Trump’s CIA Director. Member of the Tea Party crackpot movement. Climate Change denier extraordinaire. Belongs to the subversive outfit NRA. Vehemently opposed “Affordable Care”. And it goes on…
Came across this info. from Barry Soper of all people. He has his uses after all.
Five Eyes was a clandestine club for more than 60 years until it was declassified just seven years ago.
It’s been described as the inner circle of allies who don’t spy on each other but do spy on virtually everyone else.
The no spy rule extends to not tapping the phones of their leaders or their officials.
Whether they spy on each other’s citizens is a grey area though with some observers saying they do, which they’re certainly capable of, to get around laws preventing them from spying on their own citizens.
Yes. They do spy on other’s citizens and have done so for decades. My father, if he were still alive, could attest to as much and btw he was innocent of the “crime” some attributed to him.
The NZ taxpayers pay that’s who. I don’t begrudge their annual get-together (or bi-annual as the case may be) but I do begrudge us having to pay for types like Mike Pompeo.
I wonder if the other bastard Peter Thiel will be in attendance? I suppose we will be paying for him too.
They’re here to organise the hunt for the Vault 7 source. So much for Volodya.
“Having exclaimed that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” laying the blame for every embarrassing leak at Moscow’s footsteps, the FBI and CIA have admitted that they are searching for an “insider” (not a Russian) who exposed thousands of top-secret documents that described CIA tools used to penetrate smartphones, smart televisions and computer systems.”
Actual quote (I swear I didn’t make it up) from the article: However, the report also showed the waiting list had decreased slightly in Auckland, where demand for housing was greatest and where the Government has been concentrating its supply efforts. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11842084
“In China, our biggest export market, government health guidelines are aiming to halve the amount of meat consumed by 2030 out of concerns over environmental impact. If that initiative is successful, it would see a reduction equivalent to the total current consumption of meat in the United States.
We would be wrong to assume the dietary profile of the global population in 2050 will match that of the western world today. Plants will inevitably play a much bigger role on our plates than animal products do now – check out how different the millennial generation’s diet is to the baby boomer’s.
What does that mean for our business and for New Zealand in the future?”
That was an excellent article – Carden’s one in particular could go up here as a post all by itself.
The article notes a 405 ha dairy farm being converted to avocados.
There are some pretty large avocado farms already in the far north, and they are exactly what we need.
I bet there will come a point in some of those marginal northland hill country farms where it’s more economic to let them revert back to Manuka scrub and farm them for Manuka honey, than it is to just keep drystock on them.
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A concentration of avocadoes is another sort of monoculture which brings the possibility of economic collapse of a farm and even region from some likely virus spreading organism. Robert Guyton’s approach would be better with avocadoes predominating amongst a mixed horticulture.
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You don’t mention my point about the danger of trying to establish new industries with horticulture, and how they are not healthy for the environment and prime targets for some organism.
We have to do things differently and more thoughtfully than go after the gold rush effect which can be short-lived and harmful in the medium term.
The winery people are an example of gold rush. Knowing some contract growers, it can be very stressful, and in rushes people pour investment in until there is a glut and then the market fails. At least the wine market adds value and has made its name from its elegant product, not commodity wine. But no doubt soon there will be Chinese wines as good competing?
New Zealand has been able to sustain its agricultural market premiums in every bit of supermarket space other than dairy. You look through apples, wine, avocados, cherries, olive oil, kiwifruit – we retain those global margins for the right reasons. There aren’t any developmental binge-purge cycles that I can see in horticulture now.
As for the Chinese, to get the kind of quality and market price that we command, they tend to simply buy a share in the whole company like Synlait or Silver Fern Farms. They have no chance of competing in China for our quality of production, and they know it.
Those avos are undoubtedly injected with phosphorus acid on a regular basis to keep phytophera at bay.
Its the only way they are viable as crop in much of New Zealand.
Much as I love avocados, and although they have a useful amount of fat in them, they have almost no protein (like a lot of plant food). There’s nothing inherently “better” about avocado farming than meat or dairy.
– Environmental impact, including water supply and wastewater runoff
– Product quality and total quality control to source
– Product control
– Water use
– Capital per hectare
– Scarcity
– Soil
– Local grower control
This is not a food protein substitution argument.
But the owners of the 405ha farm could figure it out, so they made their decision to convert from dairy to avocado.
Also an argument for avocado, they don’t go ‘off’ in a short time because of such things as refrigeration breakdown like milk does. If there is a delay in the finishing and transport lines, they don’t have to be poured away creating pollution whether on land or river. Cheese can’t be made in large enough amounts to use up waste milk and probably even a local pig farm couldn’t use it, if it could be transported there. In other less intensive days the whey was often fed to pigs.
However avocadoes can be left for a while if there is some breakdown and if they did go off they could be composted carefully with balance of the right mix of roughage etc.
As I said before we don’t want to have a binge system with avocadoes so as not to over produce and because of the dangers of monoculture and pests. We did have troubles with kiwifruit and wine and had to pull out part of the crop.
We are now importing kiwifruit from Italy and I hope that works out well for us, balancing the seasons in the different hemispheres.
I wonder what opportunities a speedy Brexit might create for NZ growers?
As the road to a London market gets bumpy for Spanish citrus growers are Kerikeri growers looking good?
I think the Trade Dept of a progressive govt should be hacking tracks. Identifying potential future markets and advising the respective bodies, gearing up. I fear we ain’t.
I fear we are getting the basics wrong, I think we should be quadrupling our money and printing/filling Mandarin yogurt tubs rather than shipping tonnes of the raw material. We should be turning our trees into bits for Ikea rather than freighting raw logs.
Value-added. That has been talked about for decades but since we adopted the cargo cult attitude of wait for the market to arrive and the
viewpoint that nothing can be discussed that might be risky and fail, and that government can’t be trusted to do anything worthwhile, we haven’t dared to try anything. Because trying and failing proves that one should never have been unwise enough to start, so stick to the knitting that’s all we know.
I remember a business writer on an executive of Fonterra’s saying he was very able on commodities but not the man to lead into value-added and I have the feeling that they are still regarded as not doing enough with manufacture in NZ. They could have set up a satellite company that could develop products and test markets with a budget to allow R&D which would allow some failures I don’t know. They might have and I don’t know it. Any Fonterra buffs around?
Our R&D spending has always been a much smaller percentage than other developed countries. Perhaps we aren’t really developed at all, we just hanker for what the big boys have and copy them, usually with an inadequate budget. And gaps which leave out certain aspects of the system we intend to copy which will ensure that it isn’t as effective in this country as elsewhere.
And I can’t give you details of the matters that I am talking about but I have just recognised them cropping up regularly, and noted our propensity for this.
”I bet there will come a point in some of those marginal northland hill country farms where it’s more economic to let them revert back to Manuka scrub and farm them for Manuka honey, than it is to just keep drystock on them.”
don’t know about northland but in central north island its been happening for a while , not just reverting but actually planting the new improved manuka, paying big bucks for marginal land too
It’s a great Northland story bwag. Those associated are doing the district proud.
I’ve often heard the sentiment: “They don’t do anything with it, that whole tract of Maori land is reverting to scrub.”
They were right, it was. They fished, played with their kids, a faith in their land.
Now!!! A particular hapu were featured on Country Calendar. They have an impressive professional approach to the good fortune their valleys of Manuka blossom and non-union member workers have brought them.
They still fish and play with their kids, not quite as much but geeez those fullas have got a honey of a boat.
Interesting to hear the CTU and specific unions like the NZEI arguing that the government’s proposed pay equity bill reinforces inequality by requiring claimants in female-dominated jobs to compare themselves to others in the same sector or industry. This really limits the groups that can be helped, as often the whole sector is female-dominated, making any comparison a heck of a lot less helpful.
Plus, BTW, really interesting to hear Jim Bolger speaking out against neoliberalism and trying to say that he didn’t intend to destroy unions with the extremist Employment Contracts Act. Yeah right, Jim!
Love the way these Tories attempt to rewrite history.
Bolgers no better than key except not as ruthless so Shipley nailed him. Collins couldn’t even get close to jk.
He used the dissention rogernomics caused to get elected then let Richardson, English etc mug NZ, flog a generator, smash health, unions, welfare, create leaky buildings, Ignore akl transport issues etc leaving a mess the incoming govt had to sort out.
I thought I was hearing things as Bolger fired his broadside into the Good Ship Neo Liberalism – is he trying for penance in his old age – bit late now. I noticed the RNZ news didn’t give the comments he made much air time – but its timely in election year for a committed Neo Liberal ex PM to come out in public in Espiner’s interview with him and say the entire experiment was a complete failure and that it rewarded the rich and penalised the poor – who would ever have believed it!!! Fun and games ahead this election year methinks.
Certainly has taken Bolger a long time to see the light and develop a conscience.
Perhaps with one foot in the grave, he is going over some of his past abuses against his fellow man?
I think that saying sorry and admitting past mistakes is a bit of hooey, it sort of ennobles the person and the idea is that everyone looks at them respectfully and forgives them because of the admission.
Stuff that. Try to do the right thing at the time, spend a week of intense discussion with a range of people looking for ways to achieve change bringing improvement, without drastic, scorched earth measures.
My current favourite quote which will be appropriate for as long as the human race can still have the chance to think and that ability.
“The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” (Bertrand Russell)
These from George Bernard Shaw
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Major Barbara
My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, You Never Can Tell
The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Quintessence of Ibsenis
Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, A Treatise on Parents and Children
There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, On the Rock
Ah, George Bernard Shaw. Here’s British author Robert Harris on Shaw:
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW went to Russia in 1931 with his mind made up. Soviet Communism was a wonderful thing and nothing would convince him otherwise.
When a junior British diplomat, Reader Bullard, made “some disparaging remark” about one of Stalin’s show trials, he later noted in his diary how “Shaw grew quite indignant and said: ‘But they confessed.’
“I replied: ‘Yes, one of them confessed that he lunched with Colonel Lawrence at the Savoy in London on a date when we know he was in India,’ but Shaw waved the argument away.”
At a subsequent banquet in Moscow, “Shaw waved his hand at the excellent food and said ‘Russia short of food? Look at this!’ ”
Shaw sounds as if he didn’t like to have his pronouncements found false.
That doesn’t mean that they aren’t amusing or witty or profound when they are general.
People hate being told that the Gnashionals have mucked up the country, and are feeding us half-truths. Whether Communism, Fascism, Capitalism there are the fervent followers. It’s a lesson to us all, to not accept any ism, unequivocally. Keep thinking, be sceptical to some extent.
I’m interested in your anecdote but it doesn’t affect the effectiveness of his comments many of which apparently are picked out from his fiction.
To greywarshark,
Time to have a reality check, most people do not live in your world of navel gazing, about the Russells, Shaws, Platos and Socrates. The majority of the people are struggling to put a roof over their head and enough food on the table, while the greedy 1% are manipulating everyday things to improve their lot further.
Pontificating and navel gazing does what to improve our lives???
Johan
If you want to be a lowly peasant manipulated by ideas from those who don’t give a stuff for you and who will abandon you to all those things you say that the ordinary person is worrying about go ahead and plot your life on the downhill slope.
The trouble with being a human is that there is intelligence coming from your brain different from the type that insects have, who can order their lives very well. We have to choose what we do and keep thinking. It is lack of thinking along different lines, asking questions, not accepting every explanation and excuse that we are given, not learning about other thinking people’s view of the world that leaves us in an almighty mess. Those who are older than you should be apologising to you for not having realised the need to think and make changes before we got to this type of mess. But unfortunately as young people we thought as you do in your comment.
If you do want to get yourself out of the economic mess we are in I suggest you think about it, and see what other people are recommending, before you get caught up in some violence which is coming to the boil and showing up like a geyser here and there as somebody’s stress pressures to breaking point.
Think about things eh instead of making a virtue of being a poor beggar of a dumb ass. Navel gazing isn’t in it, it’s head stuff not studying parts of the body.
A little over the top there!!! You know shit about me, my age my background etc. You have a bad habit of pontificating about things despite the tiny bit of information that is being given. Get real and spout off your bullshit to someone else. I have always voted and canvassed for candidates who represented the center-left of the political spectrum, in a hope of developing a better society.
John Woodcock was chairman of the “Labour Friends of Israel” committee for eight years, a group that acted as a branch of the deep UK establishment commitment to support of Israel by being a kind of gatekeeper for advancement in Blairist “New Labour”. Basically, if you hadn’t prostrated yourself before Israel via this committee, your chances of getting ahead were considerably diminished. He was also the Labour chairman of “Progress”, the Blairite ginger group within the UK Labour party, until 2015. The guy is basically a fanatical neoliberal standing in a seat whose main industry is the British nuclear weapons program. He is also clearly in the wrong party (Mr. Woodcock represents Barrow and Furness, a seat he took over with a solid 6,000 vote majority and he now clings to with a slender 800 votes).
An electoral loss for UK Labour that saw the ouster of Mr. Woodcock would have at least one silver lining, but I am wondering, if Labour does lose 20-30 sears and with some Blairists refusing to stand again, how much would such a defeat represent a uniting moment for UK Labour by clearing out the worst of the Blairite vipers?
Anyone know of any good UK political websites that might help?
Not quite sure what you’re looking for help with – the machinations and numbers involved with Labour? The Canary does some quite good stuff on Labour. The other non-msm UK site I’ll sometimes check out (though it’s far less likely to be focusing on Labour Party politics) is the Off Guardian.
“I am wondering, if Labour does lose 20-30 seats and with some Blairists refusing to stand again, how much would such a defeat represent a uniting moment for UK Labour by clearing out the worst of the Blairite vipers?
Anyone know of any good UK political websites that might help?”
According to research by my former Pols lecturer Tim Bale –
“defeat at the next election will not materially alter the balance of pro- and anti-Corbyn MPs in the PLP. Anyone supportive of the current leadership, then, who believes that Corbyn and those around him will benefit from some sort of clear out of his opponents by the voters, is likely to be seriously disappointed.”
why would NZ need nursing & teaching immigrants when….
“Hundreds of nursing graduates are failing to get job offers straight after graduating, according to their union. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation says there could be a “talent pool” of about 400 people waiting for jobs, with about 40 per cent of graduates failing to get straight into the industry’s main first-year recruitment programme.
Sarah Lacey, 24, of Levin, graduated from Massey University about a year ago and has not been able to get into the Nurse Entry to Practice (NETP) programme.
She felt a “little exploited” after believing the country needed more nurses. “I feel like I was promised all these things: a job, a satisfying career. And I’m still struggling.”
‘Only 15 per cent of new graduates are picking up permanent posts in schools despite a national shortage in some subject areas.
New teachers who don’t nail down a job end up bouncing from school to school, often as a reliever, and have limited access to mentoring and professional development, says the Ministry of Education.”
So a richer class of immigrants will be able to afford the living in Auckland, but even more of those who do essential work, will not be able to live here?
So… salaries for NZ workers are insufficient to survive in Auckland, but the same salary (or less, perhaps?) is sufficient for an immigrant in the same circumstances?
It’s not just about the salaries they earn here. think about it. Someone on a fairly high income overseas, probably has some savings to bring to NZ to buy property at a price many Kiwis can’t compete with.
My 12 year old was wondering about the change in immigration, she asked why it is determined on someones earnings, she said that rich people can live anywhere they like.
She feels that money or earning potential should not be the deciding factor. She said the islanders that come over to do the apples are awesome people that enhance our community, and did not believe a wealthy person would be more valuable than a bunch of happy, friendly, community minded islanders.
She told me that national seems to care about money more than people.
12 years old and taking an interest in how the country is run, I’m proud of her.
Some days it seems like 12 year olds are running the country (unfortunately they are not as caring as my girl) Red, but not to worry the day after the spring equinox everything will change.
seeing as how Fox knew about his behaviour and were happy to pay out internally until the advertisers found out and started pulling their money, I’d say it’s reasonable to assume that Fox aren’t that bothered by sexual harassment so why not pay their big star on his way out the door. It sends a message to all those fans.
Fox will replace him with someone just as good – and if they wanted a challenge they would just hire Steve Bannon outright. He would star. Failing that someone straight out of Breitbart.
O’Reilly ruled for several decades because he was incredibly good at hitting the public sweet spot of rage and anxiety again and again and again.
A rare and at times unhinged portrait of President Trump’s favorite conspiracy theorist, Infowars host Alex Jones, is emerging in an Austin court this week, as the radio star seeks to retain custody of his three children from ex-wife, Kelly Jones.
Lawyers for the bombastic broadcaster are attempting to persuade the jury that he is merely a “performance artist”, someone who should be separated from the outrageous character he plays on-air. His ex-wife is arguing the opposite: Jones in private is the same person at home and with their children that he presents to his millions of conspiracy-hungry viewers, including Trump.
Here are some of the high-lights (or low-lights, depending on your view) coming out of Austin, Texas, where the two-week trial is taking place:
1. Jones claims chili affects his memory, and thus was the culprit behind him forgetting details about his young children.
2. Marijuana is too strong these days because of billionaire financier George Soros.
3. Jones can allegedly be found frequently drunk and shirtless.
4. He’s still bitter that his 9/11 truther theories never garnered a Pulitzer award.
O’Reilly’s success was very much contributed to his fan base of the red-neck populace and the repetition the words and language that they wanted to hear and feed on.
One informant tells me that O’reilly represented an income of about $400million to Fox. Another company, was it Murdock, has connections which will bring in 10 times that amount for Fox without O’Reilly, so cheap at the price to get rid of him. I can’t reference this but maybe some sleuth will verify the substance, – or not.
This, after pretty good results in Kansas and Georgia.
DNC going after these kinds of states would be like Labour going after Waitaki or Nelson. Electorates with 15 – 20,000 seat majorities.
Trump is one of the best renewal programmes to have happened to the Democrats in a long time – far better than Obama was (outside of his own Presidency).
It certainly makes me think again that Labour does not need to give up on the rural voter and the rural seats, so long as it has the right kind of candidate with the right kind of feel for communicating well.
Interesting how Bolger recognizes this obvious fact, but both Palmer and Moore remain defenders of the faith…and there in lay’s the root cause of Labours failure, today and into the future..still pursuing and advocating for ideology that has failed both economically and more importantly socially.
Always had a soft spot for Bolger. Never believed he was a hardened neo-liberal. More like he was inveigled into it by Ruth Richardson and co., saw the light and did a David Lange… sacked Ruth and had a ‘cup o tea’.
A revised version of a comment that I dropped late last night…
Liberal politics is either dead or dying just about everywhere you look.
That’s why people (misguidedly) voted Trump. That’s why people backed Sanders. That’s why the SNP killed off Scottish Labour. That’s why the Canadian Liberals opted to outflank The New Democratic Party on the left. That’s why Mélenchon seems to be coming up ‘from nowhere’ in France. That’s why Corbyn was voted to lead UK Labour (twice).
It’s the inability of liberals to see the wall, never mind read the writing on the wall, that leads to them joining with the rest of the establishment in a state of shock and puzzlement about what’s happening.
And, like I say – it’s happening everywhere…well, almost everywhere 😉
Our first step on the way to decency will be parliamentary expressions of social democracy replacing the ‘death bed’ liberal democracy.
The next step will be when the left reforms and reorganises throughout society with an eye to the past so that it avoids the obvious and disastrous pit falls of authoritarianism/statism.
The next step is a very uneven breakdown of some more states, with fewer staying solid.
The left’s global decline within that is largely irreversible, and no alternative to the Social Democrat order other than theocracies, militant dictatorships, and tiny vassal states has emerged.
We remain a slightly worsening but stable state – as we have for my current lifetime.
“Bolger says neoliberal economic policies have absolutely failed. It’s not uncommon to hear that now; even the IMF says so.
But to hear it from a former National Prime Minister who pursued privatisation, labour market deregulation, welfare cuts and tax reductions – well that’s pretty interesting.
“They have failed to produce economic growth and what growth there has been has gone to the few at the top,” Bolger says, not of his own policies specifically but of neoliberalism the world over.
He laments the levels of inequality and concludes “that model needs to change.”
But hang on. Didn’t he, along with Finance Minister Ruth Richardson, embark on that model, or at least enthusiastically pick up from where Roger Douglas and the Fourth Labour Government left off?
Bolger doesn’t have a problem calling those policies neoliberal although he prefers to call them “pragmatic” decisions to respond to the circumstances.”
classic – so jim enacted and enjoyed the benefits of neoliberalism and now laments how it didn’t work – I’m not crying tears for that guy and his tears are false ones in my book.
A bit of a long cut and paste, because I’m not sure about access to the page without signing in. If you can view it, I’d recommend reading the entire article, because it suggests that in terms of politics, Scotland has already left the UK standing.
But now the (Scottish) Greens seem ready to change strategy.
Chapman (Scottish Green co-convenor) told the National: “I would be quite happy for us to support non-Green candidates if it meant getting Tories out of Scotland and making sure we had elected representatives who walk the walk of the politics of the new Scotland we want to see.
“It’s going to be a difficult election for everybody in Scotland, coming so soon after the council elections, and the outdated system of first past the post makes it particularly difficult for us in some ways.
“I think what we need to do is use this as an opportunity to talk about the kind of Scotland we want to see, the kind of politics we want to see, and I’m hopeful we can agree to say let’s back the candidates who offer those kinds of views and that kind of outlook for Scotland.
Well said.
The First Minister has talked about a progressive alliance – the Greens look set to actually do it. But what do they get in return for this selfless gesture?
For the Greens to set aside the usual pointless party hostilities and not stand against the SNP in hopeless seats is a big step. For the SNP to acknowledge this by advising their supporters to vote Green as their second choice in the council elections would be an appropriate expression of thanks.
And lets face it, with the high cost of power now days, some are struggling to pay their summer power bills. Therefore, how about a little something more for them?
I came upon these quotes from Vladislav Surkovs Twitter feeds. Sounds similar to a modern-day Rasputin (is that a joke? I leave it for you to decide.)
Vladislav Surkov
@therealsurkov
Personal adviser of Vladimir Putin. Political technologist, stage manager, surrealist poet & aspiring ventriloquist. aka Nathan Dubovitsky, aka surkovnotsurkov.
Vladislav Surkov @therealsurkov Apr 9
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything & nothing.”
Vladislav Surkov @therealsurkov Apr 2
I grow weary of right-leaning socialists and left-leaning capitalists. Beware of the center ground as there lies boredom and mediocrity.
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything & nothing.”
I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.
Poission
Gosh I don’t feel well. No wonder he was painting people with four eyes and heads on backward. I just noted in another comment that Nietzsche said something like We take an interest in art in order not to die from truth.
I think they are trying to tell us something uncomfortable and I have just been reading about the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising on 19 April by young idealistic Jews. Is that why I am becoming very interested in art? Perhaps I should lie down and psychoanalyse myself.
If the world of written science fiction were ever to be translated into the language of visual art, Philip K. Dick would probably be Salvador Dali. His vision does not depend on Picassoesque transformations of the familiar into the grotesque so much as a jumbling of the familiar into sometimes deeply disturbing new combinations, whose disturbing aspect is not attenuated but rather accentuated by their very familiarity. This is the kind of landscape where heads sprout like mushrooms from blank desert sands or weird alien faces stare at each other nose-to-nose with an ethereal ballet dancer formed by the gaps between them. Nothing is what it seems. Nothing is real. Everything is real.
US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.
Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move forward.
During President Barack Obama’s administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn’t alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then.
The US view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents.
“Why I won’t be voting Labour anytime soon in New Zealand. The low pay and housing crisis here is caused by runaway greedy capitalism, not workers like me from other countries.”
There is a problem with immigrants coming here for low wages jobs and being exploited by greedy employers but the answer is to increase the minimum wage and tighten up employment regulations. There are also infrastructure and housing problems with too many people moving to Auckland but the best way to deal with that is to incentivise work opportunities in other parts of the country and stop property speculation.
I am not at all happy with the Labour Party blaming immigration for the problems NZ has. It panders to xenophobia instead of looking at the real reasons for the rise in poverty.
Oh dear – it appears that neither marty mars nor mcflock (nor Joe Carolan) – have been keeping up with what’s been happening in NZ – especially Auckland – the last few years.
Streams of immigrants (thousands more than we used to take in a decade ago) coming in each year – pushing house prices up by paying far more than they’re worth, stretching our education, health and hospital services until they’re about to crumble, adding to Auckland’s traffic congestion – but they don’t realise that, and have taken a snitch on Andrew Little’s immigration policy .
Get real, guys.
grow up jenny kirk – your view of the world is only one small narrow view not shared by heaps of people or even many – try being humble and listening instead of arrogant and telling.
are you a capitalist jenny kirk – is that why you want to blame others for your own capitalist tendencies?
“your view of the world is only one small narrow view not shared by heaps of people or even many – try being humble and listening instead of arrogant and telling.”
=insult x 2
“are you a capitalist jenny kirk – is that why you want to blame others for your own capitalist tendencies?”
= insult x 3
pretty sad frankly try playing the ball not the person
Hey, the question was about immigration and jobs – Labourers, specifically.
You can talk about house prices and impact on infrastructure (although you still end up with the same question “where’s the government management of these things?”), but the simple fact was that Little was linking immigration to unemployment. It’s the style of the time, but it’s bullshit.
So we ditch immigration by half. You know what happens then – as soon as people start to pick up more jobs, the reserve bank shits a brick and raises interest rates to make it less attractive for businesses to take a risk by expanding, and therefore unemplyment goes back up again.
6-8%, or thereabouts, if you count it consistently. We never go down to 1% unemployment, like inflation goes down to 1% on occasion. Why not? Because that’s how the economy is managed. The government could boost infrastructure spending by $10bn/yr, and we’d still have this level of unemployment because the OCR would be adjusted to obliterate the private sector employment levels.
Aggregate unemployment and underemployment is unrelated to immigration.
Joe Carolen and MartyM quoted “the low pay and housing crisis” and this is all part of the same thing – McFlock – too many immigrants streaming into our country is causing problems – housing, employment, health, traffic – problems in every direction.
Fair enough, in which case in relation to pay and housing I also say it’s government policy that’s the problem – not having living wage laws, making immigrants depend on employers for visa sponsorship and therefore be reluctant to make complaints to officials, and as for housing a solid 15 years of shit government policy got us where we are today.
Blaming immigrants for our problems is barely even blaming the symptom rather than treating the disease. It’s like blaming the improvised splint for the open fracture in your leg. Sure, it’s not idea, but it’s still better than nothing until you actually face up to treating the injury.
I feel our crap situation with housing is all of our own doing.
We’ve created a situation whereby the best and safest investment anyone can make is in a house.
When we allow pirates like Eric Watson et al to gut our grandparents of their nest-egg we only reinforce this predicament. They’re right, the safest place for their dosh is a 3 beddy in Kelston.
When that happens we don’t grow NZ, we bleed each other, I get a step up, my brother Kiwi steps back. It’s playing monopoly with yourself. Of course I’ll win, sort of, my other half loses.
Somehow we need to stop playing monopoly with our own houses, it’s getting us nowhere and cast our eyes elsewhere.
A few people here seem to be getting their knickers in a twist over your comments Jenny Kirk. Little is NOT blaming individual immigrants for the problem. He is blaming the NAct govt. for allowing too high a rate of immigration to occur without sufficient infrastructure in place to cater for them. The bulk of them are living in Auckland and the pressure on housing, transport and the ever increasing problem of gridlock traffic on our roads is becoming untenable for everyone. We need to drastically reduce the rate of immigration until the infrastructure is set in place – either in Auckland or elsewhere in the country.
This is not racist, zenophobic (call it what like) but plain, common sense!
All the Labour people I know welcome people of other ethnic origins. They bring a richness of culture, music and cuisine to the country but it needs to occur in a more controlled way which is not what is happening under this government.
Meanwhile the real cause, of out of control capitalism, goes unchecked, ignored and wished away. The original post was about that leap of imagination, about looking beyond easy targets and scapegoats and considering deeper reasons rather than business as usual pretend politics.
Immigration is the symptom, out of control capitalism is the cause.
Controls on immigration are controls on capitalism. These will control the effects of immigration which decreases wages, and increases property prices. The intent and effect of the current immigration policies are pure, uncontrolled capitalism.
Controls on immigration are controls on capitalism.
Then bring it on!
Btw, in contrast to the problems related to… too high an immigration rate over a short space of time, our refugee intake from war-torn countries should, for humanitarian reasons, be increased.
“Immigration is the symptom, out of control capitalism is the cause.”
yep – treating the symptoms won’t fix the cause – treating the cause will fix the cause. Focusing on the symptoms will reduce the likelihood of addressing and treating the cause imo.
Anyone who has sat in the arrivals section of Auckland international airport and witnessed the constant stream of new arrivals can see for themselves that our open door policy can not be sustained. There is now 1 flight every 3 minutes at Auckland domestic and international but now there are so many arrivals at the international terminal that many aircraft cannot arrive at the terminal but passengers must disembark on the tarmac and be bused to the terminal.
This situation has been steadily getting worse over the past 18 months to the extent now that if one is planning to use the Airport one needs to factor in hours of time for traveling to and from and transiting thru security etc not minutes.
True many are visitors – but an increasing number are not. The increasing pressure on housing, roading, and parking in Auckland is evidence of it. If you have not visited Auckland in the past 18 months you really are not fully aware of the current situation.
Yep rampart capitalism is the cause of a few things not just the housing homeless crisis and the immigration crisis but also the fresh water crisis, the excessive dairy farm crisis crime and prison crises, health ,education, mental health, suicide, inadequate infratstructure for 100 year events ,drought crises and so on. Your airport inconvenience is also caused by out of control capitalism.
Is it immigration that dragged its feet on public transport and roads?
Is it immigration that leaves tens of thousands of homes as unoccupied speculation commodities?
Is it immigration that’s taken a back seat on infrastructure development?
Is it immigration that makes Auckland the beginning and ending population centre for both immigrants and people from the regions?
No.
But immigration does seem to be an easy target to shift focus from the hard solutions to those problems.
Just looked at Gareth Morgan’s Newsletter about his Roadshow. Impressed by the photo of one of his Hall filled Meetings.
Vast majority would be under 40yo with many younger than 30. (Remember the National Party photos with every head grey?)
At that show my guess is that maybe 1,000 attended.
What does this show? And why has Gareth increased the number of his meetings?
Same reason I’m going along when he comes to my part of town – being a young leftist is making me feel associated with this kind of shit, and I just can’t deal any more:
It is a horrific experience to be suspected of being a cyber terrorist or the like by the Five Eyes partners. They go in for pre-emptive, extra-judicial action frequently; they destroy the lives of innocent people, get away with it and never say sorry and are never made accountable.
The consequences for these people is ruin and often death.
But for them, all it takes is to be suspicious in terms of political or personal affiliation or connection. Ancillary facts about a person, not relating to crime but to political and personal affiliation, is enough for them to justify to themselves their actions. Increasingly, we will see them going after people for people potential future threats: including anyone who is seen to be sniffing around in arenas they consider their domains: economic spheres, diplomatic spheres, and the like. This will soon include (more) journalists, and any other sort of researcher. It is already happening. Cases don’t come to light.
A number of people were falsely suspected of being Rawshark, for instance. As a result, those suspected were gone after in a relentless, abusive way – in ways that can only have been meant to intimidate and disrupt. Those people were innocent.
I ran across a recent essay from The Brothers Krynn, which attempts to map common horror monsters onto the Seven Deadly Sins: https://canadianculturecorner.substack.com/p/horror-monsters-and-vice My interest, however, is not in the meat of the piece, but rather the opening paragraph: It is an interesting fact that in recent decades, Vampires have ...
Buzz from the Beehive Transport Minister Simeon Brown dutifully issued advice to all road users to keep safe on our roads during the Easter weekend. He encouraged them to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. ...
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealanders recently learned about a new feature film. It will be about former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – and taxpayers will subsidise it to the tune of NZ$800,000. Ardern had nothing personally to do with either the film or the subsidy. But her government’s ...
TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above that was recorded yesterday afternoon above between and The Kākā’s climate correspondent : An independent review panel into the emergency response to Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bayconcluded “that ...
There are now only a few days left to give feedback on the Draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport 2024-34 (see our earlier post this week on GPS submission guides). As we’ve reported, the GPS is a disaster for Local Government, so we were particularly interested to hear ...
Willis has pledged to go ahead with the debt-funded tax cuts, despite growing opposition from her own supporters worried about appearing fiscally irresponsible. 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 ...
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
COMMENTARY:By Ronny Kareni Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding. Nowhere is this more evident ...
Analysis - Nicola Willis is holding firm on tax cuts despite the economic outlook being worse than forecast and critics urging her to wait, writes Peter Wilson for The Week In Politics. ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
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 A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tombs, Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago The 5th-century Maskell panel showing Jesus in a loincloth.British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA When Jesus is shown on the cross, he is almost always depicted wearing a loincloth around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the Queen’s crown. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such ...
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Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
Twenty years ago today, Māori Television launched after much controversy. Jamie Tahana looks back on its survival and impact across two decades. Chad Chambers stepped onto the stage, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his face. His smile beamed as bright as his white freezing works gumboots, ...
The unidentified foreign intelligence operation discussed in a scathing report by New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) last week appears to be a controversial United States intelligence system. The IGIS report said the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was “improper” ...
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11842034
Who pays to bring these crazies here for a week?
Its an outrage !
Mike Pompeo :
Trump’s CIA Director. Member of the Tea Party crackpot movement. Climate Change denier extraordinaire. Belongs to the subversive outfit NRA. Vehemently opposed “Affordable Care”. And it goes on…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pompeo
I strongly object to NZ even allowing this individual with an embryonic brain to set foot in our country.
Came across this info. from Barry Soper of all people. He has his uses after all.
Yes. They do spy on other’s citizens and have done so for decades. My father, if he were still alive, could attest to as much and btw he was innocent of the “crime” some attributed to him.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11842124
Who pays? We could tell you but then we’d have to kill you!
The NZ taxpayers pay that’s who. I don’t begrudge their annual get-together (or bi-annual as the case may be) but I do begrudge us having to pay for types like Mike Pompeo.
I wonder if the other bastard Peter Thiel will be in attendance? I suppose we will be paying for him too.
They’re here to organise the hunt for the Vault 7 source. So much for Volodya.
“Having exclaimed that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” laying the blame for every embarrassing leak at Moscow’s footsteps, the FBI and CIA have admitted that they are searching for an “insider” (not a Russian) who exposed thousands of top-secret documents that described CIA tools used to penetrate smartphones, smart televisions and computer systems.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-20/
Probably doesn’t mean the DNC hacks were also a leak, of course…
” A dog handler was seen hopping out of a police vehicle, which had a dog in the back, dressed in civilian clothing” (nzh)
I tell ya these guys are seriously weird
Demand for social housing in Auckland decreased.
Actual quote (I swear I didn’t make it up) from the article:
However, the report also showed the waiting list had decreased slightly in Auckland, where demand for housing was greatest and where the Government has been concentrating its supply efforts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11842084
That’s because they’ve put everyone into motels !
But yes – I agree with you, what a load of tripe – that comment is.
“That’s because they’ve put everyone into motels !”
Yes, at an outrageous cost to taxpayers.
So much for National’s astute fiscal management.
National considers government money going to its supporters as ‘astute fiscal management’.
“In China, our biggest export market, government health guidelines are aiming to halve the amount of meat consumed by 2030 out of concerns over environmental impact. If that initiative is successful, it would see a reduction equivalent to the total current consumption of meat in the United States.
We would be wrong to assume the dietary profile of the global population in 2050 will match that of the western world today. Plants will inevitably play a much bigger role on our plates than animal products do now – check out how different the millennial generation’s diet is to the baby boomer’s.
What does that mean for our business and for New Zealand in the future?”
LandCorp boss gazes into his crystal ball
[link fixed – weka]
That was an excellent article – Carden’s one in particular could go up here as a post all by itself.
The article notes a 405 ha dairy farm being converted to avocados.
There are some pretty large avocado farms already in the far north, and they are exactly what we need.
I bet there will come a point in some of those marginal northland hill country farms where it’s more economic to let them revert back to Manuka scrub and farm them for Manuka honey, than it is to just keep drystock on them.
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A concentration of avocadoes is another sort of monoculture which brings the possibility of economic collapse of a farm and even region from some likely virus spreading organism. Robert Guyton’s approach would be better with avocadoes predominating amongst a mixed horticulture.
When I drive through Marlborough through thousands of acres of monoculture, it’s still water dependent in an arid land.
But runoff is tiny, export profile is through the roof, downstream value-add is excellent, towns prosper and grow.
So thousands of tourists call in to those wineries and raise their glasses to it all.
And no more cows anywhere.
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You don’t mention my point about the danger of trying to establish new industries with horticulture, and how they are not healthy for the environment and prime targets for some organism.
We have to do things differently and more thoughtfully than go after the gold rush effect which can be short-lived and harmful in the medium term.
The winery people are an example of gold rush. Knowing some contract growers, it can be very stressful, and in rushes people pour investment in until there is a glut and then the market fails. At least the wine market adds value and has made its name from its elegant product, not commodity wine. But no doubt soon there will be Chinese wines as good competing?
New Zealand has been able to sustain its agricultural market premiums in every bit of supermarket space other than dairy. You look through apples, wine, avocados, cherries, olive oil, kiwifruit – we retain those global margins for the right reasons. There aren’t any developmental binge-purge cycles that I can see in horticulture now.
As for the Chinese, to get the kind of quality and market price that we command, they tend to simply buy a share in the whole company like Synlait or Silver Fern Farms. They have no chance of competing in China for our quality of production, and they know it.
Those avos are undoubtedly injected with phosphorus acid on a regular basis to keep phytophera at bay.
Its the only way they are viable as crop in much of New Zealand.
Much as I love avocados, and although they have a useful amount of fat in them, they have almost no protein (like a lot of plant food). There’s nothing inherently “better” about avocado farming than meat or dairy.
Let’s see; on dairy v avocados, compare:
– Environmental impact, including water supply and wastewater runoff
– Product quality and total quality control to source
– Product control
– Water use
– Capital per hectare
– Scarcity
– Soil
– Local grower control
This is not a food protein substitution argument.
But the owners of the 405ha farm could figure it out, so they made their decision to convert from dairy to avocado.
Also an argument for avocado, they don’t go ‘off’ in a short time because of such things as refrigeration breakdown like milk does. If there is a delay in the finishing and transport lines, they don’t have to be poured away creating pollution whether on land or river. Cheese can’t be made in large enough amounts to use up waste milk and probably even a local pig farm couldn’t use it, if it could be transported there. In other less intensive days the whey was often fed to pigs.
However avocadoes can be left for a while if there is some breakdown and if they did go off they could be composted carefully with balance of the right mix of roughage etc.
As I said before we don’t want to have a binge system with avocadoes so as not to over produce and because of the dangers of monoculture and pests. We did have troubles with kiwifruit and wine and had to pull out part of the crop.
We are now importing kiwifruit from Italy and I hope that works out well for us, balancing the seasons in the different hemispheres.
I wonder what opportunities a speedy Brexit might create for NZ growers?
As the road to a London market gets bumpy for Spanish citrus growers are Kerikeri growers looking good?
I think the Trade Dept of a progressive govt should be hacking tracks. Identifying potential future markets and advising the respective bodies, gearing up. I fear we ain’t.
I fear we are getting the basics wrong, I think we should be quadrupling our money and printing/filling Mandarin yogurt tubs rather than shipping tonnes of the raw material. We should be turning our trees into bits for Ikea rather than freighting raw logs.
Value-added. That has been talked about for decades but since we adopted the cargo cult attitude of wait for the market to arrive and the
viewpoint that nothing can be discussed that might be risky and fail, and that government can’t be trusted to do anything worthwhile, we haven’t dared to try anything. Because trying and failing proves that one should never have been unwise enough to start, so stick to the knitting that’s all we know.
I remember a business writer on an executive of Fonterra’s saying he was very able on commodities but not the man to lead into value-added and I have the feeling that they are still regarded as not doing enough with manufacture in NZ. They could have set up a satellite company that could develop products and test markets with a budget to allow R&D which would allow some failures I don’t know. They might have and I don’t know it. Any Fonterra buffs around?
Our R&D spending has always been a much smaller percentage than other developed countries. Perhaps we aren’t really developed at all, we just hanker for what the big boys have and copy them, usually with an inadequate budget. And gaps which leave out certain aspects of the system we intend to copy which will ensure that it isn’t as effective in this country as elsewhere.
And I can’t give you details of the matters that I am talking about but I have just recognised them cropping up regularly, and noted our propensity for this.
”I bet there will come a point in some of those marginal northland hill country farms where it’s more economic to let them revert back to Manuka scrub and farm them for Manuka honey, than it is to just keep drystock on them.”
don’t know about northland but in central north island its been happening for a while , not just reverting but actually planting the new improved manuka, paying big bucks for marginal land too
It’s a great Northland story bwag. Those associated are doing the district proud.
I’ve often heard the sentiment: “They don’t do anything with it, that whole tract of Maori land is reverting to scrub.”
They were right, it was. They fished, played with their kids, a faith in their land.
Now!!! A particular hapu were featured on Country Calendar. They have an impressive professional approach to the good fortune their valleys of Manuka blossom and non-union member workers have brought them.
They still fish and play with their kids, not quite as much but geeez those fullas have got a honey of a boat.
Interesting story. Can’t come soon enough if we are to save the braided rivers and other waterways from total ruin. And the McKenzie country as well.
But Jenny, that water is just wasted, as it only runs to the sea.
Might as well use it for intensive farming. (Wink)
A wider ranging look at the future of food, including high-tech…
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2087089/green-revolution-20-bugs-mock-meats-gm-crops-menu
… that’s actually starting to hit the shelves in some places.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/18/veggie-burger-clean-meat-revolution-plant-foods-animals
Interesting to hear the CTU and specific unions like the NZEI arguing that the government’s proposed pay equity bill reinforces inequality by requiring claimants in female-dominated jobs to compare themselves to others in the same sector or industry. This really limits the groups that can be helped, as often the whole sector is female-dominated, making any comparison a heck of a lot less helpful.
Plus, BTW, really interesting to hear Jim Bolger speaking out against neoliberalism and trying to say that he didn’t intend to destroy unions with the extremist Employment Contracts Act. Yeah right, Jim!
Love the way these Tories attempt to rewrite history.
Bolgers no better than key except not as ruthless so Shipley nailed him. Collins couldn’t even get close to jk.
He used the dissention rogernomics caused to get elected then let Richardson, English etc mug NZ, flog a generator, smash health, unions, welfare, create leaky buildings, Ignore akl transport issues etc leaving a mess the incoming govt had to sort out.
Sound familiar ?
I thought I was hearing things as Bolger fired his broadside into the Good Ship Neo Liberalism – is he trying for penance in his old age – bit late now. I noticed the RNZ news didn’t give the comments he made much air time – but its timely in election year for a committed Neo Liberal ex PM to come out in public in Espiner’s interview with him and say the entire experiment was a complete failure and that it rewarded the rich and penalised the poor – who would ever have believed it!!! Fun and games ahead this election year methinks.
Certainly has taken Bolger a long time to see the light and develop a conscience.
Perhaps with one foot in the grave, he is going over some of his past abuses against his fellow man?
I think that saying sorry and admitting past mistakes is a bit of hooey, it sort of ennobles the person and the idea is that everyone looks at them respectfully and forgives them because of the admission.
Stuff that. Try to do the right thing at the time, spend a week of intense discussion with a range of people looking for ways to achieve change bringing improvement, without drastic, scorched earth measures.
My current favourite quote which will be appropriate for as long as the human race can still have the chance to think and that ability.
“The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” (Bertrand Russell)
These from George Bernard Shaw
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Major Barbara
My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, You Never Can Tell
The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Quintessence of Ibsenis
Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, A Treatise on Parents and Children
There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, On the Rock
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/shaw_george_bernard.html#ssLxXPPdTHHDdXcV.99
Ah, George Bernard Shaw. Here’s British author Robert Harris on Shaw:
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW went to Russia in 1931 with his mind made up. Soviet Communism was a wonderful thing and nothing would convince him otherwise.
When a junior British diplomat, Reader Bullard, made “some disparaging remark” about one of Stalin’s show trials, he later noted in his diary how “Shaw grew quite indignant and said: ‘But they confessed.’
“I replied: ‘Yes, one of them confessed that he lunched with Colonel Lawrence at the Savoy in London on a date when we know he was in India,’ but Shaw waved the argument away.”
At a subsequent banquet in Moscow, “Shaw waved his hand at the excellent food and said ‘Russia short of food? Look at this!’ ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3571011/The-Left-blinds-itself-to-the-truth-about-bin-Laden.html
Shaw sounds as if he didn’t like to have his pronouncements found false.
That doesn’t mean that they aren’t amusing or witty or profound when they are general.
People hate being told that the Gnashionals have mucked up the country, and are feeding us half-truths. Whether Communism, Fascism, Capitalism there are the fervent followers. It’s a lesson to us all, to not accept any ism, unequivocally. Keep thinking, be sceptical to some extent.
I’m interested in your anecdote but it doesn’t affect the effectiveness of his comments many of which apparently are picked out from his fiction.
To greywarshark,
Time to have a reality check, most people do not live in your world of navel gazing, about the Russells, Shaws, Platos and Socrates. The majority of the people are struggling to put a roof over their head and enough food on the table, while the greedy 1% are manipulating everyday things to improve their lot further.
Pontificating and navel gazing does what to improve our lives???
Johan
If you want to be a lowly peasant manipulated by ideas from those who don’t give a stuff for you and who will abandon you to all those things you say that the ordinary person is worrying about go ahead and plot your life on the downhill slope.
The trouble with being a human is that there is intelligence coming from your brain different from the type that insects have, who can order their lives very well. We have to choose what we do and keep thinking. It is lack of thinking along different lines, asking questions, not accepting every explanation and excuse that we are given, not learning about other thinking people’s view of the world that leaves us in an almighty mess. Those who are older than you should be apologising to you for not having realised the need to think and make changes before we got to this type of mess. But unfortunately as young people we thought as you do in your comment.
If you do want to get yourself out of the economic mess we are in I suggest you think about it, and see what other people are recommending, before you get caught up in some violence which is coming to the boil and showing up like a geyser here and there as somebody’s stress pressures to breaking point.
Think about things eh instead of making a virtue of being a poor beggar of a dumb ass. Navel gazing isn’t in it, it’s head stuff not studying parts of the body.
greywarshark
A little over the top there!!! You know shit about me, my age my background etc. You have a bad habit of pontificating about things despite the tiny bit of information that is being given. Get real and spout off your bullshit to someone else. I have always voted and canvassed for candidates who represented the center-left of the political spectrum, in a hope of developing a better society.
Yes developing some form of moral compass once they no longer either need or participate in the troughs and trinkets probably.
In my opinion Ruthenasia did more damage than Rogernomics.
True, but Rogernomics built the foundation that Ruthenasia rose on
I was interested in this story from the UK – http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-mp-john-woodcock-says-he-cannot-support-voting-to-make-jeremy-corbyn-prime-minister-a3517721.html
John Woodcock was chairman of the “Labour Friends of Israel” committee for eight years, a group that acted as a branch of the deep UK establishment commitment to support of Israel by being a kind of gatekeeper for advancement in Blairist “New Labour”. Basically, if you hadn’t prostrated yourself before Israel via this committee, your chances of getting ahead were considerably diminished. He was also the Labour chairman of “Progress”, the Blairite ginger group within the UK Labour party, until 2015. The guy is basically a fanatical neoliberal standing in a seat whose main industry is the British nuclear weapons program. He is also clearly in the wrong party (Mr. Woodcock represents Barrow and Furness, a seat he took over with a solid 6,000 vote majority and he now clings to with a slender 800 votes).
An electoral loss for UK Labour that saw the ouster of Mr. Woodcock would have at least one silver lining, but I am wondering, if Labour does lose 20-30 sears and with some Blairists refusing to stand again, how much would such a defeat represent a uniting moment for UK Labour by clearing out the worst of the Blairite vipers?
Anyone know of any good UK political websites that might help?
Not quite sure what you’re looking for help with – the machinations and numbers involved with Labour? The Canary does some quite good stuff on Labour. The other non-msm UK site I’ll sometimes check out (though it’s far less likely to be focusing on Labour Party politics) is the Off Guardian.
https://www.thecanary.co/
https://off-guardian.org/
Sanctuary:
According to research by my former Pols lecturer Tim Bale –
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/04/election-labour-jeremy-corbyn?CMP=se_btn_tw
.
See also the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/04/which-side-will-do-best-out-labours-parliamentary-selections
.
Also compare Labour MPs most at risk …
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/04/election-2017-50-labour-mps-most-risk-losing-their-seats
… with their presumed ideological / factional proclivities
http://labourlist.org/2016/03/leaked-list-ranks-labour-mps-by-hostility-to-corbyn/
Thank you very much!
It seems the new skilled immigration rules of a salary of 70k, will cut out basic scale teacher and nurse immigrants!!!
why would NZ need nursing & teaching immigrants when….
“Hundreds of nursing graduates are failing to get job offers straight after graduating, according to their union. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation says there could be a “talent pool” of about 400 people waiting for jobs, with about 40 per cent of graduates failing to get straight into the industry’s main first-year recruitment programme.
Sarah Lacey, 24, of Levin, graduated from Massey University about a year ago and has not been able to get into the Nurse Entry to Practice (NETP) programme.
She felt a “little exploited” after believing the country needed more nurses. “I feel like I was promised all these things: a job, a satisfying career. And I’m still struggling.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/86827680/Wellington-nursing-graduates-say-there-are-not-enough-jobs-in-the-industry
and
‘Only 15 per cent of new graduates are picking up permanent posts in schools despite a national shortage in some subject areas.
New teachers who don’t nail down a job end up bouncing from school to school, often as a reliever, and have limited access to mentoring and professional development, says the Ministry of Education.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/78191595/Big-drop-in-teacher-graduates-getting-a-job-prompting-a-return-to-bonding
Auckland Syd?
so we need to bring in overseas immigrants, cos Wellington? I’m fairly sure that people in NZ can move for work.
Yes but the salaries are not good enough for teachers and nurses to live in Auckland.
So a richer class of immigrants will be able to afford the living in Auckland, but even more of those who do essential work, will not be able to live here?
So… salaries for NZ workers are insufficient to survive in Auckland, but the same salary (or less, perhaps?) is sufficient for an immigrant in the same circumstances?
It’s not just about the salaries they earn here. think about it. Someone on a fairly high income overseas, probably has some savings to bring to NZ to buy property at a price many Kiwis can’t compete with.
So the government wants to restrict immigrants to those who can bring money and push up the cost of housing even more than it currently is?
Its a fiddle fix.
Don’t worry DV, sounds like their is still plenty of appetite to keep NZ a low wage economy for Bill English.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11842468
My 12 year old was wondering about the change in immigration, she asked why it is determined on someones earnings, she said that rich people can live anywhere they like.
She feels that money or earning potential should not be the deciding factor. She said the islanders that come over to do the apples are awesome people that enhance our community, and did not believe a wealthy person would be more valuable than a bunch of happy, friendly, community minded islanders.
She told me that national seems to care about money more than people.
12 years old and taking an interest in how the country is run, I’m proud of her.
Good one Cinny.
Good on her for a view But that’s why 12 year olds don’t run the country, thankfully
Some days it seems like 12 year olds are running the country (unfortunately they are not as caring as my girl) Red, but not to worry the day after the spring equinox everything will change.
It just seems so very wrong.
“Bill O’Reilly, who has been ousted from his top-rated TV show on Fox News over allegations of sexual harassment, will receive almost US$25 million (NZ$36m) for agreeing to leave the company…”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11842402
seeing as how Fox knew about his behaviour and were happy to pay out internally until the advertisers found out and started pulling their money, I’d say it’s reasonable to assume that Fox aren’t that bothered by sexual harassment so why not pay their big star on his way out the door. It sends a message to all those fans.
Fox will replace him with someone just as good – and if they wanted a challenge they would just hire Steve Bannon outright. He would star. Failing that someone straight out of Breitbart.
O’Reilly ruled for several decades because he was incredibly good at hitting the public sweet spot of rage and anxiety again and again and again.
Hell, they should just go for gold … Alex Jones.
Replace one actor with another actor…sure
That’s the way programming operates
Barking…
A rare and at times unhinged portrait of President Trump’s favorite conspiracy theorist, Infowars host Alex Jones, is emerging in an Austin court this week, as the radio star seeks to retain custody of his three children from ex-wife, Kelly Jones.
Lawyers for the bombastic broadcaster are attempting to persuade the jury that he is merely a “performance artist”, someone who should be separated from the outrageous character he plays on-air. His ex-wife is arguing the opposite: Jones in private is the same person at home and with their children that he presents to his millions of conspiracy-hungry viewers, including Trump.
Here are some of the high-lights (or low-lights, depending on your view) coming out of Austin, Texas, where the two-week trial is taking place:
1. Jones claims chili affects his memory, and thus was the culprit behind him forgetting details about his young children.
2. Marijuana is too strong these days because of billionaire financier George Soros.
3. Jones can allegedly be found frequently drunk and shirtless.
4. He’s still bitter that his 9/11 truther theories never garnered a Pulitzer award.
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/04/alex-jones-custody-battle-infowars
I say, now to be fair number three sounds perfectly reasonable!
O’Reilly’s success was very much contributed to his fan base of the red-neck populace and the repetition the words and language that they wanted to hear and feed on.
One informant tells me that O’reilly represented an income of about $400million to Fox. Another company, was it Murdock, has connections which will bring in 10 times that amount for Fox without O’Reilly, so cheap at the price to get rid of him. I can’t reference this but maybe some sleuth will verify the substance, – or not.
Dorothy Parker “You can tell what the Good Lord thinks of money by the people he gives it to”
Excellent Jan.
OMG the Democrats are going to have a go in Montana:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rob-quist-montana-democrats_us_58f8d7e6e4b018a9ce58eb82?hzp&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
This, after pretty good results in Kansas and Georgia.
DNC going after these kinds of states would be like Labour going after Waitaki or Nelson. Electorates with 15 – 20,000 seat majorities.
Trump is one of the best renewal programmes to have happened to the Democrats in a long time – far better than Obama was (outside of his own Presidency).
It certainly makes me think again that Labour does not need to give up on the rural voter and the rural seats, so long as it has the right kind of candidate with the right kind of feel for communicating well.
Jim Bolger…
“Neoliberalism has failed and suggests unions should have a stronger voice”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/91769882/the-9th-floor-jim-bolger-says-neoliberalism-has-failed-nz-and-its-time-to-give-unions-the-power-back
Interesting how Bolger recognizes this obvious fact, but both Palmer and Moore remain defenders of the faith…and there in lay’s the root cause of Labours failure, today and into the future..still pursuing and advocating for ideology that has failed both economically and more importantly socially.
Turn labour Left.
Always had a soft spot for Bolger. Never believed he was a hardened neo-liberal. More like he was inveigled into it by Ruth Richardson and co., saw the light and did a David Lange… sacked Ruth and had a ‘cup o tea’.
Then along came Jenny…
A revised version of a comment that I dropped late last night…
Liberal politics is either dead or dying just about everywhere you look.
That’s why people (misguidedly) voted Trump.
That’s why people backed Sanders.
That’s why the SNP killed off Scottish Labour.
That’s why the Canadian Liberals opted to outflank The New Democratic Party on the left.
That’s why Mélenchon seems to be coming up ‘from nowhere’ in France.
That’s why Corbyn was voted to lead UK Labour (twice).
It’s the inability of liberals to see the wall, never mind read the writing on the wall, that leads to them joining with the rest of the establishment in a state of shock and puzzlement about what’s happening.
And, like I say – it’s happening everywhere…well, almost everywhere 😉
Our first step on the way to decency will be parliamentary expressions of social democracy replacing the ‘death bed’ liberal democracy.
The next step will be when the left reforms and reorganises throughout society with an eye to the past so that it avoids the obvious and disastrous pit falls of authoritarianism/statism.
The next step is a very uneven breakdown of some more states, with fewer staying solid.
The left’s global decline within that is largely irreversible, and no alternative to the Social Democrat order other than theocracies, militant dictatorships, and tiny vassal states has emerged.
We remain a slightly worsening but stable state – as we have for my current lifetime.
@Bill +1
and one from me too.
bolger
“Bolger says neoliberal economic policies have absolutely failed. It’s not uncommon to hear that now; even the IMF says so.
But to hear it from a former National Prime Minister who pursued privatisation, labour market deregulation, welfare cuts and tax reductions – well that’s pretty interesting.
“They have failed to produce economic growth and what growth there has been has gone to the few at the top,” Bolger says, not of his own policies specifically but of neoliberalism the world over.
He laments the levels of inequality and concludes “that model needs to change.”
But hang on. Didn’t he, along with Finance Minister Ruth Richardson, embark on that model, or at least enthusiastically pick up from where Roger Douglas and the Fourth Labour Government left off?
Bolger doesn’t have a problem calling those policies neoliberal although he prefers to call them “pragmatic” decisions to respond to the circumstances.”
classic – so jim enacted and enjoyed the benefits of neoliberalism and now laments how it didn’t work – I’m not crying tears for that guy and his tears are false ones in my book.
A bit of a long cut and paste, because I’m not sure about access to the page without signing in. If you can view it, I’d recommend reading the entire article, because it suggests that in terms of politics, Scotland has already left the UK standing.
Link is good for me. Maybe put it up as a post?
DJ Melenchon with his latest track (you’ll need to turn on subtitles). He’s also a candidate in the French election and has his own hologram 🙂
https://youtu.be/RDTxeY7akNA
That’s excellent. Thanks for the link 🙂
Good maui. “The face stuffers.” A better name for the very rich getting richer.
Is the Green’s new power proposal to cover 75% of the average winter cost increase an example of their new self imposed fiscal constraints?
Is that what prevented them from covering 100% of the average winter cost increase?
And lets face it, with the high cost of power now days, some are struggling to pay their summer power bills. Therefore, how about a little something more for them?
I came upon these quotes from Vladislav Surkovs Twitter feeds. Sounds similar to a modern-day Rasputin (is that a joke? I leave it for you to decide.)
Vladislav Surkov
@therealsurkov
Personal adviser of Vladimir Putin. Political technologist, stage manager, surrealist poet & aspiring ventriloquist. aka Nathan Dubovitsky, aka surkovnotsurkov.
Vladislav Surkov @therealsurkov Apr 9
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything & nothing.”
Vladislav Surkov @therealsurkov Apr 2
I grow weary of right-leaning socialists and left-leaning capitalists. Beware of the center ground as there lies boredom and mediocrity.
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything & nothing.”
I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.
Salvador Dali
Poission
Gosh I don’t feel well. No wonder he was painting people with four eyes and heads on backward. I just noted in another comment that Nietzsche said something like We take an interest in art in order not to die from truth.
I think they are trying to tell us something uncomfortable and I have just been reading about the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising on 19 April by young idealistic Jews. Is that why I am becoming very interested in art? Perhaps I should lie down and psychoanalyse myself.
https://www.sfsite.com/07a/pe155.htm
I have previously quoted PKD here; you can look it up if you like.
I guess Assange is relieved Moreno won.
.
US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.
Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move forward.
During President Barack Obama’s administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn’t alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then.
The US view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/julian-assange-wikileaks-us-charges/index.html
Joe Carolan on fbook – and yep I agree
“Why I won’t be voting Labour anytime soon in New Zealand. The low pay and housing crisis here is caused by runaway greedy capitalism, not workers like me from other countries.”
in response to this
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/04/we-ll-cut-tens-of-thousands-of-immigrants-little.html
I tend to agree as well. Unemployment is almost always the result of economic policy, not immigration policy.
There is a problem with immigrants coming here for low wages jobs and being exploited by greedy employers but the answer is to increase the minimum wage and tighten up employment regulations. There are also infrastructure and housing problems with too many people moving to Auckland but the best way to deal with that is to incentivise work opportunities in other parts of the country and stop property speculation.
I am not at all happy with the Labour Party blaming immigration for the problems NZ has. It panders to xenophobia instead of looking at the real reasons for the rise in poverty.
Oh dear – it appears that neither marty mars nor mcflock (nor Joe Carolan) – have been keeping up with what’s been happening in NZ – especially Auckland – the last few years.
Streams of immigrants (thousands more than we used to take in a decade ago) coming in each year – pushing house prices up by paying far more than they’re worth, stretching our education, health and hospital services until they’re about to crumble, adding to Auckland’s traffic congestion – but they don’t realise that, and have taken a snitch on Andrew Little’s immigration policy .
Get real, guys.
grow up jenny kirk – your view of the world is only one small narrow view not shared by heaps of people or even many – try being humble and listening instead of arrogant and telling.
are you a capitalist jenny kirk – is that why you want to blame others for your own capitalist tendencies?
“grow up” = insult
“your view of the world is only one small narrow view not shared by heaps of people or even many – try being humble and listening instead of arrogant and telling.”
=insult x 2
“are you a capitalist jenny kirk – is that why you want to blame others for your own capitalist tendencies?”
= insult x 3
pretty sad frankly try playing the ball not the person
Hey, the question was about immigration and jobs – Labourers, specifically.
You can talk about house prices and impact on infrastructure (although you still end up with the same question “where’s the government management of these things?”), but the simple fact was that Little was linking immigration to unemployment. It’s the style of the time, but it’s bullshit.
So we ditch immigration by half. You know what happens then – as soon as people start to pick up more jobs, the reserve bank shits a brick and raises interest rates to make it less attractive for businesses to take a risk by expanding, and therefore unemplyment goes back up again.
6-8%, or thereabouts, if you count it consistently. We never go down to 1% unemployment, like inflation goes down to 1% on occasion. Why not? Because that’s how the economy is managed. The government could boost infrastructure spending by $10bn/yr, and we’d still have this level of unemployment because the OCR would be adjusted to obliterate the private sector employment levels.
Aggregate unemployment and underemployment is unrelated to immigration.
Joe Carolen and MartyM quoted “the low pay and housing crisis” and this is all part of the same thing – McFlock – too many immigrants streaming into our country is causing problems – housing, employment, health, traffic – problems in every direction.
Fair enough, in which case in relation to pay and housing I also say it’s government policy that’s the problem – not having living wage laws, making immigrants depend on employers for visa sponsorship and therefore be reluctant to make complaints to officials, and as for housing a solid 15 years of shit government policy got us where we are today.
Blaming immigrants for our problems is barely even blaming the symptom rather than treating the disease. It’s like blaming the improvised splint for the open fracture in your leg. Sure, it’s not idea, but it’s still better than nothing until you actually face up to treating the injury.
I feel our crap situation with housing is all of our own doing.
We’ve created a situation whereby the best and safest investment anyone can make is in a house.
When we allow pirates like Eric Watson et al to gut our grandparents of their nest-egg we only reinforce this predicament. They’re right, the safest place for their dosh is a 3 beddy in Kelston.
When that happens we don’t grow NZ, we bleed each other, I get a step up, my brother Kiwi steps back. It’s playing monopoly with yourself. Of course I’ll win, sort of, my other half loses.
Somehow we need to stop playing monopoly with our own houses, it’s getting us nowhere and cast our eyes elsewhere.
A few people here seem to be getting their knickers in a twist over your comments Jenny Kirk. Little is NOT blaming individual immigrants for the problem. He is blaming the NAct govt. for allowing too high a rate of immigration to occur without sufficient infrastructure in place to cater for them. The bulk of them are living in Auckland and the pressure on housing, transport and the ever increasing problem of gridlock traffic on our roads is becoming untenable for everyone. We need to drastically reduce the rate of immigration until the infrastructure is set in place – either in Auckland or elsewhere in the country.
This is not racist, zenophobic (call it what like) but plain, common sense!
All the Labour people I know welcome people of other ethnic origins. They bring a richness of culture, music and cuisine to the country but it needs to occur in a more controlled way which is not what is happening under this government.
Meanwhile the real cause, of out of control capitalism, goes unchecked, ignored and wished away. The original post was about that leap of imagination, about looking beyond easy targets and scapegoats and considering deeper reasons rather than business as usual pretend politics.
Immigration is the symptom, out of control capitalism is the cause.
Controls on immigration are controls on capitalism. These will control the effects of immigration which decreases wages, and increases property prices. The intent and effect of the current immigration policies are pure, uncontrolled capitalism.
Controls on immigration are controls on capitalism.
Then bring it on!
Btw, in contrast to the problems related to… too high an immigration rate over a short space of time, our refugee intake from war-torn countries should, for humanitarian reasons, be increased.
“Immigration is the symptom, out of control capitalism is the cause.”
yep – treating the symptoms won’t fix the cause – treating the cause will fix the cause. Focusing on the symptoms will reduce the likelihood of addressing and treating the cause imo.
Anyone who has sat in the arrivals section of Auckland international airport and witnessed the constant stream of new arrivals can see for themselves that our open door policy can not be sustained. There is now 1 flight every 3 minutes at Auckland domestic and international but now there are so many arrivals at the international terminal that many aircraft cannot arrive at the terminal but passengers must disembark on the tarmac and be bused to the terminal.
This situation has been steadily getting worse over the past 18 months to the extent now that if one is planning to use the Airport one needs to factor in hours of time for traveling to and from and transiting thru security etc not minutes.
True many are visitors – but an increasing number are not. The increasing pressure on housing, roading, and parking in Auckland is evidence of it. If you have not visited Auckland in the past 18 months you really are not fully aware of the current situation.
Yep rampart capitalism is the cause of a few things not just the housing homeless crisis and the immigration crisis but also the fresh water crisis, the excessive dairy farm crisis crime and prison crises, health ,education, mental health, suicide, inadequate infratstructure for 100 year events ,drought crises and so on. Your airport inconvenience is also caused by out of control capitalism.
Is it immigration that dragged its feet on public transport and roads?
Is it immigration that leaves tens of thousands of homes as unoccupied speculation commodities?
Is it immigration that’s taken a back seat on infrastructure development?
Is it immigration that makes Auckland the beginning and ending population centre for both immigrants and people from the regions?
No.
But immigration does seem to be an easy target to shift focus from the hard solutions to those problems.
Just looked at Gareth Morgan’s Newsletter about his Roadshow. Impressed by the photo of one of his Hall filled Meetings.
Vast majority would be under 40yo with many younger than 30. (Remember the National Party photos with every head grey?)
At that show my guess is that maybe 1,000 attended.
What does this show? And why has Gareth increased the number of his meetings?
He must be doing something right.
I am a Labour-Green Supporter but….
http://www.top.org.nz/events?utm_campaign=aklevents&utm_medium=email&utm_source=garethmorgan
Same reason I’m going along when he comes to my part of town – being a young leftist is making me feel associated with this kind of shit, and I just can’t deal any more:
https://twitter.com/meaganrosae/status/854151640370356224
It is a horrific experience to be suspected of being a cyber terrorist or the like by the Five Eyes partners. They go in for pre-emptive, extra-judicial action frequently; they destroy the lives of innocent people, get away with it and never say sorry and are never made accountable.
The consequences for these people is ruin and often death.
But for them, all it takes is to be suspicious in terms of political or personal affiliation or connection. Ancillary facts about a person, not relating to crime but to political and personal affiliation, is enough for them to justify to themselves their actions. Increasingly, we will see them going after people for people potential future threats: including anyone who is seen to be sniffing around in arenas they consider their domains: economic spheres, diplomatic spheres, and the like. This will soon include (more) journalists, and any other sort of researcher. It is already happening. Cases don’t come to light.
A number of people were falsely suspected of being Rawshark, for instance. As a result, those suspected were gone after in a relentless, abusive way – in ways that can only have been meant to intimidate and disrupt. Those people were innocent.
There are 2 ideas of public policy: kindness (to the core) and short-termism, and I’m just not sure which is central to us.