No One comes out of the IPCA report on the parliament occupation looking particularly good. The vacuum of decisive leadership at the top of the police appears to have been extraordinary. Mallard it seems to be was indecisive when he needed to act swiftly and then became a complete tool – maybe driven by frustration with the police. But Andrew Coster in particular provides us all with a case study on how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. After listening to a lot of commentary, I think his leadership was weak, his force was disorganised and there was a complete failure of imagination at the top of the police force hierarchy.
Weak because he prevaricated and vacillated in his advice to political leadership, who it seems to me (reading between the lines) were incredibly frustrated by his lack of decision. Disorganised because the police seem to lack a coherent set of public order policing protocols – different police commands negotiating independently of each other was keystone cops level of farcical. And a complete failure of imagination because (and this has been IMHO a consistent theme running through police failures to maintain public order at culture-war inspired events) he seems to fail to grasp the essentially seditious nature of these protest, the level of conspiracy fed bad faith and mistrust, and the likely outcomes of encouraging such people for as long as the police did. I mean, how was it the police – who should have had suspected it may end in a riot – did not have sufficient riot equipment available? When community policing ends and you must resort to compliance policing then all police doctrines recommend the use of overwhelming force to squash any resistance before it even forms. Sending poorly equipped officers out to deal with paranoid conspiracy theorists spoiling for a fight could have ended in deaths. And the claim the police lacked sufficient gear is tosh, and more evidence of failure of leadership and imagination. They had three weeks to plan for the potential need for a compliance response. In a world awash with authoritarian regimes and those willing to supply them, is Coster really claiming they couldn't source a hundred sets of riot gear in a hurry?
Surely the buck stops with the elected politicians who are paid at minimum $170k to turn up to Parliament and face up to the consequences of their own laws popular or unpopular.
The fact that not a single member of government or Cabinet or the Green or Labour caucuses fronted up to speak to them is the most monumental failure of courage let alone democratic principle.
And for counterfactual: at the Foreshore and Seabed hikoi over a decade ago, which had at least as much spit and fury as Wellington's mandate shuffle, plenty of MPs and Ministers fronted and were given the grief they expected about their own policy and their own legislation.
Leader Ardern failing to front is in particular weak, and Chief Coster ain't so much as taking water for this one.
the main difference between the parliament occupation and the F/S hikoi was that the latter were issuing death threats to MPs or wanting to storm the citadel. It's not being given grief that was the problem.
The other problem was the lack of coherency from the anti-mandate protestors in what they wanted, along with the nature of some of the demands. I'm all for political anarchy eg the original Occupy movements having no leaders, where that's part of strategy and movement building. But that's not what the anti-mandate protestors were doing. They were a mix of reactionary dangerous people, peace and love hippies, and politically naive proto-activists who didn't know what they were doing politically (the occupation itself was impressively organised though).
The Hikoi was as a result of the worst policy of that Labour government, were experienced and well led, but didn't get what they wanted. Out of it formed The Maori Party.
The anti-mandate protest was as a result of the worst policy of this Labour government, but its political mishandling went most of the way to tank Labour's popularity and then getting the Prime Minister to resign.
You can decide how that is attributable to whether the different organisers were 'experienced' or not.
The handling of the parliamentary protest and the contempt Labour displayed for citizens (e.g. Trevor Mallard and his childish antics) with very geniune concerns about a law Labour had brought in was one of many turning points for me. And I was and still am very stronly pro vaccine.
I disagreed with a lot of what the protesters were saying at the time (I have since re-thought the mandates), but I absolutely thought they had a geniune right to be there.
The Trevor Mallard part of the story is a media beat-up. By the time Trevor Mallard is involved at all (on the 11th) the police have arrested 120 people on the 10th already.
To put it in perspective, on the 13th of February Cyclone Dovi dumped up to 150mm of rain on Kelburn. The sprinklers likely dumped 5mm of water on Parliament grounds.
Nic, I remember the weekend well and my memory is that is was very early on in the protest. They may have arrested people already, pretty sure I saw the live stream, police trying to move the protesters back, protesters holding their line.
It was a vey wet weekend, but perhaps it is not the amount of water, but the origins of the water. The storm was just weather doing its thing. Turning on the sprinklers was a deliberate act by Mallard, childish and treating citizens with contempt. The loud unpopular music was disgusting, played at night to disturb people and send them packing.
The Labour Government's Covid policies, including related mandates, were far from the worst policy of this Labour Government; they were very successful policies that saved lies. While some of the protestors focussed on that issue, many appeared to be really seeking to protest the concept of democratic government- they were seeking to make government more difficult and to incite violence. There clearly were different organisers with different aims – many of the more moderate left as they became very much a minority in the protest groups. The reality is that New Zealand saved lives, and saved our economy, under extraordinary circumstances.
When they are an incoherent rabble from the start then it makes no difference whether you engage them or not, they are not capable of listening and taking anything in, so why bother?
I remeber Maui, I think his name was, who used to comment on the Standard, providing a link from an article that showed the protesters had established four different representatives of the various groups to meet with MP.s . This could have happened. It would have shown good faith by the govt towards its own citizens.
They didn't storm Parliament. They were there for 28 days or so. They could have. They didn't.
Never approve of death threats. But perhaps a good reason to meet with the reasonable people at the protest to calm things down..
I have to make a comment on the utter hypocracy of all the professional managerial class who utterly villified the people at parliament and have turned a complete blind eye to the viciousness and violence at Albert Park against a group of women there for a peaceful event about women's rights.
yes, there were some groups that formed to meet with the MPs, but my memory was that there were still problems around demands and not pushing back against the death threats in their own protest.
And it wasn't just death threats. It was insurrection death threats against a democratically elected government. Do I really need to spell out the problems with that? Are you saying that it's ok to threaten insurrection so long as you don't do it? How would parliament know if they were going to do it or not?
My best guess is that one of the core issues was how to manage security. Certainly meeting on the steps of parliament wasn't safe. If they were to meet in a room somewhere, what level of security would be needed? Body searches and body guards?
This is the consequence of the people wanting to meet not dealing with the death and insurrection threats in their own movement. It's similar to KJK not making a statement immediately after Melbourne telling the world that the neo Nazis could fuck off. It you want to be taken seriously, you have to act with integrity. And that means a hard no to Nazis and insurrection. Because both are anti-democratic.
I agree there were all sorts of problems with how parliament and the police and the public responded to the protests. But that doesn't negate any of the above.
You will always win the Godwin Award for mentioning NAZIs the fastest.
Here's how to badly manage a major protest:
– Ignore them for months and deny anything is wrong, even if it is a force of new law untested for a century against basic employment rights
– Vilify them in the mainstream media using the power of being a Minister or Cabinet Minister, especially using state run media
– Alert all state security agencies to Stand Up, and presume everything they say is a direct threat to you
– Send the Police in to surround them, cut all services off, trespass them, turn on blaring music and lawn sprinklers to soak them
– Refuse to deal with anything they want to talk about, ban any public official to engage with them, ban any of your government or your MPs to engage with them
– Encourage the Police to clear them out by all means necessary
– Then keep blaming the victims as if they had all the power all along, deny you did nothing wrong, deny you had all the power, promulgate that they were the ones threatening society and that you were utterly right in doing all of the above.
– All of this 50 metres away from where every citizen ought to have their concerns considered
This is just the most egregious form of what this government has done really badly, namely, ignore public opposition to what people view as their way of life:
– Massive new farming regulations generated the unprecedented One Howl Of A Protest, multiple times. This has resulted in the RMA reforms being dumped and other regulations delayed
– Massive protests against new water governance and water quality legislation. This generated a massive last minute Third Reading backdown by the Green and Maori Party to support the legislation and got the Number 6 minister fired from her job and demoted.
If at any point there's a National-Act government and they put the carbon trading act and the water reforms and the farming reforms and the disability reforms on the block and you want to get to Parliament to stop them, this is what you can expect.
I originally thought they every right to protest but then got swept up in the hate and vilification of the protesters.
I always thought the way the mandates were rolled out were unkind.
The way the government,media and mainstream activists spoke of people with concerns was unhelpful and at time nasty.
The prime minister saying there will be two classes of NZers and scoffing at those opposed to the mandates from the beginning was deeply ill-advised and unhelpful.
Mallard's actions were disgraceful and he gave them a common enemy.
Sooo many 2020 labour voters and life long labour voters went from loving jacinda to hating her because of the mandates.
It was very authoritarian, it was very condescending, there was no dialogue or debate or concern shown to people with concerns and the MOH went against many gps advice by declining gps requests for patients to be exempt.
You can't lock people down forever, say be kind, force mandates on them, refuse to exempt people whose doctors advise they shouldn't get it, be seen to be trying to take away peoples right to work and then refuse any debate or dialogue and demonize people and childly escalate protests.
There was a lot of bad on both sides
But the way the media and beltway reacted from day one to these people was disgusting and escalated it.
This govts biggest failure has been dialogue with people they disagree with
If the beltway was shocked by that protest though…. If something like the great depression happens again, the NZ belt way will be shocked by how angry hungry people get.
No they absolutely shouldn't have met them on parliament steps.
KJK did make a statement about the Nazis. Did you think she made it too late? It was in the newspaper here before she arrived.
It seems like we have a difference of opinion on whether politicians should have met with the protesters or not. We know what happened that they didn't. I guess we don't know what the outcome could have been if they did
KJK did make a statement about the Nazis. Did you think she made it too late? It was in the newspaper here before she arrived.
Yes. She did an after LWS video event with some of the women who spoke and she should have addressed it then. From memory it wasn't until a day later that she did an interview with NZH and she said something then. It came across as her realising it might count against her in the visa hearing if she didn't distance herself from the Nazis. I don't believe she did it because it was the right thing to do, but rather because it was politically expedient for her to do so.
It seems like we have a difference of opinion on whether politicians should have met with the protesters or not. We know what happened that they didn't. I guess we don't know what the outcome could have been if they did
This still doesn't address the issues of MPs meeting with a group that allowed and tolerated insurrectionist death threats. It was only a year after the US Capitol attack. The idea that it didn't matter before they didn't do it here in NZ is unsound. It's like saying the US Capitol attack wasn't that bad because they didn't manage to murder people. But they intended to.
which is to say, I'd have way less of a problem with the government MPs meeting with some of the protest groups if those groups had dealt with the insurrection and death threats in their own camp. They didn't. The ball was in their court and they failed.
They didn't manage to storm parliament, most didn't try, but that's a most, some did. Brett Powers and two others attempted to do so on day 2 (7th) of the time-line which was the first day they were at parliament, he claimed he was intending to 'arrest' Andrew Little, a statement which should clearly by taken to mean a kid-napping intent. People suggesting that Trevor Mallard's input directed the protest group towards a particular kind of political engagement should explain how this works considering he enters the story first on the 11th. The police have already arrested 120 people on the 10th by this stage.
The other thing worth discussing about the protest group is how Brian Tamaki was clearly excluded from the protest group, but subsequently went on to hold multiple non-violent anti-vaccine protests after (and before) without real issue. And how the original organizers left early after finding many of the protesters beliefs differed from what they thought the protest should be about.
There were a large number of deeply misguided, foreign instigated dupes that meant to "arrest" ministers and conduct a "Nuremburg style" trial – a carbon copy of insurrectionists in Canada and the US.
They were criminal, not civil, and should have been cleared off (or interdicted) immediately. Bad faith operators like Counterspin fomented the riot, meeting government would only have further emboldened them.
But let's be real – Labour governments have done infinitely worse. The chiefest of their sins is kicking the neoliberal can further down the road, instead of dealing with the long term damage for which they are ultimately responsible.
As we head into a winter of discontent, neither housing nor cost of living has been meaningfully addressed. Like Clark, Labour seems to want to fight the election on identity politics. It's Luxon's best hope.
Ad I totally agree with you. The govt brought in laws to mandate the vaccine. It meant a significant number of people lost their jobs. I thought Labour was supposed to be the party of working people.
yes there were some bad actors there, but most had a genuine grievance.
And by September all the mandates were gone. The documentary boiling point is excellent and makes this point at the end.
I believe the anti social, violent people at the end were anti authority opportunists.
what really concerns me is how we have marginalised that sector of the population, policemen, teachers, nurses, a psychiatrist, a bee keeper. These were just some of the people who were thereto protest because they had lost their jobs. Michael Wood with his River of Filth comment. (Not to mention his comment about Posie Parker that she has an incorrect world view, a very 1984 statement). A significant number of people at parliament protests were Labour and Greens voters. Labour and The Greens have likely lost these voters and rightly so. Again Seymour to my knowledge was the only MP who tried to reach out to people.
A much more ‘significant number’ complied with the mandates and kept their jobs.
A more ‘significant number’ were not Labour or Green voters or no-voters.
Feel free to support your reckons with hard stats.
FYI, Michael Wood’s remarks in Parliament about “River of Filth” referred to the views & ideologies of what you euphemistically downplayed as “some bad actors”.
I love what you did with the narrative there, BTW.
FYI, Michael Wood’s remarks in Parliament about “River of Filth” referred to the views & ideologies of what you euphemistically downplayed as “some bad actors”.
This is true, but it was still a political mistake. People were always going to take it personally and it would have been possible to name the problems with the ideologies without using such a loaded phrase.
Some people, more than before thanks to the increased levels of polarisation, have turned it into a collective art form to try fitting every shoe they know will hurt & offend them. The ‘pay-offs’ are diverse, but major reasons for this behaviour are to induce feelings of anger and similar. This allows & enables those people to respond accordingly and in fluctuating manner, they act as angry aggressor & defender or as angry victim-defender. Of course, this does not take place in a vacuum and (social) isolation.
To justify and support the above, people twist or create their own narratives, as always. And they close their eyes & ears to facts & info that don’t fit with or suit their narratives aka bias. I see the same commenters here on TS regurgitating the same narratives, time after time, like an old broken record stuck in a groove.
So, I’m going to once again present the facts, knowing full-well that those with entrenched opinions won’t change their narrative and thinking.
He addressed the Members of and in the House about their role in what was unfolding at the time:
I want to talk about something else very serious in this respect. I've been concerned by some of the drifting rhetoric I've heard from members opposite in this House about the events in the occupation that we see out the front. The words I say now I say with some precision and I say really carefully, because I think we need to take great care with this. Out the front of this place, there are people who I think we all feel for. There are some people who are confused, there are some people who are scared, there are some people who have been manipulated by an avalanche of misinformation. There are some people who have been hurt over the past couple of years and they're lashing out. We feel for those people.
Wood aimed the rhetoric from certain people out the front of Parliament and the associated rhetoric by certain Members of the House.
He then specifically named that rhetoric, six (6) of those ‘rivers’:
But underneath all of that, there is a river of filth. There is a river of violence and menace. There is a river of anti-Semitism. There is a river of Islamophobia. There is a river of threats to people who work in this place and our staff. Those are things that we should not in any way be condoning, things that we should be apologists for, things that we should be overlooking with the rhetoric that it's all just good people and maybe we should talk about it and maybe we should put the mandates up for negotiation. I would say that there is a river of genuine fascism in parts of the event that we see out the front of this Parliament today. I just urge colleagues in this House—decent and honourable members of the centre-right parliamentary parties in this Parliament—that a lot is actually on them to not give succour and comfort to an emergent and dangerous far-right movement. I just ask those members to reflect upon that.
The last sentence is key here.
I think this was a superb speech in Parliament directed at members of the Opposition. Almost immediately, people started to misinterpret it, twist it, and weaponise it to hit back at Government. The thing you do when somebody attacks you holding a weapon is to disarm them. Take the twisted narrative away from them and take the pin out of their flawed arguments. If anything, it will sort the wheat from the chaff, which is useful info for TS Mods.
Ad @ 1.1
Your suggestion that Ardern failed to front up because she was weak is ignoring reality. She was told not to front up by her security detail. That 'detail' would have known of the existence of threats etc. that the rest of us never get to hear about.
Although she was the primary target, no doubt ministers, MPs were also told to stay away. I note you only mention Green and Labour caucus members. That is a bit disingenuous because my recollection is: no members of National or ACT turned up either. If I'm wrong someone will correct me.
Winston Peters paid them a visit but he's not a parliamentarian any more.
I remember Sandra Lee facing down a bunch of miners. Muldoon would have sent the red squad.
The absolute bullshit, first from Claire Trevett:
‘Writes the Herald’s Claire Trevett in a must-read analysis of the report’s findings (paywalled), “That decision was prompted by a puzzling naivety, given even shifting a bollard had resulted in confrontation and violence. It appears to have been based on the deluded hope that despite all evidence… the protest group could still be reasoned with.”’
Then I find it here.
First they said you know, there were some good people, despite the tiki torches. Mountainous BS, every article said you should have simply talked to them and that would have solved everything. Christ, we’re seeing the other mainstream party select people who genuinely compare JA to a Nazi. The loyal opposition, not the burn-it-all-down nutbars.
Now the Nats, mainstream media and apparently some here think- oh you can’t negotiate with people making up imaginary laws that justify your execution so that was the mistake. You shouldn’t have listened to them even a little. Even though we’d be slamming you for the opposite, we’ve now contorted ourselves to say the exact opposite of what we’ve been saying.
We’ve seen a lot of right wing revisionism to say whatever you did was wrong and we’d have done it right.
I think it was handled well, from the outside looking in.
The most likely outcome once all the loons got established was a full on riot through the streets of Wellington, so the fact they were contained then removed with only moderate damage was a victory,
Another example of why the PAYE deducted from employee wages (as well as student loan payments) by employers should be automatically paid on payday to IRD. That money belongs to the employee not the employer.
It is also a nightmare to sort out from the employees end as well.
“It had not filed GST returns, nor paid GST returns, nor income tax for close to six years, and not met PAYE obligations for a little over one year,” Williams said.
what a phenomenal waste of resources, energy, creativity and time. What happened to the post-explosion pollution? It's like the climate and ecological crises don't exist.
apparently it was a test, so when the test blew up it was ok to cheer because it's all about the learning. They get to try and not blow something else up in another few months.
As test flights go – especially for the first of a type – the engineers will be more than happy. It flew quite long enough to have obtained masses of data and valuable lessons.
I was yarning with a colleague just yesterday the difference between engineering and management. We see anything that goes wrong as a valuable chance to fix it; management thinking types either want to pretend it didn’t happen or look for someone else to blame.
there are all sorts of people who are already willing to live with less, whole movements of them. And then there are the people who are forced to by circumstance.
Cyclone Gabrielle taught us that putting all our eggs in the EV replacing ICE BAU basket is a nonsense.
This is not good news about TWO failing to deliver a coherent plan to deliver on actual front line medical services (Yanno, the health crisis, that the Minister doesn't want to call a health crisis)
When the major health unions/organizations (senior and junior doctors, nurses and allied medical staff) are saying there is a whole lot of talk, and little or no action, either short term (winter is coming) or long term (building healthy resilience in the system)
Senior and junior doctors say the Government’s national workforce task force set up months ago with fanfare has not delivered.
They say it is not even clear what is being done to avert the most immediate threat – another winter of crisis for GPs and hospitals.
The Government last August laid out measures it said were just the start of a national workforce plan.
The 12-member task force followed with a pledge to focus on areas requiring “immediate attention” and on substantive improvements.
It has since set up six professional working groups and 20 profession steering groups.
But nine months on, as the task force chair steps down, Dr Deborah Powell of the junior doctors’ union – the Resident Doctors’ Association – has been left struggling to see what has been achieved.
Further quotes:
“I can safely say it was tokenism. We just didn’t get a chance,”
“We were part of one medical engagement group which met twice and achieved nothing,”
“As far as I can tell, none of this has happened.”
“Let’s be blunt here. To the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t achieved anything.”
"…a process of ‘magical thinking’ about what the future might look like– with no real ties to our current state.”"
Environment Minister David Parker, in proposing new planning shortcuts to help the giant energy corporations, said yesterday:
“Where you have outstanding landscapes, for example, which are seen to be required to be protected to the maximum extent, it has effectively prevented wind farms from being developed in places that we need them. Now, that’s not to say that every significant landscape should have a wind farm on it, but it does say that there are some distractions from visual amenity that we’re going to have to put up with as a country if we’re going to get the renewable generation that we need.”
Parker is proposing to put thousands of industrial wind-towers all over NZ's Outstanding Natural Landscape.
See my post below-there is no need to desecrate NZ’s Outstanding Natural Landscape with massive towers. There are onshore wind sites that are not within ONL and even then when visual effects are taken into account solar is better.
If such proposals are weighted with climate change mitigation as a top priority, other considerations such as "Outstanding Natural Landscape" will naturally fall in weighting.
This adjustment of current values is a necessary change – not just for non-environmentalists – but environmentalists and conservationists as well.
Not necessarily Molly. The advantage of solar is that it does not need to be located in elevated wind-prone areas, many of these sites being within Outstanding Natural Landscape. Solar could be spread across the Canterbury Plains for instance. Sheep/cattle can graze below the panels.
In terms of cost solar is fast catching up on onshore wind and is cheaper than offshore…see below and remembering this info is 2 years old and solar will have further closed the gap on onshore wind.
"The global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of new onshore wind projects added in 2021 fell by 15%, year‑on‑year, to USD 0.033/kWh, while that of new utility-scale solar PV fell by 13% year-on-year to USD 0.048/kWh and that of offshore wind declined 13% to USD 0.075/kWh. With only one concentrating solar power (CSP) plant commissioned in 2021, the LCOE rose 7% year-on-year to USD 0.114/kWh."
The period 2010 to 2021 has witnessed a seismic improvement in the competitiveness of renewables. The global weighted average LCOE of newly commissioned utility‑scale solar PV projects declined by 88% between 2010 and 2021, whilst that of onshore wind fell by 68%, CSP by 68% and offshore wind by 60%."
There's plenty of Consented but unbuilt solar farms already.
There are no consents for offshore wind farms in New Zealand, let alone built ones, and there won't be for well over a decade. We don't even have a regulatory framework to deal with them yet.
The weighting I was referring to was weighting in terms of decision making for consents, investments, grants etc.
If climate change mitigation is expected to be THE priority for all members of the public, authorities and governments, then others will naturally fall down the list. That doesn't mean that they should not be considered, just that they will be reduced in terms of weighting for those decisions.
So, Twitter decided to pull a DeviantArt move and change its Terms Of Services to include anything you post there on their AI dataset, to re-publish your art and benefit from it without your consent or compensation.
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Catching you up on the morning’s global news and a quick look at the parallels -GLOBALTariffs are backSharemarkets in the US, UK and Europe have “plunged” in response to Trump’s tariffs. And while Mexico has won a one month reprieve, Canada and China will see their respective 25% and 10% ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission. Gondolas are often in the news, with manufacturers of ropeway systems proposing them as a modern option for mass transit systems in New Zealand. However, like every next big thing in transport, it’s hard ...
This is a re-post from The Climate BrinkBoth 2023 and 2024 were exceptionally warm years, at just below and above 1.5C relative to preindustrial in the WMO composite of surface temperature records, respectively. While we are still working to assess the full set of drivers of this warmth, it is clear that ...
Hi,I woke up feeling nervous this morning, realising that this weekend Flightless Bird is going to do it’s first ever live show. We’re heading to a sold out (!) show in Seattle to test the format out in front of an audience. If it works, we’ll do more. I want ...
From the United-For-Now States of America comes the thrilling news that a New Zealander may be at the very heart of the current coup. Punching above our weight on the world stage once more! Wait, you may be asking, what New Zealander? I speak of Peter Thiel, made street legal ...
Even Stevens: Over the 33 years between 1990 and 2023 (and allowing for the aberrant 2020 result) the average level of support enjoyed by the Left and Right blocs, at roughly 44.5 percent each, turns out to be, as near as dammit, identical.WORLDWIDE, THE PARTIES of the Left are presented ...
Back in 2023, a "prominent political figure" went on trial for historic sex offences. But we weren't allowed to know who they were or what political party they were "prominent" in, because it might affect the way we voted. At the time, I said that this was untenable; it was ...
I'm going, I'm goingWhere the water tastes like wineI'm going where the water tastes like wineWe can jump in the waterStay drunk all the timeI'm gonna leave this city, got to get awayI'm gonna leave this city, got to get awayAll this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure ...
Waitangi Day is a time to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and stand together for a just and fair Aotearoa. Across the motu, communities are gathering to reflect, kōrero, and take action for a future built on equity and tino rangatiratanga. From dawn ceremonies to whānau-friendly events, there are ...
Subscribe to Mountain Tūī ! Where you too can learn about exciting things from a flying bird! Tweet.Yes - I absolutely suck at marketing. It’s a fact.But first -My question to all readers is:How should I set up the Substack model?It’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask since November ...
Here’s the key news, commentary, reports and debate around Aotearoa’s political economy on politics and in the week to Feb 3:PM Christopher Luxon began 2025’s first day of Parliament last Tuesday by carrying on where left off in 2024, letting National’s junior coalition partner set the political agenda and dragging ...
The PSA have released a survey of 4000 public service workers showing that budget cuts are taking a toll on the wellbeing of public servants and risking the delivery of essential services to New Zealanders. Economists predict that figures released this week will show continued increases in unemployment, potentially reaching ...
The Prime Minister’s speech 10 days or so ago kicked off a flurry of commentary. No one much anywhere near the mainstream (ie excluding Greens supporters) questioned the rhetoric. New Zealand has done woefully poorly on productivity for a long time and we really need better outcomes, and the sorts ...
President Trump on the day he announced tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China, unleashing a shock to supply chains globally that is expected to slow economic growth and increase inflation for most large economies. Photo: Getty ImagesLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate ...
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashHere’s what we’re watching in the week to February 9 and beyond in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty:Monday, February 3Politics: New Zealand Government cabinet meeting usually held early afternoon with post-cabinet news conference possible at 4 pm, although they have not been ...
Trump being Trump, it won’t come as a shock to find that he regards a strong US currency (bolstered by high tariffs on everything made by foreigners) as a sign of America’s virility, and its ability to kick sand in the face of the world. Reality is a tad more ...
A listing of 24 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 26, 2025 thru Sat, February 1, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
What seems to be the common theme in the US, NZ, Argentina and places like Italy under their respective rightwing governments is what I think of as “the politics of cruelty.” Hate-mongering, callous indifference in social policy-making, corporate toadying, political bullying, intimidation and punching down on the most vulnerable with ...
If you are confused, check with the sunCarry a compass to help you alongYour feet are going to be on the groundYour head is there to move you aroundSo, stand in the place where you liveSongwriters: Bill Berry / Michael Mills / Michael Stipe / Peter Buck.Hot in the CityYesterday, ...
Shane Jones announced today he would be contracting out his thinking to a smarter younger person.Reclining on his chaise longue with a mouth full of oysters and Kina he told reporters:Clearly I have become a has-been, a palimpsest, an epigone, a bloviating fossil. I find myself saying such things as: ...
Warning: This post contains references to sexual assaultOn Saturday, I spent far too long editing a video on Tim Jago, the ACT Party President and criminal, who has given up his fight for name suppression after 2 years. He voluntarily gave up just in time for what will be a ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is global warming ...
Our low-investment, low-wage, migration-led and housing-market-driven political economy has delivered poorer productivity growth than the rest of the OECD, and our performance since Covid has been particularly poor. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty this ...
..Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.As far as major government announcements go, a Three Ministers Event is Big. It can signify a major policy development or something has gone Very Well, or an absolute Clusterf**k. When Three Ministers assemble ...
One of those blasts from the past. Peter Dunne – originally neoliberal Labour, then leader of various parties that sought to work with both big parties (generally National) – has taken to calling ...
Completed reads for January: I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson The Black Spider, by Jeremias Gotthelf The Spider and the Fly (poem), by Mary Howitt A Noiseless Patient Spider (poem), by Walt Whitman August Heat, by W.F. Harvey Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White The Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson ...
Do its Property Right Provisions Make Sense?Last week I pointed out that it is uninformed to argue that the New Zealand’s apparently poor economic performance can be traced only to poor regulations. Even were there evidence they had some impact, there are other factors. Of course, we should seek to ...
Richard Wagstaff It was incredibly jarring to hear the hubris from the Prime Minister during his recent state of the nation address. I had just spent close to a week working though the stories and thoughts shared with us by nearly 2000 working people as part of our annual Mood ...
Odd fact about the Broadcasting Standards Authority: for the last few years, they’ve only been upholding about 5% of complaints. Why? I think there’s a range of reasons. Generally responsible broadcasters. Dumb complaints. Complaints brought under the wrong standard. Greater adherence to broadcasters’ rights to freedom of expression in the ...
And I said, "Mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone"'Cause I can't go outside, I'm scared I might not make it homeWell I'm alive, I'm alive, but I'm sinking inIf there's anyone at home at your place, darlingWhy don't you invite me in?Don't try to feed me'Cause I've been ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ star is on the rise, having just added the Energy, Local Government and Revenue portfolios to his responsibilities - but there is nothing ambitious about the Government’s new climate targets. Photo: SuppliedLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate ...
It may have been a short week but there’s been no shortage of things that caught our attention. Here is some of the most interesting. This week in Greater Auckland On Tuesday Matt took a look at public transport ridership in 2024 On Thursday Connor asked some questions ...
The East Is Red: Journalists and commentators are referring to the sudden and disruptive arrival of DeepSeek as a second “Sputnik moment”. (Sputnik being the name given by the godless communists of the Soviet Union to the world’s first artificial satellite which, to the consternation and dismay of the Americans, ...
Hi,Back on inauguration day we launched a ridiculous RFK Jr. “brain worms” tee on the Webworm store, and I told you I’d be throwing my profits over to Mutual Aid LA and Rainbow Youth New Zealand. Just to show I am not full of shit, here are the receipts. I ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with regular and special guests, including: on the week in geopolitics, including the latest from Donald Trump over Gaza and Ukraine.Health expert and author David Galler ...
In an uncompromising paper Treasury has basically told the Government that its plan for a third medical school at Waikato University is a waste of money. Furthermore, the country cannot afford it. That advice was released this week by the Treasury under the Official Information Act. And it comes as ...
Back in November, He Pou a Rangi provided the government with formal advice on the domestic contribution to our next Paris target. Not what the target should be, but what we could realistically achieve, by domestic action alone, without resorting to offshore mitigation. Their answer was startling: depending on exactly ...
Photo by Mauricio Fanfa on UnsplashKia oraCome and join us for our weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news with myself , plus regular guest David Patman and ...
I don't like to spend all my time complaining about our government, so let me complain about the media first.Senior journalistic Herald person Thomas Coughlan reported that Treasury replied yeah nah, wrong bro to Luxon's claim that our benighted little country has been in recession for three years.His excitement rose ...
Back in 2022, when the government was consulting internally about proactive release of cabinet papers, the SIS opposed it. The basis of their opposition was the "mosaic effect" - people being able to piece together individual pieces of innocuous public information in a way which supposedly harms "national security" (effectively: ...
With The Stroke Of A Pen:Populism, especially right-wing populism, invests all the power of an electoral/parliamentary majority in a single political leader because it no longer trusts the bona fides of the sprawling political class among whom power is traditionally dispersed. Populism eschews traditional politics, because, among populists, traditional politics ...
I’ve spent the last week writing a fairly substantial review of a recent book (“Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race”) by a couple of Australian academic economists on Australia’s pandemic policies and experiences. For all its limitations, there isn’t anything similar in New Zealand. ...
Mr Mojo Rising: Economic growth is possible, Christopher Luxon reassures us, but only under a government that is willing to get out of the way and let those with drive and ambition get on with it.ABOUT TWELVE KILOMETRES from the farm on the North Otago coast where I grew up stands ...
You're nearly a good laughAlmost a jokerWith your head down in the pig binSaying, 'Keep on digging.'Pig stain on your fat chinWhat do you hope to findDown in the pig mine?You're nearly a laughYou're nearly a laughBut you're really a crySongwriter: Roger Waters.NZ First - Kiwi Battlers.Say what you like ...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Climate denial is dead. Renewable energy denial is here. As “alternative facts” become the norm, it’s worth looking at what actual facts tell us about how renewable energy sources like solar and wind are lowering the price of electricity. As ...
SIR GEOFFREY PALMER is worried about democracy. In his Newsroom website post of 27 January 2025 he asserts that “the future of democracy across the world now seems to be in question.” Following a year of important electoral contests across the world, culminating in Donald Trump’s emphatic recapture of the ...
The Government hasn’t stopped talking about growth since the Prime Minister made his “yes” speech at the Auckland Chamber of Commerce last week. But so far, the measures announced would seem hardly likely to suddenly pitch New Zealand into the fast-growth East Asian league. The digital nomad announcement hardly deserved ...
Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. The intention was to establish a colony with the cession of sovereignty to the Crown, ...
Te Whatu Ora Chief Executive Margie Apa leaving her job four months early is another symptom of this government’s failure to deliver healthcare for New Zealanders. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
The latest unemployment figures reveal that job losses are hitting Māori and Pacific people especially hard, with Māori unemployment reaching a staggering 9.7% for the December 2024 quarter and Pasifika unemployment reaching 10.5%. ...
Waitangi 2025: Waitangi Day must be community and not politically driven - Shane Jones Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. ...
Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson will return to politics at Waitangi on Monday the 3rd of February where she will hold a stand up with fellow co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. ...
Te Pāti Māori is appalled by the government's blatant mishandling of the school lunch programme. David Seymour’s ‘cost-saving’ measures have left tamariki across Aotearoa with unidentifiable meals, causing distress and outrage among parents and communities alike. “What’s the difference between providing inedible food, and providing no food at all?” Said ...
The Government is doubling down on outdated and volatile fossil fuels, showing how shortsighted and destructive their policies are for working New Zealanders. ...
Green Party MP Steve Abel this morning joined Coromandel locals in Waihi to condemn new mining plans announced by Shane Jones in the pit of the town’s Australian-owned Gold mine. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to strengthen its just-announced 2030-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and address its woeful lack of commitment to climate security. ...
Today marks a historic moment for Taranaki iwi with the passing of the Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill in Parliament. "Today, we stand together as descendants of Taranaki, and our tūpuna, Taranaki Maunga, is now formally acknowledged by the law as a living tūpuna. ...
Labour is relieved to see Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has woken up to reality and reversed her government’s terrible decisions to cut funding from frontline service providers – temporarily. ...
It is the first week of David Seymour’s school lunch programme and already social media reports are circulating of revolting meals, late deliveries, and mislabelled packaging. ...
The Green Party says that with no-cause evictions returning from today, the move to allow landlords to end tenancies without reason plunges renters, and particularly families who rent, into insecurity and stress. ...
The Government’s move to increase speed limits substantially on dozens of stretches of rural and often undivided highways will result in more serious harm. ...
In her first announcement as Economic Growth Minister, Nicola Willis chose to loosen restrictions for digital nomads from other countries, rather than focus on everyday Kiwis. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to stand firm and work with allies to progress climate action as Donald Trump signals his intent to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords once again. ...
The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says. “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is ...
The former Cadbury factory will be the site of the Inpatient Building for the new Dunedin Hospital and Health Minister Simeon Brown says actions have been taken to get the cost overruns under control. “Today I am giving the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build the new Dunedin ...
From today, Plunket in Whāngarei will be offering childhood immunisations – the first of up to 27 sites nationwide, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. The investment of $1 million into the pilot, announced in October 2024, was made possible due to the Government’s record $16.68 billion investment in health. It ...
New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035. Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision ...
Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
Racing Minister, Winston Peters has announced the Government is preparing public consultation on GST policy proposals which would make the New Zealand racing industry more competitive. “The racing industry makes an important economic contribution. New Zealand thoroughbreds are in demand overseas as racehorses and for breeding. The domestic thoroughbred industry ...
Business confidence remains very high and shows the economy is on track to improve, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis says. “The latest ANZ Business Outlook survey, released yesterday, shows business confidence and expected own activity are ‘still both very high’.” The survey reports business confidence fell eight points to +54 ...
Enabling works have begun this week on an expanded radiology unit at Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital which will double CT scanning capacity in Hawke’s Bay to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. This investment of $29.3m in the ...
The Government has today announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035. “We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious ...
Nine years of negotiations between the Crown and iwi of Taranaki have concluded following Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passing its third reading in Parliament today, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “This Bill addresses the historical grievances endured by the eight iwi ...
As schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “A world-leading education system is a key ...
Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson have welcomed Kāinga Ora’s decision to re-open its tender for carpets to allow wool carpet suppliers to bid. “In 2024 Kāinga Ora issued requests for tender (RFTs) seeking bids from suppliers to carpet their properties,” Mr Bishop says. “As part ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today visited Otahuhu College where the new school lunch programme has served up healthy lunches to students in the first days of the school year. “As schools open in 2025, the programme will deliver nutritious meals to around 242,000 students, every school day. On ...
Minister for Children Karen Chhour has intervened in Oranga Tamariki’s review of social service provider contracts to ensure Barnardos can continue to deliver its 0800 What’s Up hotline. “When I found out about the potential impact to this service, I asked Oranga Tamariki for an explanation. Based on the information ...
A bill to make revenue collection on imported and exported goods fairer and more effective had its first reading in Parliament, Customs Minister Casey Costello said today. “The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modernises the way in which Customs can recover the costs of services that are needed ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Department of Internal Affairs [the Department] has achieved significant progress in completing applications for New Zealand citizenship. “December 2024 saw the Department complete 5,661 citizenship applications, the most for any month in 2024. This is a 54 per cent increase compared ...
Reversals to Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions begin tonight and will be in place by 1 July, says Minister of Transport Chris Bishop. “The previous government was obsessed with slowing New Zealanders down by imposing illogical and untargeted speed limit reductions on state highways and local roads. “National campaigned on ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced Budget 2025 – the Growth Budget - will be delivered on Thursday 22 May. “This year’s Budget will drive forward the Government’s plan to grow our economy to improve the incomes of New Zealanders now and in the years ahead. “Budget 2025 will build ...
For the Government, 2025 will bring a relentless focus on unleashing the growth we need to lift incomes, strengthen local businesses and create opportunity. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today laid out the Government’s growth agenda in his Statement to Parliament. “Just over a year ago this Government was elected by ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour welcomes students back to school with a call to raise attendance from last year. “The Government encourages all students to attend school every day because there is a clear connection between being present at school and setting yourself up for a bright future,” says Mr ...
The Government is relaxing visitor visa requirements to allow tourists to work remotely while visiting New Zealand, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Tourism Minister Louise Upston say. “The change is part of the Government’s plan to unlock New Zealand’s potential by shifting the country onto ...
The opening of Kāinga Ora’s development of 134 homes in Epuni, Lower Hutt will provide much-needed social housing for Hutt families, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I’ve been a strong advocate for social housing on Kāinga Ora’s Epuni site ever since the old earthquake-prone housing was demolished in 2015. I ...
Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay will travel to Australia today for meetings with Australian Trade Minister, Senator Don Farrell, and the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF). Mr McClay recently hosted Minister Farrell in Rotorua for the annual Closer Economic Relations (CER) Trade Ministers’ meeting, where ANZLF presented on ...
A new monthly podiatry clinic has been launched today in Wairoa and will bring a much-needed service closer to home for the Wairoa community, Health Minister Simeon Brown says.“Health New Zealand has been successful in securing a podiatrist until the end of June this year to meet the needs of ...
The Judicial Conduct Commissioner has recommended a Judicial Conduct Panel be established to inquire into and report on the alleged conduct of acting District Court Judge Ema Aitken in an incident last November, Attorney-General Judith Collins said today. “I referred the matter of Judge Aitken’s alleged conduct during an incident ...
Students who need extra help with maths are set to benefit from a targeted acceleration programme that will give them more confidence in the classroom, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Last year, significant numbers of students did not meet the foundational literacy and numeracy level required to gain NCEA. To ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced three new diplomatic appointments. “Our diplomats play an important role in ensuring New Zealand’s interests are maintained and enhanced across the world,” Mr Peters says. “It is a pleasure to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ...
Ki te kahore he whakakitenga, ka ngaro te Iwi – without a vision, the people will perish. The Government has achieved its target to reduce the number of households in emergency housing motels by 75 per cent five years early, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. The number of households ...
The opening of Palmerston North’s biggest social housing development will have a significant impact for whānau in need of safe, warm, dry housing, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. The minister visited the development today at North Street where a total of 50 two, three, and four-bedroom homes plus a ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced the new membership of the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control (PACDAC), who will serve for a three-year term. “The Committee brings together wide-ranging expertise relevant to disarmament. We have made six new appointments to the Committee and reappointed two existing members ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora, good morning, talofa, malo e lelei, bula vinaka, da jia hao, namaste, sat sri akal, assalamu alaikum. It’s so great to be here and I’m ready and pumped for 2025. Can I start by acknowledging: Simon Bridges – CEO of the Auckland ...
The Government has unveiled a bold new initiative to position New Zealand as a premier destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) that will create higher paying jobs and grow the economy. “Invest New Zealand will streamline the investment process and provide tailored support to foreign investors, to increase capital investment ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins today announced the largest reset of the New Zealand science system in more than 30 years with reforms which will boost the economy and benefit the sector. “The reforms will maximise the value of the $1.2 billion in government funding that goes into ...
Turbocharging New Zealand’s economic growth is the key to brighter days ahead for all Kiwis, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says. In the Prime Minister’s State of the Nation Speech in Auckland today, Christopher Luxon laid out the path to the prosperity that will affect all aspects of New Zealanders’ lives. ...
The latest set of accounts show the Government has successfully checked the runaway growth of public spending, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. “In the previous government’s final five months in office, public spending was almost 10 per cent higher than for the same period the previous year. “That is completely ...
The Government’s welfare reforms are delivering results with the number of people moving off benefits into work increasing year-on-year for six straight months. “There are positive signs that our welfare reset and the return consequences for job seekers who don't fulfil their obligations to prepare for or find a job ...
Jon Kroll and Aimee McCammon have been appointed to the New Zealand Film Commission Board, Arts Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “I am delighted to appoint these two new board members who will bring a wealth of industry, governance, and commercial experience to the Film Commission. “Jon Kroll has been an ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has hailed a drop in the domestic component of inflation, saying it increases the prospect of mortgage rate reductions and a lower cost of living for Kiwi households. Stats NZ reported today that inflation was 2.2 per cent in the year to December, the second consecutive ...
Two new appointed members and one reappointed member of the Employment Relations Authority have been announced by Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden today. “I’m pleased to announce the new appointed members Helen van Druten and Matthew Piper to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) and welcome them to ...
Health NZ's CEO has resigned, but frontline healthworkers are sceptical that installing new leadership will make any difference to a system grappling with problems. ...
Gail Duncan, Chairperson of the St Peter’s on Willis Social Justice Group, one of the organisations invited to submit on the Bill, says the Government’s actions are unprecedented. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amani Kasherwa, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, The University of Queensland In late January, a rebel group that has long caused mayhem in the sprawling African nation of Democratic Republic of Congo took control of Goma, a major city of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yee-Fui Ng, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Monash University An ad falsely depicting independent candidate Alex Dyson as a Greens member.ABC News/Supplied The highly pertinent case of a little-known independent candidate in the Victorian seat of Wannon has exposed a gaping ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland Nik/Unsplash You might have heard that eating too many eggs will cause high cholesterol levels, leading to poor health. Researchers have examined the science behind this myth again, and ...
Everything you missed from the third day of the Treaty principles bill hearings, when the Justice Committee heard four hours of oral submission. Read our recaps of day one of the hearings here, and day two here. Parliament was quiet on Friday for the third day of hearings on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University Tijana Simic/Shutterstock The news last week that three people in Sydney were hospitalised with botulism after receiving botox injections has raised questions about the regulation of the cosmetic injectables industry. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jens Blotevogel, Principal Research Scientist and Team Leader for Remediation Technologies, CSIRO Mino Surkala, Shutterstock Lithium-ion batteries are part of everyday life. They power small rechargeable devices such as mobile phones and laptops. They enable electric vehicles. And larger versions store ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edith Jennifer Hill, Associate Lecturer, Learning & Teaching Innovation, Flinders University Netflix Netflix’s new limited series, Apple Cider Vinegar, tells the story of the elaborate cancer con orchestrated by Australian blogger Annabelle (Belle) Gibson. The first episode opens with Gibson’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dee Ninis, Earthquake Scientist, Monash University Greece’s government has just declared a state of emergency on the island of Santorini, as earthquakes shake the island multiple times a day and sometimes only minutes apart. The “earthquake swarm” is also affecting other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Western Australian state election will be held on March 8. A Newspoll, conducted January 29 to February 4 from a sample ...
She’s back behind the wheel, and this time, she wants to find out what it is that makes us tick. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. After a prolific career on stage and screen, 83-year-old Miriam Margolyes is on the road again. ...
A new poem by Jordan Hamel. Real Poet Every word earned its place and so did he, so should you. Real poet lives in the capital but writes himself into the Mackenzie country golden hour, man of the paper land, he neglects to mention his pollen ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25) No better time to get ...
The committee has published this list to inform the public about its work, and to give clarity to submitters who have contacted the committee asking if they will be invited to make an oral submission. ...
Alex Casey and Gabi Lardies dissect their Laneway 2025 experience. Gabi Lardies: Hi Alex :))))))) Congratulations on not getting sunburnt. Everyone I talked to at Laneway yesterday was braving the sun for one thing. Charli XCX. How was your brat experience?Alex Casey: We will talk about the rest of ...
The US President's suggestion, which sparked enormous debate globally, has been labelled as a threat, not a proposal, by the Federation of Islamic Associations. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine McCarthy, Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Interior of Auckland South Men’s Prison.Getty Images Prisons are not colourful places. Typically, they are grey or some variation of a monochrome colour scheme. But increasingly, ...
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No One comes out of the IPCA report on the parliament occupation looking particularly good. The vacuum of decisive leadership at the top of the police appears to have been extraordinary. Mallard it seems to be was indecisive when he needed to act swiftly and then became a complete tool – maybe driven by frustration with the police. But Andrew Coster in particular provides us all with a case study on how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. After listening to a lot of commentary, I think his leadership was weak, his force was disorganised and there was a complete failure of imagination at the top of the police force hierarchy.
Weak because he prevaricated and vacillated in his advice to political leadership, who it seems to me (reading between the lines) were incredibly frustrated by his lack of decision. Disorganised because the police seem to lack a coherent set of public order policing protocols – different police commands negotiating independently of each other was keystone cops level of farcical. And a complete failure of imagination because (and this has been IMHO a consistent theme running through police failures to maintain public order at culture-war inspired events) he seems to fail to grasp the essentially seditious nature of these protest, the level of conspiracy fed bad faith and mistrust, and the likely outcomes of encouraging such people for as long as the police did. I mean, how was it the police – who should have had suspected it may end in a riot – did not have sufficient riot equipment available? When community policing ends and you must resort to compliance policing then all police doctrines recommend the use of overwhelming force to squash any resistance before it even forms. Sending poorly equipped officers out to deal with paranoid conspiracy theorists spoiling for a fight could have ended in deaths. And the claim the police lacked sufficient gear is tosh, and more evidence of failure of leadership and imagination. They had three weeks to plan for the potential need for a compliance response. In a world awash with authoritarian regimes and those willing to supply them, is Coster really claiming they couldn't source a hundred sets of riot gear in a hurry?
The buck stops with Coster.
Surely the buck stops with the elected politicians who are paid at minimum $170k to turn up to Parliament and face up to the consequences of their own laws popular or unpopular.
The fact that not a single member of government or Cabinet or the Green or Labour caucuses fronted up to speak to them is the most monumental failure of courage let alone democratic principle.
And for counterfactual: at the Foreshore and Seabed hikoi over a decade ago, which had at least as much spit and fury as Wellington's mandate shuffle, plenty of MPs and Ministers fronted and were given the grief they expected about their own policy and their own legislation.
Leader Ardern failing to front is in particular weak, and Chief Coster ain't so much as taking water for this one.
the main difference between the parliament occupation and the F/S hikoi was that the latter were issuing death threats to MPs or wanting to storm the citadel. It's not being given grief that was the problem.
The other problem was the lack of coherency from the anti-mandate protestors in what they wanted, along with the nature of some of the demands. I'm all for political anarchy eg the original Occupy movements having no leaders, where that's part of strategy and movement building. But that's not what the anti-mandate protestors were doing. They were a mix of reactionary dangerous people, peace and love hippies, and politically naive proto-activists who didn't know what they were doing politically (the occupation itself was impressively organised though).
The differences only occurred because of the difference in political approach.
If the hikoi had not been engaged fully by politicians, you would have had the same result as the anti-mandate Parliamentary protest.
Every protest turns into a rabble if they're spurned.
No, they really don't. Experienced protestors know how to work with that and turn it to their advantage.
The Hikoi was as a result of the worst policy of that Labour government, were experienced and well led, but didn't get what they wanted. Out of it formed The Maori Party.
The anti-mandate protest was as a result of the worst policy of this Labour government, but its political mishandling went most of the way to tank Labour's popularity and then getting the Prime Minister to resign.
You can decide how that is attributable to whether the different organisers were 'experienced' or not.
Ad again I agree with you.
The handling of the parliamentary protest and the contempt Labour displayed for citizens (e.g. Trevor Mallard and his childish antics) with very geniune concerns about a law Labour had brought in was one of many turning points for me. And I was and still am very stronly pro vaccine.
I disagreed with a lot of what the protesters were saying at the time (I have since re-thought the mandates), but I absolutely thought they had a geniune right to be there.
The Trevor Mallard part of the story is a media beat-up. By the time Trevor Mallard is involved at all (on the 11th) the police have arrested 120 people on the 10th already.
To put it in perspective, on the 13th of February Cyclone Dovi dumped up to 150mm of rain on Kelburn. The sprinklers likely dumped 5mm of water on Parliament grounds.
Nic, I remember the weekend well and my memory is that is was very early on in the protest. They may have arrested people already, pretty sure I saw the live stream, police trying to move the protesters back, protesters holding their line.
It was a vey wet weekend, but perhaps it is not the amount of water, but the origins of the water. The storm was just weather doing its thing. Turning on the sprinklers was a deliberate act by Mallard, childish and treating citizens with contempt. The loud unpopular music was disgusting, played at night to disturb people and send them packing.
What an idiot Mallard looked.
The Labour Government's Covid policies, including related mandates, were far from the worst policy of this Labour Government; they were very successful policies that saved lies. While some of the protestors focussed on that issue, many appeared to be really seeking to protest the concept of democratic government- they were seeking to make government more difficult and to incite violence. There clearly were different organisers with different aims – many of the more moderate left as they became very much a minority in the protest groups. The reality is that New Zealand saved lives, and saved our economy, under extraordinary circumstances.
There is a big difference between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
Ukraineans?
When they are an incoherent rabble from the start then it makes no difference whether you engage them or not, they are not capable of listening and taking anything in, so why bother?
I remeber Maui, I think his name was, who used to comment on the Standard, providing a link from an article that showed the protesters had established four different representatives of the various groups to meet with MP.s . This could have happened. It would have shown good faith by the govt towards its own citizens.
They didn't storm Parliament. They were there for 28 days or so. They could have. They didn't.
Never approve of death threats. But perhaps a good reason to meet with the reasonable people at the protest to calm things down..
I have to make a comment on the utter hypocracy of all the professional managerial class who utterly villified the people at parliament and have turned a complete blind eye to the viciousness and violence at Albert Park against a group of women there for a peaceful event about women's rights.
yes, there were some groups that formed to meet with the MPs, but my memory was that there were still problems around demands and not pushing back against the death threats in their own protest.
And it wasn't just death threats. It was insurrection death threats against a democratically elected government. Do I really need to spell out the problems with that? Are you saying that it's ok to threaten insurrection so long as you don't do it? How would parliament know if they were going to do it or not?
My best guess is that one of the core issues was how to manage security. Certainly meeting on the steps of parliament wasn't safe. If they were to meet in a room somewhere, what level of security would be needed? Body searches and body guards?
This is the consequence of the people wanting to meet not dealing with the death and insurrection threats in their own movement. It's similar to KJK not making a statement immediately after Melbourne telling the world that the neo Nazis could fuck off. It you want to be taken seriously, you have to act with integrity. And that means a hard no to Nazis and insurrection. Because both are anti-democratic.
I agree there were all sorts of problems with how parliament and the police and the public responded to the protests. But that doesn't negate any of the above.
So many tiresome rhetorical questions.
You will always win the Godwin Award for mentioning NAZIs the fastest.
Here's how to badly manage a major protest:
– Ignore them for months and deny anything is wrong, even if it is a force of new law untested for a century against basic employment rights
– Vilify them in the mainstream media using the power of being a Minister or Cabinet Minister, especially using state run media
– Alert all state security agencies to Stand Up, and presume everything they say is a direct threat to you
– Send the Police in to surround them, cut all services off, trespass them, turn on blaring music and lawn sprinklers to soak them
– Refuse to deal with anything they want to talk about, ban any public official to engage with them, ban any of your government or your MPs to engage with them
– Encourage the Police to clear them out by all means necessary
– Then keep blaming the victims as if they had all the power all along, deny you did nothing wrong, deny you had all the power, promulgate that they were the ones threatening society and that you were utterly right in doing all of the above.
– All of this 50 metres away from where every citizen ought to have their concerns considered
This is just the most egregious form of what this government has done really badly, namely, ignore public opposition to what people view as their way of life:
– Massive new farming regulations generated the unprecedented One Howl Of A Protest, multiple times. This has resulted in the RMA reforms being dumped and other regulations delayed
– Massive protests against new water governance and water quality legislation. This generated a massive last minute Third Reading backdown by the Green and Maori Party to support the legislation and got the Number 6 minister fired from her job and demoted.
If at any point there's a National-Act government and they put the carbon trading act and the water reforms and the farming reforms and the disability reforms on the block and you want to get to Parliament to stop them, this is what you can expect.
I actually agree.
I originally thought they every right to protest but then got swept up in the hate and vilification of the protesters.
I always thought the way the mandates were rolled out were unkind.
The way the government,media and mainstream activists spoke of people with concerns was unhelpful and at time nasty.
The prime minister saying there will be two classes of NZers and scoffing at those opposed to the mandates from the beginning was deeply ill-advised and unhelpful.
Mallard's actions were disgraceful and he gave them a common enemy.
Sooo many 2020 labour voters and life long labour voters went from loving jacinda to hating her because of the mandates.
It was very authoritarian, it was very condescending, there was no dialogue or debate or concern shown to people with concerns and the MOH went against many gps advice by declining gps requests for patients to be exempt.
You can't lock people down forever, say be kind, force mandates on them, refuse to exempt people whose doctors advise they shouldn't get it, be seen to be trying to take away peoples right to work and then refuse any debate or dialogue and demonize people and childly escalate protests.
There was a lot of bad on both sides
But the way the media and beltway reacted from day one to these people was disgusting and escalated it.
This govts biggest failure has been dialogue with people they disagree with
If the beltway was shocked by that protest though…. If something like the great depression happens again, the NZ belt way will be shocked by how angry hungry people get.
No they absolutely shouldn't have met them on parliament steps.
KJK did make a statement about the Nazis. Did you think she made it too late? It was in the newspaper here before she arrived.
It seems like we have a difference of opinion on whether politicians should have met with the protesters or not. We know what happened that they didn't. I guess we don't know what the outcome could have been if they did
Yes. She did an after LWS video event with some of the women who spoke and she should have addressed it then. From memory it wasn't until a day later that she did an interview with NZH and she said something then. It came across as her realising it might count against her in the visa hearing if she didn't distance herself from the Nazis. I don't believe she did it because it was the right thing to do, but rather because it was politically expedient for her to do so.
This still doesn't address the issues of MPs meeting with a group that allowed and tolerated insurrectionist death threats. It was only a year after the US Capitol attack. The idea that it didn't matter before they didn't do it here in NZ is unsound. It's like saying the US Capitol attack wasn't that bad because they didn't manage to murder people. But they intended to.
which is to say, I'd have way less of a problem with the government MPs meeting with some of the protest groups if those groups had dealt with the insurrection and death threats in their own camp. They didn't. The ball was in their court and they failed.
They didn't manage to storm parliament, most didn't try, but that's a most, some did. Brett Powers and two others attempted to do so on day 2 (7th) of the time-line which was the first day they were at parliament, he claimed he was intending to 'arrest' Andrew Little, a statement which should clearly by taken to mean a kid-napping intent. People suggesting that Trevor Mallard's input directed the protest group towards a particular kind of political engagement should explain how this works considering he enters the story first on the 11th. The police have already arrested 120 people on the 10th by this stage.
The other thing worth discussing about the protest group is how Brian Tamaki was clearly excluded from the protest group, but subsequently went on to hold multiple non-violent anti-vaccine protests after (and before) without real issue. And how the original organizers left early after finding many of the protesters beliefs differed from what they thought the protest should be about.
None of the arrests would have been necessary if the politicians had done their job and fronted in the first place.
You wouldn't have arrested Brett Powers?
We'll never know but I'd bet some would have been unable to contain their rage and at a minimum things would start to be thrown.
There were a large number of deeply misguided, foreign instigated dupes that meant to "arrest" ministers and conduct a "Nuremburg style" trial – a carbon copy of insurrectionists in Canada and the US.
They were criminal, not civil, and should have been cleared off (or interdicted) immediately. Bad faith operators like Counterspin fomented the riot, meeting government would only have further emboldened them.
But let's be real – Labour governments have done infinitely worse. The chiefest of their sins is kicking the neoliberal can further down the road, instead of dealing with the long term damage for which they are ultimately responsible.
As we head into a winter of discontent, neither housing nor cost of living has been meaningfully addressed. Like Clark, Labour seems to want to fight the election on identity politics. It's Luxon's best hope.
I stand corrected about Brett et al…..
I hope Brett Powers and two others were arrested and faced appropriate charges. I absolutely condemn that sort of behaviour.
yes there were some bad actors there, but most had a genuine grievance.
And by September all the mandates were gone. The documentary boiling point is excellent and makes this point at the end.
I believe the anti social, violent people at the end were anti authority opportunists.
what really concerns me is how we have marginalised that sector of the population, policemen, teachers, nurses, a psychiatrist, a bee keeper. These were just some of the people who were thereto protest because they had lost their jobs. Michael Wood with his River of Filth comment. (Not to mention his comment about Posie Parker that she has an incorrect world view, a very 1984 statement). A significant number of people at parliament protests were Labour and Greens voters. Labour and The Greens have likely lost these voters and rightly so. Again Seymour to my knowledge was the only MP who tried to reach out to people.
Btw I am fully vaxxed.
A much more ‘significant number’ complied with the mandates and kept their jobs.
A more ‘significant number’ were not Labour or Green voters or no-voters.
Feel free to support your reckons with hard stats.
FYI, Michael Wood’s remarks in Parliament about “River of Filth” referred to the views & ideologies of what you euphemistically downplayed as “some bad actors”.
I love what you did with the narrative there, BTW.
This is true, but it was still a political mistake. People were always going to take it personally and it would have been possible to name the problems with the ideologies without using such a loaded phrase.
Some people, more than before thanks to the increased levels of polarisation, have turned it into a collective art form to try fitting every shoe they know will hurt & offend them. The ‘pay-offs’ are diverse, but major reasons for this behaviour are to induce feelings of anger and similar. This allows & enables those people to respond accordingly and in fluctuating manner, they act as angry aggressor & defender or as angry victim-defender. Of course, this does not take place in a vacuum and (social) isolation.
To justify and support the above, people twist or create their own narratives, as always. And they close their eyes & ears to facts & info that don’t fit with or suit their narratives aka bias. I see the same commenters here on TS regurgitating the same narratives, time after time, like an old broken record stuck in a groove.
So, I’m going to once again present the facts, knowing full-well that those with entrenched opinions won’t change their narrative and thinking.
What did Michael Wood say and not say on 16 February 2023 in Debate on Prime Minister's Statement (https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/combined/HansDeb_20220216_20220216_16)?
He addressed the Members of and in the House about their role in what was unfolding at the time:
Wood aimed the rhetoric from certain people out the front of Parliament and the associated rhetoric by certain Members of the House.
He then specifically named that rhetoric, six (6) of those ‘rivers’:
The last sentence is key here.
I think this was a superb speech in Parliament directed at members of the Opposition. Almost immediately, people started to misinterpret it, twist it, and weaponise it to hit back at Government. The thing you do when somebody attacks you holding a weapon is to disarm them. Take the twisted narrative away from them and take the pin out of their flawed arguments. If anything, it will sort the wheat from the chaff, which is useful info for TS Mods.
Ad @ 1.1
Your suggestion that Ardern failed to front up because she was weak is ignoring reality. She was told not to front up by her security detail. That 'detail' would have known of the existence of threats etc. that the rest of us never get to hear about.
Although she was the primary target, no doubt ministers, MPs were also told to stay away. I note you only mention Green and Labour caucus members. That is a bit disingenuous because my recollection is: no members of National or ACT turned up either. If I'm wrong someone will correct me.
Winston Peters paid them a visit but he's not a parliamentarian any more.
OK she could have waved her hankie from the balcony. Yoo-hoo!
Here's who would have fronted up to it: Kirk, Muldoon, Lange, Palmer, Bolger, Clark, and even probably Key.
which if those MPs met with protestors wanting to kill them?
Muldoon of course had the Red Squad, so it's more likely he would have moved the protestors on in the first few days.
Oh Bullshit Ad.
I remember Sandra Lee facing down a bunch of miners. Muldoon would have sent the red squad.
The absolute bullshit, first from Claire Trevett:
‘Writes the Herald’s Claire Trevett in a must-read analysis of the report’s findings (paywalled), “That decision was prompted by a puzzling naivety, given even shifting a bollard had resulted in confrontation and violence. It appears to have been based on the deluded hope that despite all evidence… the protest group could still be reasoned with.”’
Then I find it here.
First they said you know, there were some good people, despite the tiki torches. Mountainous BS, every article said you should have simply talked to them and that would have solved everything. Christ, we’re seeing the other mainstream party select people who genuinely compare JA to a Nazi. The loyal opposition, not the burn-it-all-down nutbars.
Now the Nats, mainstream media and apparently some here think- oh you can’t negotiate with people making up imaginary laws that justify your execution so that was the mistake. You shouldn’t have listened to them even a little. Even though we’d be slamming you for the opposite, we’ve now contorted ourselves to say the exact opposite of what we’ve been saying.
We’ve seen a lot of right wing revisionism to say whatever you did was wrong and we’d have done it right.
Yep. This kind of thing would never have happened in China. The army would have been sent in, tanks and all.
I think it was handled well, from the outside looking in.
The most likely outcome once all the loons got established was a full on riot through the streets of Wellington, so the fact they were contained then removed with only moderate damage was a victory,
I get sick of ivory tower reviews.
Another example of why the PAYE deducted from employee wages (as well as student loan payments) by employers should be automatically paid on payday to IRD. That money belongs to the employee not the employer.
It is also a nightmare to sort out from the employees end as well.
“It had not filed GST returns, nor paid GST returns, nor income tax for close to six years, and not met PAYE obligations for a little over one year,” Williams said.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131824326/construction-firm-didnt-pay-gst-for-six-years-before-entering-administration
Bit like Stephen Jack's political career.
https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1649048306503536641
what a phenomenal waste of resources, energy, creativity and time. What happened to the post-explosion pollution? It's like the climate and ecological crises don't exist.
I couldn't work out all the cheering. I was like, was it meant to blow up?
apparently it was a test, so when the test blew up it was ok to cheer because it's all about the learning. They get to try and not blow something else up in another few months.
It all sounds like a very large kindergarten to me.
Would anyone in the right mind step into a box sitting on top of one of those barely controlled explosions?
The Tesla share price is now the same as it was in October 2020, and still heading south this morning.
As if Henry Ford had invested 5% of his worth into the Hindenburg programme.
https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+share+price+now&rlz=1C1GCEB_enNZ1041NZ1041&oq=Tesla+share+price+now&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j0i22i30l9.3966j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Tesla investors must surely be crazy.
As test flights go – especially for the first of a type – the engineers will be more than happy. It flew quite long enough to have obtained masses of data and valuable lessons.
I was yarning with a colleague just yesterday the difference between engineering and management. We see anything that goes wrong as a valuable chance to fix it; management thinking types either want to pretend it didn’t happen or look for someone else to blame.
If, if there were a use for the 1% in this world, it would be to be able to burn the really high R&D shielded from taxpayer scrutiny.
I'm struggling otherwise to defend Elon Musk's moral worth in this universe.
Tesla's P/E tells the story. It's a cult.
I see a lot of tesla on the rd, must be doing something right.
it's capitalism. It won't save us from climate change.
People will not willingly live with less, even if it kills them , science is the only palatable cure.
there are all sorts of people who are already willing to live with less, whole movements of them. And then there are the people who are forced to by circumstance.
Cyclone Gabrielle taught us that putting all our eggs in the EV replacing ICE BAU basket is a nonsense.
How could this have been allowed to go this far?
How is it possible that a large business could trade for six years without paying GST?
IRD needs to answer some serious questions about this.
How indeed!
This is not good news about TWO failing to deliver a coherent plan to deliver on actual front line medical services (Yanno, the health crisis, that the Minister doesn't want to call a health crisis)
When the major health unions/organizations (senior and junior doctors, nurses and allied medical staff) are saying there is a whole lot of talk, and little or no action, either short term (winter is coming) or long term (building healthy resilience in the system)
Further quotes:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/taskforce-failing-to-deliver-health-staff-gaps-say-doctors/WWYIMJ2Q55GK7EFSUYDQCHHTE4/
Environment Minister David Parker, in proposing new planning shortcuts to help the giant energy corporations, said yesterday:
“Where you have outstanding landscapes, for example, which are seen to be required to be protected to the maximum extent, it has effectively prevented wind farms from being developed in places that we need them. Now, that’s not to say that every significant landscape should have a wind farm on it, but it does say that there are some distractions from visual amenity that we’re going to have to put up with as a country if we’re going to get the renewable generation that we need.”
Parker is proposing to put thousands of industrial wind-towers all over NZ's Outstanding Natural Landscape.
This should be fought tooth and nail.
https://www.politik.co.nz/parker-sidesteps-his-own-legislation/
[link added]
Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.
What part of the discussion paper worries you?
See my post below-there is no need to desecrate NZ’s Outstanding Natural Landscape with massive towers. There are onshore wind sites that are not within ONL and even then when visual effects are taken into account solar is better.
If such proposals are weighted with climate change mitigation as a top priority, other considerations such as "Outstanding Natural Landscape" will naturally fall in weighting.
This adjustment of current values is a necessary change – not just for non-environmentalists – but environmentalists and conservationists as well.
Not necessarily Molly. The advantage of solar is that it does not need to be located in elevated wind-prone areas, many of these sites being within Outstanding Natural Landscape. Solar could be spread across the Canterbury Plains for instance. Sheep/cattle can graze below the panels.
In terms of cost solar is fast catching up on onshore wind and is cheaper than offshore…see below and remembering this info is 2 years old and solar will have further closed the gap on onshore wind.
"The global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of new onshore wind projects added in 2021 fell by 15%, year‑on‑year, to USD 0.033/kWh, while that of new utility-scale solar PV fell by 13% year-on-year to USD 0.048/kWh and that of offshore wind declined 13% to USD 0.075/kWh. With only one concentrating solar power (CSP) plant commissioned in 2021, the LCOE rose 7% year-on-year to USD 0.114/kWh."
The period 2010 to 2021 has witnessed a seismic improvement in the competitiveness of renewables. The global weighted average LCOE of newly commissioned utility‑scale solar PV projects declined by 88% between 2010 and 2021, whilst that of onshore wind fell by 68%, CSP by 68% and offshore wind by 60%."
https://www.irena.org/publications/2022/Jul/Renewable-Power-Generation-Costs-in-2021
There's plenty of Consented but unbuilt solar farms already.
There are no consents for offshore wind farms in New Zealand, let alone built ones, and there won't be for well over a decade. We don't even have a regulatory framework to deal with them yet.
Thanks for the links Bearded Git.
The weighting I was referring to was weighting in terms of decision making for consents, investments, grants etc.
If climate change mitigation is expected to be THE priority for all members of the public, authorities and governments, then others will naturally fall down the list. That doesn't mean that they should not be considered, just that they will be reduced in terms of weighting for those decisions.
please provide a link for that quote.
Apologies Weka….see below.
https://www.politik.co.nz/parker-sidesteps-his-own-legislation/
👍
The old man says that the under the table emerald mine in Zambia did indeed exist, a rapid unscheduled disassembly, the blue tick shemozzle, and now, this.
So, Twitter decided to pull a DeviantArt move and change its Terms Of Services to include anything you post there on their AI dataset, to re-publish your art and benefit from it without your consent or compensation.
TIME TO DELETE YOUR ART PORTFOLIO ON TWITTER
https://mastodon.art/@Victor_el_DM/110229952694303511
Trump requiring those with the blue tick to pay him money, lest twitter allow impersonation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65344010
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/elon-musk-and-twitter-remove-blue-checks-from-users-who-dont-pay/NMFT23FOURDBZDGU56M23OCDMA/