined the party for.
Just have to hope that Kerekere gets voted down the list. Also that investigations are carried out into other cases of alleged bullying.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300855691/green-party-sources-accuse-mp-elizabeth-kerekere-of-bullying
There were, at least in the past, some limits on the degree to which the party list could be altered. Unfortunately I can't remember the details, and I don't know whether it still applies.
It was either that the members couldn't move any candidate by more than 2 positions from their place on the initial list or that the party council couldn't make their final list order change the party member vote position by more than a couple of places. If it was the first than she can't be voted down very far. If it is the latter then anything goes.
Sorry but it is just a vague memory of the rule. Does anyone in the party remember how it was supposed to work?
The membership vote which is coming up soon has no restrictions on placement – the initial delegate-ranked list has no impact on the membership vote except that the members can choose to vote using the delegate-ranked list instead of voting themselves if they like.
A member assembly then selects the final list, which will be either the membership-voted list or the 'balanced' list based on applying balancing criteria, but nobody on the ifnal list can be moved more than 2 places than their position on the membership-voted list.
Thank you. It is the second, much more democratic option. Is that way they have the initial list. If you think it is OK it certainly makes it easier to vote.
I just remembered that there was a rule about the subject but I couldn't remember the way round it went.
As someone from a household that gave all their vote to the left, majority of votes to TG than Labour – Not sure that TG will this year receive any votes-So it is only a few votes not to worry. They abandoned their support over the last 5 years, over that time their was minimal creep (and that is being generous) in NZ's position in addressing climate change. The same govt that The Green party supported and accepted ministerial roles. NOW we get statements "The Green Party have told other parties to come to the table with faster, bolder climate action if they want their support at the election." Where were you over the last 5 years. Funny how an election focuses the mind on returning to your base values (???)and what is important. You WASTED 5 years all for a few babbles of office !!! and now you want action ??
The last few weeks have displayed that The Greens are still in amateur mode, and to take time out to see why they deserve any votes other than their staunch Green supporters base – To me currently they do not deserve consideration.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/03/19/its-not-enough-greens-lay-down-climate-change-election-challenge/
She shouldn't have been as high on the list as she was to start with.
I’ve always been surprised that the more a group of people tell us they’re tolerant, and inclusive and stand up for people’s rights, the more they bully people.
[Please fix the typo in your e-mail address, thanks – Incognito]
Mod note
Aaaaaaah taps side of nose knowingly.
The people being bullied don't count as those to whom tolerance and inclusivity are needed.
Also for some bullies in real life, and this probably explains the conduct at the Select Committe hearing, they are able to identify those who do not feel at ease, are overawed etc and home in on them unerringly.
Just as most/many women can identify a fella in a dress as male at a 1000 paces there are bully-type people who can do pick out 'weaker' ones.
As a labour electorate and green party voter in the past, I hadn't really been aware of her. On hearing more about her behaviour, if she's listed at anything higher than number 20, greens have lost my vote.
You like to play it safe, Stan?
Nah,just hopeful me thinks.Incognito
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/488136/rnz-considers-unliking-twitter-over-government-funded-label
Was it bird shit or bat shit? That’s all I want to know. It could be dog shit, from the top-dog himself. At least, it wasn’t bull shit.
Help needed ….. During the Posie Parker fortnight, someone posted on here a link that dispells the myth of trans vulnerability.
I have done a bit of a search to no avail. Could someone re post it for me?
Many thanks
Might be you're looking for this? https://www.lemkininstitute.com/statements-new-page/statement-on-the-genocidal-nature-of-the-gender-critical-movement%E2%80%99s-ideology-and-practice
Thanks ARkie. Always good to read what is being said about gender critical feminists.
The gender critical movement is a loose international affiliation of people and groups who promote far-right ideas that have gained a degree of centrist respectability through their purported defense of women. The movement alleges that people cannot determine their own sex or gender, and that the genitalia observed by doctors at birth are the final determinants of biological sex as well as the permanent markers of gender belonging.
Do you agree with this? See most of the gender critical women I know are on the left, what ever that means nowadays.
One can identify as or consider oneself to be 'on the left' while having some 'far-right ideas'.
Bingo!
GEniune question Arkie. What constitutes far right ideas?
While it may be a genuine question, it is also a very broad question Anker. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention explains itself well regarding the gender critical movement, however I will endeavor to answer your question broadly, and then with some specific examples.
Broadly, far-right ideas can be said to be those which think that pre-existing hierarchies (of power, of money, of race, of agency etc, etc.) are correct and natural. That is to say, from nature, ordained by God, or biological even. Any attempts to remove or level hierarchies represents an affront to what is natural and good.
More specifically, that there is a 'myth of trans vulnerability' or that it is good to vote for ACT, are a couple of examples just off the top of my head.
Act are far right? Really. What are their policies that are far right?
Which groups do you know that think that "pre-existing hierarchies (of power, of money, of race, of agency" (whatever you mean by the word agency?) are correct and natural"
Who would fit this definition?
Read what I wrote. I answered your 'genuine' question.
Have you ever read anything about the debate that is going one Arkie?
And why many women of different political beliefs/relgions etc are concerned?
It does not read as if you have if you can put a link that is so reactionary in answer to Anker's question?
She asked for a link that had come up before in the debate.
Could you link to where the Lemkin stuff was mentioned in the fortnight of debate on TS.
Thanks.
I don’t know why arkie @ 7.1 provided that particular link to Anker’s question @ 7. Quite possibly, it was an honest mistake with no bad intentions whatsoever and no foul play was happening.
Anker asked another rather broad question @ 7.1.1.1.2 but said it was “GEniune question” [sic]. And arkie made a genuine attempt at answering the question in good faith @ 7.1.1.1.2.1.
If you or others don’t like arkie’s answers then you can ask why they gave those particular ones instead of and without reading maleficent intentions behind them. Treating another as a bad-faith commenter is not a good starting point for constructive debate and often a sign of a bad-faith actor.
PS that Lemkin link has come up quite recently here, but not as recently as that ‘fortnight’ starting at the 25th of March
I did ask Arkie @6.25pm.
The fact that he gave this in relation to a specific request for a specific reference that had appeared on TS makes me wonder.
I have asked them to link to where the article appeared on TS.
Hierarchy of agency is quite similar, I think, to ‘chain of command’.
Dame Anne Salmond has put this very nicely into context (e.g. https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2021/07/07/anne-salmond-he-puapua-and-forgotten-promise.html, Part One) without making any references to the Right or Far-Right (or genocide), so she may be allowed reading material. However, anybody with a modicum of general knowledge can see the glaring points of connection.
I can see now why TS has become an unpleasant place for women concerned about male bodied people coming into wards, prisons, chnaging rooms and sports.
Chain of command? You really think that linking to one of the thoughts around the following of Nazism is appropriate?
Hierarchy of agency? Any spurious attempt to either fit this issue into shoes belonging to Nazis or putting shoes on belonging to a different time or people is Ok I suppose, as long as it stamps on the concerns we have.
I note that Dame Anne has this as one of her conclusions.
‘Would it be possible to bring together ideas of whakapapa and complex systems in designing new institutional forms of order in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as relations between people and the wider world?’
This seems to suggest that in doing this the concerns of one part are not expected to be dismissed by others in the ‘complex systems’.
I have told you before, a few times now, that you have the wrong end of the stick.
Both arkie and I have been answering questions in good faith. The fact that you’re trying to sheet this home to TS being an unpleasant place for some women and [because] our answers were intended (!) as ‘stomping’ on you concerns […] says a lot about your state of mind when you respond to our comments. As has become quite evident.
You and some others here with conspiracist tendencies and brimming with distrust and antagonism are entitled to your views and opinions of others here. However, you are not entitled to treat those others with bad faith because you believe that they’re acting in bad faith.
You do not control the narrative here unless you write your own Posts for which you can dictate your own ‘terms of engagement’, as weka does from time to time (or turn comments off altogether, which, of course, completely negates robust debate).
If you and some others here (e.g. the self-confessed TS ‘Nazi expert’) cannot handle robust debate without being triggered, offended, horrified, or otherwise upset then I’d suggest you avoid those flash-points and catalysts.
I – for one – have no problem following your train of thought, Shanreagh.
Still learning as the discussion rages, so please continue for those of us who find value in your views, references and links.
(It's up to you whether you spend time and energy on swatting away personal comments, but your contributions are valued.)
Here's a great definition of fascism, which overlaps with far-right ideals.
https://tinangata.com/2023/04/12/guest-blog-how-to-spot-a-nazi/
I am not sure who is the self confessed nazi expert. I only know of it recently in relation to its use by the trans community as the general words for any person they perceive as disagreeing with them.
I am heartened by Molly's response @9.10pm. She gets where I am coming from.
I do not understand why you, Incognito, are on my case.
I especially do not like the ad homs.
I am not aware of any response from Arkie other than the ones early today so as far as I know they have not seen or responded to my points.
I admit that my focus during the time from when PP was due to come to NZ especially has been on the women’s issues in relation to the trans issues. I don't see anything wrong about that. There are others who have many single issues. There is nothing wrong with that.
From Molly:
I had always thought that ad homs did not have a place here.
Thank you Molly. Your support is appreciated.
The personal comments I find tiresome. An unwelcome addition to my time here.
Cheers again.
@Shanreagh
(Are you on Twitter?)
a few suggestions.
although the style is very different. But both write comments that aren’t necessarily immediately understandable, and both usually improve with multiple readings and taking time to think them through.
I’m saying all that because I don’t have time to go through the whole conversation, but believe it’s important to try and prevent hard polarisation on TS around the gender/ sex wars. I also think your presence on TS is a boon, so am attempting to give some guidelines on what would make it more sustainable.
As I said earlier (15/4) ACT is not far right.
8.1
15 April 2023 at 5:30 pm
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being radically conservative, ultra-nationalist, and authoritarian, as well as having nativist ideologies and tendencies.
Historically, "far-right politics" has been used to describe the experiences of fascism, Nazism, and Falangism. Contemporary definitions now include neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, the Third Position, the alt-right, racial supremacism, National Bolshevism and other ideologies or organizations that feature aspects of authoritarian, ultra-nationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and/or reactionary views.
Far-right politics have led to oppression, political violence, forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, nation, state, national religion, dominant culture, or conservative social institutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics
@ Molly. yes I am on Twitter.
Obviously I do not want give the name out here. Weka is on Twitter so I could find one of her tweets and reply to it or email to Weka here.
I'm @EdgeWatching.
We follow each other already! ha ha.
I'll make myself known……..
@Shanreagh
Of course we do…
(DM me for anonymity)
In the NZ parliamentary context, ACT are far right (they're to the right of National and no political party in parliament is further right than ACT).
That's different from the internationally understood Far Right that is white supremacist, misogynistic, authoritarian and anti-democratic.
Far-right is often used here as a pejorative term, which comes across as assuming the latter definition applies rather than the milder former.
yes, and I would encourage people to talk about the differences and the nuance in response to that rather than denying it or taking offence.
A couple of ACT's policies that are right of National,
Three Strikes
https://communitylaw.org.nz/community-law-manual/chapter-33-the-criminal-courts/sentencing-the-judges-decision-about-punishment/the-three-strikes-law-for-repeated-serious-violent-offending/
https://www.act.org.nz/law-and-order
Welfare
ACT want to remove current benefit entitlements for most unemployed and solo mums and replace them with electronically monitored and controlled income. This is anti-libertarian, ACT's libertarianism if for well off people. It cements in beneficiaries as second class citizens. You can look at how this kind of scheme has played out in Australia to see the daily problems it causes.
https://www.act.org.nz/welfare
Others who know the economic policies better can probably tell you about them.
I wouldn't even bother going there Anker.
Genocide now is it?
Snort
Tell it to the Armenians, European Jews,Native Americans ,Rwandans .
Yeah, what would the organisation named for the Polish Jewish lawyer who in 1944 coined and defined genocide know about it? /s
You may be interested in their: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/iraq-project, or their https://www.lemkininstitute.com/armeniaproject, or their https://www.lemkininstitute.com/indigenouspeoplesproject perhaps
The only way to protect an open mind is to close one’s eyes and ears.
Old Bigot Proverb
Thanks Francesca. I think your probably right, but good to challenge people.
The article is heavily focussed on the US where most observers know that the concerns about the loss of women's rights/issues by the self ID model is concentrated in the right & Christian communities.
In the UK it is the women from the left who saw the threat to womens issues and ran with it.
The concept for many women now though, I have found, is wider than lining up on party political lines.
I find the langauage used in the Lemkin article is intemperate. How can anyone bring genocide into it. It is as bad as likening some thing small & minor as a Holocaust. I am not sure if the article used the word Nazi but it would not surprise me if it did as this word is also in the trans playbook.
Not one woman I know and none of the readings I have seen have ever wished death ofr destruction on the trans community. We as women basically do not believe that science can be altered in such a way and neither do we wish for what are basically still men, in our sports, prisons, chnaging rooms or hospitals.
Arkie, you may be impressed by this writing. I am not. It is what I call reactionary and builds up a narrative, then calls it genocide. As it has not even got the key players correct worldwide I wonder what else it has incorrect?
Surely we can do better than this? Are there articles examining the opposition to self ID and men in women’s sport etc from a more measured starting point.
Otherwise Francesca has got it in one:
‘I wouldn’t even bother going there Anker.
Genocide now is it?
Snort
Tell it to the Armenians, European Jews,Native Americans ,Rwandans’ .
Where to start with this?
Either you did read the article or you did not. If you had read it, you would have known the answer to your question and would not have needed to have asked it.
You would also have known that in that article there was no mention of the Holocaust as such. (NB there is no such thing as ‘a Holocaust’]
Your counter-narrative is becoming stale & predictable.
Repeating the same well-worn talking points doesn’t change or add anything to ‘the debate’.
I don’t want to pre-empt arkie’s reply but it seems that the link was proffered in response to the question regarding the dispelling of the myth trans vulnerability or something rather. I didn’t see it as a case being made regarding genocide as such. I have no idea why arkie decided to put up something with such obvious red flags but that’s for them to explain, if they wish.
If you read my note and have kept up to date with the anti woman playbooks you will know that the reference to Nazis was a sly reference to this being used ad nauseam against anyone who they perceive as not being on the side of the trans ideology.
I did say 'it is as bad as' ……that does not mean that the article included those words but to infer genocide to women not wanting males in their safe spaces is OTT. Other people advancing this type of trope are also the ones who use 'holocaust' left, right and centre. I know full well that there is only one Holocaust. Hence my point.
My thought is that Anker asked for a specific link to a reference that had been put up here on TS over the time we were talking about trans issues. I cannot remember seeing the link from Arkie before so my thought is that Arkie may just be stirring and this was born out by the subject matter. It was not about the point that Anker was talking about but some sort of elderly critique (this is a fast moving subject) on women who are concerned.
Thanks for your ad hom, once again. Do you use that against the Ukraine/Russia commentators? Several of them have positions that they espouse and while I don't know the ins and outs of all the approaches I don't leap into print and say 'stale and predictable'.
When it comes to it for women, it is difficult to do better than saying 'we don't want male bodied people in our safe spaces'. If that is 'stale and predictable' so be it.
Or perhaps for variety I could just say 'women don't have penises' and leave it at that knowing that I have Rishi Sunak on my side,as well as biology, and Sir Keir Starmer 99.9% on my side as well.
perhaps I could maintian a rota, first
male bodied people etc
then
women don't have penises
with
biology
thrown in every 2 or times.
Would that be better?
Your comment is again oozing bad faith and it contaminates almost everything else. And it is contagious.
It never seems to occur to you that others are not actually saying and meaning what you believe they are. This is your main problem here when you try entering robust debate and it clouds your judgement.
And contrary to your belief, not every response to you is about women, safe spaces, and the usual trigger words that are on the forefront of your mind and on your lips 24/7.
Nice diversions and deflections – you forgot adding in Trump and the USA.
Please give it a break!
I don't follow Trump so whatever ref that is about it has zoomed right on over.
I think it was this article from 'The Critic' from Visubversa on 2/4/23
Visubversa1.2.1.4.2.1
2 April 2023 at 8:47 pm
I have used that article in other places to demolish 'the hard done by' argument.
The Critic has some other good articles.
Cheers Shanreagh
You do realise The Critic has been called a "contrarian conservative magazine". The editor, who set it up because he is interested in culture war topics, has a funding history including far-right wing of the UK Conservatives and rather nasty right-wing think tanks. Culture war topics are used by the current British government to obsfucate their derelict administration.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Critic_(modern_magazine)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standpoint_(magazine)
Of course.
I am omnivorous as far as good writing is concerned. I have my own sources to check and a well developed BS meter plus university quals in Womens Studies when Phillida Bunkle was head.
There is good stuff coming from the left women side in the UK and some from the Right in the US.
I think it is a mistake to believe that women's issues are divided strictly down Left Right political grounds especially for issues such as women's access to safe spaces including in sport, prisons & hospitals etc
You do realise that gender ideologist lobbyists started the culture of No Debate and neoliberal lefties picked it up and enforced it, which means that left wing gender critical people couldn't get published. So they give their left wing, progressive work to the places that will publish them. The added bonus of this is it makes conservative media more progressive.
Yes, and last time I looked the neoliberal left was putting its energy into identity politics, seems to have abandoned class politics, and is wholly ignoring climate change which will make monkeys out of all of us.
That’s naïve and more likely the other way round. Providing a platform is not necessarily bridge-building and this weird ‘experiment’ with platform-hopping has so far led to increased polarisation and aggression and it’s driving a huge wedge in what’s left of the Left. Proclaimed Lefties voting for ACT is a case in point.
how is it naive? Conservative people reading conservative media are exposed to progressive thought in a place where they feel comfortable reading.
What's the other way around? That the left wing, progressive writer is somehow influenced by being adjacent to conservative pieces? Does that happen in MSM where writers are next to opposing ideas all the time?
If this is platform hopping, it's not the progressive GC people that are causing the wedge, it's No Debate.
Besides, criticise the piece for what it says.
This has nothing to do with anker saying they will vote for ACT. That's a function of women feeling politically homeless because of No Debate and the steady removal of women's sex based rights and culture. I think it's a strategy mistake, quite a big one, and there is risk of radicalisation to the right, but I understand why women feel this way.
Have a nice day.
Wuss.
You too Incog.