First of all I have personally been involved in designing and building a very similar consent offtake monitoring system – only somewhat simpler as it involved just one weir, one offtake gate and one downstream flow. What seems pretty simple turns out to be a fair bit more complex that you might expect – but in the end I got it running extremely well. We took the need to get it right very seriously and it is one of those projects that I look back with pride. Put simply, all the years I was aware of afterward we never breached consent rules for even a minute.
This Canterbury scheme however seems far more complex than my small system and I am not in the least surprised that from time to time it has allowed breaches of consent. Especially where there are substantial manually controlled gates involved and ambiguous, low resolution data sources.
Nor am I in the least surprised that a Greenpeace spokesperson would put the worst case 'shocker' interpretation on all this. Nor would it surprise me if ECAN management historically failed to fully understand the limitations of the data they were working using and the weak assumptions they were using to determine compliance.
However the article goes on to describe the steps taken since 2019 to greatly improve matters – to the point where:
“Since this more accurate monitoring has been put in place very few exceedances have occurred, and we are generally satisfied with the rate of compliance with the 30 cumec limit.”
That looks more like a technical success story than reason to hand over effective control of the asset to the iwi chiefs.
Yep, iwi should be involved. Framing Three Waters as an iwi vs kiwi issue is just sad, as are the views of the 'creative' behind the 2005 electioneering slogan. Racism, both casual and strident, will continue to be mined/fuelled for political and other purposes – sad.
Give Nothing To Racism (2-minute video; Taika Waititi / NZ Human Right Commission)
Racism starts small. Sometimes it lives in everyday actions and comments that we laugh off, nod in agreement to, excuse, and therefore accept. But we don’t have to. We can stop casual racism from growing into something more extreme. We can give it no encouragement. No respect. No place. No power. We can give it nothing. http://www.givenothing.co.nz
Framing Three Waters as an iwi vs kiwi issue is just sad,
It's a cynical ploy to frame 3Waters as zero-sum, concession to Iwi is a loss to Kiwis. A deliberate effort to cast Māori as potential wrong doers, the blame-worthy enemy who's going to steal your shit, to engage and enrage the base.
Like with the Contergan Children (thalidomide) in Germany. When they and their injuries, their lack of sexual organs, their lack of sexual function, their inability to orgasm, their bodily issues – young people on crutches for life, etc etc etc, when all that becomes so public and so everywhere that you can not hide these children away anymore, then maybe something will change. So probably in a decade or two. And even then you will find that those that did the surgeries, that wrote the prescriptions etc will claim that they did it to safe lifes, and not to fill their coffers, even though their coffers are overflowing with blood money.
But here in NZ, we were late to the party, and it was only 2020 when the curriculum guidelines for Relationships and Sex Education were created and slapped on as an addition to the TKI – from the Ministry of Education.
For those unaware, the TKI guidelines set out the curriculum for all primary and secondary students in NZ. They specify what learning outcomes are needed, to meet curriculum requirements. Curriculum resources can therefore be created by teachers, schools or purchased from third-party organisations.
Guidelines can be found here on this page for both primary and secondary students as a pdf download.
There is a lot to unpick – and justifiably critique in these documents – but the one relevant to this point can be found in both documents (Pg 30 of Yrs 1-8 guide):
In science, ākonga can:
• consider variations in puberty, including the role of hormone blockers
This means that every child within the NZ education system is introduced to the idea – (and due to the diversity of curriculum that can be taught we have no idea how) – that puberty is something that can reasonably be avoided, and puberty blockers are the method to do so.
Our Ministry of Health follows "gender affirming health care" for transgender NZers, including children. (Without getting into details, note that "gender affirming healthcare" is a pre-determined diagnosis and treatment, not equal to quality healthcare).
For young people where these feelings continue into puberty or emerge during puberty, particularly if associated with distress, it is important to see a health professional. Puberty blockers are a medication that can be used to halt the physical changes of an unwanted puberty.
Blockers are a safe and fully reversible medicine that may be used from early puberty through to later adolescence to help ease distress and allow time to fully explore gender health options.
Service providers that can help access blockers include:
paediatric services
youth health services
endocrinologists
primary health care teams.
Late to the party, and staying for the hangover. NZ education normalises the idea of delayed puberty, while offering – without reserve – off-label medications that have no robust clinical evidence of benefit.
In fact, the countries above, that have reviewed evidence have found that the net result is harm.
If this bothers you, write to both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health, asking them what evidential base did they use as reference for these TKI outcomes, and medical response.
If your concern is for high-quality appropriate care for transgender youth, then you should be bothered. The likelihood of iatrogenic harm from the current approach is high, and the evidence of that occurring is starting to accumulate and be collected.
But where else would failing male athletes retire to to earn a little extra crust for the old days.
And who else would tell the little dears just how to shut up, and suck up then some blokes in suits with fancy titles. Privilege, it is +/-8 inches uncut with a suit and he/him and she/her pronouns.
fucking neoliberals. The hierarchy of oppression sans class analysis is a tool of the patriarchy. And liberals bought into it for the odd seat at the table. But they will never let us have shared power, because then we would dismantle neoliberalism and the whole damned hierarchical structure.
If this is neo liberalism then every party in our government without exception is neo liberal. As they all voted for Self ID in NZ. There are the parties who spearheaded the law, who mocked people in open hearings for not wanting to have Self ID and they should be carrying and in the end will be carrying the responsibility for the misery that will be caused via the many many children de-sexed for gender ideology and conformity, but the opposition parties had no issues going along with it and are thus guilty by association and enabling of harm.
Sexism on the right : own gestational carriers privately.
Sexism on the left: own gestational carriers publicly.
same shit to the gestational carriers. – owned, without agency.
Hi Sabine, Slightly off topic but understand you are based in Rotorua, so just wanted to post this article on Tamati Coffeys latest piece of legislation
"The Rotorua District Councils Representation Arrangement Bill. Do the people of Rotorua know about this?
National's justice spokesman Paul Goldsmith said the initial two-week submission period was "outrageously short".
The Government was trying to "sneak through" the bill, despite it being a significant change to electoral laws.
"Bringing through constitutional change in an obscure local bill is not the way to do things."
He said the effect of moving away from the population-based criteria for Māori wards would effectively change the principle of each vote being equal.
Although the bill was restricted to the Rotorua district council, it would open the door for other councils to follow suit.
"So [Labour] are just sneaking it through and it will then be presented as a fait accompli."
The extension to submissions will also allow more time for the usual Attorney-General report on the bill's implications before MPs have to vote on it again.
Remove the protected category of sex and you are there. We are then all they/thems and that includes the men.
Case in point those that want to remove 'sex attraction' i.e. homosexual, heterosexual, bi-sexual cause bigottry to replace it with 'gender attraction' either same or opposite. Unisex people fucking everything and everyone, and thus yhou can't discriminate. Unless of course they need kids, and then they damn well know who the gestational carrier is going to be. The human dairy cow. Money is to be made.
First they need to figure out which organs to remove to make space for the expanding uterus unless they carry it in a pouch something like a colonosty bag. Never mind the placenta and stuff.
But for what its worth, they probably have no issues with a few hundreds / thousands of men dying trying to carry a pregnancy to term or even just carry it for a month or so before their bodies give up.
Until that day is achieved they now what a gestational carrier is, a women/female by sex and not ideology to exploit by the many for the good of a few.
Weka, I just wanted to say I have enjoyed the thoughtful and fair contributions you have made to this debate.
As an old, pale stale male, I haven't felt it is an appropriate topic for me to comment on, as the issues are something I don't have any personal experience with at all. So, I have stayed on the sidelines with this one.
“Luxon said the government has been blaming international factors for adversely affecting inflation but Singapore is at 2 percent, Australia is at 3.5 and Japan is at 1 percent while dealing with the same challenges.”
When Luxon selects inflation rates that suit his argument he is "talking rubbish/lying again and again and again……….."
And to be consistent we should say that when Bearded Git selects inflation rates that suit his argument he is "talking rubbish/lying again and again and again……….."
You are either deliberately misquoting what I said or you simply don't understand it. I suspect the latter.
What I said is "There is nothing at all in the theory that says that small is always more efficient than large". I have highlighted the critical part of that statement.
You were claiming that it was always the case. You must try harder.
In that case, your characterisation of Arkie's comment is equally false.
Whatever the economies of scale save in "production" duopoly power hands directly over as profits rather than lower prices. Basic economic theory suggests increasing competition will force "producers" to redirect those savings towards consumers, while possibly diminishing those scale-based savings (depending on thresholds for efficiencies in production rather than a straight line relationship between units "produced" and the per-unit cost of that production).
Nope. Because basic economic theory isn't just one chart of supply vs demand, or economies of scale, or monopoly vs competition.
But keep arguing the supposed advantages of having a duopoly supply the bulk of groceries to a country's population. Really nails your flag to the mast.
We were discussing competition within NZ and the existing supermarket duopoly, not Amazon. The Publisher of your textbook is rescinding the deal and wants your advance payment back, all three lollies.
This started off when arkie proposed " It would be fantastic to imagine supermarket buildings being repurposed, housing multiple individual businesses and stalls" and I suggested that Supermarkets supplied a superior service, at a lower price, than did hordes on little speciality shops.
So, you were discussing Amazon, but failed to mention this to us?? No wonder you made no sense because arkie was talking about the supermarket duopoly in NZ and started their comment as follows:
An interesting article about the government apparently considering splitting the supermarket duopoly:
"Many little businesses have to compete for customers, this leads to lower prices, isn't that basic economics to you?".
Then you gave this answer:
No, and I can't think of any Economist I know who would agree with it.
Looks quite clear to me that you think that competition is not good for lowering consumer price and that economy of scale and less competition thanks to the duopoly is preferable for consumers.
Let us know when your economic textbook comes out: Economics-101 by a Dummy.
Oh dear. You are a fan of the selective quote are you.
If you are going to quote what I say quote it in full. Otherwise I will start assuming that you are a politician.
The full context of those comments includes a lot more than you are quoting, but you know that and just pretend it isn't there.
I would suggest that you and arkie would both benefit from reading Economics for Dummies. It is not the best of introductory works but it will certainly teach you more about the subject than you know now.
Arkie and I both have your textbook on pre-order as colouring-in book for the pre-schoolers in our extended families.
I was pretending not linking to the comment and arkie also pretended not linking to the same comment. However, none of us is as pretentious as you: less competition is good!
I chose major G20 countries to compare with NZ which seemed reasonable to me as they would tend to be trading in similar markets to NZ. I didn't contradict Luxon's 3.5% figure for Australia-it would be interesting to know why this is so low (it is forecast to rise to 4.5% by 30/6).
I did find it odd that Luxon got Singapore's inflation rate badly wrong.
I did find it odd that Luxon got Singapore's inflation rate badly wrong.
Well, politicians do make mistakes. (Singapore's core inflation is 2.2%.) But the fact remains that prices in NZ have been increasing at a faster rate for some time, and we can't blame Russia.
As you know, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been brewing for many years and had been escalating before the actual invasion on 24 Feb and this sent jitters through the global economy before the invasion. This may be too hard to understand for a linear reductionist.
this sent jitters through the global economy before the invasion.
It did? In 2021, the Reserve Bank reviewed the Official Cash Rate (OCR) on seven occasions. You won't find any mention of conflict in Europe, Asia, or Africa (or anywhere else) during the bank's deliberations, though you will find a lot of discussion about inflation.
It's worth noting that the inflation rate for non-tradable goods and services is 6%. Again, it’s difficult to see how Russia can be blamed for a rise in the price of items that aren't subject to much, if any, foreign competition.
“Non-tradable goods and services by definition have relatively little exposure to international competition. Consequently, their prices are more likely to be influenced by developments in the domestic economy, particularly the extent of spare capacity in both production and the labour market.”
Is it a coincidence that at the same time as Government spending has skyrocketed, inflation has surged? It seems not.
"White House aides were out in force on Monday warning that Tuesday's inflation report would be ugly and blaming it on Vladimir Putin. No doubt that beats blaming your own policies. But inflation didn’t wait to appear until the Ukraine invasion, and by now it will be hard to reduce. … the inflation trend began in earnest a year ago at the onset of the Biden Presidency. It has accelerated for most of the last 12 months. That's long before Mr. Putin decided to invade. The timing reflects too much money chasing too few goods, owing mainly to the combination of vast federal spending and easy monetary policy."
The government pandemic response of spending to maintain incomes and thus demand and easy monetary policy is an OECD one – and in the US began under Trump.
Even before the Kremlin ordered Russian troops into separatist territories of Ukraine on Monday, the tension had taken a toll. The promise of punishing sanctions in return by President Biden and the potential for Russian retaliation had already pushed down stock returns and driven up gas prices.
The point is that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is just one of many factors affecting inflation in NZ, most of which are completely beyond the control of NZ Government.
I have no idea what or which conflicts “in Europe, Asia, or Africa (or anywhere else)” you had in mind, but this is a distraction anyway, as the RBNZ is not commonly commenting on specific international conflicts. The notable exception is, of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine (https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/news/2022/04/monetary-tightening-brought-forward).
The Russian invasion is not blamed for the rise in costs of non-tradeable items by 6% (mainly housing) nor is it singularly blamed for rise in tradeable items (mainly driven by overseas imports such as petrol) by 8.5%. That’s another of your strawmen.
The inflation in the US is not useful here nor is quoting from a RBA Bulleting from 2014. You know your argument is weak when you have to resort to desperate diversions.
The main part of the cost increases was Housing costs.
The main driver for the 6.9 percent annual inflation to the March 2022 quarter was the housing and household utilities group, influenced by rising prices for construction and rentals for housing.
Prices for the construction of new dwellings increased 18 percent in the March 2022 quarter compared with the March 2021 quarter, the largest increase recorded since the series began in 1985.
“Construction firms have been experiencing many supply-chain issues, higher labour costs, and also higher demand, which have pushed up the cost of building a new house,” senior prices manager Aaron Beck said.
Constraining immigration,and enforcing RMA requirements for short term residential accommodation,are quick ,efficient,and cheap ways to reduce housing constraints.
This picture just encapsulates the pressures that MPs, and all public figures, are under when not only does the technology exist to excerpt a demeaning still shot from a film, but then allows the ability to distribute the same extremely widely; especially when the original was not produced for this purpose.
I'm just glad I got out of the public eye before this crap became prevalent.
It always has been there, though, for political purposes. Who remembers Hitler's 'jig' purportedly captured when attending the 1940 capitulation of France signing?
I really appreciate being told I have to have a sense of humour. I've got one, some would say far too often displayed. But I've also got a sense of propriety, of fairness, of appreciation of the travails of public life.
I don't want my political representatives to be so 'thick-skinned' that they are not sensitive to what we need them to be aware of, lke poverty and injustice; nor so ill-attuned like Boris Johnson, or Chris Luxon.
At least, I believe that can't be said of Grant Robertson, though some will of course disagree, who is the brunt of this belittling concoction.
It's a cartoon but without the skill, the wit, the political incision of a good cartoonist.
Luxon talking rubbish/lying again and again and again………..
Yeah I'm sure that will go down a treat with those visiting their local foodbank.
Meanwhile, this graph clearly shows inflation increased significantly throughout 2021 in New Zealand. That date is important as it's a year that Ukraine wasn't invaded by Russia. Bugger.
The governor, Adrian Orr, has told an International Monetary Fund seminar that it had been caught on the backfoot, like many other central banks, by supply chain shocks and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which had exacerbated inflation pressures.
Leading economist Shamubeel Eaqub told Newshub Late New Zealand has yet to see the impacts of Government spending on inflation.
"Most of the inflation so far has been on food, fuel and housing, so we haven't seen that impact of a lot of Government spending in the last couple of years because of the pandemic coming through to inflation yet," he said.
This narrative about spending and govt spending lead inflation in NZ is based on the idea that NZ wages were raised significantly. Instead we have a cost of living crisis because what actually happened was that many industries have been disrupted and have raised their prices, but this has not been passed on to the median wage. Of course if you take economics seriously you to some extent need the idea of demand side inflation to actually manifest in the wage data. On the other hand if you just use economics to assign blame in your massively simplified narrative that inflation must be the govt fault then all the data lining up is beside the point.
Cutting government spending or raising interest rates isn't going to change a lot of the drivers of inflation, though it may eventually generate a recession which could certainly impact prices. Its worth highlighting that most NZers have recently received real wage cuts as their wages went up less than the inflation rate in recent history. Seems like self inflicted austerity probably isn't the best policy solution at present, but my following of the last 14 year economic history of Europe suggests its likely to be tried first.
Ross we were invaded by covid… remember that? Wuhan covid 19, followed by Delta, then Omicron.
All that support by the Government for workers and business and Health,……Health systems vaccines and millions to the food charities……..
now the pain plus Ukraine/Russia effects.
Also the cumulative effects of climate change floods and fires during droughts. Much dearer fruits and vegetables, replacing of roads and bridges, facing the rising seas around our coasts, the creep of housing onto food growing areas…..
All of that. A pandemic world wide has stressed a shaky system.
So, if the Government said “here is your help, but you have to pay for it.’ How many would have died?
Some Business model Charities took money for their workers, but have contributed little to relief for their supposed target "market" Look up the list.!!
Some play the religion card for tax… An absolute rort!!
Our son on the Gold Coast tells of properties rising by 25 to 30%, food costs and petrol costs starting to bite. It appears their property cycle is 3to 4 months behind ours. So watch their inflation.
What I find very interesting is that the motor spirit price in New Zealand has remained pretty well constant in New Zealand since the cut in tax on 15 March.
Meanwhile in Australia the price has dropped by about 47 cents/litre in the same time period. That might stop biting your son quite so much.
Anyone have any idea on why this might have happened? Both countries import most of their fuel so it can't be local production.
You didn't even get to the end of the first sentence I wrote did you? If you had you might have noticed the last few words "since the cut in tax on 15 March".
I was talking about why Australia had shown very a marked drop since them but we hadn't.
According to your own link, over the period from 10-Jan-2022 to 18-Apr-2022 shown in the graph there was no such drop by about 47 cents/litre in Australia!? It appears you cherry-picked the maximum on 21 March, i.e. apples & oranges.
The Ozzies got a fuel tax cut of 22 cents/litre on 29 March.
Any more diversion trolling from you? Try a different country.
I hadn't realised that the 22cent cut in the budget had taken effect immediately. That accounts for a decent chunk of the 47 cents in the time period.
On the other hand can you tell us why Australia, after a 22c cut is now back to about the same price as it was at the start of the year while we, after a 28.5c cut are still about 25c above the price at the beginning of the year?
I suppose so. It totally closed on 1 April, didn't it. On the other hand I believe Australia is down to just 2 refineries and that about 90% of its oil supply is imported refined product. Could the 2 refineries make that much difference?
If so I might have to reconsider my views on keeping Marsden Point going.
“It is 50 years since I read Hannah Arendt’s essay on ‘Lying in Politics’. The essay was prompted by the unauthorised release of the Pentagon Papers, a classified documentary history of US policy-making in the Vietnam War. What shocked many at the time was the evidence that while Lyndon Johnson’s administration continued to tell the American people that its strategy was working, despite the accumulating casualties, top officials knew it was failing. Much of the commentary surrounding the release of the papers, including Arendt’s, turned on the role of deception and self-deception.
One passage in this essay stuck with me and influenced my subsequent efforts to understand how political leaders end up making such poor choices about military power. This is the passage.
‘Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers, the “National Security Managers” as they have recently been called by Richard J. Barnet, who “exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and by interpreting the outside world for him.” The President, one is tempted to argue, allegedly the most powerful man of the most powerful country, is the only person in this country whose range of choices can be predetermined.’
I recalled the passage when considering how Vladimir Putin came to decide on his calamitous war against Ukraine. The key insight was that someone so powerful could also be so badly informed. That was the case with Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. Could it also be the case for Putin in 2022?”
The legacy of ancient Rome has always constituted an important component of the Russian cultural consciousness. The revitalization of classical scholarship in nineteenth-century Russia and new approaches to antiquity prompted many of the Russian Symbolists to seek their inspiration in ancient Rome.
The Russkiy Mir, like the Pax Romana that inspired it, is not attractive to the peoples bordering that unhappy state as it staggers towards oblivion without Gibbons' culprit playing much of a role.
VP doesnt come across as a gullible fool to me in fact when you hear him speaking in interviews and giving speeches he seems way more on to it than most of his western counterparts imo . The question could be if all power bases were snake pits whose would be the dirtiest ? Id argue america's by a comfortable margin .
An important challenge for the left is to expose the emptiness of what Luxon seems committed to spitting out at every opportunity – bullshit like this – and whatever's next, which is likely to be tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that…
Does Boris Johnson know that the UK's 7% inflation is due to the Tory governments over spending?
Does Christopher Luxon know that cutting government spending and handing out the money via tax cuts does not reduce inflationary demand in the economy?
2. Orr QE's money for government response (good, helps government finance prevention of any recession) and to enable more bank lending on property (bad, gets rid of deposit criteria for buying up existing property rather than targeted funds to new building – and so boom in property values)
3. Responding to supply shortage inflation, as if it was demand led (whether public or private sector spending) inflation and so resorting to interest rate rises or demand restraint (causing a recession/unemployment) is not smart.
Salmon is the rising star of the NZ aquaculture scene – its feed conversion ratio runs between 1 & 1.1 kg of feed per kg of grown fish, and the adult fish retail at $30+ a kilo – yielding a profit margin that would make John Key blush. But the moment your water temperature creeps over 18 degrees, fish live or die on a coin toss.
So – here is a litmus test of whether the cohort of managers formed in the post-Brierly period can manage for a sustainable future, or whether they will take no effectual action and let their industry die as global warming pushes through the 2 degree line and heads for 4, which will end salmon farming that has made no provision for temperature moderation.
Throwing a thousand tonnes of dead fish into landfill is pretty lame too. Composting them has been done since the 1950s, and recycling them using Black Soldier Flies is also well established. Unlike other flies, the BSF do not feed as adults, so they are not a plague vector if they are used to process putrescible waste.
Watch this space as our aquaculture industries decline to develop temperature moderation, and fail to compost or otherwise gainfully repurpose this high fertility resource. And when NZ's productivity continues to languish at 1970 levels, you'll know why.
How are the salmon farmers supposed to effect 'temperature moderation ' stuart ? I thought they were aiming to shift their operations into more open areas of the ocean in order to do just that or are you implying that some artificial device exists to bring temps down inside the nets ?
I dont buy farmed salmon i find the industry repugnant .To keep what are normally wild migrating fish in a cage feeding them food they wouldnt ordinarily eat and polluting the area around the ' farm ' in the process is i think anti nature and deserves to fail .I hope it does .
If i remember correctly king salmon applied a year or so ago to get gov money to develope some kind of composting ability did nothing come of that ?
How are the salmon farmers supposed to effect 'temperature moderation
This is a matter each must determine according to their locale. Trout farmers in Jordan have used evaporative cooling – spray jets rather like those used by NZ dairy irrigators. But their situation is recirculating raceways, not sea cages, which are harder to cool because the water moves through them. It may be that sea cages must be abandoned in most areas, and farming transitioned to onshore tanks which can be kept at the optimal 13 degrees. My concern is that farming should not proceed without adapting, praying for cool seasons that will become increasingly rare, on the basis that sea cages have exceptionally low capital costs. The industry is profitable enough to support a greater level of capital investment.
A Dunedin company was composting factory fish offal with bark for decades, and very popular their product proved, especially with rose growers. But given that:
trucks from Havelock and Picton made 160 trips to the Bluegums Landfill in Blenheim, dumping 1269 tonnes of dead fish (RNZ link above)
It would seem that composting efforts fell a bit short of requirements in this instance. Composting fish typically calls for 4 or 5 parts of cellulose material (wood chip or sawdust or straw) to 1 part of fish – so it isn’t hard to imagine an excess mortality on the farms might meet a shortfall of organic matter – which is one of the advantages of BSF.
It's a longish read, so I'll sum it up. The writer developed a severe toothache – intermittent at first, then constant; one tooth to begin with, then several; infection confined to mouth only, then started to wreak havoc through much of her body. Dentists' investigations revealed no evidence of any dental disorder, so insisted that the pain must have other causes, and refused to touch it. The main motive for withholding treatment seems to have been fear of proceedings against them should anything go wrong.
Could this culture of fear in the medical profession spread to NZ? One would like to think not, but a recent personal straw in the wind suggests we shouldn't get complacent. Obtrectatrix uses a wheelchair and asked a well-known handyman franchise to make a couple of ramps so that she could get out on to the deck in it. They refused point-blank. "That's medical – we're not touching that." A couple of bloody ramps, not a series of brain-surgeries! What had they to worry about, for the love of Pete?
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Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
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https://www.newsroom.co.nz/council-disowns-report-revealing-consent-breaches
This story alone explains why we need Three Waters. And why iwi must be involved.
First of all I have personally been involved in designing and building a very similar consent offtake monitoring system – only somewhat simpler as it involved just one weir, one offtake gate and one downstream flow. What seems pretty simple turns out to be a fair bit more complex that you might expect – but in the end I got it running extremely well. We took the need to get it right very seriously and it is one of those projects that I look back with pride. Put simply, all the years I was aware of afterward we never breached consent rules for even a minute.
This Canterbury scheme however seems far more complex than my small system and I am not in the least surprised that from time to time it has allowed breaches of consent. Especially where there are substantial manually controlled gates involved and ambiguous, low resolution data sources.
Nor am I in the least surprised that a Greenpeace spokesperson would put the worst case 'shocker' interpretation on all this. Nor would it surprise me if ECAN management historically failed to fully understand the limitations of the data they were working using and the weak assumptions they were using to determine compliance.
However the article goes on to describe the steps taken since 2019 to greatly improve matters – to the point where:
That looks more like a technical success story than reason to hand over effective control of the asset to the iwi chiefs.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/river-water-quality-clarity-and-turbidity
Yep, iwi should be involved. Framing Three Waters as an iwi vs kiwi issue is just sad, as are the views of the 'creative' behind the 2005 electioneering slogan. Racism, both casual and strident, will continue to be mined/fuelled for political and other purposes – sad.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/33891/iwikiwi-billboard
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/dame-anne-salmond-iwi-and-kiwi-beyond-the-binary
Give Nothing To Racism (2-minute video; Taika Waititi / NZ Human Right Commission)
Racism starts small. Sometimes it lives in everyday actions and comments that we laugh off, nod in agreement to, excuse, and therefore accept. But we don’t have to. We can stop casual racism from growing into something more extreme. We can give it no encouragement. No respect. No place. No power. We can give it nothing. http://www.givenothing.co.nz
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/442497/taika-waititi-fronts-anti-racism-campaign-aimed-at-teachers
It's a cynical ploy to frame 3Waters as zero-sum, concession to Iwi is a loss to Kiwis. A deliberate effort to cast Māori as potential wrong doers, the blame-worthy enemy who's going to steal your shit, to engage and enrage the base.
I have for a long time thought that what is good for Maori is good for all of us.
I bemoan the state of my local wai, the Oroua, not much chop from Feilding south
This one may well be a technical success story. There are plenty of others where Ecan has not down such a great job. Nitrate levels, being an example.
Eighty years ago hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to forced labour camps in Russia's far east The majority of those deported were women and children.
Russia's at it again.
https://twitter.com/VagrantJourno/status/1516758940561948672
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1516758940561948672.html
Well this is what happens when you have Stalin as your role model.
More sexism. SSDD and just as tedious when it was the original manels
https://twitter.com/hjoycegender/status/1516823558592286731?s=21
This is misogyny, far beyond tedious.
https://twitter.com/radphoenixx/status/1516554939107061760?s=21
just found this and thought you might find it interesting.
Lupron and side effects. Btw, it appears that these women got lupron to prevent early puperty and / or promote a 'taller' growth. Madness.
https://revealnews.org/article/women-say-drug-used-to-halt-puberty-has-ruined-their-lives/
When are people going to wake up to the fact that gender affirming medicines for teens with Gender dysphoria is dangerous
Like with the Contergan Children (thalidomide) in Germany. When they and their injuries, their lack of sexual organs, their lack of sexual function, their inability to orgasm, their bodily issues – young people on crutches for life, etc etc etc, when all that becomes so public and so everywhere that you can not hide these children away anymore, then maybe something will change. So probably in a decade or two. And even then you will find that those that did the surgeries, that wrote the prescriptions etc will claim that they did it to safe lifes, and not to fill their coffers, even though their coffers are overflowing with blood money.
Well, apparently when they look for robust clinical evidence of benefits – and find none.
Cue:
Netherlands; https://www.voorzij.nl/more-research-is-urgently-needed-into-transgender-care-for-young-people-where-does-the-large-increase-of-children-come-from/
Finland; https://segm.org/Finland_deviates_from_WPATH_prioritizing_psychotherapy_no_surgery_for_minors
Sweden; https://segm.org/segm-summary-sweden-prioritizes-therapy-curbs-hormones-for-gender-dysphoric-youth
France; https://segm.org/France-cautions-regarding-puberty-blockers-and-cross-sex-hormones-for-youth
the UK in the form of the Interim Cass Review; https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/
But here in NZ, we were late to the party, and it was only 2020 when the curriculum guidelines for Relationships and Sex Education were created and slapped on as an addition to the TKI – from the Ministry of Education.
For those unaware, the TKI guidelines set out the curriculum for all primary and secondary students in NZ. They specify what learning outcomes are needed, to meet curriculum requirements. Curriculum resources can therefore be created by teachers, schools or purchased from third-party organisations.
https://hpe.tki.org.nz/guidelines-and-policies/relationships-and-sexuality-education/
Guidelines can be found here on this page for both primary and secondary students as a pdf download.
There is a lot to unpick – and justifiably critique in these documents – but the one relevant to this point can be found in both documents (Pg 30 of Yrs 1-8 guide):
This means that every child within the NZ education system is introduced to the idea – (and due to the diversity of curriculum that can be taught we have no idea how) – that puberty is something that can reasonably be avoided, and puberty blockers are the method to do so.
Our Ministry of Health follows "gender affirming health care" for transgender NZers, including children. (Without getting into details, note that "gender affirming healthcare" is a pre-determined diagnosis and treatment, not equal to quality healthcare).
https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/transgender-new-zealanders/transgender-new-zealanders-children-and-young-people
Late to the party, and staying for the hangover. NZ education normalises the idea of delayed puberty, while offering – without reserve – off-label medications that have no robust clinical evidence of benefit.
In fact, the countries above, that have reviewed evidence have found that the net result is harm.
If this bothers you, write to both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health, asking them what evidential base did they use as reference for these TKI outcomes, and medical response.
If your concern is for high-quality appropriate care for transgender youth, then you should be bothered. The likelihood of iatrogenic harm from the current approach is high, and the evidence of that occurring is starting to accumulate and be collected.
It appears that Norway has now reviewed and found evidence of harm, and ordered immediate cessation of use of puberty blockers.
Unfortunately, the only evidence I have of this is a Tweet but will post an English language link when it becomes available.
https://twitter.com/saeterjenta/status/1517210417499672577
But where else would failing male athletes retire to to earn a little extra crust for the old days.
And who else would tell the little dears just how to shut up, and suck up then some blokes in suits with fancy titles. Privilege, it is +/-8 inches uncut with a suit and he/him and she/her pronouns.
If we just stopped insisting on being female the problems would go away.
fucking neoliberals. The hierarchy of oppression sans class analysis is a tool of the patriarchy. And liberals bought into it for the odd seat at the table. But they will never let us have shared power, because then we would dismantle neoliberalism and the whole damned hierarchical structure.
If this is neo liberalism then every party in our government without exception is neo liberal. As they all voted for Self ID in NZ. There are the parties who spearheaded the law, who mocked people in open hearings for not wanting to have Self ID and they should be carrying and in the end will be carrying the responsibility for the misery that will be caused via the many many children de-sexed for gender ideology and conformity, but the opposition parties had no issues going along with it and are thus guilty by association and enabling of harm.
Sexism on the right : own gestational carriers privately.
Sexism on the left: own gestational carriers publicly.
same shit to the gestational carriers. – owned, without agency.
yes, our government is neoliberal.
Hi Sabine, Slightly off topic but understand you are based in Rotorua, so just wanted to post this article on Tamati Coffeys latest piece of legislation
"The Rotorua District Councils Representation Arrangement Bill. Do the people of Rotorua know about this?
https://theplatform.kiwi/opinions/ardern-struggles-to-defend-unequal-suffrage
Yes, i know about it, but not thanks to the news or Labour. Thanks to Winston Peters, thanks to the Hologram, thanks to some Nationalistas.
Submission period increased thanks to some National MPs that complained about the short submission period.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/public-submissions-on-rotorua-maori-wards-bill-extended-after-concerns-about-rushed-process/SQOH7543B5L2OWK5P42EAXRUNU/
Remove the protected category of sex and you are there. We are then all they/thems and that includes the men.
Case in point those that want to remove 'sex attraction' i.e. homosexual, heterosexual, bi-sexual cause bigottry to replace it with 'gender attraction' either same or opposite. Unisex people fucking everything and everyone, and thus yhou can't discriminate. Unless of course they need kids, and then they damn well know who the gestational carrier is going to be. The human dairy cow. Money is to be made.
not to worry, some progressive men think we will be liberated once science figures out how to do uterus implants into men.
sorry for all the sarcasm, just fucked off I can't write posts about this.
First they need to figure out which organs to remove to make space for the expanding uterus unless they carry it in a pouch something like a colonosty bag. Never mind the placenta and stuff.
But for what its worth, they probably have no issues with a few hundreds / thousands of men dying trying to carry a pregnancy to term or even just carry it for a month or so before their bodies give up.
Until that day is achieved they now what a gestational carrier is, a women/female by sex and not ideology to exploit by the many for the good of a few.
Weka, I just wanted to say I have enjoyed the thoughtful and fair contributions you have made to this debate.
As an old, pale stale male, I haven't felt it is an appropriate topic for me to comment on, as the issues are something I don't have any personal experience with at all. So, I have stayed on the sidelines with this one.
thanks 👍 I think reading and listening is not a bad approach for people that aren't particularly involved. It's a complex set of issues and dynamics.
Still obsessing with terf bullshit? I think you need to get a new hobby before you ruin your life a la Linehan.
[permanent ban for blatant trolling and misogyny. – weka]
Receipts for the misogyny, the word terf used in the way you just used it is a slur.
https://terfisaslur.com/
“Luxon said the government has been blaming international factors for adversely affecting inflation but Singapore is at 2 percent, Australia is at 3.5 and Japan is at 1 percent while dealing with the same challenges.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/465554/high-government-spending-fuelling-inflation-rate-luxon
Some current inflation rates:
USA 8.5
UK 7.0
Euro Area 7.5 (Spain 9.8 Germany 7.3 Holland 9.7)
Canada 6.7
NZ 6.9
Singapore 4.3 (not 2% per Luxon)
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate-?continent=g20
Luxon talking rubbish/lying again and again and again………..
So, can we say that
When Luxon selects inflation rates that suit his argument he is "talking rubbish/lying again and again and again……….."
And to be consistent we should say that when Bearded Git selects inflation rates that suit his argument he is "talking rubbish/lying again and again and again……….."
You can’t think of an economist that thinks competition lowers prices, so economics is well outside of your area of expertise.
You are either deliberately misquoting what I said or you simply don't understand it. I suspect the latter.
What I said is "There is nothing at all in the theory that says that small is always more efficient than large". I have highlighted the critical part of that statement.
You were claiming that it was always the case. You must try harder.
You and your strawmen. You are an bad faith commenter and anyone can read any thread you 'contribute' to and see that amply demonstrated.
Please stop trying.
Owlwyn’s a hoot – next he'll be demanding his own fact-checker![laugh laugh](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/teeth_smile.png?x42494)
https://www.netsafe.org.nz/how-to-spot-fake-news/
Paraphrasing ≠ quoting.
Alright. For your benefit I shall reword it.
His attempt at paraphrasing what I say is a false representation of what was said.
In that case, your characterisation of Arkie's comment is equally false.
Whatever the economies of scale save in "production" duopoly power hands directly over as profits rather than lower prices. Basic economic theory suggests increasing competition will force "producers" to redirect those savings towards consumers, while possibly diminishing those scale-based savings (depending on thresholds for efficiencies in production rather than a straight line relationship between units "produced" and the per-unit cost of that production).
Maybe, maybe not.
The basic theory would have a great deal of trouble explaining the fact that a company like Amazon exists, and undercuts every one it competes with.
Nope. Because basic economic theory isn't just one chart of supply vs demand, or economies of scale, or monopoly vs competition.
But keep arguing the supposed advantages of having a duopoly supply the bulk of groceries to a country's population. Really nails your flag to the mast.
We were discussing competition within NZ and the existing supermarket duopoly, not Amazon. The Publisher of your textbook is rescinding the deal and wants your advance payment back, all three lollies.
Fail.
This started off when arkie proposed " It would be fantastic to imagine supermarket buildings being repurposed, housing multiple individual businesses and stalls" and I suggested that Supermarkets supplied a superior service, at a lower price, than did hordes on little speciality shops.
.https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15-04-2022/#comment-1883202
So, you were discussing Amazon, but failed to mention this to us?? No wonder you made no sense because arkie was talking about the supermarket duopoly in NZ and started their comment as follows:
Well, this is what you wrote in your comment here (https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15-04-2022/#comment-1883360):
First you quoted arkie:
Then you gave this answer:
Looks quite clear to me that you think that competition is not good for lowering consumer price and that economy of scale and less competition thanks to the duopoly is preferable for consumers.
Let us know when your economic textbook comes out: Economics-101 by a Dummy.
Oh dear. You are a fan of the selective quote are you.
If you are going to quote what I say quote it in full. Otherwise I will start assuming that you are a politician.
The full context of those comments includes a lot more than you are quoting, but you know that and just pretend it isn't there.
I would suggest that you and arkie would both benefit from reading Economics for Dummies. It is not the best of introductory works but it will certainly teach you more about the subject than you know now.
Arkie and I both have your textbook on pre-order as colouring-in book for the pre-schoolers in our extended families.
I was pretending not linking to the comment and arkie also pretended not linking to the same comment. However, none of us is as pretentious as you: less competition is good!
Alwyn,
I chose major G20 countries to compare with NZ which seemed reasonable to me as they would tend to be trading in similar markets to NZ. I didn't contradict Luxon's 3.5% figure for Australia-it would be interesting to know why this is so low (it is forecast to rise to 4.5% by 30/6).
I did find it odd that Luxon got Singapore's inflation rate badly wrong.
I did find it odd that Luxon got Singapore's inflation rate badly wrong.
Well, politicians do make mistakes. (Singapore's core inflation is 2.2%.) But the fact remains that prices in NZ have been increasing at a faster rate for some time, and we can't blame Russia.
Singapore's core inflation eases to 2.2% in February – CNA (channelnewsasia.com)
The three B’s: Binary Blaming Bigot.
As you know, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been brewing for many years and had been escalating before the actual invasion on 24 Feb and this sent jitters through the global economy before the invasion. This may be too hard to understand for a linear reductionist.
Does that mean that when Robertson says "Robertson has pointed to global issues, such as the war in Ukraine ……." he is fantasizing?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/inflation-highest-in-30-years-grant-robertson-blames-global-pressures-christopher-luxon-says-government-addicted-to-spending/77P46GHLMPMQ272WY66EKBJU4U/
Only when Robertson refers to himself in the third person.
Of course, Adrian Orr and Shamubeel Eaqub are also fantasizing (https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-21-04-2022/#comment-1883994). Yeah, right!
this sent jitters through the global economy before the invasion.
It did? In 2021, the Reserve Bank reviewed the Official Cash Rate (OCR) on seven occasions. You won't find any mention of conflict in Europe, Asia, or Africa (or anywhere else) during the bank's deliberations, though you will find a lot of discussion about inflation.
It's worth noting that the inflation rate for non-tradable goods and services is 6%. Again, it’s difficult to see how Russia can be blamed for a rise in the price of items that aren't subject to much, if any, foreign competition.
“Non-tradable goods and services by definition have relatively little exposure to international competition. Consequently, their prices are more likely to be influenced by developments in the domestic economy, particularly the extent of spare capacity in both production and the labour market.”
Is it a coincidence that at the same time as Government spending has skyrocketed, inflation has surged? It seems not.
The fact checkers agree.
https://thenationaldesk.com/news/fact-check-team/fact-check-team-a-closer-look-at-rising-inflation-in-the-us-russia-ukraine-military-attack-war-money-prices-gas-oil-food
https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-isnt-vladimir-putins-inflation-white-house-joe-biden-consumer-price-index-energy-wages-11649792567
https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2014/sep/pdf/bu-0914-4.pdf
The government pandemic response of spending to maintain incomes and thus demand and easy monetary policy is an OECD one – and in the US began under Trump.
Yes, it did.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/business/economy/ukraine-russia-economy.html
The point is that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is just one of many factors affecting inflation in NZ, most of which are completely beyond the control of NZ Government.
I have no idea what or which conflicts “in Europe, Asia, or Africa (or anywhere else)” you had in mind, but this is a distraction anyway, as the RBNZ is not commonly commenting on specific international conflicts. The notable exception is, of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine (https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/news/2022/04/monetary-tightening-brought-forward).
The Russian invasion is not blamed for the rise in costs of non-tradeable items by 6% (mainly housing) nor is it singularly blamed for rise in tradeable items (mainly driven by overseas imports such as petrol) by 8.5%. That’s another of your strawmen.
The inflation in the US is not useful here nor is quoting from a RBA Bulleting from 2014. You know your argument is weak when you have to resort to desperate diversions.
The main part of the cost increases was Housing costs.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-inflation-reaches-30-year-high-of-6-9-percent
Constraining immigration,and enforcing RMA requirements for short term residential accommodation,are quick ,efficient,and cheap ways to reduce housing constraints.
Can you suggest a better way of reducing immigration than the one we followed for the last couple of years?
Here is a sample figure for the year ended August 2021. The net gain dropped from 72,500 to 2,400. What change on that would you try for?
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/international-migration-august-2021-infoshare-tables#:~:text=migrant%20arrivals%3A%2048%2C000%20(%C2%B1%20600,%C2%B1%20500)%2C%20down%2033%20percent
"Year ended August 2021 (compared with year ended August 2020) provisional estimates were:
Up to the border close in the 2 previous years we had net inflow of 120000,which required 46000 housing units (@2.76pp).Still playing catchup.
Finance Minister looking in to claims government spending may have contributed to runaway inflation.
This picture just encapsulates the pressures that MPs, and all public figures, are under when not only does the technology exist to excerpt a demeaning still shot from a film, but then allows the ability to distribute the same extremely widely; especially when the original was not produced for this purpose.
I'm just glad I got out of the public eye before this crap became prevalent.
It always has been there, though, for political purposes. Who remembers Hitler's 'jig' purportedly captured when attending the 1940 capitulation of France signing?
https://www.professorbuzzkill.com/hitler-jig-myth/
You have to have a sense of humor about these things. Like being hit in the face with a dildo.
Not condoning that thwack, but pity the dildo – oh to be a fly on those eyebrows.
I really appreciate being told I have to have a sense of humour. I've got one, some would say far too often displayed. But I've also got a sense of propriety, of fairness, of appreciation of the travails of public life.
I don't want my political representatives to be so 'thick-skinned' that they are not sensitive to what we need them to be aware of, lke poverty and injustice; nor so ill-attuned like Boris Johnson, or Chris Luxon.
At least, I believe that can't be said of Grant Robertson, though some will of course disagree, who is the brunt of this belittling concoction.
It's a cartoon but without the skill, the wit, the political incision of a good cartoonist.
Luxon talking rubbish/lying again and again and again………..
Yeah I'm sure that will go down a treat with those visiting their local foodbank.
Meanwhile, this graph clearly shows inflation increased significantly throughout 2021 in New Zealand. That date is important as it's a year that Ukraine wasn't invaded by Russia. Bugger.
Inflation – Reserve Bank of New Zealand (rbnz.govt.nz)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/465494/reserve-bank-not-in-a-good-place-admits-governor
Ouch!
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2022/04/leading-economist-shamubeel-eaqub-warns-inflation-caused-by-government-spending-will-come-in-year-or-so.html
Double ouch!
This narrative about spending and govt spending lead inflation in NZ is based on the idea that NZ wages were raised significantly. Instead we have a cost of living crisis because what actually happened was that many industries have been disrupted and have raised their prices, but this has not been passed on to the median wage. Of course if you take economics seriously you to some extent need the idea of demand side inflation to actually manifest in the wage data. On the other hand if you just use economics to assign blame in your massively simplified narrative that inflation must be the govt fault then all the data lining up is beside the point.
Cutting government spending or raising interest rates isn't going to change a lot of the drivers of inflation, though it may eventually generate a recession which could certainly impact prices. Its worth highlighting that most NZers have recently received real wage cuts as their wages went up less than the inflation rate in recent history. Seems like self inflicted austerity probably isn't the best policy solution at present, but my following of the last 14 year economic history of Europe suggests its likely to be tried first.
Ross we were invaded by covid… remember that? Wuhan covid 19, followed by Delta, then Omicron.
All that support by the Government for workers and business and Health,……Health systems vaccines and millions to the food charities……..
now the pain plus Ukraine/Russia effects.
Also the cumulative effects of climate change floods and fires during droughts. Much dearer fruits and vegetables, replacing of roads and bridges, facing the rising seas around our coasts, the creep of housing onto food growing areas…..
All of that. A pandemic world wide has stressed a shaky system.
So, if the Government said “here is your help, but you have to pay for it.’ How many would have died?
Some Business model Charities took money for their workers, but have contributed little to relief for their supposed target "market" Look up the list.!!
Some play the religion card for tax… An absolute rort!!
Some tax laws need to be enforced.
Our son on the Gold Coast tells of properties rising by 25 to 30%, food costs and petrol costs starting to bite. It appears their property cycle is 3to 4 months behind ours. So watch their inflation.
What I find very interesting is that the motor spirit price in New Zealand has remained pretty well constant in New Zealand since the cut in tax on 15 March.
Meanwhile in Australia the price has dropped by about 47 cents/litre in the same time period. That might stop biting your son quite so much.
Anyone have any idea on why this might have happened? Both countries import most of their fuel so it can't be local production.
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/New-Zealand/gasoline_prices/
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Australia/gasoline_prices/
It is sad sight seeing you drooling over your cherry-picked data.
This might perk you up: https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/energy-statistics-and-modelling/energy-statistics/weekly-fuel-price-monitoring/
Even you might be able to spot the sudden drop in fuel prices around 15 March 2022.
"Even you might be able …"
You didn't even get to the end of the first sentence I wrote did you? If you had you might have noticed the last few words "since the cut in tax on 15 March".
I was talking about why Australia had shown very a marked drop since them but we hadn't.
According to your own link, over the period from 10-Jan-2022 to 18-Apr-2022 shown in the graph there was no such drop by about 47 cents/litre in Australia!? It appears you cherry-picked the maximum on 21 March, i.e. apples & oranges.
The Ozzies got a fuel tax cut of 22 cents/litre on 29 March.
Any more diversion trolling from you? Try a different country.
I hadn't realised that the 22cent cut in the budget had taken effect immediately. That accounts for a decent chunk of the 47 cents in the time period.
On the other hand can you tell us why Australia, after a 22c cut is now back to about the same price as it was at the start of the year while we, after a 28.5c cut are still about 25c above the price at the beginning of the year?
Competition
There is a Marsden Point factor.
I suppose so. It totally closed on 1 April, didn't it. On the other hand I believe Australia is down to just 2 refineries and that about 90% of its oil supply is imported refined product. Could the 2 refineries make that much difference?
If so I might have to reconsider my views on keeping Marsden Point going.
The fuel price at the pump in rural areas of Darwin NT $1.959 for ULP and filling up the ute tomorrow prior to heading out to my bush block.
An outstation in WA was charging 2lt bottle of milk at $9.50
Oh come on Bearded Git (5) the man of seven houses was probably being facetious (again) …
Must be Ramadan.
/
https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1516910324724736000
The usual caveats about institutional bias etc etc. But an interesting read.
https://samf.substack.com/p/absolute-ends-with-limited-means?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0ODA3MDgsIl8iOiI3RjZZOCIsImlhdCI6MTY1MDUwNTIzMCwiZXhwIjoxNjUwNTA4ODMwLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNjMxNDIyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.t2ifv0YBA5xZiUIUnJXZgzZDLiXfBnNKpnK2b6RodG4
“It is 50 years since I read Hannah Arendt’s essay on ‘Lying in Politics’. The essay was prompted by the unauthorised release of the Pentagon Papers, a classified documentary history of US policy-making in the Vietnam War. What shocked many at the time was the evidence that while Lyndon Johnson’s administration continued to tell the American people that its strategy was working, despite the accumulating casualties, top officials knew it was failing. Much of the commentary surrounding the release of the papers, including Arendt’s, turned on the role of deception and self-deception.
One passage in this essay stuck with me and influenced my subsequent efforts to understand how political leaders end up making such poor choices about military power. This is the passage.
I recalled the passage when considering how Vladimir Putin came to decide on his calamitous war against Ukraine. The key insight was that someone so powerful could also be so badly informed. That was the case with Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. Could it also be the case for Putin in 2022?”
The dreams of Russia are focused far in the past.
The legacy of ancient Rome has always constituted an important component of the Russian cultural consciousness. The revitalization of classical scholarship in nineteenth-century Russia and new approaches to antiquity prompted many of the Russian Symbolists to seek their inspiration in ancient Rome.
The Russkiy Mir, like the Pax Romana that inspired it, is not attractive to the peoples bordering that unhappy state as it staggers towards oblivion without Gibbons' culprit playing much of a role.
VP doesnt come across as a gullible fool to me in fact when you hear him speaking in interviews and giving speeches he seems way more on to it than most of his western counterparts imo . The question could be if all power bases were snake pits whose would be the dirtiest ? Id argue america's by a comfortable margin .
An important challenge for the left is to expose the emptiness of what Luxon seems committed to spitting out at every opportunity – bullshit like this – and whatever's next, which is likely to be tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/128415159/inflation-a-real-worry-and-govt-is-to-blame–nationals-christopher-luxon
Luxon's no Key, and his bullshit is easier to see, but unfortunately it's still not obvious enough for most people. That's a big problem.
Does Boris Johnson know that the UK's 7% inflation is due to the Tory governments over spending?
Does Christopher Luxon know that cutting government spending and handing out the money via tax cuts does not reduce inflationary demand in the economy?
Economy for beginners.
1. Treasury warns pandemic will cause recession
2. Orr QE's money for government response (good, helps government finance prevention of any recession) and to enable more bank lending on property (bad, gets rid of deposit criteria for buying up existing property rather than targeted funds to new building – and so boom in property values)
3. Responding to supply shortage inflation, as if it was demand led (whether public or private sector spending) inflation and so resorting to interest rate rises or demand restraint (causing a recession/unemployment) is not smart.
OMG I've seen it all now – Dancing Kiwifruit! lol
https://twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1516940545327009793?cxt=HHwWgsDU2fHYoI0qAAAA
With no effectual response to global warming, we're going to see more of this: Thousand tonnes of dead fish poses problem for King Salmon | RNZ News
Salmon is the rising star of the NZ aquaculture scene – its feed conversion ratio runs between 1 & 1.1 kg of feed per kg of grown fish, and the adult fish retail at $30+ a kilo – yielding a profit margin that would make John Key blush. But the moment your water temperature creeps over 18 degrees, fish live or die on a coin toss.
So – here is a litmus test of whether the cohort of managers formed in the post-Brierly period can manage for a sustainable future, or whether they will take no effectual action and let their industry die as global warming pushes through the 2 degree line and heads for 4, which will end salmon farming that has made no provision for temperature moderation.
Throwing a thousand tonnes of dead fish into landfill is pretty lame too. Composting them has been done since the 1950s, and recycling them using Black Soldier Flies is also well established. Unlike other flies, the BSF do not feed as adults, so they are not a plague vector if they are used to process putrescible waste.
Watch this space as our aquaculture industries decline to develop temperature moderation, and fail to compost or otherwise gainfully repurpose this high fertility resource. And when NZ's productivity continues to languish at 1970 levels, you'll know why.
How are the salmon farmers supposed to effect 'temperature moderation ' stuart ? I thought they were aiming to shift their operations into more open areas of the ocean in order to do just that or are you implying that some artificial device exists to bring temps down inside the nets ?
I dont buy farmed salmon i find the industry repugnant .To keep what are normally wild migrating fish in a cage feeding them food they wouldnt ordinarily eat and polluting the area around the ' farm ' in the process is i think anti nature and deserves to fail .I hope it does .
If i remember correctly king salmon applied a year or so ago to get gov money to develope some kind of composting ability did nothing come of that ?
How are the salmon farmers supposed to effect 'temperature moderation
This is a matter each must determine according to their locale. Trout farmers in Jordan have used evaporative cooling – spray jets rather like those used by NZ dairy irrigators. But their situation is recirculating raceways, not sea cages, which are harder to cool because the water moves through them. It may be that sea cages must be abandoned in most areas, and farming transitioned to onshore tanks which can be kept at the optimal 13 degrees. My concern is that farming should not proceed without adapting, praying for cool seasons that will become increasingly rare, on the basis that sea cages have exceptionally low capital costs. The industry is profitable enough to support a greater level of capital investment.
A Dunedin company was composting factory fish offal with bark for decades, and very popular their product proved, especially with rose growers. But given that:
trucks from Havelock and Picton made 160 trips to the Bluegums Landfill in Blenheim, dumping 1269 tonnes of dead fish (RNZ link above)
It would seem that composting efforts fell a bit short of requirements in this instance. Composting fish typically calls for 4 or 5 parts of cellulose material (wood chip or sawdust or straw) to 1 part of fish – so it isn’t hard to imagine an excess mortality on the farms might meet a shortfall of organic matter – which is one of the advantages of BSF.
A seriously disconcerting story from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/apr/20/dentists-would-not-treat-my-toothache-now-my-health-has-been-wrecked-for-ever
It's a longish read, so I'll sum it up. The writer developed a severe toothache – intermittent at first, then constant; one tooth to begin with, then several; infection confined to mouth only, then started to wreak havoc through much of her body. Dentists' investigations revealed no evidence of any dental disorder, so insisted that the pain must have other causes, and refused to touch it. The main motive for withholding treatment seems to have been fear of proceedings against them should anything go wrong.
Could this culture of fear in the medical profession spread to NZ? One would like to think not, but a recent personal straw in the wind suggests we shouldn't get complacent. Obtrectatrix uses a wheelchair and asked a well-known handyman franchise to make a couple of ramps so that she could get out on to the deck in it. They refused point-blank. "That's medical – we're not touching that." A couple of bloody ramps, not a series of brain-surgeries! What had they to worry about, for the love of Pete?
Marvelous beasties.
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1516519608341221379
Thats so cool thanks for that joe , do you reckon thats a juvinile elephant or a particular sort thats just natrually small ?
Straight out of Edgar Allan's story.
https://twitter.com/VICENews/status/1516523515276636163