National had used the Treasury's budget update to calculate that the party would "save" $19.1 billion by scrapping contributions to the NZ Super Fund. But, National should have been using the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update (Prefu) – which showed that the "saving" would have been $15 billion over 10 years.
Irritating, he said. Like accidentally wearing his underpants outside his suit when he showed up at work, rather than on the inside. Such small irritations can happen to anyone anytime. If he'd done that instead of using the wrong facts to do his numbers, Judith would have also said it was
"a little error," "entirely inconsequential" and something "not many people are worried about".
But it would have given the Nat launch more pizzazz, eh? Fashion reporters would have been able to grab timeslots on the tv news to praise his innovative style.
As it was, Goldsmith fronted the tv cameras like an angry dormouse, whiskers intensely quivering, gimlet eyes staring down the slavering pack of journos: "You'll never get me! Scum!"
What a bugger though, when you're born to rule. Technical glitches in cerebral process. He could've done a Trump: "No, no, never happened. Fake news." "Look over there!" Well, over there is Michael Reddell:
the way that all societies look to be materially poorer than they would have thought just a few months ago, it is difficult to be very optimistic about the likely pace of sustained economic rebounds anywhere. https://croakingcassandra.com/
So Goldsmith can toke away on his growth spliff until he goes cross-eyed, but his promises will be as ephemeral as the smoke haze…
I thought about doing so. I just felt a different perspective on a new day was appropriate. Coming here as a radical centrist (albeit somewhat of a leftist fellow-traveller) I tend to find the sectarian polemic bandwagon-jumping effect more than just a little moronic, so felt the other had a `been there, done that' feel to it – plus being a little like a polluted stream.
If that doesn't make sense to you, it'll be due to a mix of innate sensitivity and too many nuances on my part, so I don't blame you!
My natural tendency is to find the right more worthy of criticism most of the time but I can't exhibit that here due to too many others doing it. So this morning seemed a good opportunity to take a fresh look at the situation. I found the Nat positioning on it deserving of severe criticism due to being both inept and an insult to the public, so I wrote on their behalf.
Thanks for explanation DF. I like your approach which brings another perspective. It fits with my recurring thought that everything we have been doing in the past has been only partly successful or a complete failure. Old cold potatoes on the gravy train is not a viable dish now.
On a day when the party was meant to be revving up the troops at its Covid-disrupted campaign launch, Goldsmith was instead explaining how he and his team had overlooked a $4 billion gap in the calculations for its fiscal plan.
There will be high-profile tests of the party’s popularity this week, with at least one television network expected to release a poll and the first leaders’ debate between Ardern and Collins taking place on Tuesday evening, via TVNZ.
The idea that there is any achievement in a lower debt level if it is realised by less money in the NZSF is absurd. A smaller NZSF means greater fiscal pressure on future government budgets.
As one would expect the actual stakes in this contentious political issue are extremely low. Ultimately we are just asking where in the govt budget pension expenditure will come from.
Labour argue more for, fund it now, launder it through the govt investment side for a bit (so it doesn't look as much like govt funding when spent), we have a huge budget deficit going already which the public are not challenging. National argue instead for fund it from the budget at the time and lower the deficit now and probably to try to get to surplus sooner.
But govts ability to fund pensions rests only on the countries ability to produce sufficient physical goods for pensioners (without them contributing to production themselves). The govt can always pay sufficient income to purchase those goods one way or another at that point.
The govt doesn't face a financial constraint, it faces an inflation constraint. The inflation constraint means the govt should balance its spending (and taxation) with the total economic activity level to avoid instigating more activity than there is capacity to undertake (as doing so may be inflationary). That always means balancing your govt deficit/surplus level against the present economic state regardless of its investment levels or during which time frame the expenditure was added to the govt forecast (e.g the budget). So the minutae of how this happens or even the state of the govt books is pretty much irrelevant.
As you said "Worker numbers to those on super is an important factor in its affordability." Or, there need to be enough goods to distribute.
I don't think either party is proposing OMF at this stage, not that that regime performs any differently.
As I said its a very low stakes debate point being worked over here.
I think inflation/capacity constraints are both visible and important to the public. Most recently impacting the Kiwibuild policy when it was discovered the cost of new builds (shortage of builders) would be impacted by the govts house building program (at which point they very rapidly backed off their election promises).
Well that leads to the likelihood that National in not prefunding Super is preparing the way to change super settings in the future (as soon as baby boomer numbers start to die off/as electoral demographics change).
With KiwiBuild, land was the cost issue and pitching new build housing as affordable homes for first home buyers was a rookie mistake (mismatch with available buyers – who required 20% deposits). If it was a cost of building or market supply constraint they would not have ramped up state house construction as quickly as they did to compensate.
If KiwiBuild was set up properly they would have soon got migrant workers in – as they did in Christchurch for the post earthquake rebuild.
The govt doesn't face a financial constraint, it faces an inflation constraint. The inflation constraint means the govt should balance its spending (and taxation) with the total economic activity level to avoid instigating more activity than there is capacity to undertake (as doing so may be inflationary).
Refreshing to see some actual facts, instead of the usual "government budget is like a household budget" nonsense that both Labour and National parrot.
unfortunately much of that needed isnt provided in that currency.
Which doesn't matter. The government can still purchase those things using its own currency and the people accepting the NZ$ can then buy what they want from NZ. Or they can just sell it on to those that want to buy from NZ.
Note that allowing migration places inflationary pressure on existing housing supply – both in rent cost and land values (time lag to new housing supply), but the labour supply reduces wages immediately.
And do we measure land cost in inflation statistics …
Stuff's photos of both major party leaders breaking the social distance rule reveal a bipartisan consensus. Seymour, predictably, only accused one of them. Guess which?
Stuff''s reporter sensibly refrained from claiming the rule had actually been broken by either. In postmodernia, nobody is meant to know if rules are real, so if they get broken that may just be the random perception of the random observer, not a fact.
Pretty funny boasting that you are the party that are good with numbers and can manage the economy better, and then finding you have an irritating $4bn error in your numbers!
Provincial growth is good. Pushing that is great. Helping put Northland on the map is excellent.
Being a smart arse is just being a smart arse. If, as is most likely, he and his party are stuffed after the election, will the political eulogies mention that there are a lot of country folk, who don't like smart arses? Or come across like that. In an electorate like Northland especially.
The hard yards here are won in the hearts not on the edges of logorrhoea and misplaced perceptions of the power of mellifluousness.
how does that help NZF? If they get under 5%, the Greens being in parliament or not won't have anything to do with it. Any Green vote will go to Labour. I would have thought the Greens polling above 5% would mean some shift from Labour to NZF to stop Labour going leftwards next term.
.
Probably believes it'll go down well with NZF's target audience.
As various iterations of the NZ Election Study have highlighted, the Party's current & recent voters sit at the opposite end of the Cultural-Moral spectrum from Green Party supporters … (while, at the same time, positioned reasonably close to each other on the traditional Left-Right Economic spectrum … although the 2017 Election does seem to have tilted NZF’s constituency in a somewhat Bluer direction than previously).
So critiquing the Greens & the Woke to push Culture Wars onto the campaign agenda (squeezing it in between the massive COVID-19 Elephant doing plops all over the place), & advertising their credentials as the key 'conservative' force in that battle … in the hope of winning back as many previous supporters as poss, while concurrently looking attractive to segments of National’s & Labour’s voting bases.
Dell in 2003. I bet Jon sussed that he was in the wrong room months ago. "Goddam contract blues. Okay, gotta ride this one out. Can't retreat to academia until it's all over, rover. So when surrounding by primadonnas in the land of the wrong off-white crowd, think again, huh?"
Unfortunately many people couldn't see through him or past him. He had to be put in a place where he could demonstrate all his talents to people's heart's content. Now he has had his turn in the spotlight can we replace him with someone capable of deeper thought advancing the well-thought-out practical policies in an effective manner, going forward?
Furrell is also furious that most of those found responsible for wetland destruction have received little more than a slap on the wrist. In one example in 2012, relatives of former Cabinet minister Shane Jones were caught digging for swamp kauri in an indigenous wetland on their Far North property. The regional council did stop work at the site, and the logs were left on the side of State Highway 1.
Green Party primary industries spokesperson Eugenie Sage said Mr Guy had been forced to backtrack on his earlier assertions that there were no major problems with how exports of swamp kauri were policed.
"We want the minister, Shane Jones, to answer this … does he consider it's okay for his officials to thumb their noses at a Supreme Court ruling? Because that is what they are doing," Ms Furrell said.
Both the MPI and Shane Jones have been approached for comment.
…and here, way Up North, Uncle Shane is a bit of a joke. He may have purchased support with the bucketloads of putea that has been thrown at local projects but he is going to have to work a bit harder. Spread some charm. Heh.
Two leading contenders at the moment seem to be the Green Party candidate Darlene Tana Hoff-Nielsen and newboy Billy Te Kahika.
It seems that the Green School's application for $1m from the Provincial Growth Fund ro market the school as a tourist attraction had been turned down prior to them then applying for $11.7m (grant or loan) from the Covid Recovery Fund – granted by Shaw.
Oh dear, this issue just doesn't go away. The change.org petition to reduce this latter grant now stands at over 14,100 signatures
The original application didn't meet the approval of the panel, but the second one did? Is that the news?
Pretty stale, in my view. Those who are looking for a stick with which to beat the Greens will always find one conveniently-placed nearby. Oh! Shane Jones was here!
Why is electoral debate centred around the long term level of government debt, and not on the amount of debt the government now has that is not owed to anyone at all?
Because the politicians and business people don't want the people to realise that we don't need capitalists to fund things. We can do it all on our own through our democratic administration.
The reason why they don't want us to realise that is because then it would eliminate the bludging that is the sole purpose of capitalism.
It is. It's owed to us. It's paid back to us by providing us with what ever it was the funds were issued for, e.g. State housing, thousands of acres of pine trees, excellent health care, schools, railway network etc etc
National’s troops online have resorted to outright lies about the missing $4 billion. They are claiming that Robertson has pretty much nicked it out of the Super Fund without telling anybody. This bullshit is getting peddled about by sitting MPs. They have lost the plot.
The Key Governments discontinuing of payments to the Cullen fund was financial stupidity – right in the same league as selling off 49% of SOE electricity generators -ideologically driven financial vandalism. National are economic incompetents.
that is the other side of the coin, one creates a surplus (which is essentially only tax revenue not spend on the people) and then the other wins and creates a tax cuts for those that are in the correct income group (like the ones that created the surplus 🙂 ). Then everyone screams that the bank is empty and the people will have to sell their very few belongings to pay the bills.
Rinse repeat, rinse repeat. The ones with money are good with it as they can buy up the countrys silver cutlery, and the ones without money move to a ditch nearby.
Yes Sabine my bad what I regarded as stupidity may simply simply be greed, malevolence and dishonesty – after all it is the National Party we are talking about
Judith is on Morning Report claiming that Goldsmith couldn’t understand the PREFU docs because Treasury had written them so badly. We’re entering the Twilight Zone now.
edit
How National dares to open its mouth about finance stumps me. Many will have seen this but seeing things are so fast-moving it pays to check back for ‘holes’ in the argument. This from a few days ago:
Sep,18/20 National plans to raise those brackets, so every dollar you earn up to $20k would be taxed at 10.5 percent, and $20k to $64k at 17.5 percent. The 30 percent bracket would include every dollar between $64k to $90k, and every dollar above $90k would be taxed at 33 percent.
…National says that's because it wants to target middle-income earners who may be more likely to spend-up.
(Me: What!! Middles, 'may be more likely to spend up'. Anyone with economic nous knows that the poor spend 100%+ of their income, just to meet basic costs. Pay them more and they will still need to spend it all also borrow, as their income is so far behind what is needed! Those near $20,000 are at break-even point, far from the $64,000 level, and will be returning tax to the government of about 32.50% of their meagre income in taxes of 17.5% for income and 15% GST. I have forgotten if the gummint charges GST on rent, which would reduce the GST paid by that amount. About a third from basic needs, is different than from a wealthier person's discretionary income.)
If you're on $30k a year, National's policy would put $560 in your back pocket over the 16-month period for which it's proposed. But if you're on $90k a year, you'd pocket $4026 over that same period. National's policy explains: "Middle-income earners receive the largest benefit as a proportion of their income. As a proportion of income, the largest benefit is for someone on the average income of $64,000. There are no further tax savings for incomes over $90,000."
The policy is expected to cost $4.7 billion over the 16-month period and National plans to pay for it by reducing Government debt by suspending Super Fund contributions, and axing policies like KiwiBuild and the first year of free university.
Government contributions to the Super Fund were suspended by the previous National-led Government between 2009 and 2017, but they were resumed under the current Government at a cost of $7.7 billion over five years.
Seems that Gnats have many people so confused that they don't know whether Peter or Paul are being robbed or not, and who is paying. Maybe the manner in which they intone the words 'tax cuts' arouses visions of heavenly dispensation in the heads of spiritual believers and non-beis, alike.
Unless the company refused to pay that wage subsidy out to its staff i don't see how they could make a 'windfall'.
And i would like to point out that for the last two extentions you actually have to proof that you have a loss of revenue of 40% to the year prior (not 39% or less but 40%) to even be able to apply for it.
Can you link to anything that would support your point, just for interest sake.
Law firms qualified and then repaid it back (they did not have to do that). Briscoes paid a dividend after taking a wage subsidy. An insolvency firm also claimed it – yet their business will be booming.
For some, a temporary dip, eligibility for wage subsidy, then pent up demand results in a business boom.
Here in Aotearoa, we might look to what helped us out of the Great Depression. From 1935 to 1940, Michael Joseph Savage introduced welfare, free health care and universal superannuation. The Reserve Bank was brought under government control and the money printer went brrr. Income tax was 42.9% and 57% for unearned income such as rent, interest or dividends. Savage used those funds to start construction on thousands of state homes which created more jobs and places for people to live.
She doesn't, quite, get it.
The money printer went brrr as she says and thus the taxes weren't needed for the funds.
So, why the high taxes on large incomes? A couple of reasons:
To contain inflation by keeping the money in circulation low
To keep incomes down – no point in having high incomes if most of it is just going to go to the government
To discourage bad behaviour such as speculation and rent seeking
Why don't Aucklanders put a tunnel through their underwater harbour lava field?
[Why have you changed your user name and e-mail address yet again? That’s one particularly annoying habit of yours and I’ve already permanently banned one of your other aliases. Please give me a good reason why I should not permanently ban this one too – Incognito]
Imagine bosses paying the space, the electricity, the broadband, the heating and all that is involved with working for home, for a start. Is there any legislation in the works that would actually assure that or is that the price of work that needs to be paid by the worker in order to be considered for the job?
Imagine if public transport were free to the users – we could potentially not even meet demand. Is there any legislation that would promote this, or is that too much of a hassle and besides on the rich can have free shit, the poor need to pay for it?
Imagine if in this country all areas had the same good broadband that some areas currently enjoy. Imagine, not only could you use your mobile from home rather then go out on the open street, but your kids could learn from home and you could work from home. Is there any legislation in the works that would assure that broadband will go to the very rural areas that are currently underserved?
Imagine all the shit that all the previous governments of all stripes have ignored for so long, and then just continue to imagine how our future and current government will do exactly the same.
Imagine if public transport were free to the users – we could potentially not even meet demand.
I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons why we ended up with personal cars is because it creates more jobs than public transport. A couple of hundred mechanics maintaining a fleet of buses or thousands of mechanics maintaining a fleet of personal vehicles. Then the fleet of personal vehicles also needs gas stations and their attendants and more tanker drivers and more fuel and more…
You get the idea. More consumption producing more jobs.
Looks good at the start because more jobs but is completely uneconomic.
And now, of course, everyone has their personal vehicles and doesn't want to give them up despite all the evidence that we need to.
Or just make use of the Northern Busway free for 6 weeks? Sure, you might overload it, or overload the carparks round the bus stations – but it may have some short-term ameliorating effect, as well as change some long-term habits. See how it goes – and if it works, make it permanent and gradually extend to all PT.
The constraint is number of buses available – they would need to hire extra buses and run a peak time level of frequency of service for a longer time period.
that is a different issue then the lack of resources.
As i said, we have the resources, now we just need "the Will" and that could actually come from government, you know the current lot who runs the world. And they could excuse their 'interference into local government' as one of these job creating shovel ready programs, they could provide funds to make it palatable to the former Minister of Transport and Labour MP, and above all they could make it attractive to Aucklanders who could pressure their council into going along with it.
Ahh, will – the want to change – is the only thing needed and that is what is not there, in government local and national.
Could be a tipping point looming when the population of road cones in Ak passes the population of Aucks. I'm waiting for an evangelical to point out to parishioners that this divine retribution is due to Aucks voting for left/right govts that persisted in jamming the city with immigrants and not building infrastructure to match the increase.
Could be a decent contagion effect out of that as the gnosis spreads. Too bad road cones are still unable to vote. A growing minority group, but lacking political heft. Discriminated against.
"As infrastructure increases in scale and complexity, the costs of maintenance rise to equal and exceed the available economic surplus; the period of prosperity ends in political and economic failure, and infrastructure falls into ruin as its maintenance costs are no longer paid."
'Money' is not the issue, merely a measure.
Consider the recent calls for billions to be spent on maintaining roads that have suffered from deferred maintenance for years past, the failing 3 waters, the lack of public transport etc…all these have (and are) occurred BECAUSE we as a society cannot resource the required maintenance of the existing, let alone any additional…..it may not be recognised but catabolic collapse isnt something to worry about in the future, it is all around us.
occurred BECAUSE we as a society cannot resource the required maintenance of the existing
But we could if we had a more economical model than what we use now.
I've calculated before that if we only produced enough food for ourselves we'd free up ~150,000 workers. How many workers do we need to maintain our infrastructure? I don't know but I'm pretty sure that it would be less than 150,000. We'd probably have enough people still spare afterwards that we could have more doctors and other health workers to maintain us, more telecommunications techs, more researchers, etcetera.
The problem we have is that our economic model, one that's been in use for thousands of years, is uneconomic.
No, I calculated that we could free up 150,000 people if we dropped the amount of farming down to only feeding NZ. Those 150,000 could then be put to other uses to support and develop our society.
They would use our resources to make what was needed such as using our iron to build tractors, and ships, and the machinery to build and maintain bridges etcetera.
Those extra 150,000 people in farming are a waste of resources.
And, yes, both statements can be, and are, correct.
Due to money, people have lost sight of the economy.
See, you're problem is that you've just been told that it can't be done and you're believing that despite all the evidence that we actually do have the resources and people to maintain what we build. If we didn't we wouldn't have been able to build it in the first place.
The problem is the failed economic system that says that if we grow lots of cows then we can just buy the maintenance from other countries. This results in the over allocation of people into farming and then, when we do need the maintenance, we find that we can't buy it. That we need to provide more than just money like housing etcetera and we find that we can't do it, that we can no longer afford to maintain our infrastructure.
But if we hadn't over allocated our resources and people into farming then we could, quite easily, maintain our infrastructure and much else as well.
cant 'calculate' the number huh…your problem is you have an ideology that dosnt fit the facts…we dont do those things because it is beyond our resources (uneconomic if you like)….the '150,000' farm workers' (many of whom we currently import) are not able or sufficient to create the production you attribute to them
It's not a question of me calculating it precisely – but showing how it could be done which I have.
You and the idiot Arch Druid (Really, he's on record of saying that work before industrialisation didn't leave any time for having a break) have specified that we can't.
we dont do those things because it is beyond our resources (uneconomic if you like)
That's just it – its not beyond our resources. The problem is our socio-economic system that has massively miss-allocated the resources that we do have.
the '150,000' farm workers' (many of whom we currently import) are not able or sufficient to create the production you attribute to them
Yes they are – even without the imported seasonal workers which I'm pretty sure my source didn't include – although they'll probably need to have their education ramped up. Modern production is so efficient it really doesn't use that many people:
Vehicle assembly ceased at the plant in 2002, but it continues as a major production site with capacity to assemble 1.4 million engines a year.
Following the change to only building engines it now employs around 2,000 people.
I don't think we need a million engines per year so maybe only hire 200.
When everything including creating jobs is linked to something else but until it's in your own backyard…
Interesting meters ticking over :-
Environmental impacts of Steel production.
" Steel production is one of the most energy-consuming and CO2 emitting industrial activities in the world.
The mining of iron ore ( to produce steel) is highly energy intensive and causes air pollution – and water pollution.
The making of steel from the mined iron ore is also highly energy demanding. Production of steel is the most energy-consuming and CO2 emitting industrial activity in the world. "
More of those interesting meters .. of " catabolic collapse "
" If you compare Earth's history to a calendar year then we (humans) have only have existed for about 37 minutes – and we have used 33% of Earth's entire natural resources in the last 0.2 seconds! "
79 years until rainforests are gone.
27 years until seafood runs out.
At the time of this posting over 290 million tons of hazardous waste has been discarded this year so far.
We don't mine iron ore in NZ and the power is mostly renewable meaning that Glenbrook's production of it has far less Co2 incorporated into it than that of other nations.
And, yes, the over use of resources by capitalism is thousands of years old as well.
We can do something about that to but only by getting rid of capitalism.
With a maintenance rate of 3% in a little over 23 years maintenance exceeds construction…..you can apply it at any level you like, individual or societal and in any form, monetary or time.
Its not that we produce more than we can maintain but that the rich don't want to pay to maintain it and, as their the ones in control, things don't get maintained and thus we get collapse.
Alcohol causes more harm than marijuana, not even those voting no in the drug referendum deny that.
The only argument put forward is that young people (teens) adversely impacted by its use, would still be adversely impacted by it should there be legal sales to adults (those over 20).
One such admits that the only thing wrong with legalising sales to those not harmed by use of the drug is that this normalises it when teens would still be harmed by its use.
But makes no case whatsover that normalising use by adults would have any impact on teen use.
Countered by the opening up of the data and facts to scrutiny, the injection of funds into tagged health responses to "teen use", the removal of much of the secrecy and associated dishonesty and paranoia that goes with illegality – the scales will be tipped heavily in favour of a safer, healthier society.
It is still true that most ideas to change society get a good working over in academia and policy think tanks before they surface in the mainstream media. For example, mainstream media discussion of the concept of “degrowth” is recent and introductory, even if the academic discourse and activism in this field has been intense for nearly twenty years.
Retrosuburbia provides the patterns and models that need to be replicated across our residential heartlands to achieve a scale of impact. By replacing a fair slab of the current household consumption activity (currently about 55% of GDP in Australia) with downsized and much more efficient ways to provide basic needs in the household and community non-monetary economies, society could radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond the 8% reductions resulting from the pandemic.
so i had an interesting experience with the council.
Thanks to covid the inspections of lisenced food premises now is 'remote'. Which involved in taking pictures of every delivery docket, every temperature sheet, every dairy sheet, any training documents, etc , which then needed to be downloaded, named and safed and then emailed to the 'inspector', plus a set up for a zoom meeting.
The inspector was quite unhappy that i was the only one going along with it – and that the others put up a bit of a stink and wanting to wait for level 1 to have a physical inspection.
Now frankly, after having spend the better part of three days, photographing hundreds of bits of papers, downloading them, saving them, attaching them to several tens of emails, i can understand. That is a loss of time, extra work no one needs.
But i guess its the future. It all went well, no recommendations, in fact she will propose some of my Covid rules and promote these to some of the businesses that have a similar set up. She really did like my plague door. Thanks, but heck that was a lot of extra work that i could have done without.
The rapid rise in online shopping has prompted NZ Post to lease a $100 million-plus yet-to-be-built premises the size of three rugby fields in south Auckland.
The state-owned enterprise said the 3.3ha planned new building would be in addition to its planned new Wellington "super depot".
why not more local depots to serve a region rather then 'super depots' that will have to be closed down because someone comes down with covid LOL and nothing happens, like literally the last lockdown 3 in AKL let to delays of weeks in some cases if not outright 'lost', and rather create a few smaller depots that could serve the regions. IF i want to send something for a customer to Taupo via post it goes to AKL first. Cause sure it does. It is actually easier for us to just drive to taupo and deliver it ourself, at least we know it will arrive.
Local depots cost more to maintain than a large, single depot.
That said, there should be a computer algorithm being used to determine the best places to put the depots in relation to transportation routes and minimising transportation use.
Chief medical officer Sue Nightingale said it has severely reduced their ability to provide specialist assessments and follow up appointments.
"Currently all new appointment requests, and appointments for patients already in the system, have been reprioritised… to ensure those in the greatest need are seen soonest."
This process will continue for the next few weeks, and 275 appointments are likely to be affected.
Cancer survivor Tracey Stevenson was due to see an oncologist on October 2, but her appointment at Christchurch Hospital has been cancelled.
She had a stage-3 tumour removed in June.
"I had a scan a few weeks ago and the radiologist told me there was a lymph node that was of concern to him, and that I'd need to be seen a little bit sooner.
"The cancer nurse tried to get me an earlier appointment, but that wasn't able to be done."
Stevenson was told to wait until October, but last week she got a call informing her of the cancellation.
"They couldn't give me any indication of when I'd get a new appointment."
The situation is particularly frightening for her, because if her cancer comes back it will most likely kill her.
"It's very scary knowing there's potentially some cancer growing in you that's not being dealt with.
can we please increase the benefits of people, can we please provide lunches for all kids, can we please stop the bullshit?
As a nation you’re measured by how you look after your children, how you look after your elderly and how you look after your most vulnerable,” Swann said. “And if we’re not doing a good job of that, then as a nation we’re failing ourselves.”
Those hungry mouths are not going away with more than 100 schools and early childhood centres on the waiting list, said Kidscan chief executive Julie Chapman.
The organisation is making a push to raise money to feed those going hungry.
“There were plenty of families struggling before the effects of Covid-19 set in, and this has only been exacerbated with incomes being reduced and some parents losing jobs altogether,” Chapman said.
and above all can we please stop with the added insult of 'teaching the value of work' to beneficiaries who often times have jobs? Or desperatly apply for anything that comes up just to no avail, and above all
Can we please start acknowledging that the last crisis and this current crisis has hit women the hardest? It is women who loose their jobs, and it is women who get very little to next to nothing from this current kinder and gentler government. Or is that too upsetting for the dears? Because the dears in their expensive suits n shoes are failing us.
Child poverty is a complex issue that's going to take time to fix, but one thing we can do straight away is to make sure kids get at least one decent meal a day.
We have already rolled out our programme to 31 schools, delivering free and healthy lunches to 7,000 children. We’ve deliberately targeted areas that will help inform how to work differently in different contexts – from big urban primary schools to small rural area schools.
By 2021, it’ll be rolled out to 120 schools and 20,000 students.
The free school lunch programme would be extended to 200,000 children by mid-2021, as announced in the Budget in May, at a cost of $220 million.
So are we to understand that Covid cost 180.000 kids to fall into poverty, or were they simply not enough poor enough in February 2020 to be included in the budget?
Excuse me but that just feel very cynical. An election lolly on the backs of the poorest. Say it ain't so.
And what about the kids that will have to wait till mid 2021 – about a year to be precise – to be included. They will just have to tighten their belts or hope kids can and a teacher might drop some lunch.?
Considering that we had this issues for the many years under National i guess we can say thanks to a global pandemic that the kids of this country – the very wretched poor ones – finally get one feed a day that they can count on. When of course the program is rolled out in their schools. YEI Covid!
The amounts beneficiaries can earn before abatement at 70 cents in the dollar have gone up a lot. For a single person it goes from $90 to up to $160 a week and for a person with others (children) it goes up to $250 a week.
The Training Incentive Allowance is being restored. It’s set at $113 per week.
National really dropped the ball 2008-2017 (and since), keeping the amount before abatement at $80 and $120 prevented beneficiaries getting ahead through work.
And now more are on benefits, this extra income sans abatement is going to be vital.
There is still a lot to do.
1. Allowing partners to claim support for up to one year (allows people to intern or retrain).
2. Allowing those under 25 to have UI if not in FT study or FT work. This supports the gig/casual/part-timers (reduces WINZ paperwork)
3. Government support for divorced couples to maintain housing for children after a separation
4. End the repayment of grants out of benefits, taking it out of paid work income as for tertiary loans. And expand this to include re-finance of debt incurred while employed.
And how are we going to do that when the capacity to do it doesn't exist and will take time to build?
This is the major problem with people. They see a good idea and immediately think that it should be done now and think nothing of the physical apparatus that needs to be in place to achieve it. This results in things like this:
The organisation is making a push to raise money to feed those going hungry.
That's not likely to happen no matter how much money is raised because the infrastructure isn't there to do it.
Due to money, people have lost sight of the economy.
We've always been at that point. Very few seem to have asked how we could feed everyone and even fewer have tried to do so. The most notable was the 1st Labour government but it only lasted a couple of decades before the stresses began to show and then only another couple before complete collapse in the 1980s.
Over the last 72hrs I’ve been trying to write a post to be submitted to The Standard, but all I can get out of my head at what happened to me at 0200Hrs some 21yrs ago with this.
At 0200 21yrs ago, this humble working class lad from Hornby CHCH ran off back of a RAAF C130 at Dili Airport East Timor as a part of the INTERFET a Chap 7 Peacekeeping Mission. Which would turn my life upside down for ever as I wandered aimlessly around the RAAF for 18yrs before my med discharge after a horror trip back to the Sandpit.
I’m still seeking answers at why humanity & politics of both left & right could allow this to happen? Ever today most people couldn’t give a rats ass about West Papua including those on left who supported the founding father of Modern day Indonesia annexation of West Papua from the Dutch & in NZ the current state of the NZDF if had to mount similar Chap7 Mission to West Papua or the NZ Timor-Leste Veterans especially my mate’s who were in both NZ Batt1 &2 Battle Group who are still struggling today.
Both the NZ Greens and NZ Labour refuse to discuss the NZDF lessons learnt from Timor-Leste even when Ron Mark drags them into reality but they still scream about the cost at equipping & the rising, training and more importantly sustaining the NZDF for UN Peacekeeping Missions or the long term reality of CC trends and finally the ongoing effects of NZ Veterans expose to the Peacekeeping Missions or in the Gan?
i was hoping to add some pictures of before during and after of me so everyone could see the psychological & psychical changes to me from the NZ Army days through to the RAAF Ground Defence days and to my current situation post discharge.
Unfortunately it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon and probably not in my or your lifetime due the Australian- Indonesian Lombok Treaty. Also Australia is chasing a FTA with Indonesian as well. So the sods in West Papua are going to be hung out to dry if Indonesian can achieve it. Unfortunately there will be little that NZ can do either via Diplomatic or by Military means apart from waffle, fluff & BS at various international meetings or at a local.
Not surprising from those in Oz – these are the first world nation people who block East Timor access to mineral rights to resources in their economic zone.
What really gives me the shits about West Papua from my left wing POV is people like Marie who supported the Indonesia annexation of Dutch West Papua in the 60's when the founding Father of Indonesia was a socialist/communist and who also booted out the Dutch post WW2.
There is a enough evidence to suggest that the Dutch were planning to return West Papua to PNG when Australia under a Labour Government would grant PNG its independence which did happen in 75. But the Dutch hand was forced under the then POTUS JKF as a means of stopping Indonesia from coming a Communist/ Socialist Country in SEA. While at the same time forcing the Brits, Oz, NZ and the Dutch to stay out of it, needless to say against all advice from it Allies who hand a better understanding at what was happening on the ground especially during the Confrontation.
Dunno, but I do empathise, so I'll guess. Both the NZ Greens and NZ Labour refuse to discuss the NZDF lessons learnt from Timor-Leste due to having higher priorities.
PTSD? If so, does it get diagnosed by the military nowadays? I would agree to taxpayer-funded treatment – does that already happen to suffering soldiers?
Peacekeeping is trad leftist idealism. I know that because I had to operate as peacemaker in civil society somewhat when young due to fighting being the norm, then make love not war came along & got traction, but the quakers had been standing for peace amongst the mainstream long previously (until Nixon destroyed them from within), and mustn't forget Archie Baxter & the torture of conscientious objectors to war in WWI. So leftist politicos are big on peace as a basis of civilisation, but could be they are insufficiently practical re managing the consequences, eh?
The problem i have with the NZ Greens & Labour is that they still fail to recognise or understand just how close we came to an all out shooting war with the TNI and the INTERFET Mission was the biggest NZDF Deployment probably since J Force or WW2. Where the NZ Army did an over the Beach Landing at Suai since the 3rd NZ Div in the Solly's during WW2. This over the beach landing by NZBATT1 went tits up, while at the same time the RNZN Type 12 Frigate the Canterbury was actively pursuing a TNI Sub inside Timor- Leste's water near Suai. NZ was very lucky that the TNI didn't decide to make a point against NZ and sooner or later the law of military averages will come home to roost with NZ.
Because NZ's politicians are all talk, but no actions when it comes to Peacekeeping or providing the necessary capital adequately equip the NZDF to Raise, Train and Sustain a Peacekeeping Force like the one that the NZ Deployed to Timor- Leste unlike the Australian Government who heavily invested in the ADF and the Lessons Learnt by the ADF which a massive investment in Airlift, Sealift capabilities, two extra Infantry Battalion Groups and investment in the Army's Rotay Wing units including Gunship attack Helicopters since the NZG decided to disband its Maritime Strike/ Close Air Support Wing.
Mental Health of Veterans is the biggest cost to the Government be it PTSD, Moral Trauma from Peacekeeping or HADR Missions and sometimes members do not get diagnosed until they have the forces or in some cases booted out for discipline reasons. Before we even start talking about other injuries that have happen during Peacetime Training or on Operations. Most Veterans don't trust their Government to look after them because the Politicians are all talk no action and will do anything to avoid or cut cost to Veterans welfare just they do to the NZDF with equipment upgrades, cuts to Capabilities also with poor pay & conditions etc.
Yes there is a big disconnect from the left and our so-called leftest politicians IRT the theoretical side of Peacekeeping and the what actually happens on the ground. This is not entirely new either as we have seen in Bosnia, Rwanda and even as far back as the Congo in the 60's. And yet you would think by now politicians and the public of all stripes and colours would understand this by now, but us poor sods in the Military are constantly having to re-learnt lessons learnt because our stupid politicians and public refuse to fund an adequate NZDF to Raise, Train & Sustain Peacekeeping which also flows onto the Veterans health/ Welfare cost needs into the future.
Okay, I get the picture. Thanks for that description. My diagnosis: you're right, almost certainly, but what we lack is politicos with your field experience. Particularly those who, like you, can deduce general principles from particular situations. Situation won't change unless such folk enter politics, eh?
Well NZ Labour won't have me back as i'm too working class for them aka too left wing for social, economic issues and too right wing on defence issues including the use of Lethal Force to enforce the Southern Ocean and enforcing NZ EEZ IRT to overseas fishing boats conduction illegal fishing.
I probably won't last 5mins in the Greens because of the Locke Family and their fellow travellers. I should vote Green, but because of the Locke's and their Defence Policy i don't. For the record and disclosure reasons i've voted Labour & NZF in that order.
Veterans should receive adequate, fair, and appropriate support. This includes income support, and treatment and compensation for injuries, psychological and emotional health problems, and occupational diseases.
The Greens defence policy is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. Not perfect, still got too many ideologues getting the way, but a hell of a lot better and seems to be based upon actual facts and the world situation (except the bit (3.1) about not searching for submarines, I mean, really, WTF?).
But Gorlz did SFA in pushing NZ Greens Veterans policies through this term with Ronnie! Heck even Ronnie does like almost of the NZ Greens Veterans Policy. So what the F*** was Gorlz doing FFS, well she was bitching about the P3 replacement, the C130 replacement, the Dive Ship replacement. Then banging on about the future cost of the two landing ships and the future Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel without realising that Ronnie is trying to future proof the NZDF IRT to CC and CC related events including possible wars/ conflicts if plan A fails or plan B fails. All this is also on top of the NZDF current NZG madated tasks that has to fulfil atm as CC adds another layer of complexity because politicians at or levels of govenment including other issue motivated groups and sections of the public refuse to believe in the science of CC.
The Anti Sub Warfare of the NZGreens is just dumb and stupid. Considering NZ had Jap and German Subs operate in its waters during WW2, NZ economy aka its exports and imports are heavily reliant of international shipping routes aka freedom of navigation on the open seas (FONOS) for its economic wealth and finally the TNI Submarine activities during INTERFET which was under a Chap7 UN Peacekeeping Mandate.
I did say it was better, not perfect. That was not their policy going in last term which was pretty much three paragraphs on how they were going to gut the defence forces completely.
I think the Green Caucus has learned a lot about what our defence forces need but they still answer to the party membership and there's too many members who believe that we don't need a defence force at all. And, yes, it is better that caucus answers to the members but we need caucus to now inform the members as to why we need a capable defence force that we look after and then have a discussion about it.
Politics, unfortunately, takes time.
As for 3.2 and the policy against installing sub-hunting gear in our aircraft, IMO, that looks like someone's pet peeve that's been installed into the policy without anyone really understanding it as, in 2.5, the policy says this:
Ensure that Aotearoa New Zealand has sufficient maritime surveillance capabilities, including airplanes, to properly monitor the waters around New Zealand, and to assist South Pacific island states.
Which 3.2 completely contradicts. To properly monitor the seas around NZ requires the anti-submarine capability.
My apologies for my reply yesterday even after 21 odd yrs, the events of East Timor and Lenny's death 20 odd yrs ago are still raw and its like it happen only yesterday. Trying to write up a post for The Standard is bloody hard for me because i find it to keep my emotions under control which effect my ability to keep a fair and balance post.
It one of the reasons why avoid social policy issues, because of what happen to our family in the 90's under the National Government.
Anyway back to tropic, i also see the NZ Greens have drop their opposition to purpose design Amphibious Landing Ship. Obvious someone or persons have read the Coles Report into the L421 Canterbury and the issues with the 2 OPV's which are no long fit for purpose in the South Ocean.
It will be interesting to see what happens after this election as the next 3-4 major capital equipment items that need to brought are going to be:-
The New Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel a cost of anywhere from $300m-$600m
The first of the 2 Landing Ships with a docking well a cost of anywhere from $300m- $600m
New Ship borne Helicopters these won't come cheap either probably nudging the $1B plus mark
Long Range Aerial UAV's again these are not cheap either because of the intial start up costs involved like the start ups with the P8's.
You are not responsible for political decisions when on a deployment. You followed orders due to your youth and being in the defence force trying to make a difference.
It is always differcult when the desired outcome of a peace keeping mission or combat is not met. From time to time I think of the young men who fought in Vietnam because of the politicians who sent them there.
Those in the NZDF need to be looked after better than they are when on deployment and when no longer in service.
If Scud is trying to get a post together on the subject for The Standard could any of you knowledgeable people here assist if there are technical aspects needing advice? Could someone offer in case that is holding him up?
It's more to with my Mental Health as even after 21 odd yrs, the events of East Timor and Lenny's death 20 odd yrs ago are still raw and its like it happen only yesterday. Trying to write up a post for The Standard is bloody hard for me because i find it to keep my emotions under control which effect my ability to keep a fair and balance post.
I've a got of ideals for two posts, one the Next 4yrs NZMoD/ NZDF policy advice which has some interesting bits from CC, Covid19 and Hybrid warfare/ Non State Actors etc.
The other is a Book probably the best read this yr and no its not to with Defence and it also explains why i got miss diagnosed with a funky tropical vector borne diseased that i picked up in East Timor during INTERFET which wasn't probably diagnosed in late 07-08
Yes and that's how my mate got killed in action 20 odd yrs ago in East Timorhttps://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-24-07-2020/#comment-1733871 because the stupid c***s in the Labour/ Alliance Government change the NZBATT2 ROE and OFOF against the wishes of the NZDF HQ, BATT2 CO, ANZAC Brigade HQ in the Border Region, NZ's Senior Officer and UN Military HQ in Timor Leste. All Because the of stupidity and arrogance of their political ideology of what Peacekeeping should be as they believe the ROE's and OFOF was too Gung Ho for their liking.
After Lenny was KIA the NZBATT2's ROE and OFOF was changed back to the original set. Also the deep cuts to the NZDF during the 90's also played a part as well as those of us who were a part 3 Land Force Group the Sth Is would know our training budget was to cut by 80-90% in order to keep the RF in 2LFG at some sort of readiness.
Even the 8mths of training for NZBATT2 couldn't make up for the lost yrs of the 90's for both the RF units/personal or the South Is TF units/personal who deployed to ET in 2000. Alot of old hands have said it was probably the most poor trained formed body of troops leave NZ Shores since WW2 and we all point the fingers at the NZ Politicians Post Cold War aka 1991 onwards and their various travellers from either side of the political spectrum who want cuts to the NZDF.
Where there is organisational failure this needs to be addressed.
The Abuse into Care Royal Commission of Inquiry is at its most important phase.
The Limitations Act is not fit for purpose when it comes to an historical abuse case. The now adults who were then the abused children are being silenced again due to the Limitations Act time having run out for action to be taken against those who are responsible for covering up the offending.
I want to see everyone affected by trauma to be able to be processed with fit for purpose legislation. This would enable people to be processed without unnecessary delays and a verbal fight which just drains a person who is already drained.
I no longer waste my energy having anger for the thick bastards who should know better. I try to stay strong one day at a time. I have my numb days and I go for long walks.
Thank you for the sound advice Treetop, even after 21 odd yrs, the events of East Timor and Lenny's death 20 odd yrs ago are still raw and its like it happen only yesterday. Trying to write up a post for The Standard is bloody hard for me because i find it to keep my emotions under control which effect my ability to keep a fair and balance post.
I usual try and spend time outside working, but our Nth'ern Wet Season rains and the resulting humidity have come two mths early than normal (this time last yr we had 3 massive running bush fires where i was involved with one of those fires) bloody CC.
I usually head off and spend time building my 1/700 model ships in my man cave while listening to ABC Classical Radio until the my Cricket of Cricket starts on ABC Sport Grandstand which sort've keeps me grounded.
Like you from the sounds of it, we both hate the today's modern political class who will not resigned from office unless they are pushed if they did something or acted against advice of their Portfolio Advisors and later to be find in the wrong when it all goes to shit.
Have you looked into the aboriginal way of burning off to protect against bush fires? It sounds just odd enough to be the right thing to do, because it is so different to whatever the norm is. And there were people with standing buildings not affected by the fires who swear by it.
Sounds like you were between a rock and a hard place. The pollies making noises for the benefit of sensitive voters, but also placating our so-called allies; not easy, but you deserved to be readied and backed with effective resources.
That reminds me I have a copy of Peter Winter's book on NZ in Crete and what he thought about taking part in the defence of it against superior German offensive. Very critical of our Forces leaders and was too hot to publish for a while. He thought that if the general involved and leaders had been better in touch with the troops, they could have been more effective with fewer casualties. They were not well-led. So good luck with your book and recollections. The advice from people who have had trauma is that as you write, the emotion connected is felt again but then lessened, and sort of goes into the words on the page and out of your mind. So a little bit at a time, and perhaps some tears on the way, will ease the weight of the memories when you have set it all down.
I have bought some interesting books lately about past wars, and they make compelling reading. So I hope you can keep up with yours, we get more out of the ones from individuals and researchers, than the recitations in the official histories.
On the RNZ politics discussion just now Trish Sherson made the observation that Jacinda can never claim that Labour is a transformational government after its timid, safety-first policy announcements to date in the campaign.
To her credit (because she speaks from the Right) Sherson praised the Greens for a series of green and anti-poverty policies that much better fit the transformational label. She mentioned the Ocean policy just released.
Agree 100%. Well worth a listen (RNZ at 11.05 today).
"encourage a moral and ethically based set of political belief(s), policies and candidates"
Moral and ethical and (or versus) the National Party of New Zealand
You what? Get away with y', my laddy.
They need that like a hole in the head!
But all the same, I have found no reference which affirmatively states that the National Party of NZ are vehemently opposed to morals and ethics in politics, it is just that they don’t really wish to make mention of them too often.
I would think that they might be used sparingly by National, but only if and when absolutely necessary.
After all, they wouldn't wish to be seen as attempting to drastically alter their core identity.
I guest they've still got some chance of insinuating that that have a few morals and ethics to throw here and there from time to time, but they need to be very careful. Using such tools as ethics could be very dangerous for them, especially if incorrectly applied.
Like any addict, they've got to really want to change their behavior pattern so as to adopt political morality and ethics, but where would be the incentive for the National Party of New Zealand to want to change?
It gets a lot of support from many shit bags.
Hell, I'd even vote for them if I believed that it would be lucrative enough for me to make it worth my while.
This probably reflects how many of their supporters feel.
My least favourite whingers. "Our yachts need to escape French Polynesia's pretty much non existent cyclones."
Radio NZ is not really providing balanced news here. Why are they not pushing back on the one sided aspect of this? They should be asking( apart from the cyclones)
– Is someone paying this bloke?
– are only members of his club to be allowed in?
– If there is a more general exemption what is to stop masses of yachts from say Hawaii California and other states from setting sail to NZ and how on earth would we control that.
-if they are really rich or very large why do they not sail for home/put their yacht on a container ship to take it home.
Really this is starting to feel very close to fake news.
What abart the workers then. How many workers? And are you suggesting that we go on selling off bits of NZ at a cost to us all? It isn't moronic to note that there is likely to be a hole in the dyke, as we let in some comfortably off, setting a precedent for others. Letting in more and more wealthy who will cause costs to our health services and our disease control over the country, introducing arrogant, self-centred people who don't give a stuff for us apart from some public gesture to appear concerned.
Sorry but you really have the wrong end of the stick on this. The large majority of people in these yachts are ordinary middle class folk who have swapped a life onshore for one on the sea. Their boat is their home. It may look like an expensive toy to you, but in reality it's small complex machine that provides it's own shelter, transport, power, utilities for a family. But overall it's price is not dissimilar to the home they might have if they lived on land. Often cheaper.
All the communal services you take for granted by living onshore, these people provide for themselves in their own independent home. They have some good times, but there is a lot of hard work involved as well. It's a different life to the one most of us are accustomed to, but on the whole it's neither more or less privileged than most others in the developed world.
The really wealthy types on superyachts are able to pay to solve any COVID related problems so they aren't the concern here. But yachties are a very diverse community, and most only just balance their budget each year.
There has only been one documented death among the entire global sailing community I'm aware of, and that was in South Africa. By and large these people are responsible, risk averse, generally healthy people who will follow the rules wherever possible. They generally get plenty of sunshine and Vit D. After a 7 – 10 day passage on a small vessel with only 2 -8 people on board, either everyone has caught COVID or none at all. It's a trivial matter to require them to quarantine once they arrive in Opua on board for another week and undergo a couple of tests.
And while FP may not have a lot of cyclones at the moment, marine insurance policies usually require the boat to outside of the tropical zones during the season. This is a pretty big deal for most boat owners.
Someone in the Ministry is being stupidly political on this one.
FP rarely has cyclones and parts of the islands are never hit.A quick google will explain. It's a 21 day passage now which has a number of dangers as they can't island hop – because islands are closed. And would you want to develop covid en route? And we get cyclones here and in Australia sometimes too.
But my point remains – these people are in no particular danger now or in the next six months( insurance isn't really our issue or coverage could be extended by extra premiums-use that and anyone paying health insurance could make a case for coming here) so they have no need to make the passage. And the MSM can stop beating it up
And how would we control this? Only members of the club that can be joined for 50 pounds? How would we know that an influx would not come from WCNA or Hawaii or somewhere to take advantage of this – just staging through FP.
And if the issue is visa expiry in FP them maybe the problem is Boris dropping out of the EU or something else – but we should not have to make up that gap.
I have to wonder at the motivation behind your objection here. This is a relatively small group of people, who can be easily managed with a booking and quarantine system, and who have compelling reasons to get to NZ. They represent a miniscule risk on any objective scale, and they traditionally bring a steady flow of good business to the local industry.
Yet because they're perceived to be 'rich pricks' the reflexive left wing response is to fuck them over if at all possible. Pathetic.
You really have no clue on this. Sailing people all over the world have been treated appallingly by many countries during this crisis, and you seem determined to add NZ to that list of shame.
Again this is a limited group of people who represent a very low risk. The only possible motivation to keep the out of NZ at this time is based in a certain mean spirited resentment of people you perceive as rich pricks. I’m quite certain of this, there really is no other obvious explanation.
Long term weather data shows that the bottom half of FP does not get hit with cyclones. There are 5 island groups. NZ also gets hit with cyclones and hurricanes. Do you want to guarantee that will not happen here? Thought not. But hey these are weather facts readily available.
My point is the MSM should stop promoting an essentially fake narrative – that NZ is going to let people be at the mercy of killer cyclones – when statistically it may be a lot riskier for them to undertake a 21 day blue water passage and we should not encourage such irresponsibility. Imagine going down with covid en route. A severe bout on land would be close to a death sentence at sea.
Plus the articles I have read do not say it is a small group. And I see a lot of potential for this group to be increased by loophole seekers.
At this point I'll agree to differ. The facts available don't support the MSM narrative. NZ is correct to not see this as compelling reasons to take people from FP.
As to the rich pricks comment see below- that seems to exist only with you. This is about having a compelling need to come here.
when statistically it may be a lot riskier for them to undertake a 21 day blue water passage and we should not encourage such irresponsibility.
They've already done a passage of similar length to get to FP from say the Galapagos any how. It's what they're set up to do.
As for coming down with COVID enroute, that's exceedingly unlikely. They're probably as a age group more at risk from heart attacks and stroke. This is a risk they assume and manage voluntarily every time they go to sea.
And managing 'loopholers' is trivial, just implement a booking and permit system. Anyone who arrives without permission would face substantial penalties. I really don't see this as a problem; they are a bone fide group of people who are all well known to each other, anyone trying to free ride the exemption would be called out real fast.
As for your insistence that FP is some kind of hurricane free zone; I’ve checked in the past hour with a more experienced friend … he just laughed.
I'm actually not saying they are rich pricks – as Poisson says they don't have compelling safety reasons and the length of passage from FP has its own downsides. So the MSM could report that accurately which is my main beef.
But this small (?) group would have the potential to be an exploitable loophole whereby FP suddenly acquires a boatload of people coming from all over the place then on to NZ.
The rich pricks seem to be holed up in Fiji's blue lanes initiatives. But I don't doubt that if exemptions were given they would be down here in a heartbeat.
I think your thinking tends to be linear Red Logix. They are rich enough to have a boat and please themselves. I know that the wealthy can always find people with more money than themselves to compare with, so they can say we're not rich. But the broad mass of people in NZ have limited funds, and everyone at the top has to start expecting the world on a plate.
There is a shrinking of what is there to go round, and a continual expanding of old people wanting their share and a bit of others' as well. Plus the natural increase even in countries with diminishing population rates. So we all have to grow a little to match the lessening of our opportunities.
RL, genuinely don't envy any of them myself – no "stinking resentment" here.
And if you got "stinking resentment" from greywarshark's quoted comment, then your threshold of detection for "stinking resentment" is set too low, IMHO – but whatever floats your boat
I've been around here long enough to see people swearing blind they don't 'envy the rich', yet over and over it's the only rational explanation for their behaviour.
Again yachties are a very mixed bunch, and only a small handful would qualify as the 'super rich'. Most are ordinary people who have just swapped a life on land for one on water with pretty similar budgets. The cost of the boat is usually less than the cost of the house they no longer live in. It looks like an expensive toy to the lefties here, it isn't, it's their home.
But it was a way of life that was predicated on relatively easy movement between nations, and that has been understandably curtailed for a period. But hurricane season is another force of nature that doesn't wait around either and small chance or not, getting caught in one is catastrophic for them.
NZ cannot seal itself off from the world forever, the lockdowns and travel bans were temporary measures to buy us time to organise other defenses in depth. Nine months later we're much better at tracking and treating COVID now, and managing a few hundred yachties who represent a trivial risk, is well within our capacity.
As pointed out above, it's a three week passage from FP (which is well within their capacity) and this alone ensures quarantine on a small boat. And while the risk of cyclones in FP is not high, it's not damn zero either.
"I've been around here long enough to see people swearing blind they don't 'envy the rich', yet over and over it's the only rational explanation for their behaviour."
RL, hope that doesn’t include me, although if you are then it would be interesting to know what behaviour(s) gave me away
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are”
Regarding the yatchies, if they’re NZ citizens or permanent residents then personally I would have a problem with them making arrangements to come home, as long as they’re happy to go through managed isolation on arrival, just like everyone else.
What I'm seeing here is people looking at all the yachts in marinas and thinking 'rich pricks', and then lazily generalises this to anyone who has a boat.
For a typical sailing family on a monohull the boat will be worth around NZ$200-400k, double that for a catamaran. This is probably less than a house they might live in. Their costs are going to be in the NZ$30-80k pa range. Many work very hard in all sorts of ways to make it work. Again these are fairly middle class numbers, nothing all that startling.
What baffles me is that the left doesn't seem to know what it wants. On one had we claim to advocate for the poor and vulnerable and argue that poverty is a bad thing. Yet when people DO escape poverty and make it into the middle class, we treat them as entitled rich pricks to be sneered at and fucked over whenever possible.
Sure we can reduce inequality by making everyone equally poor, but that's a trivial solution. Anyone with a destructive bent can achieve that. I've always held that it's far more interesting to see just how prosperous and flourishing we could make everyone, and each according to their unique temperament, interests and capacity.
A month back I met a couple who had been caught at sea in the worst of the SE Asian lockdowns at the beginning of the COVID crisis. They got bounced from place to place around SE Asia with diminishing resources until they finally made it to Darwin after 73 days at sea with literally no water or food left on board. Crazy story. NZ doesn't need to be on the same shameful list of countries whose bureaucrats found it easier to say 'no' than to apply some basic common sense.
"What I'm seeing here…" – and why do you think you're seeing that?
"Yet when people DO escape poverty and make it into the middle class, we treat them as entitled rich pricks to be sneered at and fucked over whenever possible."
"Fucked over"? Maybe you've discovered 'Entitled Rich Pricks Delusion Syndrome' – come one (NZ citizen or resident), come all, poor or rich; just don't expect preferential treatment.
Must be especially tough to be “a rich prick” in a global pandemic.
There are so many bad assumptions embedded in that comment I really don't know where to begin.
Up until February this year many people lived perfectly legitimate lives based on the perfectly reasonable presumption that they could travel between countries. For the past nine months this has been disrupted and everyone understands why. Yet it comes at a real cost for the many people whose lives were arranged around that freedom of travel. People who have commitments in multiple countries are being affected in all sorts of ways, and for the most part we're just putting up with it and hoping for the best.
For example, I'm in the awkward position of needing to be in NZ to apply for NZ Super, but if I do I cannot get back to my life here in Australia. So I'm just having to forgo it for the time being. You probably think of me as some kind of middle class rich prick, but yesterday I worked 20 hours as a deckhand doing a very unglam job in a marine setting. It's what I'm doing to get through.
But the COVID restrictions are not going to be permanent and sooner or later we are going to start unwinding them in a controlled fashion. These yachties are caught in a problem not of their own making and I really can see no good reason to keep making it worse for them.
Other than 'lets just fuck them over because they're rich pricks and COVID gives us a bit of moral authority to do so'.
@ RL – already said I wouldn't have a problem (apart from the typo – that's my problem) with citizens and permanent residents returning home to NZ, subject to managed isolation/quarantine capacity constraints. They can fly, sail, canoe or swim for all I care, and I wish them all well – just go through the standard processing on entry into NZ in these unusual and uncertain times.
If they're not NZ citizens or permanent residents, then they should also go through the usual channels, no? I'm not understanding why they should be treated any differently because of their (perfectly valid) lifestyle choices. We've already had a few too many 'visitor exceptions' IMHO. I’d prefer not to make exceptions, even for ‘poors‘.
Brisbane’s (~2800 km) not much further from Fiji than Auckland (~2100 km), so that’s always an option too.
I'm not understanding why they should be treated any differently because of their (perfectly valid) lifestyle choices.
Probably because you don't understand living at sea much.
All they are asking is to be allowed to arrive in NZ as they committed to do a year ago, and undergo all the required entry procedures as necessary. It’s not hard, it’s not risky, and I still cannot see the motivation to say no.
Hm, what's the "motivation" for denying entry into NZ now? Good question. What's the Aussie government's own position on the issue?
I don’t understand living at sea at all – my personal puzzlement is likely due to being susceptible to very unpleasant bouts of sea-sickness. Still cannot understand why 'yachties' should be entitled to priority entry over other non-residents simply because of their lifestyle choices/plans. If they're currently suffering significant hardshipand/or risk (as opposed to inconvenience), then that's another matter and certainly deserves consideration on a case-by-case basis. But open slather? No way, IMHO. Still, money talks – watch this space.
People who have commitments in multiple countries are being affected in all sorts of ways, and for the most part we're just putting up with it and hoping for the best.
For example, I'm in the awkward position of needing to be in NZ to apply for NZ Super, but if I do I cannot get back to my life here in Australia. So I'm just having to forgo it for the time being.
Caring and reciprocity are words that should be in our NZ template for what we want and expect of 'citizens'. RL wants us to be caring about people who aren't citizens. We also don't expect reciprocity from them except the laws of the sea when they are at sea.
A pleasant life for them, but freedom comes with a cost. No-one has forced them out of their country have they? They aren't boat people. Let them offer enough money for a haven in Australia which is primarily interested in that, and they can have their RandR there, instead of us being told by you RL to include them in what needs to be a nation under the aegis of CandR. You have a yacht RL, have friends with that lifestyle?
Look at it from the other way, they would be one of the very few groups who would not be adversely impacted if we did let them in.
Consider the refugees who are not getting any settlement any time soon, for example.
I get the middle class people suffering hardship empathy, even Collins has it for farmers, those with jobs and rental properties.
Garner taking their side did them no good, he earlier wanted borders closed to those returning or people paying for their managed isolation – and they were fellow citizens/residents. Why the empathy for this group?
The ground has shifted. Six months ago it made sense to keep the borders as tight as possible; now we know a lot more about treating and managing this disease. We know how to run quarantine (originally a marine idea of course) effectively.
There is no special virtue in keeping the world out indefinitely, we have to start opening up in a controlled and gradual fashion.
they would be one of the very few groups who would not be adversely impacted if we did let them in.
As for this group … well as has been said over and again … the seasons are not going to wait. It’s a bad assumption on your part to think they are not being adversely affected.
@ RL – despite now knowing "a lot more about treating and managing this disease", globally the number of active Covid-19 infections (currently ~7.5 million, i.e. 1 in every 1,000) continues to rise.
I have no opinion on whether there is a "special virtue in keeping the world out indefinitely", but the idea that "we have to start opening up in a controlled and gradual fashion" is not a new one. Personally I would prefer that the global number of active Covid-19 cases was at least stable before NZ opened up, so it's too soon to open up, IMHO.
Well most yachties who arrive here from the Pacific spend a reasonable amount with the local marine industry. It's not massive overall, but it's important to those businesses that depend on it for continutity.
NZ does have an innovative and thriving marine industry, there is a good business case to help it wherever it's reasonable to do so. Ad made this point more forcefully earlier.
What I see happening here is some on the left exploiting COVID as a reason to impose their own agenda in ways that I see as mean spirited and ungenerous. There is nothing virtuous about the lockdowns and travel bans except that they bought us some time to learn how to live with this virus long term.
@ RL – the Covid-19 case fatality rate may be decreasing, but because the global number of active cases is increasing the daily tally of Covid-19 deaths remains stubbornly stable, and really quite high somewhere north of 5,000 per day (7-day moving average).
It's purely arbitrary, but I'd prefer that daily Covid-19 deaths dropped below 50% of the April 18 peak (7,063 deaths per day, 7-day moving average) before NZ made the call to ‘open up‘, and that would probably still be too soon tbh.
Well that is kind of my point, overall this pandemic is not racing out of control and I believe we are now closer to the end of it than the beginning.
And just to put this into perspective, some 150,000 people die each day from all causes in all countries.
I'm not minimising this. Six months ago we really had no idea how COVID was going to play out as a pandemic. And with so many gross fumbles and mistakes being made it looked bad. Well the good news is that collectively humanity seems to have muddled it's way through to some sort of stable place where, while COVID remains a real problem, it isn't going to sycthe through hundreds of millions of people as the initial data suggested it could.
NZ has certainly done remarkably well in keeping it bay, but now we face a new challenge in how to manage in a world where COVID is going to be endemic for some time to come. Locking the borders forever is not the solution.
they would be one of the very few groups who would not be adversely impacted if we did let them in.
As for this group … well as has been said over and again … the seasons are not going to wait. It’s a bad assumption on your part to think they are not being adversely affected.
What assumption? I said, if we let them in they would be one of the few groups in the world not adversely affected.
"I believe we are now closer to the end of it than the beginning."
Your belief is not infectious, and is a poor response to a global pandemic. IMHO we will not be "closer to the end than the beginning" of this pandemic until the global number of active cases begins to decline.
We might be close to that turn around, and then again we might not – after all, officially only ~0.4% of the global population have been infected so far, compared to an estimated one-third of the world’s population being infected by the 1918 ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic.
As to the business case for letting them in. We are balancing the economic return with the risk.
There are some yachts being allowed in now – based on the economic return. There are the 10% places in MI allocated for skilled workers.
The political problem here is possibly this is the case most like the alternative private arrangements (arrival without government organised MI) sought by some businesses (tourist lodges/universities/horticultural companies and for profit tourism Air N B etc) – they would be staying on yacht and yet associate with supply delivery onshore contact etc. There would be nationwide ports of entry and bio security issues (30 days thing) as well.
they would be staying on yacht and yet associate with supply delivery onshore contact etc.
We are talking about a very low risk outdoor settings where COVID hardly ever transmits. Ideally they would be at anchor, but even in a marina it's still easy to isolate. They've already quarantined for at least a week, if not three, and arranging for a test on a dock on arrival, then say another at six days, should be more than sufficient to ensure effective management.
Delivering a food and water without contact is trivial. A small craft take the supplies out, puts them in the yacht tender and leaves. Safer than anything done on land. You'd only have to do this once or twice per boat.
None of them would have urgent family reasons to try and break quarantine. As a group they are very accustomed to much more complex procedures around arriving and departing countries than you’d imagine. (Typically there is a stack of paperwork involved and it can take some days work to organise entry to many places.)
My judgement call is that yachties overall present a risk profile an order of magnitude lower than people arriving by plane.
officially only ~0.4% of the global population have been infected so far, compared to an estimated one-third of the world’s population being infected by the 1918 ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic.
Yes, but this is a different virus and it isn't 1918 either. Martenson has made the case that while it's a novel virus it may well be the case that large fractions of the population are either already generically immune, or partially so, to COVID. This is suggested by the interesting observation that in many countries the shape of the case rate curve is similar, despite wildly differing responses by these countries.
Absolutely it remains worthwhile to flatten the curve as much as possible, but supposing that if we did nothing it would result in an out of control spiral into hundreds of millions of deaths doesn't seem justified either. We still have some way to go to properly understand the epidemiology of this virus.
Plus of course we are now treating it far more effectively than back in April. And there is good reason to expect we will only get better at it. After all in 1918 we barely understood what virus's were, and we had no idea how they interacted with RNA and DNA.
RL, I really hope that you're proven correct in your stated belief that we are closer to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic (whatever 'the end' might look like) than the beginning, but don't share your belief.
Scientific advances nowithstanding (in 1918 scientists didn't know what DNA or RNA was), I think we're nowhere near the halfway point in the timeline of this particular pandemic.
“<We still have some way to go to properly understand the epidemiology of this virus.“
it is getting more infectious, and that will impact in the north – Sept-Feb (autumn winter indoors) as they go through flu season while trying to resume education. I do not envy them that, is it flu or coronavirus health management problem.
Remember what happened in Sept-Dec 1918 (the more vulnerable younger population being active got hid hard – this time they will be the ones spreading to those who would be hit hard)
On immunity – the bmj did a recent look at a few reports indicating there might be historic immunity in the population (not from infection with this coronavirus) and this might make a 50% effective vaccine still useful.
(2009 Swine flu – those born pre 1949 seemed to have immunity).
Scott Morrison suggested a potential bubble could work between regions that have no known outbreaks, with travellers from the South Island landing in Australia without having to be quarantined.
An extra 2000 people will be allowed to enter Australia from next Friday, which could help more Australians return home from New Zealand. Caps were made on the number of arrivals to limit the amount of people headed to quarantine facilities.
Because Oz doesn't give a f… about Kiwis deep in their hearts, it would be unwise for us to rely on them making sure that those coming here had been thoroughly screened as if they had not come from a low Covid state.
But we could try for a 1 for 1 flight from NZ with returning Australians having first option, and the same in Australia, which would include no doubt Kiwis they are chucking out – and those people would have to go into 14 day managed isolation, with the new post isolation checks now being recommended.
And tourism lobby be damned, let's have visas between our two friendly nations, the Ossies wanted visas citing the reason that so many furriners got in through the NZ back door which dates back to when we were all for better relations. I think we now have had all the advantage of that arrangement, and are past the tipping-point for change. Special visas will no doubt be given to special business people as with the Chinese; we must not be unfair and show preference in this matter.
And the tourist industry here can run down their drive-yourself business to poor tourists. And we can do what other nations do and that is ensure that people have a return ticket paid for, and a letter from the bank stating the person has sufficient funds to support themselves while in the country. We now have to reduce numbers here, to people who spend more per day, and are not so hard on the countryside and public facilities. In the 1970s there were guidebooks on managing travel on $10 a day, and amazingly this is not all in the past. There are good hints for that low budget traveller which we have to be wary of.
I suggest that we support Woofers (Willing workers on organic farms) which is a way for genuine travellers to get to know people though being low budget through also working with farmers who provide accommodation in this system.
I feel extremely sorry for people sailing from Africa trying to get to Greece. It is so hard for them, and hard for Greece too. Probably they are forced to flee after years of chaos caused by western political interference and competition to get resources there which causing friction and fighting. Those in flight drown in quite big numbers and then it is hard to live when they do get to land and a more peaceful situation. There are millions? of people on the move in the world having to run away to save their lives.
These yachties choose to be at sea, go round sampling countries and lifestyles away from their origin, avoiding a deep commitment to land for much of the year. It is their lifestyle, they don't have to live on their boats as do many poorer people. Now it suits the yachties to make demands on us citing their safety. We also have safety concerns, and must look after our own. The yacht owners should have made practical arrangements at their home ports. They seem to have made themselves virtual stateless persons which is not now convenient for them.
Get real, lad! That's not how things are done in NYC! Daddy taught him to just put the word out on the street. Those with the expertise normally call to discuss the contract. Is he too young to have seen/read The Godfather?? Does he not watch crime shows on tv?
Probably get so many takers there'd be a queue around the Trump Tower block, at which point he'd have a bright idea. Use a recruiting agency to do the interviews, and inform each contestant as they left that they may be starring in an upcoming reality tv show. Local gangs would think that ever so cool. Pros, of course, wouldn't show up in the queue, but would be pissed off at so much competition. Gang war in NYC ensuing could be a useful distraction to the media, allowing the Don a smoother campaign.
From the Nats and kiwi blog but facts never the less Why so much faith in labour is beyond me, if past is a good indicator of the future
[Why so much faith in anything that comes from PDF/KB is beyond me. If the past is a good indicator of the future then it was just a matter of time before you did something as stupid as a cross-posting of PDF’s misleading BS asserting they are “facts never the less” [sic]. I can easily spot one lie: the Government never promised to actually fund the planting of one billion trees. In addition, 258,475,000 trees have been planted as of 7 September 2020, not a measly 36,822,000 directly funded by the One Billion Trees Fund as implied by PDF and you.
As other commenters have already pointed out many of those promises are long-term goals and projects going as far as 2050, which means at least 10 election cycles away. If PDF and you think that you can predict that far out and declare failure today then you are not only disturbingly dishonest but also stupendously stupid.
I can’t say I haven’t warned you. PDF’s post has attracted 86 comments so far so you’ll be banned for 86 days for spreading lies and misleading BS – Incognito]
Even if I were to make the mistake of taking all that at face value, I would still prefer the bumbling good intentions shown there over the competent malignance which is the best that is ever on offer from the Nats. But at the moment all the Nats are offering is malignant incompetence.
F F f ffffffuck off with your facts. Most that are listed have yet to reach the year stated. Stick to that sicko blog. The fact is the Nats are a stinking sinking ship overburdened by lies and misleading narratives.
Numbers and targets like these you tend to look at the trends towards target and on any measure or political persuasion ( if your intellectually honest) they are poor No point going into denial, it is what it is not a great score card
I'd also like to point out that the new Dunedin Public Hospital has indeed had "0 bricks laid".
Firstly, I suspect it will be mostly of poured concrete and steel, rather than brick construction. It's a hospital, not a house for a little piggy.
Secondly, prior to this government the hospital project was stuck in a Wakari/Central City committee limbo. Fuckall was happening. Since the change in government, the project has:
selected the site
negotiated and completed the purchase of the required land
done geologic surveys of the property
put together the master plan for phased construction
National in government: "There is NO housing crisis".
National in opposition: "Why haven't you solved the housing crisis?".
Rinse and repeat for a range of policies from health to climate change.
Or to put it another way …
If you promise your partner that you will do 10 household chores and you do only 5, are you better or worse than the lazy slob who doesn't offer to do anything?
"Avoid failing by not trying" – National's new slogan.
The point is about labour’s performance and promises, not the Nats, they had their chance and on your count failed The above indicates labour at their bumbling best are not much scratch either They set these goals and targets not national, so not sure why they are then projected on to national, labour needs to own them
Yeah KiwiBuild – hard to bring in builders to build them via local companies when there are not enough first home buyers who can afford them. If they do not allow young couples who own flats or apartments to buy them when starting families or boomers trading down from their 1/4 acre section home to buy, this is going to fail.
A growing waiting list for state houses is not evidence people are homeless, it’s that private sector rents are going up (see above) and more people are being helped via motels. But sure, if they are not going to sort out KiwiBuild they will need to build 10,000 state houses a year, not the 3 or 4,000 they currently do.
Shane Jones could not even get the PGF money allocated and spent, so achieving a trees target was way beyond his munificence.
National promised the Dunedin hospital rebuild three elections in a row, and Labour not getting the building going until the second term is cited? I hope those in Napier are not holding their breath for either a National win or any delivery (not this decade under National).
Labour has moved the target of 100% renewable forward to 2030.
15% more in tertiary, if there was free fees first year – based on Treasury modelling? But it’s no ones fault if jobs are so much easier to come by on leaving school when Labour is in office.
Which also explains the bleating by employers about needing more migrant labour. The economy going too good for this promise to be kept is not something National should be publicising. Own goal.
Peters preferred rail not light rail. Coalitions huh.
Not achieving immediate progress towards reaching longer term goals is not as important as delivering pathways – which Labour did on emissions.
Child poverty is an interesting one, moves to improve rental quality and food in schools will make a difference, as will allowing sole parents to keep more money earned from part-time work.
Then there have been the higher higher MW – over a dolllar increases 2020 (and again 2021). expansion of the living wage and prospect of industry awards this coming term.
Impact of Government policy changes on Child Poverty
The Government introduced its Families Package in July 2018 (changes to the Accommodation Supplement came into force earlier). The 2018/19 HES was conducted over 12 months from July 2018 to June 2019 and collected annual income for the 12 months prior to the interview.
This means that the incomes of households interviewed in 2018 include some income from 2017, and only the very last households interviewed include income from the entire 2018/19 year.
As such, it will take at least one more survey before these income-related policy changes will have close to their full effect on the reported annual income of all households interviewed.
Agree some reasonable mitigating ( I would have even have accepted Twyford as an overarching Reasonable excuse ) but not exoneration for a pretty poor effort on delivery
if they are not going to sort out KiwiBuild they will need to build 10,000 state houses a year, not the 3 or 4,000 they currently do.
It's more depressing than I outlined, they're building 3000-4000 over a three year term – getting to 10,000 over a three year term may be the hoped for level …
"Yeah KiwiBuild – hard to bring in builders to build them via local companies when there are not enough first home buyers who can afford them. If they do not allow young couples who own flats or apartments to buy them when starting families or boomers trading down from their 1/4 acre section home to buy, this is going to fail."
I accept some of your other arguments, but you have to admit Kiwibuild was a bit of a downer.
Even Megan Woods has admitted 100,000 was "overly ambitious"
"Housing Minister Megan Woods said the 100,000 target was overly ambitious and had led to "contracts being signed in places where there was little first-home buyer demand"."
Basically they are still unable to admit that trying to build a lot of new homes while restricting sales to first home buyers, and while the RBG was requiring a 20% deposit, was so so wrong. Thus it will now never get going and the number of state house builds being so low will result in what it already has, waiting lists that grow and grow.
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Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
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 ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Stokan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County If you live in one of the most economically deprived neighborhoods in your city, you might think the government is directing a smaller share of public funds to your community. ...
Wansolwara The news media’s crucial role in climate change and environment journalism was the focus of The University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme 2024 World Press Freedom Day celebrations. The European Union Ambassador to the Pacific, Barbara Plinkert, and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Henry Puna were the chief ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Adams, Professor of Corporate Law & Academic Director of UNE Sydney campus, University of New England Last August, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched legal proceedings against Qantas. The consumer watchdog accused the airline of selling thousands of tickets ...
This episode of A View From Afar was recorded LIVE on May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, May 5, 2024 at 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Taylor, Assistant Professor, Bond University Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures At the crux of the critical response to Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Challengers is one word: “sexy”. The film charts a love triangle between three up-and-coming tennis players: Tashi (Zendaya), ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy, ADFA Canberra, UNSW Sydney For years, First Nations people have been telling governments they want to be listened to. In particular, they want more ownership of the programs and services that are supposed to help them. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Why do trees have bark? Julien, age 6, Melbourne. This is a great question, Julien. We are so familiar with bark on trees, that most of us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Nasser, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Technology Sydney PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is an important ligament in the knee. It runs from the thigh bone (femur) to the shin bone (tibia) and helps stabilise ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne I covered the May 2 United Kingdom local government elections for The Poll Bludger. The Blackpool South parliamentary byelection was also held, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanna Grant-Smith, Professor of Management, University of the Sunshine Coast The federal government has announced a “Commonwealth Prac Payment” to support selected groups of students doing mandatory work placements. Those who are studying to be a teacher, nurse, midwife or social ...
We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+. If you love a dark comedy: Bodkin (Netflix, May 9)An English podcaster, an Irish podcaster and American podcaster walk into a pub and…make a TV show? ...
By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Pacific regionalism academic has called out New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS and says the security deal “raises serious questions for the Pacific region”. Auckland University of Technology academic Dr Marco de Jong ...
How worried should we be about the cloud? This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. I currently have a few thousand unread emails languishing in my inbox, mostly old marketing newsletters and piles of unread science journal press releases. I have a similar number ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nuurrianti Jalli, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies College of Arts and Sciences Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication Studies, Northern State University Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asian governments not only have to deal with the virus but also with the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murakami Wood, Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa The skyline of Riyadh, the capital and largest city of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia.(Shutterstock) There is a long history of planned city building by both governments ...
The LIVE Recording of A View from Afar podcast will begin today at 12:45pm May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment of ...
The Boil Up’s Lucinda Bennett considers the oyster – from freshness to pearls to the joy of shucking your own. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. In Carmen Maria Machado’s short story ‘Eight Bites’, a woman begins her last supper before bariatric surgery with “a cavalcade ...
Asia Pacific Report A group of 65 Auckland University academics have written an open letter to vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater criticising the institution’s stance over students protesting in solidarity with Palestine. They have called on her administration to “support” the students who were denied permission to establish an “overnight encampment” by ...
The Student Volunteer Army is on the march, generating approximately 1.6 million hours of volunteering from roughly 35,000 secondary school students in just five years. For Rebekah Brown, the pathway to volunteering started with her singing coach. With a passion for the arts, the suggestion to volunteer at Acting Antics, ...
Keeping up with online communication can be exhausting, so Fran Barclay enlisted the help of Meta’s new ‘intelligent assistant’ to respond to all her messages. Could her mates tell the difference? For centuries, technology has ruled the ways in which we communicate. From the dawn of written language, to the ...
Jamie Arbuckle, a councillor who has become an member of parliament, says he has settled into having two roles so comfortably he's going to keep both pay cheques. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong Fifty years ago, Australian feminist Anne Summers denounced “the ideology of sexism” governing over so many women’s lives. Unfortunately, sexism is as lethal today as it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez, Senior Researcher in Architecture, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images The COVID-19 pandemic and the hybrid work patterns it fostered have changed the way we think about office space, and central business districts in general. While fears ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Boccabella, Associate Professor of Taxation Law, UNSW Sydney There’s a good reason your local volunteer-run netball club doesn’t pay tax. In Australia, various nonprofit organisations are exempt from paying income tax, including those that do charitable work, such as churches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Deller, Casual Academic, Creative Writing and English Literature, Flinders University NetflixComedy is opening up spaces for silences to be broken and trauma stories to be told. In 2018, Hannah Gadsby started a revolution with Nanette, asking audiences to rethink ...
The workplace can be a minefield of bad comms and passive aggression. Kinksters can help you navigate it. A friend and colleague recently gave me a compliment I loved. They told me I’d always been good at emotional communication and making people feel comfortable. “But I feel like it’s really ...
Even if some students are now just texting on their laptops. Stewart Sowman-Lund writes in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Councils from Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City will meet this Friday to work together on a plan for a Greater Wellington region water deal. ...
Renowned musician, advocate, and proud born and raised daughter of Tauranga, Ria Hall, is announcing her candidacy for Mayor of Tauranga and Pāpāmoa Ward for the upcoming election on July 20th. ...
The new Aotearoa histories curriculum is rich with potential. There’s still work to be done, but the education minister’s criticisms about ‘balance’ miss the mark, argues primary school teacher Jessie Moss. In 2015, Ōtorohanga College students presented to parliament a petition signed by more than 10,000 people calling for a ...
For too long our so-called national bird has maintained its stranglehold on the economy of regional New Zealand. Thanks to the fast track legislation, we will have our revenge. Theories abound on what ails New Zealand’s economy. National leader Chris Luxon has posited that we’re negative, wet, whiny, and inward-looking; ...
If building one of Auckland’s possible waterfront stadiums was funded privately, it would need to hold a sold-out Ed Sherran concert every weekday for 25 years. That’s Rob Hamlin’s finding – he’s a senior marketing lecturer at the University of Otago. “It’s not going to happen; forget about it,” he ...
Comment: The debate over the future relationship between news and social media is bringing us closer to a long-overdue reckoning. Social media isn’t trying to kill journalism, because social media has never really cared about journalism. Social media is resolutely in the attention business. News propels some attention — perhaps ...
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So there "was a "basic error" that National's finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith quickly admitted to." https://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=12366421
Irritating, he said. Like accidentally wearing his underpants outside his suit when he showed up at work, rather than on the inside. Such small irritations can happen to anyone anytime. If he'd done that instead of using the wrong facts to do his numbers, Judith would have also said it was
But it would have given the Nat launch more pizzazz, eh? Fashion reporters would have been able to grab timeslots on the tv news to praise his innovative style.
As it was, Goldsmith fronted the tv cameras like an angry dormouse, whiskers intensely quivering, gimlet eyes staring down the slavering pack of journos: "You'll never get me! Scum!"
What a bugger though, when you're born to rule. Technical glitches in cerebral process. He could've done a Trump: "No, no, never happened. Fake news." "Look over there!" Well, over there is Michael Reddell:
So Goldsmith can toke away on his growth spliff until he goes cross-eyed, but his promises will be as ephemeral as the smoke haze…
"So Goldsmith can toke away on his growth spliff until he goes cross-eyed"
Hey no need to denigrate the mighty weed or it's users by associating it and them with the incompetent and malevolent National Party!
DF Why didn't you put this on Micky Savage's site already up, so the comments were all together? It would have assisted wide discussion I think.
I thought about doing so. I just felt a different perspective on a new day was appropriate. Coming here as a radical centrist (albeit somewhat of a leftist fellow-traveller) I tend to find the sectarian polemic bandwagon-jumping effect more than just a little moronic, so felt the other had a `been there, done that' feel to it – plus being a little like a polluted stream.
If that doesn't make sense to you, it'll be due to a mix of innate sensitivity and too many nuances on my part, so I don't blame you!
My natural tendency is to find the right more worthy of criticism most of the time but I can't exhibit that here due to too many others doing it. So this morning seemed a good opportunity to take a fresh look at the situation. I found the Nat positioning on it deserving of severe criticism due to being both inept and an insult to the public, so I wrote on their behalf.
Thanks for explanation DF. I like your approach which brings another perspective. It fits with my recurring thought that everything we have been doing in the past has been only partly successful or a complete failure. Old cold potatoes on the gravy train is not a viable dish now.
Sam Sachdeva, Newsroom's political editor, was underwhelmed: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/politics/nationals-fiscal-stumble-blunts-campaign-launch
Astonishingly, David Farrar hasn't caught up with the news! Blissfully unaware (it seems) he's not posted on Goldsmith's "irritation".
He'll be going through his 'pre-poll' phase busily outlining what he's going to say on the next announcement.
The investment of time more recently has been well spent. Ending in him not saying anything and given his followers exercise in writing 'rouge.'
The idea that there is any achievement in a lower debt level if it is realised by less money in the NZSF is absurd. A smaller NZSF means greater fiscal pressure on future government budgets.
Short-sighted greed is that party's pitch. Jam today!
As one would expect the actual stakes in this contentious political issue are extremely low. Ultimately we are just asking where in the govt budget pension expenditure will come from.
Labour argue more for, fund it now, launder it through the govt investment side for a bit (so it doesn't look as much like govt funding when spent), we have a huge budget deficit going already which the public are not challenging. National argue instead for fund it from the budget at the time and lower the deficit now and probably to try to get to surplus sooner.
But govts ability to fund pensions rests only on the countries ability to produce sufficient physical goods for pensioners (without them contributing to production themselves). The govt can always pay sufficient income to purchase those goods one way or another at that point.
Pre funding it while the numbers on super are lower has appeal.
And while doing it when in deficit is not ideal, there is value to doing so while debt is really cheap and asset values are rising.
And 85% is invested offshore with the associated benefits
The govt doesn't face a financial constraint, it faces an inflation constraint. The inflation constraint means the govt should balance its spending (and taxation) with the total economic activity level to avoid instigating more activity than there is capacity to undertake (as doing so may be inflationary). That always means balancing your govt deficit/surplus level against the present economic state regardless of its investment levels or during which time frame the expenditure was added to the govt forecast (e.g the budget). So the minutae of how this happens or even the state of the govt books is pretty much irrelevant.
Worker numbers to those on super is an important factor in its affordability.
And low cost of debt and investment return on money allocated is about realising wealth creation (net gain to all Kiwis).
For the rest, the issue is not so much inflation capacity – but whether debt should even accrue to government for printing money during a pandemic.
As you said "Worker numbers to those on super is an important factor in its affordability." Or, there need to be enough goods to distribute.
I don't think either party is proposing OMF at this stage, not that that regime performs any differently.
As I said its a very low stakes debate point being worked over here.
I think inflation/capacity constraints are both visible and important to the public. Most recently impacting the Kiwibuild policy when it was discovered the cost of new builds (shortage of builders) would be impacted by the govts house building program (at which point they very rapidly backed off their election promises).
Well that leads to the likelihood that National in not prefunding Super is preparing the way to change super settings in the future (as soon as baby boomer numbers start to die off/as electoral demographics change).
With KiwiBuild, land was the cost issue and pitching new build housing as affordable homes for first home buyers was a rookie mistake (mismatch with available buyers – who required 20% deposits). If it was a cost of building or market supply constraint they would not have ramped up state house construction as quickly as they did to compensate.
If KiwiBuild was set up properly they would have soon got migrant workers in – as they did in Christchurch for the post earthquake rebuild.
Refreshing to see some actual facts, instead of the usual "government budget is like a household budget" nonsense that both Labour and National parrot.
the government dosnt face a financial constraint 'in its issued currency.'…unfortunately much of that needed isnt provided in that currency.
Which doesn't matter. The government can still purchase those things using its own currency and the people accepting the NZ$ can then buy what they want from NZ. Or they can just sell it on to those that want to buy from NZ.
Note that allowing migration places inflationary pressure on existing housing supply – both in rent cost and land values (time lag to new housing supply), but the labour supply reduces wages immediately.
And do we measure land cost in inflation statistics …
Yes, the RBNZ and Treasury consider house prices in their analysis. This includes land costs.
Stuff's photos of both major party leaders breaking the social distance rule reveal a bipartisan consensus. Seymour, predictably, only accused one of them. Guess which?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/122824985/election-2020-david-seymour-criticises-jacinda-arderns-lack-of-social-distancing-in-selfie-while-on-the-campaign-trail
Stuff''s reporter sensibly refrained from claiming the rule had actually been broken by either. In postmodernia, nobody is meant to know if rules are real, so if they get broken that may just be the random perception of the random observer, not a fact.
And this is the Seymour that believes that we should already be at Level 1 outside of Auckland.
Pretty funny boasting that you are the party that are good with numbers and can manage the economy better, and then finding you have an irritating $4bn error in your numbers!
AND the shadow min of finance has admitted he can't read/ understand treasury docs!!!!
Jones: ""I'm going to do everything in my power to ensure the Greens do not survive," "
Charming fella.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/nz-election-2020-shane-jones-concedes-nz-first-can-t-rely-on-northland-seat-vows-to-kill-off-green-party.html
Provincial growth is good. Pushing that is great. Helping put Northland on the map is excellent.
Being a smart arse is just being a smart arse. If, as is most likely, he and his party are stuffed after the election, will the political eulogies mention that there are a lot of country folk, who don't like smart arses? Or come across like that. In an electorate like Northland especially.
The hard yards here are won in the hearts not on the edges of logorrhoea and misplaced perceptions of the power of mellifluousness.
how does that help NZF? If they get under 5%, the Greens being in parliament or not won't have anything to do with it. Any Green vote will go to Labour. I would have thought the Greens polling above 5% would mean some shift from Labour to NZF to stop Labour going leftwards next term.
or a shift from National to NZF to prevent the Greens from being the only option in the event Labour dont have a majority alone
Ummm….pure spite? Out-of-control envy? The just-released Green policy on oceans has stirred his cod-pot!
.
Probably believes it'll go down well with NZF's target audience.
As various iterations of the NZ Election Study have highlighted, the Party's current & recent voters sit at the opposite end of the Cultural-Moral spectrum from Green Party supporters … (while, at the same time, positioned reasonably close to each other on the traditional Left-Right Economic spectrum … although the 2017 Election does seem to have tilted NZF’s constituency in a somewhat Bluer direction than previously).
So critiquing the Greens & the Woke to push Culture Wars onto the campaign agenda (squeezing it in between the massive COVID-19 Elephant doing plops all over the place), & advertising their credentials as the key 'conservative' force in that battle … in the hope of winning back as many previous supporters as poss, while concurrently looking attractive to segments of National’s & Labour’s voting bases.
.
Least ways, that's how I sees it, says I.
Logorrhea? 'a tendency to extreme loquacity.' Shane J won't understand that, probably would think it about his forestry policy.
It also is reminiscent of diarrhoea. It certainly is an apt and protean word!
Shane thinks he is, Winston thinks he is, but Jon Johansen knows he is. Try to never be the smartest person in the room. And, if you are, I suggest you invite smarter people… or find a different room. https://michaelsseaver.com/leadership/its-okay-to-be-the-smartest-person-in-the-room/
Dell in 2003. I bet Jon sussed that he was in the wrong room months ago. "Goddam contract blues. Okay, gotta ride this one out. Can't retreat to academia until it's all over, rover. So when surrounding by primadonnas in the land of the wrong off-white crowd, think again, huh?"
What SurpyDurpy Tally Doesn't want, the Pompous Prince of the Provinces doesn't want.
He's a petty, incompetent creature. Whanau must be embarrassed at how he has turned out after all that investment in him.
Unfortunately many people couldn't see through him or past him. He had to be put in a place where he could demonstrate all his talents to people's heart's content. Now he has had his turn in the spotlight can we replace him with someone capable of deeper thought advancing the well-thought-out practical policies in an effective manner, going forward?
A charming fellow who has an axe, so to speak, to grind over those pesky conservationist types.
There's history….
https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/swamp-kauri/
Furrell is also furious that most of those found responsible for wetland destruction have received little more than a slap on the wrist. In one example in 2012, relatives of former Cabinet minister Shane Jones were caught digging for swamp kauri in an indigenous wetland on their Far North property. The regional council did stop work at the site, and the logs were left on the side of State Highway 1.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11480306
Green Party primary industries spokesperson Eugenie Sage said Mr Guy had been forced to backtrack on his earlier assertions that there were no major problems with how exports of swamp kauri were policed.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/395167/kauri-log-export-conservation-group-accuses-mpi-of-ignoring-supreme-court-ruling
"We want the minister, Shane Jones, to answer this … does he consider it's okay for his officials to thumb their noses at a Supreme Court ruling? Because that is what they are doing," Ms Furrell said.
Both the MPI and Shane Jones have been approached for comment.
…and here, way Up North, Uncle Shane is a bit of a joke. He may have purchased support with the bucketloads of putea that has been thrown at local projects but he is going to have to work a bit harder. Spread some charm. Heh.
Two leading contenders at the moment seem to be the Green Party candidate Darlene Tana Hoff-Nielsen and newboy Billy Te Kahika.
Robert, you must have missed the related article also on Newshub in the last 24 hours re the Taranaki Green School, ie
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/green-school-previously-turned-down-for-provincial-growth-fund-cash.html
It seems that the Green School's application for $1m from the Provincial Growth Fund ro market the school as a tourist attraction had been turned down prior to them then applying for $11.7m (grant or loan) from the Covid Recovery Fund – granted by Shaw.
Oh dear, this issue just doesn't go away. The change.org petition to reduce this latter grant now stands at over 14,100 signatures
https://www.change.org/p/james-shaw-reduce-the-green-school-grant?source_location=petitions_browse
The original application didn't meet the approval of the panel, but the second one did? Is that the news?
Pretty stale, in my view. Those who are looking for a stick with which to beat the Greens will always find one conveniently-placed nearby. Oh! Shane Jones was here!
I see National are promising a charter school…
"The National Party has promised a $1.29b boost for the tech sector, with scholarships and a charter school"
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300112183/election-2020-live-national-unveils-129b-plan-to-double-tech-sector
KilroyShane J was here!Would you expect anything less from Shane Jones?
Why is electoral debate centred around the long term level of government debt, and not on the amount of debt the government now has that is not owed to anyone at all?
Because the politicians and business people don't want the people to realise that we don't need capitalists to fund things. We can do it all on our own through our democratic administration.
The reason why they don't want us to realise that is because then it would eliminate the bludging that is the sole purpose of capitalism.
Whys it called debt if it's not owed to anyone?
So they will not be seen as challenging the neo-liberal capitalist order.
It is. It's owed to us. It's paid back to us by providing us with what ever it was the funds were issued for, e.g. State housing, thousands of acres of pine trees, excellent health care, schools, railway network etc etc
We being New Zealand.
National’s troops online have resorted to outright lies about the missing $4 billion. They are claiming that Robertson has pretty much nicked it out of the Super Fund without telling anybody. This bullshit is getting peddled about by sitting MPs. They have lost the plot.
Wrong. They didn't have a plot – past working out who the next leader is to be.
The right-wing lying about things because they didn't go their way is par for the course.
The right-wing have to lie because reality never conforms to their beliefs.
The Key Governments discontinuing of payments to the Cullen fund was financial stupidity – right in the same league as selling off 49% of SOE electricity generators -ideologically driven financial vandalism. National are economic incompetents.
its only stupid if you don't profit off it.
that is the other side of the coin, one creates a surplus (which is essentially only tax revenue not spend on the people) and then the other wins and creates a tax cuts for those that are in the correct income group (like the ones that created the surplus 🙂 ). Then everyone screams that the bank is empty and the people will have to sell their very few belongings to pay the bills.
Rinse repeat, rinse repeat. The ones with money are good with it as they can buy up the countrys silver cutlery, and the ones without money move to a ditch nearby.
Yes Sabine my bad what I regarded as stupidity may simply simply be greed, malevolence and dishonesty – after all it is the National Party we are talking about
yup they knew exactly what they're doing. Calling it 'best practice' at the time had an ironic twist from a taxpayer/consumer perspective.
Judith is on Morning Report claiming that Goldsmith couldn’t understand the PREFU docs because Treasury had written them so badly. We’re entering the Twilight Zone now.
Being reality to her will, the Donald would be so proud of his new protege.
And she’s now banging on about Labour’s so-called $11 billion hole at the last election. She’s digging a HUGE hole!
Did you hear the up-beat, irrepressible, we're going to win this by a country-mile, "post-campaign-launch" verve and bounce in Judith's voice?
Me neither.
edit
How National dares to open its mouth about finance stumps me. Many will have seen this but seeing things are so fast-moving it pays to check back for ‘holes’ in the argument. This from a few days ago:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/nz-election-2020-national-s-promising-tax-cuts-so-how-would-they-affect-you.html
Sep,18/20 National plans to raise those brackets, so every dollar you earn up to $20k would be taxed at 10.5 percent, and $20k to $64k at 17.5 percent. The 30 percent bracket would include every dollar between $64k to $90k, and every dollar above $90k would be taxed at 33 percent.
…National says that's because it wants to target middle-income earners who may be more likely to spend-up.
(Me: What!! Middles, 'may be more likely to spend up'. Anyone with economic nous knows that the poor spend 100%+ of their income, just to meet basic costs. Pay them more and they will still need to spend it all also borrow, as their income is so far behind what is needed! Those near $20,000 are at break-even point, far from the $64,000 level, and will be returning tax to the government of about 32.50% of their meagre income in taxes of 17.5% for income and 15% GST. I have forgotten if the gummint charges GST on rent, which would reduce the GST paid by that amount. About a third from basic needs, is different than from a wealthier person's discretionary income.)
If you're on $30k a year, National's policy would put $560 in your back pocket over the 16-month period for which it's proposed. But if you're on $90k a year, you'd pocket $4026 over that same period.
National's policy explains: "Middle-income earners receive the largest benefit as a proportion of their income. As a proportion of income, the largest benefit is for someone on the average income of $64,000. There are no further tax savings for incomes over $90,000."
The policy is expected to cost $4.7 billion over the 16-month period and National plans to pay for it by reducing Government debt by suspending Super Fund contributions, and axing policies like KiwiBuild and the first year of free university.
Government contributions to the Super Fund were suspended by the previous National-led Government between 2009 and 2017, but they were resumed under the current Government at a cost of $7.7 billion over five years.
Seems that Gnats have many people so confused that they don't know whether Peter or Paul are being robbed or not, and who is paying. Maybe the manner in which they intone the words 'tax cuts' arouses visions of heavenly dispensation in the heads of spiritual believers and non-beis, alike.
A good article explaining why more tax of the right type (not tax on lower incomes or GST, though) is a good thing, rather than less tax / tax cuts.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/21-09-2020/the-case-for-tax-more-of-it-much-more/
Perhaps Laura O'Connell Rapira (the author of the piece) should be the next fnance minister? She can't do worse than Paora Goldsmith, anyway!
There is also the case for a windfall tax on companies which made a profit after receiving the wage subsidy.
Unless the company refused to pay that wage subsidy out to its staff i don't see how they could make a 'windfall'.
And i would like to point out that for the last two extentions you actually have to proof that you have a loss of revenue of 40% to the year prior (not 39% or less but 40%) to even be able to apply for it.
Can you link to anything that would support your point, just for interest sake.
Law firms qualified and then repaid it back (they did not have to do that). Briscoes paid a dividend after taking a wage subsidy. An insolvency firm also claimed it – yet their business will be booming.
For some, a temporary dip, eligibility for wage subsidy, then pent up demand results in a business boom.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/122797339/time-to-tax-big-companies-who-made-windfall-off-wage-subsidy
She doesn't, quite, get it.
The money printer went brrr as she says and thus the taxes weren't needed for the funds.
So, why the high taxes on large incomes? A couple of reasons:
It's a pity that we lost that wisdom.
"She doesn't, quite, get it."
Explain it to her. @laura_oc_rapira
With a bit more knowledge she might make a half decent journalist.
@Robert Guyton 9.1
Jane Clifton said yesterday that it was like somebody had taken out her batteries. You can hear the dull sound of defeat in her every word now.
The credibility of all the shills for National on Newstalk ZB is taking hit after hit.
Poor bunny!
Why don't Aucklanders put a tunnel through their underwater harbour lava field?
[Why have you changed your user name and e-mail address yet again? That’s one particularly annoying habit of yours and I’ve already permanently banned one of your other aliases. Please give me a good reason why I should not permanently ban this one too – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 9:09 AM.
Auckland needs an additional harbour crossing we are told (among so many other things)
"The central idea of catabolic collapse is that human societies pretty consistently tend to produce more stuff than they can afford to maintain."
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-01-20/onset-catabolic-collapse/#:~:text=The%20central%20idea%20of%20catabolic,they%20can%20afford%20to%20maintain.
Again, I support your position on this, Pat.
you would appear to be one of the very few….it appears a topic studiously ignored
Civilisation brooks no dissent!
Imagine if the current bridge already had biking lanes added on to it.
Bike sales would be up.
Or if people decided to use broadband at home during peak road congestion periods and then take a bus to work.
Imagine bosses paying the space, the electricity, the broadband, the heating and all that is involved with working for home, for a start. Is there any legislation in the works that would actually assure that or is that the price of work that needs to be paid by the worker in order to be considered for the job?
Imagine if public transport were free to the users – we could potentially not even meet demand. Is there any legislation that would promote this, or is that too much of a hassle and besides on the rich can have free shit, the poor need to pay for it?
Imagine if in this country all areas had the same good broadband that some areas currently enjoy. Imagine, not only could you use your mobile from home rather then go out on the open street, but your kids could learn from home and you could work from home. Is there any legislation in the works that would assure that broadband will go to the very rural areas that are currently underserved?
Imagine all the shit that all the previous governments of all stripes have ignored for so long, and then just continue to imagine how our future and current government will do exactly the same.
I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons why we ended up with personal cars is because it creates more jobs than public transport. A couple of hundred mechanics maintaining a fleet of buses or thousands of mechanics maintaining a fleet of personal vehicles. Then the fleet of personal vehicles also needs gas stations and their attendants and more tanker drivers and more fuel and more…
You get the idea. More consumption producing more jobs.
Looks good at the start because more jobs but is completely uneconomic.
And now, of course, everyone has their personal vehicles and doesn't want to give them up despite all the evidence that we need to.
Or just make use of the Northern Busway free for 6 weeks? Sure, you might overload it, or overload the carparks round the bus stations – but it may have some short-term ameliorating effect, as well as change some long-term habits. See how it goes – and if it works, make it permanent and gradually extend to all PT.
+1
free public transport, or at the very least so cheap that the car is no longer a viable option. Like a dollar per ride.
The constraint is number of buses available – they would need to hire extra buses and run a peak time level of frequency of service for a longer time period.
and that would literally not be a problem considering that many bus tour businesses that previously catered to tourists are now not working.
We have busses, we have the drivers and chances are they would all jump at the opportunity of staying in business and keeping these jobs alive.
We have the resources, it appears we don't have the will.
The Auckland Mayor would rather have gridlock than find the money …
that is a different issue then the lack of resources.
As i said, we have the resources, now we just need "the Will" and that could actually come from government, you know the current lot who runs the world. And they could excuse their 'interference into local government' as one of these job creating shovel ready programs, they could provide funds to make it palatable to the former Minister of Transport and Labour MP, and above all they could make it attractive to Aucklanders who could pressure their council into going along with it.
Ahh, will – the want to change – is the only thing needed and that is what is not there, in government local and national.
Sure it is more likely to be funded by central government – and possibly sold as a way to get Auckland back moving at Level 2.
Could be a tipping point looming when the population of road cones in Ak passes the population of Aucks. I'm waiting for an evangelical to point out to parishioners that this divine retribution is due to Aucks voting for left/right govts that persisted in jamming the city with immigrants and not building infrastructure to match the increase.
Could be a decent contagion effect out of that as the gnosis spreads. Too bad road cones are still unable to vote. A growing minority group, but lacking political heft. Discriminated against.
"As infrastructure increases in scale and complexity, the costs of maintenance rise to equal and exceed the available economic surplus; the period of prosperity ends in political and economic failure, and infrastructure falls into ruin as its maintenance costs are no longer paid."
'Money' is not the issue, merely a measure.
Consider the recent calls for billions to be spent on maintaining roads that have suffered from deferred maintenance for years past, the failing 3 waters, the lack of public transport etc…all these have (and are) occurred BECAUSE we as a society cannot resource the required maintenance of the existing, let alone any additional…..it may not be recognised but catabolic collapse isnt something to worry about in the future, it is all around us.
But we could if we had a more economical model than what we use now.
I've calculated before that if we only produced enough food for ourselves we'd free up ~150,000 workers. How many workers do we need to maintain our infrastructure? I don't know but I'm pretty sure that it would be less than 150,000. We'd probably have enough people still spare afterwards that we could have more doctors and other health workers to maintain us, more telecommunications techs, more researchers, etcetera.
The problem we have is that our economic model, one that's been in use for thousands of years, is uneconomic.
So which is it?
"Yeah, he's wrong."
or
"The problem we have is that our economic model, one that's been in use for thousands of years, is uneconomic."
Both.
We can maintain things – we just don't due to a failed economic model.
lol…as Greer says the model is inherently unsustainable both statements cannot be correct.
So you 'calculate' we can successfully maintain our infrastructure with 150,000 individuals….what will they use?
No, I calculated that we could free up 150,000 people if we dropped the amount of farming down to only feeding NZ. Those 150,000 could then be put to other uses to support and develop our society.
They would use our resources to make what was needed such as using our iron to build tractors, and ships, and the machinery to build and maintain bridges etcetera.
Those extra 150,000 people in farming are a waste of resources.
And, yes, both statements can be, and are, correct.
Due to money, people have lost sight of the economy.
and how many do you 'calculate' would be required to develop industries to produce sufficient of those items to enable that maintenance?
The same way any business prepares a quote?
See, you're problem is that you've just been told that it can't be done and you're believing that despite all the evidence that we actually do have the resources and people to maintain what we build. If we didn't we wouldn't have been able to build it in the first place.
The problem is the failed economic system that says that if we grow lots of cows then we can just buy the maintenance from other countries. This results in the over allocation of people into farming and then, when we do need the maintenance, we find that we can't buy it. That we need to provide more than just money like housing etcetera and we find that we can't do it, that we can no longer afford to maintain our infrastructure.
But if we hadn't over allocated our resources and people into farming then we could, quite easily, maintain our infrastructure and much else as well.
cant 'calculate' the number huh…your problem is you have an ideology that dosnt fit the facts…we dont do those things because it is beyond our resources (uneconomic if you like)….the '150,000' farm workers' (many of whom we currently import) are not able or sufficient to create the production you attribute to them
It's not a question of me calculating it precisely – but showing how it could be done which I have.
You and the idiot Arch Druid (Really, he's on record of saying that work before industrialisation didn't leave any time for having a break) have specified that we can't.
That's just it – its not beyond our resources. The problem is our socio-economic system that has massively miss-allocated the resources that we do have.
Yes they are – even without the imported seasonal workers which I'm pretty sure my source didn't include – although they'll probably need to have their education ramped up. Modern production is so efficient it really doesn't use that many people:
I don't think we need a million engines per year so maybe only hire 200.
We already produce over half a million tonnes of steel to build stuff from.
When everything including creating jobs is linked to something else but until it's in your own backyard…
Interesting meters ticking over :-
Environmental impacts of Steel production.
" Steel production is one of the most energy-consuming and CO2 emitting industrial activities in the world.
The mining of iron ore ( to produce steel) is highly energy intensive and causes air pollution – and water pollution.
The making of steel from the mined iron ore is also highly energy demanding. Production of steel is the most energy-consuming and CO2 emitting industrial activity in the world. "
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/mining/environmental-impact-of-steel-production/story
More of those interesting meters .. of " catabolic collapse "
" If you compare Earth's history to a calendar year then we (humans) have only have existed for about 37 minutes – and we have used 33% of Earth's entire natural resources in the last 0.2 seconds! "
79 years until rainforests are gone.
27 years until seafood runs out.
At the time of this posting over 290 million tons of hazardous waste has been discarded this year so far.
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges
We don't mine iron ore in NZ and the power is mostly renewable meaning that Glenbrook's production of it has far less Co2 incorporated into it than that of other nations.
And, yes, the over use of resources by capitalism is thousands of years old as well.
We can do something about that to but only by getting rid of capitalism.
the calculation is simple…rule of 70
With a maintenance rate of 3% in a little over 23 years maintenance exceeds construction…..you can apply it at any level you like, individual or societal and in any form, monetary or time.
something has to give.
Yeah, he's wrong.
Its not that we produce more than we can maintain but that the rich don't want to pay to maintain it and, as their the ones in control, things don't get maintained and thus we get collapse.
Oh goody, another party invite from Gfoffloffle pending.
Alcohol causes more harm than marijuana, not even those voting no in the drug referendum deny that.
The only argument put forward is that young people (teens) adversely impacted by its use, would still be adversely impacted by it should there be legal sales to adults (those over 20).
One such admits that the only thing wrong with legalising sales to those not harmed by use of the drug is that this normalises it when teens would still be harmed by its use.
But makes no case whatsover that normalising use by adults would have any impact on teen use.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12353424
Countered by the opening up of the data and facts to scrutiny, the injection of funds into tagged health responses to "teen use", the removal of much of the secrecy and associated dishonesty and paranoia that goes with illegality – the scales will be tipped heavily in favour of a safer, healthier society.
Permaculture co-founder on facets of societal re-think: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-09-15/can-changing-habits-for-self-reliance-and-resilience-help-society-avoid-the-worst-of-unfortunate-futures/
so i had an interesting experience with the council.
Thanks to covid the inspections of lisenced food premises now is 'remote'. Which involved in taking pictures of every delivery docket, every temperature sheet, every dairy sheet, any training documents, etc , which then needed to be downloaded, named and safed and then emailed to the 'inspector', plus a set up for a zoom meeting.
The inspector was quite unhappy that i was the only one going along with it – and that the others put up a bit of a stink and wanting to wait for level 1 to have a physical inspection.
Now frankly, after having spend the better part of three days, photographing hundreds of bits of papers, downloading them, saving them, attaching them to several tens of emails, i can understand. That is a loss of time, extra work no one needs.
But i guess its the future. It all went well, no recommendations, in fact she will propose some of my Covid rules and promote these to some of the businesses that have a similar set up. She really did like my plague door. Thanks, but heck that was a lot of extra work that i could have done without.
For now, yes, but how would you set up to this in a permanent way?
Think of all the things you did and what needs to change if/when it becomes the way:
Etcetera.
Then think about how you could use that data to make your business better.
This, after all, is what IT is for.
this is bullshit. like seriously why the fuck why?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12365490
why not more local depots to serve a region rather then 'super depots' that will have to be closed down because someone comes down with covid LOL and nothing happens, like literally the last lockdown 3 in AKL let to delays of weeks in some cases if not outright 'lost', and rather create a few smaller depots that could serve the regions. IF i want to send something for a customer to Taupo via post it goes to AKL first. Cause sure it does. It is actually easier for us to just drive to taupo and deliver it ourself, at least we know it will arrive.
Local depots cost more to maintain than a large, single depot.
That said, there should be a computer algorithm being used to determine the best places to put the depots in relation to transportation routes and minimising transportation use.
and then this.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12366493
and this
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/300110964/financial-strain-from-covid19-leaves-pupils-hungry
can we please increase the benefits of people, can we please provide lunches for all kids, can we please stop the bullshit?
and above all can we please stop with the added insult of 'teaching the value of work' to beneficiaries who often times have jobs? Or desperatly apply for anything that comes up just to no avail, and above all
Can we please start acknowledging that the last crisis and this current crisis has hit women the hardest? It is women who loose their jobs, and it is women who get very little to next to nothing from this current kinder and gentler government. Or is that too upsetting for the dears? Because the dears in their expensive suits n shoes are failing us.
The Free School Lunches programme is under Labour being expanded to 200,000 Students.
Announced last week.
well that took them three years and many articles like the one i posted today about.
So essentially three years and many shamings late.
Because in February 2020 they said this https://www.labour.org.nz/lunchesinschools
now they are saying this:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300107419/election-2020-labour-promises-more-school-lunches-wont-extend-feesfree-programme
So are we to understand that Covid cost 180.000 kids to fall into poverty, or were they simply not enough poor enough in February 2020 to be included in the budget?
Excuse me but that just feel very cynical. An election lolly on the backs of the poorest. Say it ain't so.
And what about the kids that will have to wait till mid 2021 – about a year to be precise – to be included. They will just have to tighten their belts or hope kids can and a teacher might drop some lunch.?
Considering that we had this issues for the many years under National i guess we can say thanks to a global pandemic that the kids of this country – the very wretched poor ones – finally get one feed a day that they can count on. When of course the program is rolled out in their schools. YEI Covid!
The amounts beneficiaries can earn before abatement at 70 cents in the dollar have gone up a lot. For a single person it goes from $90 to up to $160 a week and for a person with others (children) it goes up to $250 a week.
The Training Incentive Allowance is being restored. It’s set at $113 per week.
All true under Labour.
Susan StJohn still makes good points in this area.
National really dropped the ball 2008-2017 (and since), keeping the amount before abatement at $80 and $120 prevented beneficiaries getting ahead through work.
And now more are on benefits, this extra income sans abatement is going to be vital.
There is still a lot to do.
1. Allowing partners to claim support for up to one year (allows people to intern or retrain).
2. Allowing those under 25 to have UI if not in FT study or FT work. This supports the gig/casual/part-timers (reduces WINZ paperwork)
3. Government support for divorced couples to maintain housing for children after a separation
4. End the repayment of grants out of benefits, taking it out of paid work income as for tertiary loans. And expand this to include re-finance of debt incurred while employed.
And how are we going to do that when the capacity to do it doesn't exist and will take time to build?
This is the major problem with people. They see a good idea and immediately think that it should be done now and think nothing of the physical apparatus that needs to be in place to achieve it. This results in things like this:
That's not likely to happen no matter how much money is raised because the infrastructure isn't there to do it.
Due to money, people have lost sight of the economy.
I think the question should be how did we even get to the point in New Zealand where we have to argue about how to feed hungry children????
We've always been at that point. Very few seem to have asked how we could feed everyone and even fewer have tried to do so. The most notable was the 1st Labour government but it only lasted a couple of decades before the stresses began to show and then only another couple before complete collapse in the 1980s.
Over the last 72hrs I’ve been trying to write a post to be submitted to The Standard, but all I can get out of my head at what happened to me at 0200Hrs some 21yrs ago with this.
At 0200 21yrs ago, this humble working class lad from Hornby CHCH ran off back of a RAAF C130 at Dili Airport East Timor as a part of the INTERFET a Chap 7 Peacekeeping Mission. Which would turn my life upside down for ever as I wandered aimlessly around the RAAF for 18yrs before my med discharge after a horror trip back to the Sandpit.
I’m still seeking answers at why humanity & politics of both left & right could allow this to happen? Ever today most people couldn’t give a rats ass about West Papua including those on left who supported the founding father of Modern day Indonesia annexation of West Papua from the Dutch & in NZ the current state of the NZDF if had to mount similar Chap7 Mission to West Papua or the NZ Timor-Leste Veterans especially my mate’s who were in both NZ Batt1 &2 Battle Group who are still struggling today.
Both the NZ Greens and NZ Labour refuse to discuss the NZDF lessons learnt from Timor-Leste even when Ron Mark drags them into reality but they still scream about the cost at equipping & the rising, training and more importantly sustaining the NZDF for UN Peacekeeping Missions or the long term reality of CC trends and finally the ongoing effects of NZ Veterans expose to the Peacekeeping Missions or in the Gan?
i was hoping to add some pictures of before during and after of me so everyone could see the psychological & psychical changes to me from the NZ Army days through to the RAAF Ground Defence days and to my current situation post discharge.
Is there much talk in Oz of any UN Peacekeeping move into West Papua?
Unfortunately it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon and probably not in my or your lifetime due the Australian- Indonesian Lombok Treaty. Also Australia is chasing a FTA with Indonesian as well. So the sods in West Papua are going to be hung out to dry if Indonesian can achieve it. Unfortunately there will be little that NZ can do either via Diplomatic or by Military means apart from waffle, fluff & BS at various international meetings or at a local.
Not surprising from those in Oz – these are the first world nation people who block East Timor access to mineral rights to resources in their economic zone.
For others a backgrounder.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/author/marie-leadbetter/
What really gives me the shits about West Papua from my left wing POV is people like Marie who supported the Indonesia annexation of Dutch West Papua in the 60's when the founding Father of Indonesia was a socialist/communist and who also booted out the Dutch post WW2.
There is a enough evidence to suggest that the Dutch were planning to return West Papua to PNG when Australia under a Labour Government would grant PNG its independence which did happen in 75. But the Dutch hand was forced under the then POTUS JKF as a means of stopping Indonesia from coming a Communist/ Socialist Country in SEA. While at the same time forcing the Brits, Oz, NZ and the Dutch to stay out of it, needless to say against all advice from it Allies who hand a better understanding at what was happening on the ground especially during the Confrontation.
Dunno, but I do empathise, so I'll guess. Both the NZ Greens and NZ Labour refuse to discuss the NZDF lessons learnt from Timor-Leste due to having higher priorities.
PTSD? If so, does it get diagnosed by the military nowadays? I would agree to taxpayer-funded treatment – does that already happen to suffering soldiers?
Peacekeeping is trad leftist idealism. I know that because I had to operate as peacemaker in civil society somewhat when young due to fighting being the norm, then make love not war came along & got traction, but the quakers had been standing for peace amongst the mainstream long previously (until Nixon destroyed them from within), and mustn't forget Archie Baxter & the torture of conscientious objectors to war in WWI. So leftist politicos are big on peace as a basis of civilisation, but could be they are insufficiently practical re managing the consequences, eh?
The problem i have with the NZ Greens & Labour is that they still fail to recognise or understand just how close we came to an all out shooting war with the TNI and the INTERFET Mission was the biggest NZDF Deployment probably since J Force or WW2. Where the NZ Army did an over the Beach Landing at Suai since the 3rd NZ Div in the Solly's during WW2. This over the beach landing by NZBATT1 went tits up, while at the same time the RNZN Type 12 Frigate the Canterbury was actively pursuing a TNI Sub inside Timor- Leste's water near Suai. NZ was very lucky that the TNI didn't decide to make a point against NZ and sooner or later the law of military averages will come home to roost with NZ.
Because NZ's politicians are all talk, but no actions when it comes to Peacekeeping or providing the necessary capital adequately equip the NZDF to Raise, Train and Sustain a Peacekeeping Force like the one that the NZ Deployed to Timor- Leste unlike the Australian Government who heavily invested in the ADF and the Lessons Learnt by the ADF which a massive investment in Airlift, Sealift capabilities, two extra Infantry Battalion Groups and investment in the Army's Rotay Wing units including Gunship attack Helicopters since the NZG decided to disband its Maritime Strike/ Close Air Support Wing.
Mental Health of Veterans is the biggest cost to the Government be it PTSD, Moral Trauma from Peacekeeping or HADR Missions and sometimes members do not get diagnosed until they have the forces or in some cases booted out for discipline reasons. Before we even start talking about other injuries that have happen during Peacetime Training or on Operations. Most Veterans don't trust their Government to look after them because the Politicians are all talk no action and will do anything to avoid or cut cost to Veterans welfare just they do to the NZDF with equipment upgrades, cuts to Capabilities also with poor pay & conditions etc.
Yes there is a big disconnect from the left and our so-called leftest politicians IRT the theoretical side of Peacekeeping and the what actually happens on the ground. This is not entirely new either as we have seen in Bosnia, Rwanda and even as far back as the Congo in the 60's. And yet you would think by now politicians and the public of all stripes and colours would understand this by now, but us poor sods in the Military are constantly having to re-learnt lessons learnt because our stupid politicians and public refuse to fund an adequate NZDF to Raise, Train & Sustain Peacekeeping which also flows onto the Veterans health/ Welfare cost needs into the future.
Okay, I get the picture. Thanks for that description. My diagnosis: you're right, almost certainly, but what we lack is politicos with your field experience. Particularly those who, like you, can deduce general principles from particular situations. Situation won't change unless such folk enter politics, eh?
Well NZ Labour won't have me back as i'm too working class for them aka too left wing for social, economic issues and too right wing on defence issues including the use of Lethal Force to enforce the Southern Ocean and enforcing NZ EEZ IRT to overseas fishing boats conduction illegal fishing.
I probably won't last 5mins in the Greens because of the Locke Family and their fellow travellers. I should vote Green, but because of the Locke's and their Defence Policy i don't. For the record and disclosure reasons i've voted Labour & NZF in that order.
Greens Defence Policy:
Full document.
The Greens defence policy is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. Not perfect, still got too many ideologues getting the way, but a hell of a lot better and seems to be based upon actual facts and the world situation (except the bit (3.1) about not searching for submarines, I mean, really, WTF?).
But Gorlz did SFA in pushing NZ Greens Veterans policies through this term with Ronnie! Heck even Ronnie does like almost of the NZ Greens Veterans Policy. So what the F*** was Gorlz doing FFS, well she was bitching about the P3 replacement, the C130 replacement, the Dive Ship replacement. Then banging on about the future cost of the two landing ships and the future Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel without realising that Ronnie is trying to future proof the NZDF IRT to CC and CC related events including possible wars/ conflicts if plan A fails or plan B fails. All this is also on top of the NZDF current NZG madated tasks that has to fulfil atm as CC adds another layer of complexity because politicians at or levels of govenment including other issue motivated groups and sections of the public refuse to believe in the science of CC.
The Anti Sub Warfare of the NZGreens is just dumb and stupid. Considering NZ had Jap and German Subs operate in its waters during WW2, NZ economy aka its exports and imports are heavily reliant of international shipping routes aka freedom of navigation on the open seas (FONOS) for its economic wealth and finally the TNI Submarine activities during INTERFET which was under a Chap7 UN Peacekeeping Mandate.
I did say it was better, not perfect. That was not their policy going in last term which was pretty much three paragraphs on how they were going to gut the defence forces completely.
I think the Green Caucus has learned a lot about what our defence forces need but they still answer to the party membership and there's too many members who believe that we don't need a defence force at all. And, yes, it is better that caucus answers to the members but we need caucus to now inform the members as to why we need a capable defence force that we look after and then have a discussion about it.
Politics, unfortunately, takes time.
As for 3.2 and the policy against installing sub-hunting gear in our aircraft, IMO, that looks like someone's pet peeve that's been installed into the policy without anyone really understanding it as, in 2.5, the policy says this:
Which 3.2 completely contradicts. To properly monitor the seas around NZ requires the anti-submarine capability.
Draco,
My apologies for my reply yesterday even after 21 odd yrs, the events of East Timor and Lenny's death 20 odd yrs ago are still raw and its like it happen only yesterday. Trying to write up a post for The Standard is bloody hard for me because i find it to keep my emotions under control which effect my ability to keep a fair and balance post.
It one of the reasons why avoid social policy issues, because of what happen to our family in the 90's under the National Government.
Anyway back to tropic, i also see the NZ Greens have drop their opposition to purpose design Amphibious Landing Ship. Obvious someone or persons have read the Coles Report into the L421 Canterbury and the issues with the 2 OPV's which are no long fit for purpose in the South Ocean.
It will be interesting to see what happens after this election as the next 3-4 major capital equipment items that need to brought are going to be:-
The New Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel a cost of anywhere from $300m-$600m
The first of the 2 Landing Ships with a docking well a cost of anywhere from $300m- $600m
New Ship borne Helicopters these won't come cheap either probably nudging the $1B plus mark
Long Range Aerial UAV's again these are not cheap either because of the intial start up costs involved like the start ups with the P8's.
You are not responsible for political decisions when on a deployment. You followed orders due to your youth and being in the defence force trying to make a difference.
It is always differcult when the desired outcome of a peace keeping mission or combat is not met. From time to time I think of the young men who fought in Vietnam because of the politicians who sent them there.
Those in the NZDF need to be looked after better than they are when on deployment and when no longer in service.
If Scud is trying to get a post together on the subject for The Standard could any of you knowledgeable people here assist if there are technical aspects needing advice? Could someone offer in case that is holding him up?
Sorry Grey,
It's more to with my Mental Health as even after 21 odd yrs, the events of East Timor and Lenny's death 20 odd yrs ago are still raw and its like it happen only yesterday. Trying to write up a post for The Standard is bloody hard for me because i find it to keep my emotions under control which effect my ability to keep a fair and balance post.
I've a got of ideals for two posts, one the Next 4yrs NZMoD/ NZDF policy advice which has some interesting bits from CC, Covid19 and Hybrid warfare/ Non State Actors etc.
The other is a Book probably the best read this yr and no its not to with Defence and it also explains why i got miss diagnosed with a funky tropical vector borne diseased that i picked up in East Timor during INTERFET which wasn't probably diagnosed in late 07-08
Yes and that's how my mate got killed in action 20 odd yrs ago in East Timorhttps://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-24-07-2020/#comment-1733871 because the stupid c***s in the Labour/ Alliance Government change the NZBATT2 ROE and OFOF against the wishes of the NZDF HQ, BATT2 CO, ANZAC Brigade HQ in the Border Region, NZ's Senior Officer and UN Military HQ in Timor Leste. All Because the of stupidity and arrogance of their political ideology of what Peacekeeping should be as they believe the ROE's and OFOF was too Gung Ho for their liking.
After Lenny was KIA the NZBATT2's ROE and OFOF was changed back to the original set. Also the deep cuts to the NZDF during the 90's also played a part as well as those of us who were a part 3 Land Force Group the Sth Is would know our training budget was to cut by 80-90% in order to keep the RF in 2LFG at some sort of readiness.
Even the 8mths of training for NZBATT2 couldn't make up for the lost yrs of the 90's for both the RF units/personal or the South Is TF units/personal who deployed to ET in 2000. Alot of old hands have said it was probably the most poor trained formed body of troops leave NZ Shores since WW2 and we all point the fingers at the NZ Politicians Post Cold War aka 1991 onwards and their various travellers from either side of the political spectrum who want cuts to the NZDF.
Where there is organisational failure this needs to be addressed.
The Abuse into Care Royal Commission of Inquiry is at its most important phase.
The Limitations Act is not fit for purpose when it comes to an historical abuse case. The now adults who were then the abused children are being silenced again due to the Limitations Act time having run out for action to be taken against those who are responsible for covering up the offending.
I want to see everyone affected by trauma to be able to be processed with fit for purpose legislation. This would enable people to be processed without unnecessary delays and a verbal fight which just drains a person who is already drained.
I no longer waste my energy having anger for the thick bastards who should know better. I try to stay strong one day at a time. I have my numb days and I go for long walks.
Thank you for the sound advice Treetop, even after 21 odd yrs, the events of East Timor and Lenny's death 20 odd yrs ago are still raw and its like it happen only yesterday. Trying to write up a post for The Standard is bloody hard for me because i find it to keep my emotions under control which effect my ability to keep a fair and balance post.
I usual try and spend time outside working, but our Nth'ern Wet Season rains and the resulting humidity have come two mths early than normal (this time last yr we had 3 massive running bush fires where i was involved with one of those fires) bloody CC.
I usually head off and spend time building my 1/700 model ships in my man cave while listening to ABC Classical Radio until the my Cricket of Cricket starts on ABC Sport Grandstand which sort've keeps me grounded.
Like you from the sounds of it, we both hate the today's modern political class who will not resigned from office unless they are pushed if they did something or acted against advice of their Portfolio Advisors and later to be find in the wrong when it all goes to shit.
Have you looked into the aboriginal way of burning off to protect against bush fires? It sounds just odd enough to be the right thing to do, because it is so different to whatever the norm is. And there were people with standing buildings not affected by the fires who swear by it.
Sounds like you were between a rock and a hard place. The pollies making noises for the benefit of sensitive voters, but also placating our so-called allies; not easy, but you deserved to be readied and backed with effective resources.
That reminds me I have a copy of Peter Winter's book on NZ in Crete and what he thought about taking part in the defence of it against superior German offensive. Very critical of our Forces leaders and was too hot to publish for a while. He thought that if the general involved and leaders had been better in touch with the troops, they could have been more effective with fewer casualties. They were not well-led. So good luck with your book and recollections. The advice from people who have had trauma is that as you write, the emotion connected is felt again but then lessened, and sort of goes into the words on the page and out of your mind. So a little bit at a time, and perhaps some tears on the way, will ease the weight of the memories when you have set it all down.
I have bought some interesting books lately about past wars, and they make compelling reading. So I hope you can keep up with yours, we get more out of the ones from individuals and researchers, than the recitations in the official histories.
On the RNZ politics discussion just now Trish Sherson made the observation that Jacinda can never claim that Labour is a transformational government after its timid, safety-first policy announcements to date in the campaign.
To her credit (because she speaks from the Right) Sherson praised the Greens for a series of green and anti-poverty policies that much better fit the transformational label. She mentioned the Ocean policy just released.
Agree 100%. Well worth a listen (RNZ at 11.05 today).
She'll be disappointed that Labour haven't driven a chunk of voters into the cold embrace of the right, by announcing dancing cossack policies.
Labour are eating the National, Green, and NZFirst vote.
Plus the right is splintering.
Trish can stick it in her ear.
National can try again in 2026… if its convincing
"Flowers of Scotland" comes to mind for me when I think of what the coming election result might well mean for National.
"And sent them homeward
Tae think again."
That is what National needs. To think again. To develop and encourage a moral and ethically based set of political belief, policies and candidates.
Power for its own sake attracts the wrong sort, as we have seen them select time and again.
Can't happen as National is immoral and ethically deficient. They are the embodiment of power for its own sake.
"encourage a moral and ethically based set of political belief(s), policies and candidates"
Moral and ethical and (or versus) the National Party of New Zealand
You what? Get away with y', my laddy.
They need that like a hole in the head!
But all the same, I have found no reference which affirmatively states that the National Party of NZ are vehemently opposed to morals and ethics in politics, it is just that they don’t really wish to make mention of them too often.
I would think that they might be used sparingly by National, but only if and when absolutely necessary.
After all, they wouldn't wish to be seen as attempting to drastically alter their core identity.
I guest they've still got some chance of insinuating that that have a few morals and ethics to throw here and there from time to time, but they need to be very careful. Using such tools as ethics could be very dangerous for them, especially if incorrectly applied.
Like any addict, they've got to really want to change their behavior pattern so as to adopt political morality and ethics, but where would be the incentive for the National Party of New Zealand to want to change?
It gets a lot of support from many shit bags.
Hell, I'd even vote for them if I believed that it would be lucrative enough for me to make it worth my while.
This probably reflects how many of their supporters feel.
Major tax increases or new taxes appear to be off the table. The government still needs to reduce inequality.
So they are raising the minimum wage and will implement Fair Pay agreements. If you can't take it from the top, add it onto the bottom!
My least favourite whingers. "Our yachts need to escape French Polynesia's pretty much non existent cyclones."
Radio NZ is not really providing balanced news here. Why are they not pushing back on the one sided aspect of this? They should be asking( apart from the cyclones)
– Is someone paying this bloke?
– are only members of his club to be allowed in?
– If there is a more general exemption what is to stop masses of yachts from say Hawaii California and other states from setting sail to NZ and how on earth would we control that.
-if they are really rich or very large why do they not sail for home/put their yacht on a container ship to take it home.
Really this is starting to feel very close to fake news.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/426508/foreign-yachties-say-lives-now-at-risk-from-nz-decision
It's the ZOMG, the rich have been inconvenienced, please save them which is par for the course in the MSM.
Hundreds of workers in marine refits needed those boats here.
It was the uplift in business they desperately needed.
There are boats coming here for a refit. They make a business case.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
You probably don't even know the names of the agencies they need to deal with.
You're just part of the moronic left that sees whole employment sectors destroyed through the pandemic and celebrates it.
What abart the workers then. How many workers? And are you suggesting that we go on selling off bits of NZ at a cost to us all? It isn't moronic to note that there is likely to be a hole in the dyke, as we let in some comfortably off, setting a precedent for others. Letting in more and more wealthy who will cause costs to our health services and our disease control over the country, introducing arrogant, self-centred people who don't give a stuff for us apart from some public gesture to appear concerned.
Ad knows everything and all about everyone. All hail Ad.
Personal ad hominem from someone in position of power is an abuse of power.
Are they some kind of travelling boat party?
Sorry but you really have the wrong end of the stick on this. The large majority of people in these yachts are ordinary middle class folk who have swapped a life onshore for one on the sea. Their boat is their home. It may look like an expensive toy to you, but in reality it's small complex machine that provides it's own shelter, transport, power, utilities for a family. But overall it's price is not dissimilar to the home they might have if they lived on land. Often cheaper.
All the communal services you take for granted by living onshore, these people provide for themselves in their own independent home. They have some good times, but there is a lot of hard work involved as well. It's a different life to the one most of us are accustomed to, but on the whole it's neither more or less privileged than most others in the developed world.
The really wealthy types on superyachts are able to pay to solve any COVID related problems so they aren't the concern here. But yachties are a very diverse community, and most only just balance their budget each year.
There has only been one documented death among the entire global sailing community I'm aware of, and that was in South Africa. By and large these people are responsible, risk averse, generally healthy people who will follow the rules wherever possible. They generally get plenty of sunshine and Vit D. After a 7 – 10 day passage on a small vessel with only 2 -8 people on board, either everyone has caught COVID or none at all. It's a trivial matter to require them to quarantine once they arrive in Opua on board for another week and undergo a couple of tests.
And while FP may not have a lot of cyclones at the moment, marine insurance policies usually require the boat to outside of the tropical zones during the season. This is a pretty big deal for most boat owners.
Someone in the Ministry is being stupidly political on this one.
Correction – Someone in the Ministry is being
stupidlywisely political on this one.Love the detailed reasoning there. /sarc
FP rarely has cyclones and parts of the islands are never hit.A quick google will explain. It's a 21 day passage now which has a number of dangers as they can't island hop – because islands are closed. And would you want to develop covid en route? And we get cyclones here and in Australia sometimes too.
But my point remains – these people are in no particular danger now or in the next six months( insurance isn't really our issue or coverage could be extended by extra premiums-use that and anyone paying health insurance could make a case for coming here) so they have no need to make the passage. And the MSM can stop beating it up
And how would we control this? Only members of the club that can be joined for 50 pounds? How would we know that an influx would not come from WCNA or Hawaii or somewhere to take advantage of this – just staging through FP.
And if the issue is visa expiry in FP them maybe the problem is Boris dropping out of the EU or something else – but we should not have to make up that gap.
I have to wonder at the motivation behind your objection here. This is a relatively small group of people, who can be easily managed with a booking and quarantine system, and who have compelling reasons to get to NZ. They represent a miniscule risk on any objective scale, and they traditionally bring a steady flow of good business to the local industry.
Yet because they're perceived to be 'rich pricks' the reflexive left wing response is to fuck them over if at all possible. Pathetic.
and who have compelling reasons to get to NZ.
What reasons ?
Safety is not one of them as the risk of cyclones decrease in FP in a La nina phase
https://niwa.co.nz/news/la-ni%C3%B1a-shifts-pattern-tropical-cyclones-season
You aren't out there with your home and family at risk.
Nor are they
You really have no clue on this. Sailing people all over the world have been treated appallingly by many countries during this crisis, and you seem determined to add NZ to that list of shame.
Again this is a limited group of people who represent a very low risk. The only possible motivation to keep the out of NZ at this time is based in a certain mean spirited resentment of people you perceive as rich pricks. I’m quite certain of this, there really is no other obvious explanation.
And are you absolutely guaranteeing there will be no cyclones in FP this year? Because any small boats caught in a bad one will stand no chance.
Long term weather data shows that the bottom half of FP does not get hit with cyclones. There are 5 island groups. NZ also gets hit with cyclones and hurricanes. Do you want to guarantee that will not happen here? Thought not. But hey these are weather facts readily available.
My point is the MSM should stop promoting an essentially fake narrative – that NZ is going to let people be at the mercy of killer cyclones – when statistically it may be a lot riskier for them to undertake a 21 day blue water passage and we should not encourage such irresponsibility. Imagine going down with covid en route. A severe bout on land would be close to a death sentence at sea.
Plus the articles I have read do not say it is a small group. And I see a lot of potential for this group to be increased by loophole seekers.
At this point I'll agree to differ. The facts available don't support the MSM narrative. NZ is correct to not see this as compelling reasons to take people from FP.
As to the rich pricks comment see below- that seems to exist only with you. This is about having a compelling need to come here.
when statistically it may be a lot riskier for them to undertake a 21 day blue water passage and we should not encourage such irresponsibility.
They've already done a passage of similar length to get to FP from say the Galapagos any how. It's what they're set up to do.
As for coming down with COVID enroute, that's exceedingly unlikely. They're probably as a age group more at risk from heart attacks and stroke. This is a risk they assume and manage voluntarily every time they go to sea.
And managing 'loopholers' is trivial, just implement a booking and permit system. Anyone who arrives without permission would face substantial penalties. I really don't see this as a problem; they are a bone fide group of people who are all well known to each other, anyone trying to free ride the exemption would be called out real fast.
As for your insistence that FP is some kind of hurricane free zone; I’ve checked in the past hour with a more experienced friend … he just laughed.
I'm actually not saying they are rich pricks – as Poisson says they don't have compelling safety reasons and the length of passage from FP has its own downsides. So the MSM could report that accurately which is my main beef.
But this small (?) group would have the potential to be an exploitable loophole whereby FP suddenly acquires a boatload of people coming from all over the place then on to NZ.
The rich pricks seem to be holed up in Fiji's blue lanes initiatives. But I don't doubt that if exemptions were given they would be down here in a heartbeat.
I think your thinking tends to be linear Red Logix. They are rich enough to have a boat and please themselves. I know that the wealthy can always find people with more money than themselves to compare with, so they can say we're not rich. But the broad mass of people in NZ have limited funds, and everyone at the top has to start expecting the world on a plate.
There is a shrinking of what is there to go round, and a continual expanding of old people wanting their share and a bit of others' as well. Plus the natural increase even in countries with diminishing population rates. So we all have to grow a little to match the lessening of our opportunities.
They are rich enough to have a boat and please themselves.
There … the stinking resentment of anyone doing better than yourself.
RL, genuinely don't envy any of them myself – no "stinking resentment" here.
And if you got "stinking resentment" from greywarshark's quoted comment, then your threshold of detection for "stinking resentment" is set too low, IMHO – but whatever floats your boat
I've been around here long enough to see people swearing blind they don't 'envy the rich', yet over and over it's the only rational explanation for their behaviour.
Again yachties are a very mixed bunch, and only a small handful would qualify as the 'super rich'. Most are ordinary people who have just swapped a life on land for one on water with pretty similar budgets. The cost of the boat is usually less than the cost of the house they no longer live in. It looks like an expensive toy to the lefties here, it isn't, it's their home.
But it was a way of life that was predicated on relatively easy movement between nations, and that has been understandably curtailed for a period. But hurricane season is another force of nature that doesn't wait around either and small chance or not, getting caught in one is catastrophic for them.
NZ cannot seal itself off from the world forever, the lockdowns and travel bans were temporary measures to buy us time to organise other defenses in depth. Nine months later we're much better at tracking and treating COVID now, and managing a few hundred yachties who represent a trivial risk, is well within our capacity.
As pointed out above, it's a three week passage from FP (which is well within their capacity) and this alone ensures quarantine on a small boat. And while the risk of cyclones in FP is not high, it's not damn zero either.
RL, hope that doesn’t include me, although if you are then it would be interesting to know what behaviour(s) gave me away
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are”
Regarding the yatchies, if they’re NZ citizens or permanent residents then personally I would have a problem with them making arrangements to come home, as long as they’re happy to go through managed isolation on arrival, just like everyone else.
What I'm seeing here is people looking at all the yachts in marinas and thinking 'rich pricks', and then lazily generalises this to anyone who has a boat.
For a typical sailing family on a monohull the boat will be worth around NZ$200-400k, double that for a catamaran. This is probably less than a house they might live in. Their costs are going to be in the NZ$30-80k pa range. Many work very hard in all sorts of ways to make it work. Again these are fairly middle class numbers, nothing all that startling.
What baffles me is that the left doesn't seem to know what it wants. On one had we claim to advocate for the poor and vulnerable and argue that poverty is a bad thing. Yet when people DO escape poverty and make it into the middle class, we treat them as entitled rich pricks to be sneered at and fucked over whenever possible.
Sure we can reduce inequality by making everyone equally poor, but that's a trivial solution. Anyone with a destructive bent can achieve that. I've always held that it's far more interesting to see just how prosperous and flourishing we could make everyone, and each according to their unique temperament, interests and capacity.
A month back I met a couple who had been caught at sea in the worst of the SE Asian lockdowns at the beginning of the COVID crisis. They got bounced from place to place around SE Asia with diminishing resources until they finally made it to Darwin after 73 days at sea with literally no water or food left on board. Crazy story. NZ doesn't need to be on the same shameful list of countries whose bureaucrats found it easier to say 'no' than to apply some basic common sense.
"What I'm seeing here…" – and why do you think you're seeing that?
"Fucked over"? Maybe you've discovered 'Entitled Rich Pricks Delusion Syndrome' – come one (NZ citizen or resident), come all, poor or rich; just don't expect preferential treatment.
Must be especially tough to be “a rich prick” in a global pandemic.
@gw 10:18am
There are so many bad assumptions embedded in that comment I really don't know where to begin.
Up until February this year many people lived perfectly legitimate lives based on the perfectly reasonable presumption that they could travel between countries. For the past nine months this has been disrupted and everyone understands why. Yet it comes at a real cost for the many people whose lives were arranged around that freedom of travel. People who have commitments in multiple countries are being affected in all sorts of ways, and for the most part we're just putting up with it and hoping for the best.
For example, I'm in the awkward position of needing to be in NZ to apply for NZ Super, but if I do I cannot get back to my life here in Australia. So I'm just having to forgo it for the time being. You probably think of me as some kind of middle class rich prick, but yesterday I worked 20 hours as a deckhand doing a very unglam job in a marine setting. It's what I'm doing to get through.
But the COVID restrictions are not going to be permanent and sooner or later we are going to start unwinding them in a controlled fashion. These yachties are caught in a problem not of their own making and I really can see no good reason to keep making it worse for them.
Other than 'lets just fuck them over because they're rich pricks and COVID gives us a bit of moral authority to do so'.
@DMK
Must be especially tough to be “a rich prick” in a global pandemic.
So I'm still not getting the motives here. Why the insistence that these people must be kept out?
It's not the risk of COVID, that's tiny and completely manageable. It's almost certainly less than the risk of ordinary returnees arriving by plane.
So what is it?
@ RL – already said I wouldn't have a problem (apart from the typo – that's my problem) with citizens and permanent residents returning home to NZ, subject to managed isolation/quarantine capacity constraints. They can fly, sail, canoe or swim for all I care, and I wish them all well – just go through the standard processing on entry into NZ in these unusual and uncertain times.
If they're not NZ citizens or permanent residents, then they should also go through the usual channels, no? I'm not understanding why they should be treated any differently because of their (perfectly valid) lifestyle choices. We've already had a few too many 'visitor exceptions' IMHO. I’d prefer not to make exceptions, even for ‘poors‘.
Brisbane’s (~2800 km) not much further from Fiji than Auckland (~2100 km), so that’s always an option too.
I'm not understanding why they should be treated any differently because of their (perfectly valid) lifestyle choices.
Probably because you don't understand living at sea much.
All they are asking is to be allowed to arrive in NZ as they committed to do a year ago, and undergo all the required entry procedures as necessary. It’s not hard, it’s not risky, and I still cannot see the motivation to say no.
Hm, what's the "motivation" for denying entry into NZ now? Good question. What's the Aussie government's own position on the issue?
I don’t understand living at sea at all – my personal puzzlement is likely due to being susceptible to very unpleasant bouts of sea-sickness. Still cannot understand why 'yachties' should be entitled to priority entry over other non-residents simply because of their lifestyle choices/plans. If they're currently suffering significant hardship and/or risk (as opposed to inconvenience), then that's another matter and certainly deserves consideration on a case-by-case basis. But open slather? No way, IMHO. Still, money talks – watch this space.
I presume this covers your circumstance.
https://www.cab.org.nz/article/KB00001999
You should write to an MP/Minister, and ask for some exemption from return from Oz to claim (for the duration of the MI regime).
Oops – that should read "wouldn't have a problem"; my bad.
Caring and reciprocity are words that should be in our NZ template for what we want and expect of 'citizens'. RL wants us to be caring about people who aren't citizens. We also don't expect reciprocity from them except the laws of the sea when they are at sea.
A pleasant life for them, but freedom comes with a cost. No-one has forced them out of their country have they? They aren't boat people. Let them offer enough money for a haven in Australia which is primarily interested in that, and they can have their RandR there, instead of us being told by you RL to include them in what needs to be a nation under the aegis of CandR. You have a yacht RL, have friends with that lifestyle?
Look at it from the other way, they would be one of the very few groups who would not be adversely impacted if we did let them in.
Consider the refugees who are not getting any settlement any time soon, for example.
I get the middle class people suffering hardship empathy, even Collins has it for farmers, those with jobs and rental properties.
Garner taking their side did them no good, he earlier wanted borders closed to those returning or people paying for their managed isolation – and they were fellow citizens/residents. Why the empathy for this group?
At the moment, our approach is locals first and the business case in relation to others.
For yachties – its this.
https://www.nzmarine.com/news/item/superyacht-and-other-vessel-entry-criteria-for-americas-cup-released
The ground has shifted. Six months ago it made sense to keep the borders as tight as possible; now we know a lot more about treating and managing this disease. We know how to run quarantine (originally a marine idea of course) effectively.
There is no special virtue in keeping the world out indefinitely, we have to start opening up in a controlled and gradual fashion.
they would be one of the very few groups who would not be adversely impacted if we did let them in.
As for this group … well as has been said over and again … the seasons are not going to wait. It’s a bad assumption on your part to think they are not being adversely affected.
@ RL – despite now knowing "a lot more about treating and managing this disease", globally the number of active Covid-19 infections (currently ~7.5 million, i.e. 1 in every 1,000) continues to rise.
I have no opinion on whether there is a "special virtue in keeping the world out indefinitely", but the idea that "we have to start opening up in a controlled and gradual fashion" is not a new one. Personally I would prefer that the global number of active Covid-19 cases was at least stable before NZ opened up, so it's too soon to open up, IMHO.
@SPC
Well most yachties who arrive here from the Pacific spend a reasonable amount with the local marine industry. It's not massive overall, but it's important to those businesses that depend on it for continutity.
NZ does have an innovative and thriving marine industry, there is a good business case to help it wherever it's reasonable to do so. Ad made this point more forcefully earlier.
What I see happening here is some on the left exploiting COVID as a reason to impose their own agenda in ways that I see as mean spirited and ungenerous. There is nothing virtuous about the lockdowns and travel bans except that they bought us some time to learn how to live with this virus long term.
@DMK
Personally I would prefer that the global number of active Covid-19 cases was at least stable before NZ opened up, so it's too soon to open up, IMHO.
At the same time the case fatality rate is dropping. John Campbell has been reporting this for weeks; it's quite a remarkable turnaround.
@ RL – the Covid-19 case fatality rate may be decreasing, but because the global number of active cases is increasing the daily tally of Covid-19 deaths remains stubbornly stable, and really quite high somewhere north of 5,000 per day (7-day moving average).
It's purely arbitrary, but I'd prefer that daily Covid-19 deaths dropped below 50% of the April 18 peak (7,063 deaths per day, 7-day moving average) before NZ made the call to ‘open up‘, and that would probably still be too soon tbh.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#coronavirus-deaths-daily
Well that is kind of my point, overall this pandemic is not racing out of control and I believe we are now closer to the end of it than the beginning.
And just to put this into perspective, some 150,000 people die each day from all causes in all countries.
I'm not minimising this. Six months ago we really had no idea how COVID was going to play out as a pandemic. And with so many gross fumbles and mistakes being made it looked bad. Well the good news is that collectively humanity seems to have muddled it's way through to some sort of stable place where, while COVID remains a real problem, it isn't going to sycthe through hundreds of millions of people as the initial data suggested it could.
NZ has certainly done remarkably well in keeping it bay, but now we face a new challenge in how to manage in a world where COVID is going to be endemic for some time to come. Locking the borders forever is not the solution.
they would be one of the very few groups who would not be adversely impacted if we did let them in.
What assumption? I said, if we let them in they would be one of the few groups in the world not adversely affected.
Your belief is not infectious, and is a poor response to a global pandemic. IMHO we will not be "closer to the end than the beginning" of this pandemic until the global number of active cases begins to decline.
We might be close to that turn around, and then again we might not – after all, officially only ~0.4% of the global population have been infected so far, compared to an estimated one-third of the world’s population being infected by the 1918 ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic.
As to the business case for letting them in. We are balancing the economic return with the risk.
There are some yachts being allowed in now – based on the economic return. There are the 10% places in MI allocated for skilled workers.
The political problem here is possibly this is the case most like the alternative private arrangements (arrival without government organised MI) sought by some businesses (tourist lodges/universities/horticultural companies and for profit tourism Air N B etc) – they would be staying on yacht and yet associate with supply delivery onshore contact etc. There would be nationwide ports of entry and bio security issues (30 days thing) as well.
they would be staying on yacht and yet associate with supply delivery onshore contact etc.
We are talking about a very low risk outdoor settings where COVID hardly ever transmits. Ideally they would be at anchor, but even in a marina it's still easy to isolate. They've already quarantined for at least a week, if not three, and arranging for a test on a dock on arrival, then say another at six days, should be more than sufficient to ensure effective management.
Delivering a food and water without contact is trivial. A small craft take the supplies out, puts them in the yacht tender and leaves. Safer than anything done on land. You'd only have to do this once or twice per boat.
None of them would have urgent family reasons to try and break quarantine. As a group they are very accustomed to much more complex procedures around arriving and departing countries than you’d imagine. (Typically there is a stack of paperwork involved and it can take some days work to organise entry to many places.)
My judgement call is that yachties overall present a risk profile an order of magnitude lower than people arriving by plane.
officially only ~0.4% of the global population have been infected so far, compared to an estimated one-third of the world’s population being infected by the 1918 ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic.
Yes, but this is a different virus and it isn't 1918 either. Martenson has made the case that while it's a novel virus it may well be the case that large fractions of the population are either already generically immune, or partially so, to COVID. This is suggested by the interesting observation that in many countries the shape of the case rate curve is similar, despite wildly differing responses by these countries.
Absolutely it remains worthwhile to flatten the curve as much as possible, but supposing that if we did nothing it would result in an out of control spiral into hundreds of millions of deaths doesn't seem justified either. We still have some way to go to properly understand the epidemiology of this virus.
Plus of course we are now treating it far more effectively than back in April. And there is good reason to expect we will only get better at it. After all in 1918 we barely understood what virus's were, and we had no idea how they interacted with RNA and DNA.
RL, I really hope that you're proven correct in your stated belief that we are closer to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic (whatever 'the end' might look like) than the beginning, but don't share your belief.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/global?view=infections-testing&tab=trend&test=infections
Scientific advances nowithstanding (in 1918 scientists didn't know what DNA or RNA was), I think we're nowhere near the halfway point in the timeline of this particular pandemic.
Amen to that!
While that is plausible, there is still this
it is getting more infectious, and that will impact in the north – Sept-Feb (autumn winter indoors) as they go through flu season while trying to resume education. I do not envy them that, is it flu or coronavirus health management problem.
Remember what happened in Sept-Dec 1918 (the more vulnerable younger population being active got hid hard – this time they will be the ones spreading to those who would be hit hard)
On immunity – the bmj did a recent look at a few reports indicating there might be historic immunity in the population (not from infection with this coronavirus) and this might make a 50% effective vaccine still useful.
(2009 Swine flu – those born pre 1949 seemed to have immunity).
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563
"doing better"?
Orstrylia. Where orstriches come from. Head in sand as usual.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/426504/how-far-off-a-trans-tasman-bubble-are-we-now
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we….
Scott Morrison suggested a potential bubble could work between regions that have no known outbreaks, with travellers from the South Island landing in Australia without having to be quarantined.
An extra 2000 people will be allowed to enter Australia from next Friday, which could help more Australians return home from New Zealand. Caps were made on the number of arrivals to limit the amount of people headed to quarantine facilities.
Because Oz doesn't give a f… about Kiwis deep in their hearts, it would be unwise for us to rely on them making sure that those coming here had been thoroughly screened as if they had not come from a low Covid state.
But we could try for a 1 for 1 flight from NZ with returning Australians having first option, and the same in Australia, which would include no doubt Kiwis they are chucking out – and those people would have to go into 14 day managed isolation, with the new post isolation checks now being recommended.
And tourism lobby be damned, let's have visas between our two friendly nations, the Ossies wanted visas citing the reason that so many furriners got in through the NZ back door which dates back to when we were all for better relations. I think we now have had all the advantage of that arrangement, and are past the tipping-point for change. Special visas will no doubt be given to special business people as with the Chinese; we must not be unfair and show preference in this matter.
And the tourist industry here can run down their drive-yourself business to poor tourists. And we can do what other nations do and that is ensure that people have a return ticket paid for, and a letter from the bank stating the person has sufficient funds to support themselves while in the country. We now have to reduce numbers here, to people who spend more per day, and are not so hard on the countryside and public facilities. In the 1970s there were guidebooks on managing travel on $10 a day, and amazingly this is not all in the past. There are good hints for that low budget traveller which we have to be wary of.
I suggest that we support Woofers (Willing workers on organic farms) which is a way for genuine travellers to get to know people though being low budget through also working with farmers who provide accommodation in this system.
Travel advice examples:
A modern guide: https://medium.com/nomadicwandering/10-ways-to-travel-on-10-a-day-2dc767c1f199
About Frommer and the guide books beloved by we early world travellers after WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Frommer
https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Frommer-Reproduction-1905-07-14-Paperback/
edit
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/426508/foreign-yachties-say-lives-now-at-risk-from-nz-decision
I feel extremely sorry for people sailing from Africa trying to get to Greece. It is so hard for them, and hard for Greece too. Probably they are forced to flee after years of chaos caused by western political interference and competition to get resources there which causing friction and fighting. Those in flight drown in quite big numbers and then it is hard to live when they do get to land and a more peaceful situation. There are millions? of people on the move in the world having to run away to save their lives.
These yachties choose to be at sea, go round sampling countries and lifestyles away from their origin, avoiding a deep commitment to land for much of the year. It is their lifestyle, they don't have to live on their boats as do many poorer people. Now it suits the yachties to make demands on us citing their safety. We also have safety concerns, and must look after our own. The yacht owners should have made practical arrangements at their home ports. They seem to have made themselves virtual stateless persons which is not now convenient for them.
Rightist lawyer Liam Hehir speculates on this possible future:
Get real, lad! That's not how things are done in NYC! Daddy taught him to just put the word out on the street. Those with the expertise normally call to discuss the contract. Is he too young to have seen/read The Godfather?? Does he not watch crime shows on tv?
Probably get so many takers there'd be a queue around the Trump Tower block, at which point he'd have a bright idea. Use a recruiting agency to do the interviews, and inform each contestant as they left that they may be starring in an upcoming reality tv show. Local gangs would think that ever so cool. Pros, of course, wouldn't show up in the queue, but would be pissed off at so much competition. Gang war in NYC ensuing could be a useful distraction to the media, allowing the Don a smoother campaign.
From the Nats and kiwi blog but facts never the less Why so much faith in labour is beyond me, if past is a good indicator of the future
[Why so much faith in anything that comes from PDF/KB is beyond me. If the past is a good indicator of the future then it was just a matter of time before you did something as stupid as a cross-posting of PDF’s misleading BS asserting they are “facts never the less” [sic]. I can easily spot one lie: the Government never promised to actually fund the planting of one billion trees. In addition, 258,475,000 trees have been planted as of 7 September 2020, not a measly 36,822,000 directly funded by the One Billion Trees Fund as implied by PDF and you.
As other commenters have already pointed out many of those promises are long-term goals and projects going as far as 2050, which means at least 10 election cycles away. If PDF and you think that you can predict that far out and declare failure today then you are not only disturbingly dishonest but also stupendously stupid.
I can’t say I haven’t warned you. PDF’s post has attracted 86 comments so far so you’ll be banned for 86 days for spreading lies and misleading BS – Incognito]
Even if I were to make the mistake of taking all that at face value, I would still prefer the bumbling good intentions shown there over the competent malignance which is the best that is ever on offer from the Nats. But at the moment all the Nats are offering is malignant incompetence.
F F f ffffffuck off with your facts. Most that are listed have yet to reach the year stated. Stick to that sicko blog. The fact is the Nats are a stinking sinking ship overburdened by lies and misleading narratives.
Numbers and targets like these you tend to look at the trends towards target and on any measure or political persuasion ( if your intellectually honest) they are poor No point going into denial, it is what it is not a great score card
I'd also like to point out that the new Dunedin Public Hospital has indeed had "0 bricks laid".
Firstly, I suspect it will be mostly of poured concrete and steel, rather than brick construction. It's a hospital, not a house for a little piggy.
Secondly, prior to this government the hospital project was stuck in a Wakari/Central City committee limbo. Fuckall was happening. Since the change in government, the project has:
Thanks McFlock for info that people way up in the North Island may not know.
I suspect that 'Red' is concealing the second half of his pseudonym, which would be '-neck.'
So to sum up:
National in government: "There is NO housing crisis".
National in opposition: "Why haven't you solved the housing crisis?".
Rinse and repeat for a range of policies from health to climate change.
Or to put it another way …
If you promise your partner that you will do 10 household chores and you do only 5, are you better or worse than the lazy slob who doesn't offer to do anything?
"Avoid failing by not trying" – National's new slogan.
The point is about labour’s performance and promises, not the Nats, they had their chance and on your count failed The above indicates labour at their bumbling best are not much scratch either They set these goals and targets not national, so not sure why they are then projected on to national, labour needs to own them
Yeah KiwiBuild – hard to bring in builders to build them via local companies when there are not enough first home buyers who can afford them. If they do not allow young couples who own flats or apartments to buy them when starting families or boomers trading down from their 1/4 acre section home to buy, this is going to fail.
A growing waiting list for state houses is not evidence people are homeless, it’s that private sector rents are going up (see above) and more people are being helped via motels. But sure, if they are not going to sort out KiwiBuild they will need to build 10,000 state houses a year, not the 3 or 4,000 they currently do.
Shane Jones could not even get the PGF money allocated and spent, so achieving a trees target was way beyond his munificence.
National promised the Dunedin hospital rebuild three elections in a row, and Labour not getting the building going until the second term is cited? I hope those in Napier are not holding their breath for either a National win or any delivery (not this decade under National).
Labour has moved the target of 100% renewable forward to 2030.
15% more in tertiary, if there was free fees first year – based on Treasury modelling? But it’s no ones fault if jobs are so much easier to come by on leaving school when Labour is in office.
Which also explains the bleating by employers about needing more migrant labour. The economy going too good for this promise to be kept is not something National should be publicising. Own goal.
Peters preferred rail not light rail. Coalitions huh.
Not achieving immediate progress towards reaching longer term goals is not as important as delivering pathways – which Labour did on emissions.
Child poverty is an interesting one, moves to improve rental quality and food in schools will make a difference, as will allowing sole parents to keep more money earned from part-time work.
Then there have been the higher higher MW – over a dolllar increases 2020 (and again 2021). expansion of the living wage and prospect of industry awards this coming term.
Impact of Government policy changes on Child Poverty
The Government introduced its Families Package in July 2018 (changes to the Accommodation Supplement came into force earlier). The 2018/19 HES was conducted over 12 months from July 2018 to June 2019 and collected annual income for the 12 months prior to the interview.
This means that the incomes of households interviewed in 2018 include some income from 2017, and only the very last households interviewed include income from the entire 2018/19 year.
As such, it will take at least one more survey before these income-related policy changes will have close to their full effect on the reported annual income of all households interviewed.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/child-poverty-statistics-year-ended-june-2019
Agree some reasonable mitigating ( I would have even have accepted Twyford as an overarching Reasonable excuse ) but not exoneration for a pretty poor effort on delivery
It's more depressing than I outlined, they're building 3000-4000 over a three year term – getting to 10,000 over a three year term may be the hoped for level …
"Yeah KiwiBuild – hard to bring in builders to build them via local companies when there are not enough first home buyers who can afford them. If they do not allow young couples who own flats or apartments to buy them when starting families or boomers trading down from their 1/4 acre section home to buy, this is going to fail."
I accept some of your other arguments, but you have to admit Kiwibuild was a bit of a downer.
Even Megan Woods has admitted 100,000 was "overly ambitious"
"Housing Minister Megan Woods said the 100,000 target was overly ambitious and had led to "contracts being signed in places where there was little first-home buyer demand"."
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/09/labour-s-flagship-policy-where-did-kiwibuild-go-wrong.html
Basically they are still unable to admit that trying to build a lot of new homes while restricting sales to first home buyers, and while the RBG was requiring a 20% deposit, was so so wrong. Thus it will now never get going and the number of state house builds being so low will result in what it already has, waiting lists that grow and grow.
100 reasons to vote Labour.
https://www.labour.org.nz/100reasons
Anyone feeling adventurous could put some of those side by side with the National critique. It would be a useful post.
See my Moderation note @ 3:55 PM.