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.
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When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
COMMENTARY:By Ronny Kareni Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding. Nowhere is this more evident ...
Analysis - Nicola Willis is holding firm on tax cuts despite the economic outlook being worse than forecast and critics urging her to wait, writes Peter Wilson for The Week In Politics. ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
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 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
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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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcTmBfA7Qik
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/