What a CRUEL, ideologically-driven pack of insipid, bullshit artists a NAct coalesced regime is!
As far as I can see the only “shine” for their existence (apart from greed, the “I’m alright Jack attitude, unfounded aspiration, and complacency) is a lack-lustre 2nd party opposition that still seems welded to the political pendulum that swung right (with TINA) about a quarter century ago.
Along with it, a lazy ‘mainstream media” with no respect for a 4th Estate, let alone any understanding of the concept.
The advantage they (the junta) have of course is that there is an entire generation that has grown over a quarter century that has experienced nothing else – NO-Tina alternative.
(Hence I ‘spose, insipid little people like Hipkisses and Currans whose approaching the mid-life and a wish to make a mark drive a particular attitude: AND who think they have a right to throw bombs and walk away deserve this treatment too
Like others in an “ABC” camp of “I paid me dues – I’m therefore entitled”, it’s an attitude that’s now entrenched in the parly-are-meant wing.
[PATHETIC really when one thinks about it – the potential destruction of a political party due to the want of a few exercising their egos over and above a commitment to basic principles.
NZ’s not alone of course – look what’s happening to Labor across the ditch – which in many ways makes the arrogance of the likes of ABCers even more serious and pathetic! Worse still is that a Curran or two are not exactly unfamiliar with an Australian experience……We’re expected to now take them seriously are we? I think not!
There is now a sizeable proportion of an electorate that’s been hijacked by a hope that somehow they too can be like a Slippery Dick used-car salesman – and if and when they ever manage it, they can lay claim to ‘self made MAN status”.
eww!.
I guess the trip south (swapping a Mt Vic house for a Lyttleton one for one week) had ominous beginnings.
Boarding the flight with me was a Gerry Brownlee. Family and I had always joked about those huge bags that are filled with concrete and used to prop up walls and crumbling embankments – calling them either Greylees or Brownlees. They actually do nothing except prop shit up, and come another big one, they’ll probably shuffle about a bit and just prolong an inevitable unless something realistic is done as soon as possible.
That Prince of Power and supposed reason – the one given Tzar status (by a Parliamentary majority – including Labour Party compliance ffs!
Tzared and installed in order to get things done along with a CERA chief and a number of other initiatives that challenged the whole idea of what democracy, representation and accountability were all about.
I hope those Labour Party people that were part of the enabling process realise what they did. It’s now more than two years since EQC ChCh – and actually sweet fuck all of benefit to the citizens of a fallen city has actually happened.
It might be useful to note that across the ditch, an entire flooded town in QLD has almost been entirely relocated WITHOUT all the insurance bullshit and needless heartbreak that has, and continues to plague Christchurch.
The cynic could reasonably assume that one reason for the delay in actually initiating any sort of RECONSTRUCTION (as opposed to demolition) could have something to do with a desire to balance a budget based on an ideologically-driven belief (a religion).
I initially thought that CERA Chief (I think Rog by name – yep that’s it – that good bloke Rog Sutton) was an OK sort of guy – that is until I saw his one-dimensional thinking in “When A City Falls”. There was Rog talking to a slippery Dick about the benefits of overhead wiring versus underground cables.
On that basis alone – old Rog (actually probably 10 or 20 years younger than me) is quite obviously NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer – although I have NO doubt his salary alone will convince a lot of people that he’s actually quite sharp.
(The cabling thing though – a comment about elasticity, or lack of it with underground electrical reticulation demonstrated the one-dimensional (probably ideologically-driven) thought processes. What a fucking DICKHEAD! It was an eye opener for me anyway – here was someone I thought was a reasonable sort of joker demonstrating the art of cock sucking and arse licking, and at the same time a certain belief that he could justify by logic (trouble is it was Ideologically-driven “logic and TINA-like).
Anyway ……… un-fucking believable…..”offline” I could give him some very basic tips on how to make underground cabling and electrical reticulation “elastic” without any sort of problems with induction or other problems.
Open your frikken mind Rog – its what you’re paid the big bucks for (or so we told). It seems to be that “he’s paid a mint, therefore he must actually be clever” – like the used-car salesman though – it often has more to do with the gift of the bullshit gab.
After a week returning to, and living in the city I was born, I can’t see many signs of reconstruction. I remember Gerry’s comment way back when where he wanted to level the place and start again without any respect for history or respect for the organic nature that produces citites fit for humans to live in.
Still, current Nact are a bunch of philistines – some of their predecessors would be rolling in their graves, and those that have a ‘class breeding’ they’d like to lay claim to don’t have the balls to challenge a Joyce-English-Key style collective ego with its inflated sense of self-worth.
Instead though , we have to see total demolotion – those flat sort of fields we often see with suburban developments whereby all is demolished including foliage, lovely little boxes are built, THEN foliage may (or may not be) replaced. Scorched Earth after which sterility and a supposed antiseptic, compliant society will evolve.
Antiseptic, inorganic, lack-lustre, insipid!.
Not somewhere I’ll ever return to.
Let’s be clear… The government and City COuncil have amounts of land in near environs that is stable enough to let people live on.
How is it that they have not simply done (for example) land swaps with people whose land is fucked? and simply placed the burden for buildings alone on the insurance/EQC industry? Oh
We are talking about 2 plus years now since shit happened! There are people in places like Bexley still shitting in little green cublicles ffs.
It’s reminiscent of dear leader’s promise at Pike – “we’ll do whatever it takes”. Unfortunately he forgot to qualify it by saying – “that is, as long as we can belince the bujit, and I don’t jeopardise my knoithood and making a name for mesef with a bottle of 100 yo whisky, and es long es oi don’t blow me cover with Bronagh.
On top of all this, there are things like the Hekia education experiment centred around Munt City.
I wonder what their “final solution” to it all is.
Apologies to Karol – I vowed I wasn’t going to make further comment on this site – I didn’t lie as such – just like Key, Joyce and English – I bullshitted. There’s FA other forums tho’ in which to express an opinion.
It is always interesting to hear the views of people from outside Chch when they come to visit Tim. There has been much going on since the main earthquakes and I don’t think all of it is going to stand up to the test of time. One example is the amount that has been demolished. Or rather, the lack of buildings that could have been kept to provide some of the fabric to which the new city can be reattached. The underlying fabric has so comprehensively ripped off that we are left with bare rock to reattach to. Silly and short-sighted and unnecessary.
Your point about the organic growth of cities and communities is spot on. That organic nature has been left lying on the floor of Cera and this government and been swept away by the cleaners. No room for anything organic in Brownlees mind.
I am sure the ruling clique of the Labour party are as terrified of democracy as are the National party, Chris Trotter’s ‘permanent government’ and most major corporations. The idea that ‘ordinary’ people through informed decisions will make rational choices is a threat to everything for which these people stand. As Noam Chomsky pointed out recently , throughout the West 100s of billions (if not trillions) has , necessarily, been spent over the last few decades by PR and advertising companies, the corporate media, ‘public’ broadcasting institutions, universities, ministeries, government departments, what-have-you to ensure people make irrational choices based on uniformed decisions.
Considering the function of the mainstream media in the modern western ‘democracy’, I would take issue with Tim’s observation that, “Along with it, a lazy ‘mainstream media” with no respect for a 4th Estate, let alone any understanding of the concept.” As an extension of corporate domination of the socio-economic system, I would argue the mainstream media, in collusion with their PR and Ad. Company cohorts, works diligently to maintain an ideological construct which serves the interests of an insidious plutocracy.
Under totalitarian regimes the media are inherently regarded by most of those subject to the ruling junta as propaganda organs instituted to parrot the party line, whereas the ‘free’ press in the Western sphere must promote the necessary illusion of impartiality while obsequiously conforming to a rigid paradigm. An anecdote by John Pilger sums it up brilliantly , “During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said their spokesman, “that we were astonished to find, after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were, by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?” ”
As long as we have political apparatchiks who are little more than props in a system designed to maintain the status and influence of an unelected ruling elite we will continue to suffer the likes of the Labour Party caucus and it’s increasingly weird contortionist act. The Labour Party cannot both serve the status quo and act in the interests of the general population, at best they can only provide a slightly less odious alternative to the current regime.
Through necessity, humanity will adopt a more democratic system of participation in economic, social and political processes or face the very real prospect of extinction in a perverse attempt to conform to an abhorrent paradigm designed to sustain the illegitimate authority of a privileged few. [Rant ends]
All the institutions that we’ve surrounded ourselves with over the last few years/centuries have been designed to maintain capitalism and to prevent democracy.
“If you look at the court stats, most of the crime that has been committed has been committed by fatherless kids.”
It wouldn’t matter that some children, if adopted by a gay couple, had two fathers, because they would still need a mother, he said.
I guess as 1 of 5 to a solo mum, his view would see one or more or all of us with police records.
Sorry to shit all over that one for you, Garth.
No police ever came knocking at my mum’s doorstep over any of us.
Five boys + one mum = Five men.
Come tell me to my face she did it wrong.
I dare you. Bring a TV crew if you’re brave enough.
Today I don’t know what I find more disturbing about this bloke, his attitude to homosexuals or his vision of solo parenting and solo family children.
Single mothers face a lot of pressures in a society geared to marginalising and demonising them. They are likely to have lower incomes than 2 parent families or the majority of single fathers, and they often get treated as second class by those in authority. This creates an environment where some children of sole parents could enter into criminal activities.
It is more likely to be the context and environment than lack of fathers, because research shows children of lesbian parents tend to be better adjusted and more successful in school, etc, than the average.
This study of 78 teenagers with lesbian parents (as reported in November last year) shows:
According to the report from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, the teens surveyed have GPAs in the A- to B+ range, have numerous close friends who are predominantly heterosexual and consider their parents as shining role models.
‘Adolescents with Lesbian Mothers Describe Their Own Lives’ is part of a larger study conducted by professors at the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law that has tracked same sex families for 26 years as it examines the progress of children raised by two mothers.
The 17-year-olds questioned at this stage consisted of 38 boys and 38 girls.
Nearly all of them are planning to go to college after high school and all boasted strong family bonds with an open-minded attitude to life thanks to their non-traditional family situations.
Though in previous studies on the same sample group a few teens had experienced some form of homophobia within their peergroup, a supportive family environment had helped counteract the negative effects.
And despite these obstacles, findings showed that the children demonstrated fewer behavioural problems than a normative sample of same-aged American youth.
And the report on another longitudinal study, as reported in 2010, shows similar results:
A new study published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics followed a group of children born to lesbian mothers for nearly 25 years to chart their psychological health and development. Previous studies have found no significant differences in psychological health between children reared by lesbian or heterosexual parents [1-4]. …
Compared to established norms, the children of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence. They were rated significantly lower in social problems, rule breaking, and aggressive problems.
“This creates an environment where some children of sole parents could enter into criminal activities”
Witnessing conflict seems to me to be much more likely to be a cause of later violence and criminality than living in a stable single parent home. There is some evidence to support this, for example…
… the evidence fails to support a conclusion that single-parent families cause crime. Asking whether broken homes are good or bad is misleading; the answer must depend in part on the available alternatives. Family conflict is particularly likely to promote criminal behavior, and the choice to divorce must typically be made by parents who do not get along. Convincingly, David Farrington found that among boys who had not been previously aggressive, marital disharmony of parents when the boys were fourteen predicted subsequent aggressive behavior. Furthermore, effects of living with a single parent vary in relation to the emotional and economic climate in the home. Indeed, in their longitudinal study of family disruption among London boys, Heather Juby and David Farrington (2001) found that those who stayed with their mothers following disruption had delinquency rates that were almost identical to those reared in intact families with low conflict. And in their study of inner-city minority youths living in Chicago, Deborah Gorman-Smith, Patrick Tolan, and David Henry (1999) showed that single-parent status had little impact on delinquency.
That poorer behaviour appears in children from single parent households, if true, ignores the time lag of behaviours witnessed in dysfunctional dual parent homes. Sorting domestic violence is a good start to reducing this problem. In walking away from domestic violence single parents are doing their kids a favour.
And well done to your mum, Al1en – and to you and your brothers.
Thanks, rosy. That makes sense. And, yes, it’s important to state that most children of single parents become well adjusted adults, as with Allen and his family.
if absent fathers leads to crime, surely two dads reduces it? And if crime reduction was simply a matter of parent-counting, keeping the mother in the mix would mean that mcvictim is supporting polyandry. KP might have a word with him about that…
It’s not a simple picture, but absent parents/broken families are one major risk factor in social underachievement, truancy and involvement in the criminal justice system.
To a degree (and there is probably a certain amount of confounding from the factors that contribute to family breakdown), but I was trying to look at it through filters as simple as mcvictim’s.
That’s all well and good, but in my opinion we’re playing to Garth McVicars tune by giving his homophobia too much consideration.
The issue of solo parents is completely separate to gay marriage. However there’s no doubt that solo parents have a harder time to bring up children and their kids are more likely to go off the rails, especially in our current user pays society. That dynamic wouldn’t be influenced much by whether the solo parent was gay or straight. Income is usually the defining factor, and gay people earn a bit more on average than straight people. Therefore the children of gay solo parents would be less likely to end up in jail etc than the children of straight solo parents.
What McVicar is actually saying is that gay people should stop being gay, like it’s a choice. This will stem from his belief that gay people choose to be gay. McVicars will also believe that gay parents are more likely to have gay children, when there is also no evidence to support such a belief.
The only conclusion that can really be reached here is that McVicar is a complete bigot, and should be scorned at every opportunity.
absent parents/broken families are one major risk factor in social underachievement, truancy and involvement in the criminal justice system.
More of a risk factor than the dysfunctional parental relationships that might have preceded the absent parents/broken families? Or a risk factor as a result of the dysfunctional parental relationships that preceded the absent parents/broken families?
Mc Vicar can piss off as far as I am concerned and stop his gay and single parent bashing.
Has Mc Vicar ever looked after two young children full – time e.g. a crawler and a older preschooler? If he has, he would find out how you have to have eyes at the back of your head as the crawler can choke on any little thing the preschooler leaves out.
I would say that single unemployed childless people are more representative than single hard working parents re crime stats.
Why do we engage in political activism? It might be moral or financial support or leaflet distribution, phone calling through to working on policy groups and committees. Why?
Because we believe it matters. We believe that we can, and must, change how society and the economy are structured and operated for the benefit of Kiwis and the planet.
So we come together in political party of like minded people, people with similar values, and organise ourselves in a particular way to effect these changes: the Policy platform and the Constitution and that sort of stuff.
So what if we find that that organisation is no longer effectively able to drive those changes, that it has lost it’s way? That is what has happened to the NZ Labour Party.
A party is made up of people and some get to a point that they no longer listen and interact effectively with the rest. That is what has happened with Annette King, Grant Robertson and Trevor Mallard. They have “lost it” but are trying to retain ego through influencing David Shearer. A few more have attached themselves to the this group as they think it is where power and influence will ultimately lie if Labour wins.
The fatal flaw is that the Leader is getting his advice from dis-connected has-beans rather that the connected active membership. We will never win an election in these circumstances.
That is why each and everyone one of us must directly face our nearest MP and senior office holders and challenge them to make a generational step forward.
The time has come for Annette, Grant and Trevor to go.
The we can get back to driving change that will improve the lot of all voters and non-voters alike.
That’s some pretty harsh lessons you are dishing out there Khandalla. A commentator last year said that because political parties have a reasonable amount of parliamentary funding, they are less and less reliant on members to get that media profile, get the attention, make the meetings happen, generate the publications. They don’t need us. We need them more.
A question that you are posing is whether membership based political parties really matter. And that is the core of the lie that the parliamentary caucus has perpeterated upon itself. I really get the impression that they bring members and supproters together merely as stage props for televisual hits; that when it comes to it all policy is formed by them, seat and list selection processes are opaque at best, our conations are helpful but really a few major business donations would be more efficient.
However that question can only be answered by a vote that includes the members, in February. It is precisely the revised constitution that shifts the fulcral point on the whole axis of power between members and caucus. They may not need us, but for one brief moment every 3 years, we have them.
I have been impressed with how the party under Moira has changed in a year. Caucus leadership got the shock of its life when the Party got those constitutional changes through at Conference.
Those MPs who sought to silence democratic voices within the membership will work against it a leadership vote in February, as they did so very hard in the drafting process going into it. But affiliates and members and I believe sufficient numbers of MPs will want their voice.
As the members said at Conference: “We’re taking our party back.”
Question for you Khandalla: if Mallard and King left by (say) deselection, who is up and coming that would do a better job for a strong and inclusive Labour party?
Question for any Affiliates on this site: do you still want a voice in the leadership by February?
It is not just that they are disconnected, they have a seperate policy agenda. They genuinely do not believe that the system is wrong, they think it needs tweaking and tinkering around the edges.
Guys/gals, that three are throw-backs to the old right wing Labour party, Helen sat tightly on them. We now need to bade them farewell.
And their conservative politics.
Only 3, being of a ‘right wing bias in the Labour Caucus???, i think you will find that at least 50% of that Caucus is of the ‘don’t rock the boat’ centrist/right wing school of ‘thought’,
Helen Clark’s 3 terms as Prime Minister were all about the same thing, interest free student loans, working for families, don’t rock the boat, buy the support of the middle class…
To Bad12 – Helen DID rock the boat – the s59 repeal of the Crimes Act, the attempt to get healthier food into schools, the anti-violence campaign ….. she was a cautious PM but she was getting Labour back to its roots. Pity people don’t remember that.
Actually i don’t, Remember the Clark government getting Labour back to it’s roots that is, what you list as great achievements are hardly that,
What i seen in 9 years of the Clark Government was business as usual and the beginnings of the Labour attack upon beneficiaries along with a flat refusal to address the even then growing un-affordability of housing specially in the Auckland area,
From here, Helen Clark will be remembered for having lead Labour to 3 election victories and little else…
along with a flat refusal to address the even then growing un-affordability of housing specially in the Auckland area,
Well it was more than that. The property owning middle class wanted to see continuous, fast, property price appreciation.
And Cullen let it happen (deliberately I would guess), by not restricting bank lending, because asset price appreciation added to the sense of wealth in that all important strata of society.
This is the wisdom of hindsight, and you must remember also that in the last three years, Labour was governing with a reduced majority. However, throughout the nine years, it was not unreasonable to believe that the so-called market economy would mature and stabilise. It was also reasonable to believe in its early stages that the property boom, which was accompanied by greatly reduced unemployment, would financially underpin an increase in local industry. This was not to be so, of course. The 2008 crash revealed the “market economy” for what it is – a method of conquest by the economically powerful. And delivered unto us a PM who was all too happy to facilitate their demands. And a Labour Party that now appears to think it imprudent to challenge their demands.
Do you see that line of continuously increasing private debt to GDP?
You can’t tell me that no one on Cullen’s staff, or Cullen himself noticed this, even as they were deliberately paring down public sector debt.
It was also reasonable to believe in its early stages that the property boom, which was accompanied by greatly reduced unemployment, would financially underpin an increase in local industry.
I agree that its only in the last 5 years that economists like Steve Keen have zeroed in on the crucial role of increasing debt in keeping unemployment low.
However, going to dinner parties and cocktail parties month after month after month where the main topic of conversation amongst the property investing class was how to leverage up further to buy a few more properties to flip, it was very clear that a speculative bubble was being built and that nothing was going into the productive economy.
With regard to the property investment class: true, and vile it was, but that was quite late in the piece; certainly in final couple of years of their last term.
I have been impressed with how the party under Moira has changed in a year. Caucus leadership got the shock of its life when the Party got those constitutional changes through at Conference.
Yes. Moira Coatsworth has done a magnificent job. It is she who steered the rejuvenation of
organisational aspects of the constitution through all its processes. I doubt the changes to the leadership vote – and other related matters – would have seen the light of day without the effort she has put into ‘democratising’ the party.
In some ways I think she might be unpopular with a few senior Labour MPs. 🙂
The harder test for her I think will be how the complaints that the New Lynn LEC made after Conference are handled. If Hipkins gets basic backing for “he was doing his job” rather than “bullying and ridicule must be eliminated from this workplace”, then we know that whatever rules are put in place by the party, the caucus really does rule, and writes the rules.
Anyone have any idea when the results are due on that complaint?
Anyone have any idea when the results are due on that complaint?
Yes ad I’ve been wondering about that too. I suspect the hold up lies with the senior parliamentary team. Moira and co. are still waiting to hear their side of the story. What’s the bet they won’t get an answer until AFTER the Feb. leadership has been resolved.
When people can finally accept, the reasons for the continued *failure* of our political system/services to function for the benefit of NZ, and its people, is due to massive corruption, then the actions of certain policiticans becomes understandable.
King, Mallard etc have not *lost it*, they are operating under instruction!
David Shearer is not getting bad advise, he is getting exactly what he will expect, as part of his role brief!
John Key did not arrive by accident, these people are lined up, and interjected into our political system with pre-assigned roles and responsibilities..
The question is, how is it they are being controlled to such degrees, that the structures which support the heart beat of NZ, continue to decay!
Keep looking for conventional answers, and nothing can EVER change!
STIMULUS:
standard allegation of local political conspiracy theories.
CONSPIRACIES NAMED: none. Allusion only.
WORD EMPHASIS: random, “*”, single word capitalization
RESPONSE:
rolly eyes.
NOTES:
bwahahaha! My experiment is going according to plan!
Six more months of these results and I will be able to stimulate a revolution with a probability of 87.4% success within three months of my initial blog comment! And when the internet activists crown me the Emperor of New Zealand, I will be in an excellent position to RULE THE WORLD!!! ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Actually muzza has nothing on Pete George who has an entire post yesterday about Irish moderating over the weekend. I won’t bother linking to it. But here is my response.
I’m always amazed at how you always go for the vast conspiracy theory rather than the simplistic explanations.
Different moderators have different banning behaviours – we don’t exert much effort to make them consistent. The usual reason for changes in banning behaviour depend on who has time to look at the comments. The most variable time is during weekends when we’re all off work and running all over the place with shopping, DIY, family, friends, and everything else.
This weekend for instance, I was on a laptop dealing with nasty bugs in a set of upgrade routines for work most of the weekend and running around with Lyn shopping the rest of the time. Which is why you see bugger all comments or moderating from me. RedLogix looks like he was mostly offline and probably tramping somewhere. r0b looks like he was offline. Bill was stepping up for a bit of moderation. And it looks to me like Irish was stuck at home…
Umm. The defining characteristic of Irish’s moderation is that he really doesn’t think that warnings have much effect.
QED: all of a sudden there are more bans than usual, and Pete George starts frothing at the mouth with his latest conspiracy theory… Quite simple really.
Given PG’s complete inability to say anything innovative or even intelligent himself, I am confident that he will take my comment and spin another post out of it.
LOLZ, perhaps you could let the whining little cry baby back again for a day,(snigger), and then ban Him again for not spelling a word properly or failing to include a full stop,
Now that would really give ‘it’ something to squeal about…
“Given PG’s complete inability to say anything innovative or even intelligent himself, I am confident that he will take my comment and spin another post out of it.”
Crikey, given that his fixation with me has hit epic proportions this week, you may well be right, LP. Pete George: He’s just saying what nobody’s thinking.
Answering one of the questions for Khandallah: The new blood we need will only emerge when we have a Party in better shape. The problem at present is that newbies are being groomed by King/Mallard/Robertson. This is why we have a caucus with too many groomed staffers now MPs: Hipkins/Robertson/Adern.
I don’t want to see the likes of Helen Kelly groomed so well by the ABC then slotted nicely into Rongotai. I’d like to see the empty seat attract real competition so that a robust selection process can be applied that attracts new people with new ideas. If Helen Kelly just inherits we never get to see who else may be out there. A robust process that seeks competition for selection makes a healthy organisation.
It’s the same with Leadership. Let’s take the healthy, robust option. Hear from all potential candidates, see how thye campaign, what their new ideas are that can contribute to forming new policies, and then have the tri partite vote and settle this once and for all.
Dave on PrimeNews last night, Shearer that is, the message from Dave is that Labour will be as a Government ‘hands on’ with the economy, even poked the stick at Himself about the tongue tied nature of His previous attempts to publicly elucidate Labour policy,
Slippery on ice via TV1 news on the same night came across using that voice that’s laden with ‘spit’, it’s a hard one to describe, not quite that of child speak more heading toward a lisp,
Ive noticed this ‘persona’ exhibited by the Slippery little Shyster we have as Prime Minister before when He is under pressure or things aint going His way,
The TV1 clip ending with the Slippery one saying that the New Zealand efforts in Antarctica need more funding, the silence after that little gem almost roared with the unsaid ‘but don’t think you Greenies are getting any from My Government’,
Pity TV1 didn’t choose to put up Dave’s news bite alongside of Slippery’s there’s a certain stark contrast there that New Zealand voters deserve to see more of….
Shearer keeps using this “hands on” line. What does it mean? It needs to be explained clearly. How does this compare with NAct’s undemocratic manipulation, regulation and control? Otherwise, this line by Shearer is just a bit of meaningless spin.
The line means Government intervention in the economy, karol. Shearer was a bit more explicit about it in interviews at conference. Key and Co have taken a hands off approach, most other countries have gone for hands on.
The rhetoric is that Key’s government has been hands off, but that’s just neoliberal spin. The reality is they are hands on when it suits them. So Shearer is just responding to spin. If Shearer really wants to counter the NAct agenda, they need to focus on inequality, not the debatable issue of government intervention.
It’s not so much an issue of hands on or off, but where and how the intervention is done.
And which countries have gone for hands on? The US? The UK? Germany? DO you really think these countries have stopped supporting the interests of the powerful and wealthy elites?
I do think tho that Labour along with ‘a hands on approach to the economy’ needs to broaden the message,
Not necessarily with the major announcements on economic policy but in broad brush terms, simply put, Dave should be saying the Labour as the Government will be hands on with the economy AND as a Government it will be Dave’s responsibility to create employment and where employment cannot be created Labour will provide affordable housing and security of welfare benefit for those it has been unable to find that employment for,
There has to be somewhere in the political spectrum the ‘honesty’ to admit, even functioning at 3% growth/inflation the New Zealand economy cannot, and never will, deliver employment to all those able and willing to work…
Best indication of that was the housing policy, coupled with a Capital Gains Tax. Bold. They are not enough by themselves, but I can already imagine what a “hands on” Labour government with “hands on” Labour Ministers not beholden to old non-interventionist ways could mean for the people, and the Cities, of New Zealand. It would be tremendously exciting.
But it would take a real no-more-excuses first term to achieve the housing and rebuild policy goals. If King goes to the Wellington mayoralty, who in caucus would be bold enough to take that task on?
Don’t know if i would attach the word ‘bold’ to Capital Gains Tax and Kiwibuild, the latter, (without further clarification), would seem to rely upon a household income of at least $60,000 to be able to participate,(so targeted at the children of the middle class who’s parents helped create the affordability issue in the first place by piling en masse into ‘rental investments),
‘Bold’ would have been to announce a State rental housing ‘build’ of the same magnitude as the planned Kiwibuild ownership scheme at the same time,
Doing both at once is far from impossible,(the Kirk Government were building 30,000 a year),and, such construction in both the ownership and rental area’s would negate the need for the Capital Gains Tax,
I would wait for the numbers from Labour on building State Rentals before attaching ‘bold’ to their policy…
Karol, This is what the reality us. Quoting from Bowlalley.
“Ideological mummery is also the key distinguishing feature of Shearer’s principal backers in the Labour Caucus. Phil Goff, Annette King and Trevor Mallard all dipped their paper cups into the neoliberal Kool-Aid in the 80s and none of them have ever publicly recanted (let alone repented) their supporting roles in Roger Douglas’s Economic Salvation Show. They no longer defend (at least not publicly) Rogernomics’ legacy, but behind their hands they dismiss its critics as “paleosocialists” who simply don’t understand how the world works.
What all of them fail to grasp, however, is that the current climate of stress is being generated by the failure of neoliberal ideology (just as the climate of stress of the late-1970s and early-80s was caused by the failure of Keynesianism). To talk about aneoliberal policy aggressor in 2013 is, therefore, oxymoronic. The next genuine policy aggressor will be a politician possessing both the courage and the imagination to go beyond the maintenance of a discredited orthodoxy – someone willing to forge a new political, economic and social consensus.”
The next genuine policy aggressor will be a politician possessing both the courage and the imagination to go beyond the maintenance of a discredited orthodoxy…
The ‘whacko nutters” who used to stand on a box and address the Waikikamukow are to be found at The Standard says Mike Williams. Also there are people from the extreme left like Alliance.
Wanting a real Labour leader, realler than David Shearer, is undercutting him and Labour. The nigglers should submit to the choice of the narrow elite for leader.
I heard Mike Williams too. He is isolated and very very comfortable in the world of “commentator”. He and Hooton make smug sneering radio together.
Like Annette Grant and Trevor, he should exit stage right.
I heard the bit about Williams referring to advice from Helen Clark on how to spin: ie. keep repeating your lines, and at about the point when you are really getting sick of repeating it, that’s about the point when people are starting to listen. But that was the old way to do things in pre-GFC, “neoliberal” times.
Now is the time for a new approach – and that means new policies, and getting back to solid left wing values. It’s no good keeping repeating your lines if the policies and values mean no fundamental change from the times of appeasing the “neoliberal” elites.
+1 ( if you mean Williams and Hooter on N2N this morning with Kethlic Guuurl Rinnie Ryan? – even SHE got pissed off with Hooter, as she often does). How anyone can justify the accusation that RNZ is staunchly “left wing” with Rinnie for 3 hours between 9-12 then that exceptionally ‘noice’ man/everyone’s best friend in the afternoon completely bewilders me.
Not really as “in touch” with folks as they would desperately try to have us believe.
There’s a really good book called ‘Bad Science” by Dr. Ben Goldacre. Although its to do with medicalisation and related matters……….it should be compulsory reading for the likes of Joyce, Hooten, Key – in fact most of them. The salient discussion in it is to do with truth telling versus being a liar VERSUS simply being a bullshitter. (At the top of this thread – I was playing the Bulllshitter – I’m not very good at it, AND I really must cease commenting as I promised to do since I might have offended somebody precious – one that’s “paid his dues” and as such holds a sense of entitledment. Far be it for me to express an opinion that may offend.
Anyway……this Nact abomination, AND a sizeable percentage of the current Labour ‘cohorts’ fit the bullshitter category. The Band’s “I’m the Great Pretender” springs to mind.
Joyce carries it off very well though – total CRAP expressed with the confidence of the used car salesman offloading a lemon. Joyce though is also borderline liar. I ‘spose that delusional really.
They’re a fucking trajedy. What I am convinced of though is that in the future, they’ll get a comeuppance of sorts – simply because their arrogance and master of the universe shit eventually overcomes them.
Old Bernie Madoff’s a good example
Ha ha, fancy describing his fellow commentator Matthew Hooton as a whacko nutter. Kind of pulls himself into the realm as well. Idiot.
Who cares about what these well known commentators think of what goes on here. I would rather read the daily machinations here than listen to Hooton, Williams, and all the others. They have too many vested and conflicted interests to be taken credibly or seriously. That is where honest comment, by way of anonymity, comes into its own. They do all seem to be very upset though. I wonder why. Perhaps they should stop reading it.
I wonder if Williams has ever posted here? Betcha he has.
Once you’re shown to be a manipulating BS artist it’s a little difficult to get any credibility. I think it goes back to that old boy who cried wolf story.
His and his NACT overlords Mickey especially some of the answers given in the house. RNZ has become a race to the bottom.
Shows how inept the Nat’s were under blinglish etc that williamson, mallard and co could get 3 terms as once they went up against some structured messaging and media focus they’ve been shown to be boys against men.
Yeah, he reminds me of Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson…everything that comes out of his mouth is well timed and is said for a number of reasons. These reasons are usually not picked up on by the average punter…therein lies his skill.
Yes that from ‘Mr i am off to Australia to dig up the dirt on Slippery’, for a tame radio station like RadioNZ what’s-his face,(i tend to think of Him as That Fat Wanker), really layed it on thick with His little anti-Standard rant,
As usual the ‘weak host’ of the particular RadioNZ show sat in what can only be described as approving silence as (That Fat Wanker) defamed many commenters here on the Standard by claiming that He didn’t think that those who comment here while claiming to be Labour activists were actually active in the Party at all,
The up-side to that is that (a) the Standard is obviously having ‘some’ effect in the rarified atmosphere of national politics, and (b), the recent whipping of (The Other Fat Wanker) who appears on that particular RadioNZ received here at the Standard hit all the right spots,
Usually those 2 make absurd statements to the sound of i agree with (That Fat Wanker), which were the first words uttered with gushing approval by the ex Prez of Labour, but, noted with ;laughter was (The Other Fat Wankers) absence of agreement as (That Fat Wanker) attacked the Standard…
Ah, well, I just went back and listened to it. So, it seems that, according to MW, it’s Cunliffe supporters that are stirring up on TS, and being really nasty about Shearer (the anonymous extreme “nutters”. And according to MH, it was one of those DC supporters that posted about Shearer going to put his leadership up to a party vote next month.
And MH, in an attempt at evidence that it is Cunliffe supporting and/or Cunliffe-organised posters/bloggers who are stirring up against Shearer on TS, mentioned Greg Presland, who he thought was the NL …. erm… LEC secretary/leader or some such role. It seems GP posts here. So they weren’t really differentiating between authors of the posts, and people commenting on the posts.
MW was also intrigued and a little disturbed that when he went to Shearer’s speech at the conference, there were a lot of new faces, and a lot of faces of radical, Alliance types, too. Ryan said it was a good thing to see genuine diversity of views rather than have the stage managed kind of conference that we have seen in recent times – which MW agreed was the kind of conferences he used to manage.
he probably just wanted to see where ‘happy feet’ was filmed
but seriously key’s environmental credibility is beyond a joke – he’ll fry us all to make an extra buck and there’s gold in them thar hills for the exploiters.
Not to mention taking that huge entourage with him, the amount of sewage that lot would have created and all the food and drink (no doubt high quality) necessary to keep all those journos happy… the mind boggles at the expense both cash and environmental.
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 ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
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 Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
What a CRUEL, ideologically-driven pack of insipid, bullshit artists a NAct coalesced regime is!
As far as I can see the only “shine” for their existence (apart from greed, the “I’m alright Jack attitude, unfounded aspiration, and complacency) is a lack-lustre 2nd party opposition that still seems welded to the political pendulum that swung right (with TINA) about a quarter century ago.
Along with it, a lazy ‘mainstream media” with no respect for a 4th Estate, let alone any understanding of the concept.
The advantage they (the junta) have of course is that there is an entire generation that has grown over a quarter century that has experienced nothing else – NO-Tina alternative.
(Hence I ‘spose, insipid little people like Hipkisses and Currans whose approaching the mid-life and a wish to make a mark drive a particular attitude: AND who think they have a right to throw bombs and walk away deserve this treatment too
Like others in an “ABC” camp of “I paid me dues – I’m therefore entitled”, it’s an attitude that’s now entrenched in the parly-are-meant wing.
[PATHETIC really when one thinks about it – the potential destruction of a political party due to the want of a few exercising their egos over and above a commitment to basic principles.
NZ’s not alone of course – look what’s happening to Labor across the ditch – which in many ways makes the arrogance of the likes of ABCers even more serious and pathetic! Worse still is that a Curran or two are not exactly unfamiliar with an Australian experience……We’re expected to now take them seriously are we? I think not!
There is now a sizeable proportion of an electorate that’s been hijacked by a hope that somehow they too can be like a Slippery Dick used-car salesman – and if and when they ever manage it, they can lay claim to ‘self made MAN status”.
eww!.
I guess the trip south (swapping a Mt Vic house for a Lyttleton one for one week) had ominous beginnings.
Boarding the flight with me was a Gerry Brownlee. Family and I had always joked about those huge bags that are filled with concrete and used to prop up walls and crumbling embankments – calling them either Greylees or Brownlees. They actually do nothing except prop shit up, and come another big one, they’ll probably shuffle about a bit and just prolong an inevitable unless something realistic is done as soon as possible.
That Prince of Power and supposed reason – the one given Tzar status (by a Parliamentary majority – including Labour Party compliance ffs!
Tzared and installed in order to get things done along with a CERA chief and a number of other initiatives that challenged the whole idea of what democracy, representation and accountability were all about.
I hope those Labour Party people that were part of the enabling process realise what they did. It’s now more than two years since EQC ChCh – and actually sweet fuck all of benefit to the citizens of a fallen city has actually happened.
It might be useful to note that across the ditch, an entire flooded town in QLD has almost been entirely relocated WITHOUT all the insurance bullshit and needless heartbreak that has, and continues to plague Christchurch.
The cynic could reasonably assume that one reason for the delay in actually initiating any sort of RECONSTRUCTION (as opposed to demolition) could have something to do with a desire to balance a budget based on an ideologically-driven belief (a religion).
I initially thought that CERA Chief (I think Rog by name – yep that’s it – that good bloke Rog Sutton) was an OK sort of guy – that is until I saw his one-dimensional thinking in “When A City Falls”. There was Rog talking to a slippery Dick about the benefits of overhead wiring versus underground cables.
On that basis alone – old Rog (actually probably 10 or 20 years younger than me) is quite obviously NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer – although I have NO doubt his salary alone will convince a lot of people that he’s actually quite sharp.
(The cabling thing though – a comment about elasticity, or lack of it with underground electrical reticulation demonstrated the one-dimensional (probably ideologically-driven) thought processes. What a fucking DICKHEAD! It was an eye opener for me anyway – here was someone I thought was a reasonable sort of joker demonstrating the art of cock sucking and arse licking, and at the same time a certain belief that he could justify by logic (trouble is it was Ideologically-driven “logic and TINA-like).
Anyway ……… un-fucking believable…..”offline” I could give him some very basic tips on how to make underground cabling and electrical reticulation “elastic” without any sort of problems with induction or other problems.
Open your frikken mind Rog – its what you’re paid the big bucks for (or so we told). It seems to be that “he’s paid a mint, therefore he must actually be clever” – like the used-car salesman though – it often has more to do with the gift of the bullshit gab.
After a week returning to, and living in the city I was born, I can’t see many signs of reconstruction. I remember Gerry’s comment way back when where he wanted to level the place and start again without any respect for history or respect for the organic nature that produces citites fit for humans to live in.
Still, current Nact are a bunch of philistines – some of their predecessors would be rolling in their graves, and those that have a ‘class breeding’ they’d like to lay claim to don’t have the balls to challenge a Joyce-English-Key style collective ego with its inflated sense of self-worth.
Instead though , we have to see total demolotion – those flat sort of fields we often see with suburban developments whereby all is demolished including foliage, lovely little boxes are built, THEN foliage may (or may not be) replaced. Scorched Earth after which sterility and a supposed antiseptic, compliant society will evolve.
Antiseptic, inorganic, lack-lustre, insipid!.
Not somewhere I’ll ever return to.
Let’s be clear… The government and City COuncil have amounts of land in near environs that is stable enough to let people live on.
How is it that they have not simply done (for example) land swaps with people whose land is fucked? and simply placed the burden for buildings alone on the insurance/EQC industry? Oh
We are talking about 2 plus years now since shit happened! There are people in places like Bexley still shitting in little green cublicles ffs.
It’s reminiscent of dear leader’s promise at Pike – “we’ll do whatever it takes”. Unfortunately he forgot to qualify it by saying – “that is, as long as we can belince the bujit, and I don’t jeopardise my knoithood and making a name for mesef with a bottle of 100 yo whisky, and es long es oi don’t blow me cover with Bronagh.
On top of all this, there are things like the Hekia education experiment centred around Munt City.
I wonder what their “final solution” to it all is.
Apologies to Karol – I vowed I wasn’t going to make further comment on this site – I didn’t lie as such – just like Key, Joyce and English – I bullshitted. There’s FA other forums tho’ in which to express an opinion.
It is always interesting to hear the views of people from outside Chch when they come to visit Tim. There has been much going on since the main earthquakes and I don’t think all of it is going to stand up to the test of time. One example is the amount that has been demolished. Or rather, the lack of buildings that could have been kept to provide some of the fabric to which the new city can be reattached. The underlying fabric has so comprehensively ripped off that we are left with bare rock to reattach to. Silly and short-sighted and unnecessary.
Your point about the organic growth of cities and communities is spot on. That organic nature has been left lying on the floor of Cera and this government and been swept away by the cleaners. No room for anything organic in Brownlees mind.
I am sure the ruling clique of the Labour party are as terrified of democracy as are the National party, Chris Trotter’s ‘permanent government’ and most major corporations. The idea that ‘ordinary’ people through informed decisions will make rational choices is a threat to everything for which these people stand. As Noam Chomsky pointed out recently , throughout the West 100s of billions (if not trillions) has , necessarily, been spent over the last few decades by PR and advertising companies, the corporate media, ‘public’ broadcasting institutions, universities, ministeries, government departments, what-have-you to ensure people make irrational choices based on uniformed decisions.
Considering the function of the mainstream media in the modern western ‘democracy’, I would take issue with Tim’s observation that, “Along with it, a lazy ‘mainstream media” with no respect for a 4th Estate, let alone any understanding of the concept.” As an extension of corporate domination of the socio-economic system, I would argue the mainstream media, in collusion with their PR and Ad. Company cohorts, works diligently to maintain an ideological construct which serves the interests of an insidious plutocracy.
Under totalitarian regimes the media are inherently regarded by most of those subject to the ruling junta as propaganda organs instituted to parrot the party line, whereas the ‘free’ press in the Western sphere must promote the necessary illusion of impartiality while obsequiously conforming to a rigid paradigm. An anecdote by John Pilger sums it up brilliantly , “During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said their spokesman, “that we were astonished to find, after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were, by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?” ”
As long as we have political apparatchiks who are little more than props in a system designed to maintain the status and influence of an unelected ruling elite we will continue to suffer the likes of the Labour Party caucus and it’s increasingly weird contortionist act. The Labour Party cannot both serve the status quo and act in the interests of the general population, at best they can only provide a slightly less odious alternative to the current regime.
Through necessity, humanity will adopt a more democratic system of participation in economic, social and political processes or face the very real prospect of extinction in a perverse attempt to conform to an abhorrent paradigm designed to sustain the illegitimate authority of a privileged few. [Rant ends]
+1
All the institutions that we’ve surrounded ourselves with over the last few years/centuries have been designed to maintain capitalism and to prevent democracy.
McVicar stands by claim over gay bill
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10860409
“If you look at the court stats, most of the crime that has been committed has been committed by fatherless kids.”
It wouldn’t matter that some children, if adopted by a gay couple, had two fathers, because they would still need a mother, he said.
I guess as 1 of 5 to a solo mum, his view would see one or more or all of us with police records.
Sorry to shit all over that one for you, Garth.
No police ever came knocking at my mum’s doorstep over any of us.
Five boys + one mum = Five men.
Come tell me to my face she did it wrong.
I dare you. Bring a TV crew if you’re brave enough.
Today I don’t know what I find more disturbing about this bloke, his attitude to homosexuals or his vision of solo parenting and solo family children.
Single mothers face a lot of pressures in a society geared to marginalising and demonising them. They are likely to have lower incomes than 2 parent families or the majority of single fathers, and they often get treated as second class by those in authority. This creates an environment where some children of sole parents could enter into criminal activities.
It is more likely to be the context and environment than lack of fathers, because research shows children of lesbian parents tend to be better adjusted and more successful in school, etc, than the average.
This study of 78 teenagers with lesbian parents (as reported in November last year) shows:
And the report on another longitudinal study, as reported in 2010, shows similar results:
“This creates an environment where some children of sole parents could enter into criminal activities”
Witnessing conflict seems to me to be much more likely to be a cause of later violence and criminality than living in a stable single parent home. There is some evidence to support this, for example…
That poorer behaviour appears in children from single parent households, if true, ignores the time lag of behaviours witnessed in dysfunctional dual parent homes. Sorting domestic violence is a good start to reducing this problem. In walking away from domestic violence single parents are doing their kids a favour.
And well done to your mum, Al1en – and to you and your brothers.
Thanks, rosy. That makes sense. And, yes, it’s important to state that most children of single parents become well adjusted adults, as with Allen and his family.
“And well done to your mum”
Five lads under 14, on her own in the 70s and 80s London, I reckon so too.
“and to you and your brothers”
We did the easy bits, but that’s cause we had an Alpha 1
if absent fathers leads to crime, surely two dads reduces it? And if crime reduction was simply a matter of parent-counting, keeping the mother in the mix would mean that mcvictim is supporting polyandry. KP might have a word with him about that…
It’s not a simple picture, but absent parents/broken families are one major risk factor in social underachievement, truancy and involvement in the criminal justice system.
To a degree (and there is probably a certain amount of confounding from the factors that contribute to family breakdown), but I was trying to look at it through filters as simple as mcvictim’s.
That’s all well and good, but in my opinion we’re playing to Garth McVicars tune by giving his homophobia too much consideration.
The issue of solo parents is completely separate to gay marriage. However there’s no doubt that solo parents have a harder time to bring up children and their kids are more likely to go off the rails, especially in our current user pays society. That dynamic wouldn’t be influenced much by whether the solo parent was gay or straight. Income is usually the defining factor, and gay people earn a bit more on average than straight people. Therefore the children of gay solo parents would be less likely to end up in jail etc than the children of straight solo parents.
What McVicar is actually saying is that gay people should stop being gay, like it’s a choice. This will stem from his belief that gay people choose to be gay. McVicars will also believe that gay parents are more likely to have gay children, when there is also no evidence to support such a belief.
The only conclusion that can really be reached here is that McVicar is a complete bigot, and should be scorned at every opportunity.
absent parents/broken families are one major risk factor in social underachievement, truancy and involvement in the criminal justice system.
More of a risk factor than the dysfunctional parental relationships that might have preceded the absent parents/broken families? Or a risk factor as a result of the dysfunctional parental relationships that preceded the absent parents/broken families?
if absent fathers leads to crime, surely two dads reduces it?
On that basis mcvictim wouldn’t support two mothers though… oh no… where’s the dad in that!
Mc Vicar can piss off as far as I am concerned and stop his gay and single parent bashing.
Has Mc Vicar ever looked after two young children full – time e.g. a crawler and a older preschooler? If he has, he would find out how you have to have eyes at the back of your head as the crawler can choke on any little thing the preschooler leaves out.
I would say that single unemployed childless people are more representative than single hard working parents re crime stats.
+1
Surely this will see the end to McVicar. A deluded man born a couple of centuries too late.
Why do we engage in political activism? It might be moral or financial support or leaflet distribution, phone calling through to working on policy groups and committees. Why?
Because we believe it matters. We believe that we can, and must, change how society and the economy are structured and operated for the benefit of Kiwis and the planet.
So we come together in political party of like minded people, people with similar values, and organise ourselves in a particular way to effect these changes: the Policy platform and the Constitution and that sort of stuff.
So what if we find that that organisation is no longer effectively able to drive those changes, that it has lost it’s way? That is what has happened to the NZ Labour Party.
A party is made up of people and some get to a point that they no longer listen and interact effectively with the rest. That is what has happened with Annette King, Grant Robertson and Trevor Mallard. They have “lost it” but are trying to retain ego through influencing David Shearer. A few more have attached themselves to the this group as they think it is where power and influence will ultimately lie if Labour wins.
The fatal flaw is that the Leader is getting his advice from dis-connected has-beans rather that the connected active membership. We will never win an election in these circumstances.
That is why each and everyone one of us must directly face our nearest MP and senior office holders and challenge them to make a generational step forward.
The time has come for Annette, Grant and Trevor to go.
The we can get back to driving change that will improve the lot of all voters and non-voters alike.
That’s some pretty harsh lessons you are dishing out there Khandalla. A commentator last year said that because political parties have a reasonable amount of parliamentary funding, they are less and less reliant on members to get that media profile, get the attention, make the meetings happen, generate the publications. They don’t need us. We need them more.
A question that you are posing is whether membership based political parties really matter. And that is the core of the lie that the parliamentary caucus has perpeterated upon itself. I really get the impression that they bring members and supproters together merely as stage props for televisual hits; that when it comes to it all policy is formed by them, seat and list selection processes are opaque at best, our conations are helpful but really a few major business donations would be more efficient.
However that question can only be answered by a vote that includes the members, in February. It is precisely the revised constitution that shifts the fulcral point on the whole axis of power between members and caucus. They may not need us, but for one brief moment every 3 years, we have them.
I have been impressed with how the party under Moira has changed in a year. Caucus leadership got the shock of its life when the Party got those constitutional changes through at Conference.
Those MPs who sought to silence democratic voices within the membership will work against it a leadership vote in February, as they did so very hard in the drafting process going into it. But affiliates and members and I believe sufficient numbers of MPs will want their voice.
As the members said at Conference: “We’re taking our party back.”
Question for you Khandalla: if Mallard and King left by (say) deselection, who is up and coming that would do a better job for a strong and inclusive Labour party?
Question for any Affiliates on this site: do you still want a voice in the leadership by February?
“conations”? Donations.
“Conation” That’s sounds like what donations are called in Banksies electorate office.
It is not just that they are disconnected, they have a seperate policy agenda. They genuinely do not believe that the system is wrong, they think it needs tweaking and tinkering around the edges.
Guys/gals, that three are throw-backs to the old right wing Labour party, Helen sat tightly on them. We now need to bade them farewell.
And their conservative politics.
Only 3, being of a ‘right wing bias in the Labour Caucus???, i think you will find that at least 50% of that Caucus is of the ‘don’t rock the boat’ centrist/right wing school of ‘thought’,
Helen Clark’s 3 terms as Prime Minister were all about the same thing, interest free student loans, working for families, don’t rock the boat, buy the support of the middle class…
To Bad12 – Helen DID rock the boat – the s59 repeal of the Crimes Act, the attempt to get healthier food into schools, the anti-violence campaign ….. she was a cautious PM but she was getting Labour back to its roots. Pity people don’t remember that.
Actually i don’t, Remember the Clark government getting Labour back to it’s roots that is, what you list as great achievements are hardly that,
What i seen in 9 years of the Clark Government was business as usual and the beginnings of the Labour attack upon beneficiaries along with a flat refusal to address the even then growing un-affordability of housing specially in the Auckland area,
From here, Helen Clark will be remembered for having lead Labour to 3 election victories and little else…
Well it was more than that. The property owning middle class wanted to see continuous, fast, property price appreciation.
And Cullen let it happen (deliberately I would guess), by not restricting bank lending, because asset price appreciation added to the sense of wealth in that all important strata of society.
This is the wisdom of hindsight, and you must remember also that in the last three years, Labour was governing with a reduced majority. However, throughout the nine years, it was not unreasonable to believe that the so-called market economy would mature and stabilise. It was also reasonable to believe in its early stages that the property boom, which was accompanied by greatly reduced unemployment, would financially underpin an increase in local industry. This was not to be so, of course. The 2008 crash revealed the “market economy” for what it is – a method of conquest by the economically powerful. And delivered unto us a PM who was all too happy to facilitate their demands. And a Labour Party that now appears to think it imprudent to challenge their demands.
?
Check out this data between 2002 and 2008 compiled by Treasury.
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/reviews-consultation/savingsworkinggroup/finalreport/19.htm
Do you see that line of continuously increasing private debt to GDP?
You can’t tell me that no one on Cullen’s staff, or Cullen himself noticed this, even as they were deliberately paring down public sector debt.
I agree that its only in the last 5 years that economists like Steve Keen have zeroed in on the crucial role of increasing debt in keeping unemployment low.
However, going to dinner parties and cocktail parties month after month after month where the main topic of conversation amongst the property investing class was how to leverage up further to buy a few more properties to flip, it was very clear that a speculative bubble was being built and that nothing was going into the productive economy.
With regard to the property investment class: true, and vile it was, but that was quite late in the piece; certainly in final couple of years of their last term.
Yes. Moira Coatsworth has done a magnificent job. It is she who steered the rejuvenation of
organisational aspects of the constitution through all its processes. I doubt the changes to the leadership vote – and other related matters – would have seen the light of day without the effort she has put into ‘democratising’ the party.
In some ways I think she might be unpopular with a few senior Labour MPs. 🙂
The harder test for her I think will be how the complaints that the New Lynn LEC made after Conference are handled. If Hipkins gets basic backing for “he was doing his job” rather than “bullying and ridicule must be eliminated from this workplace”, then we know that whatever rules are put in place by the party, the caucus really does rule, and writes the rules.
Anyone have any idea when the results are due on that complaint?
Yes ad I’ve been wondering about that too. I suspect the hold up lies with the senior parliamentary team. Moira and co. are still waiting to hear their side of the story. What’s the bet they won’t get an answer until AFTER the Feb. leadership has been resolved.
When people can finally accept, the reasons for the continued *failure* of our political system/services to function for the benefit of NZ, and its people, is due to massive corruption, then the actions of certain policiticans becomes understandable.
King, Mallard etc have not *lost it*, they are operating under instruction!
David Shearer is not getting bad advise, he is getting exactly what he will expect, as part of his role brief!
John Key did not arrive by accident, these people are lined up, and interjected into our political system with pre-assigned roles and responsibilities..
The question is, how is it they are being controlled to such degrees, that the structures which support the heart beat of NZ, continue to decay!
Keep looking for conventional answers, and nothing can EVER change!
🙄
PROJECT ONAN
DAILY NOTES 21 JAN 2013
STIMULUS:
standard allegation of local political conspiracy theories.
CONSPIRACIES NAMED: none. Allusion only.
WORD EMPHASIS: random, “*”, single word capitalization
RESPONSE:
rolly eyes.
NOTES:
bwahahaha! My experiment is going according to plan!
Six more months of these results and I will be able to stimulate a revolution with a probability of 87.4% success within three months of my initial blog comment! And when the internet activists crown me the Emperor of New Zealand, I will be in an excellent position to RULE THE WORLD!!! ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
lolz
Is there a way to tell between Muzza’s genuine comments, and stuff he’s putting up for personal shits and giggles as “Muzza the Puppet Master”?
Actually muzza has nothing on Pete George who has an entire post yesterday about Irish moderating over the weekend. I won’t bother linking to it. But here is my response.
Given PG’s complete inability to say anything innovative or even intelligent himself, I am confident that he will take my comment and spin another post out of it.
The old 20 questions gambit is a bit petey isn’t it – you know – just for research purposes – I’m sure he went hard on that one like the muzza
LOLZ, perhaps you could let the whining little cry baby back again for a day,(snigger), and then ban Him again for not spelling a word properly or failing to include a full stop,
Now that would really give ‘it’ something to squeal about…
“Given PG’s complete inability to say anything innovative or even intelligent himself, I am confident that he will take my comment and spin another post out of it.”
Crikey, given that his fixation with me has hit epic proportions this week, you may well be right, LP. Pete George: He’s just saying what nobody’s thinking.
http://www.thepaincomics.com/Onan%20the%20Barbarian.jpg
Answering one of the questions for Khandallah: The new blood we need will only emerge when we have a Party in better shape. The problem at present is that newbies are being groomed by King/Mallard/Robertson. This is why we have a caucus with too many groomed staffers now MPs: Hipkins/Robertson/Adern.
I don’t want to see the likes of Helen Kelly groomed so well by the ABC then slotted nicely into Rongotai. I’d like to see the empty seat attract real competition so that a robust selection process can be applied that attracts new people with new ideas. If Helen Kelly just inherits we never get to see who else may be out there. A robust process that seeks competition for selection makes a healthy organisation.
It’s the same with Leadership. Let’s take the healthy, robust option. Hear from all potential candidates, see how thye campaign, what their new ideas are that can contribute to forming new policies, and then have the tri partite vote and settle this once and for all.
Rongotai selection will of course be widely sought, but Helen Kelly will get the nod anyway.
She is the most needed and capable.
Dave on PrimeNews last night, Shearer that is, the message from Dave is that Labour will be as a Government ‘hands on’ with the economy, even poked the stick at Himself about the tongue tied nature of His previous attempts to publicly elucidate Labour policy,
Slippery on ice via TV1 news on the same night came across using that voice that’s laden with ‘spit’, it’s a hard one to describe, not quite that of child speak more heading toward a lisp,
Ive noticed this ‘persona’ exhibited by the Slippery little Shyster we have as Prime Minister before when He is under pressure or things aint going His way,
The TV1 clip ending with the Slippery one saying that the New Zealand efforts in Antarctica need more funding, the silence after that little gem almost roared with the unsaid ‘but don’t think you Greenies are getting any from My Government’,
Pity TV1 didn’t choose to put up Dave’s news bite alongside of Slippery’s there’s a certain stark contrast there that New Zealand voters deserve to see more of….
Shearer keeps using this “hands on” line. What does it mean? It needs to be explained clearly. How does this compare with NAct’s undemocratic manipulation, regulation and control? Otherwise, this line by Shearer is just a bit of meaningless spin.
The line means Government intervention in the economy, karol. Shearer was a bit more explicit about it in interviews at conference. Key and Co have taken a hands off approach, most other countries have gone for hands on.
The rhetoric is that Key’s government has been hands off, but that’s just neoliberal spin. The reality is they are hands on when it suits them. So Shearer is just responding to spin. If Shearer really wants to counter the NAct agenda, they need to focus on inequality, not the debatable issue of government intervention.
It’s not so much an issue of hands on or off, but where and how the intervention is done.
And which countries have gone for hands on? The US? The UK? Germany? DO you really think these countries have stopped supporting the interests of the powerful and wealthy elites?
I do think tho that Labour along with ‘a hands on approach to the economy’ needs to broaden the message,
Not necessarily with the major announcements on economic policy but in broad brush terms, simply put, Dave should be saying the Labour as the Government will be hands on with the economy AND as a Government it will be Dave’s responsibility to create employment and where employment cannot be created Labour will provide affordable housing and security of welfare benefit for those it has been unable to find that employment for,
There has to be somewhere in the political spectrum the ‘honesty’ to admit, even functioning at 3% growth/inflation the New Zealand economy cannot, and never will, deliver employment to all those able and willing to work…
Best indication of that was the housing policy, coupled with a Capital Gains Tax. Bold. They are not enough by themselves, but I can already imagine what a “hands on” Labour government with “hands on” Labour Ministers not beholden to old non-interventionist ways could mean for the people, and the Cities, of New Zealand. It would be tremendously exciting.
But it would take a real no-more-excuses first term to achieve the housing and rebuild policy goals. If King goes to the Wellington mayoralty, who in caucus would be bold enough to take that task on?
Don’t know if i would attach the word ‘bold’ to Capital Gains Tax and Kiwibuild, the latter, (without further clarification), would seem to rely upon a household income of at least $60,000 to be able to participate,(so targeted at the children of the middle class who’s parents helped create the affordability issue in the first place by piling en masse into ‘rental investments),
‘Bold’ would have been to announce a State rental housing ‘build’ of the same magnitude as the planned Kiwibuild ownership scheme at the same time,
Doing both at once is far from impossible,(the Kirk Government were building 30,000 a year),and, such construction in both the ownership and rental area’s would negate the need for the Capital Gains Tax,
I would wait for the numbers from Labour on building State Rentals before attaching ‘bold’ to their policy…
Karol, This is what the reality us. Quoting from Bowlalley.
“Ideological mummery is also the key distinguishing feature of Shearer’s principal backers in the Labour Caucus. Phil Goff, Annette King and Trevor Mallard all dipped their paper cups into the neoliberal Kool-Aid in the 80s and none of them have ever publicly recanted (let alone repented) their supporting roles in Roger Douglas’s Economic Salvation Show. They no longer defend (at least not publicly) Rogernomics’ legacy, but behind their hands they dismiss its critics as “paleosocialists” who simply don’t understand how the world works.
What all of them fail to grasp, however, is that the current climate of stress is being generated by the failure of neoliberal ideology (just as the climate of stress of the late-1970s and early-80s was caused by the failure of Keynesianism). To talk about aneoliberal policy aggressor in 2013 is, therefore, oxymoronic. The next genuine policy aggressor will be a politician possessing both the courage and the imagination to go beyond the maintenance of a discredited orthodoxy – someone willing to forge a new political, economic and social consensus.”
Which orthodoxy are you talking about?
DTB, that’s a quote from this post about Shearer & his backers by Trotter. He starts the post with this:
And that is the “discredited orthodoxy” Trotter is referring to.
The ‘whacko nutters” who used to stand on a box and address the Waikikamukow are to be found at The Standard says Mike Williams. Also there are people from the extreme left like Alliance.
Wanting a real Labour leader, realler than David Shearer, is undercutting him and Labour. The nigglers should submit to the choice of the narrow elite for leader.
That either came before I switched onto it, or after I switched off. The out-of-touch pontificating was too much for me this morning.
I heard Mike Williams too. He is isolated and very very comfortable in the world of “commentator”. He and Hooton make smug sneering radio together.
Like Annette Grant and Trevor, he should exit stage right.
I heard the bit about Williams referring to advice from Helen Clark on how to spin: ie. keep repeating your lines, and at about the point when you are really getting sick of repeating it, that’s about the point when people are starting to listen. But that was the old way to do things in pre-GFC, “neoliberal” times.
Now is the time for a new approach – and that means new policies, and getting back to solid left wing values. It’s no good keeping repeating your lines if the policies and values mean no fundamental change from the times of appeasing the “neoliberal” elites.
+1 ( if you mean Williams and Hooter on N2N this morning with Kethlic Guuurl Rinnie Ryan? – even SHE got pissed off with Hooter, as she often does). How anyone can justify the accusation that RNZ is staunchly “left wing” with Rinnie for 3 hours between 9-12 then that exceptionally ‘noice’ man/everyone’s best friend in the afternoon completely bewilders me.
Not really as “in touch” with folks as they would desperately try to have us believe.
There’s a really good book called ‘Bad Science” by Dr. Ben Goldacre. Although its to do with medicalisation and related matters……….it should be compulsory reading for the likes of Joyce, Hooten, Key – in fact most of them. The salient discussion in it is to do with truth telling versus being a liar VERSUS simply being a bullshitter. (At the top of this thread – I was playing the Bulllshitter – I’m not very good at it, AND I really must cease commenting as I promised to do since I might have offended somebody precious – one that’s “paid his dues” and as such holds a sense of entitledment. Far be it for me to express an opinion that may offend.
Anyway……this Nact abomination, AND a sizeable percentage of the current Labour ‘cohorts’ fit the bullshitter category. The Band’s “I’m the Great Pretender” springs to mind.
Joyce carries it off very well though – total CRAP expressed with the confidence of the used car salesman offloading a lemon. Joyce though is also borderline liar. I ‘spose that delusional really.
They’re a fucking trajedy. What I am convinced of though is that in the future, they’ll get a comeuppance of sorts – simply because their arrogance and master of the universe shit eventually overcomes them.
Old Bernie Madoff’s a good example
Ha ha, fancy describing his fellow commentator Matthew Hooton as a whacko nutter. Kind of pulls himself into the realm as well. Idiot.
Who cares about what these well known commentators think of what goes on here. I would rather read the daily machinations here than listen to Hooton, Williams, and all the others. They have too many vested and conflicted interests to be taken credibly or seriously. That is where honest comment, by way of anonymity, comes into its own. They do all seem to be very upset though. I wonder why. Perhaps they should stop reading it.
I wonder if Williams has ever posted here? Betcha he has.
Dumb is as dumb does.
Hooton is an extraordinary spinner. There has been a call for a factcheck website in NZ. His comments deserve a special category on any such website.
Once you’re shown to be a manipulating BS artist it’s a little difficult to get any credibility. I think it goes back to that old boy who cried wolf story.
His and his NACT overlords Mickey especially some of the answers given in the house. RNZ has become a race to the bottom.
Shows how inept the Nat’s were under blinglish etc that williamson, mallard and co could get 3 terms as once they went up against some structured messaging and media focus they’ve been shown to be boys against men.
Yeah, he reminds me of Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson…everything that comes out of his mouth is well timed and is said for a number of reasons. These reasons are usually not picked up on by the average punter…therein lies his skill.
Yes that from ‘Mr i am off to Australia to dig up the dirt on Slippery’, for a tame radio station like RadioNZ what’s-his face,(i tend to think of Him as That Fat Wanker), really layed it on thick with His little anti-Standard rant,
As usual the ‘weak host’ of the particular RadioNZ show sat in what can only be described as approving silence as (That Fat Wanker) defamed many commenters here on the Standard by claiming that He didn’t think that those who comment here while claiming to be Labour activists were actually active in the Party at all,
The up-side to that is that (a) the Standard is obviously having ‘some’ effect in the rarified atmosphere of national politics, and (b), the recent whipping of (The Other Fat Wanker) who appears on that particular RadioNZ received here at the Standard hit all the right spots,
Usually those 2 make absurd statements to the sound of i agree with (That Fat Wanker), which were the first words uttered with gushing approval by the ex Prez of Labour, but, noted with ;laughter was (The Other Fat Wankers) absence of agreement as (That Fat Wanker) attacked the Standard…
Ah, well, I just went back and listened to it. So, it seems that, according to MW, it’s Cunliffe supporters that are stirring up on TS, and being really nasty about Shearer (the anonymous extreme “nutters”. And according to MH, it was one of those DC supporters that posted about Shearer going to put his leadership up to a party vote next month.
And MH, in an attempt at evidence that it is Cunliffe supporting and/or Cunliffe-organised posters/bloggers who are stirring up against Shearer on TS, mentioned Greg Presland, who he thought was the NL …. erm… LEC secretary/leader or some such role. It seems GP posts here. So they weren’t really differentiating between authors of the posts, and people commenting on the posts.
MW was also intrigued and a little disturbed that when he went to Shearer’s speech at the conference, there were a lot of new faces, and a lot of faces of radical, Alliance types, too. Ryan said it was a good thing to see genuine diversity of views rather than have the stage managed kind of conference that we have seen in recent times – which MW agreed was the kind of conferences he used to manage.
And Whittall will most likely be shown the wet bus ticket.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/8195483/US-coal-mine-manager-jailed-over-explosion
TV3 reckons that the antarctic junket has boosted Kay’s environmental credibility. And mentions that a south pole trip was on his bucket list.
Given his fracking drilling bunker-fuel dairying fuckwittedness, I reckon one is more likely prime motivation for going there than the other.
And it’s not ticking “environmental activism” at the cost of the taxpayer.
he probably just wanted to see where ‘happy feet’ was filmed
but seriously key’s environmental credibility is beyond a joke – he’ll fry us all to make an extra buck and there’s gold in them thar hills for the exploiters.
Not to mention taking that huge entourage with him, the amount of sewage that lot would have created and all the food and drink (no doubt high quality) necessary to keep all those journos happy… the mind boggles at the expense both cash and environmental.
In Stuff today, a scientist is looking for a woman to volunteer for motherhood – to bear a neanderthal child … has anyone suggested he could start looking around the Beehive?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/8203804/Mother-wanted-for-Neanderthal-baby
that’s an – ethical minefield, at the very least.
The Beehive? I’m sure Logie97 already knows 😀