Tried a couple of times to post this link about the Freedom of the Press Foundation considering cutting its ties to WikiLeaks, but they disappeared into the memory hole. Let’s see if it goes through without the snark about Assange…
Hi Marcus – I’m pleased you did – I like writing for them, they give me plenty of freedom to chose topics, etc. Writing about un-likeable plants was a hoot! I’m pleased too, that you take notice of the moon, just as plants do 🙂
The post about “Yellow Peril” got me wondering about one of my recent choices.
I have a part interest in a farm property that is partway through the process of being sold. It is in an area where a number of properties have been bought by chinese, and then left unused and neglected to the point that they become nuisance pest reservoirs for the neighbours.
When it come to decision time, we had two offers: a higher offer from chinese investors with no apparent connection to farming and had nothing to say about their plans for the property, and a lower offer from a local who mentioned his interest in continuing bush restoration in unproductive areas and continuing to farm (and has a track record of doing so).
We accepted the lower offer from the local. In my case the difference means effectively I chose to forego a year or two’s worth of income in order to sell to the local.
Does that make me a racist?
Or does that just make me an idiot for not taking the most money and running?
Should I feel a warm fuzzy for being willing to take a personal financial hit to get a result I think is better for NZ? Or ashamed that I let softy sentimentality interfere with looking after my best interests?
Well, I mentioned “chinese” twice in my comment, so obviously it did affect my decision. But if instead of “chinese” it had been “american” or “australian” or “south african” or “russian” in those two places, my decision would have been the same. Or “remuera tractor driving queen street farmer”, for that matter.
Andre
It certainly is getting to the stage where you can’t draw attention to the facts and clearly seen observations and name the people involved. It’s not a reaction to racism by critics it is an attempt to introduce censorship.
At the same times, excess being something to avoid, one must not blame everything that happens on every individual Chinese etc. also they are taking advantage of conditions that ‘our’ so-called government has set up and
welcomed. So call the National government out on disabling our borders and causing the entry of more foreign disruptive organisms that act against our, as ordinary NZs, best interests.
So call the National government out on disabling our borders and causing the entry of more foreign disruptive organisms that act against our, as ordinary NZs, best interests.
IIRC, That wasn’t actually National but the 4th Labour government. National just refused to put the border controls back in place – and so did the 5th Labour government. The present Labour government are putting in place a few restrictions but the borders are remaining open.
We haven’t had a government working in the best interests of NZ for some time. Admittedly, a lot of that is due to poor understanding of real world economics brought about by a bunch of economists who have no understanding of real world economics.
Yeah yeah DTB – keep on saying it – they say you have to go through three levels to get a speech received and understood – Tell the audiance what you are on about, give them the spiel, and summarise what you have just told them, If you keep telling people the same as you did at 11.26am you will have broken through the density shield by the time you die.
Everything you write is about critising others!!!!!
Get real will you; ffs; – #$%^&*()_>
We are now building a positve new future “out of the shaddows of the long deep respressive nine years of discontent” – that your national party placed over us all.
making or showing an unfair or prejudicial distinction between different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
“discriminatory employment practices”
synonyms: prejudicial, biased, prejudiced, preferential, unfair, unjust, invidious, inequitable, weighted, one-sided, partisan;
and….
discriminating
having or showing refined taste or good judgement.
“he became a discriminating collector and patron of the arts”
synonyms: discerning, perceptive, astute, shrewd, judicious, perspicacious, insightful;
Well said, Rosemary. But it is almost a lost cause trying to get people to discriminate accurately between meanings of words nowadays – you are quite likely to be abused by some ardent believer for pedantry.
No, you were primarily judging by the land use. You have that right. You made a loss to follow your beliefs. What a shame more people don’t think less of money and more of out comes, there wouldn’t be the pest sink.
I wouldn’t say “loss”. The difference was between a ridiculous amount of capital gain and an even more ridiculous capital gain.
And NZ’s tax laws mean the NZ government won’t claim any part of this effective windfall that they have enabled. But because I’m dual NZ-US, I’m fairly sure I’m going to have to write a fairly big cheque to Uncle Sam for their capital gains tax, even though the US contributed absolutely nothing to creating it.
Why are foreign investors land banking in New Zealand?!
Fred Pearce in his outstanding book ‘The Land Grabbers’ says this.
‘Across the world there is a land grab. Entire countries are being snatched from under the feet of native residents: Saudia Arabia now owns most of Ethiopia; the Rev Moon owns a slice of South America the size of Switzerland. Triggered by the 2008 world food crisis and the credit crunch, this grab is not just about food.’
Or does that just make me an idiot for not taking the most money and running?
On Kiwiblog, both of those would apply – you’d be a villainous xenophobe and also an idiot for not putting money above all other considerations. Fortunately, you posted it here…
You would be racist if:
The intended land use of the two bidders was reversed, and
The price offers were the same, and
You made the same decision.
Under those conditions there would clearly be no factor influencing your decision other than the race of the buyer.
Pretty standard decision tree there. Not racist unless you were wearing your ‘go home you look different’ t shirt. Weighing up pluses and minuses including the financials is normal I think – a few people here choose to sell their houses to families instead of non families for social concious reasons – seems a good way to think about it to me – you know, values an all.
I’m just fascinated with why western liberal lefty culture is so anxious about even the merest perceptions of racism. In Asia, discrimination by race and region is basic every day life.
Yeah, it’s an interesting phenomenon how some people work so hard at finding something they can point to and call “racist” and then use that to completely ignore any other points being made.
But I don’t think the fact that racism has been and continues to be a cultural thing all around the world should get in the way of trying to move beyond it for the future.
‘Moving beyond racism’ seems like a great idea until people realise that multicultural societies fully acknowledge that different cultures have different values, beliefs, perspectives and behavioural tendencies (albeit with large areas of overlap).
You can’t try and do deals in Japan like you would in China. Like you would in Australia. Like you would in the USA.
As Rosemary suggested, it’s the difference between discrimination and being discriminating.
So making a vendor decision based solely on skin colour might certainly be racism – but it’d also be superficial and thoughtless. But once you take into account what fits with your value system – then it becomes a nuanced decision which takes into account cultural values across many dimensions – theirs as a buyer and yours as a vendor.
Thanks for that point CV. I have a book about Australia’s interaction with Asia written 1980’s I think and Indonesia calls Australia all sorts of things. And attitudes are expressed by them that represent their political advantage from time to time.
It has relevance because it is evidence of another example of land ownership and its use to add to the information about foreign buyers and who they are. Its not rocket science. Just looking at the facts.
It would have been a fairly pointless self-congratulatory onanistic comment if I had left out the chinese bit. But put it in and hopefully we get an interesting conversation about what racism really is, and how to interpret behaviours that can look like racism viewed one way, and “not racism” viewed another.
Ok. Well to make an observation you appear to have made a judgement on a group based on their race, unless your reference to ‘chinese’ is specific to foreign investors from China.
I would think that a Chinese immigrant, or NZ born person of Chinese origin, who read your post would be asking if you’d have acted the same if all the buyers in your story were caucasions.
We know that Chinese from Mainland and also Singapore and Hong Kong are big investors all over the world, that they have chosen to move out all over the world, and threaten the USA’s
It is unfortunate that Chinese Kiwis are being affected. The problem is that the government has opened the doors so wide there are too many newbie foreigners, China had the investment money, so are in a majority.
So we have to be careful as to which Chinese we are talking about, cold-eyed newbies buying up land, houses to land bank, as unlovely as any of our own speculators, or whatever. I know of a large investment by dreamers from North America, that was done in visionary dreams and hopes and overseas money has fallen through, and local contractors remain unpaid. Huge legal bills for all those involved in the practical outcomes.
The bloody world can’t descend on us to play around with, what were the economic and political leaders thinking of to not see it leading to an asymmetric engagement of some sort? A rhetorical question!
Another way of looking at the sale would be to estimate that the overseas investor will just make a purchase down the road and the extra money he would of paid might of worked harder if donated to a cause dedicated to changing our OSI rules.
Or does that just make me an idiot for not taking the most money and running?
According to National it would make you a racist, a xenophobe and an idiot.
Should I feel a warm fuzzy for being willing to take a personal financial hit to get a result I think is better for NZ?
You should feel warm and fuzzy. Doing what’s right for the local community is far better than doing what’s right for your bank account when doing what’s right for the bank account is obviously so bad for the local community.
Andre, if the decision was made out of a principle of having the land used in an appropriate way, not land banked and even native bush added, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Some might misconstrue the concept but it would be just another opinion.
Another day, another round of MSM trommelfeuer against the government – this time kelvin Davis is in the firing line. Oh, if they’d only ever held Key’s ministers to such account in their nine year love fest of being insiders to a culture of complacent, smug arrogance.
Geeze I had to google that … drumfire. Yes the perfect image.
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about living in Australia this past few years has been an MSM that has a range of voices. Sure there is the ugly (Andrew Bolt comes to mind) and the mad, but there are other voices to balance them.
it is the German word for a constant, wearying bombardment. It is constant dissection of the trivial with a pummeling, carping tone designed to buttress audience prejudices and pitch people against each other rather than challenge them to work together and it is explicitly aimed at feeding cynicism and outrage for clickbait rather than appeal to hope and altruism.
It is the media environment that loved the cynical eye rolling lip service to society by the servants of the greedy and the haughty that was the Key government, and it is a environment profoundly threatened by the ideals of an inclusive progressive government.
The MSM desperately needs reform, but I doubt this Labour government has the balls to do it.
Look at the utter bullshit from Garner today on paid parental leave – it is so idiotic I won’t link to it. But the bottom line if the roles were reversed, Duncan “who ate all the pies” Garner would have spent his piece excoriating Labour on it’s record on paid parental leave and demanding it support incremental change. Instead, he lauds National’s cynical ploy from a position of not even understanding the governments position on the matter. What an ignorant, idiotic right wing fucktard.
Very good analysis. This time it’s Davis’s turn. Unfortunately he’s a soft target. He doesn’t seem to have the skillset to have Ardern’s back like Cullen did for Clark. To me he’s the wrong person for the role.
As for the attack lines against the government it’s almost like the whole thing is being orchestrated. I got an image in my mind of a team of evil trolls sitting somewhere in a darkened room saying: “Right. Who’s turn is it this time? Davis. Who do we allocate this one to? Moir, she’ll do.”
“And as a bonus hit, how about some dribble from Garner about parental leave. Perfect.”
“Now what’s for tomorrow?”
And you’re right Sanctuary this sort of BS will be relentless.
gee they could have someone in the office next to english and then he could feed lies to a piece of shit blogger who could hand feed the lies to moron journos to spread , i reckon that would work ,
oh wait i think it’s been done , ? i wonder if they refined it to make it harder to spot?
Why wouldn’t it be. The opposition’s strategy is to identify the government’s weak points and seek to undermine it. When the media picks it up and amplifies it, well, thats a bonus. Davis, rightly, will be feeling exposed and humiliated as a result.
Davis’s ineptness provided National with an easy target last week and of course they’d use this as an opportunity to undermine Labour. And it worked. It’s for Labour to figure out how they can mitigate such attacks. The obvious answer, as you have identified, is to sack Davis and replace him with someone more competent.
BTW Labour had exactly the same strategy when it was in opposition. Its what oppositions do in Westminster democracies.
Sanctuary
Aspects of what you have written at 9.38am would have been mentioned in this interesting and mind-opening interview by Kim this morning. It helps to put Peter Thiel and bitcoin etc in context.
Listen duration 16′ :04″
Simon Denny graduated with a BFA from Elam in 2004 and completed his post-graduate study in Frankfurt. Recent exhibitions include The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington (2014) and All You Need is Data – The DLD 2012 Conference REDUX as part of the Walter’s Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki (2014).
Denny was selected to represent New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale, exhibiting Secret Power at the New Zealand Pavilion. Anthony Byrt is an Auckland-based critic and journalist. He is a regular writer for Metro, a contributing editor to Paperboy, and the New Zealand correspondent for Artforum International. His book This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art was shortlisted for the 2017 Ockham national book award.
Together the pair have created an exhibition, The Founder’s Paradox, including essays, on a series of large art pieces based on familiar board games. The games unpack extreme libertarian ideologies such as those held by ‘new’ New Zealander Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley thought leaders. The Founder’s Paradox is on at the Michael Lett Gallery until December 22.
Sanctuary, just read the article from Garner. My first thought was – is he going to breastfeed the little pumperletsch (German for poor little one)?
Has he and with him the right lost completely the connection to the issue at hand? A women giving birth, needing the rest, breastfeeding, post natal hormone disturbances, learning the ropes of having a new born etc… yes, men should be supporting the new mother but they most likely have no idea either. Visiting the pub, playing golf and/ or partying to celebrate fatherhood does not count.
Not that there are fathers who will try very hard to help, but to help one needs experience and knowledge about the subject. This is where the plunket service comes in.
To make new mothers a political football is another low for half the population. Is is ever going to be any different?
I wish I had the option of paid parental leave. My wife’s an immigrant with no family here and my family was a long way away as well.
My wife suffered terribly from postnatal depression and later also diagnosed with ptsd as a result. It was and still is a harrowing experience. At the time I used all my leave, leave in advance and sick leave took on a fairly large debt before having to return to work to keep the rent paid.
At times things were so bad I was scared to leave the house in the morning not knowing what I would find when I got home. I could get very little in the way of practical support for my wife and myself outside of our gp and a councillor who agreed to see me free of charge as I started to fall to bits having to work and try and care for a wife who was becoming progressively more unwell. Tbh neither of us have fully recovered 10 years down the track.
I don’t know for sure but having the ability to spend 3-6 months at home would have made a massive difference.
Cricklewood, I am sorry to hear that and quite sad when reading your story. I am shocked that your wife did not receive more help. PN depression is not often mentioned in general and new mothers often feel very upset because they MUST feel elated.
In such severe cases such as your wife experienced, it ought to be possible for you to stay with the new mother as her carer for more than just 6 months.
My best wishes and I hope this years festive season will give you and your family reason to celebrate.
@ Sanctuary (4) … I agree. The previous government of the past nine years was never held to account by media for anything!
Kelvin Davis did his best as a novice in the position he was put into to fill in for the PM, when both she and her deputy PM were both away. Davis became media’s target, due to his inexperience in the role, demonstrating msm’s bullying tactics in a mean spirited attempt to humiliate and cause strife in government, when there was no necessity for it. Media’s job is to cover news facts and report it, not make it up to suit Natz, still stinging after the election loss!
However, it will be very interesting when Winston fills in for Jacinda, as acting PM and he will, given his animosity towards Natz at the moment, re his superannuation detail leaks. Also I’m sure he won’t hesitate to call out any sour, denigrating media BS against government either!
Davis set himself up through his ineptness. He’s the deputy pm, he gets the status and the remuneration and other benefits that goes with the role. He’s fair game if he screws up – as did last week in question time, which is covered by the media..
Last week the Herald published an article written by Brian Gaynor in which he exposed the awful folly of Muldoon’s National Super scheme. He also highlighted how the recent National Government had failed to enhance the Cullen Fund (which, he says, has been a brilliant success) and had taken away the incentive to join Kiwi Saver (another great Labour initiative.
I thought the article was “political dynamite” but it wasn’t even a damp squib.
When I wrote to Mr Gaynor expressing my surprise at the muted reaction he said that it was just a sign of the times – people were only interested in sound bites and not long term issues.
Muldoon’s strategy has caused this vital issue to be a political football for over forty years but the worst aspect is that it has cost the country billions of dollars. The National Party as a whole should be held to account because it has connived in the scandal for all of that time.
And we’d be living on Mars etc etc. Once you depart on a road of what ifs, anything is possible. Calling someone a fool for extrapolating an alternative outcome just makes you look like an uncharitable moron.
Good grief. You swallowed Muldoon’s line hook and sinker. By the way, did you read the article. I very much doubted but I have a copy if you care to read it. Were you even around then? Brian is a respected and trusted economist. What are your credentials.
Thanks Marcus M I too have been waiting in vain for any MSM comment on that article which I found very revealing and very well written.
I cut it out and pasted it into my scrapbook, yes , I know I can get it off the net but it looks more real somehow alongside the other clippings that I have collected over the years.
The whole dastardly “episode” is even worse when you read Hugh Templeton’s comment in his book “All Honourable Men”. Hugh was a member of Muldoon’s cabinet and the architect of CER. He writes that the National Party strategists (including Muldoon himself), knew the scheme was unsustainable before it was even promulgated. It was an unspeakable crime against the country in my view and has resulted in an appalling cost.
It looks as though Little has put the Pike River promises into the too-hard basket.
Didn’t Labour, New Zealand First and the Green parties make an unconditional guarantee that the mine would be re-entered and the bodies recovered?
Now it seems to all be fading away. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11945226
[you start running lies about Labour and I will start banning you. Take this as the warning for future comments. I’ll let this one stand so I can deal with it in comments. – weka]
For people that haven’t clicked through and might be wondering what bullshit alwyn is on about, the article is Little describing the process for making a decision about re-entry into Pike River including the risk assessment and involving the families in that. He makes the point that if it turns out that re-entry can’t be done safely then there are no absolute guarantees.
Which is exactly what I would expect. Alwyn wants to play politics with this, I guess thinking that Little should be letting a dangerous re-entry go ahead. This all says much about alwyn.
The article also points out the differences between National’s ‘fill the mine with concrete’ position and Labour’s (and NZF/Greens’) ‘let’s work through the process to make sure re-entry is possible, and do right by the families’. It’s clear from the article that Little still thinkings re-entry is possible but is just being responsible by making it clear that it won’t be done at the risk to workers.
Agreed. What Little should be making is the one thing he can control, which is an absolute guarantee that the decision making process is open and transparent.
No-one wants to put a re-entry crew into an unreasonable hazard, much less see harm to them. National were completely obdurate and opaque about defining the risk, hiding behind nameless ‘experts’ whose interests in the matter could never be assessed.
The best Labour can do here is ensure the families and the wider public have a high level of confidence in what’s done. There will of course be criticism, and it will be impossible to make everyone happy.
And of course the likes of alwyn will exploit this for all they can wring from it. Expect more.
These kinds of wordings bother me. They imply a workplace environment where the people going in are doing so under the instruction of supervisors responsible for their safety.
The only people I’m comfortable with going into that mine are acknowledged expects in dealing with the conditions likely to be in the mine, that are choosing to go in for personal reasons of their own around the remains still in there or learning lessons for the future.
The grounds for refusing a volunteer team entry into the mine should only be “we don’t think you have the experience and expertise to assess and manage the risks you’re about to take, come back when you have a more credible team”.
That’s very far removed from any kind of situation where workplace health and safety regulations are relevant.
Fair points and ones I’d agree with if it turns out the risk is higher than they thought, but I’m guessing that neither weka nor Red know what the actual plans are 😉 I’d suggest digging a bit deeper with the people who are doing the planning (I’d be interested to know that too if you find out).
Little seems to be saying that he thinks safe re-entry can be done without messing with Health and Safety legislation. That’s a good sign.
I understand that. Every time I used to go into the mountains I put myself at risk. Had enough close calls to know the risk was nothing airy-fairy or hypothetical either.
But this isn’t some individual quest of modest consequence, it’s a highly sensitive and deeply political operation. You only have to imagine the blow-back if something DID go wrong. Labour have to be totally clear and responsible about the decision-making process here.
Winston has volunteered to led a team in. Let him do so. He’s already exploited the situation for selfish and cynical political gain. Let him put his money where his mouth is.
He said “Didn’t Labour, New Zealand First and the Green parties make an unconditional guarantee that the mine would be re-entered and the bodies recovered?”
Do you believe that Labour intended to re-enter at any cost? If so then I think your thinking is pretty stupid.
Alwyn, and you, can parse the abstract meaning any way you like, but my expectation is that the Labour govt will work on re-entering the mine safely. That’s what Little is talking about and it’s very clear even from Clare Trevett’s reporting that that is what Little is talking about – safe re-entry. I don’t see anything there to suggest that Little is resiling from Labour’s commitment.
Before the election a number of groups, including Labour, said that unlike National they thought re-entry was possible. They committed to doing that, but I don’t think anyone apart from you and alwyn and RW shit stirrers thought that meant doing so unsafely. Grow the fuck up.
“I don’t see what is incorrect in what Alwyn said.”
He also said, “It looks as though Little has put the Pike River promises into the too-hard basket.” and “Now it seems to all be fading away.” That’s the malicious spin that got my moderation attention.
From memory, those parties took advice from experts and those experts advised that re-entry was possible. As Red points out, what’s happening now is that Little is working through the process responsibly. Only an idiot would think that Labour promised to re-enter if there was a risk of people dying. Also, see my comment below about point scoring in the context of Pike River.
Yes, well said & linked Antoine. I can’t see why mods would get so upset about alwyn’s post, except possibly with despair as another absolute promise seems to dilute into wishes & feels.
If you think that Labour have put re-entry into the to “too-hard basket” and their commitment is ‘fading away’, produce some evidence of that. I can’t see it in the article linked.
Alwyn can believe whatever he likes, but when he misrepresents political parties and how they are being reported in the MSM he’s going to get moderator attention.
“another absolute promise”
Likewise, produce evidence that Labour ever said that re-entry would happen no matter what even if it mean people dying or being hurt in the process. That’s what absolute means.
Both you and alwyn are playing silly bugger politics. Personally I have a very low tolerance for that on this particular issue because people died and then their families were treated badly by the previous government who have failed to ensure a safe work place was maintained. Those are all serious issues with bigger picture consequences that don’t deserve stupid shit point scoring.
Perhaps I can offer a couple of examples of the change in the Labour Parties former leader, Andrew Little’s approach.
In January 2017 he told TVNZ News
“He said on February 7, the first day of Parliament, he’d seek leave to table a bill that would absolve those involved in recovery of responsibility” https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/labour-leader-vows-table-bill-enable-pike-river-re-entry
He now says
“He did not intend to legislate for any exemption to the health and safety laws or immunity from liability for the Pike River Agency.”
From the Herald article I linked to.
In October 2016 Little said
“The Government claims it’s not safe to enter the drift and try to get any bodies in there out. That’s not true. Experts, both local and international, say the mine is now stable. We can get those men out, and secure evidence regarding the cause of the explosion. It can be done” http://www.labour.org.nz/promises_to_pike_families_must_be_kept
Now he says it isn’t really as certain as he was a year ago.
“Those plans include another risk assessment to decide whether a manned re-entry is possible.”
I would suggest these examples illustrate that Andrew Little, now that he is part of the Government is being vastly more responsible than he was when in Opposition.
And a damn good thing that he is. The approach he seems to be willing to take now is, of course, in line with what the National Government did.
When they found that the expert opinion was that re-entry was unsafe they didn’t promise to go ahead with such an attempt.
The full quote (not your selective one) from today’s Herald article is,
He did not intend to legislate for any exemption to the health and safety laws or immunity from liability for the Pike River Agency.
“I’m confident we can do everything that’s needed in terms of planning and preparation without it.”
So yes, Little has changed his approach, because he no longer sees a need to change legislation in order to re-enter the mine. What’s the problem with that exactly?
In October 2016 Little said
“The Government claims it’s not safe to enter the drift and try to get any bodies in there out. That’s not true. Experts, both local and international, say the mine is now stable. We can get those men out, and secure evidence regarding the cause of the explosion. It can be done”
Now he says it isn’t really as certain as he was a year ago.
“Those plans include another risk assessment to decide whether a manned re-entry is possible.”
First point is about expert advice on what might be possible, second point is them doing the actual planning based on that advice. Do I really have to explain to you what the differences are there?
“I would suggest these examples illustrate that Andrew Little, now that he is part of the Government is being vastly more responsible than he was when in Opposition.”
Well duh. Maybe that’s because only the government is capable of organising the re-entry and it’s not something that the Opposition could or should do. The role of the opposition was to listen to the families, get expert advice, and then try and get into government so they would have access to all the tools that the govt has.
“The approach he seems to be willing to take now is, of course, in line with what the National Government did.”
No. National wanted to close the mine permanently and not let anyone in. They also treated the families badly.
I think John Armstrong’s comments from January 2017 are going to turn out to be completely accurate.
“It ain’t going to happen. Not now. Not ever. Full stop.”
You are of course entitled to believe whatever you want. But what you’ve just said doesn’t support what you said originally, so the moderation warning stands going forward. I’m not really interested in spending a bunch of time arguing back against your random reckons when you are misrepresenting the situation.
If you want to argue against what Labour are doing, then do it honestly.
If Antoine is left running she will generate enough return comments to keep the blog going while in summer the mod lies back with a cool glass of something and just blobs out.
I think you are making shit up. Go ahead, produce five examples of Labour ‘back-pedalling hard on election promises at the moment’.
I’m not sure if Labour have back-pedalled hard on the TPPA, I thought their pre-election stance was opaque, so while I don’t like what they are doing it’s hard to point to positions from during the election campaign and see where they have reversed them.
But seeing as how you think Labour are back-pedalling on promises plural, by all means put up some other examples.
Well that’s what we do here Antoine, we put up arguments and other people disagree with them and then we discuss that. But what you have done is asserted that Labour are back-pedalling hard on multiple fronts, and you’ve been unable to provide any back up of that, so I’m going to assume you made it up.
“Osborne said Little had so far been true to his word to involve the family members every step of the way in his plans for the Pike River Agency.
“It’s something quite new to the families because that’s something we haven’t had for seven years is a bit of truth and transparency around things.”
Or ..
“Just 25 days after the Labour-led Government was sworn in, legislation to set up a new agency devoted to the Pike River Mine re-entry is expected to go before cabinet on Monday.”
You almost had me, until the video started autoplaying: “we the undersigned commit that a new government we are part of will act immediately to safely reenter”…
Are you ever going to positively contribute to our effects to restore our society to a kinder, gentler society again after the last nine years of turmoil and despression we all suffered through?
When you “put things in the too hard basket” it’s a way of avoiding doing anything and shutting things down. This was a classic National Party tactic on a whole range of things , but it’s not actually what Little is doing here. Let’s wait and see. The difference seems to be one of emphasis: National it seems were desperately seeking reasons not to re-enter the mine, the Coalition are keen to find a way of doing so.
Alwyn has a particular sly approach to his spin and slurs. I don’t believe that he genuinely thinks that Labour previously promised to enter the mine at the risk to those re-entering. I think he’s just politicking to undermine Labour.
He used to tell blatant lies about the Greens and was unable to back up what he was saying so I got to call him a liar quite a bit (before I was an author). More recently he’s learned how to not be so blatant and he uses framing like ‘seems to’. Which is an improvement if that’s what he genuinely believes, but on issues that are important and where misinformation is likely to cause problems for the site, he’ll get this moderator attention similar to if he told the lie more blatantly.
As for others, their mileage will vary. Honestly held belief is fine. Trolling isn’t. The grey area in-between is where the warnings happen.
I found the rwnjs here were quite useful during the election campaign. They would spout all the rubbish heard on kiwi blog and talk back and the Standanista community would refute them in a calm and intelligent way. The arguments made by the Standanista community were very useful when I was out door knocking so I must say thank you rwnjs.
But I must say we do need better trolls than at comment 13 on this page. He contributes nothing – no argument at all. So I hope that the cleverer rwnjs don’t desert us perhaps due to funding issues from National big payers deserting them leaving us with the dregs.
Eighty something years ago, IBM’s punch card technology was used to identify undesirables.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A coalition of rights groups launched an online petition on Thursday urging IBM Corp to declare that it will not develop technology to help the Trump administration carry out a proposal to identify people for visa denial and deportation from the United States.
[…]
ICE wants to use machine learning technology and social media monitoring to determine whether an individual is a “positively contributing member of society,” according to documents published on federal contracting websites.
There you go computational technology used as a sword OUR WORLD CAN VOTE with there wallet and dump IBM Shears if they don’t heed the calls to be a humane company and stop this bulls hit.
One good point OUR people should see with Andrew little is he is honest. If a neo liberal was in the same situation they would have lied there ass off.
Andrew I would take heed to Trumps and jacinda conversion he is not all bad There are a lot of power full people who are pissed that we won so please be cautious people will be throwing under arm balls from all directions. Kia kaha
You sound like you are practicing for your declaration to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Instead “I voted Labour once, but I am reforming and growing stronger and will never do it again, so help me God” or along those lines.
What was this vision you claim to have voted for? And how quickly did you expect them to fulfill it, given that you’ve apparently written them off so completely you’ll never vote for them again after the few weeks they’ve been in office?
That’s National BM. Key was a master at telling people what they wanted to hear. You miss him don’t you and wish Labour really did do it too just like Key.
What about Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes?
As you watch the loathsome Tucker Carlson chuntering on in this masterpiece of selective outrage, consider how little concern he shows for the victims of Harvey Weinstein, and how obsessed he is with emphasizing that Weinstein is a “liberal” (if someone on the right wing of the Democratic Party can so be described)….
I’d love to think that the likes of Stephen Sackur, Gavin Esler and Mishal Hussein showed such intelligence and self-awareness when they’re similarly off-camera, but I doubt they do.
Three misconfigured AWS S3 buckets have been discovered wide open on the public internet containing “dozens of terabytes” of social media posts and similar pages – all scraped from around the world by the US military to identify and profile persons of interest.
The archives were found by veteran security breach hunter UpGuard’s Chris Vickery during a routine scan of open Amazon-hosted data silos, and these ones weren’t exactly hidden. The buckets were named centcom-backup, centcom-archive, and pacom-archive.
[…]
Just one of the buckets contained 1.8 billion social media posts automatically fetched over the past eight years up to today.
Many thanks to Our New Zealand media for showing a lot more positive stories about OUR Maori culture people this will lift the Mana of all New Zealanders Ka pai
JOE90 the only social media I use is the standard I new a long time ago of the dubble edged sword of our Internet many thanks to for getting it out there my story has spread all around OUR WORLD Kia kaha
Good on you Pete from one news you are a good role model for our men.
Also many thanks to OUR media for all the good stories on Lady sports stars it a shame Jacinda did not have more lady peers while she was meeting all of the other world leaders this is going to change soon Kia Kaha.
He did, however, not specify what he had done to the 15-year-old Auckland girl who was holidaying at the Hilton on Denarau Island, saying he was too drunk to remember but accepted her version of events.
The allegations included that he twice grabbed the girl’s backside while she was pool-side at around 3am and had assaulted her male friend when he had tried to intervene.
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Voice Memos is a convenient app on your iPhone that allows you to quickly record and store audio snippets. These recordings can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as taking notes, capturing ideas, or recording interviews. While you can listen to your voice memos on your iPhone, you ...
Laptop screens are essential for interacting with our devices and accessing information. However, when lines appear on the screen, it can be frustrating and disrupt productivity. Understanding the underlying causes of these lines is crucial for finding effective solutions. Types of Screen Lines Horizontal lines: Also known as scan ...
Right-clicking is a common and essential computer operation that allows users to access additional options and settings. While most desktop computers have dedicated right-click buttons on their mice, laptops often do not have these buttons due to space limitations. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how to right-click ...
Powering up and shutting down your ASUS laptop is an essential task for any laptop user. Locating the power button can sometimes be a hassle, especially if you’re new to ASUS laptops. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on where to find the power button on different ASUS laptop ...
Dell laptops are renowned for their reliability, performance, and versatility. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just someone who needs a reliable computing device, a Dell laptop can meet your needs. However, if you’re new to Dell laptops, you may be wondering how to get started. In this comprehensive ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
I was initially resistant to the idea often suggested to me that the Government should deliver an arts strategy. The whole point of the arts and creativity is that people should do whatever the hell they want, unbound by the dictates of politicians in Wellington. Peter Jackson, Kiri Te Kanawa, Eleanor ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
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 The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
What does a forever relationship look like when you don’t believe in marriage? And how do you celebrate it? This essay is part of our Sunday Essay series, made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.I’m going to do it, right now. I’m going to say ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 26 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
You can’t have missed the Gallipoli story as the movies, documentaries, essays and books capture what it was like for New Zealand troops in their eight-month campaign on the Peninsula. But this Anzac Day the Auckland War Memorial Museum has published a book that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner. Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to ...
Asia Pacific Report Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to ...
Pacific Media Watch Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders. According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
ACT's Rural Communities and Veterans spokesman Mark Cameron responds to cancellations and protests of ANZAC Day commemorations in Wellington. He says, "These pitiful attempts to detract from ANZAC Day are not at all indicative of the feelings of mainstream ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Pōneke based peace activists staged a silent protest at the ANZAC day service to highlight New Zealand’s complicity in war and genocide, and urge the government to take concrete steps to stop the genocide in Palestine. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena M.E. Bunbury, Postdoctoral Researcher, James Cook University Burial with a horse at the Rákóczifalva site, Hungary (8th century AD).Sándor Hegedűs, Hungarian National Museum, CC BY How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been ...
Amanda Thompson doesn’t really do Anzac Day. But what she does do is remember the people she knew who had a lifetime to remember stuff they didn’t really want to, because of a war they didn’t ask for. And she does make Anzac biscuits.First published in 2021.All my ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Willis, Postdoctoral Researcher, CSIRO Xavier Boulenger/Shutterstock In the two decades to 2019, global plastic production doubled. By 2040, plastic manufacturing and processing could consume as much as 20% of global oil production and use up 15% of the annual carbon ...
With our collective remembrance, and steadfast belief in our common humanity, we strengthen our hope and resolve to do what we can to foster dialogue and understanding, and to heal divisions in our pursuit of peace. ...
Principal reasons for the opposition is the loss of the public’s democratic right to have “a fair say” and the vital need for a government free from corruption, said Casey Cravens of Dunedin, president of the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater ...
Never mind the scoreboard – in the 2000 Bledisloe Cup decider, the real trans-Tasman battle was won before kickoff.First published in 2016. The dawn of the new millennium was a dark time for the All Blacks. Their final game pre-Y2K was a 22-18 loss to South Africa in the ...
I’m on the wrong side of 40, I never pursued creative work and now my job is killing my soul. Help! Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,May I start with the least original conversation opener you’re likely to hear around the motu at the moment, particularly in Wellington: ...
“Never again - No AUKUS” was the message of the wreath laid at this morning’s national ANZAC Day commemorative service at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park this morning by the Stop AUKUS group. ...
Until this month, Auckland swimmer Hazel Ouwehand had never met a qualifying time in an Olympic event for a New Zealand team, even as a junior. Now she’s very likely off to the Paris Olympics after swimming well under the qualifying standard in the 100m butterfly twice – both in ...
While Anzac Day has experienced a resurgence in recent years, our other day of remembrance has slowly faded from view.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand. Original illustrations by Hope McConnell.First published in 2022.The high school’s head girl and ...
Australian and New Zealand volunteers fought together in the Waikato War, yet still its place in the Anzac tradition is unacknowledged by our defence forces or Returned Services Association.First published in 2018.When I was a boy cub I attended Anzac Day services in the South Auckland suburb of ...
Tried a couple of times to post this link about the Freedom of the Press Foundation considering cutting its ties to WikiLeaks, but they disappeared into the memory hole. Let’s see if it goes through without the snark about Assange…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/free-press-group-set-to-cut-off-wikileaks
edit: yep, appeared immediately. Now I really wonder what triggered the disappearance of the previous comments.
Thank you for that Andre. Most informative.
Heavenly morning in Riverton; sunshine, bird song, not a breath of wind; probably be in the garden all day 🙂
Hi Robert, Enjoyed your contribution to this weeks edition of “Get Growing”. I follow their “Moon” almanac and it generally works.
Hi Marcus – I’m pleased you did – I like writing for them, they give me plenty of freedom to chose topics, etc. Writing about un-likeable plants was a hoot! I’m pleased too, that you take notice of the moon, just as plants do 🙂
The post about “Yellow Peril” got me wondering about one of my recent choices.
I have a part interest in a farm property that is partway through the process of being sold. It is in an area where a number of properties have been bought by chinese, and then left unused and neglected to the point that they become nuisance pest reservoirs for the neighbours.
When it come to decision time, we had two offers: a higher offer from chinese investors with no apparent connection to farming and had nothing to say about their plans for the property, and a lower offer from a local who mentioned his interest in continuing bush restoration in unproductive areas and continuing to farm (and has a track record of doing so).
We accepted the lower offer from the local. In my case the difference means effectively I chose to forego a year or two’s worth of income in order to sell to the local.
Does that make me a racist?
Or does that just make me an idiot for not taking the most money and running?
Should I feel a warm fuzzy for being willing to take a personal financial hit to get a result I think is better for NZ? Or ashamed that I let softy sentimentality interfere with looking after my best interests?
Are you racist ?
I guess that depends if the fact that one buyer was Chinese entered your decision making process.
Well, I mentioned “chinese” twice in my comment, so obviously it did affect my decision. But if instead of “chinese” it had been “american” or “australian” or “south african” or “russian” in those two places, my decision would have been the same. Or “remuera tractor driving queen street farmer”, for that matter.
Can you really not tell whether your comment is racist or not? Or are you trying to make a point?
Weka, it is hard to be a “holier than thou” American.
Don’t worry about “racism” – Mainland Chinese business people treat white skin marks completely differently to Chinese marks all the time.
Even if you are just buying from their roadside stall.
Andre
It certainly is getting to the stage where you can’t draw attention to the facts and clearly seen observations and name the people involved. It’s not a reaction to racism by critics it is an attempt to introduce censorship.
At the same times, excess being something to avoid, one must not blame everything that happens on every individual Chinese etc. also they are taking advantage of conditions that ‘our’ so-called government has set up and
welcomed. So call the National government out on disabling our borders and causing the entry of more foreign disruptive organisms that act against our, as ordinary NZs, best interests.
IIRC, That wasn’t actually National but the 4th Labour government. National just refused to put the border controls back in place – and so did the 5th Labour government. The present Labour government are putting in place a few restrictions but the borders are remaining open.
We haven’t had a government working in the best interests of NZ for some time. Admittedly, a lot of that is due to poor understanding of real world economics brought about by a bunch of economists who have no understanding of real world economics.
Yeah yeah DTB – keep on saying it – they say you have to go through three levels to get a speech received and understood – Tell the audiance what you are on about, give them the spiel, and summarise what you have just told them, If you keep telling people the same as you did at 11.26am you will have broken through the density shield by the time you die.
By the way I put up link earlier from Radionz this morning but you might miss it. So here it is again, talking about newtech and life extension and great topics for some science fiction books, only it isn’t fiction. Peter Thiel appears – interesting contrarian.
16m
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018622144/anthony-byrt-and-simon-denny-the-founder-s-paradox
What you could have said is one buyer had no farming plan and the other buyer did.
You know James;
Everything you write is about critising others!!!!!
Get real will you; ffs; – #$%^&*()_>
We are now building a positve new future “out of the shaddows of the long deep respressive nine years of discontent” – that your national party placed over us all.
Wow clean green – you are a strange person.
A question was asked and I replied. There was zero criticism or indeed judgement.
“Does that make me a racist?”
I replied (in short) only if the race entered your decision making process.
Then you post going (as my kids would say) off on one with zero justification or reason.
Perhaps it’s you that needs to “get real Ffs”
A question was asked
Time to explore the difference between…
discriminatory
making or showing an unfair or prejudicial distinction between different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
“discriminatory employment practices”
synonyms: prejudicial, biased, prejudiced, preferential, unfair, unjust, invidious, inequitable, weighted, one-sided, partisan;
and….
discriminating
having or showing refined taste or good judgement.
“he became a discriminating collector and patron of the arts”
synonyms: discerning, perceptive, astute, shrewd, judicious, perspicacious, insightful;
Well said, Rosemary. But it is almost a lost cause trying to get people to discriminate accurately between meanings of words nowadays – you are quite likely to be abused by some ardent believer for pedantry.
No, you were primarily judging by the land use. You have that right. You made a loss to follow your beliefs. What a shame more people don’t think less of money and more of out comes, there wouldn’t be the pest sink.
I wouldn’t say “loss”. The difference was between a ridiculous amount of capital gain and an even more ridiculous capital gain.
And NZ’s tax laws mean the NZ government won’t claim any part of this effective windfall that they have enabled. But because I’m dual NZ-US, I’m fairly sure I’m going to have to write a fairly big cheque to Uncle Sam for their capital gains tax, even though the US contributed absolutely nothing to creating it.
The government should be doing that and putting in place the proper regulations to prevent land being sold to become obvious land banks.
It’s relatively simple – use it or lose it.
Why are foreign investors land banking in New Zealand?!
Fred Pearce in his outstanding book ‘The Land Grabbers’ says this.
‘Across the world there is a land grab. Entire countries are being snatched from under the feet of native residents: Saudia Arabia now owns most of Ethiopia; the Rev Moon owns a slice of South America the size of Switzerland. Triggered by the 2008 world food crisis and the credit crunch, this grab is not just about food.’
Does that make me a racist?
Or does that just make me an idiot for not taking the most money and running?
On Kiwiblog, both of those would apply – you’d be a villainous xenophobe and also an idiot for not putting money above all other considerations. Fortunately, you posted it here…
You would be racist if:
The intended land use of the two bidders was reversed, and
The price offers were the same, and
You made the same decision.
Under those conditions there would clearly be no factor influencing your decision other than the race of the buyer.
Pretty standard decision tree there. Not racist unless you were wearing your ‘go home you look different’ t shirt. Weighing up pluses and minuses including the financials is normal I think – a few people here choose to sell their houses to families instead of non families for social concious reasons – seems a good way to think about it to me – you know, values an all.
I’m just fascinated with why western liberal lefty culture is so anxious about even the merest perceptions of racism. In Asia, discrimination by race and region is basic every day life.
Yeah, it’s an interesting phenomenon how some people work so hard at finding something they can point to and call “racist” and then use that to completely ignore any other points being made.
But I don’t think the fact that racism has been and continues to be a cultural thing all around the world should get in the way of trying to move beyond it for the future.
‘Moving beyond racism’ seems like a great idea until people realise that multicultural societies fully acknowledge that different cultures have different values, beliefs, perspectives and behavioural tendencies (albeit with large areas of overlap).
You can’t try and do deals in Japan like you would in China. Like you would in Australia. Like you would in the USA.
As Rosemary suggested, it’s the difference between discrimination and being discriminating.
So making a vendor decision based solely on skin colour might certainly be racism – but it’d also be superficial and thoughtless. But once you take into account what fits with your value system – then it becomes a nuanced decision which takes into account cultural values across many dimensions – theirs as a buyer and yours as a vendor.
It seems to me that’s exactly what you did.
Thanks for that point CV. I have a book about Australia’s interaction with Asia written 1980’s I think and Indonesia calls Australia all sorts of things. And attitudes are expressed by them that represent their political advantage from time to time.
Why did you even mention they were Chinese Andre? I can’t see why that has any relevance there.
It has relevance because it is evidence of another example of land ownership and its use to add to the information about foreign buyers and who they are. Its not rocket science. Just looking at the facts.
Andre hasn’t said the buyers were foreign. He just said they were chinese.
It would have been a fairly pointless self-congratulatory onanistic comment if I had left out the chinese bit. But put it in and hopefully we get an interesting conversation about what racism really is, and how to interpret behaviours that can look like racism viewed one way, and “not racism” viewed another.
Ok. Well to make an observation you appear to have made a judgement on a group based on their race, unless your reference to ‘chinese’ is specific to foreign investors from China.
I would think that a Chinese immigrant, or NZ born person of Chinese origin, who read your post would be asking if you’d have acted the same if all the buyers in your story were caucasions.
We know that Chinese from Mainland and also Singapore and Hong Kong are big investors all over the world, that they have chosen to move out all over the world, and threaten the USA’s
It is unfortunate that Chinese Kiwis are being affected. The problem is that the government has opened the doors so wide there are too many newbie foreigners, China had the investment money, so are in a majority.
So we have to be careful as to which Chinese we are talking about, cold-eyed newbies buying up land, houses to land bank, as unlovely as any of our own speculators, or whatever. I know of a large investment by dreamers from North America, that was done in visionary dreams and hopes and overseas money has fallen through, and local contractors remain unpaid. Huge legal bills for all those involved in the practical outcomes.
The bloody world can’t descend on us to play around with, what were the economic and political leaders thinking of to not see it leading to an asymmetric engagement of some sort? A rhetorical question!
So we have to be careful as to which investors we are talking about… FIFY.
Ethnicity has nothing to do with it.
Ethnicity is important because the individuals are acting within a financial matrix of that country, or to which that country is incorporated.
Racism is playing the man, not the ball.
Another way of looking at the sale would be to estimate that the overseas investor will just make a purchase down the road and the extra money he would of paid might of worked harder if donated to a cause dedicated to changing our OSI rules.
According to National it would make you a racist, a xenophobe and an idiot.
You should feel warm and fuzzy. Doing what’s right for the local community is far better than doing what’s right for your bank account when doing what’s right for the bank account is obviously so bad for the local community.
Andre, if the decision was made out of a principle of having the land used in an appropriate way, not land banked and even native bush added, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Some might misconstrue the concept but it would be just another opinion.
I’d have called you an ecologist rather than a racist.
Another day, another round of MSM trommelfeuer against the government – this time kelvin Davis is in the firing line. Oh, if they’d only ever held Key’s ministers to such account in their nine year love fest of being insiders to a culture of complacent, smug arrogance.
Their audience share is shrinking, so they are less effective.
Geeze I had to google that … drumfire. Yes the perfect image.
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about living in Australia this past few years has been an MSM that has a range of voices. Sure there is the ugly (Andrew Bolt comes to mind) and the mad, but there are other voices to balance them.
NZ just has this narrow little click-bait cult.
it is the German word for a constant, wearying bombardment. It is constant dissection of the trivial with a pummeling, carping tone designed to buttress audience prejudices and pitch people against each other rather than challenge them to work together and it is explicitly aimed at feeding cynicism and outrage for clickbait rather than appeal to hope and altruism.
It is the media environment that loved the cynical eye rolling lip service to society by the servants of the greedy and the haughty that was the Key government, and it is a environment profoundly threatened by the ideals of an inclusive progressive government.
The MSM desperately needs reform, but I doubt this Labour government has the balls to do it.
Look at the utter bullshit from Garner today on paid parental leave – it is so idiotic I won’t link to it. But the bottom line if the roles were reversed, Duncan “who ate all the pies” Garner would have spent his piece excoriating Labour on it’s record on paid parental leave and demanding it support incremental change. Instead, he lauds National’s cynical ploy from a position of not even understanding the governments position on the matter. What an ignorant, idiotic right wing fucktard.
Very good analysis. This time it’s Davis’s turn. Unfortunately he’s a soft target. He doesn’t seem to have the skillset to have Ardern’s back like Cullen did for Clark. To me he’s the wrong person for the role.
As for the attack lines against the government it’s almost like the whole thing is being orchestrated. I got an image in my mind of a team of evil trolls sitting somewhere in a darkened room saying: “Right. Who’s turn is it this time? Davis. Who do we allocate this one to? Moir, she’ll do.”
“And as a bonus hit, how about some dribble from Garner about parental leave. Perfect.”
“Now what’s for tomorrow?”
And you’re right Sanctuary this sort of BS will be relentless.
”whole thing is being orchestrated. ”
gee they could have someone in the office next to english and then he could feed lies to a piece of shit blogger who could hand feed the lies to moron journos to spread , i reckon that would work ,
oh wait i think it’s been done , ? i wonder if they refined it to make it harder to spot?
Of course its orchestrated Grey Area.
Why wouldn’t it be. The opposition’s strategy is to identify the government’s weak points and seek to undermine it. When the media picks it up and amplifies it, well, thats a bonus. Davis, rightly, will be feeling exposed and humiliated as a result.
Davis’s ineptness provided National with an easy target last week and of course they’d use this as an opportunity to undermine Labour. And it worked. It’s for Labour to figure out how they can mitigate such attacks. The obvious answer, as you have identified, is to sack Davis and replace him with someone more competent.
BTW Labour had exactly the same strategy when it was in opposition. Its what oppositions do in Westminster democracies.
Sanctuary
Aspects of what you have written at 9.38am would have been mentioned in this interesting and mind-opening interview by Kim this morning. It helps to put Peter Thiel and bitcoin etc in context.
Anthony Byrt and Simon Denny – The Founder’s Paradox
From Saturday Morning, about 1 hour ago
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018622144/anthony-byrt-and-simon-denny-the-founder-s-paradox
Listen duration 16′ :04″
Simon Denny graduated with a BFA from Elam in 2004 and completed his post-graduate study in Frankfurt. Recent exhibitions include The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington (2014) and All You Need is Data – The DLD 2012 Conference REDUX as part of the Walter’s Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki (2014).
Denny was selected to represent New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale, exhibiting Secret Power at the New Zealand Pavilion. Anthony Byrt is an Auckland-based critic and journalist. He is a regular writer for Metro, a contributing editor to Paperboy, and the New Zealand correspondent for Artforum International. His book This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art was shortlisted for the 2017 Ockham national book award.
Together the pair have created an exhibition, The Founder’s Paradox, including essays, on a series of large art pieces based on familiar board games. The games unpack extreme libertarian ideologies such as those held by ‘new’ New Zealander Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley thought leaders. The Founder’s Paradox is on at the Michael Lett Gallery until December 22.
They still believe that the profit drive gets the best results despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Sanctuary, just read the article from Garner. My first thought was – is he going to breastfeed the little pumperletsch (German for poor little one)?
Has he and with him the right lost completely the connection to the issue at hand? A women giving birth, needing the rest, breastfeeding, post natal hormone disturbances, learning the ropes of having a new born etc… yes, men should be supporting the new mother but they most likely have no idea either. Visiting the pub, playing golf and/ or partying to celebrate fatherhood does not count.
Not that there are fathers who will try very hard to help, but to help one needs experience and knowledge about the subject. This is where the plunket service comes in.
To make new mothers a political football is another low for half the population. Is is ever going to be any different?
I wish I had the option of paid parental leave. My wife’s an immigrant with no family here and my family was a long way away as well.
My wife suffered terribly from postnatal depression and later also diagnosed with ptsd as a result. It was and still is a harrowing experience. At the time I used all my leave, leave in advance and sick leave took on a fairly large debt before having to return to work to keep the rent paid.
At times things were so bad I was scared to leave the house in the morning not knowing what I would find when I got home. I could get very little in the way of practical support for my wife and myself outside of our gp and a councillor who agreed to see me free of charge as I started to fall to bits having to work and try and care for a wife who was becoming progressively more unwell. Tbh neither of us have fully recovered 10 years down the track.
I don’t know for sure but having the ability to spend 3-6 months at home would have made a massive difference.
Cricklewood, I am sorry to hear that and quite sad when reading your story. I am shocked that your wife did not receive more help. PN depression is not often mentioned in general and new mothers often feel very upset because they MUST feel elated.
In such severe cases such as your wife experienced, it ought to be possible for you to stay with the new mother as her carer for more than just 6 months.
My best wishes and I hope this years festive season will give you and your family reason to celebrate.
@ Sanctuary (4) … I agree. The previous government of the past nine years was never held to account by media for anything!
Kelvin Davis did his best as a novice in the position he was put into to fill in for the PM, when both she and her deputy PM were both away. Davis became media’s target, due to his inexperience in the role, demonstrating msm’s bullying tactics in a mean spirited attempt to humiliate and cause strife in government, when there was no necessity for it. Media’s job is to cover news facts and report it, not make it up to suit Natz, still stinging after the election loss!
However, it will be very interesting when Winston fills in for Jacinda, as acting PM and he will, given his animosity towards Natz at the moment, re his superannuation detail leaks. Also I’m sure he won’t hesitate to call out any sour, denigrating media BS against government either!
Davis set himself up through his ineptness. He’s the deputy pm, he gets the status and the remuneration and other benefits that goes with the role. He’s fair game if he screws up – as did last week in question time, which is covered by the media..
If he can’t cut the mustard he should step down.
Deafening silence in NZ about the climate summit in Bonn which has just ended despite the fact that NZ sent James Shaw along.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/17/planet-at-a-crossroads-climate-summit-makes-progress-but-leaves-much-to-do
Also no news here about the new “Powering Past Coal Alliance” of 19 countries, of which significantly NZ is now one.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/16/political-watershed-as-19-countries-pledge-to-phase-out-coal
Would be good to see a Standard post about this, even if the MSM are more interested in title tattle rather than the world’s “nuclear free moment”.
One News ran a piece about this last night, featuring Shaw.
Last week the Herald published an article written by Brian Gaynor in which he exposed the awful folly of Muldoon’s National Super scheme. He also highlighted how the recent National Government had failed to enhance the Cullen Fund (which, he says, has been a brilliant success) and had taken away the incentive to join Kiwi Saver (another great Labour initiative.
I thought the article was “political dynamite” but it wasn’t even a damp squib.
When I wrote to Mr Gaynor expressing my surprise at the muted reaction he said that it was just a sign of the times – people were only interested in sound bites and not long term issues.
Muldoon’s strategy has caused this vital issue to be a political football for over forty years but the worst aspect is that it has cost the country billions of dollars. The National Party as a whole should be held to account because it has connived in the scandal for all of that time.
Gaynor is a fool. Kirk’s fund would have been privatised and broken up in the 1980’s. Everyone knows that.
And we’d be living on Mars etc etc. Once you depart on a road of what ifs, anything is possible. Calling someone a fool for extrapolating an alternative outcome just makes you look like an uncharitable moron.
Good grief. You swallowed Muldoon’s line hook and sinker. By the way, did you read the article. I very much doubted but I have a copy if you care to read it. Were you even around then? Brian is a respected and trusted economist. What are your credentials.
Thanks Marcus M I too have been waiting in vain for any MSM comment on that article which I found very revealing and very well written.
I cut it out and pasted it into my scrapbook, yes , I know I can get it off the net but it looks more real somehow alongside the other clippings that I have collected over the years.
The whole dastardly “episode” is even worse when you read Hugh Templeton’s comment in his book “All Honourable Men”. Hugh was a member of Muldoon’s cabinet and the architect of CER. He writes that the National Party strategists (including Muldoon himself), knew the scheme was unsustainable before it was even promulgated. It was an unspeakable crime against the country in my view and has resulted in an appalling cost.
It looks as though Little has put the Pike River promises into the too-hard basket.
Didn’t Labour, New Zealand First and the Green parties make an unconditional guarantee that the mine would be re-entered and the bodies recovered?
Now it seems to all be fading away.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11945226
[you start running lies about Labour and I will start banning you. Take this as the warning for future comments. I’ll let this one stand so I can deal with it in comments. – weka]
Can’t tell if you really are that stupid.
For people that haven’t clicked through and might be wondering what bullshit alwyn is on about, the article is Little describing the process for making a decision about re-entry into Pike River including the risk assessment and involving the families in that. He makes the point that if it turns out that re-entry can’t be done safely then there are no absolute guarantees.
Which is exactly what I would expect. Alwyn wants to play politics with this, I guess thinking that Little should be letting a dangerous re-entry go ahead. This all says much about alwyn.
The article also points out the differences between National’s ‘fill the mine with concrete’ position and Labour’s (and NZF/Greens’) ‘let’s work through the process to make sure re-entry is possible, and do right by the families’. It’s clear from the article that Little still thinkings re-entry is possible but is just being responsible by making it clear that it won’t be done at the risk to workers.
Agreed. What Little should be making is the one thing he can control, which is an absolute guarantee that the decision making process is open and transparent.
No-one wants to put a re-entry crew into an unreasonable hazard, much less see harm to them. National were completely obdurate and opaque about defining the risk, hiding behind nameless ‘experts’ whose interests in the matter could never be assessed.
The best Labour can do here is ensure the families and the wider public have a high level of confidence in what’s done. There will of course be criticism, and it will be impossible to make everyone happy.
And of course the likes of alwyn will exploit this for all they can wring from it. Expect more.
weka says “… at the risk to workers.”
RedLogix says “… put a re-entry crew …”
These kinds of wordings bother me. They imply a workplace environment where the people going in are doing so under the instruction of supervisors responsible for their safety.
The only people I’m comfortable with going into that mine are acknowledged expects in dealing with the conditions likely to be in the mine, that are choosing to go in for personal reasons of their own around the remains still in there or learning lessons for the future.
The grounds for refusing a volunteer team entry into the mine should only be “we don’t think you have the experience and expertise to assess and manage the risks you’re about to take, come back when you have a more credible team”.
That’s very far removed from any kind of situation where workplace health and safety regulations are relevant.
“These kinds of wordings bother me.”
Fair points and ones I’d agree with if it turns out the risk is higher than they thought, but I’m guessing that neither weka nor Red know what the actual plans are 😉 I’d suggest digging a bit deeper with the people who are doing the planning (I’d be interested to know that too if you find out).
Little seems to be saying that he thinks safe re-entry can be done without messing with Health and Safety legislation. That’s a good sign.
I understand that. Every time I used to go into the mountains I put myself at risk. Had enough close calls to know the risk was nothing airy-fairy or hypothetical either.
But this isn’t some individual quest of modest consequence, it’s a highly sensitive and deeply political operation. You only have to imagine the blow-back if something DID go wrong. Labour have to be totally clear and responsible about the decision-making process here.
Winston has volunteered to led a team in. Let him do so. He’s already exploited the situation for selfish and cynical political gain. Let him put his money where his mouth is.
Redlogix: expect more.
Grantoc: *makes R/L’s point*
I don’t see what is incorrect in what Alwyn said.
He said “Didn’t Labour, New Zealand First and the Green parties make an unconditional guarantee that the mine would be re-entered and the bodies recovered?”
Indeed, they did: https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/west-coast/95798732/crossparty-agreement-pledges-a-reentry-of-pike-river-mine. “Jacinda Ardern says a Labour Government would reenter the Pike River Mine . The leaders of Labour, United Future, the Maori Party and the Green Party signed a commitment in Wellington on Tuesday to reenter the West Coast mine.”
(Italics mine)
A.
Do you believe that Labour intended to re-enter at any cost? If so then I think your thinking is pretty stupid.
Alwyn, and you, can parse the abstract meaning any way you like, but my expectation is that the Labour govt will work on re-entering the mine safely. That’s what Little is talking about and it’s very clear even from Clare Trevett’s reporting that that is what Little is talking about – safe re-entry. I don’t see anything there to suggest that Little is resiling from Labour’s commitment.
Before the election a number of groups, including Labour, said that unlike National they thought re-entry was possible. They committed to doing that, but I don’t think anyone apart from you and alwyn and RW shit stirrers thought that meant doing so unsafely. Grow the fuck up.
“I don’t see what is incorrect in what Alwyn said.”
He also said, “It looks as though Little has put the Pike River promises into the too-hard basket.” and “Now it seems to all be fading away.” That’s the malicious spin that got my moderation attention.
FWIW i think Little’s position now is sensible. The earlier tripartite accord however should have been cast in more cautious terms.
A.
From memory, those parties took advice from experts and those experts advised that re-entry was possible. As Red points out, what’s happening now is that Little is working through the process responsibly. Only an idiot would think that Labour promised to re-enter if there was a risk of people dying. Also, see my comment below about point scoring in the context of Pike River.
Yes, well said & linked Antoine. I can’t see why mods would get so upset about alwyn’s post, except possibly with despair as another absolute promise seems to dilute into wishes & feels.
If you think that Labour have put re-entry into the to “too-hard basket” and their commitment is ‘fading away’, produce some evidence of that. I can’t see it in the article linked.
Alwyn can believe whatever he likes, but when he misrepresents political parties and how they are being reported in the MSM he’s going to get moderator attention.
“another absolute promise”
Likewise, produce evidence that Labour ever said that re-entry would happen no matter what even if it mean people dying or being hurt in the process. That’s what absolute means.
Both you and alwyn are playing silly bugger politics. Personally I have a very low tolerance for that on this particular issue because people died and then their families were treated badly by the previous government who have failed to ensure a safe work place was maintained. Those are all serious issues with bigger picture consequences that don’t deserve stupid shit point scoring.
Perhaps I can offer a couple of examples of the change in the Labour Parties former leader, Andrew Little’s approach.
In January 2017 he told TVNZ News
“He said on February 7, the first day of Parliament, he’d seek leave to table a bill that would absolve those involved in recovery of responsibility”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/labour-leader-vows-table-bill-enable-pike-river-re-entry
He now says
“He did not intend to legislate for any exemption to the health and safety laws or immunity from liability for the Pike River Agency.”
From the Herald article I linked to.
In October 2016 Little said
“The Government claims it’s not safe to enter the drift and try to get any bodies in there out. That’s not true. Experts, both local and international, say the mine is now stable. We can get those men out, and secure evidence regarding the cause of the explosion. It can be done”
http://www.labour.org.nz/promises_to_pike_families_must_be_kept
Now he says it isn’t really as certain as he was a year ago.
“Those plans include another risk assessment to decide whether a manned re-entry is possible.”
I would suggest these examples illustrate that Andrew Little, now that he is part of the Government is being vastly more responsible than he was when in Opposition.
And a damn good thing that he is. The approach he seems to be willing to take now is, of course, in line with what the National Government did.
When they found that the expert opinion was that re-entry was unsafe they didn’t promise to go ahead with such an attempt.
I think John Armstrong’s comments from January 2017 are going to turn out to be completely accurate.
“It ain’t going to happen. Not now. Not ever. Full stop.”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/john-armstrong-pike-river-re-entry-never-going-happen#
The full quote (not your selective one) from today’s Herald article is,
He did not intend to legislate for any exemption to the health and safety laws or immunity from liability for the Pike River Agency.
“I’m confident we can do everything that’s needed in terms of planning and preparation without it.”
So yes, Little has changed his approach, because he no longer sees a need to change legislation in order to re-enter the mine. What’s the problem with that exactly?
In October 2016 Little said
“The Government claims it’s not safe to enter the drift and try to get any bodies in there out. That’s not true. Experts, both local and international, say the mine is now stable. We can get those men out, and secure evidence regarding the cause of the explosion. It can be done”
http://www.labour.org.nz/promises_to_pike_families_must_be_kept
Now he says it isn’t really as certain as he was a year ago.
“Those plans include another risk assessment to decide whether a manned re-entry is possible.”
First point is about expert advice on what might be possible, second point is them doing the actual planning based on that advice. Do I really have to explain to you what the differences are there?
“I would suggest these examples illustrate that Andrew Little, now that he is part of the Government is being vastly more responsible than he was when in Opposition.”
Well duh. Maybe that’s because only the government is capable of organising the re-entry and it’s not something that the Opposition could or should do. The role of the opposition was to listen to the families, get expert advice, and then try and get into government so they would have access to all the tools that the govt has.
“The approach he seems to be willing to take now is, of course, in line with what the National Government did.”
No. National wanted to close the mine permanently and not let anyone in. They also treated the families badly.
I think John Armstrong’s comments from January 2017 are going to turn out to be completely accurate.
“It ain’t going to happen. Not now. Not ever. Full stop.”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/john-armstrong-pike-river-re-entry-never-going-happen#
You are of course entitled to believe whatever you want. But what you’ve just said doesn’t support what you said originally, so the moderation warning stands going forward. I’m not really interested in spending a bunch of time arguing back against your random reckons when you are misrepresenting the situation.
If you want to argue against what Labour are doing, then do it honestly.
If Antoine is left running she will generate enough return comments to keep the blog going while in summer the mod lies back with a cool glass of something and just blobs out.
Labour is backpedalling hard on election promises at the moment.
Give us five examples (with links) please.
Also, demonstrate how Labour are back-pedalling on Pike River.
Why are you disagreeing with me? I thought you disliked Labour’s change of stance on the TPP?
A.
I think you are making shit up. Go ahead, produce five examples of Labour ‘back-pedalling hard on election promises at the moment’.
I’m not sure if Labour have back-pedalled hard on the TPPA, I thought their pre-election stance was opaque, so while I don’t like what they are doing it’s hard to point to positions from during the election campaign and see where they have reversed them.
But seeing as how you think Labour are back-pedalling on promises plural, by all means put up some other examples.
There’s no point. Whatever example I came up with, you would say was invalid for some reason.
A.
Well that’s what we do here Antoine, we put up arguments and other people disagree with them and then we discuss that. But what you have done is asserted that Labour are back-pedalling hard on multiple fronts, and you’ve been unable to provide any back up of that, so I’m going to assume you made it up.
Back peddling? You mean like this…..
“Osborne said Little had so far been true to his word to involve the family members every step of the way in his plans for the Pike River Agency.
“It’s something quite new to the families because that’s something we haven’t had for seven years is a bit of truth and transparency around things.”
Or ..
“Just 25 days after the Labour-led Government was sworn in, legislation to set up a new agency devoted to the Pike River Mine re-entry is expected to go before cabinet on Monday.”
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/west-coast/pike-mine-re-entry-bill-way
lol
You almost had me, until the video started autoplaying: “we the undersigned commit that a new government we are part of will act immediately to safely reenter”…
#nevertrustatory
Alwyn,
We are growing so tired of you;
Are you ever going to positively contribute to our effects to restore our society to a kinder, gentler society again after the last nine years of turmoil and despression we all suffered through?
I can’t say I suffered through nine years of turmoil and depression under the last government and I suspect I’m not on my own.
You’re not on your own there. Unfortunately, you’re in the minority.
So much privilege.
see moderator note.
When you “put things in the too hard basket” it’s a way of avoiding doing anything and shutting things down. This was a classic National Party tactic on a whole range of things , but it’s not actually what Little is doing here. Let’s wait and see. The difference seems to be one of emphasis: National it seems were desperately seeking reasons not to re-enter the mine, the Coalition are keen to find a way of doing so.
Foolish alwyn, foolish to try this approach – when will have an honest discussion eh? The 12th of never is when…
Hey weka if you ban all who tell lies about labour, aint going to be many RWNJ left here.
..and certainly very few labour MPs
Alwyn has a particular sly approach to his spin and slurs. I don’t believe that he genuinely thinks that Labour previously promised to enter the mine at the risk to those re-entering. I think he’s just politicking to undermine Labour.
He used to tell blatant lies about the Greens and was unable to back up what he was saying so I got to call him a liar quite a bit (before I was an author). More recently he’s learned how to not be so blatant and he uses framing like ‘seems to’. Which is an improvement if that’s what he genuinely believes, but on issues that are important and where misinformation is likely to cause problems for the site, he’ll get this moderator attention similar to if he told the lie more blatantly.
As for others, their mileage will vary. Honestly held belief is fine. Trolling isn’t. The grey area in-between is where the warnings happen.
I found the rwnjs here were quite useful during the election campaign. They would spout all the rubbish heard on kiwi blog and talk back and the Standanista community would refute them in a calm and intelligent way. The arguments made by the Standanista community were very useful when I was out door knocking so I must say thank you rwnjs.
+1
But I must say we do need better trolls than at comment 13 on this page. He contributes nothing – no argument at all. So I hope that the cleverer rwnjs don’t desert us perhaps due to funding issues from National big payers deserting them leaving us with the dregs.
Eighty something years ago, IBM’s punch card technology was used to identify undesirables.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A coalition of rights groups launched an online petition on Thursday urging IBM Corp to declare that it will not develop technology to help the Trump administration carry out a proposal to identify people for visa denial and deportation from the United States.
[…]
ICE wants to use machine learning technology and social media monitoring to determine whether an individual is a “positively contributing member of society,” according to documents published on federal contracting websites.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-immigration/ibm-urged-to-avoid-working-on-extreme-vetting-of-u-s-immigrants-idUSKBN1DG1VT
Joe90 – read IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation by Edwin Black.
IMB made money throughout almost the whole war from their machines used to sort out Jews being sent to the death camps.
Money has no conscience and no loyalty.
On the list.
https://archive.org/stream/IbmAndTheHolocaust/ibm-and-the-holocaust-edwin-black-2001-history_djvu.txt
GROPERS
No. 3: Al Franken
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42018154
“GROPERS” is researched and presented by GroperWatch, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
No.1 George Herbert Walker Bush
No. 2 Bill O’Reilly
Has anyone else noticed the amount of mc Mansons that are on the market to it looks like the speculators are abandoning ship all at once.
That took me a while to decipher I think you meant to type McMansions????
Perhaps he meant cm Manson rather than mc Manson.
Luckily he is still doing time in a California prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Manson
Hopefully, not for much longer.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/charles-manson-grave-condition-california-hospital-article-1.3635813
There you go computational technology used as a sword OUR WORLD CAN VOTE with there wallet and dump IBM Shears if they don’t heed the calls to be a humane company and stop this bulls hit.
One good point OUR people should see with Andrew little is he is honest. If a neo liberal was in the same situation they would have lied there ass off.
Andrew I would take heed to Trumps and jacinda conversion he is not all bad There are a lot of power full people who are pissed that we won so please be cautious people will be throwing under arm balls from all directions. Kia kaha
Did Miriama Kamo ever work for BBC morning television?
If it’s not Miriama Kamo, then it’s her doppelgänger who appears at the 1:09 mark…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_amyJCLmMY8
I voted Labour,I believed in their vision.
I wont vote Labour again.
Sorry but I cant think of a thing I was told,apart from paid parental leave that is what I voted for.
Sorry again,I cant support Labour with this leadership group in charge.
Doesn’t ring true. I don’t believe you have ever voted Labour
I do not believe you.
I don’t believe him either. He sounds like Josie Pagani, or THIS fool….
https://twitter.com/philquin
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15092015/#comment-1071082
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15092015/#comment-1071082
You sound like you are practicing for your declaration to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Instead “I voted Labour once, but I am reforming and growing stronger and will never do it again, so help me God” or along those lines.
I voted Labour,I believed in their vision.
I wont vote Labour again.
What was this vision you claim to have voted for? And how quickly did you expect them to fulfill it, given that you’ve apparently written them off so completely you’ll never vote for them again after the few weeks they’ve been in office?
National needs better trolls.
Deleted.
After not even a whole month you’ve lost your reason to vote Labour? Sort your shit out.
Rather naive of you Terry, Labour just tells people what they want to hear.
Once they’re in power all changes.
That’s National BM. Key was a master at telling people what they wanted to hear. You miss him don’t you and wish Labour really did do it too just like Key.
Terry, surely you must allow at least 90 days before time’s up?
What about Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes?
As you watch the loathsome Tucker Carlson chuntering on in this masterpiece of selective outrage, consider how little concern he shows for the victims of Harvey Weinstein, and how obsessed he is with emphasizing that Weinstein is a “liberal” (if someone on the right wing of the Democratic Party can so be described)….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fnzww1KuN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNHXM4LzXYE
I’d love to think that the likes of Stephen Sackur, Gavin Esler and Mishal Hussein showed such intelligence and self-awareness when they’re similarly off-camera, but I doubt they do.
Watching.
Three misconfigured AWS S3 buckets have been discovered wide open on the public internet containing “dozens of terabytes” of social media posts and similar pages – all scraped from around the world by the US military to identify and profile persons of interest.
The archives were found by veteran security breach hunter UpGuard’s Chris Vickery during a routine scan of open Amazon-hosted data silos, and these ones weren’t exactly hidden. The buckets were named centcom-backup, centcom-archive, and pacom-archive.
[…]
Just one of the buckets contained 1.8 billion social media posts automatically fetched over the past eight years up to today.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/17/us_military_spying_archive_exposed/
Many thanks to Our New Zealand media for showing a lot more positive stories about OUR Maori culture people this will lift the Mana of all New Zealanders Ka pai
JOE90 the only social media I use is the standard I new a long time ago of the dubble edged sword of our Internet many thanks to for getting it out there my story has spread all around OUR WORLD Kia kaha
Good on you Pete from one news you are a good role model for our men.
Also many thanks to OUR media for all the good stories on Lady sports stars it a shame Jacinda did not have more lady peers while she was meeting all of the other world leaders this is going to change soon Kia Kaha.
This British man (originally from Latvia) has interesting thoughts.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/16/isaiah-berlin-letters-modern-youth
COP 23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skilmEHMsMc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBAcYkc6v6A
GROPERS
No. 4: Robin Brooke
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10655407
“GROPERS” is researched and presented by GroperWatch, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
No.1 George Herbert Walker Bush
No. 2 Bill O’Reilly
No. 3 Al Franken
Deadbeat Dads
No. 2: From where did this little creep learn his hateful attitudes?
http://www.pridenz.com/gaynz/4991.html
http://forums.punkas.com/viewtopic.php?t=39631