Open mike 18/11/2023

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, November 18th, 2023 - 52 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

52 comments on “Open mike 18/11/2023 ”

  1. bwaghorn 1

    https://www.interest.co.nz/banking/125244/could-new-zealand-first-save-conduct-financial-institutions-regime

    Seems like a good policy from Winston to me. Making a nz bank strong enough to be the governments bank.

    Although one wonders how a coalition can work when I'd bet my belt that nat/act would sell kiwibank in a heart beat if they could

    • mikesh 1.1

      They could always nationalize the BNZ, paying suitable compensation of course to National Australia Bank. The could run it as a state owned bank.

    • bwaghorn 2.1

      But but I saw photo of a hole in the ground and some very nicely laid out small arms in a war zone?

      • Drowsy M. Kram 2.1.1

        Takes time to dig tunnel networks under hospitals – the IDF will find them eventually.

      • Eco Maori 2.1.2

        I see right through this system now.

        The middle class and the upper class.

        Don't want there cottage industry to END can't lose that gravy train. That is why for tangata we have to have Tangata Whenua running the health and justice system for our selves to get better equal service from all government departments.

        I see many of my whanau dying before their 55 or 60 birthday 5 to 10 years before they can collect the retirement pension.

        Then the upper and middle classes live to 95 easy.

        To me they are getting nearly x dubble the time tangata whenua are getting from this uneven system. They get 45 years longer life from their system. In my reality these people are getting the CREAM while we get Tu Tai amount of service from the government system.

        Ka kite Ano whanau.

        • Eco Maori 2.1.2.1

          You see whanau te western government are the most inefficient model in the world.

          Elo Mus can send a rocket to space at about 10 % of the cost that nasa can that tell me how inefficient our government agency are the 80 /20 principal 20 percent of the work force poduce

          80 %of the income so we he got ready of the 80 % as we should to.

          Ka kite Ano whanau

  2. bwaghorn 3

    https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/301010866/chris-luxon-reluctant-to-explain-the-merger-and-acquisition-experience-he-often-talks-up

    Tova the hopless reporter doing stuff she should have done pre election, like find out if clutson was any actual use as a negotiator!!

    • AB 3.1

      It's useful to know if Luxon is a bullshitter. But unfortunately, Tova's sub-text is that if Luxon is not bullshitting, then his claim that he is well-suited to the job of coalition negotiations, is actually true.

      She might have asked the wider question of whether corporate M&A experience is useful in coalition negotiations – and concluded that the two situations are so dissimilar that any benefit is marginal, Then she would have had the double whammy of Luxon making a claim that is both absurd in principle and in his case, wrong in fact. I guess the simple gotcha of potentially discovering fibbing or CV embellishment is so attractive that she was unable to think wide enough.

      • bwaghorn 3.1.1

        https://thestandard.org.nz/daily-review-17-11-2023/#comment-1976995

        I did note that as Joe90 pointed out yesterday she didn't point out his sale of air nzs position in ansett came at a $100 million loss!!.

        Bloody hoooton is a better reporter than the woeful tova

        • Johnr 3.1.1.1

          I'm a bit unclear over hooootons agenda. I don't think he's a person who does stuff for no reason.

          However, if you set aside the media hysteria. Is anyone any worse off by not having a govt in the past month or so? Remember, the longer negotiations take, the less opportunity for harm

          • bwaghorn 3.1.1.1.1

            Don't worry I wouldn't trust hooton further than I can throw him,

            And yes the problem with governments is they feel like they must be doing something to everything all the time, never stopping to think , us it broke? And most importantly what's the right way to fix it instead of believing my ideology will fix it.

          • observer 3.1.1.1.2

            It's really not about the length of time per se, but what it demonstrates.

            To repeat (again): these are not the usual negotiations. We knew the outcome 5 weeks ago. There is no "A or B". Only A.

            Luxon is going to form a government with two minor parties who have no leverage (neither can go and talk to Labour instead). They both have to support National on conf & supp – at a minimum.

            So your last sentence isn't right. There is more harm because Luxon is too weak to tell Peters (even more than Seymour) "we're done here, take it or walk away". He keeps coming back for more.

            We'll find out the price soon, and I bet you it's a lot more than 6%.

          • Cricklewood 3.1.1.1.3

            I think Hooton is upset over been frozen out post his involvment installing Todd Muller if anything goes to show how shit his judgement is.

    • Gabby 3.2

      I was thinking that. Interesting timing.

  3. Sanctuary 4

    This story is just awesome, it's got unconsented buildings, breaches of the healthy homes rules, an unrepentent slumlord, a basically corrupt local council refusing to act on breaches of consenting laws, and presented as though the real victim is the slumlord.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/landlord-who-ran-unlawful-napier-property-slams-tenant-who-filmed-leaks-hes-made-himself-a-lot-of-enemies/BU5D2BHI35HYRC2YTTV4ULY3YM/

    It's behind a payway, but if you can read I highly recommend it as a tale of the new minor aristocracy in action. We might call the landlord loathsome, but Luxon calls him his base.

    • ianmac 4.1

      The summary for Sanctuary's story. Note that the Council decided to not prosecute.

      • When Scott Healey realised he had rented a badly leaking property in the Napier suburb of Onekawa, he decided to take his landlord to the Tenancy Tribunal.
      • The tribunal ordered Leyland Properties Ltd’s Darrell Paul Ross to pay him $9000 in compensation and noted the industrial zone property that Ross rented out, which housed several others, was likely unlawful.
      • Ross says he’s housed people for 30 years without a single complaint. He told Hawke’s Bay Today that he now had to make 20 people homeless and Healey had “made himself a lot of enemies that boy”.
      • Napier City Council says it has decided not to issue an infringement fine against Leyland Properties despite an investigation confirming that unconsented building work had been carried out and that people were living at the property.
      • SPC 4.1.1

        BOB possessed Leyland (sp) Properties the entity manufactured to cater to the need of the deprived to have a home.

        Market forces will be market forces wherever and whenever a council and a government allow them to be.

        Where the corrupt operate, dig a grave and build a prison to house the politicians and their lawyers.

        Man in the mirror

      • Visubversa 4.1.2

        Councils have to think about how much of the ratepayers $$$$ they want to expend going to Court for fines. There is always the thought that the requirement to no longer rent the properties and/or to remediate or remove the unconsented work will be sufficient.

        It will all be in Council records, so any Council Officer who deals with the sites or the Company in the future will be very careful.

        There is a great deal of unconsented work and unlawful dwellings around. In my last year of Planning School, I collected the Census around my area. I found 6 dwelling units that I could see did not meet the requirements of the relevant District Plan and were very likely not lawfully established. As I had signed the usual non-disclosure agreement with the Census people I could not report any of them.

  4. Sanctuary 5

    Reliable neolib poodle Luke Malpass is warming us all up for a Reoublican style attack on the independence of the judiciary I see:

    https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/350112591/judges-beware-black-letter-law-day-could-be-coming?utm_id=mh_stuff

    It seems to me obvious that the settler elite who have all the power have brought themselves NZ First and ACT and a stakehold in National and are determined to go after any suggestion their total grip on powwer be loosened.

    They are so blinded by settler arrogance that they can't see what the Maori Partry victories in the Maori seats for what they are – a warning shot that any attempt to deinstiutionalise the treaty will be seen by many Maori as signal the settler government deligitimising any sovereignty it might have over them, and a defacto declaration of war with people who are convinced they never ceded sovereignty in the first place.

    Still, ACT and ex-mercenary Mark Mitcheel seem determined to pass laws that, combined with attacks on the treaty and the judiciary, will encourage Maori to start seeing the gangs as the armed wing of their movement and create a nice enemy weithin for wannabe authoritarians

  5. Anne 6

    Interesting interview with Matthew Hooton on The Nation this morning. He's wearing his 'I'm such a reasonable man ' hat, which we all know is only one of his multiple head gear, but even so there are some good points:

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/11/election-2023-humiliating-five-weeks-for-christopher-luxon-matthew-hooton.html

    • bwaghorn 6.1

      I'd be looking to see who in national hooton is close to that might have something to gain by luxon being rolled

    • observer 6.2

      Wonderful moment at 6:55 in.

      Hoots was dumbstruck, couldn't believe what the interviewer had just said. If Luxon is a "quick learner", Stephen Hawking was a dunce.

      • newsense 6.2.1

        Just highlights the way he’s been covered- he’s f- everything up, insulting colleagues and his wannabe ministers don’t know anything about their portfolios to base their policy prescriptions on.

        Oh, he’s learning!

        Quite an astonishing interview in terms of showing how the media wanna avoid their job pre-election. Or play teams that go with momentum in the polls.

  6. Muttonbird 7

    National Party leader Christopher Luxon arrives at an Auckland hotel to continue discussions on forming the next government.

    All that is wrong with the near future.

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/11/election-2023-winston-peters-christopher-luxon-continue-coalition-talks-in-auckland.html

  7. Kat 8

    Winston could be emerging as New Zealand's very own version of a benevolent dictator.

    Without his involvement in these farcical coalition talks Luxon and Seymour would be running riot with their sweaty little hands on the levers of power.

    The blue and yellow team supporters must be choking and spinning on the G forces of the unfolding political handbrake skid.

    As another Winston once famously said: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter"

    • Adrian Thornton 9.1

      Joe90..as usual only the most indepth analysis and deep dive reporting is delivered to you from the Standards very own expert purveyor of everything 'Putin'…..yes folks follow this chap down his rabbit hole….yes, go on, read it if you must.. and then you too can experience the warm and fussy feeling of your very own IQ plummeting in real time…..

      "The General’s remarks about the deplorable training of Russia’s aviators were made in 2007. But like his American sycophant, Putin does not forget slights. And unlike Trump, he is capable of outward emotional control and long-range planning. And who knows what Sviridov might have said more recently after the Russian Air Force’s lamentable performance in the Ukraine War

      I suspect that the Russian authorities are running a full-scale investigation into what story they will agree on to explain the General and his wife’s untimely demise. That will not be a Herculean task as they have so much experience with this sort of thing.

      As an armchair sleuth, I will go with asphyxiation as the cause, as the authorities were in such a rush to rule it out.”

      Holy shit…..I used to expect better research from my boys when they were in their teens when we used to engaged in our regular debates…much better.

      • francesca 9.1.1

        But it's so well worth the laughs Adrian!

        Like soviet times Pravda

        Everyone in Russia who dies is either a member of Putin's bulging inner circle or a prominent critic

  8. Morrissey 11

    How lucky we mainstream media followers are to be served by rigorous and reliable media outlets like the BBC…

    And trustworthy politicians like this fellow…

    • SPC 11.1

      'I don't think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he's somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion, or focus groups, or opinion polls. He took all of those on. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result

      Don Rumsfeld was of the opinion that military victory could be won by a force to small too occupy the nation successfully afterwards – and he was proven right.

      Was it his fault that the Baath Party army, police and bureaucracy were all laid off … banks and museums looted?

      Was it his fault that no one on the White House or No 10 considered the past rule of Iraq in 3 provinces by the Ottoman empire and why the Hussein regime had faced rebellions in the Kurdish and southern areas

      There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

      Donald Rumsfeld

      Did anyone at Foggybottom or Whitehall (Munich paperliteweight) have anything useful to say, and if so what happened?

      • SPC 11.1.1

        The King’s English version

        Don Rumsfeld was of the opinion that military victory could be won by a force too small to occupy the nation successfully afterwards – and he was proven right.

  9. SPC 12

    People over 65 and how they cope if they do not own property?

    In a room in a hotel (ex boarding house).

    Continuing to work, so market rent is afforded.

    Flatting with those who own property (family or friends), until a subsidised unit becomes available.

    Having a retirement village place but no right of continuing occupancy (and then being told to leave).

    https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/nz-news/350089499/everybody-out-boom-retirees-kicked-out-cambridge-retirement-village

    A registered community housing provider that bought up council pensioner housing

    And then there is the delivery of food parcels in the weeks between the fortnightly super payment

    https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/a/society/350110249/renting-and-pension-its-just-hard?utm_source=stuff_website&utm_medium=stuff_referral&utm_campaign=mh_stuff&utm_id=mh_stuff

    And also

    state housing

    housing on iwi land

    for the able – community gardens

    those not able

    https://www.govt.nz/browse/health/help-in-your-home/cooking-and-meals/

    Winston Peters said we lacked a plan for having enough old aged care places.

    One wonders if this will be mentioned in the coalition agreement.

    • Belladonna 12.1

      This has always been the case – for people over 65 without home ownership – which is why all of those social provisions exist.

      The issue is now: A. There are a lot more of them (social disruption since the 80s reduced home ownership, and the last of the retiring Boomers boosting the overall numbers) and B. The cost of housing and the general cost of living has increased substantially (a much greater proportion of super goes on just having a roof over your head)

      Of course, this is also true for people under 65 – especially those in minimum wage jobs, or who have a disability which prevents them working full time; and the ability to aspire to home ownership is looking more out of reach than ever for many households.

      The challenge for the new government will be to address this for everyone (not just the golden oldies).

    • Ad 12.2

      Also the bleeding obvious that children who own houses should have their parents living with them. Until they need hospital level care. Like back when we were real families.

      • Drowsy M. Kram 12.2.1

        yes

      • SPC 12.2.2

        They would need them living in New Zealand and with either land for a granny flat (less and less likely with infill) or a spare double bedroom – grandchildren emptying the nest.

        In that regard the developing issue would be the delayed period before starting a family – though there are child care advantages also if there is the room.

        That leads to the question of available housing where the children live so that mutual support is available.

        In terms of housing policy – if there is the section entire there is the chance of a small (some mobile) builds. The encouragement of granny flats (or sleep out for children/grandchildren) in urban planning as part of social policy. In times of yore of course people just added a bedroom to the house (with each new child)

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