I am watching this and basically agree with the general thrust of what I am seeing – albeit with some quibbles. For instance at the 41 min mark he shows a key table that sums up total estimated metals requirement and then divides by 2019 production and arrives at some very long timeframes indeed.
Yet the production figures for just two of those metals – lithium and vanadium are already out of date. I was deeply involved last year in a project that increased battery grade lithium production from the 95,170 tonnes figure he quotes by another 48,000 tonnes. And next year I will be involved in doubling it again and the same again for the next four or five years to a total of almost 250,000 tonnes. And this is just one project globally. Nonetheless I agree I with his conclusion, there is not enough known lithium reserves globally to ever be the dominant battery chemistry.
As for vanadium – just last week I was speaking with the PM for a brand new Australian site that will increase production of this metal referenced 96,000 tonnes by another 20,000 tonnes. And this is a relatively modest site.
So I have first hand knowledge that at least some of his numbers are squishy. Yet that does not take away from the broad conclusion he reaches and one that I have been making for a while; that the proponents of SWB renewables are guilty of glossing over some of the innate constraints they face.
We have discussed alternatives to copper elsewhere – although again oddly enough this next year I will be spending about a third of my time consulting to a massive new copper concentrator.
My point is that the kind of projection Michaux is making here is not easy to get correct in the detail – but he can still be correct in the big picture.
As he qualifies, the numbers are broad based and conservative, and 2019 production figures are used for good reason.
In the grand scheme of things when you conservatively estimate over 7000 years of annual copper production (nevermind the reserves) required in the next 20 talk of solving these issues with recycling is a nonsense.
As he states near the end, as its impossible it will not occur.
OK so I have gotten through the entire thing – but only the lightest possible mention of nuclear. While he praises it's high performance he then airily dismisses it as 'taking too long' and recycles the old waste storage myth. And there is a brief mention in the Q&A of Gen 4 and thorium, but still no data.
On the whole however I fully agree with the broad thrust of his argument; that we have grossly underestimated the challenge of replacing just our current fossil fuel energy consumption, much less the future requirement necessary to support human development this century. Depending on the assumptions made, we will need somewhere between 3 to 8 times our current energy. Which is of course impossible with any projection of current technologies – except Gen 4 nuclear.
In my mind I keep returning to the Kaya Identity as a guide to this puzzle. It essentially tells us there are four levers we have to the carbon problem:
Population
Prosperity per Person
Energy Efficiency per unit of Prosperity
Carbon Intensity per unit of Energy
Of these four levers only one of them can be physically driven to zero – and that is the last term – Carbon Intensity. And there are only two technologies that can deliver on zero carbon:
Essentially Michaux clearly demonstrates that due to the diffuse and intermittent nature of solar and wind renewables the amount of material necessary to build them is impossibly large given current technologies. (On the basis of far less data and rigor I have been making the same argument here for ages.)
Nuclear by contrast is a highly dense and reliable energy source which is the primary reason it can deliver the energy needed within a sane resources budget. But to get there we have to throw away many of the out of date assumptions we have about it:
If we build factory build nuclear plants using the same methods we use for large ships, the time and costs will be better than for existing coal or gas.
If we build nuclear plants using anything but conventional PWR technology – they will be innately lower cost, far easier to operate, produce far less waste and make it reasonably possible to scale nuclear energy's already superb safety record to the numbers of reactors required. All this I have covered in detail elsewhere.
And the old chestnut of waste storage is an entirely solved problem.
The outstanding challenge is regulatory; all of which is based on a fraudulent LNT model of radiation harm that adds utterly unjustified costs, delays and uncertainty to any nuclear project. Which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that Michaux repeats, that nuclear is too expensive and slow.
And to repeat myself – I do not advocate that AU or NZ need to be pioneers in this; we have the enormous luxury of having an excellent solar and wind resource we can use to bridge for several decades or more until mass scale, low cost nuclear becomes mature. In the meantime – can we please quit with the nihilistic 'the end of the world is nigh' sackcloth rendering – that only serves to alarm and discourage people from believing in their children's future. Enough already.
Again – both are myths based on out of date projections. It is exactly like examining WW2 radio technology and insisting from this study that cell phones are impossible.
(Just for laughs – yes I have seen and operated a ZC1 many years ago – quite a remarkable beast for the era it was built in, but generations out of date now. PWR nuclear reactors were also first devised in the 1940’s.)
Michaux displays no antipathy to nuclear energy any more than he does to e.g. copper…. he has simply looked at whats required and determined that its not viable, even less so than renewables, which as you have agreed he has demonstrated.
As he stated all of these figures dont include the energy/materials for the likes of earth works or concrete….that is all additional.
he has simply looked at whats required and determined that its not viable, even less so than renewables,
Again based on demonstrably out of date assumptions that inevitably lead him to the wrong conclusion. As I said above – if all you knew was WW2 radio technology you would incorrectly project that cellphones were impossible. You know this would be a stupid rookie mistake, yet somehow well informed, intelligent people are happy to repeat it when it comes to confirming their biases around nuclear. An odd blind spot.
Note the bolded emphasis I made in my comment above – density and reliability are the fundamental engineering drivers that distinguish SWB renewables from nuclear. Get your head around this and everything else follows.
The problems are numerous and he is probably across the latest developments more so than you are….if you wish to critique his argument then listen to what he has to say on the issue.
He covers nuclear in more depth in his discussion with Nate Hagens (along with other articles)
I watched your first clip and responded in depth. That is way more respect for the argument than you routinely give me.
If you want me to invest another hours worth of my attention you will need to explain why. And perhaps put some effort into responding to my carefully constructed argument above.
I have invested several thousand hours this past five years or so educating myself on nuclear energy and the issues. If I watch this video I predict that Michaux will make the following claims:
That there is not enough uranium to last more than a 100 years or so
That the thorium cycle although more abundant is more complex and less efficient and does not solve the problem.
That Gen 4 reactors are no different and merely make the problem bigger.
That the resulting waste pile is enormous and cannot be dealt with because the future is too uncertain.
It covers some of the points…but misses the main constraint…there is simply not enough time to build the required plant even if all impediments are removed.
I have attached a link to his research which covers all the scenarios he investigated and add his recommendations here
The following recommendations are made:
• Nuclear power is used to service heavy industry operations and heating requirements directly.
• Expansion of the fleet should be planned to a little bit larger in scope than reference scenario to make resources last.
• It is also recommended to develop a robust back end SNF handling system. The proposed storage of SNF and MOX fuel manufacture in the Generation III+ simulation is ambitious. It is recomended that a more practical version of this plan is developed.
• It is recomended to resource the development of Generation IV and thorium nuclear power technology.
You may note from the original podcast that he models expanding existing nuclear generation alongside the renewable implementation.
OK so for the sake of argument let us remove the technical and regulatory constraints. And yes absolutely if we build reactors in the conventional fashion as massive onsite projects you and Michaux would be right – it would indeed take too long.
(Although I must add that having squandered 60 years of not doing nuclear properly, I have little sympathy for those who complain we have now run out of time. But I'll set that one aside too.)
But that is not how to do Gen 4 reactors. We already have all of the engineering capacity to deliver new reactors far faster than we could even with solar and wind. Here is how:
The masters of building big on an assembly line are the shipyards. World class commercial shipyards, exposed to a brutally competitive market, have developed truly remarkable productivity. I spent three years in Korea watching this magic. Flat plate comes in at one end of the property and an immense, complex ship goes out the other end. A good yard needs only 400,000 man-hours to build a ship weighing 30,000 tons, a little more than 10 man-hours per ton. This includes everything: coating, piping, wiring, machinery, and testing. The contract is fixed price, which will be about $3000 per ton. The ship will be built in less than a year. The ship must perform per contract and there are substantial penalties for late delivery.
The shipyards achieve their remarkable productivity by a combination of automation and block construction. Sub-assemblies are produced on a automated panel line, combined into assemblies, and then into fully coated blocks with HVAC, piping, wiring (and scaffolding if required) pre-installed. In the last step, super blocks, weighing as much as 3000 tons, are dropped into place in a building dock.
The steel weight of a 500 MW ThorCon is about 50,000 tons. The world’s largest shipyard can build more than 2,000,000 steel tons of ships per year. A single shipyard can produce 20 GW’s of ThorConIsle power per year. In terms of resource requirements, one gigawatt of ThorCon power is not a big deal. The scale up rate will not be limited by shipyard capacity, but by the rate at which the turbogenerators can be built.
Now I can understand Michaux not including this rapid build pathway because the data would be speculative. But to use this self-imposed limitation of his own study to claim that it cannot be done is not reasonable either.
@ Roblogic…it may be , especially if they can develop fusion. However that will require a functioning society if it is to occur and if the problems are not resolved PDQ there wont be such an environment.
I should add that I do not want to come across as overly critical of Michaux. My first comment still stands – there is a lot of solid work in what I have read so far. I am scanning that pdf now and agree with much of what he is saying.
In particular he underlines just how challenging it is to replace our current fossil energy systems – and explains why in an accessible manner.
But in tackling such an ambitious scope it is inevitable that he will also skate past important details and innovation in specialist areas like nuclear.
How long have you been advocating this plan Red?…3 or 4 years? Where are they?
He is right not to include speculative ideas…that is no basis for analysis….after all aliens may arrive tomorrow and present us with an instant energy solution but i wouldnt waste too much time or energy on planning for it
How long have you been advocating this plan Red?…3 or 4 years? Where are they?
Not quite that long. But now you have re-introduced other constraints to the timeline.
My inside info is that if Thorcon could ignore all regulatory requirements and supply chain issues – they could have the first one up and going within 6 – 8 months. As it is they are making steady progress, appointing a Certification Authority being an important and relatively mature milestone.
Comparing this to aliens arriving is frankly idiotic.
"Not quite that long. But now you have re-introduced other constraints to the timeline."
I have introduced nothing….these are unproven and there is no evidence they will perform as promoted….if these are to be any part of a solution they are rapidly running out of time to make an appearance.
there is simply not enough time to build the required plant even if all impediments are removed.
Well I demonstrated that this is not true – shipyard building can achieve the speed and scale needed – if all the impediments were removed. So then you effectively re-introduced the constraints that a real world developer like Thorcon have to work with by demanding to know why they have not delivered by now. Well if you cared to ask them as I have, it is meeting onerous, time consuming, sometimes capricious regulatory requirements and supply chain issues around accessing startup fuel that are the primary constraints they face.
(One of the most frustrating and perverse constraints is that the US DOE has a small stockpile of U-233 that would be an ideal startup fuel for thorium cycle based reactors – yet for reasons no-one can sanely explain hundreds of millions are being wasted downgrading it to uselessness. An entirely self-inflicted delay.)
The best time to have done nuclear would have been 60 years ago – today being the second best.
and there is no evidence they will perform as promoted
Thorcon is using a nucleonic design very similar to one already proven to work in the famous MSR-E in the 1960's. There is ample, rock solid evidence that it will perform as intended.
But we have been over this ground before. If you are going to cling to the the ‘it hasn’t been done therefore it cannot be done’ excuse – I have nothing more to add.
I do not dismiss what you propose because it has not been done before…i question why it has not been achieved to date.
Consider…there are at least 32 countries with access to the required material in a world crying out for energy. even if the US regulators have been nobbled, if you have a viable proposal to provided energy ( and all that flows from that) then somebody will have provided the wherewithal for this 'proven' method to be developed….the fact that nobody to date is evidence there are issues that are not readily apparent
Also the fact that someone like Michaux, with his obvious interaction with the energy sector, hasnt deemed it worthy of consideration is also indicative.
The best way to make a case is to demonstrate capability….if and when that happens it cannot be denied.
I have now read through Michaux's document that you linked to. I skimmed most of it looking for the Gen 4 analysis – and yes it is there. Actually it is better than I had hoped. He concludes that it would definitely be the best of the four main nuclear scenarios he considers. However he boxes himself in on five fronts:
He calculates almost 180 years of Gen 4 thorium cycle fuel supply, but then does not consider the eventual development of an efficient thorium breeder cycle – that would extend this life indefinitely. (He also only uses proven reserves of high grade thorium mineral resources that are currently mined, but if you allow for the economic extraction from lower grades – there is a vastly greater reserve available.)
He also then calculates an accumulating high level SNF waste pile that requires active energy to cool – that eventually becomes unmanageably large. Molten salt thorium reactors have the opportunity to perform a continuous fuel reprocessing using chemical methods – that avoid much of this problem. There is decades of development needed to bring this solution to production scale, but neither is it is a problem that needs solving immediately. This is a can we can safely kick down the road.
Same with the development of specialised fast-spectrum waste burner reactors that massively reduce the volume and half-life of the ultimate waste stream. Again we have decades to solve that problem before it is needed.
And in his calculations he explicitly assumes it takes 5 years to build each new plant, while I have shown it is entirely reasonable to build them far faster than this.
And finally I think he missed an important point that Gen 4 fission is likely to only be needed for a limited period, until we can solve the fusion problem at scale. And it only takes one key innovator to crack the puzzle. For instance this fusion startup is very impressive.
In essence we don't need Gen 4 fission to solve our energy problem for millennia into the future – we really only need it to bridge the gap for maybe 50 – 100 yrs until fusion becomes cheap and abundant. And that eliminates all of the constraints Michaux describes.
'IF 'fusion becomes available…but you miss his main point…even with a 5 year build time (not going to happen…we cant build one (average output) inside 10 years currently…we sure as hell arnt going to build 25 per annum on a 5 year time frame in the next 10-20 years)…we will not replace the energy lost from fossil fuels in the forseeable….and that means LESS output!
(not going to happen…we cant build one (average output) inside 10 years currently…we sure as hell arnt going to build 25 per annum on a 5 year time frame in the next 10-20 years)
Yes but that statement may well be true, but it is only useful if you understand why we are currently building them too slowly. The reason is not a physical constraint we cannot overcome – it is mostly a political one that is almost entirely within our control.
Hell back in the 70's and 80's there was no problem building reactors fast and cheap, and most of them are still running just fine today. And that was using Gen 2 designs that are far harder to build. The absurd 10 or more year builds that have been taking place since then have nothing to do with how long it takes to build them, and everything to do with a regulatory framework designed to prevent them from being built.
As I have said a few times before – the solutions are there, we are just choosing not to take them.
Key made his choice based on the circumstance in 2008 and the goal of NZF (then in coalition with an outgoing Labour admin) going under 5% was realised. This allowed his National and ACT or MP governing majority of the 2008-2017 era.
This time NZF is campaigning from an opposition to the current government, and Key's advice is to consider a National and ACT or NZF strategy. Puting NZF into the role played by the Maori Party in his time. That allows the opportunity for National to reduce the influence of both on government policy (given ACT and NZF have significant differences), an approach designed to gather as many centrist votes to National as possible.
Peters own strategy is to note those on the centre right who voted Labour to give them a majority without the Greens. He wants some of these voters to go with NZF to counter a NACT government further to the right than they would want.
I went to Winston’s rally when he came to my area. I have never gone to any political rally before. But I had time on my hands, and the person who wanted me to attend with them sucked me in by saying there would be ''finger food'' at the venue.
As per the link Winston started with the concept of freedom, mentioning both the ''baby blood saga'' and the many ''ordinary'' Kiwis he had met at the parliamentary protest who had lost jobs because of the vaccine mandate. He made a clear demarcation between ''crazies'' and ''ordinary'' protesters.
I couldn't help thinking Winston was missing the mark with the assembled audience. The audience was younger than I'd have expected. I was surprised at the Maori and young folk in attendance. Maybe they thought there would be ''finger food'' on tap too?
All in all, a flat lifeless presentation by Winston until… until the floor was opened for questions. Then the charismatic Winston came to the fore. One liners, quips, barbs for the media and political opponents. He became a different man. Watching the enigma that is Winston Peters was a fascinating experience.
Interesting. I had dinner one evening in 2001 at the Green Parrot with Winston holding court at a nearby table, and how entertaining was that! Whatever you might think of his politics, Peters is a remarkable politician and NZ Parliament would have been the poorer without him.
Winston First… he doesn't care about anything except his ego.
David Lange once described Winston Peters as the "only member of Parliament to have a concrete block named after him and I can understand that".
He also noted that Peters, not present to hear his valedictory speech to Parliament in 1996, "would have been with us today if he hadn't been detained by a full-length mirror".
There was no ''finger food.'' My naivety regarding political rallies was evident. Given there was about 200 people present, and Winston was passing the hat around, we would have considered ourselves luck if we saw a picture of finger food. I did however have one mini Mars Bar. A delightful old biddy sitting next to me smiled and said ''take one.'' ''One'' was emphasised. Obviously she sensed my low blood glucose, but at the same time my feral looks probably urged her to be cautious in case I snatched all three Mars bars in the packet.
Nobody here is making any mistakes regarding your political leanings. In fact, shortly (a week) after you started commenting on this forum under your current user name you made this declaration:
I decided to leave the the E out for brevity. [sic]
Your debating skills are poor and you don’t comment here in good faith. Unfortunately, this takes up a lot of bandwidth from other commenters and they’re wasting their precious time & effort on you, IMO. I knew this would happen as soon as I released you back onto the reserve – it is déjà vu all over again
To quote Mandy Rice Davies…'Well he would say that wouldn't he?'
Ian Powell used to have my attention. I regard him now as a perpetual nay sayer with no good ideas but plenty of criticism and this has been his modus operandi.
It has probably got to with the nature of the people he represented as Executive Officer. Many union commentators have a world or NZ view of politics that informs their work
We can argue the merits of mass vaccination, lockdowns and so on, quoting expert research and analysis until the cows come home. But the issues raised by Malloy are all solid management and political questions that are well within our wheelhouse to consider.
The Royal Commission NZ is holding into the COVID response is a promising sign that the system is prepared to consider learning from the experience. Arguably not everything we did was worth doing, and some things may well have had a higher cost than benefit.
The aviation industry learned decades ago the correct path to real safety; installing black boxes and cockpit voice recorders, and intensive 'no blame' investigations after every incident to properly uncover the root causes and the chain of events. It has proven to be a remarkably effective model.
Reads like anti-Labour polemic. Does the Govt get any credit for a world leading pandemic response, and saving thousands of lives. Nope. Zilch. Does Covid, or the failing DHB model get mentioned as a factor in the present difficulties? Nope.
The reforms were needed, there is never a perfect time to make these kinds of fundamental changes, but we could not carry on with whole regions getting hacked (Waikato DHB) and people having to shift around the country just to get a fscking appointment
“To cap off this leadership failure, the Government made the inexplicable political call to restructure the health system….in the midst of a health pandemic”
”It took this extraordinarily irresponsible political step in the full knowledge that public hospitals and general practices did not have the capacity to cope with the pandemic pressure”
So nothing in his article to say when would have been a good time, what would have been the arguments for and against and then caps it all off by saying health union leaders have not been commenting on the issue. Perhaps on balance union leaders believe that the restructure has more going for it than against it, in the long term.
Results for the Fiji election are due this afternoon- barring interestingly timed delays, such as happened on Wednesday night. Fijian immigrants to Aotearoa, that I have talked to; are a bit worried about what is happening back there. Yes, the head of the military has vowed not to interfere, but Rabuka was only a senior officer, not head of the military (though Bainimarama was), with the support of a couple dozen soldiers when they did their first coup. The provisional numbers seem to be set to give the combined opposition a majority (once subthreshold votes are excluded), if they can work together:
Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama's FijiFirst government is currently ahead in the tally with 42 per cent of the vote.
Sitiveni Rabuka's People's Alliance is sitting on 36 per cent, while the National Federation Party has just under nine per cent and the Social Democratic Liberal Party five.
The other five political parties are sitting under the five per cent threshold…
Rabuka – also a former coup leader turned prime minister – who has flagged a coalition with the National Federation Party.
The final decision on who to form government with could come down to Social Democratic Liberal Party leader Viliame Gavoka.
And the likelihood of opposition parties working to form a coalition government seem to have increased by alleged irregularities in this election. Rabuka was leader of SoDeLiPa in the 2018, and there is reportedly not much love lost between him and his successor (by intraparty coup), but they both seem more opposed to the present Prime Minister's government more – for now.
People’s Alliance and four other opposition parties on Friday launched a petition calling for an independent audit and a recount, after saying they had no confidence in the election process.
Rabuka was brought in for questioning by the police after questioning the election process. And other party's members are apparently under investigation. But maybe more important in the Fiji political culture is this:
Police also took in the head of the Methodist Church in Fiji and Rotuma, Reverend Ili Vunisuwai, for questioning at the Valelevu police station in Nasinu.
Vunisiwai had sent a letter on behalf of the Methodist Church to the Fiji president on Thursday expressing concern about the counting of the votes and inconsistencies in the electronic results management app and included the military commander and police chief in the communication.
It's nearly an hour since the final results should have been out, and still nothing in RNZ. Which is a bit concerning. This was from earlier:
As 6am local time of the Fiji Election Office results app showed 1994 out of 2071 polling stations or 96.3 percent had been counted.
The results by party have the ruling Fiji First Party in the lead with a 42.47 percent share of the votes counted so far.
The People's Alliance Party is in second place with 35.87 percent followed by the National Federation Party on 8.86 percent and the Social Democratic Liberal party precariously perched at 5.2 percent; just above the 5 percent threshold needed to get into parliament.
I don't know that I agree with the RNZ assessment. If SoDeLP do make it over the Threshold that is 92.5% total votes with 7.5% subthreshold. Which gives Fiji First roughly 46% to the combined opposition's 54%.
It would appear so; Sacha. However it is a very new constitution brought in by Bainimarama after a coup, with significant ammendments from the original proposal – in particular about declaring states of emergency, and leniency for military action against the government. There have only been two elections under this constitution so far (2014 & 2018) and neither have resulted in a coalition government.
Results are now 3 hours late. But if the results are accepted by those currently in power, then a coalition of the present opposition parties seems likely:
As it stands, the PAP-NFP coalition have a lead of 44.6% combined share of votes and have 26 projected seats in Fiji’s 52-member parliament.
A grand coalition could be formed with fourth-placed Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), who have three projected seats from 5.1% of votes.
Fiji's election kingmakers have demands. SODELPA has just three seats (from 24,172 votes) but they are needed by rival coupsters Bainimarama & Rabuka. Fiji has limited experience in coalition negotiation – a sharp learning curve ahead#FijiElections22https://t.co/SoBMuxpBwQpic.twitter.com/Sy3fxWBDkl
Zelensky and staff talked to The Economist about Russia, the war being on the edge, Ukrainian reluctance to compromise on territory, and prospects for the coming year.
In recent days The Economist has interviewed the three men at the crux of Ukraine’s war effort. One is Mr Zelensky. The second is General Valery Zaluzhny, who has served as the country’s top soldier for the past year and a half. The third is Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces, who masterminded the defence of Kyiv in the spring and Ukraine’s spectacular counter-offensive in Kharkiv province in September. All three men emphasised that the outcome of the war hinges on the next few months. They are convinced that Russia is readying another big offensive, to begin as soon as January. Whether Ukraine launches a pre-emptive strike of its own or waits to counter-attack, how it garners and distributes its forces, how much ammunition and equipment it amasses in the coming weeks and months—these looming decisions will determine their country’s future.
”Putin’s insecurity might start with anxiety about his personal future, but he has extended this into a vision for Russia that involves a permanent struggle with the West and its liberalism. There is little NATO can do about this vision except to ensure Russia’s defeat in Ukraine. “
You know The Daily Blog has completely lost it when they print a Tremain cartoon. They are usually only given the light of day in NACT meme groups and troll farms.
WTF is wrong with National MPs? Barbara Kuriger has been misusing her MP status to run interference for her son (he was prosecuted for animal mistreatment), and run a campaign of attacks against Fonterra and MPI
This was up yesterday about Kruger's emails and misuse of her position.. Yes a window on their world of entitlement… but Nania Mahuta gets pilloried by those Nats.
Actually worth listening to – 6 mins of Garner just telling the truth about housing policy over the last decade or so.
Must listen & then forward to all your mates who have short memories.
Full credit to Duncan Garner yesterday for calling out the Nats as the deliberate perpetrators of the housing crisis that this government is now rapidly solving. pic.twitter.com/ZSshoHsBzG
Over at DailyKos, Thom Hartmann chronicles 40 years of Reaganism and the unfolding destruction of the common wealth of the USA by the predatory 0.01%. It's a hard read. But in the middle of it is a shining reminder of a brief moment in history when pro-social values held the political high ground
Before Reagan, we’d passed the right to unionize, which built America’s first middle class. We passed unemployment insurance and workplace safety rules to protect workers. Social Security largely ended poverty among the elderly, and Medicare provided them with health security.
A top personal income tax rate between 74% and 91% throughout that period kept wages strong for working people and prevented the corrosive wealth inequality we see today. We didn’t get our first billionaire until after the Reagan revolution.
America built colleges that were free or affordable; gleaming new nonprofit hospitals; the world’s finest system of public schools; and new roads, bridges, rail, and airports from coast to coast.
We cleaned up the environment with the Environmental Protection Agency, cleaned up politics with the Federal Elections Commission, cleaned up corporate backroom deals with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We outlawed banks from gambling with our deposits via the Glass-Steagall law.
Sadly, we see even in New Zealand this is not the norm, but something workers and democracy-minded parties have to actively fight for. Because powerful moneyed interests prefer their exploitations and scams not to be subject to inconveniences like ethics or law.
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Buzz from the Beehive The big bread-and-butter issue of pay packets and weekly incomes was at the core of three ministerial statements since Point of Order’s previous monitoring of the Beehive website. Andrew Little was earning his keep, meanwhile, by delivering a speech in which he discussed co-governance. He was ...
After yesterday's news that Stuart Nash deliberately and knowingly breached the OIA to cover up his corrupt disclosure of Cabinet information to his donors, the media now is focusing on the wider point: Nash's behaviour isn't isolated, but a symptom of the rot which has eaten away at transparency under ...
There was great disappointment following the just released poverty figures for the year ended to June 2022. Whatever your take, we are not facing up to the real child poverty problems.Some say the poverty figures show no significant change, some say there was a small improvement. Some say that the ...
Quiz1. Which is the most pleasing comment so far regarding this man’s indictment?a. He finally won a popular vote! b. “You can’t indicate me, I quit”c. Is this joy? It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything.2. “The boxset scandal that is Stuart Nash.”Who wrote this fine description? a. ...
It’s truly astonishing the way that the Government has been able to suppress evidence of business donors gaining special access to Cabinet information. Now that Stuart Nash has been fired from Cabinet for leaking sensitive information to individuals who funded his election campaign, the focus has shifted to why this ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Have you noticed the media’s propensity to label people and groups in a way that shows negative bias? People speaking up for women’s right to their own spaces and fairness in sport aren’t feminists or women’s rights activists, they’re anti-trans or transphobic. The Taxpayers’ Union is often prefaced with the label right ...
Photo by Magdalena Kula Manchee on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week for an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session for paying subscribers about the week that was for an hour (I’ll be online for an hour from 12.30 so pile them up), including:The Government’s latest climate back-tracks on diesel cars and ...
All of the Government’s five options for improving Auckland’s links include or prioritise tunnels and bridges for cars, double-cab utes and trucks ahead of walking, cycling and rail. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Labour Government has brought forward plans to start building and/or drilling a second Waitematā harbour ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes: Green’s co-leader Marama Davidson just keeps digging the hole she is in deeper. First she showed her bitter antipathy towards white CIS (same gender as birth) men. Then she walked it back to all men. On Tuesday night on TV1 News she said, “…overwhelmingly it ...
as Auckland’s cantankerous mayor stumbles from one crisis to the next, the hope is not that Wayne Brown will learn on the job – that’s almost certainly a lost cause – but that Aucklanders will manage to come together and limit the damage that he threatens to inflict on the ...
Wow, it’s the end of March already. Here are a few of the smaller items that caught our attention over the last week. We need better trucks Newsroom reported on a Ministry of Transport report showing just how dirty our current truck fleet is. A heavy diesel truck costs ...
Listening to RNZ yesterday, I heard that the government was making a major announcement about a second crossing of the Waitematā. I was fairly surprised.I’d have thought with it being election year the last thing the government would want to be talking about was a massive Auckland transport project. Especially ...
I cracked open a fortune cookie with a family group after dinner. My loved ones got warm, inspiring messages such as my son’s: ‘You will be successful in business and society’. Nice. I got this one: “Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.” By coincidence, I had already drafted a ...
THOMAS CRANWELL: When ideology turns violent – the political and media backing behind the Posie Parker mob Thomas Cranwell writes – ——————————– Similar to other countries, the transgender movement in New Zealand is not a grassroots organisation but instead is an increasingly ...
It is a lovely autumn morning.The sun is shining. The birds in Kōwhai park are twittering.There is music playing on Today FM.You can hardly tell that the children at Kia Kaha primary school are being greenhouse gassed.It is not just happening at Kia Kaha Primary School.It is happening to all ...
Poor old Mike Hosking! In today’s Herald, such is his visceral antipathy to our current government, that he is reduced to wrestling with himself in trying to understand how it is that despite its many failings – in his eyes at least – the Labour government is somehow ahead in ...
Air pollution kills, and dirty diesel vehicles are a major source of it. Cleaning them up has enormous social benefits in avoided deaths and hospitalisations. How much? Billions of dollars: A report quietly released by the Ministry of Transport in July shows tighter regulation of vehicle imports for air ...
Via one of my lovely Twitter sources, the sardonic and interesting @johubris … the following ‘poll question’ has been recently distributed: “Thinking about your life and your country now, what is the most important issue that you want to see the New Zealand Government addressing?” This qualifies as push-polling, which ...
On Tuesday night, former Forestry Minister Stuart Nash was sacked for corruption, after the Prime Minister discovered he had disclosed confidential cabinet discussions to his donors. Its since emerged that Jacinda Ardern's office knew of this disclosure, but didn't act on the obvious breach of the Cabinet manual, and didn't ...
Buzz from the Beehive Whoa, there – we can’t keep up! Suddenly, the PM’s ministerial team has unleashed a slew of press statements. Sixteen announcements have been posted on the Beehive website since our last check. This burst of activity (we wondered) might be the result of them responding positively ...
Big transport news today with the government beginning public engagement on options for the Waitemata Harbour Connections project. This project has had an incredibly long history, with previous versions somehow managing to be incredibly expensive, detrimental to most of the transport outcomes we are trying to achieve in Auckland, and ...
If ever there was an example of complacency about corruption and integrity in New Zealand politics it’s the fact that the Prime Minister’s Office knew back in 2021 that Cabinet Minister Stuart Nash was feeding privileged Cabinet information to business donors but did nothing about it. This is one of ...
Open access notables "Despite the potential for positive methane–climate feedbacks from global wetlands, most Earth System Models (ESMs) and Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that informed the last Assessment Report of the IPCC do not directly incorporate this process."Publishing in Nature Climate Change, Zheng et al. unpack the implications of this ...
Among its ‘go slow’ on climate measures, the Government chose to delay tighter regulation of vehicle imports for air pollution for six years because it would have increased vehicle purchase costs. Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government continues to backtrack on moves to reduce emissions, with three news items ...
Stuart Nash’s downfall appears to have had its beginnings with one of the players from the “Dirty Politics” scandals of 2014. Simon Lusk, a close associate of Cameron “Whaleoil” Slater, one of the key figures in Nicky Hagar’s “Dirty Politics” expose, has been associated with Stuart Nash. Lusk has ...
Worried if this election will be shellacked by “the culture war”? That arrived ages ago. And, one side is definitely in panic mode, even if that’s not being admitted right now. Because of that, they’re reverting yet again to straight up… culture wars. Yes, fellow traveler, the Party who ...
All About Climate is a Youtube channel dedicated to communicating climate science and combating misinformation about global warming. It is run by Roshan Salgado D'Arcy - or 'Rosh' for short. He is a geology graduate with an MSc in climate change and is currently reading for a PhD in the communication of ...
ChatGPT is an interesting little beastie. I have only really started experimenting with it recently – not because I have any interest in using it for my own writing projects, but because I enjoy pushing and prodding the AI in strange directions. I have spent an inordinate amount of ...
The science of climate change is clear: we need to stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and we cannot burn even a fraction of those already discovered. So naturally, Labour is offering oil companies more exploration permits: The Government is offering companies another opportunity to search for ...
There are two keyboards in my office. I hammer at one a lot more than the other.But some days — today, for instance, after a few days of steeping myself in toxicity —that other keyboard can really come into its own.I learned to play the piano as a kid, went ...
Is the government imploding? Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has had to sack one of his more effective (and likeable) ministers, while another (from the Green Party) has insulted many of the adult population. For his part, Hipkins had appeared to be shaping up well since he took over the ...
Mobbed! As Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s (Posie Parker’s) opponents surged forward, her only protecters were a handful of burly security guards who surrounded their client and began forcing a path through what was now a howling mob. At least one video recording shows the diminutive Keen-Minshull, a terrified rag-doll, eyes dulled by ...
Buzz from the Beehive It looks like Marama Davidson must revile white sis males – or some other group of our population – three more times before she gets the heave-ho as one of Chris Hipkins’ ministers. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the PM’s treatment of Stuart Nash, ...
For a serial offender like Stuart Nash, it was inevitable that another skeleton would emerge from his closet, and end his ministerial career. This one though, was a whopper. Previously, Nash had tried to tell the Police how to do their job. He had also tried to tell the courts ...
Cabinet Minister Stuart Nash was sacked last night for violating Cabinet Collective Responsibility rules, when it was revealed he disclosed sensitive Government information to business supporters who had donated money to him. The breach of the Cabinet Manual was enough to land him in trouble, but the fact that it ...
Some good news last week with the Council confirming that Te Hā Noa – Victoria St Linear Park will go ahead and with construction starting on 11 April – though with a few fishhooks. Te Hā Noa, a renewed Victoria Street, is the next big project in Auckland Council’s Midtown ...
Stuart Nash’s assurances to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins that there were no further examples of him breaching the Cabinet Manual became meaningless with the release of emails from Nash sharing Cabinet discussions with business people. The Prime Minister had no choice but to sack Nash as a Minister with immediate ...
Hi,Just a quick online-only update after yesterday’s newsletter, How Michael Organ Weaponised the Family Court... and Sean Plunket. First up — wow. Thanks for all the support, and to all those who shared their own personal stories in the comments. And welcome to any new Webworm readers.I just wanted ...
Let that sink in for a moment - Christopher Luxon, who has spent the last year demonising Māori, wants Marama Davidson to apologise to white men.You will likely have seen the video, or read about it. Marama Davidson rushing along Princes St on Saturday evening, the road that runs between ...
Stuart Nash, the great-grandson of former Prime Minister Sir Walter Nash, has lost his political career. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Stuart Nash was sacked for telling donors what happened in Cabinet. Wellington’s City and Regional Councils are going cold on light rail plans. Wayne Brown is under ...
NZ First Leader Winston Peters is sympathising with Stuart Nash and defending him but dodging questions on whether he would be welcome in New Zealand First. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins last night sacked Nash from the Cabinet after an email he had sent to two of his campaign donors ...
So, after interfering with the police, and then interfering with immigration decisions, Stuart Nash has finally been sacked: Stuart Nash has been sacked as a minister, after Stuff revealed he had emailed business figures, including donors, detailing private Cabinet discussions. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed the people Nash emailed ...
Nearly 25% of mortgages in Auckland are deemed at risk in a 1-in-100 year flood event. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Once a year, every year, from now on, in our not-so-slow-cooking climate crisis, there will be a moment when the most important number in Aotearoa’s own personal, national ...
Item One: About a confected crisis Please bear with me for a moment, readers outside Auckland, I wish to sound the klaxon. Auckland, we have until 11pm today to have our say. About what? About this, as copied and pasted from Pippa Coom’s Facebook page:The "austerity" budget is built on ...
Buzz from the Beehive Yet again, the statement we were looking for could not be found on the Beehive website. Nor was it on the Scoop or Green Party websites. But – come to think of it – we are probably wasting our time by searching. Our quest is for the ...
The following is from a speech given by Arundhati Roy at the Swedish Academy on March 22, 2023, at a conference called Thought and Truth Under Pressure and reprinted from Literary Hub. I thank the Swedish Academy for inviting me to speak at this conference and for affording me the privilege ...
After almost two decades of racism, Australia is finally getting off its "stop the boats" bullshit. But don't worry, racists - Michael Wood has your back!The Government wants to increase the time it can detain without a warrant people seeking asylum en masse from four days to 28 ...
Last year, the Education and Workforce Committee recommended that the government legislate for pay transparency to prevent employers from secretly discriminating. This ought to be a bread and butter issue for Labour - discrimination sees women (and particularly Māori and Pasifika women) paid significantly less than men. But since then ...
Thomas Cranmer writes – ———— An unruly mob in Albert Park has catapulted New Zealand into the global headlines with ugly images that may become iconic in the debate about the dangers of transgenderism. ———— Bravo Kellie-Jay Keen. She did the job that needed to be done. For all the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global warming is melting the Arctic ice cap, and that’s having unforeseen effects on the world’s weather — even thousands of miles away from the North Pole. Some climate scientists have begun to link increasingly common heat waves in Europe to what is ...
Hot on the heels of the demotion of former police Minister Stuart Nash for breaching the Cabinet Manual, Radio New Zealand has revealed the close links between lobbyists and politicians- an area of New Zealand politics that is completely unregulated. The evidence in Guyon Espiner’s series Mate, Comrade, Brother, the ...
At the Auckland Transport board meeting today a series of papers really highlight the cost of sprawl. For the last few years, the Supporting Growth work has been looking at designing the strategic transport networks for future greenfield areas in the South, Northwest, North (around Dairy flat) and in Warkworth. ...
Hi,Today’s newsletter is something I’ve wanted to report for ages, but I have been waiting on a New Zealand judge to make a ruling. That ruling has been made — so here we go.Enjoy.A scene from Mister Organ.Two Police Officers Knock on My DoorOn November 4 last year, I was ...
Only three days after Nanaia Mahuta had dinner with China’s Foreign Minister, New Zealand’s intelligence chiefs were talking about state actors interfering in New Zealand politics and using ethnic communities here for espionage purposes. Neither GSCB Director (and new SIS director) Andrew Hampton nor acting SIS CEO Phil McKee ...
In what has been one of her most important diplomatic mission, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has opened the door for a visit to Beijing by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins later this year. Such a mission is regarded as vital with a new Prime Minister Li Qiang settling into office. ...
Saturday morning, we went to Albert Park.We were there to show support, to challenge words of demonisation.To repeat those words from Michèle A’Court:Making them sound “other” is a technique used by racists and homophobes to dehumanise whole groups of people who “aren’t like them”. If you dehumanise people, it is ...
Over a million New Zealanders will receive a little extra to help with the cost of living as a result of our 1 April changes. Around the world, inflation is causing costs to rise and we’re feeling it here at home. In tough times, we need to support those who ...
With benefit changes coming into effect tomorrow, the Green Party is calling on the Government to lift benefits to liveable levels to make sure everyone has what they need to thrive. ...
Following decades of work by the Green Party alongside the organics sector, people will finally be able to be confident that products labelled organic have met standards. ...
The Green Party supports immediate Government action to close the pay gap as called for in an open letter released today by the Human Rights Commission and 50 other organisations. ...
The Green Party is today welcoming the release of the Government’s waste strategy, but says it has a big gap without action on the container return scheme for beverage containers. ...
The Government’s decision to introduce ‘mass arrivals’ legislation goes against the values we all share of Aotearoa as a place where all people are treated fairly, the Green Party says. ...
MINISTER DAVIDSON MUST RESIGN AFTER 'VIOLENCE' COMMENTS Marama Davidson should stand down as ‘Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence’ for the clear and outrageous statement she made at the Posie Parker protest that ‘white straight men’ are the cause of violence. Her offensive, racist, and sexist remarks ...
In response to Newshub and Amelia Wade’s obvious and ham-fisted attempt at a typical and predicted political hit job. As any politically aware reporter would know, any Cabinet subcommittee has a duty and obligation as a part of any government to respond to any UN declaration, in this case ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to speak with you today and in your busy lives turning up to this meeting. Forty five years ago, in Howick, often described as racist, and where few Maori lived because it had been a ‘Fencible’ settlement at the time of the Anglo-Maori ...
The Green Party has marked the National Party’s new education policy and given it a fail, especially for its failure to address the underlying drivers of school performance. ...
“This is it; 2023 will be the last opportunity New Zealand has to get a government that will confront the climate emergency with the urgency it demands,” says the Green Party’s co-leader and climate change spokesperson, James Shaw. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised in their State of the Planet speech today. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party after the election must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised today. ...
You will never truly understand, from the pictures you’ve seen in the newspapers or on the six o-clock news, the sheer scale of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle. ...
We’re boosting incomes and helping ease cost of living pressures on Kiwis through a range of bread and butter support measures that will see pensioners, students, families, and those on main benefits better off from the start of next month. ...
The error Labour Ministers made by stopping work on a beverage container return scheme will be reversed by the Greens at the earliest opportunity as part of the next Government. ...
“Cabinet needs to do better - and today has shown exactly why we need Green Ministers in cabinet, so we can prioritise action to cut climate pollution and support people to make ends meet,” says Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson. ...
Biggest increase in food prices for over three decades shows the need for an excess profit tax on corporations to help people put food on the table. ...
From today, 1.8 million flu vaccines are available to help protect New Zealanders from winter illness, Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall has announced. “Vaccination against flu is safe and will be a first line of defence against severe illness this winter,” Dr Verrall said. “We can all play a part ...
Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage Willow-Jean Prime has congratulated Professor Rangi Mātāmua (Ngāi Tūhoe) who was last night named the prestigious Te Pou Whakarae o Aotearoa New Zealander of the Year. Professor Mātāmua, who is the government's Chief Adviser Mātauranga Matariki, was the winner of the New Zealander ...
The Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta has announced further sanctions on political and military figures from Russia and Belarus as part of the ongoing response to the war in Ukraine. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova ...
A new public housing development planned for Whangārei will provide 95 warm and dry, modern homes for people in need, Housing Minister Megan Woods says. The Kauika Road development will replace a motel complex in the Avenues with 89 three-level walk up apartments, alongside six homes. “Whangārei has a rapidly ...
New Zealand welcomes the substantial conclusion of negotiations on the United Kingdom’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. “Continuing to grow our export returns is a priority for the Government and part of our plan to ...
Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown initial Taranaki Maunga collective redress deed Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown have today initialled the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Deed, named Te Ruruku Pūtakerongo, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little says. “I am pleased to be here for this ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Barbara Edmonds has announced the 2023 Pacific Language week series, highlighting the need to revitalise and sustain languages for future generations. “Pacific languages are a cornerstone of our health, wellbeing and identity as Pacific peoples. When our languages are spoken, heard and celebrated, our communities thrive,” ...
880,000 pensioners to get a boost to Super, including 5000 veterans 52,000 students to see a bump in allowance or loan living costs Approximately 223,000 workers to receive a wage rise as a result of the minimum wage increasing to $22.70 8,000 community nurses to receive pay increase of up ...
Over 8000 community nurses will start receiving well-deserved pay rises of up to 15 percent over the next month as a Government initiative worth $200 million a year kicks in, says Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall. “The Government is committed to ensuring nurses are paid fairly and will receive ...
Tākiri mai ana te ata Ki runga o ngākau mārohirohi Kōrihi ana te manu kaupapa Ka ao, ka ao, ka awatea Tihei mauri ora Let the dawn break On the hearts and minds of those who stand resolute As the bird of action sings, it welcomes the dawn of a ...
The Government is introducing a scheme which will lift incomes for artists, support them beyond the current spike in cost of living and ensure they are properly recognised for their contribution to New Zealand’s economy and culture. “In line with New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement with the UK, last ...
New Zealand is welcoming a decision by the United Nations General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice to consider countries’ international legal obligations on climate change. The United Nations has voted unanimously to adopt a resolution led by Vanuatu to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion on ...
More Police officers are being deployed to the frontline with the graduation of 59 new constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. “The graduation for recruit wing 364 was my first since becoming Police Minister last week,” Ginny Andersen said. “It was a real honour. I want to ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta met with Vanuatu Foreign Minister Jotham Napat in Port Vila, today, signing a new Statement of Partnership — Aotearoa New Zealand’s first with Vanuatu. “The Mauri Statement of Partnership is a joint expression of the values, priorities and principles that will guide the Aotearoa New Zealand–Vanuatu relationship into ...
The Government has passed new legislation amending the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) levy regime, ensuring the best balance between a fair and cost effective funding model. The Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill makes changes to the existing law to: charge the levy on contracts of ...
The Government has passed the Organic Products and Production Bill through its third reading today in Parliament helping New Zealand’s organic sector to grow and lift export revenue. “The Organic Products and Production Bill will introduce robust and practical regulation to give businesses the certainty they need to continue to ...
The Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill, which will make it easier for New Zealanders to safely prove who they are digitally has passed its third and final reading today. “We know New Zealanders want control over their identity information and how it’s used by the companies and services they ...
The full Cyclone Gabrielle Recovery Taskforce has met formally for the first time as work continues to help the regions recover and rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle. The Taskforce, which includes representatives from business, local government, iwi and unions, covers all regions affected by the January and February floods and cyclone. ...
Changes have been made to legislation to give subcontractors the confidence they will be paid the retention money they are owed should the head contractor’s business fail, Minister for Building and Construction Megan Woods announced today. “These changes passed in the Construction Contracts (Retention Money) Amendment Act safeguard subcontractors who ...
Transport Minister Michael Wood has unveiled five scenarios for one of the most significant city-shaping projects for Tāmaki Makaurau in coming decades, the additional Waitematā Harbour crossing. “Aucklanders and businesses have made it clear that the biggest barriers to the success of Auckland is persistent congestion and after years of ...
The Government has passed new legislation that ensures New Zealand’s civil aviation rules are fit for purpose in the 21st century, Associate Transport Minister Kiri Allan says. The Civil Aviation Bill repeals and replaces the Civil Aviation Act 1990 and the Airport Authorities Act 1966 with a single modern law ...
A Bill aimed at helping to reduce delays in the coronial jurisdiction passed its third reading today. The Coroners Amendment Bill, amongst other things, will establish new coronial positions, known as Associate Coroners, who will be able to perform most of the functions, powers, and duties of Coroners. The new ...
The Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Secretary to conduct a review into communications between Stuart Nash and his donors. The review will take place over the next two months. The review will look at whether there have been any other breaches of cabinet collective responsibility or confidentiality, or whether ...
The new Recovery Visa to help bring in additional migrant workers to support cyclone and flooding recovery has attracted over 600 successful applicants within its first month. “The Government is moving quickly to support businesses bring in the workers needed to recover from Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods,” Michael ...
Bills to ensure non-teaching employees and contractors at schools, and unlicensed childcare services like mall crèches are vetted by police, and provide safeguards for school board appointments have passed their first reading today. The Education and Training Amendment Bill (No. 3) and the Regulatory Systems (Education) Amendment Bill have now ...
Wānanga will gain increased flexibility and autonomy that recognises the unique role they fill in the tertiary education sector, Associate Minister of Education Kelvin Davis has announced. The Education and Training Amendment Bill (No.3), that had its first reading today, proposes a new Wānanga enabling framework for the three current ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta will travel to Vanuatu today, announcing that Aotearoa New Zealand will provide further relief and recovery assistance there, following the recent destruction caused by Cyclones Judy and Kevin. While in Vanuatu, Minister Mahuta will meet with Vanuatu Acting Prime Minister Sato Kilman, Foreign Minister Jotham ...
The Government is backing Police and making communities safer with the roll-out of state-of-the-art tools and training to frontline staff, Police Minister Ginny Andersen said today. “Frontline staff face high-risk situations daily as they increasingly respond to sophisticated organised crime, gang-violence and the availability of illegal firearms,” Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government has provided Police with more tools to crack down on gang offending with the passing of new legislation today which will further improve public safety, Justice Minister Kiri Allan says. The Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill amends existing law to: create new targeted warrant and additional search powers ...
The Government today announced far-reaching changes to the way we make, use, recycle and dispose of waste, ushering in a new era for New Zealand’s waste system. The changes will ensure that where waste is recycled, for instance by households at the kerbside, it is less likely to be contaminated ...
New legislation passed by the Government today will make it harder for gangs and their leaders to benefit financially from crime that causes considerable harm in our communities, Minister of Justice Kiri Allan says. Since the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 came into effect police have been highly successful in ...
This evening I have advised the Governor-General to dismiss Stuart Nash from all his ministerial portfolios. Late this afternoon I was made aware by a news outlet of an email Stuart Nash sent in March 2020 to two contacts regarding a commercial rent relief package that Cabinet had considered. In ...
Legislation to enable more build-to-rent developments has passed its third reading in Parliament, so this type of rental will be able to claim interest deductibility in perpetuity where it meets the requirements. Housing Minister Dr Megan Woods, says the changes will help unlock the potential of the build-to-rent sector and ...
A law passed by Parliament today exempts employers from paying fringe benefit tax on certain low emission commuting options they provide or subsidise for their staff. “Many employers already subsidise the commuting costs of their staff, for instance by providing car parks,” Environment Minister David Parker said. “This move supports ...
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Closer Economic Relations (CER), our gold standard free trade agreement between New Zealand and Australia. “CER was a world-leading agreement in 1983, is still world-renowned today and is emblematic of both our countries’ commitment to free trade. The WTO has called it the world’s ...
The Government is making procedural changes to the Immigration Act to ensure that 2013 amendments operate as Parliament intended. The Government is also introducing a new community management approach for asylum seekers. “While it’s unlikely we’ll experience a mass arrival due to our remote positioning, there is no doubt New ...
The Government welcomes progress on public sector pay adjustment (PSPA) agreements, and the release of the updated public service pay guidance by the Public Service Commission today, Minister for the Public Service Andrew Little says. “More than a dozen collective agreements are now settled in the public service, Crown Agents, ...
The Government has introduced the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill to further support the recovery and rebuild from the recent severe weather events in the North Island. “We know from our experiences following the Canterbury and Kaikōura earthquakes that it will take some time before we completely understand the ...
Further assistance is now available to businesses impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle, with Customs able to offer payment plans and to remit late-payments, Customs Minister Meka Whaitiri has announced. “This is part of the Government’s ongoing commitment to assist economic recovery in the regions,” Meka Whaitiri said. “Cabinet has approved the ...
More than 41,000 sole parent families will be better off with a median gain of $20 a week Law change estimated to help lift up to 14,000 children out of poverty Child support payments will be passed on directly to people receiving a sole parent rate of main benefit, making ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The rout of the Liberals in Aston is a disaster for Peter Dutton. The party has defied history – in the worst possible way. This is the first time in more than a century ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Morgan Hancock/AAP With 44% of enrolled voters counted in today’s Aston federal byelection, the ABC has Labor expected to win ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Morgan Hancock/AAP With 44% of enrolled voters counted in today’s Aston federal byelection, the ABC has Labor expected to win ...
Analysis - When is a cabinet minister not a cabinet minister? The faulty logic of Stuart Nash has landed him and Labour in a heap of trouble but opened the door to serious reform of the Official Information Act, Tim Watkin writes. ...
Jubi News in Jayapura Indonesia’s Papua police chief Inspector-General Mathius D Fakhiri has called for action to ensure that “security disturbances” in the Puncak Jaya highlands do not widen in the face of escalating attacks by pro-independence militants. “For Puncak, we will take immediate action,” he said. According to General ...
What are you going to be watching this month? We round up everything coming to streaming services this month, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Neon and TVNZ+. The biggies Party Down (all seasons on TVNZ+ from April 1) Thirteen years is a long time between drinks and ...
Ginny Andersen has landed a hot-potato portfolio and has been in Cabinet less than two months - the opposition will be eager to test her mettle this election year. ...
The executive producer of Modern Family has issued an incendiary claim about New Zealanders cheering and clapping in public. Hayden Donnell gets to the bottom of things.The sitcom Modern Family is remembered as a “warm-hearted story about the unbreakable bonds of family”; a tale of radically different people overcoming ...
As rain kept falling across January, February and into March, all band members cold do was sit at home cancelling festivals and posting sad Facebook messages to fans. The first post landed on January 3. As wild weather began hitting the country, campers around Northland packed up their tents ...
Because pro-social behaviour emerges so often after disaster, community empowerment should be central to disaster mitigation and recoveryOpinion: Cyclone Gabrielle caused major damage across the North Island. This unprecedented climate event created great uncertainty. People are wondering if, or when, they can return to their homes, the extent to ...
"We, women, loving you; you, men, finding new women to love": a Francophile love story in NZ Louis woke up and found out Marine was not lying next to him in bed. He checked his phone – 5:30am. The aurora shone a bright gold on the windows of the detached ...
Every weekday, The Detail makes sense of the big news stories. This week, we looked at how co-governance really works, Labour's record on climate action, what the new AUKUS nuclear submarine deal means for New Zealand, Posie Parker's visit to Auckland and the free speech debate, and the damage processed foods are ...
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Spend an hour (on a rainy day) informing yourself.
I am watching this and basically agree with the general thrust of what I am seeing – albeit with some quibbles. For instance at the 41 min mark he shows a key table that sums up total estimated metals requirement and then divides by 2019 production and arrives at some very long timeframes indeed.
Yet the production figures for just two of those metals – lithium and vanadium are already out of date. I was deeply involved last year in a project that increased battery grade lithium production from the 95,170 tonnes figure he quotes by another 48,000 tonnes. And next year I will be involved in doubling it again and the same again for the next four or five years to a total of almost 250,000 tonnes. And this is just one project globally. Nonetheless I agree I with his conclusion, there is not enough known lithium reserves globally to ever be the dominant battery chemistry.
As for vanadium – just last week I was speaking with the PM for a brand new Australian site that will increase production of this metal referenced 96,000 tonnes by another 20,000 tonnes. And this is a relatively modest site.
So I have first hand knowledge that at least some of his numbers are squishy. Yet that does not take away from the broad conclusion he reaches and one that I have been making for a while; that the proponents of SWB renewables are guilty of glossing over some of the innate constraints they face.
We have discussed alternatives to copper elsewhere – although again oddly enough this next year I will be spending about a third of my time consulting to a massive new copper concentrator.
My point is that the kind of projection Michaux is making here is not easy to get correct in the detail – but he can still be correct in the big picture.
As he qualifies, the numbers are broad based and conservative, and 2019 production figures are used for good reason.
In the grand scheme of things when you conservatively estimate over 7000 years of annual copper production (nevermind the reserves) required in the next 20 talk of solving these issues with recycling is a nonsense.
As he states near the end, as its impossible it will not occur.
OK so I have gotten through the entire thing – but only the lightest possible mention of nuclear. While he praises it's high performance he then airily dismisses it as 'taking too long' and recycles the old waste storage myth. And there is a brief mention in the Q&A of Gen 4 and thorium, but still no data.
On the whole however I fully agree with the broad thrust of his argument; that we have grossly underestimated the challenge of replacing just our current fossil fuel energy consumption, much less the future requirement necessary to support human development this century. Depending on the assumptions made, we will need somewhere between 3 to 8 times our current energy. Which is of course impossible with any projection of current technologies – except Gen 4 nuclear.
In my mind I keep returning to the Kaya Identity as a guide to this puzzle. It essentially tells us there are four levers we have to the carbon problem:
Of these four levers only one of them can be physically driven to zero – and that is the last term – Carbon Intensity. And there are only two technologies that can deliver on zero carbon:
Essentially Michaux clearly demonstrates that due to the diffuse and intermittent nature of solar and wind renewables the amount of material necessary to build them is impossibly large given current technologies. (On the basis of far less data and rigor I have been making the same argument here for ages.)
Nuclear by contrast is a highly dense and reliable energy source which is the primary reason it can deliver the energy needed within a sane resources budget. But to get there we have to throw away many of the out of date assumptions we have about it:
If we build factory build nuclear plants using the same methods we use for large ships, the time and costs will be better than for existing coal or gas.
If we build nuclear plants using anything but conventional PWR technology – they will be innately lower cost, far easier to operate, produce far less waste and make it reasonably possible to scale nuclear energy's already superb safety record to the numbers of reactors required. All this I have covered in detail elsewhere.
And the old chestnut of waste storage is an entirely solved problem.
The outstanding challenge is regulatory; all of which is based on a fraudulent LNT model of radiation harm that adds utterly unjustified costs, delays and uncertainty to any nuclear project. Which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that Michaux repeats, that nuclear is too expensive and slow.
And to repeat myself – I do not advocate that AU or NZ need to be pioneers in this; we have the enormous luxury of having an excellent solar and wind resource we can use to bridge for several decades or more until mass scale, low cost nuclear becomes mature. In the meantime – can we please quit with the nihilistic 'the end of the world is nigh' sackcloth rendering – that only serves to alarm and discourage people from believing in their children's future. Enough already.
He addresses nuclear with a little more depth in other podcasts….his two main issues with it are again the same, scale and time.
There is not enough of either.
Again – both are myths based on out of date projections. It is exactly like examining WW2 radio technology and insisting from this study that cell phones are impossible.
(Just for laughs – yes I have seen and operated a ZC1 many years ago – quite a remarkable beast for the era it was built in, but generations out of date now. PWR nuclear reactors were also first devised in the 1940’s.)
Michaux displays no antipathy to nuclear energy any more than he does to e.g. copper…. he has simply looked at whats required and determined that its not viable, even less so than renewables, which as you have agreed he has demonstrated.
As he stated all of these figures dont include the energy/materials for the likes of earth works or concrete….that is all additional.
Again based on demonstrably out of date assumptions that inevitably lead him to the wrong conclusion. As I said above – if all you knew was WW2 radio technology you would incorrectly project that cellphones were impossible. You know this would be a stupid rookie mistake, yet somehow well informed, intelligent people are happy to repeat it when it comes to confirming their biases around nuclear. An odd blind spot.
Note the bolded emphasis I made in my comment above – density and reliability are the fundamental engineering drivers that distinguish SWB renewables from nuclear. Get your head around this and everything else follows.
The problems are numerous and he is probably across the latest developments more so than you are….if you wish to critique his argument then listen to what he has to say on the issue.
He covers nuclear in more depth in his discussion with Nate Hagens (along with other articles)
I watched your first clip and responded in depth. That is way more respect for the argument than you routinely give me.
If you want me to invest another hours worth of my attention you will need to explain why. And perhaps put some effort into responding to my carefully constructed argument above.
Respect???
Do you want information or not? The link is there, listen or not, its up to you.
I have invested several thousand hours this past five years or so educating myself on nuclear energy and the issues. If I watch this video I predict that Michaux will make the following claims:
That there is not enough uranium to last more than a 100 years or so
That the thorium cycle although more abundant is more complex and less efficient and does not solve the problem.
That Gen 4 reactors are no different and merely make the problem bigger.
That the resulting waste pile is enormous and cannot be dealt with because the future is too uncertain.
Does that cover it off?
FYI Pat
It covers some of the points…but misses the main constraint…there is simply not enough time to build the required plant even if all impediments are removed.
I have attached a link to his research which covers all the scenarios he investigated and add his recommendations here
The following recommendations are made:
• Nuclear power is used to service heavy industry operations and heating requirements directly.
• Expansion of the fleet should be planned to a little bit larger in scope than reference scenario to make resources last.
• It is also recommended to develop a robust back end SNF handling system. The proposed storage of SNF and MOX fuel manufacture in the Generation III+ simulation is ambitious. It is recomended that a more practical version of this plan is developed.
• It is recomended to resource the development of Generation IV and thorium nuclear power technology.
You may note from the original podcast that he models expanding existing nuclear generation alongside the renewable implementation.
https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf
OK so for the sake of argument let us remove the technical and regulatory constraints. And yes absolutely if we build reactors in the conventional fashion as massive onsite projects you and Michaux would be right – it would indeed take too long.
(Although I must add that having squandered 60 years of not doing nuclear properly, I have little sympathy for those who complain we have now run out of time. But I'll set that one aside too.)
But that is not how to do Gen 4 reactors. We already have all of the engineering capacity to deliver new reactors far faster than we could even with solar and wind. Here is how:
Or here:
Now I can understand Michaux not including this rapid build pathway because the data would be speculative. But to use this self-imposed limitation of his own study to claim that it cannot be done is not reasonable either.
@ Roblogic…it may be , especially if they can develop fusion. However that will require a functioning society if it is to occur and if the problems are not resolved PDQ there wont be such an environment.
I should add that I do not want to come across as overly critical of Michaux. My first comment still stands – there is a lot of solid work in what I have read so far. I am scanning that pdf now and agree with much of what he is saying.
In particular he underlines just how challenging it is to replace our current fossil energy systems – and explains why in an accessible manner.
But in tackling such an ambitious scope it is inevitable that he will also skate past important details and innovation in specialist areas like nuclear.
How long have you been advocating this plan Red?…3 or 4 years? Where are they?
He is right not to include speculative ideas…that is no basis for analysis….after all aliens may arrive tomorrow and present us with an instant energy solution but i wouldnt waste too much time or energy on planning for it
Not quite that long. But now you have re-introduced other constraints to the timeline.
My inside info is that if Thorcon could ignore all regulatory requirements and supply chain issues – they could have the first one up and going within 6 – 8 months. As it is they are making steady progress, appointing a Certification Authority being an important and relatively mature milestone.
Comparing this to aliens arriving is frankly idiotic.
"Not quite that long. But now you have re-introduced other constraints to the timeline."
I have introduced nothing….these are unproven and there is no evidence they will perform as promoted….if these are to be any part of a solution they are rapidly running out of time to make an appearance.
I was responding to your first condition:
Well I demonstrated that this is not true – shipyard building can achieve the speed and scale needed – if all the impediments were removed. So then you effectively re-introduced the constraints that a real world developer like Thorcon have to work with by demanding to know why they have not delivered by now. Well if you cared to ask them as I have, it is meeting onerous, time consuming, sometimes capricious regulatory requirements and supply chain issues around accessing startup fuel that are the primary constraints they face.
(One of the most frustrating and perverse constraints is that the US DOE has a small stockpile of U-233 that would be an ideal startup fuel for thorium cycle based reactors – yet for reasons no-one can sanely explain hundreds of millions are being wasted downgrading it to uselessness. An entirely self-inflicted delay.)
The best time to have done nuclear would have been 60 years ago – today being the second best.
Thorcon is using a nucleonic design very similar to one already proven to work in the famous MSR-E in the 1960's. There is ample, rock solid evidence that it will perform as intended.
But we have been over this ground before. If you are going to cling to the the ‘it hasn’t been done therefore it cannot be done’ excuse – I have nothing more to add.
You appear to misunderstand my position.
I do not dismiss what you propose because it has not been done before…i question why it has not been achieved to date.
Consider…there are at least 32 countries with access to the required material in a world crying out for energy. even if the US regulators have been nobbled, if you have a viable proposal to provided energy ( and all that flows from that) then somebody will have provided the wherewithal for this 'proven' method to be developed….the fact that nobody to date is evidence there are issues that are not readily apparent
Also the fact that someone like Michaux, with his obvious interaction with the energy sector, hasnt deemed it worthy of consideration is also indicative.
The best way to make a case is to demonstrate capability….if and when that happens it cannot be denied.
I have now read through Michaux's document that you linked to. I skimmed most of it looking for the Gen 4 analysis – and yes it is there. Actually it is better than I had hoped. He concludes that it would definitely be the best of the four main nuclear scenarios he considers. However he boxes himself in on five fronts:
In essence we don't need Gen 4 fission to solve our energy problem for millennia into the future – we really only need it to bridge the gap for maybe 50 – 100 yrs until fusion becomes cheap and abundant. And that eliminates all of the constraints Michaux describes.
'IF 'fusion becomes available…but you miss his main point…even with a 5 year build time (not going to happen…we cant build one (average output) inside 10 years currently…we sure as hell arnt going to build 25 per annum on a 5 year time frame in the next 10-20 years)…we will not replace the energy lost from fossil fuels in the forseeable….and that means LESS output!
A downward spiral.
Time…always time.
Yes but that statement may well be true, but it is only useful if you understand why we are currently building them too slowly. The reason is not a physical constraint we cannot overcome – it is mostly a political one that is almost entirely within our control.
Hell back in the 70's and 80's there was no problem building reactors fast and cheap, and most of them are still running just fine today. And that was using Gen 2 designs that are far harder to build. The absurd 10 or more year builds that have been taking place since then have nothing to do with how long it takes to build them, and everything to do with a regulatory framework designed to prevent them from being built.
As I have said a few times before – the solutions are there, we are just choosing not to take them.
Tom Lehrer has put all his songs online, including lyrics and sheet music, and given away all rights to them. (the site will be up for a short time).
https://tomlehrersongs.com/albums/the-remains-of-tom-lehrer-disc-3/
https://tomlehrersongs.com/
Interesting article by Andrea Vance this morning.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/300766847/will-christopher-luxon-write-the-final-act-of-winston-peters-career
”Does Christopher Luxon have the balls to write the final act of Winston Peters’ career?”
I suspect the answer is no.
Key made his choice based on the circumstance in 2008 and the goal of NZF (then in coalition with an outgoing Labour admin) going under 5% was realised. This allowed his National and ACT or MP governing majority of the 2008-2017 era.
This time NZF is campaigning from an opposition to the current government, and Key's advice is to consider a National and ACT or NZF strategy. Puting NZF into the role played by the Maori Party in his time. That allows the opportunity for National to reduce the influence of both on government policy (given ACT and NZF have significant differences), an approach designed to gather as many centrist votes to National as possible.
Peters own strategy is to note those on the centre right who voted Labour to give them a majority without the Greens. He wants some of these voters to go with NZF to counter a NACT government further to the right than they would want.
I went to Winston’s rally when he came to my area. I have never gone to any political rally before. But I had time on my hands, and the person who wanted me to attend with them sucked me in by saying there would be ''finger food'' at the venue.
As per the link Winston started with the concept of freedom, mentioning both the ''baby blood saga'' and the many ''ordinary'' Kiwis he had met at the parliamentary protest who had lost jobs because of the vaccine mandate. He made a clear demarcation between ''crazies'' and ''ordinary'' protesters.
I couldn't help thinking Winston was missing the mark with the assembled audience. The audience was younger than I'd have expected. I was surprised at the Maori and young folk in attendance. Maybe they thought there would be ''finger food'' on tap too?
All in all, a flat lifeless presentation by Winston until… until the floor was opened for questions. Then the charismatic Winston came to the fore. One liners, quips, barbs for the media and political opponents. He became a different man. Watching the enigma that is Winston Peters was a fascinating experience.
My guess is NZ1 will plop over the 5% line.
Interesting. I had dinner one evening in 2001 at the Green Parrot with Winston holding court at a nearby table, and how entertaining was that! Whatever you might think of his politics, Peters is a remarkable politician and NZ Parliament would have been the poorer without him.
I agree. I believe the Green Parrot was his favourite haunt, since closed?
Winston First… he doesn't care about anything except his ego.
David Lange once described Winston Peters as the "only member of Parliament to have a concrete block named after him and I can understand that".
He also noted that Peters, not present to hear his valedictory speech to Parliament in 1996, "would have been with us today if he hadn't been detained by a full-length mirror".
My guess is that NZ1 will plop.
But I still want to know about the finger food
What was it? and was there enough?
There was no ''finger food.'' My naivety regarding political rallies was evident. Given there was about 200 people present, and Winston was passing the hat around, we would have considered ourselves luck if we saw a picture of finger food. I did however have one mini Mars Bar. A delightful old biddy sitting next to me smiled and said ''take one.'' ''One'' was emphasised. Obviously she sensed my low blood glucose, but at the same time my feral looks probably urged her to be cautious in case I snatched all three Mars bars in the packet.
I have never been what you would consider a real socialist. I'm a swing voter as I have already stated. Hence X instead of EX.
''The letter "x" is often used in algebra to mean a value that is not yet known.''
Mickey Savage made the same mistake. The thing is I read he's a lawyer(?) You aren't. Fify.
''What happened to National’s policy machine?''
mickysavage…
16 November 2022 at 8:38 pm
''You can guarantee from his name that he was never ever a socialist.''
Nobody here is making any mistakes regarding your political leanings. In fact, shortly (a week) after you started commenting on this forum under your current user name you made this declaration:
Your debating skills are poor and you don’t comment here in good faith. Unfortunately, this takes up a lot of bandwidth from other commenters and they’re wasting their precious time & effort on you, IMO. I knew this would happen as soon as I released you back onto the reserve – it is déjà vu all over again
Current user name! Are we allowed to play a game of guess the old name?
Reminds me if a master baiter of a certain collour.
Leave it to the Mods, thanks. They know what they are doing.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/12/18/guest-blog-ian-powell-so-much-stuffed-up-by-so-few-reflecting-on-2022/
Ian Powell nails it
To quote Mandy Rice Davies…'Well he would say that wouldn't he?'
Ian Powell used to have my attention. I regard him now as a perpetual nay sayer with no good ideas but plenty of criticism and this has been his modus operandi.
It has probably got to with the nature of the people he represented as Executive Officer. Many union commentators have a world or NZ view of politics that informs their work
A very good article Anker.
We can argue the merits of mass vaccination, lockdowns and so on, quoting expert research and analysis until the cows come home. But the issues raised by Malloy are all solid management and political questions that are well within our wheelhouse to consider.
The Royal Commission NZ is holding into the COVID response is a promising sign that the system is prepared to consider learning from the experience. Arguably not everything we did was worth doing, and some things may well have had a higher cost than benefit.
The aviation industry learned decades ago the correct path to real safety; installing black boxes and cockpit voice recorders, and intensive 'no blame' investigations after every incident to properly uncover the root causes and the chain of events. It has proven to be a remarkably effective model.
Reads like anti-Labour polemic. Does the Govt get any credit for a world leading pandemic response, and saving thousands of lives. Nope. Zilch. Does Covid, or the failing DHB model get mentioned as a factor in the present difficulties? Nope.
The reforms were needed, there is never a perfect time to make these kinds of fundamental changes, but we could not carry on with whole regions getting hacked (Waikato DHB) and people having to shift around the country just to get a fscking appointment
Ran out of time to quote from the link above
ian Powells article on the health system
“To cap off this leadership failure, the Government made the inexplicable political call to restructure the health system….in the midst of a health pandemic”
”It took this extraordinarily irresponsible political step in the full knowledge that public hospitals and general practices did not have the capacity to cope with the pandemic pressure”
The quote illustrates my point beautifully.
So nothing in his article to say when would have been a good time, what would have been the arguments for and against and then caps it all off by saying health union leaders have not been commenting on the issue. Perhaps on balance union leaders believe that the restructure has more going for it than against it, in the long term.
Results for the Fiji election are due this afternoon- barring interestingly timed delays, such as happened on Wednesday night. Fijian immigrants to Aotearoa, that I have talked to; are a bit worried about what is happening back there. Yes, the head of the military has vowed not to interfere, but Rabuka was only a senior officer, not head of the military (though Bainimarama was), with the support of a couple dozen soldiers when they did their first coup. The provisional numbers seem to be set to give the combined opposition a majority (once subthreshold votes are excluded), if they can work together:
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8023801/fiji-election-to-come-down-to-the-wire/
And the likelihood of opposition parties working to form a coalition government seem to have increased by alleged irregularities in this election. Rabuka was leader of SoDeLiPa in the 2018, and there is reportedly not much love lost between him and his successor (by intraparty coup), but they both seem more opposed to the present Prime Minister's government more – for now.
https://www.euronews.com/2022/12/17/fiji-election
Rabuka was brought in for questioning by the police after questioning the election process. And other party's members are apparently under investigation. But maybe more important in the Fiji political culture is this:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/480927/rabuka-calls-for-calm-after-fiji-police-interrogation
I would say it's popcorn time this arvo, but the consequences are so dire if it goes pear-shaped that I doubt I will have much of an appetite.
It's nearly an hour since the final results should have been out, and still nothing in RNZ. Which is a bit concerning. This was from earlier:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/480976/by-the-numbers-2022-fiji-election-count-in-home-stretch
I don't know that I agree with the RNZ assessment. If SoDeLP do make it over the Threshold that is 92.5% total votes with 7.5% subthreshold. Which gives Fiji First roughly 46% to the combined opposition's 54%.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method
Does Fiji's constitution enable coalitions to form government if another single party has a higher individual vote?
It would appear so; Sacha. However it is a very new constitution brought in by Bainimarama after a coup, with significant ammendments from the original proposal – in particular about declaring states of emergency, and leniency for military action against the government. There have only been two elections under this constitution so far (2014 & 2018) and neither have resulted in a coalition government.
Results are now 3 hours late. But if the results are accepted by those currently in power, then a coalition of the present opposition parties seems likely:
https://i.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/130798574/fiji-election-final-results-going-to-be-very-interesting-political-sociologist-dr-steven-ratuva-says
Though that seems to be Stuff (or possibly Ratuva) working from a previous election model, as the number of seats increased to 55 this year.
https://www.ifes.org/tools-resources/election-snapshots/elections-fiji-2022-general-election
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/101785528
Thank you. Cannot picture Bainimarama ceding power gracefully somehow.
Send in Winston 🙂
Zelensky and staff talked to The Economist about Russia, the war being on the edge, Ukrainian reluctance to compromise on territory, and prospects for the coming year.
In recent days The Economist has interviewed the three men at the crux of Ukraine’s war effort. One is Mr Zelensky. The second is General Valery Zaluzhny, who has served as the country’s top soldier for the past year and a half. The third is Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces, who masterminded the defence of Kyiv in the spring and Ukraine’s spectacular counter-offensive in Kharkiv province in September. All three men emphasised that the outcome of the war hinges on the next few months. They are convinced that Russia is readying another big offensive, to begin as soon as January. Whether Ukraine launches a pre-emptive strike of its own or waits to counter-attack, how it garners and distributes its forces, how much ammunition and equipment it amasses in the coming weeks and months—these looming decisions will determine their country’s future.
https://archive.vn/SC66C
Two different worlds
More interesting reading from Lawrence Freedman re Putin and security.
https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0ODA3MDgsInBvc3RfaWQiOjkxMDYwNzg2LCJpYXQiOjE2NzEyNzAwNDQsImV4cCI6MTY3Mzg2MjA0NCwiaXNzIjoicHViLTYzMTQyMiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.VfUE-hnbgj6wStqIWVMhJnLog4z6-fPXbnfIELr8gTg&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
”Putin’s insecurity might start with anxiety about his personal future, but he has extended this into a vision for Russia that involves a permanent struggle with the West and its liberalism. There is little NATO can do about this vision except to ensure Russia’s defeat in Ukraine. “
You know The Daily Blog has completely lost it when they print a Tremain cartoon. They are usually only given the light of day in NACT meme groups and troll farms.
Did it have the word 'woke' in it..
WTF is wrong with National MPs? Barbara Kuriger has been misusing her MP status to run interference for her son (he was prosecuted for animal mistreatment), and run a campaign of attacks against Fonterra and MPI
MP's Emails Show Pattern Of Personal Attacks On Ministry | Newsroom
This was up yesterday about Kruger's emails and misuse of her position.. Yes a window on their world of entitlement… but Nania Mahuta gets pilloried by those Nats.
Yet another example of Luxon’s weakness. He has no control of his caucus.
Expect the Nats to run media rounds tomorrow with her either being removed or defended, depending on their internal polling about it.
Actually worth listening to – 6 mins of Garner just telling the truth about housing policy over the last decade or so.
Only noticed after posting that it was from September. Has he done any similar pieces since?
Ouch.
What did he think was going to happen?
Well, he can buy reddit next, and all the emails, dms and shit that come with it. Just like he did with twitter.
Doxing bad when its people we like, doxing good when its people we don't like.
It's called "abuse of power" when used to punch down on those who cannot fight back.
It's called "whistleblowing" or "accountability" or "journalism" when used against the powerful to reveal things they would prefer to remain hidden
Ahhh, so who is who in your scenario?
Billionaires are the enemy of freedom & democracy & human rights, so they should be uncomfortable when the truth about their vast crimes is revealed
Over at DailyKos, Thom Hartmann chronicles 40 years of Reaganism and the unfolding destruction of the common wealth of the USA by the predatory 0.01%. It's a hard read. But in the middle of it is a shining reminder of a brief moment in history when pro-social values held the political high ground
Sadly, we see even in New Zealand this is not the norm, but something workers and democracy-minded parties have to actively fight for. Because powerful moneyed interests prefer their exploitations and scams not to be subject to inconveniences like ethics or law.
Is he gonna do Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama next?