The redacted Mueller report is out. While it’s still way too early to digest it all and get all a clear picture of what we’re being allowed too see, let alone try to parse what might have been in the redacted bits, let’s all keep in mind how seriously Barr has already misrepresented the report.
Here’s Barr:
As the report states: ”[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election inference activities.”
Here’s the full sentence from Mueller:
Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
What we already knew from public info: they met in a bar, there was dirty dancing, there was steamy snogging in the carpark. Mueller just couldn’t get the tapes that they got to the bedroom together and jumped each other’s bones.
But her role in covering up Trump’s motivations for firing Comey were laid bare in the report, which cited how her statements at a press briefing days after the FBI’s firing were at odds with the facts. Sanders insisted at the briefing that Trump fired Comey at the justice department’s recommendation and repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that rank-and-file members of the FBI had lost confidence in Comey.
Sanders acknowledged to the special counsel’s office that her assertion “was not founded on anything”.
The tour will “lay out the plan to make the 2020 election a referendum on the Green New Deal, so we can make the Green New Deal law in 2021.”
……..Three prominent Massachusetts Democrats will join community and labor leaders in Boston Thursday night to kick off the youth-led Sunrise Movement’s 250-city Road to a Green New Deal Tour……
……..”We’re building a groundswell of support for the Green New Deal in every corner of this country,” organizers explain on a tour webpage. “We’ll gather in libraries, university campuses, churches, and living rooms to learn about the ambition, prosperity, and promise of a Green New Deal, hear from political and community leaders, and discuss the pathway to make the Green New Deal become reality.”…..
……”First, we put the Green New Deal on the map and changed the conversation on climate policy in this country,” Sunrise Movement executive director Varshini Prakash said in a press statement. “Now it’s time to transform the 2020 election into a referendum on climate action…….
….This sort of leadership, combining public activism with parliamentary activism, fought from a minority position, is not unknown in this country.
Rod Donald also fought for his corner with the sort of dogged leadership currently being given by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Rod Donald MP, from an even slimmer minority position, than the one currently enjoyed by the Green Party, promoted and fought for, and eventually won over the whole country pushing the National government of Jim Bolger to hold a public referendum on MMP, which was carried by a huge majority, despite a massive well funded anti-MMP campaign by the Right.
Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Catherine Delahunty….none afraid of speaking up or standing out. Goodness, I’d forgotten about the battle for MMP, thanks Jenny-htgt.
Hi Rosemary, what is even less well known about Rod Donald was his political activism to make New Zealand Nuclear Weapons free.
‘Combining public activism with par’iamentary activism’
All politics is pressure
Rod Donald had been a Values Party member since 1974, in 1982 Rod Donald and other Values Party members joined the Labour Party. What Rod and other ex-Values members brought with them into the Labour Party was their strong anti-nuclear views.
During the time of Rod Donald’s influential leadership and political activism against war, (and nuclear weapons in particular), within the Labour Party, LECs became the main organising centres for the huge protests against US Nuclear armed and powered warships. This grass roots activism at the LEC level fed into the parliamentary activism of the opposition Labour Party in parliament. In 1984 public pressure, combined with the huge anti-nuclear ship protests, two government MPs Mike Minogue and Maralyn Waring crossed the floor to vote with the opposition Labour Party to make New Zealand nuclear free. To prevent the final vote being taken, Prime MInister Muldoon closed parliament and called a snap election. The rest is history.
(The strategies and tactics that Rod Donald learned in the Anti-nuclear campaign, he honed and refined in his later campaign for MMP.)
We are again living in an age where activists must become politicians, and politicians must become activists.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s path to Congress representing an urban, diverse district in New York City began in a freezing-cold protest camp in North Dakota.
She spent several weeks in 2017 with indigenous activists fighting the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. The protests garnered national attention, even if she herself didn’t.
“It was right after I left Standing Rock that I knew I had to do something,” she said at a press conference last week…..
….”She was someone who was very passionate about climate justice,” said Evan Weber, Sunrise Movement founder, who noted her time at Standing Rock…..
…..Ocasio-Cortez often links her experiences with the water protectors at Standing Rock and the goals of the Green New Deal. In North Dakota, she saw corporate power bearing down on the Native activists, building a pipeline that would endanger local water and ultimately contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
On being elected to congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t disappear into committee rooms never to heard from again, as is the traditional career path followed by most freshmen congress members. But continued how she had begun, melding, executive parliamentary activism with grass roots political activism.
On Nov. 13, [Congresswoman] Ocasio-Cortez joined 150 activists from Sunrise in a protest at the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the likely next speaker.
Sunrise wants a Green New Deal: a program aimed at decarbonizing the U.S. economy through significant investments in green infrastructure and renewable energy. It also wants the establishment of a select panel on climate change with legislative authority in the House.
Ocasio-Cortez quickly signed on to the group’s goals, boosting them on Twitter and turning what had been fringe proposals into a legitimate movement among the party’s progressive flank. At least 18 members of the new Democratic caucus back the Green New Deal.
“Obviously we had added star power and firepower that took it through the roof,” Weber said regarding the explosion of interest in the Green New Deal after Ocasio-Cortez trumpeted the cause.
She has since been joined by other progressive favorites including Reps.-elect Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
Gordon Campbell ruminates on the aftermath of the cgt debacle, and asks “who were the big winners”? “That’s easy: the people on the topmost rungs of the wealth ladder. By the Tax Working Group’s own calculations, 10% of the population own 70% of the assets that stood to be taxed, while the bottom 70% have only 10% of such assets, and the 30% of lowest income earners have merely 1% of them.” http://werewolf.co.nz/2019/04/gordon-campbell-on-scrapping-the-capital-gains-tax/
So the coalition has chosen survival via preservation of wealth inequality. It knows those who voted for them in hope of reducing inequality have no better voting option, so making a living wage more viable will have to do for this term.
“In fact, if they have a good tax lawyer, high earners can find ingenious ways to transform their ordinary taxable income into untaxed capital gains. So… is it fair that the country’s top 10% will continue to enjoy tax–free earnings for the foreseeable, while ordinary wage earners have to pay tax year in, year out? Of course not.”
Since there’s never been a fair economy, Gordon’s perception (which I share) is largely irrelevant. Politics is the art of the possible. CGT was proven impossible.
“On strictly economic terms, it also isn’t very smart – or efficient – to incentivize people to buy up property for the capital gain, rather than encourage them to invest in the productive parts of the economy.” Maybe so. However, the notion that investing in shares is a good idea was shredded by the ’87 crash. Slow learners still clinging to the notion got done over by the dot-com crash a decade later. God only knows what constituency Gordon thinks he’s (not) preaching to…
Not possible only in the most neo-liberal nation state. Most others have a higher top rate of tax, a CGT and estate tax. And near all have higher GDP per capita – much greater investment in the real economy, rather than property.
So perhaps focus will now switch to whether the coalition can keep faith with the electorate by making the tax system fairer in other ways. I hope so.
Ardern’s choice to not park the cgt, but eliminate it, was strange. Some kind of Labour in-house psychodynamic has to explain this – I wonder if it will be made public or suppressed as dirty laundry?
As a percentage of GDP, the New Zealand government’s share of the economy is pretty much in the the middle of the OECD.
The reason why it is done without CGT and with a top tax rate of 33%, is because we have almost no tax deductions and that it actually very difficult to avoid taxes in New Zealand. Also our GST is across the board, and also has virtually no exemptions.
Our GDP level is not due to the size of government, which is pretty average among the OECD. It is mostly the result of being the most remote nation in the world and largely dependent on a few key primary products. In fact given that, we do pretty well.
I meant it has proven impossible in the current political & economic context. I agree it’s possible in principle. Desirable, too. Preferable.
I suspect Labour insiders with a practical inclination would point to impracticality of application, due to the devil being in the details. Perhaps lack of advocacy from Labour politicians can be explained by this?
Good leadership includes things like embracing slightly risky options, if they offer improved outcomes over time. Consistently failing to take such steps erodes trust in leadership. The trope is not yet firmly established, but duck squeezing is not a habit that grows support.
In respect to the leadership angle, this decision reeks more of management than leadership.
Splitting hairs perhaps.
I am desirous of leadership in regards to bringing equity into our society.
Getting rid of G.S.T. and P.A.Y.E. and bringing in a F.T.T. aka Tobin tax or Hone tax. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qYtNwmXKIvM
(Not telling you how to suck eggs Stuart, the link is for onlookers.)
I recall around 7/8 years ago – when Key was riding the crest of political popularity – having a polite (reasonably) argument with a bunch of Auckland based MPs about Labour’s lack of responses to Key’s lies and false representations. In a polite and pc nuanced way they told me… they were scared to be too critical cos the voters might punish them.
Maybe they didn’t agree with you Anne and knew the voters would take issue with too many falsehoods being thrown at John Key. H fee blew up spectacularly for labour. That was about 7-8 years ago
A variety of reputable (note I said reputable) journalists were able to pick the lies and the distortions to pieces but the MSM for the most part ignored their contributions and we all know why… living in Key’s back pocket was regarded as essential if one’s career was to continue unobstructed.
Btw. my recollectuion was the H thing blew up about ten years ago… soon after the Key govt. was elected.
Nah. The entire thing was botched from the outset. Setting aside my view the a CGT is a dogs breakfast of a tax that doesn’t work, the TWG report was an uninspiring rehash of last century ideas and thinking. There was no vision, or cohesive strategy to energise a desire for change.
But the fatal blow was the proposed settings for the CGT. If it had been inflation adjusted and/or set at less than the top marginal tax rate, I think most people would have gone along with it.
Failing to adjust it for inflation was stupid. In rough terms property inflation over the long-term is about 3% pa, while inflation is 2%. It meant that even in the case of a property which has had zero gain in real value, that over periods of a decade or more, would still be hit with substantial tax liabilities on eventual sale due simply to inflation.
The same exact effect happens when PAYE tax rate thresholds are not inflation adjusted. Nice for government revenue, but it’s a lazy, dishonest form of taxation for everyone else.
Another major fault was a failure to exempt the tax if the proceeds of a sale are immediately re-invested into the same asset class, which is a major disincentive to businesses re-structuring and updating.
Still there is an upside to dumping this tax; it clears the way for something else. We may even be in for a surprise as soon as this next Budget.
There had better be Redlogix otherwise they will look like losers in the minds of ordinary folk. If you have principles then you must act on those principles.
John Key never had to worry because he didn’t have a lot pf principles in the first place.
Failure to make equity-setting policies time-independent has long puzzled me. Conventional thinking has been driving settings out of whack throughout our lives, so you’d think all stakeholders would have learnt the lesson by now. Bad design.
Re a pleasant budget surprise, hope you’re right. Maybe they put the rocket scientists onto a parallel track & left the cgt to the dummies. Will GR talk out of the socialist side of his mouth while reassuring the markets out of the neoliberal side? Will we see a forked tongue slithering between the two?
The whole exercise appears to have been designed as a trap by Minister Robertson to smash the reputation and body of work of Dr Cullen into a smeared red paste.
As if Robertson was simply letting the left of the party, the unions, the churches, NGOs, and the Green Party, know in neon lights that he knows exactly what they want – and they will never get it.
The biggest failure of all was to get things back to front. The person who should be paying CGT is the owner of a family home. Everyone else should be exempt. Paying a tax on the capital gain on the sale of a family home would afford some recognition of the years of rent free accommodation enjoyed by the family home owner. Instead the designers of the CGT want to exempt the family home and tax every other capital gain.
And this is a world wide problem. Every country that has a capital gains tax exempts the family home and taxes everything else. It’s no wonder the tax is so ineffectual.
Yes. When TOP first pointed this out many people found it a bit hard to process. The basic argument goes, that if you have money sitting in your own house you pay zero tax, but if you have it invested in any productive asset, even a minimum risk/return bank account you do pay tax on the income generated.
The argument rests on the idea that the benefit you enjoy from living in your own home is a form of ‘income’ that should be taxed in the interests of horizontal equity. That’s a grey area for a lot of people, we’ve become so acculturated to this loophole most people will deny it exists.
What is clear though, you do get to keep any ‘real capital gains’ (over and above inflation) as real income when you sell your home. That form of income was what a CGT was intended to capture, but as you say, for purely political reasons the family home is perversely excluded.
Thus homeowners would get to enjoy two tax benefits over all other asset types. Again for political reasons this may be tolerable. Home ownership has long been considered a desirable social goal in it’s own right. It’s also the presupposition our superannuation model is built on; $20k pa Super is simply not enough if your also paying $15k pa in rent.
But the core problem with home ownership as a desirable goal is that it privileges a hugely unproductive investment in housing. The vast bulk of the debt we owe as a nation is sitting in our houses. It’s not entirely wasted, we need shelter and a place to call our own, but the problem comes when we also start treating our homes as savings accounts and ATM’s.
Much of this is driven by the fact that National Super is insufficient to sustain even a modest middle class standard of living in retirement. It’s a safety net, not a lifestyle. Because my generation got repeatedly burnt by our financial sector and Muldoon destroyed our infant superannuation industry, that left housing as the only moderately reliable place to put our retirement savings.
As an aside it’s often overlooked that NZ is the only OECD country to fund superannuation entirely from the govt’s current account. Most other nations, retirement provision is at least a separate stream from core govt taxation. Indeed if for comparison purposes you separate out National Super, NZ’s core govt fraction of the economy is the very lowest in the OECD. So much for the proposition that we’re an over-taxed socialist hell-hole 🙂
But increasing tax revenue is difficult because our tax system is working with such a thin base. And this because so much of our wealth is tied up in non productive, un-taxed housing. An anti-virtuous circle if there ever was one.
The current system is a distorted mess and I’m under no illusion how difficult it will be to fix without causing more problems than we’re trying to solve. But it’s why I supported TOP because at least they were willing to put substantive tax reform at the centre of their agenda.
Let’s no buy in and spread the meme that CGT was or is proven impossible; other countries have CGT and the sky has not fallen for them. This does not help the tax debate, which must continue because the problems have not gone away; they have moved the elephant from one to another room.
In the NZ context, CGT was in the too-hard basket and the political price too high for some.
Shares are a good medium- to long-term investment option, even when you take inevitable market downturns and ‘crashes’ into account. The golden rule is to diversify and not put all your (Easter) eggs in one basket and to adopt a financial risk level that suits you.
Could be that tax policy is something the govt want to defer until the review of the Public Finance Act is complete. It sets out the standards and practices of how the Crown should report its tax and spending to parliament, according to economist Brian Easton. https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/a-taxing-and-spending-matter
“To understand the power of the PFA you need to recall Gilling’s Law which states the way you score the game shapes the way the game is played. Gilling’s Law says the danger is that we lapse into placing the level of debt at the top of the score card even if the primary focus is meant to be wellbeing. This is well illustrated by the current ‘Budget Responsibility Rules’, which emphasise the debt track.”
The coalition seeks to incorporate well-being as a policy goal, and shift the govt from operating like a business to include more of a quality of life focus. Such practical socialism is laudable, even if the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I agree that game theory has become influential in public policy since the eighties, despite practitioners remaining reluctant to educate the public about usage. They ought to pull finger and lose their diffident stance. We need more sophisticated politics.
I think the PM’s next tax initiative (if there is one) will be a top rate of 40% for incomes above $150,000 (or maybe $200,000) and a tax free threshold of $5,000 to $10,000.
She could readily campaign on that for the 2020 election. But would she take that risk? Are changes to income tax rates even necessary?
She could just stay with the current tax settings, on the basis they have widespread consent. That is what Labour did for 2017. Clearly it was a proven winner, so why mess with success.
In my view Jacinda’s brand does not lie in tax policy. It is much more in the area of children, environment, climate change and peacemaking.
The government doesn’t actually need to raise taxes to get more money. They already have a healthy surplus, some of which could be spent. Fiscal drag will slowly push up the size of government as a percentage of GDP. Govt spending could easily increase by say $4 billion per year (about 5% increase in govt spending) on current settings. You can actually do quite a lot with an extra $4 billion.
Maybe so, but that will only keep the conventional part of her electoral base happy. To make the progressive part happy she has to produce a fairer system. I doubt Winston is allergic to fairness (despite being conservative) so I hope the two will agree on sufficient of a better design of the tax system to deliver reassurance to the electorate that they intend to be more than just managerial neoliberals.
I expect the Greens to be firm in encouraging the govt to produce more of a sophisticated design. Recalling that income tax didn’t exist prior to around a century ago, and that land tax was the primary source of govt finance in the colonial era, I’m anticipating a design suitable for sustainable economics.
After all what would be the real point of major tax policy or even tax bracket change?
The economy is fine,
– international trade is fine,
– inequality is what it has been for a while,
– the government has plenty of money, and spends it,
– the Prime Minister is applauded for leadership in emotion without policy,
– the farmers are happy,
– any social-legislaation reform like euthanasia is gone,
– and the government sits atop a great pile of unused political capital.
Well, I’m taken aback by that news. Sounds rather like an infestation of Blairites, requiring remedial action. Understandable, however, given the ongoing failure of Corbyn and Sanders to explain how they intend to launch Socialism 2.0 as an operating system.
The way I see it, making progress in economics means devising a sustainable economy, in which the business cycle operates in a steady-state macroeconomic context. However, that’s mere philosophy and vision, and it needs a cadre of economists to drive it forward. After 27 years waiting, I’m still not seeing that emerge. Socialism 2.0 as an operating system will have to be designed as sustainable in perpetuity. Perhaps we still lack sufficient desperation to make it happen. More disasters, please!!
In my view Jacinda’s brand does not lie in tax policy. It is much more in the area of children, environment, climate change and peacemaking.
I suspect you are correct. However, the danger with this kind of statements is that we start to associate signature policies with political branding (PR) and this raises expectations in one and lowers them in other areas. The point is that it is not an either-or situation when you are in Government. Even outside of Government it matters as the Greens can attest to, for example. People didn’t mind them as long as they were barking up and hugging the right ‘tree’ but they get really upset when the Greens appear to stray from their ‘paddock’.
I’d hoped that we were getting past that kind of simplistic politics but it seems we still have a long way to go …
But it’s not the real thing.
As the article says
“By the time you get there and back you’ve done well over 5000km”.
What is this back bit? Surely they could hock of bits of the cars as they go along. I’m sure you could be a pretty good price for the drivers door from a yellow mini as you passed through Wanaka.
That would really be in the spirit of the original film, although if I was in it I certainly wouldn’t be volunteering parts of my car.
Are they all real minis or are the BMW imposters along as well?
I doubt if Fortune magazine would be keen to change JA’s ranking* in the light of NZ domestic politics. Funny how a leader who gained such credibility so recently has seemingly lost it all so quickly with the CGT backdown. Mind you, it’s a funny old list anyway, with the Gates at number 1 and Greta Thunberg there with Jacinda in the top 10.
We can’t afford to have unbalanced people with destructive obsessions roaming free in the streets. There is so much lasting damage that some quick or small behaviour can cause to society.
Just days after flames ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a man was arrested Wednesday night (local time) after entering St Patrick’s Cathedral [New York] carrying two cans of gasoline, lighter fluid and butane lighters, police say….
“It’s hard to say exactly what his intentions were, but I think the totality of circumstances of an individual walking into an iconic location like St Patrick’s Cathedral carrying over four gallons of gasoline, two bottles of lighter fluid and lighters is something that we would have great concern over,” Mr Miller said.
“His story is not consistent.”
Mr Miller said the suspect was known to police, who were currently looking into his background.
St Patrick’s Cathedral was built in 1878 and has installed a sprinkler-like system during recent renovations. Its wooden roof is also coated with fire retardant. https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/387371/new-york-police-arrest-man-entering-st-patrick-s-cathedral-with-petrol-cans
Whanau care at its very, very worst….aided and abetted by the Tokoroa Hospital, Waikato Hospital, WINZ, a General Practitioner, a social worker and the New Zealand Police.
These criminals have been remanded in custody until sentencing…they shoild both be jailed…but probably will walk free.
They shoud be jailed and learn a bit about how it feels to be helpless, and they actually might learn something useful while there. Also it would split them up, they have been dragging each other down.
A mother in Nelson took her own life and her intellectually handicapped son’s when Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley indicated to the country that they had no human compassion. The mother felt if she died, her son would be neglected and have a hell of a life, and she decided to act before that happened. Very sad.
Having some crass cosmetic business use my sacred place name as a trademark would upset me greatly. What can we do about this to indicate that we actually have respect and sensitivity to Islam?
Mmmm. I don’t think this can be passed over lightly. It is a trademark and it cheapens the holy place each time it is displayed. I don’t think it would be used my any Muslim businessman.
Is so nice to be among the Trolls and Misfits. They churn out so much piffle. Most of it against Jacinda Adern .
Jacinda is a woman. Which is her biggest fault. She is The Prime Minister of New Zealand. Which is Her next biggest fault. She is Kindly – Which is her next biggest fault. The Trolls of New Zealand detest her with a vicious venom exuding from their tiny head cells. Some Bastard gave her magnificent Intelligence. Which is another Fault. Never Mind.
Also they are very old Trolls – more interested in their Cirrhotic Livers – than anything important.
Jacinda has looked at the Money Books and decided She will not Tax Property. It means a lot to the greedy pinchy males of NZ – for after all they were bred for Greed.
However, the Greedy know, Money always goes to fewer and fewer and fewer- and the Trolls will gradually loose out. Even if The Queen of Sheba hands the coin stuff out.
The Trolls know that in a nonfair place like New Zealand they will soon be heavily impoverished. The Trolls and misfits will be no loss whatever. In my Opinion.
‘Thousands took to the streets of Berlin on Saturday in protest against rising property rents and called for properties of large-scale landlords with more than 3,000 houses to be taken over by the government.
Other protests have been held across Germany’s major cities, including Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich on Saturday.’
Whanau you see the sandflys have that much hardware pointed at me cameras listening devices that’s the main reason they keep blocking my YouTube video music because they are scared they might miss something interesting with my music blocking there buggs YEA RIGHT YOU got nothing and ain’t never going to find ANYTHING fools. P.S they broke a radio at the old whare to be careful whanau they are dirty rotten cheats
Whanau here is more evedince that goverments serve the 00.1% first and for most The sweet tooths use there money to bribe lobby cheat and steal with impunity .US the 99.9 % of people are just sheep to them waiting to be ripped off THATs REALITY.
Private Eye’s work revealed that a large chunk of the country was not only under corporate control, but owned by companies that – in many cases – were almost certainly seeking to avoid paying tax, that most basic contribution to a civilised society. Some potentially had an even darker motive: purchasing property in England or Wales as a means for kleptocratic regimes or corrupt businessmen to launder money, and to get a healthy return on their ill-gotten gains in the process. This was information that clearly ought to be out in the open, with a huge public interest case for doing so. And yet the government had sat on it for years.The political ramifications of these revelations were profound. They kickstarted a process of opening up information on land ownership that, although far slower and less complete than many would have liked, has nevertheless transformed our understanding of what companies own. In November 2017, the Land Registry released its corporate and commercial dataset, free of charge and open to all. It revealed, for the first time, the 3.5m land titles owned by UK-based corporate bodies – covering both public sector institutions and private firms – with limited companies owning the majority, 2.1m, of these. But there were two important caveats. Although we now had the addresses owned by companies, the dataset omitted to tell us the size of land they owned. Second, the data lacked accurate information on locations, making it hard to map. Ka Kite ano Links below P.S Whanau Eco Maori is going to change this atrocity https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/19/who-owns-england-secretive-companies-hoarding-land
Good choice of spreaker Moana will give a awsome view on the realitys of Aotearoa.
This is not the time for white voices
The speaker at the Hamilton Press Club on Friday May 3 will be Moana Jackson.He was a little bit reluctant and could even be described as diffident. Put it this way, it wasn’t his life’s dream.But he spoke with friends who have attended Hamilton Press Club events, and could be trusted to give him an honest appraisal of the lunch events and whether they are worthwhile forums, and they must have said okay things and out of kindness not described me as a complete jackass, because Moana eventually said, in his slow, measured way, yes.
Great. I think it’s going to be a special moment for the Hamilton Press Club. It can be a bit of a rough-house affair. I’m thinking of the time guest speaker Duncan Garner directed a jibe at then-MP Brendan Horan, who simmered and seethed for a couple of minutes, then caught my eye and indicated he needed to have a word in private.We met backstage. He said: “I’m going to dunk the *** in the river.” He really was incandescent with rage and I calmed him down with the help of New Zealand Herald journalist David Fisher, but I kind of regret it. I’d have paid good money to see Horan go at it with Garner.
Ka kite ano links below P.S its cool to get Eco Maori tau toko there are———- you know
The 00.1% Who are the actual rulers of the world still want there chocolate $$$ whether it ruins the Papatuanuku mother earth or not .Kia kaha protesters of the Extinction Rebellion Eco Maori Has your BACK
Pink boat becomes focus of attention on fifth day of Extinction Rebellion protestsThe siege of the Berta Cáceres started started shortly after noon when police in high-vis jackets surrounded the bright pink boat in Oxford Circus, central London, with two cordons and then steadily peeled off the Extinction Rebellion activists stuck to it.Officers with angle grinders cut through the bars below the hull of the vessel, named after the murdered Honduran environmental activist, which protesters had chained and glued themselves to.Five hours later, however, the tables had turned as hundreds of activist reinforcements swarmed into side roads and blocked the end of Regent Street. The police were surrounded. As officers attached the Berta Cáceres to a lorry, the crowd chanted: “We have more boats.”By 7pm police had managed to move the boat just two streets away, only to find themselves pinned in by more rows of demonstrators singing the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. After much obstruction the vessel was eventually driven away up Regent Street followed by jogging uniformed officers.
Welcome to the fifth day of the Extinction Rebellion, the escalating but still methodically polite campaign of disruption that has turned several of central London’s best-known locations into a giant game of territorial to-and-fro.Despite more than 100 arrests on Friday, taking the total to 682 by early evening, the demonstration which has blocked four major London landmarks looked set to continue beyond the weekend, with organisers preparing to extend their disruption on Monday to “picnics on the motorway.”Advertisement
The activists reported an influx of supporters as the Easter holiday, balmy weather and gestures of support from school strike leader Greta Thunberg and the actor Emma Thompson injected new momentum into the weeklong climate protest. Ka kite ano Links below https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/19/extinction-rebellion-reports-hundreds-of-people-signing-up
Kia ora Newshub
Yes biggest thanks from Eco Maori for the protesting in Auckland and around the Papatuanukue on Climate change Kia kaha I would be there with you but if ECO Maori was there you would have seen the big police escort that caters for ME.
Cleo the haters need there heads read why hate its beyond me I’m get – – – on but I forgive the perpetrators I can see it’s the sandflys minupulate them I will forgive but NOT forget what they are doing.
Its quite dry in the Bop and Waikato regions hope no one was hurt in the 2 fires in Waikato .
Its cool that the Auckland Council is being vigilant in the defence of Tane Mahuta againstthe vvirus but YOU must do all you can to save him and his Mokopuna.
I can remember all the new species of fish when we first started fishing for orangeruffy and fishing Scampi down the Auckland island .
I see that a big name is calling on a trump inpeachment.
What giving the Democract no choice they can read the trump report but can’t talk about it or publish it what’s the fucken use of that PUPPET.
That was a big beautiful pithonsnake all animals have personalitys OUR dogs all had excellent personalitys hope she didn’t get to scared.
Plants are beautiful orcds to I had a elderly neighbour who had heaps of Orchids to use to give her all the fish she can eat.
Ka kite ano
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 ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
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 Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
Reacting to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s refusal to rule out introducing new taxes at the budget, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “Today’s refusal to rule out new taxes suggests the Government is nothing more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne Aila Images/Shutterstock Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they ...
He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah. Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best ...
The redacted Mueller report is out. While it’s still way too early to digest it all and get all a clear picture of what we’re being allowed too see, let alone try to parse what might have been in the redacted bits, let’s all keep in mind how seriously Barr has already misrepresented the report.
Here’s Barr:
Here’s the full sentence from Mueller:
What we already knew from public info: they met in a bar, there was dirty dancing, there was steamy snogging in the carpark. Mueller just couldn’t get the tapes that they got to the bedroom together and jumped each other’s bones.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-barr-misled-public-mueller-report_n_5cb8b2b0e4b032e7ceb60d05
Yep – gonna be fun unraveling the lies.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/apr/18/mueller-report-trump-russia-key-takeaways
This is how progressive politics is done.’
“A Message from the Future with AOC”: New Film Imagines World Transformed by the Green New Deal
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/18/a_message_from_the_future_with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiDBjQ2UVWU
Here is a link to just the video of “A Message from the Future with AOC”: https://www.youtube.com/embed/d9uTH0iprVQ?wmode=opaque
This is how progressive politics is done. II
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/18/warren-markey-and-pressley-join-launch-sunrise-movements-250-city-road-green-new
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=5Eg6ZMxhbHM
This is how progressive politics is done. III
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/04/18/if-you-think-that-the-nz-green-party-who-are-just-as-wedded-to-neoliberalism-as-labour-is-are-your-new-political-home-you-are-delusional/#comment-459265
Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Catherine Delahunty….none afraid of speaking up or standing out. Goodness, I’d forgotten about the battle for MMP, thanks Jenny-htgt.
Hi Rosemary, what is even less well known about Rod Donald was his political activism to make New Zealand Nuclear Weapons free.
‘Combining public activism with par’iamentary activism’
All politics is pressure
Rod Donald had been a Values Party member since 1974, in 1982 Rod Donald and other Values Party members joined the Labour Party. What Rod and other ex-Values members brought with them into the Labour Party was their strong anti-nuclear views.
During the time of Rod Donald’s influential leadership and political activism against war, (and nuclear weapons in particular), within the Labour Party, LECs became the main organising centres for the huge protests against US Nuclear armed and powered warships. This grass roots activism at the LEC level fed into the parliamentary activism of the opposition Labour Party in parliament. In 1984 public pressure, combined with the huge anti-nuclear ship protests, two government MPs Mike Minogue and Maralyn Waring crossed the floor to vote with the opposition Labour Party to make New Zealand nuclear free. To prevent the final vote being taken, Prime MInister Muldoon closed parliament and called a snap election. The rest is history.
(The strategies and tactics that Rod Donald learned in the Anti-nuclear campaign, he honed and refined in his later campaign for MMP.)
We are again living in an age where activists must become politicians, and politicians must become activists.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060108771
On being elected to congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t disappear into committee rooms never to heard from again, as is the traditional career path followed by most freshmen congress members. But continued how she had begun, melding, executive parliamentary activism with grass roots political activism.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060108771
Gordon Campbell ruminates on the aftermath of the cgt debacle, and asks “who were the big winners”? “That’s easy: the people on the topmost rungs of the wealth ladder. By the Tax Working Group’s own calculations, 10% of the population own 70% of the assets that stood to be taxed, while the bottom 70% have only 10% of such assets, and the 30% of lowest income earners have merely 1% of them.” http://werewolf.co.nz/2019/04/gordon-campbell-on-scrapping-the-capital-gains-tax/
So the coalition has chosen survival via preservation of wealth inequality. It knows those who voted for them in hope of reducing inequality have no better voting option, so making a living wage more viable will have to do for this term.
“In fact, if they have a good tax lawyer, high earners can find ingenious ways to transform their ordinary taxable income into untaxed capital gains. So… is it fair that the country’s top 10% will continue to enjoy tax–free earnings for the foreseeable, while ordinary wage earners have to pay tax year in, year out? Of course not.”
Since there’s never been a fair economy, Gordon’s perception (which I share) is largely irrelevant. Politics is the art of the possible. CGT was proven impossible.
“On strictly economic terms, it also isn’t very smart – or efficient – to incentivize people to buy up property for the capital gain, rather than encourage them to invest in the productive parts of the economy.” Maybe so. However, the notion that investing in shares is a good idea was shredded by the ’87 crash. Slow learners still clinging to the notion got done over by the dot-com crash a decade later. God only knows what constituency Gordon thinks he’s (not) preaching to…
Not possible only in the most neo-liberal nation state. Most others have a higher top rate of tax, a CGT and estate tax. And near all have higher GDP per capita – much greater investment in the real economy, rather than property.
So perhaps focus will now switch to whether the coalition can keep faith with the electorate by making the tax system fairer in other ways. I hope so.
Ardern’s choice to not park the cgt, but eliminate it, was strange. Some kind of Labour in-house psychodynamic has to explain this – I wonder if it will be made public or suppressed as dirty laundry?
As a percentage of GDP, the New Zealand government’s share of the economy is pretty much in the the middle of the OECD.
The reason why it is done without CGT and with a top tax rate of 33%, is because we have almost no tax deductions and that it actually very difficult to avoid taxes in New Zealand. Also our GST is across the board, and also has virtually no exemptions.
Our GDP level is not due to the size of government, which is pretty average among the OECD. It is mostly the result of being the most remote nation in the world and largely dependent on a few key primary products. In fact given that, we do pretty well.
Wayne.
We are so incredibly fortunate to have you around here.
Those who make the unpalatable sound like ambrosia also serve.
From the bottom of my heart….
GDP is just one aggregate economic measure and more of an indicator, just like CPI, for example.
“CGT was proven impossible”
Nope – our representatives merely folded too soon as usual.
I meant it has proven impossible in the current political & economic context. I agree it’s possible in principle. Desirable, too. Preferable.
I suspect Labour insiders with a practical inclination would point to impracticality of application, due to the devil being in the details. Perhaps lack of advocacy from Labour politicians can be explained by this?
I think it was a corrosive decision.
Good leadership includes things like embracing slightly risky options, if they offer improved outcomes over time. Consistently failing to take such steps erodes trust in leadership. The trope is not yet firmly established, but duck squeezing is not a habit that grows support.
In respect to the leadership angle, this decision reeks more of management than leadership.
Splitting hairs perhaps.
I am desirous of leadership in regards to bringing equity into our society.
Getting rid of G.S.T. and P.A.Y.E. and bringing in a F.T.T. aka Tobin tax or Hone tax.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qYtNwmXKIvM
(Not telling you how to suck eggs Stuart, the link is for onlookers.)
Any substantive action that counteracts burgeoning inequality will attract my ringing endorsement – I’ll suck those eggs any way you want.
I suspect you are right Stuart Munro.
I recall around 7/8 years ago – when Key was riding the crest of political popularity – having a polite (reasonably) argument with a bunch of Auckland based MPs about Labour’s lack of responses to Key’s lies and false representations. In a polite and pc nuanced way they told me… they were scared to be too critical cos the voters might punish them.
I wandered off thinking… damm cowards. 😉
Maybe they didn’t agree with you Anne and knew the voters would take issue with too many falsehoods being thrown at John Key. H fee blew up spectacularly for labour. That was about 7-8 years ago
Except they weren’t falsehoods mate!
A variety of reputable (note I said reputable) journalists were able to pick the lies and the distortions to pieces but the MSM for the most part ignored their contributions and we all know why… living in Key’s back pocket was regarded as essential if one’s career was to continue unobstructed.
Btw. my recollectuion was the H thing blew up about ten years ago… soon after the Key govt. was elected.
But they were falsehoods.
If labour mp’s feel that way, I’d trust their judgement over yours on the matter.
Nah. The entire thing was botched from the outset. Setting aside my view the a CGT is a dogs breakfast of a tax that doesn’t work, the TWG report was an uninspiring rehash of last century ideas and thinking. There was no vision, or cohesive strategy to energise a desire for change.
But the fatal blow was the proposed settings for the CGT. If it had been inflation adjusted and/or set at less than the top marginal tax rate, I think most people would have gone along with it.
Failing to adjust it for inflation was stupid. In rough terms property inflation over the long-term is about 3% pa, while inflation is 2%. It meant that even in the case of a property which has had zero gain in real value, that over periods of a decade or more, would still be hit with substantial tax liabilities on eventual sale due simply to inflation.
The same exact effect happens when PAYE tax rate thresholds are not inflation adjusted. Nice for government revenue, but it’s a lazy, dishonest form of taxation for everyone else.
Another major fault was a failure to exempt the tax if the proceeds of a sale are immediately re-invested into the same asset class, which is a major disincentive to businesses re-structuring and updating.
Still there is an upside to dumping this tax; it clears the way for something else. We may even be in for a surprise as soon as this next Budget.
There had better be Redlogix otherwise they will look like losers in the minds of ordinary folk. If you have principles then you must act on those principles.
John Key never had to worry because he didn’t have a lot pf principles in the first place.
Failure to make equity-setting policies time-independent has long puzzled me. Conventional thinking has been driving settings out of whack throughout our lives, so you’d think all stakeholders would have learnt the lesson by now. Bad design.
Re a pleasant budget surprise, hope you’re right. Maybe they put the rocket scientists onto a parallel track & left the cgt to the dummies. Will GR talk out of the socialist side of his mouth while reassuring the markets out of the neoliberal side? Will we see a forked tongue slithering between the two?
Agreed.
The whole exercise appears to have been designed as a trap by Minister Robertson to smash the reputation and body of work of Dr Cullen into a smeared red paste.
As if Robertson was simply letting the left of the party, the unions, the churches, NGOs, and the Green Party, know in neon lights that he knows exactly what they want – and they will never get it.
The biggest failure of all was to get things back to front. The person who should be paying CGT is the owner of a family home. Everyone else should be exempt. Paying a tax on the capital gain on the sale of a family home would afford some recognition of the years of rent free accommodation enjoyed by the family home owner. Instead the designers of the CGT want to exempt the family home and tax every other capital gain.
And this is a world wide problem. Every country that has a capital gains tax exempts the family home and taxes everything else. It’s no wonder the tax is so ineffectual.
Yes. When TOP first pointed this out many people found it a bit hard to process. The basic argument goes, that if you have money sitting in your own house you pay zero tax, but if you have it invested in any productive asset, even a minimum risk/return bank account you do pay tax on the income generated.
The argument rests on the idea that the benefit you enjoy from living in your own home is a form of ‘income’ that should be taxed in the interests of horizontal equity. That’s a grey area for a lot of people, we’ve become so acculturated to this loophole most people will deny it exists.
What is clear though, you do get to keep any ‘real capital gains’ (over and above inflation) as real income when you sell your home. That form of income was what a CGT was intended to capture, but as you say, for purely political reasons the family home is perversely excluded.
Thus homeowners would get to enjoy two tax benefits over all other asset types. Again for political reasons this may be tolerable. Home ownership has long been considered a desirable social goal in it’s own right. It’s also the presupposition our superannuation model is built on; $20k pa Super is simply not enough if your also paying $15k pa in rent.
But the core problem with home ownership as a desirable goal is that it privileges a hugely unproductive investment in housing. The vast bulk of the debt we owe as a nation is sitting in our houses. It’s not entirely wasted, we need shelter and a place to call our own, but the problem comes when we also start treating our homes as savings accounts and ATM’s.
Much of this is driven by the fact that National Super is insufficient to sustain even a modest middle class standard of living in retirement. It’s a safety net, not a lifestyle. Because my generation got repeatedly burnt by our financial sector and Muldoon destroyed our infant superannuation industry, that left housing as the only moderately reliable place to put our retirement savings.
As an aside it’s often overlooked that NZ is the only OECD country to fund superannuation entirely from the govt’s current account. Most other nations, retirement provision is at least a separate stream from core govt taxation. Indeed if for comparison purposes you separate out National Super, NZ’s core govt fraction of the economy is the very lowest in the OECD. So much for the proposition that we’re an over-taxed socialist hell-hole 🙂
But increasing tax revenue is difficult because our tax system is working with such a thin base. And this because so much of our wealth is tied up in non productive, un-taxed housing. An anti-virtuous circle if there ever was one.
The current system is a distorted mess and I’m under no illusion how difficult it will be to fix without causing more problems than we’re trying to solve. But it’s why I supported TOP because at least they were willing to put substantive tax reform at the centre of their agenda.
Let’s no buy in and spread the meme that CGT was or is proven impossible; other countries have CGT and the sky has not fallen for them. This does not help the tax debate, which must continue because the problems have not gone away; they have moved the elephant from one to another room.
In the NZ context, CGT was in the too-hard basket and the political price too high for some.
Shares are a good medium- to long-term investment option, even when you take inevitable market downturns and ‘crashes’ into account. The golden rule is to diversify and not put all your (Easter) eggs in one basket and to adopt a financial risk level that suits you.
Could be that tax policy is something the govt want to defer until the review of the Public Finance Act is complete. It sets out the standards and practices of how the Crown should report its tax and spending to parliament, according to economist Brian Easton. https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/a-taxing-and-spending-matter
“To understand the power of the PFA you need to recall Gilling’s Law which states the way you score the game shapes the way the game is played. Gilling’s Law says the danger is that we lapse into placing the level of debt at the top of the score card even if the primary focus is meant to be wellbeing. This is well illustrated by the current ‘Budget Responsibility Rules’, which emphasise the debt track.”
The coalition seeks to incorporate well-being as a policy goal, and shift the govt from operating like a business to include more of a quality of life focus. Such practical socialism is laudable, even if the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I agree that game theory has become influential in public policy since the eighties, despite practitioners remaining reluctant to educate the public about usage. They ought to pull finger and lose their diffident stance. We need more sophisticated politics.
I think the PM’s next tax initiative (if there is one) will be a top rate of 40% for incomes above $150,000 (or maybe $200,000) and a tax free threshold of $5,000 to $10,000.
She could readily campaign on that for the 2020 election. But would she take that risk? Are changes to income tax rates even necessary?
She could just stay with the current tax settings, on the basis they have widespread consent. That is what Labour did for 2017. Clearly it was a proven winner, so why mess with success.
In my view Jacinda’s brand does not lie in tax policy. It is much more in the area of children, environment, climate change and peacemaking.
The government doesn’t actually need to raise taxes to get more money. They already have a healthy surplus, some of which could be spent. Fiscal drag will slowly push up the size of government as a percentage of GDP. Govt spending could easily increase by say $4 billion per year (about 5% increase in govt spending) on current settings. You can actually do quite a lot with an extra $4 billion.
Maybe so, but that will only keep the conventional part of her electoral base happy. To make the progressive part happy she has to produce a fairer system. I doubt Winston is allergic to fairness (despite being conservative) so I hope the two will agree on sufficient of a better design of the tax system to deliver reassurance to the electorate that they intend to be more than just managerial neoliberals.
I expect the Greens to be firm in encouraging the govt to produce more of a sophisticated design. Recalling that income tax didn’t exist prior to around a century ago, and that land tax was the primary source of govt finance in the colonial era, I’m anticipating a design suitable for sustainable economics.
The economically progressive part are not required, and Robertson’s team are actively burning them off, both within caucus and the Party.
Perhaps Grant and his ‘team’ should bugger off and join the National Party
They have the power not us.
After all what would be the real point of major tax policy or even tax bracket change?
The economy is fine,
– international trade is fine,
– inequality is what it has been for a while,
– the government has plenty of money, and spends it,
– the Prime Minister is applauded for leadership in emotion without policy,
– the farmers are happy,
– any social-legislaation reform like euthanasia is gone,
– and the government sits atop a great pile of unused political capital.
Ta-daaaaaaah!
Well, I’m taken aback by that news. Sounds rather like an infestation of Blairites, requiring remedial action. Understandable, however, given the ongoing failure of Corbyn and Sanders to explain how they intend to launch Socialism 2.0 as an operating system.
The way I see it, making progress in economics means devising a sustainable economy, in which the business cycle operates in a steady-state macroeconomic context. However, that’s mere philosophy and vision, and it needs a cadre of economists to drive it forward. After 27 years waiting, I’m still not seeing that emerge. Socialism 2.0 as an operating system will have to be designed as sustainable in perpetuity. Perhaps we still lack sufficient desperation to make it happen. More disasters, please!!
I suspect you are correct. However, the danger with this kind of statements is that we start to associate signature policies with political branding (PR) and this raises expectations in one and lowers them in other areas. The point is that it is not an either-or situation when you are in Government. Even outside of Government it matters as the Greens can attest to, for example. People didn’t mind them as long as they were barking up and hugging the right ‘tree’ but they get really upset when the Greens appear to stray from their ‘paddock’.
I’d hoped that we were getting past that kind of simplistic politics but it seems we still have a long way to go …
60 Minis left Kaitaia this morning, how many will make it to Invercargill.
In tribute to the iconic Goodbye Pork Pie & it’s recent remake; and raising money for the KidsCan charity.
Jolly good!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503450&objectid=12223139
To donate:
https://porkpiecharityrun2019.gofundraise.co.nz
But it’s not the real thing.
As the article says
“By the time you get there and back you’ve done well over 5000km”.
What is this back bit? Surely they could hock of bits of the cars as they go along. I’m sure you could be a pretty good price for the drivers door from a yellow mini as you passed through Wanaka.
That would really be in the spirit of the original film, although if I was in it I certainly wouldn’t be volunteering parts of my car.
Are they all real minis or are the BMW imposters along as well?
I doubt if Fortune magazine would be keen to change JA’s ranking* in the light of NZ domestic politics. Funny how a leader who gained such credibility so recently has seemingly lost it all so quickly with the CGT backdown. Mind you, it’s a funny old list anyway, with the Gates at number 1 and Greta Thunberg there with Jacinda in the top 10.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/04/fortune-magazine-names-jacinda-ardern-world-s-second-best-leader.html
We can’t afford to have unbalanced people with destructive obsessions roaming free in the streets. There is so much lasting damage that some quick or small behaviour can cause to society.
Just days after flames ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a man was arrested Wednesday night (local time) after entering St Patrick’s Cathedral [New York] carrying two cans of gasoline, lighter fluid and butane lighters, police say….
“It’s hard to say exactly what his intentions were, but I think the totality of circumstances of an individual walking into an iconic location like St Patrick’s Cathedral carrying over four gallons of gasoline, two bottles of lighter fluid and lighters is something that we would have great concern over,” Mr Miller said.
“His story is not consistent.”
Mr Miller said the suspect was known to police, who were currently looking into his background.
St Patrick’s Cathedral was built in 1878 and has installed a sprinkler-like system during recent renovations. Its wooden roof is also coated with fire retardant.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/387371/new-york-police-arrest-man-entering-st-patrick-s-cathedral-with-petrol-cans
Read it and weep….I did.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/112080526/vulnerable-man-who-drank-own-urine-spends-last-hours-constantly-moaning-and-calling-for-food-and-water
Whanau care at its very, very worst….aided and abetted by the Tokoroa Hospital, Waikato Hospital, WINZ, a General Practitioner, a social worker and the New Zealand Police.
These criminals have been remanded in custody until sentencing…they shoild both be jailed…but probably will walk free.
They shoud be jailed and learn a bit about how it feels to be helpless, and they actually might learn something useful while there. Also it would split them up, they have been dragging each other down.
A mother in Nelson took her own life and her intellectually handicapped son’s when Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley indicated to the country that they had no human compassion. The mother felt if she died, her son would be neglected and have a hell of a life, and she decided to act before that happened. Very sad.
Having some crass cosmetic business use my sacred place name as a trademark would upset me greatly. What can we do about this to indicate that we actually have respect and sensitivity to Islam?
Australian makeup retailer Mecca is moving out of its Auckland CBD store and into the former Topshop Auckland site on the corner of Queen and Victoria Sts.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12047157
Its lucky for them the moslem faith preaches tolerance and forgiveness!!
Mmmm. I don’t think this can be passed over lightly. It is a trademark and it cheapens the holy place each time it is displayed. I don’t think it would be used my any Muslim businessman.
No she ia white young entrepreneur from the money-worshipping cult so wouln’t think of being sensitive. Such a great brand! /sarc
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/mecca-cosmetica-creator-jo-horgans-vision-for-the-future-of-beauty-products-in-australia/news-story/05cfe778056d710c2b3404d1a7d9ca58
Breathing Happily
Is so nice to be among the Trolls and Misfits. They churn out so much piffle. Most of it against Jacinda Adern .
Jacinda is a woman. Which is her biggest fault. She is The Prime Minister of New Zealand. Which is Her next biggest fault. She is Kindly – Which is her next biggest fault. The Trolls of New Zealand detest her with a vicious venom exuding from their tiny head cells. Some Bastard gave her magnificent Intelligence. Which is another Fault. Never Mind.
Also they are very old Trolls – more interested in their Cirrhotic Livers – than anything important.
Jacinda has looked at the Money Books and decided She will not Tax Property. It means a lot to the greedy pinchy males of NZ – for after all they were bred for Greed.
However, the Greedy know, Money always goes to fewer and fewer and fewer- and the Trolls will gradually loose out. Even if The Queen of Sheba hands the coin stuff out.
The Trolls know that in a nonfair place like New Zealand they will soon be heavily impoverished. The Trolls and misfits will be no loss whatever. In my Opinion.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/04/06/germans-take-to-streets-in-rent-rise-protests-demanding-government-takeover-large-private
‘Thousands took to the streets of Berlin on Saturday in protest against rising property rents and called for properties of large-scale landlords with more than 3,000 houses to be taken over by the government.
Other protests have been held across Germany’s major cities, including Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich on Saturday.’
(Might need to ratchet the numbers down for NZ…)
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/ZPQ8d55_rhE
Whanau you see the sandflys have that much hardware pointed at me cameras listening devices that’s the main reason they keep blocking my YouTube video music because they are scared they might miss something interesting with my music blocking there buggs YEA RIGHT YOU got nothing and ain’t never going to find ANYTHING fools. P.S they broke a radio at the old whare to be careful whanau they are dirty rotten cheats
Whanau here is more evedince that goverments serve the 00.1% first and for most The sweet tooths use there money to bribe lobby cheat and steal with impunity .US the 99.9 % of people are just sheep to them waiting to be ripped off THATs REALITY.
Private Eye’s work revealed that a large chunk of the country was not only under corporate control, but owned by companies that – in many cases – were almost certainly seeking to avoid paying tax, that most basic contribution to a civilised society. Some potentially had an even darker motive: purchasing property in England or Wales as a means for kleptocratic regimes or corrupt businessmen to launder money, and to get a healthy return on their ill-gotten gains in the process. This was information that clearly ought to be out in the open, with a huge public interest case for doing so. And yet the government had sat on it for years.The political ramifications of these revelations were profound. They kickstarted a process of opening up information on land ownership that, although far slower and less complete than many would have liked, has nevertheless transformed our understanding of what companies own. In November 2017, the Land Registry released its corporate and commercial dataset, free of charge and open to all. It revealed, for the first time, the 3.5m land titles owned by UK-based corporate bodies – covering both public sector institutions and private firms – with limited companies owning the majority, 2.1m, of these. But there were two important caveats. Although we now had the addresses owned by companies, the dataset omitted to tell us the size of land they owned. Second, the data lacked accurate information on locations, making it hard to map. Ka Kite ano Links below P.S Whanau Eco Maori is going to change this atrocity
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/19/who-owns-england-secretive-companies-hoarding-land
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd2T3o-Ybow
Some how I think the pro brexit was a plan to turn britian into Europe’s Factory farm.
Good choice of spreaker Moana will give a awsome view on the realitys of Aotearoa.
This is not the time for white voices
The speaker at the Hamilton Press Club on Friday May 3 will be Moana Jackson.He was a little bit reluctant and could even be described as diffident. Put it this way, it wasn’t his life’s dream.But he spoke with friends who have attended Hamilton Press Club events, and could be trusted to give him an honest appraisal of the lunch events and whether they are worthwhile forums, and they must have said okay things and out of kindness not described me as a complete jackass, because Moana eventually said, in his slow, measured way, yes.
Great. I think it’s going to be a special moment for the Hamilton Press Club. It can be a bit of a rough-house affair. I’m thinking of the time guest speaker Duncan Garner directed a jibe at then-MP Brendan Horan, who simmered and seethed for a couple of minutes, then caught my eye and indicated he needed to have a word in private.We met backstage. He said: “I’m going to dunk the *** in the river.” He really was incandescent with rage and I calmed him down with the help of New Zealand Herald journalist David Fisher, but I kind of regret it. I’d have paid good money to see Horan go at it with Garner.
Ka kite ano links below P.S its cool to get Eco Maori tau toko there are———- you know
https://e-tangata.co.nz/media/this-is-not-the-time-for-white-voices/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_religion
The 00.1% Who are the actual rulers of the world still want there chocolate $$$ whether it ruins the Papatuanuku mother earth or not .Kia kaha protesters of the Extinction Rebellion Eco Maori Has your BACK
Pink boat becomes focus of attention on fifth day of Extinction Rebellion protestsThe siege of the Berta Cáceres started started shortly after noon when police in high-vis jackets surrounded the bright pink boat in Oxford Circus, central London, with two cordons and then steadily peeled off the Extinction Rebellion activists stuck to it.Officers with angle grinders cut through the bars below the hull of the vessel, named after the murdered Honduran environmental activist, which protesters had chained and glued themselves to.Five hours later, however, the tables had turned as hundreds of activist reinforcements swarmed into side roads and blocked the end of Regent Street. The police were surrounded. As officers attached the Berta Cáceres to a lorry, the crowd chanted: “We have more boats.”By 7pm police had managed to move the boat just two streets away, only to find themselves pinned in by more rows of demonstrators singing the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. After much obstruction the vessel was eventually driven away up Regent Street followed by jogging uniformed officers.
Welcome to the fifth day of the Extinction Rebellion, the escalating but still methodically polite campaign of disruption that has turned several of central London’s best-known locations into a giant game of territorial to-and-fro.Despite more than 100 arrests on Friday, taking the total to 682 by early evening, the demonstration which has blocked four major London landmarks looked set to continue beyond the weekend, with organisers preparing to extend their disruption on Monday to “picnics on the motorway.”Advertisement
The activists reported an influx of supporters as the Easter holiday, balmy weather and gestures of support from school strike leader Greta Thunberg and the actor Emma Thompson injected new momentum into the weeklong climate protest. Ka kite ano Links below
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/19/extinction-rebellion-reports-hundreds-of-people-signing-up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu-VzZ45MwI
Kia ora Newshub
Yes biggest thanks from Eco Maori for the protesting in Auckland and around the Papatuanukue on Climate change Kia kaha I would be there with you but if ECO Maori was there you would have seen the big police escort that caters for ME.
Cleo the haters need there heads read why hate its beyond me I’m get – – – on but I forgive the perpetrators I can see it’s the sandflys minupulate them I will forgive but NOT forget what they are doing.
Its quite dry in the Bop and Waikato regions hope no one was hurt in the 2 fires in Waikato .
Its cool that the Auckland Council is being vigilant in the defence of Tane Mahuta againstthe vvirus but YOU must do all you can to save him and his Mokopuna.
I can remember all the new species of fish when we first started fishing for orangeruffy and fishing Scampi down the Auckland island .
I see that a big name is calling on a trump inpeachment.
What giving the Democract no choice they can read the trump report but can’t talk about it or publish it what’s the fucken use of that PUPPET.
That was a big beautiful pithonsnake all animals have personalitys OUR dogs all had excellent personalitys hope she didn’t get to scared.
Plants are beautiful orcds to I had a elderly neighbour who had heaps of Orchids to use to give her all the fish she can eat.
Ka kite ano