I heard a quick promo on the radio the otherday which Hosking was talking to Roberson about such figures. Hosking asked -what about Australia which is 'higher'.
Robertson queried where he got his numbers from, but really should have a better answer which I can do now
1. Iron Ore prices have jumped up dramatically in last 9 months, flows to GDP
2.Iron Ore etc
3. Tourism In normal times Australia a 'net tourism exporter' as it residents travel much more than us ( more competition means their airfares for equivalent routes are cheaper). Covid has meant the boost to domestic tourism is greater, but a few areas more affected than others. And of course international tourism is a bigger part of NZ economy , more like 4-5% nothing like the inflated number 20% the 'industry' claims…that would make foreign tourists a $40 bill input …laughable.
We have shortages within the workforce and growth, then why are industries, some contributors here and the government doing all they can to suppress any wage growth ? The nurses battle just to name one.
I wait to read that we need to keep interest rates down for those with debt.
You are mistaking growth, as an increase on returns on investment, ie profits. A good thing. With an increase in wages, ie wage inflation. A bad thing.*
*(mainly because it cuts into growth in profits. A very bad thing).
Yes. "One Roof' earlier this year was running opinion columns by person, who very little was said. A look at linkedin showed he was the Founder and former CEO of 'The Property Council', hardly a mere 'commentator'
The Herald also seems to be running stories by staff who either joined them from 'Property Press' or are moonlighting/ contra deal
I'm ready…a mix of Russian Red and two other Kiwi garlic strains going into a 3m2 lovingly prepared bed. Up here, I guess I should have planted earlier…but I'm a bit of a stickler for the solstice ritual. Have warned the neighbours there could be naked dancing and music….
Three weeks ago I bunged three cloves of shop bought garlic into a yogurt pot to see if they'd grow. Two are well over 10 cm and the one I thought had failed is up about 4cm. Last years crop was a fizzer due to drought and us not having collected enough water to maintain even minimum hydration. This year…our cups runneth over…77000 litres stored up. Still picking outdoor tomatoes.
Armed with a search warrant, Italy’s police wildlife unit entered the house of a suspected cactus trafficker, finding more than 1000 rare cacti poached from Chile's Atacama Desert in a locked room.
The collecting of huia feathers comes to mind. The great thing about plants though, is their potential for propagation; from one rare (poached) plant can come thousands. Standing a huia feather in a glass, however, results only in disappointment.
Indeed, I suspect many plants here have come from a single imported specimen, in many cases the intransigent position of MPI has created a black market and prevented the mass propagation of endangered species many of which stand pretty much zero chance of surviving in the 'wild' here.
Something I saw in NT Times this morning about US 'labour shortage', which sort of reflects what the industry groups are claiming here – but they want the migrant tap of cheaper labour to be turned back on.
However as NY Times points out , a lot more people have quit there jobs this year , as last year was a holding pattern for those who feel underpaid or dont like their job anymore
"By some estimates, more than five million fewer people quit last year than would otherwise be expected, as some workers, riding out the labor market’s convulsions, stuck with jobs they may have wanted to leave anyway"
So the mirage of labour shortage , often meaning not 5-10 people applying only 1 or 2, is just a consequence of the labour force stability last year ( apart from those that lost their job) and a higher turnover in last 6 months
Only one quote suggested that Hubbard was taking someone else's place. Difficult to see, as no other woman in NZ seems to have qualified for her weight class.
But far be it for me to suggest that your desire to exclude a trans personbe critical of a trans person's gender from a competition should remain unexpressed.
It's not excluding trans people, it's excluding trans women from a particular category, not sport generally. We exclude men from women's sports. Straight people can be excluded from gay and lesbian space. Paheka from Maori spaces and so on. Exclusion isn't inherently bad.
"be critical of a trans person's gender"
No-one cares about gender, the issue is biological sex.
The trip from women wanting to discuss the fairness issues of trans women and other biological males in women's sports, to 'bigots want to exclude trans people from sport and should stfu' is a big one.
Lots of people think that Hubbard should compete based on biological sex. That means not in the women's competition, because the reason we have women's separate from men's sport is fairness due to physical differences between the two sexes. There’s plenty of research and analysis out now on how males retain male advantage despite medication to alter hormones.
Instead of expecting women to be disadvantaged to make way for trans women and other males, we should be retaining women's rights and looking at how to create sports that will work for trans people. And non-binary, because that's what's coming up next.
I just forgot most of the many levels on which this debate has become utterly pointless.
So sure, Hubbard has taken someone else's place for the Olympics (even though nobody else from NZ qualified for that weight class), and will have an unfair advantage over other Olympic competitors (even though her record suggests she seems to be on a par with other Olympic-qualifiedwomen weightlifters in her class), and excluding transwomen from a category isn't exclusion at all. She should have seperate but equal events, I guess.
if it's pointless why are you here? It matters a great deal to many women. You can ignore the arguments all you like, but please don't pretend that you don't know what they are or that they don't exist.
"and excluding transwomen from a category isn't exclusion at all"
excluding transwomen from the category of women is exclusion, just like we exclude other males.
Let's just cut to the chase. The end point here is that women would not be able to have female only space if we are no longer allowed to name our own class. You may not care about that (still surprises me though), but it's supreme bullshit to say this is about fairness if you are elevating trans women at the expense of women. Because that just looks like the same old sexist shit all over again.
I made a comment because the regrettable leftish tendency to oppose injustice jumped the gun on my better judgement. Tends to happen when I read links that don't seem to be based on an impartial selection of facts – I'd still like to see who missed out because Hubbard qualified for the Olympics in her weight class.
If you still think the trans recognition movement is about "elevating" transwomen above other women rather than addressing the basic othering and exclusion of transpeople (and the entire damned spectrum of nonbinary people), or don't see why that is important, no worries.
In twenty years probably nobody will get what the fuss was about.
If you still think the trans recognition movement is about "elevating" transwomen above other women rather than addressing the basic othering and exclusion of transpeople (and the entire damned spectrum of nonbinary people
I neither said that nor believe that. Read it again. What I said is that you, and lefties in general, can’t claim to be supporting trans people out of fairness while removing women’s rights. That you as a man think you know better than feminists what women’s rights entail and whether there is a conflict of rights, fundamentally undermines any position of being on the side of justice.
as for othering, what strikes me as significant about that comment, apart from the gall of lecturing a politicised woman on it, is that I’m guessing you are in favour of sex blindness, similar to how liberal Americans like the idea of colourblindness. It just doesn’t work.
…regrettable leftish tendency to oppose injustice …
Just so there's no confusion…the "injustice" you're referring to is towards Hubbard? From the gender critical who object to male- bodied transwomen athletes competing against women in women's sport?
Any possibility you could, for a nanosecond or two, put yourself in the shoes of these young women…
You are doing that thing again where you are inserting your comments after the comment that you are replying to rather than in chronological order. This is making the discussion hard to follow. I note that you only do this when discussing this issue and it seems an unfair advantage to do this with what are not moderator comments.
Solkta, not quite sure what you mean. I can go into the back end and reply directly to a comment when the reply buttons have run out and this will show my comments as a reply in the Replies tab, and will put my comments ahead of other commenters in the same stream I think.
But I haven't been doing that tonight, I've just been on my mobile and laptop replying as per normal in the front end. Can you please explain a bit better what you are seeing (I think there are issues with the mobile version and if this is another one I will pass it on to Lynn).
it's supreme bullshit to say this is about fairness if you are elevating trans women at the expense of women.
ok, fair call. "at the expense of" vs "over".
It's still a bullshit framing that will be reduced to the history books and a few social conservatives in a couple of decades.
As for the rest, I don't just listen to transwomen on this. I listen to other women who disagree vehemently with anything close to your position, and throw the t-acronym you dislike about with free abandon. I listen to Rosemary, who referred me to fecking youtube comments about "genetic manipulation" and "axes" for some damned reason. I even try to listen to you, and reflect upon the points you make.
But the thought of being referred to youtube comments and tweets with highly selective evidence for the next couple of months just makes me very tired.
Your comment at 9.02pm is showing directly after McFlock's at 7.33pm that it replies to but before Rosemary's comment at 7.50pm and another of McFlock's at 8.25pm.
The same thing was happening the last time i commented on this issue a couple of weeks ago and i mentioned it in reply to you then.
That’s weird. I suspect it’s when I’m on the mobile version and logged in. I get a reply button on the mobile that I don’t get on my laptop. It’s not anything I am doing intentionally (and I don’t remember reading a comment from you on this before but if you have a link handy it would be helpful to look at another example).
ok, just tested it. It's something the mobile version is doing (not me). And it happens whether I am logged in or not. So it should also happen with anyone using the mobile version where a thread has run out of replies on the desktop version but there are still reply buttons on the mobile version.
edit, just noting that the mobile version doesn’t have time stamps on each comment like in the desktop version.
You have been trying really hard to put words in my mouth and i really don't appreciate it. You have been behaving like RL.
All i have been saying is that LGBTQ spaces are for all LGBTQ people. If L people want to have a separate space then that space can't be within LGBTQ space, ie Pride.
Also, inserting your posts out of time sequence is making all this hard to follow. As these aren't moderation notes this seems unfair.
@McFlock, I hadn't seen that comment from you the other day either. Ironically, one of things I was hoping from posting Hilton's tweet is the kind of discussion you brought to bear on it, but unfortunately it got derailed early on.
If Hilton is cherry picking problematically (rather than her just tweeting some charts she was working on that day), I'd like to know. Sometimes it's easier to get someone to explain charts than to figure it out myself (I don't have that background), so I laid down a challenge.
Imo, she's worth following because she does usually explain better what her argument is.
The other irony is that if there hadn't been such a massive suppression of debate, I'd be putting up researches and clear posts on the topics and we could be wrangling with the issues in the comments, rather than me dropping stuff I find on twitter randomly in OM or DR and us talking past each other.
Assuming of course I could get past the elephant in the living room of why there are no feminists posting about feminism here. So you might understand then why I'm tetchy about the whole thing.
For one thing, in the extended chart she's looking at one result in all weight classes and controlling for age.
Seems to me, if you're looking at a sport that has its main divisions by weight, maybe control for that? If the arguments are that two groups have people of different weights, then neglecting to control for that factor creates a chart that's misleading. The primary questions are whether a 130kg trans woman has an advantage over another non-trans woman, and whether weight classes reflect the participants. If the weight classes for the Masters are divided by the blank lines, then some classes consist of only a 5kg spread in weight, while the SHW class Hubbard is in has something like a 40kg spread between the four competitors.
She has a fair call about Hubbard's age, but then Precious Mackenzie was getting weightlifting medals for NZ in his 40s. So not sure one datapoint means anything.
The other way in which the masters seem to be an aberration in the apparent spread between the gold medalists and the following three competitors, compared to e.g. the panpacs or the 2019 world champs (and dayum that was a fascinating googlehole). In the world champs Hubbard came 6 out of 19, with not one opponent under 100kg as far as I can see, with at least a couple heavier than her.
But I don't see the last ten years of the IWF world champs all in a line, just the one with a lot of people in it for the fun. Might skew the spread a bit.
edit: hell of a google digression to get a handle on it, though – wikipedia, competition score pdfs, all sorts of sports websites. Interesting – didn’t know people kept such data online.
there's a whole thesis to be written on how left wing men have abandoned the concept that women get to have their own politics while at the same time upholding the right of trans women to have their own politics. It's almost like it wasn't real and all the time it was just men supporting women where their interests aligned, not because women a deserving of a full place in society. Of course such a thesis won't be written at the moment because the punishments in academia are too severe. Not even going to be a post on TS.
yes. Its the apparently the largest NZ team in weightlifting…. as those going met the standard and in separate classes. I wonder why so many qualified.
never mind, the pitchforks and hoods are being passed to the mob ,out to protect the purity of womenhood.
The men and womens groups of that american group of bigots had this as their creed
'This organisation is not anti-jew, anti-catholic nor anti-negro BUT we restrict our membership to native born, white, protestant, gentile American citizens.' …plus White supremacy.
Change a few words and we are back in the 1920s.
These are the possible women classes, Hubbard is the selectee in 87 kg and over, in spite of lies told in Rueters link.
45 kg (99.2 lb) (non-Olympic)
49 kg (108 lb)
55 kg (121 lb)
59 kg (130 lb)
64 kg (141 lb)
71 kg (157 lb) (non-Olympic)
76 kg (168 lb)
81 kg (179 lb) (non-Olympic)
87 kg (192 lb)
87 kg and over (191 lb+)
[you’re going to have to up your game in this debate. I couldn’t make much sense of your previous comment, and this one is not much better. What lies? If you are going to make a claim of fact, you have to back it up. There’s an expectation that in controversial topics you will do this in real time, not after being asked. The reason for this is to stop people just dropping in bullshit and slurs that derail or flame instead of debating the issues.
Please reread the Policy especially the bit about not using tone or language that has the effect of excluding others. If you want to make the argument that gender critical women are the same as the KKK (I think this is what you are doing), then you will have to make the argument, credibly, and back it up. You cannot just call feminists nazis on TS.
I’m leaving your comment, but know that you’re now using up my moderator time for the second time in a few days and I’ve got short patience for regulars here being so disrespectful of the boundaries and kaupapa of the site. And yes I will do the same moderation if gender critical people start with the same kind of slurring, derailing, non-debate bullshit. – weka]
Im not your student or subordinate and dont have to justify my view the lies told in mere Reuters link. – no context from the story added , no mention why its important , just a drive by link tossed there along with STFU.
Wheres this person who was left out because Hubbard was selected ? Wheres the beef ?
'understanding' is the new 'safety', a cliche used to dismiss opinions or inclusion that dont align with the 'right outlook' on gender
Feedback: some of your comments are really hard to parse. Honestly, I have to read them three times to understand what you mean.
Rosemary didn't tell anyone to STFU in the opening comment, she made the point that women are being told to not talk about the issues and she linked to an article discussing that.
Wheres this person who was left out because Hubbard was selected ? Wheres the beef ?
Women have already lost out competing against Hubbard. Hubbard will be competing against female athletes again, with Hubbard's male bodied advantage. That's the beef.
'understanding' is the new 'safety', a cliche used to dismiss opinions or inclusion that dont align with the 'right outlook' on gender
what does that even mean? this is a classic example of you saying something but not explaining.
You can assert independence from boundaries on TS, but I will continue to moderate, and across the board the thing that it ends up being about is wasting moderator time. There's only so many times I'm going to ask for you to up your game and support your assertions before I just start putting in short, and then increasing bans. You can say some abhorrent things here, but there are rules around how you do that. I've explained well enough where the boundaries, ball is in your court.
no context from the story added , no mention why its important , I prefer brevity, ghostwhowalksnz, and letting the link speak for itself. My personal opinion on the matter would be indicated by the "I guess its tough shit for female athletes."
Golly gosh…this is akin to a Year 8 English class on comprehension.
No one cares about your views on gender purity, or the cliches used to exclude others who dare to different. Hubbard is doing what she wants to do whether you like it or not
I think the main thing is this was basically created by the IWF rule change and the pressure should be on them to change their rules. Hubbard is elegable and NZ selectors should follow the selection rules of their sport. Other sports will probably follow the consensus trend emerging from that process eventually.
The New Zealand Medical Council are threatening doctors with terminating their employment if they have the temerity to criticise the vaccine rollout. Shades of East/ Germany/ the Soviet Union .All free speech regarding the vaccine rollout has been cancelled.We are not a country that welcomes both sides of an argument being presented, and the public making up its own mind. No informed consent here ! The Death of Democracy!!!
If you read that article, you’ll see that you’re barking up the wrong tree and that you have the wrong end of the stick.
There are plenty of experts, including medics, who are criticising the Government without fear of losing their jobs, e.g., the Plan B group and Professor Des Gorman come to mind.
I take a dim view of commenters who spread misinformation here.
Thanks Rosemary – Dr Thornley (of Plan B fame?) is a signatory; say no more. There were two news items on the PlanB website in April, but nothing since then.
Succumbed to the 'relentless pressure' – get my first jab of this experimental vaccine next week. Maybe it'll be the end of me, and yet I can hardly wait – weird eh?
The council has received 13 complaints about medical staff from the public this year – although that included instances of multiple complaints about the same doctor.
I agree and I don’t know why the letter was even brought into it other than as a distraction and diversion from the utter nonsense spouted by Historian Pete.
Some commenters here have a habit of shovelling all shit into their favourite pet wheelbarrow to confirm their ingrained conscious and sub-conscious biases. SSDD.
That discusses "a letter" but fails to provide a link to it?
Attached photo shows supporters outside the courthouse for the section 23 case , and it requires little in the way of effort to find the Ngai Kaitiaki Tuku Ihu website.
Honest and unbiased reporting would encourage readers to actually read the 'offending' letter and make their own minds up as to the appropriate response.
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that any doctor who actively dissuades people from using a tested and safe vaccine during a pandemic is unfit to practise medicine and deserves to be struck off.
Sure, if they can documentclear levels of harm, especially if that harm is in the same order of magnitude or greater than from covid, they're whistleblowers.
You fail to mention said doctors are peddling misinformation about Covid 19 which I am sure is contrary to the ethical standards expected of such people. Any doctors who behave like that deserve to be struck of the medical register forthwith.
Can you please point to the investigation and reasons why the Council is investigating doctors for potentially spreading misinformation around Covid-19? Thank you in advance.
This letter…written in April and signed by 40-odd members of MC who all appended their MC registration numbers. This I saw as an indication of their integrity and willingness to put their reputations on the line. ( You might have noticed I have a thing about folks opining anonymously.)
I understand more have since signed. IMHO there is certainly nothing in that letter that warrants such a response from the Medical Council. (I hope there is another letter somewhere that merits such censure.) A link within the article would have helped.
This is the only such letter that I've read. I had to go looking for it and it was by chance I found it. Well, not quite…I read the decision from the case Sue Grey took to the court over Section 23 of the Medicines Act which forced an immediate response from Government to rectify the 'anomaly.' Fascinating stuff if holding truth to power is one's thing.
There was a time, not long since, when folks here would do likewise and dig a little deeper into the scary, shouty headlines dealt up by MSM. Having personally been a victim of such I make a real effort to fact check.
I have no detailed knowledge of the MC investigation. In any case, Historian Pete made all sorts of weird and wild accusations without rhyme or reason. I don’t think he’s a genuine historian. Do you?
Firstly, I have witnessed the biggest suppression of news and debate that has occurred in New Zealand since the 1952 Waterfront Strike. I can remember the NZBC around 2005 refusing to air a topic on the grounds that they were unable to present both sides of the story. Now it is par for the course that only one side is presented .The New Zealand public have a right to hear both sides. I have neither seen on TV{Tova Obrien anyone?} nor read in newspapers ie the Herald, any reasonable coverage of the views of those opposed to the" Vaccine' rollout. This is a suppression of free speech. How can these Doctors have a professional debate when they are closed down in all avenues. They have the courage to speak out at a significant risk to their professional careers. They have a credo to live up to: To do no harm. And the Pfizer jab is to them not in the interests of their patients.So they refuse to be gagged.
Secondly My own reseach on the topic has lead me to believe that firstly the jab is not a vaccine.A vaccine immunises the patient and prevents transmission.The Pfizer jab does neither. A plethora of toxic side effects is occuring after the " vaccination", especially the second one, which includes death. This is occurring far more frequently than would have occurred if the rollout had not happened at all . The Authorities are doing a sterling job of suppressing the real deaths happening being revealed to the public. However the TRUTH is slowly being revealed. Resistance is growing as we speak .This toxic Experimental "vaccine" has been established in haste, and many throughout the world now fear that long term it will result in unaccepable casualties ..
So, the death of free speech, and the termination of informed consent. And serious harm to a large number of the public. A determined group of Doctors acting on their conscience .I know whose side I'm on!!!
Professional debates do not happen in the media, generally. So no suppression there.
Professional debate between scientists involves evidence. The moonbats have none, so no suppression there.
The news media is supposed to disseminate news, not moonbat theories, otherwise the nightly news would headline whatever the local crazy person was yelling in the street. So no suppression there.
Your own research has led you to make some interesting claims, including "The Authorities are doing a sterling job of suppressing the real deaths happening being revealed to the public." I'm glad that you have managed to compromise this veil of official secrecy with your own research, which doubtless includes unearthing evidence buried in youtube videos. They can bury the corpses, but they can't censor online content, eh! /sarc
Intriguing PoV. Personally think it's OK that these determined doctors won't be getting immunised against COVID-19 – just hope their patients will be OK.
The Pfizer vaccine was 79 percent effective against the Delta variant and 92 percent against the Alpha variant at least 14 days after the second dose. The AZ vaccine was 60 percent effective against the Delta variant and 79 percent against the Alpha variant.
Earlier, Public Health England released similar study results. The study said two full doses of the Pfizer vaccine reduced the chance of hospital admission for the Delta variant infection by 96 percent. Two doses of the AZ vaccine lowered the risk of the infection progressing to a serious disease by 92 percent.
You undermine your own credibility by attributing every single climatic event to CC. Tornados have been occuring in NZ for as long as it has been above the waves and they are common in one form or another in almost every country in the world, and as for heavy rain and floods, if you believe that they are only a recent addition to weathers numerous variations, you are really dreaming. Even last weeks large floods in Canterbury are merely proof of how the Plains were formed over millennia. If you want to be believed you must first of all be believable.
You undermine your own credibility by attributing every single climatic event to CC.
Yes Adrian, I sometimes undermine my credibility, here and elsewhere.
As to whether I attribute "every single climatic event to CC", others can judge the credibility of that charge. Fwiw, I believe that "attributing every single climatic event to CC" is as silly as suggesting that there is no causal link between climate trends (and the frequency and/or severity of extreme weather events), and global warming. Time will tell.
It’s called “attribution science” and New Zealand researchers have been working on it since 2009, Niwa’s principal climate scientist, Dr Sam Dean, says.
The problem has been that getting an answer has taken many months, by which time people have moved on, he says. But two pieces of work are under way that may produce answers “within days after an extreme weather event”.
“Attribution has a really strong role in communicating with people the idea that climate change is the here and now. It's not something for the distant future,” Dean says.
“I spent years talking about what might happen in the year 2100 if we don't mitigate climate change and that's still true, but it disengages with people. It's much more powerful to [show that we] live in a different world now. We've already had more than a degree of warming and that is affecting everything – from ecosystems to floods to heat waves to droughts.”
Climate Change Indicators: Weather and Climate Rising global average temperature is associated with widespread changes in weather patterns. Scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change. This chapter focuses on observed changes in temperature, precipitation, storms, floods, and droughts.
Suppression of free speech. Decades ago, when MMP was mooted we held a public meeting to explain it. Quite a good turn-out, and worked well as we sat and listened and took it in. The time was well-used and the understanding was enhanced as we did not give any time to the FPP proponents who gnashed their teeth.
No-thinking types like them did not want us to waste our time exercising our minds about possible worthy changes to the political process. We also had a very firm woman time-keeper of a Liberal persuasion who was interested in a well-controlled meeting which enabled informed discussion.
The types 'agin-it' just want to choose their weapons and hit people over the head to stop them daring to divert their minds from the very satisfactory system they have decided they like and want to retain.
Listen Shit-For-Brains, there is no alternative evidence on the pros and cons for vaccination, but what there is a job offer going on your preferred planet and you and your dopey flat-earthers should be right on to it as it needs qualified expendables to join them. See Jenny at 9 at 3.00pm. Bon voyage and good riddance.
Historian Pete- the first job of the historian is to get the dates right; otherwise, anything you say afterwards is somewhat blighted by doubt as to your actual knowledge, doubt of your proofreading skills and doubt as to your right to appropriate the title of historian.
The Waterfront Dispute (that it was a strike is actually itself disputed) took place in 1951.
All hail to the “suppression of free speech” when the nut-bars turn up. I s'pose you support Donald Trump and believe the presidential election was stolen from him.
Do you believe the moon landing was a fake and that the American government was responsible for the World Trade Centre terrorist attacks? Or worse still do you believe it was a false flag and it never happened at all?
Geez… you need brain surgery on the one and only brain cell you possess.
A. Non-stop ads on TV exhorting us all to buy oversized 4 wheel drive utes.
Or,
B. A plan to shift the planet further away from the sun so that we can all continue to enjoy driving them well into the future.
Scientific American
A Modest Proposal: Let’s Change Earth’s Orbit
What’s the worst that could happen?
Maddie Bender, June 18, 2021
….Sure, it’s a Sisyphean task in which humanity is Sisyphus and the boulder being eternally pushed uphill is Earth itself. But at least we’d get to keep driving our sweet SUVs! I say we get to work.
And can we get rid of that annoying 22 degree tilt in the earth's axis please? I get an awful crick in my neck compensating, and the four seasons are a nuisance and a bore.
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Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
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 cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive One minister is talking tough while a colleague – whose ministry had acted tough and drawn a barrage of flak – has shown an official softening. Some ministers are doing what Labour was good at, which is distributing public funds to causes regarded as worthy or ...
A ballot for 4 Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Insurance Contracts Bill (Duncan Webb) Income Tax (Clean Transport FBT Exclusion) Amendment Bill (Julie Anne Genter) Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill (Greg Fleming) Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) ...
One of the strongest narratives about "our" spy agencies is that they are basically institutional traitors, working for foreign powers (or just themselves), without any control or oversight by the elected government. And today, we have yet another report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security which explicitly confirms this. ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
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I learned a new word this morning: sponcon
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018800326/undeclared-sponcon-causing-political-and-editorial-headaches
One Roof…AKA the marketing arm of the NZ economy
GDP was up 1.6% in Q2-2021, our economy is on FIRE!
lol….very good
I heard a quick promo on the radio the otherday which Hosking was talking to Roberson about such figures. Hosking asked -what about Australia which is 'higher'.
Robertson queried where he got his numbers from, but really should have a better answer which I can do now
1. Iron Ore prices have jumped up dramatically in last 9 months, flows to GDP
2.Iron Ore etc
3. Tourism In normal times Australia a 'net tourism exporter' as it residents travel much more than us ( more competition means their airfares for equivalent routes are cheaper). Covid has meant the boost to domestic tourism is greater, but a few areas more affected than others. And of course international tourism is a bigger part of NZ economy , more like 4-5% nothing like the inflated number 20% the 'industry' claims…that would make foreign tourists a $40 bill input …laughable.
We have shortages within the workforce and growth, then why are industries, some contributors here and the government doing all they can to suppress any wage growth ? The nurses battle just to name one.
I wait to read that we need to keep interest rates down for those with debt.
You are mistaking growth, as an increase on returns on investment, ie profits. A good thing. With an increase in wages, ie wage inflation. A bad thing.*
*(mainly because it cuts into growth in profits. A very bad thing).
Yes. "One Roof' earlier this year was running opinion columns by person, who very little was said. A look at linkedin showed he was the Founder and former CEO of 'The Property Council', hardly a mere 'commentator'
The Herald also seems to be running stories by staff who either joined them from 'Property Press' or are moonlighting/ contra deal
I wonder if that too is sponcon ?
Bugger! It’s going to be a long day today.
Y'all have prepared the beds for the garlic of course? Homegrown is so much more effective at warding off the evil 'fluences.
Already planted my Russian Red garlic!
I'm ready…a mix of Russian Red and two other Kiwi garlic strains going into a 3m2 lovingly prepared bed. Up here, I guess I should have planted earlier…but I'm a bit of a stickler for the solstice ritual. Have warned the neighbours there could be naked dancing and music….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qcPS-J0HTg
Planted our garlic six weeks ago to (hopefully) harvest before garlic rust gets chance to take hold. Plants are already 10cm high.
Three weeks ago I bunged three cloves of shop bought garlic into a yogurt pot to see if they'd grow. Two are well over 10 cm and the one I thought had failed is up about 4cm. Last years crop was a fizzer due to drought and us not having collected enough water to maintain even minimum hydration. This year…our cups runneth over…77000 litres stored up. Still picking outdoor tomatoes.
Garlic, onions, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, you name it. My dreams are more lucid than Nostradamus’s!
Cactus smuggling. It's a thing.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/garden/300337908/rare-poached-cacti-found-in-italian-raid-and-sent-home-to-native-chile
Poached cactus! Imagine!
Acquired taste.
Nopales.
Definitely an acquired taste. I gave them a good go when I worked in Tijuana, but just couldn't get there.
There's money in rare plants and plenty of it, every now and then you can get a peak on Trademe ie the plant that went for 27K the other week.
There are a number of amazing private collections in NZ that sit under the radar lest MPI get wind of them.
The collecting of huia feathers comes to mind. The great thing about plants though, is their potential for propagation; from one rare (poached) plant can come thousands. Standing a huia feather in a glass, however, results only in disappointment.
Indeed, I suspect many plants here have come from a single imported specimen, in many cases the intransigent position of MPI has created a black market and prevented the mass propagation of endangered species many of which stand pretty much zero chance of surviving in the 'wild' here.
There's money in cacti…prime Far North Real estate, complete with ready to harvest crop.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-woman-caught-smuggling-succulents-and-endangered-cacti-into-new-zealand/7COM2VJ6FAZWMQ24G53RCN2R6Q/
finally, something that almost certainly won't be smuggled in someone's pants.
McFlock @ (3.4) … Or tucked up inside their rear end!
well, that's an ouchie…
Never say Neve.
Talking of cactuses/cacti reminded of Cactus Kate and started my wondering what that prickly persona was up to.
Reading between the lines, it seems CK wants to demote the Prime Minister and the First Man and replace them with their daughter.
Be careful what you wish for Kate. One day it might come true.
Something I saw in NT Times this morning about US 'labour shortage', which sort of reflects what the industry groups are claiming here – but they want the migrant tap of cheaper labour to be turned back on.
However as NY Times points out , a lot more people have quit there jobs this year , as last year was a holding pattern for those who feel underpaid or dont like their job anymore
"By some estimates, more than five million fewer people quit last year than would otherwise be expected, as some workers, riding out the labor market’s convulsions, stuck with jobs they may have wanted to leave anyway"
So the mirage of labour shortage , often meaning not 5-10 people applying only 1 or 2, is just a consequence of the labour force stability last year ( apart from those that lost their job) and a higher turnover in last 6 months
Celebrations afoot at the news that local 'lassie' Laurel scores another first place.
I guess its tough shit for female athletes, who can just go and stfu.
Really …and who else made the qualifying mark ?…what would you know about weightlifting any way
The NZ team includes 3 female and 2 male in differing categories
Take your own advice !
You are making little sense. Again. Did you actually read the links provided?
I guess not.
Only one quote suggested that Hubbard was taking someone else's place. Difficult to see, as no other woman in NZ seems to have qualified for her weight class.
But far be it for me to suggest that your desire to
exclude a trans personbe critical of a trans person's gender from a competition should remain unexpressed.It's not excluding trans people, it's excluding trans women from a particular category, not sport generally. We exclude men from women's sports. Straight people can be excluded from gay and lesbian space. Paheka from Maori spaces and so on. Exclusion isn't inherently bad.
"be critical of a trans person's gender"
No-one cares about gender, the issue is biological sex.
The trip from women wanting to discuss the fairness issues of trans women and other biological males in women's sports, to 'bigots want to exclude trans people from sport and should stfu' is a big one.
So nobody wants to exclude Hubbard from the event?
are you being stupid or a smart arse?
Lots of people think that Hubbard should compete based on biological sex. That means not in the women's competition, because the reason we have women's separate from men's sport is fairness due to physical differences between the two sexes. There’s plenty of research and analysis out now on how males retain male advantage despite medication to alter hormones.
Instead of expecting women to be disadvantaged to make way for trans women and other males, we should be retaining women's rights and looking at how to create sports that will work for trans people. And non-binary, because that's what's coming up next.
I just forgot most of the many levels on which this debate has become utterly pointless.
So sure, Hubbard has taken someone else's place for the Olympics (even though nobody else from NZ qualified for that weight class), and will have an unfair advantage over other Olympic competitors (even though her record suggests she seems to be on a par with other Olympic-qualified women weightlifters in her class), and excluding transwomen from a category isn't exclusion at all.
She should have seperate but equal events, I guess.if it's pointless why are you here? It matters a great deal to many women. You can ignore the arguments all you like, but please don't pretend that you don't know what they are or that they don't exist.
"and excluding transwomen from a category isn't exclusion at all"
excluding transwomen from the category of women is exclusion, just like we exclude other males.
Let's just cut to the chase. The end point here is that women would not be able to have female only space if we are no longer allowed to name our own class. You may not care about that (still surprises me though), but it's supreme bullshit to say this is about fairness if you are elevating trans women at the expense of women. Because that just looks like the same old sexist shit all over again.
I made a comment because the regrettable leftish tendency to oppose injustice jumped the gun on my better judgement. Tends to happen when I read links that don't seem to be based on an impartial selection of facts – I'd still like to see who missed out because Hubbard qualified for the Olympics in her weight class.
If you still think the trans recognition movement is about "elevating" transwomen above other women rather than addressing the basic othering and exclusion of transpeople (and the entire damned spectrum of nonbinary people), or don't see why that is important, no worries.
In twenty years probably nobody will get what the fuss was about.
I neither said that nor believe that. Read it again. What I said is that you, and lefties in general, can’t claim to be supporting trans people out of fairness while removing women’s rights. That you as a man think you know better than feminists what women’s rights entail and whether there is a conflict of rights, fundamentally undermines any position of being on the side of justice.
as for othering, what strikes me as significant about that comment, apart from the gall of lecturing a politicised woman on it, is that I’m guessing you are in favour of sex blindness, similar to how liberal Americans like the idea of colourblindness. It just doesn’t work.
@McFlock
…regrettable leftish tendency to oppose injustice …
Just so there's no confusion…the "injustice" you're referring to is towards Hubbard? From the gender critical who object to male- bodied transwomen athletes competing against women in women's sport?
Any possibility you could, for a nanosecond or two, put yourself in the shoes of these young women…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-_TTj14Kns
…and maybe read the comments?
Score table was reasonably close. Hardly a massive advantage.
Youtube comments gonna youtube.
@weka
You are doing that thing again where you are inserting your comments after the comment that you are replying to rather than in chronological order. This is making the discussion hard to follow. I note that you only do this when discussing this issue and it seems an unfair advantage to do this with what are not moderator comments.
Solkta, not quite sure what you mean. I can go into the back end and reply directly to a comment when the reply buttons have run out and this will show my comments as a reply in the Replies tab, and will put my comments ahead of other commenters in the same stream I think.
But I haven't been doing that tonight, I've just been on my mobile and laptop replying as per normal in the front end. Can you please explain a bit better what you are seeing (I think there are issues with the mobile version and if this is another one I will pass it on to Lynn).
ok, fair call. "at the expense of" vs "over".
It's still a bullshit framing that will be reduced to the history books and a few social conservatives in a couple of decades.
As for the rest, I don't just listen to transwomen on this. I listen to other women who disagree vehemently with anything close to your position, and throw the t-acronym you dislike about with free abandon. I listen to Rosemary, who referred me to fecking youtube comments about "genetic manipulation" and "axes" for some damned reason. I even try to listen to you, and reflect upon the points you make.
But the thought of being referred to youtube comments and tweets with highly selective evidence for the next couple of months just makes me very tired.
Test comment
Test logged out.
@weka
Your comment at 9.02pm is showing directly after McFlock's at 7.33pm that it replies to but before Rosemary's comment at 7.50pm and another of McFlock's at 8.25pm.
The same thing was happening the last time i commented on this issue a couple of weeks ago and i mentioned it in reply to you then.
That’s weird. I suspect it’s when I’m on the mobile version and logged in. I get a reply button on the mobile that I don’t get on my laptop. It’s not anything I am doing intentionally (and I don’t remember reading a comment from you on this before but if you have a link handy it would be helpful to look at another example).
ok, just tested it. It's something the mobile version is doing (not me). And it happens whether I am logged in or not. So it should also happen with anyone using the mobile version where a thread has run out of replies on the desktop version but there are still reply buttons on the mobile version.
edit, just noting that the mobile version doesn’t have time stamps on each comment like in the desktop version.
Your test comment is showing for me as out of sequence before my last comment.
The other time i was referring to was in Daily Review of 21/05.
thanks Soltka, I hadn't seen that comment before (and it's useful for me to read on terms of the conversation there as well as the threading issue).
yes, my test comments are out of chronological sequence, because I made them on my phone using the mobile version. This comment is on my laptop.
@McFlock, I hadn't seen that comment from you the other day either. Ironically, one of things I was hoping from posting Hilton's tweet is the kind of discussion you brought to bear on it, but unfortunately it got derailed early on.
If Hilton is cherry picking problematically (rather than her just tweeting some charts she was working on that day), I'd like to know. Sometimes it's easier to get someone to explain charts than to figure it out myself (I don't have that background), so I laid down a challenge.
Here's what she said later in the thread,
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1399673573988524035
Imo, she's worth following because she does usually explain better what her argument is.
The other irony is that if there hadn't been such a massive suppression of debate, I'd be putting up researches and clear posts on the topics and we could be wrangling with the issues in the comments, rather than me dropping stuff I find on twitter randomly in OM or DR and us talking past each other.
Assuming of course I could get past the elephant in the living room of why there are no feminists posting about feminism here. So you might understand then why I'm tetchy about the whole thing.
For one thing, in the extended chart she's looking at one result in all weight classes and controlling for age.
Seems to me, if you're looking at a sport that has its main divisions by weight, maybe control for that? If the arguments are that two groups have people of different weights, then neglecting to control for that factor creates a chart that's misleading. The primary questions are whether a 130kg trans woman has an advantage over another non-trans woman, and whether weight classes reflect the participants. If the weight classes for the Masters are divided by the blank lines, then some classes consist of only a 5kg spread in weight, while the SHW class Hubbard is in has something like a 40kg spread between the four competitors.
She has a fair call about Hubbard's age, but then Precious Mackenzie was getting weightlifting medals for NZ in his 40s. So not sure one datapoint means anything.
The other way in which the masters seem to be an aberration in the apparent spread between the gold medalists and the following three competitors, compared to e.g. the panpacs or the 2019 world champs (and dayum that was a fascinating googlehole). In the world champs Hubbard came 6 out of 19, with not one opponent under 100kg as far as I can see, with at least a couple heavier than her.
But I don't see the last ten years of the IWF world champs all in a line, just the one with a lot of people in it for the fun. Might skew the spread a bit.
edit: hell of a google digression to get a handle on it, though – wikipedia, competition score pdfs, all sorts of sports websites. Interesting – didn’t know people kept such data online.
I read his comment and decided to treat it with the contempt it deserves.
Nothing new in men deriding women. Unless they're talking about transwomen, then these men are on their side.
If it wasn't so fucking depressing it'd be hilarious.
there's a whole thesis to be written on how left wing men have abandoned the concept that women get to have their own politics while at the same time upholding the right of trans women to have their own politics. It's almost like it wasn't real and all the time it was just men supporting women where their interests aligned, not because women a deserving of a full place in society. Of course such a thesis won't be written at the moment because the punishments in academia are too severe. Not even going to be a post on TS.
Between you and me and the gatepost, I think the wee mites are shit-scared of us.
Fear begats hate and all that.
yes. Its the apparently the largest NZ team in weightlifting…. as those going met the standard and in separate classes. I wonder why so many qualified.
never mind, the pitchforks and hoods are being passed to the mob ,out to protect the purity of womenhood.
The men and womens groups of that american group of bigots had this as their creed
'This organisation is not anti-jew, anti-catholic nor anti-negro BUT we restrict our membership to native born, white, protestant, gentile American citizens.' …plus White supremacy.
Change a few words and we are back in the 1920s.
These are the possible women classes, Hubbard is the selectee in 87 kg and over, in spite of lies told in Rueters link.
45 kg (99.2 lb) (non-Olympic)
49 kg (108 lb)
55 kg (121 lb)
59 kg (130 lb)
64 kg (141 lb)
71 kg (157 lb) (non-Olympic)
76 kg (168 lb)
81 kg (179 lb) (non-Olympic)
87 kg (192 lb)
87 kg and over (191 lb+)
[you’re going to have to up your game in this debate. I couldn’t make much sense of your previous comment, and this one is not much better. What lies? If you are going to make a claim of fact, you have to back it up. There’s an expectation that in controversial topics you will do this in real time, not after being asked. The reason for this is to stop people just dropping in bullshit and slurs that derail or flame instead of debating the issues.
Please reread the Policy especially the bit about not using tone or language that has the effect of excluding others. If you want to make the argument that gender critical women are the same as the KKK (I think this is what you are doing), then you will have to make the argument, credibly, and back it up. You cannot just call feminists nazis on TS.
I’m leaving your comment, but know that you’re now using up my moderator time for the second time in a few days and I’ve got short patience for regulars here being so disrespectful of the boundaries and kaupapa of the site. And yes I will do the same moderation if gender critical people start with the same kind of slurring, derailing, non-debate bullshit. – weka]
mod note.
Im not your student or subordinate and dont have to justify my view the lies told in mere Reuters link. – no context from the story added , no mention why its important , just a drive by link tossed there along with STFU.
Wheres this person who was left out because Hubbard was selected ? Wheres the beef ?
'understanding' is the new 'safety', a cliche used to dismiss opinions or inclusion that dont align with the 'right outlook' on gender
Feedback: some of your comments are really hard to parse. Honestly, I have to read them three times to understand what you mean.
Rosemary didn't tell anyone to STFU in the opening comment, she made the point that women are being told to not talk about the issues and she linked to an article discussing that.
Women have already lost out competing against Hubbard. Hubbard will be competing against female athletes again, with Hubbard's male bodied advantage. That's the beef.
what does that even mean? this is a classic example of you saying something but not explaining.
You can assert independence from boundaries on TS, but I will continue to moderate, and across the board the thing that it ends up being about is wasting moderator time. There's only so many times I'm going to ask for you to up your game and support your assertions before I just start putting in short, and then increasing bans. You can say some abhorrent things here, but there are rules around how you do that. I've explained well enough where the boundaries, ball is in your court.
the lies told in mere Reuters link. Specifically?
no context from the story added , no mention why its important , I prefer brevity, ghostwhowalksnz, and letting the link speak for itself. My personal opinion on the matter would be indicated by the "I guess its tough shit for female athletes."
Golly gosh…this is akin to a Year 8 English class on comprehension.
protect the purity of womenhood.
Nevermind the 1920s….your ancestors, it seems, failed to land far enough from the tree.
Come back when you've learned the difference between 'biological sex' and 'gender.'
The difference between the twain matters…especially in sex segregated sports.
No one cares about your views on gender purity, or the cliches used to exclude others who dare to different. Hubbard is doing what she wants to do whether you like it or not
Hubbard competed as a man in weightlifting.
Now Hubbard competes as a woman.
You don't see a problem with this with respect to fairness to women athletes who have always competed as women because they are, well, women?
I care about Rosemary's views.
No-one cares that Hubbard is trans, all power to them on that and living their life.
Meanwhile,
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/300319156/transgender-athletes-will-be-able-to-play-rugby-but-nz-rugby-is-unsure-who-against
Safety: biological sex actually matters when it comes to physicality.
I think the main thing is this was basically created by the IWF rule change and the pressure should be on them to change their rules. Hubbard is elegable and NZ selectors should follow the selection rules of their sport. Other sports will probably follow the consensus trend emerging from that process eventually.
The New Zealand Medical Council are threatening doctors with terminating their employment if they have the temerity to criticise the vaccine rollout. Shades of East/ Germany/ the Soviet Union .All free speech regarding the vaccine rollout has been cancelled.We are not a country that welcomes both sides of an argument being presented, and the public making up its own mind. No informed consent here ! The Death of Democracy!!!
This is a fine example why you should include a link in your comment, so that others can see what you’re on about and check for themselves.
For example, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/445179/doctors-spreading-misinformation-about-covid-19-may-lose-their-job-medical-council
If you read that article, you’ll see that you’re barking up the wrong tree and that you have the wrong end of the stick.
There are plenty of experts, including medics, who are criticising the Government without fear of losing their jobs, e.g., the Plan B group and Professor Des Gorman come to mind.
I take a dim view of commenters who spread misinformation here.
Is this the offending letter signed by the offensive Doctors?
?
Thanks Rosemary – Dr Thornley (of Plan B fame?) is a signatory; say no more. There were two news items on the PlanB website in April, but nothing since then.
Succumbed to the 'relentless pressure' – get my first jab of this experimental vaccine next week. Maybe it'll be the end of me, and yet I can hardly wait – weird eh?
What letter are your talking about? Historian Pete didn’t mention a letter!? He was also very confused.
It is not about a letter. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/445179/doctors-spreading-misinformation-about-covid-19-may-lose-their-job-medical-council
I agree and I don’t know why the letter was even brought into it other than as a distraction and diversion from the utter nonsense spouted by Historian Pete.
Some commenters here have a habit of shovelling all shit into their favourite pet wheelbarrow to confirm their ingrained conscious and sub-conscious biases. SSDD.
Sacha. You did follow the link within the RNZ piece?
The link that leads to a TVNZ article? (https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/health-professionals-sign-letter-misleading-claims-around-pfizers-covid-vaccine)
That discusses "a letter" but fails to provide a link to it?
Attached photo shows supporters outside the courthouse for the section 23 case , and it requires little in the way of effort to find the Ngai Kaitiaki Tuku Ihu website.
Honest and unbiased reporting would encourage readers to actually read the 'offending' letter and make their own minds up as to the appropriate response.
This complaint process is not about that letter.
What is the nature of this criticism? Logical, I hope, given that it's coming from “doctors“.
three exclamation marks. It must be serious.
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that any doctor who actively dissuades people from using a tested and safe vaccine during a pandemic is unfit to practise medicine and deserves to be struck off.
Sure, if they can document clear levels of harm, especially if that harm is in the same order of magnitude or greater than from covid, they're whistleblowers.
But distributors of woo should be struck off.
Dr Woo?
The crazy is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.
You fail to mention said doctors are peddling misinformation about Covid 19 which I am sure is contrary to the ethical standards expected of such people. Any doctors who behave like that deserve to be struck of the medical register forthwith.
You fail to mention said doctors are peddling misinformation about Covid 19 …
Exactly what is it that they are saying that amounts to "peddling misinformation", if it is the letter I linked to above that is the source?
Nope. I reads newspapers and listen to the news. Try it. You might learn something.
So you’re getting all your information from MSM??
I tried to find it on the Medical Council website (https://www.mcnz.org.nz/) but could not find anything. The closest I could find was this: https://www.mcnz.org.nz/about-us/news-and-updates/expectations-for-covid-19-vaccination-released-for-doctors-and-dentists/
Can you please point to the investigation and reasons why the Council is investigating doctors for potentially spreading misinformation around Covid-19? Thank you in advance.
This letter…written in April and signed by 40-odd members of MC who all appended their MC registration numbers. This I saw as an indication of their integrity and willingness to put their reputations on the line. ( You might have noticed I have a thing about folks opining anonymously.)
I understand more have since signed. IMHO there is certainly nothing in that letter that warrants such a response from the Medical Council. (I hope there is another letter somewhere that merits such censure.) A link within the article would have helped.
This is the only such letter that I've read. I had to go looking for it and it was by chance I found it. Well, not quite…I read the decision from the case Sue Grey took to the court over Section 23 of the Medicines Act which forced an immediate response from Government to rectify the 'anomaly.' Fascinating stuff if holding truth to power is one's thing.
There was a time, not long since, when folks here would do likewise and dig a little deeper into the scary, shouty headlines dealt up by MSM. Having personally been a victim of such I make a real effort to fact check.
Ta
I have no detailed knowledge of the MC investigation. In any case, Historian Pete made all sorts of weird and wild accusations without rhyme or reason. I don’t think he’s a genuine historian. Do you?
The response is not about the letter.
The letter is not the source.
Then what is the source?
I sincerely hope, (as I said at https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-21-06-2021/#comment-1799309) that there is something else other that the letter referred to in the TVNZ piece.
Sigh. Complaints from the public about particular practitioners triggered the process.
Perhaps taking the hint from Winston, Barnaby Joyce has returned.
As if Australia hadn't troubles enough.
Firstly, I have witnessed the biggest suppression of news and debate that has occurred in New Zealand since the 1952 Waterfront Strike. I can remember the NZBC around 2005 refusing to air a topic on the grounds that they were unable to present both sides of the story. Now it is par for the course that only one side is presented .The New Zealand public have a right to hear both sides. I have neither seen on TV{Tova Obrien anyone?} nor read in newspapers ie the Herald, any reasonable coverage of the views of those opposed to the" Vaccine' rollout. This is a suppression of free speech. How can these Doctors have a professional debate when they are closed down in all avenues. They have the courage to speak out at a significant risk to their professional careers. They have a credo to live up to: To do no harm. And the Pfizer jab is to them not in the interests of their patients.So they refuse to be gagged.
Secondly My own reseach on the topic has lead me to believe that firstly the jab is not a vaccine.A vaccine immunises the patient and prevents transmission.The Pfizer jab does neither. A plethora of toxic side effects is occuring after the " vaccination", especially the second one, which includes death. This is occurring far more frequently than would have occurred if the rollout had not happened at all . The Authorities are doing a sterling job of suppressing the real deaths happening being revealed to the public. However the TRUTH is slowly being revealed. Resistance is growing as we speak .This toxic Experimental "vaccine" has been established in haste, and many throughout the world now fear that long term it will result in unaccepable casualties ..
So, the death of free speech, and the termination of informed consent. And serious harm to a large number of the public. A determined group of Doctors acting on their conscience .I know whose side I'm on!!!
Professional debates do not happen in the media, generally. So no suppression there.
Professional debate between scientists involves evidence. The moonbats have none, so no suppression there.
The news media is supposed to disseminate news, not moonbat theories, otherwise the nightly news would headline whatever the local crazy person was yelling in the street. So no suppression there.
Your own research has led you to make some interesting claims, including "The Authorities are doing a sterling job of suppressing the real deaths happening being revealed to the public." I'm glad that you have managed to compromise this veil of official secrecy with your own research, which doubtless includes unearthing evidence buried in youtube videos. They can bury the corpses, but they can't censor online content, eh! /sarc
Intriguing PoV. Personally think it's OK that these determined doctors won't be getting immunised against COVID-19 – just hope their patients will be OK.
https://health-reporter.news/study-pfizer-vaccine-works-against-gamma-variant/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Are the MSM still giving air time to climate change deniers?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300338071/auckland-tornado-46k-raised-for-killed-workers-family-papatoetoe-cleanup-continues
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/445149/flash-floods-from-east-cape-to-napier-more-rain-expected-around-new-zealand
You undermine your own credibility by attributing every single climatic event to CC. Tornados have been occuring in NZ for as long as it has been above the waves and they are common in one form or another in almost every country in the world, and as for heavy rain and floods, if you believe that they are only a recent addition to weathers numerous variations, you are really dreaming. Even last weeks large floods in Canterbury are merely proof of how the Plains were formed over millennia. If you want to be believed you must first of all be believable.
Yes Adrian, I sometimes undermine my credibility, here and elsewhere.
As to whether I attribute "every single climatic event to CC", others can judge the credibility of that charge. Fwiw, I believe that "attributing every single climatic event to CC" is as silly as suggesting that there is no causal link between climate trends (and the frequency and/or severity of extreme weather events), and global warming. Time will tell.
Laughable …
"Secondly My own research on the topic has lead me to believe ….. [the rantings of a disturbed mind….]
Right who left the gate open and let the crazy in?
Suppression of free speech. Decades ago, when MMP was mooted we held a public meeting to explain it. Quite a good turn-out, and worked well as we sat and listened and took it in. The time was well-used and the understanding was enhanced as we did not give any time to the FPP proponents who gnashed their teeth.
No-thinking types like them did not want us to waste our time exercising our minds about possible worthy changes to the political process. We also had a very firm woman time-keeper of a Liberal persuasion who was interested in a well-controlled meeting which enabled informed discussion.
The types 'agin-it' just want to choose their weapons and hit people over the head to stop them daring to divert their minds from the very satisfactory system they have decided they like and want to retain.
Listen Shit-For-Brains, there is no alternative evidence on the pros and cons for vaccination, but what there is a job offer going on your preferred planet and you and your dopey flat-earthers should be right on to it as it needs qualified expendables to join them. See Jenny at 9 at 3.00pm. Bon voyage and good riddance.
"The New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC) was a publicly owned company of the New Zealand Government founded in 1962. The Broadcasting Act 1976 then reformed NZBC as the Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand (BCNZ).[1] The corporation was dissolved on 1 April 1975, and replaced by three separate organisations: Radio New Zealand, Television One, and Television Two, later known as South Pacific Television. The television channels would merge again in 1980 to become Television New Zealand, while Radio New Zealand remained unchanged."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Broadcasting_Corporation
Historian Pete- the first job of the historian is to get the dates right; otherwise, anything you say afterwards is somewhat blighted by doubt as to your actual knowledge, doubt of your proofreading skills and doubt as to your right to appropriate the title of historian.
The Waterfront Dispute (that it was a strike is actually itself disputed) took place in 1951.
All hail to the “suppression of free speech” when the nut-bars turn up. I s'pose you support Donald Trump and believe the presidential election was stolen from him.
Do you believe the moon landing was a fake and that the American government was responsible for the World Trade Centre terrorist attacks? Or worse still do you believe it was a false flag and it never happened at all?
Geez… you need brain surgery on the one and only brain cell you possess.
Interesting assumption that he/she has a brain cell.
What's more crazy:
A. Non-stop ads on TV exhorting us all to buy oversized 4 wheel drive utes.
Or,
B. A plan to shift the planet further away from the sun so that we can all continue to enjoy driving them well into the future.
I did like that the actual guy was asking the Forest Service to do it. Just to add stupid icing to the stupid cake.
And can we get rid of that annoying 22 degree tilt in the earth's axis please? I get an awful crick in my neck compensating, and the four seasons are a nuisance and a bore.
Good news for you it is moving.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17657-global-warming-could-change-earths-tilt/
And rotating faster which makes my head spin…..