The answer is, of course, social, economic and political mayhem. Thousands of ordinary middle-class New Zealanders would be ruined. The country’s leading banks would teeter on the brink of failure. Credit would dry up overnight. New Zealand would be plunged headlong into a deep recession. Thousands of “millennial” Kiwis would lose their jobs, closely followed by thousands of redundant Gen-Xers. Poverty would surge upwards to engulf layers of society untouched by deprivation for more than eighty years. In short order, shock and disbelief would give way to unrelenting political rage – and a lust for inter-generational vengeance.
Hickey’s plan has as much chance of being adopted by either main party as you have propelling yourself to the moon using only farts.
Like most people here I think he government should embark on a government funded house building spree AKA the 1950s and 1960s.
But they won't. Labour is all about technocratic woke neoliberalism – and in this country that is an election winning combination, since our technocratic elites are competent and our liberal middle class who runs everything is woke as fuck.
Of course, you CAN try and drain that swamp by voting for outsider candidates and get your revolution to cut house prices by 50%, but you are far, far more likely to end up with Donald Trump or Boris Johnson than you are with Che Guevara.
So really, if we want housing change we are all going to have to start getting real about what levers a neoliberal government under pressure might pull to get more houses built. And that is only, in NZ, going to be through the NGO housing sector.
Hang on there, are you actually claiming Trotter is right (a 1990s style recession eventuates from Hickeys housing policy) and that this is a political price worth paying?
More along the lines of implement Hickey's suggestions and reap the benefits.
As we have found, there are unintended consequences in radical times. After all, how many recent articles are there where economists have either got it totally wrong it didn't anticipate certain outcomes?
Would you like to elaborate on the benefits of the 1990s recession for us? I think Ruth Richardsons position was probably that the reforms getting passed justified the pain. But with 30 years of hindsight we might consider if the consequences were justified especially for those whose careers were interrupted by the high unemployment of that time.
However its not a zero sum game. Whatever the cause the general fall out from a major recession would easily be worse than the on going property price rises.
Of note, last year the government had an opportunity to run that experiment just by implementing lockdown without the accompanying wage subsidy (which was proportionally the largest in the world). This would certainly have landed the economy in a recession and quite likely would have prevented the latest price rises.
Unless you think that was preferable (Labour would have lost the election of course in this case) then the reforms must avoid such a recession or have a plan to mitigate it. Pertinently Trotter is asking the economist (Hickey) what that plan is because its widely known this is a likely consequence of such a price collapse. Its also what happened across multiple countries when their property bubbles collapsed, we have somewhat more evidence its a real problem than just recons. Its also the kind of advice being given to Ardern and why she is telling the country she doesn't want to cause a price collapse.
The surface dismissal of what Trotter is saying without either engaging with the argument (or even just to state their belief that property market collapse wouldn't cause a recession) doesn't endear.
This is incorrect, though a widely held myth. Soaring house prices are based on what the latest batch of house buyers are willing to pay for the houses they purchased. Often they borrowed to make those purchases, so also deposit and lending criteria, etc…
But in no way did government spending facilitate those decisions. The government could have funded itself in many ways including, normal DMO operations (though at higher interest rates) or OMF or if Grant Robertson found 60 billion down the back of the couch.
So how should the government have completed its deficit spending to avoid these recent price rises?
It seems to me Bernard Hickey is entirely unserious about solving the countries housing issues and instead he (along with a huge proportion of the vocal insolent left) prefers the high ground of oppositional politics. Why else would you propose a scheme which has zero chance of implementation?
Either Bernard Hickey wishes to be taken seriously on the issue or he does not. If he wants his views to be relegated to the background noise of a increasingly petulant twitterati left then he can carry on proposing such pie in the sky policy prescriptions. Or he can start coming up with some concrete ideas that might have a chance of actually being adopted.
As we have experienced a rise so meteoric in the last year – Part due to government action of quantitive easing and throwing $$ without taking action to counteract what this has done to property. The market has plenty of slack to allow for the market to drop to levels that we were experiencing this time last year. Problem is that our PM finds moderate increases as acceptable. To our PM: every period that rises are over and above disposable income increases guess what ? – It gets more difficult to buy a family home, or are many comfortable with a timid response ??
Less terrible than were we are now 🤫, but those who comment regarding aversions to see property prices drops forget that a return to where we were 6months. What other options are there ? stagnant property prices for many years to come as wage growth of 1% allows for an improving the house affordability trend ?
The point being that no-one wants to either buy or lend into a falling market, because of the risk of destroying all the equity and going underwater.
If there is one thing worse than a house that's too damn expensive (there is a chance you can work with that), it's a house you dare not buy regardless.
I mean, people who want a house rather than an investment with a capital gain might be interested, mad fools they are. Who just buys a house to live in it lol
Here's the missing reporting on the massive "stop the steal" protests at state capitols all around the US that the fake news media censored. (check the whole thread)
While the Democrats like to think they're the 'natural party of government' in the USA, the reality is that they only very narrowly won this election. The entire popular majority for the President resides in just three states, California, New York and Florida. The swings virtually everywhere else were tiny; the fundamental voting patterns have barely changed in decades.
And you may want to keep in mind, even when losing, Trump gained more Hispanic and Black votes this election than any Republican President ever. If it were not for the shambolic COVID response, Trump would have likely romped home.
In the meantime the Republicans are now composed almost entirely of right wing populists of various nutty flavours, and their traditional support base among the business, national security and social conservatives has been completely frozen out. A smart Democrat leadership will move toward these groups, representing as they do real money and large voting blocs.
Of course this analysis isn't intended to make you happy – it's a look at what is happening rather than what you might wish would.
Sure, the Dems need to actually win in order to get shit done. But they don't need to be as pathetic as Obama and pander to Wall St quite so obsequiously. 🤮
Maybe they think themselves as true Scythians where revolutions are infinite and in continuous turmoil (and continuous revolutions have a second law constraint) see Zamyatin.
The spiritual revolutionary, the genuine freeman and Scythian, is envisaged by Ivanov-Razumnik 1 thus: he “works for the near or distant future,” he knows that “the way of the revolution is verily a way of the cross.” We can almost agree with this defini- tion, but how often “almost” makes a world of difference. The true Scythian does not know of any straddling “or.” He works only for the distant future, never for the near future, and never for the present. Hence to him there is one way — Golgotha — and no other, and one conceivable victory — to be crucified — and no other. Christ on Golgotha, between two thieves, bleeding to death drop by drop, is the victor — because he has been crucified, be- cause, in practical terms, he has been vanquished. But Christ vic- torious in practical terms is the grand inquisitor. And worse, Christ victorious in practical terms is a paunchy priest in a silk- lined purple robe, who dispenses benedictions with his right hand and collects donations with the left. The Fair Lady, in legal marriage, is simply Mrs. So-and-So, with hair curlers at night and a migraine in the morning. And Marx, come down to earth, is simply a Krylenko . 2 Such is the irony and such is the wisdom of fate. Wisdom, because this ironic law holds the pledge of eternal movement forward. The realization, materialization, practical victory of an idea immediately gives it a philistine hue. And the true Scythian will smell from a mile away the odor of dwellings, the odor of cabbage soup, the odor of the priest in his purple cassock, the odor of Krylenko — and will hasten away from the dwellings, into the steppe, to freedom.
There's the newish dynamic prosperous urban centres of Portland and Seattle that attract a population that is young, progressive, diverse, energetic, possibly a little hot-headed, and they aren't going to take shit.
Then there's the older backblocks that aren't doing as well as they think they're entitled to and think they're still in the 1800s when the constitution of Oregon explicitly forebade non-whites. (Washington state didn't quite do that, but the vibe was still pretty clear).
So the regular rumbles between the various factions are now kind of a routine thing. Almost an expected ritual.
If there is one thing guaranteed to lose support in the USA it's political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
It's possibly the one factor that turned what should have been a slam dunk win over Trump into a nail-biter.
Democratic leaders have been condemning all violence for the entire last four terms. Suggesting they haven't is amplifying a right-wing smear.
In stark contrast to Darth Hater, who had been encouraging violence and dog-whistle cheering it on, with an occasional feeble hostage video repudiation when even his sycophants thought he had gone waaay too far.
At least 13 Biden campaign staff members posted on Twitter on Friday and Saturday that they made donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which opposes the practice of cash bail, or making people pay to avoid pre-trial imprisonment. The group uses donations to pay bail fees in Minneapolis.
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Reuters that the former vice president opposes the institution of cash bail as a “modern day debtors prison.”
But the campaign declined to answer questions on whether the donations were coordinated within the campaign, underscoring the politically thorny nature of the sometimes violent protests.
Bates instead pointed to Biden’s comments that protesters have the right to be angry but that more violence won’t solve justice problems.
Note: not Democratic Leaders; their campaign staff, in an unofficial capacity; donating to a third-party that bails out protestors; and a statement by Biden calling out violence.
The fact that left wing protests regularly turned into violence of one sort or another virtually all damned year – and that protest leaders and Democrats did little but token hand-wringing to stop it is something the left owns now whether you like it or not.
BLM and other leftish protests regularly turned into violence (at a rate of about 4% to 6% of all protests) mostly because of police and white supremacists initiating violence.
The police had an obligation to ensure protestors could exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble: the police abjectly failed, and indeed, were often the proximate cause of the violation of the protestors rights. In direct contravention of their obligations and oaths.
That RWNJs are now furiously gaslighting to deflect blame doesn’t change the facts.
edit: here’s just one link of many that are easily found just be googling police brutality blm protests.
So the link to the Antifa protest yesterday that sparked this thread, is a deep fake video? Or white supremacists reacting to police provocation?
And if BLM want to base an entire movement on the basis of less than 20 unjustified deaths per year (out of tens of million of police encounters), then your 4 – 6% of protests that turn ugly cannot be dismissed either.
The simple truth you keep dodging is that while I don't have to hassle any brain cells to rank the order of importance between the Capitol invasion and the the burning down of a Seven11 – the ongoing news clips showing political violence done either in the name of or under the cover of ostensibly left wing protests all year cannot be erased from the voters mind either.
And unless I've missed something, I have yet to see any pro-BLM/Antifa people here on this thread actually condemning the Antifa violence seen even yesterday. What we get instead are denial, minimising and deflection at every step.
The fact that you continue to misrepresent what your own links say, to demonise civil rights protests, makes clear the rabidity of your own partisanship, whether you like it or not.
So you want to reserve the option to both allow the left to condemn political violence for reasons of respectability, but at the same time cheer it on when it suits because 'racism'.
Of course I support violence when I think it's justified. Why would I oppose justified violence?
Does it extend to other people's idea of justification? Within reason. Individual circumstances are not always precise, nor is the level of violence chosen.
I'm a great fan of a "reasonable person" assessment. I know it doesn't fit with your desire for categorical imperatives that can be adapted as rules for your positronic neural network, but that's the difficulty of being human.
And as we previously discovered, what you count as "political violence" is not as categorical as you claim. Damaging property and threatening people with assault in order to protest materialism is fine, if it's "performative" enough.
Of course you can claim the 'cleansing of the Temple' was political violence because it suits your argument. I think it was a legitimate protest, disruptive yes, but not violent. (There is no evidence from the account anyone was hurt.)
That's my point, you think you're being reasonable, when I don't. So which one of us gets to define what is acceptable or not? It just becomes a matter of opinion, and the fucking nazis are just as free to have their opinion as Antifa.
My argument is simply that whenever there is any doubt, political violence must be out of bounds. The most watertight definition is the most reliable one.
That's my point, you think you're being reasonable, when I don't. So which one of us gets to define what is acceptable or not? It just becomes a matter of opinion, and the fucking nazis are just as free to have their opinion as Antifa.
Neither of us do. There is no central Decider who makes the determination. We are judged by our peers, voters, judiciary, and history. All of them get to change their minds at any time. You might despise that sort of ethical melieu, but the objective isn't a categorical line in the sand. The objective is to not go down in history as being too much of a dick. John Brown is another dude who I'd rather be like than someone who just frowned at slavery and did nothing.
My argument is simply that whenever there is any doubt, political violence must be out of bounds. The most watertight definition is the most reliable one.
Have you not been paying attention? There is always some shred of doubt. By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
solkta is now using a modern dictionary to parse events that took place 2000 years ago.
If you think that era was at all touched by the concerns of the modern woke, you really need to read some history.
Setting aside the historicity of the bible narrative here are some examples of the 'woke'-ness RL so derides:
How Jesus broke down racial barriers:
Jesus went to Samaria to save the Woman at the Well. Most Jews went around Samaria just to avoid “those people.” There was total segregation between them (Jn. 4:9), but Jesus had a divine appointment with a broken woman who desperately needed Him. The disciples were shocked that Jesus even spoke to her (Jn. 4:27), yet He took the time to reveal His Messiahship to her (Jn. 4:25-26). As a result, a two-day revival broke out in Samaria (Jn. 4:39-42).
Jesus healed a Roman Centurion’s servant (Mt. 8:5-13). There was much racial tension between Jews and Romans. The Jews despised them for occupying their land, controlling their lives, and overtaxing them. Jesus was willing to go to his house, but most Jews wouldn’t even consider going near the house of an “unclean” Gentile. The Centurion said Jesus could just speak the word only. He knew how the chain of command worked. Then Jesus commended his faith and healed his servant.
Jesus delivered the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter (Mt. 15:21-28). Jesus went beyond the borders of Israel to meet this Greek woman. At first, He ignored her (Mt. 15:23). Then, He excluded her—“I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15:24). Next, it seems, He insulted her—“It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs” (Mt 15:26). (Jews often referred to Gentiles as dogs.) She must have been a bulldog because she refused to take no for an answer (Mt. 15:27). Jesus was so impressed with her faith that He delivered her daughter from demons.
Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:30-37). Samaritans were the “bad guys” to the Jews, but Jesus made one the hero of this story to show there is good in people we may not like. Notice the priest and the Levite (two “good guys”) did nothing to help the victim. Jesus redefined who is our neighbor is—not just the person on our same street, but any person of any race who is in need.
Jesus went out of His way to include the Gentiles and break down racial barriers. After all, He wasn’t just the King of the Jews. As the Samaritans testified, “We know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the WORLD” (Jn. 4:42).
Well that of course is why Christ is remembered – he did challenge the norms of the era and set in place a moral framework that still informs the modern world.
But if you imagine the account of the 'cleansing of the Temple' would have stacked up as 'violent' in terms of how people thought in those quite different times, I think you and McF are suffering a quite bad dose of presentism.
Notably Christ's approach to the issues you list is based however not in identity politics and power struggle, but through the 'rebirth of the soul' within the heart of each individual. That's my problem with woke – it takes good causes and uses them to cloak bad actions.
By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
Well that's because we know what happened subsequently in the 1940's. Now how would you feel if someone had tried or even succeeded in assassinating Trump?
Now how would you feel if someone had tried or even succeeded in assassinating Trump?
Hmmm. In 2016? Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it. Less ambivalent if I knew literally hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved.
But then if Hitler had been assassinated in 1935 and I was reading about it in a history book, same deal.
RL, why can't you just admit that you were wrong? Why are you so incapable of that?
In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
My point is simple – if you are going to insist on reserving the right to use political violence in the name of your own cause, then you will have no defense when your opponents do the same.
Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it.
I would have condemned it absolutely outright. As would indeed the vast majority of 'reasonable' people I suggest.
You've completely forgotten the very purpose of politics. It's to substitute dialog and negotiation for coercion and war.
When you allow violence to creep in through the cracks – you will inevitably find it betrays democracy and civilisation. Everything you thought worth saving.
I would have condemned it absolutely outright. As would indeed the vast majority of 'reasonable' people I suggest.
Yeah, his repeated early moves on race-based immigration didn't worry many people you'd regard as "reasonable". But they were pretty fucking strong portents of looming fascism.
I'd have been against it a bit because maybe he hadn't met the threshold of harm that warranted assassination, but for it a bit because he looked like he had a good chance of going there. Ambivalent. Hell, I'm still ambivalent about whether it would have been a good thing at the start of his presidency. Would Pence's Gilead have been worse than 400k covid deaths and open fascism? Can't say for sure.
What happens when the State claims a monopoly on violence, but then that State goes rogue, ignores the democratic will of the people, and indeed begins oppressing its own? From the Declaration of Independence:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
@RL In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
Some people are able to admit when they are wrong about something and this enables them to learn new things. Others just want to prance around like a peacock.
Well compared to say Yeltsin using tanks to shell the Kremlin, how does the 'storming of the Capitol' stack up? Just a little singe?
My point I think is this; unless you have categorically ruled political violence out of bounds, then you (or anyone else) will always find a reason to justify it to suit themselves.
I don't think it was reasonable – but I'll bet the vast majority of people who went almost certainly thought it was. The accounts I've read support this.
So? They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
What do we know, through careful examination of the facts? The insurrectionists got much of their plan wrong. They lacked reason. They livestreamed their crimes. Lack of reason. They had faith in dolt45. Lack of reason.
Yelstin: there was an attempted coup. Coup plotters had arrest lists and military forces. He organised resistance to the coup. Coup plotters didn't surrender, he shelled their position. All reasonable actions.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
I'm not the one who is willing to commit violence in the name of your always reasonable cause, nor condone an assassination if it suits your political view.
I've assessed that violence represents the abdication of politics, the point at which you've plunged into the abyss.
You will be the good man who stands by and does nothing because you can't trust your mental faculties and you might therefore be wrong. Frowns don't stop nazis.
They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
Which is why we reserve violence for the state; it alone has the capacity to make the collective determination you're asking for here.
And if the state has degenerated into an intolerable tyranny then it can be resisted by defying it courageously. Ghandi, Mandela and King showed how it’s done.
Actually, if you think Mandela was a pacifist then you're probably right to mistrust your judgement.
BLM protests aren't the riots you paint them as, but even if they all were, MLK said "riots are the language of the unheard". He didn't approve, but he understood. He didn't just fire off categorical imperatives as an excuse to dismiss the issue.
Gandhi was also not as categorical as you: "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Apparently also recruited Indians to serve as British soldiers in WW1.
Let's see: Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Jesus… none of them lived up to Redlogix's pacifist ideals.
Yet each of these leaders are held in such high esteem precisely because they achieved their remarkable goals with the bare minimum of disruption and force necessary. Their primary leverage was a moral not physical.
The general trend of human evolution has been away from coercion and violence to resolve conflicts of interest, toward dialog and negotiation. In this process we have slowly ceded our right to personal forceful action upward to higher authority. First to the clan, the tribe, the warlord, the city state and now the nation state.
At each step we've gained increasing freedom in our daily lives from violence. At this point in time humans are probably the least violent we've ever been. Pinker has made this case very well.
This is not necessarily because our personal capacity for violence has diminished, but because we have created social structures that regulate and moderate it on our collective behalf.
Meanwhile, in the real world nobody lives up to your categorical imperatives, St RedLogix. Not even the people you list.
I agree, minimum force should be used. I worked under that rule for 20 years, always knowing any instance could be put to a test of reasonableness in court. But "never"? You're setting absurdly high goals for any movement, there, let alone one you seem to oppose.
And in my view the principle of non-violence must take precedence. There is no more excuse for individuals resorting to violence for a political purpose than there is for domestic violence.
It's the same logic, just taken to the next wider social level.
Yet manifestly they're all celebrated precisely for the success of their non-violent approach.
It's a very odd thing that you should now be consigning them to the same dustbin history along with all the assorted thugs, warlords and failed revolutionaries who only ever reached for violent means to prosecute their cause.
If that's your genuine take-away from the discussion, all I can do is be thankful that you have enough awareness remaining to doubt the reasonableness of your beliefs.
You may want to consider that what we think permissible, changes with time. My view is that the boundaries on violence are being gradually extended from virtually no limits at all – toward ideally a total prohibition in any form.
RL, your view seems not to correspond with reality. The difference between those engaged in violence in support of a fascist coup and others fighting oppression seems quite clear to other commenters. For one thing; the oppressors expect to get away with their crimes, whereas the oppressed expect to be harshly punished, but do it anyway.
This is the best I have seen it stated:
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
Everyone would want to see the correct legal outcome that most people considered just; but it would be a mob that went on a rampage afterward if they didn't like it.
… political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
Democratic politicians are outspoken supporters of the most extreme violence by insurrectionary mobs in Venezuela and by Israeli snipers against unarmed protestors in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
Where on earth do you get the idea that Democrats oppose violence?
I am not that familiar with twitter, but this Disclose.tv thread looks a bit dodgy there Poisson.
Hopefully, in the next few days, we will see some details about those eight arrested. I wouldn't be quite so quick to ascribe the actions to "Antifa", though I guess ICE is arguably fascist enough for people to be anti it. But Anarchist is not the same as Antifa, despite sounding similar, and sometimes sharing similar objectives. The J20 protests the previous 4 years have certainly seemed a bit larger, but also featured flag burning. From 2017:
The day's events began with a contentious American flag burning event that was organized by a small group of anarchists around 2:30 p.m. No arrests were made at that time, but Portland Police took several wooden poles and other materials from protesters that could have been used as weapons.
But it's not entirely clear if the group is the same as those of previous years with McKelvey, then leader of "Portland's Resistance" seeming to have moved to Atlanta in mid-2018. And there are no repeated names in the lists of arrested between the two years (can't be bothered hunting up 2016,18&19 details – have enough tabs open as it is). Also not the only protest in Portland that day:
Another demonstration involving a different group of people got underway at 4 p.m. at Northeast Portland's Irving Park.
Portland Police said they were aware of a third protest, set for 8 p.m. at South Portland's Caruthers Park.
The Global Disinformation Index seems to think that they know. Naming Disclose.tv as one of the top 10 biggest profiteers from publishing election disinformation in November 2020.
Poisson, yeah – I should have been more specific about my search terms; "Antifa protest", was clearly insufficient, but quicker to type. The Seattle protest looks more minor, so only two arrests there.
I would apologize for derailing your thread, but seeing as you were doing that to Andre yourself, won't.
Pretty much. When the government got serious about child abuse and changed the law to allow uplift where the threat was clear Maori activists and leaders couldn't see past their reflexive sense of grievance.
Maori leadership has chosen not to see James Whakaruru as the victim of child abuse with painful questions about Maori culpability, preferring to focus on the easy portrayal of the likes of Te Rangi Whakaruru and Benny Haerewa as victims of colonisation. As you say, now they will get their chance to own the results.
The 2020 report found that moving Maori babies into state care happens earlier than it does for non-Māori – with the decision increasingly being made before the child is even born.
"There were eight times more concerns reported for unborn Māori babies in 2019, as compared with 2004. In that same time, reported concerns for non-Māori increased only 4.5 times.
In 2010 there were 36 approvals for unborn Māori children to be removed from their families at birth – by 2017 that had risen to 93, despite findings of actual abuse decreasing over that same period.
In 2019, 0.67 percent of pēpi aged three months or under were taken into state care, but only 0.13 percent of non-Māori.
Urgent decisions to remove pepi doubled over the last decade, but stayed the same for non-Māori."
Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft had words to say about that.
"And 48 percent of pregnant women whose pēpi were taken into state care before birth had been in state care themselves at some point."
"From 2014 to 2017, the removal of Māori babies ordered into state custody before birth almost doubled."
Yes , the stats are difficult reading but that wasnt my point (and it may be premature in any case, the organisation is still state led)….I was suggesting that rather than Maori highlighting the failings of the state organisation, it is likely that the state (and certainly others) will highlight any failings of a Maori led response….and my concern is the objective is lost.
Though as already noted it would be difficult to do any worse than the existing structure
Professor Stephen Hoadley starts his talk about the state of democracy in the USA by stating that Venezuela is a third world county and implying that it's democracy and thereby it's elections are and where undemocratic.
Jesse I would have thought that you would have enough knowledge around world politics to push back on this false narrative Mr. Hoadley openly used, which is widely known as fake news.
If true (which I doubt) it says a lot about the IQ of the average voter in Venezuela, ie the ones that are left with half the county voting with their feet vs a fraudulent ballot box
The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog) The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy plus the millions who have left Venezuela just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
???!!?? You are obviously unfamiliar with their role of megaphone for the right wing British regime—most shamefully in the persecution of the dissenting journalist Julian Assange. The BBC's short-lived democratic deviation in 2003, when Andrew Gilligan went rogue and actually told the truth about Blair and Campbell's manipulation of documents leading up to the destruction of Iraq, was soon ended.
The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy
The Trump regime, that is.
plus the millions who have left Venezuela
They left a country under brutal, and illegal, sanctions. That shows what suffering has been inflicted on the country by the United States, the U.K., and Colombia; it does not imply they are opponents of their elected government.
just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
???? You have no evidence to back up your claim, other than the word of the Trump regime.
Well written, Adrian. Steve Hoadley is an extremely unsavoury commentator, not a lot different from the likes of Michael Bassett and Waikato's notorious Dov Bing. During the November 2012 escalation in Israeli terror against the citizens of Gaza, named with brutal sarcasm "Operation Pillar of Defense", Hoadley went onto Radio Rhema and expressed his support not for the victims, but the killers.
I fear that you're wasting your time trying to reason with Jesse Mulligan; he's one of the more susceptible and easily bamboozled broadcasters. He was, and presumably still is, a true believer in the Russiagate nonsense, as we can see in this 2016 interview with another dodgy academic, Al Gillespie….
JESSE MULLIGAN: Why do ceasefires break down, Al, if uh, if no one enjoys war? [snickers nervously]
PROFESSOR AL GILLESPIE: There’s no trust on the ground. No one believes that it’s safe to bring in aid, water, or food, and so unless you can get the most basic modicum of trust, you can’t build up.
JESSE MULLIGAN: So how do you CREATE it?
PROFESSOR AL GILLESPIE: You get the teams, well you need two things. One, people have to get tired of fighting, and neither side has to believe that they can WIN. At the moment, there’s so much money, men, and ammunition going into the fight, both sides believe that they still have the upper hand. And then you need to have confidence-building measures, and right now they can’t even achieve THAT.
JESSE MULLIGAN:[speaking very slowly, to convey thoughtfulness] Sometimes when I read this stuff I get the sense that Russia are L-L-L-LOOKIN’ for trouble, are L-L-L-LOOKIN’ to create tension with the U.S. Is that fair?
[This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content. To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts, which is no better than those puerile images that you’re so fond of. Lastly, it is about something utterly trivial that happened years ago.
Cut out the crap and stop the ad homs for the sake of it. Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet. This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito]
Yes listening to Mulligan (which I only do very rarely these days) is like listening to a slightly sophisticated teenage radio show…along with most of his music choices, morning report has pretty much sunk to that same level now as well. It seems like serious unbiased news is well and truly a thing of the past on RNZ now (with the rare exception of course)…lucky we still RNZ concert.
This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content.
Adrian Thornton made the comment about Prof. Hoadley's unfounded and politically incendiary claims about Venezuela—Adrian called them a "false narrative"—and he also expressed his disappointment at the quality, or lack of quality, in Jesse Mulligan's performance. I simply reinforced Adrian's points by providing evidence of even worse performances in the past by Hoadley and Mulligan. Both of the examples I provided were accurate; they were neither ad hominem nor snide.
To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts
I provided 14 lines of a larger transcript to illustrate my point about Mulligan's credulous and ill informed comments. It is indeed realistic, and any lack of gravity is entirely due to the two people involved in that awful conversation.
Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet.
I kept my comment rigorously to the point. It amplified the comment made by another poster. How was it not relevant?
This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito
You are wielding your hammer again, and threatening me, for what? My comment was directly relevant to the points made by another poster, I made nothing up, I used no foul language.
The poor suffering Venezuelans are more concerned with more basic commodores like dependable utilities and food A shortage of Oxygen is the least of their worries A bit of virtue signalling by Maduro and his henchmen that’s all this is ie a puff piece
I found this an interesting viewpoint from an USAn who is usually not too political (except where being trans in Trump's Amerika is involved – so yeah; quite political now I think of it). It's unscripted, and the second half is mostly about Star Trek; because that's a lens through which she finds the world makes sense (the; Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, slogan certainly gets many repetitions). This quote starts at 5:39 and seems worth transcribing before the progression of the algorithm eclipses it:
…It is easier to radicalize a person on the right to the far left, than it is to take a person in the center to the left. Because… there is lot a similarity in that there is the recognition of a problem that this society is not working in the way it should… The only difference really is the solutions that have been offered.
Which got me thinking about some people who went from the (not too far) left to acolytes of conspiracy theories this year. Faith always seems to trump evidence (pun not intentional, but not removed either). Extremism's counter is not contrary extremism but centrism? Unfortunately the Earth's biosphere may not have time for a return to the status quo.
It's an interesting question isn't it. Before that incident, Gorbachov was in charge, but afterwards, it was Yeltsin. So realpolitik analysts consider that the real coup was Yeltsin's
Funnily enough, it's not that I actually doubt either claim, the link of his that was relevant to my comment seems reasonable. I just can't be bothered getting into a debate about whether it was right or wrong to [checks notes] assist in some small way to stop communist hardliners gaining power through military force.
The other link was quite sweet – I was almost tempted to be the fourth person to download the article just to see if what Adrian thought it said was actually what it said. But if I can't be bothered to debate a link that was relevant to what I'd said, I'm not going to go off on a tangent.
I'm working on just letting more bullshit go these days.
Surely you know Mcflocks's 'lol' was not brought on by his finding anything humourous but as attempt to ridicule the author of the comment he was replying to. I doubt he was laughing.
What I found slightly amusing was his need to further explain himself because he thought your 'lol' was similarly meant for him, and you further having to assure him that you weren't seeking to ridicule him.
This documentary has never been more relevant than it is today, and in the context of the last 30 years it's no wonder that Chomsky is still clinging to 'hope' for political change in the USA. The media's complicity in the political process has never been stronger. It used to be called propaganda but it's also called 'Manufactured Consent'
Produced in 1992, it runs for 2hr 47min and considers the propaganda model of communication and the politics of the mass-communications business, with emphasis on Chomsky's ideas and career. He's a brilliant communicator, and this alone makes watching and following this documentary quite easy despite it's length.
In the context of some of the discussion above quoting media sources, this is a must watch.
Perhaps it will be shown on the Maori Channel sometime, it's virtually the only NZ TV station to run intelligent and thought provoking programs that challenge the status quo.
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 19 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
Reacting to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s refusal to rule out introducing new taxes at the budget, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “Today’s refusal to rule out new taxes suggests the Government is nothing more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne Aila Images/Shutterstock Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they ...
He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah. Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best ...
Download the 6 page housing build 'plan' announced yesterday: https://www.hud.govt.nz/community-and-public-housing/increasing-public-housing/public-housing-plan/
From the sidebar, Colonel Trotter dons a straw hat to defend us all against the consequences of that Bernard Hickey chap's revolutionary incitements about housing prices. http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-economic-consequences-of-mr-hickey.html
Small price to pay to address one of the major drivers of inequality, third world health outcomes for some and mental ill health.
Hickey’s plan has as much chance of being adopted by either main party as you have propelling yourself to the moon using only farts.
Like most people here I think he government should embark on a government funded house building spree AKA the 1950s and 1960s.
But they won't. Labour is all about technocratic woke neoliberalism – and in this country that is an election winning combination, since our technocratic elites are competent and our liberal middle class who runs everything is woke as fuck.
Of course, you CAN try and drain that swamp by voting for outsider candidates and get your revolution to cut house prices by 50%, but you are far, far more likely to end up with Donald Trump or Boris Johnson than you are with Che Guevara.
So really, if we want housing change we are all going to have to start getting real about what levers a neoliberal government under pressure might pull to get more houses built. And that is only, in NZ, going to be through the NGO housing sector.
Following a recent BBQ, I stood a chance of said propulsion, with the effects of the paua fritters I had consumed the night before.
hahahaha go easy on the garlic powder!
NGO social housing seems to be the 'answer' both our centre parties can agree on. Yay.
Hang on there, are you actually claiming Trotter is right (a 1990s style recession eventuates from Hickeys housing policy) and that this is a political price worth paying?
More along the lines of implement Hickey's suggestions and reap the benefits.
As we have found, there are unintended consequences in radical times. After all, how many recent articles are there where economists have either got it totally wrong it didn't anticipate certain outcomes?
That's actually a yes then.
Would you like to elaborate on the benefits of the 1990s recession for us? I think Ruth Richardsons position was probably that the reforms getting passed justified the pain. But with 30 years of hindsight we might consider if the consequences were justified especially for those whose careers were interrupted by the high unemployment of that time.
Sorry, I could have been clearer.
I have as much faith in Trotter's reckons as any economists predictions i.e. very little.
We do need a correction, a shift or a radical change. BAU doesn't cut it- wealth accumulating into fewer and fewer hands.
However its not a zero sum game. Whatever the cause the general fall out from a major recession would easily be worse than the on going property price rises.
Of note, last year the government had an opportunity to run that experiment just by implementing lockdown without the accompanying wage subsidy (which was proportionally the largest in the world). This would certainly have landed the economy in a recession and quite likely would have prevented the latest price rises.
Unless you think that was preferable (Labour would have lost the election of course in this case) then the reforms must avoid such a recession or have a plan to mitigate it. Pertinently Trotter is asking the economist (Hickey) what that plan is because its widely known this is a likely consequence of such a price collapse. Its also what happened across multiple countries when their property bubbles collapsed, we have somewhat more evidence its a real problem than just recons. Its also the kind of advice being given to Ardern and why she is telling the country she doesn't want to cause a price collapse.
The surface dismissal of what Trotter is saying without either engaging with the argument (or even just to state their belief that property market collapse wouldn't cause a recession) doesn't endear.
I feel we are talking past each other.
Politically, you seem to be saying we must not frighten the horses. I am of the opinion they need a jolly good rark up. Maybe a gate or two left open.
Plus the the other part of housing affordability is the income/wages side of it. Incomes/benefits/wages need to rise.
Well I didn't have a sense of talking past each other, but if you want to move the discussion onto stables then we certainly are now.
Soaring house prices are from govt QE poured into the banking sector, not wage subsidies. Trickle-down nonsense again.
This is incorrect, though a widely held myth. Soaring house prices are based on what the latest batch of house buyers are willing to pay for the houses they purchased. Often they borrowed to make those purchases, so also deposit and lending criteria, etc…
But in no way did government spending facilitate those decisions. The government could have funded itself in many ways including, normal DMO operations (though at higher interest rates) or OMF or if Grant Robertson found 60 billion down the back of the couch.
So how should the government have completed its deficit spending to avoid these recent price rises?
And a calculated assumption that the poor, the homeless , the disenfranchised will not
rise up or indeed be championed by the same middle class with property portfolios.
It seems to me Bernard Hickey is entirely unserious about solving the countries housing issues and instead he (along with a huge proportion of the vocal insolent left) prefers the high ground of oppositional politics. Why else would you propose a scheme which has zero chance of implementation?
Either Bernard Hickey wishes to be taken seriously on the issue or he does not. If he wants his views to be relegated to the background noise of a increasingly petulant twitterati left then he can carry on proposing such pie in the sky policy prescriptions. Or he can start coming up with some concrete ideas that might have a chance of actually being adopted.
As I've pointed out a few times in the past, the one thing worse than a housing market that's too hot, is one that's dropping.
As we have experienced a rise so meteoric in the last year – Part due to government action of quantitive easing and throwing $$ without taking action to counteract what this has done to property. The market has plenty of slack to allow for the market to drop to levels that we were experiencing this time last year. Problem is that our PM finds moderate increases as acceptable. To our PM: every period that rises are over and above disposable income increases guess what ? – It gets more difficult to buy a family home, or are many comfortable with a timid response ??
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/108601/2020-capped-19-rise-house-prices-year-despite-sharp-jump-volumes-sold-prices-were#:~:text=New%20Zealand%20house%20prices%20rose,gain%20rate%20to%20%2B%24422.
So even if they dropped 20%, house prices would be back to the terrible times of… last year.
Less terrible than were we are now 🤫, but those who comment regarding aversions to see property prices drops forget that a return to where we were 6months. What other options are there ? stagnant property prices for many years to come as wage growth of 1% allows for an improving the house affordability trend ?
The point being that no-one wants to either buy or lend into a falling market, because of the risk of destroying all the equity and going underwater.
If there is one thing worse than a house that's too damn expensive (there is a chance you can work with that), it's a house you dare not buy regardless.
"No one".
I mean, people who want a house rather than an investment with a capital gain might be interested, mad fools they are. Who just buys a house to live in it lol
Do the Trotsker's vapours owe anything to his own house holding status?
It’s a beautiful day in Auckland. Nice feeling to know that the USA is not completely crazy and liable to start WW3 any minute
Here's the missing reporting on the massive "stop the steal" protests at state capitols all around the US that the fake news media censored. (check the whole thread)
https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1351961693098799105
Still sleepless in Seattle.
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1352062780975755266
The far left in the USA has been dumped by TeamBiden and will not be happy.
They’ll be even less happy when the US business faction gets into bed with the Dem party leaders.
The “far left” being those who want the basics of a civilised democracy as opposed to the current oligarchy
While the Democrats like to think they're the 'natural party of government' in the USA, the reality is that they only very narrowly won this election. The entire popular majority for the President resides in just three states, California, New York and Florida. The swings virtually everywhere else were tiny; the fundamental voting patterns have barely changed in decades.
And you may want to keep in mind, even when losing, Trump gained more Hispanic and Black votes this election than any Republican President ever. If it were not for the shambolic COVID response, Trump would have likely romped home.
In the meantime the Republicans are now composed almost entirely of right wing populists of various nutty flavours, and their traditional support base among the business, national security and social conservatives has been completely frozen out. A smart Democrat leadership will move toward these groups, representing as they do real money and large voting blocs.
Of course this analysis isn't intended to make you happy – it's a look at what is happening rather than what you might wish would.
Sure, the Dems need to actually win in order to get shit done. But they don't need to be as pathetic as Obama and pander to Wall St quite so obsequiously. 🤮
Maybe they think themselves as true Scythians where revolutions are infinite and in continuous turmoil (and continuous revolutions have a second law constraint) see Zamyatin.
The Russians write like no-one else.
That's how they roll in that part of the world.
There's the newish dynamic prosperous urban centres of Portland and Seattle that attract a population that is young, progressive, diverse, energetic, possibly a little hot-headed, and they aren't going to take shit.
Then there's the older backblocks that aren't doing as well as they think they're entitled to and think they're still in the 1800s when the constitution of Oregon explicitly forebade non-whites. (Washington state didn't quite do that, but the vibe was still pretty clear).
So the regular rumbles between the various factions are now kind of a routine thing. Almost an expected ritual.
If there is one thing guaranteed to lose support in the USA it's political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
It's possibly the one factor that turned what should have been a slam dunk win over Trump into a nail-biter.
Democratic leaders have been condemning all violence for the entire last four terms. Suggesting they haven't is amplifying a right-wing smear.
In stark contrast to Darth Hater, who had been encouraging violence and dog-whistle cheering it on, with an occasional feeble hostage video repudiation when even his sycophants thought he had gone waaay too far.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/13/fact-check-democrats-have-condemned-violence-linked-protests/3317862001/
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-biden-condemn-violence/fact-check-joe-biden-has-condemned-violent-protests-in-the-last-three-months-idUSKBN25V2O1?edition-redirect=uk
Democratic leaders have been condemning all violence for the entire last four terms.
So cheerfully paying bail monies to arrested 'protesters' is somehow consistent with this?
From your link:
Note: not Democratic Leaders; their campaign staff, in an unofficial capacity; donating to a third-party that bails out protestors; and a statement by Biden calling out violence.
The fact that left wing protests regularly turned into violence of one sort or another virtually all damned year – and that protest leaders and Democrats did little but token hand-wringing to stop it is something the left owns now whether you like it or not.
BLM and other leftish protests regularly turned into violence (at a rate of about 4% to 6% of all protests) mostly because of police and white supremacists initiating violence.
The police had an obligation to ensure protestors could exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble: the police abjectly failed, and indeed, were often the proximate cause of the violation of the protestors rights. In direct contravention of their obligations and oaths.
That RWNJs are now furiously gaslighting to deflect blame doesn’t change the facts.
edit: here’s just one link of many that are easily found just be googling police brutality blm protests.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-07/police-brutality-caught-on-film-black-lives-matter/12330672
So the link to the Antifa protest yesterday that sparked this thread, is a deep fake video? Or white supremacists reacting to police provocation?
And if BLM want to base an entire movement on the basis of less than 20 unjustified deaths per year (out of tens of million of police encounters), then your 4 – 6% of protests that turn ugly cannot be dismissed either.
The simple truth you keep dodging is that while I don't have to hassle any brain cells to rank the order of importance between the Capitol invasion and the the burning down of a Seven11 – the ongoing news clips showing political violence done either in the name of or under the cover of ostensibly left wing protests all year cannot be erased from the voters mind either.
And unless I've missed something, I have yet to see any pro-BLM/Antifa people here on this thread actually condemning the Antifa violence seen even yesterday. What we get instead are denial, minimising and deflection at every step.
A lot of those spnosored bail bonds will be to people who were victims of police violence, but apparently it's still all the fault of the "left wing".
You got it McFlock.
The fact that you continue to misrepresent what your own links say, to demonise civil rights protests, makes clear the rabidity of your own partisanship, whether you like it or not.
If them antifa folk would stop running headlong into police batons and redneck fists, peace would descend. Saw it on Faux News so it must be true.
Just in case it's not clear.
https://twitter.com/LilithGoode/status/1352346266794127365
Four of the five permanent members of the Security Council all began their modern states with bloody revolutions.
All four founded those revolutionary states on principles that they thought were universal.
So if or when the trial of Derek Chauvin fails to deliver the outcome the mob wants, do you think the USA should burn?
It's a bad faith form of debate to use loaded questions to force opinion.
So you want to reserve the option to both allow the left to condemn political violence for reasons of respectability, but at the same time cheer it on when it suits because 'racism'.
Does that cover it off?
As we all know, the springbok tour in '81 was called off because people frowned pointedly at it.
@McF
Does this mean you support political violence when you think it's justified?
And does this extend to when other people think it's justified?
Of course I support violence when I think it's justified. Why would I oppose justified violence?
Does it extend to other people's idea of justification? Within reason. Individual circumstances are not always precise, nor is the level of violence chosen.
I'm a great fan of a "reasonable person" assessment. I know it doesn't fit with your desire for categorical imperatives that can be adapted as rules for your positronic neural network, but that's the difficulty of being human.
The category of political violence is absolute; it's either allowable or not.
And even Uncle Joe thought he was being reasonable.
Did he really? Or was he just a bastard?
And as we previously discovered, what you count as "political violence" is not as categorical as you claim. Damaging property and threatening people with assault in order to protest materialism is fine, if it's "performative" enough.
Of course you can claim the 'cleansing of the Temple' was political violence because it suits your argument. I think it was a legitimate protest, disruptive yes, but not violent. (There is no evidence from the account anyone was hurt.)
That's my point, you think you're being reasonable, when I don't. So which one of us gets to define what is acceptable or not? It just becomes a matter of opinion, and the fucking nazis are just as free to have their opinion as Antifa.
My argument is simply that whenever there is any doubt, political violence must be out of bounds. The most watertight definition is the most reliable one.
(oxford)
No need for hurt.
So if nobody is hurt it's not violence? The dude made a whip, ffs. Not sure anyone was hurt (by protestors) in the "violence" at portland yesterday, either.
Neither of us do. There is no central Decider who makes the determination. We are judged by our peers, voters, judiciary, and history. All of them get to change their minds at any time. You might despise that sort of ethical melieu, but the objective isn't a categorical line in the sand. The objective is to not go down in history as being too much of a dick. John Brown is another dude who I'd rather be like than someone who just frowned at slavery and did nothing.
Have you not been paying attention? There is always some shred of doubt. By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
This is where these discussions usually end up, with RL making up his own definitions for words.
solkta is now using a modern dictionary to parse events that took place 2000 years ago.
If you think that era was at all touched by the concerns of the modern woke, you really need to read some history.
Setting aside the historicity of the bible narrative here are some examples of the 'woke'-ness RL so derides:
https://mountaineagle.com/stories/how-jesus-responded-to-racism,26438
RL:
Because we're using English, not Latin or Aramaic.
Violence, violentiam, βία: it's the same in any language from any era.
Well that of course is why Christ is remembered – he did challenge the norms of the era and set in place a moral framework that still informs the modern world.
But if you imagine the account of the 'cleansing of the Temple' would have stacked up as 'violent' in terms of how people thought in those quite different times, I think you and McF are suffering a quite bad dose of presentism.
Notably Christ's approach to the issues you list is based however not in identity politics and power struggle, but through the 'rebirth of the soul' within the heart of each individual. That's my problem with woke – it takes good causes and uses them to cloak bad actions.
By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
Well that's because we know what happened subsequently in the 1940's. Now how would you feel if someone had tried or even succeeded in assassinating Trump?
My copy of the bible is in English.
RL, why can't you just admit that you were wrong? Why are you so incapable of that?
Hmmm. In 2016? Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it. Less ambivalent if I knew literally hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved.
But then if Hitler had been assassinated in 1935 and I was reading about it in a history book, same deal.
RL, why can't you just admit that you were wrong? Why are you so incapable of that?
In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
My point is simple – if you are going to insist on reserving the right to use political violence in the name of your own cause, then you will have no defense when your opponents do the same.
Or indeed any other form of violence.
Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it.
I would have condemned it absolutely outright. As would indeed the vast majority of 'reasonable' people I suggest.
You've completely forgotten the very purpose of politics. It's to substitute dialog and negotiation for coercion and war.
When you allow violence to creep in through the cracks – you will inevitably find it betrays democracy and civilisation. Everything you thought worth saving.
Yeah, his repeated early moves on race-based immigration didn't worry many people you'd regard as "reasonable". But they were pretty fucking strong portents of looming fascism.
I'd have been against it a bit because maybe he hadn't met the threshold of harm that warranted assassination, but for it a bit because he looked like he had a good chance of going there. Ambivalent. Hell, I'm still ambivalent about whether it would have been a good thing at the start of his presidency. Would Pence's Gilead have been worse than 400k covid deaths and open fascism? Can't say for sure.
What happens when the State claims a monopoly on violence, but then that State goes rogue, ignores the democratic will of the people, and indeed begins oppressing its own? From the Declaration of Independence:
@RL In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
Some people are able to admit when they are wrong about something and this enables them to learn new things. Others just want to prance around like a peacock.
A little singe now and again.
The focus of BLM had gained good impact in the new administration already. They generated massive marches and some fires on the streets.
Whereas attacking the Senate has massively damaged the Republicans. Hopefully it splits them and there's a nice new splinter party formed.
So you do need the sense to put your sights on the right target if you're going to set fires.
A little singe now and again.
Well compared to say Yeltsin using tanks to shell the Kremlin, how does the 'storming of the Capitol' stack up? Just a little singe?
My point I think is this; unless you have categorically ruled political violence out of bounds, then you (or anyone else) will always find a reason to justify it to suit themselves.
But not the other guys.
Wasn't Yeltsin putting down a coup, not fomenting one?
Well most of the people at the Capitol thought exactly the same; they were there to defend the Constitution not overthrow it.
Do you think that this belief was reasonable?
I don't think it was reasonable – but I'll bet the vast majority of people who went almost certainly thought it was. The accounts I've read support this.
So? They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
What do we know, through careful examination of the facts? The insurrectionists got much of their plan wrong. They lacked reason. They livestreamed their crimes. Lack of reason. They had faith in dolt45. Lack of reason.
Yelstin: there was an attempted coup. Coup plotters had arrest lists and military forces. He organised resistance to the coup. Coup plotters didn't surrender, he shelled their position. All reasonable actions.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
I'm not the one who is willing to commit violence in the name of your always reasonable cause, nor condone an assassination if it suits your political view.
I've assessed that violence represents the abdication of politics, the point at which you've plunged into the abyss.
No dude.
You will be the good man who stands by and does nothing because you can't trust your mental faculties and you might therefore be wrong. Frowns don't stop nazis.
They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
Which is why we reserve violence for the state; it alone has the capacity to make the collective determination you're asking for here.
And if the state has degenerated into an intolerable tyranny then it can be resisted by defying it courageously. Ghandi, Mandela and King showed how it’s done.
Resorting to mob violence is the cowards way out.
Actually, if you think Mandela was a pacifist then you're probably right to mistrust your judgement.
BLM protests aren't the riots you paint them as, but even if they all were, MLK said "riots are the language of the unheard". He didn't approve, but he understood. He didn't just fire off categorical imperatives as an excuse to dismiss the issue.
Gandhi was also not as categorical as you: "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Apparently also recruited Indians to serve as British soldiers in WW1.
Let's see: Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Jesus… none of them lived up to Redlogix's pacifist ideals.
Yet each of these leaders are held in such high esteem precisely because they achieved their remarkable goals with the bare minimum of disruption and force necessary. Their primary leverage was a moral not physical.
The general trend of human evolution has been away from coercion and violence to resolve conflicts of interest, toward dialog and negotiation. In this process we have slowly ceded our right to personal forceful action upward to higher authority. First to the clan, the tribe, the warlord, the city state and now the nation state.
At each step we've gained increasing freedom in our daily lives from violence. At this point in time humans are probably the least violent we've ever been. Pinker has made this case very well.
This is not necessarily because our personal capacity for violence has diminished, but because we have created social structures that regulate and moderate it on our collective behalf.
Meanwhile, in the real world nobody lives up to your categorical imperatives, St RedLogix. Not even the people you list.
I agree, minimum force should be used. I worked under that rule for 20 years, always knowing any instance could be put to a test of reasonableness in court. But "never"? You're setting absurdly high goals for any movement, there, let alone one you seem to oppose.
And in my view the principle of non-violence must take precedence. There is no more excuse for individuals resorting to violence for a political purpose than there is for domestic violence.
It's the same logic, just taken to the next wider social level.
A view not shared even by more than half the folks you name-dropped to support it.
Yet manifestly they're all celebrated precisely for the success of their non-violent approach.
It's a very odd thing that you should now be consigning them to the same dustbin history along with all the assorted thugs, warlords and failed revolutionaries who only ever reached for violent means to prosecute their cause.
If that's your genuine take-away from the discussion, all I can do is be thankful that you have enough awareness remaining to doubt the reasonableness of your beliefs.
Now I'll have to generate a post on revolutions.
You may want to consider that what we think permissible, changes with time. My view is that the boundaries on violence are being gradually extended from virtually no limits at all – toward ideally a total prohibition in any form.
Which direction do you want to take?
RL, your view seems not to correspond with reality. The difference between those engaged in violence in support of a fascist coup and others fighting oppression seems quite clear to other commenters. For one thing; the oppressors expect to get away with their crimes, whereas the oppressed expect to be harshly punished, but do it anyway.
This is the best I have seen it stated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz7KLSOJaTE
The difference between those engaged in violence in support of a fascist coup and others fighting oppression seems quite clear to other commenters.
It's a remarkable conceit to imagine that you're always on the side of the angels and the other guys are always the oppressors.
It's the idea that the left can never do any wrong that doesn't correlate with reality.
You think that only "the mob" wants justice in the Chauvin case?
Everyone would want to see the correct legal outcome that most people considered just; but it would be a mob that went on a rampage afterward if they didn't like it.
… political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
Democratic politicians are outspoken supporters of the most extreme violence by insurrectionary mobs in Venezuela and by Israeli snipers against unarmed protestors in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
Where on earth do you get the idea that Democrats oppose violence?
I am not that familiar with twitter, but this Disclose.tv thread looks a bit dodgy there Poisson.
Hopefully, in the next few days, we will see some details about those eight arrested. I wouldn't be quite so quick to ascribe the actions to "Antifa", though I guess ICE is arguably fascist enough for people to be anti it. But Anarchist is not the same as Antifa, despite sounding similar, and sometimes sharing similar objectives. The J20 protests the previous 4 years have certainly seemed a bit larger, but also featured flag burning. From 2017:
https://katu.com/news/local/portland-protests-large-crowd-begins-to-gather-at-pioneer-courthouse-square
But it's not entirely clear if the group is the same as those of previous years with McKelvey, then leader of "Portland's Resistance" seeming to have moved to Atlanta in mid-2018. And there are no repeated names in the lists of arrested between the two years (can't be bothered hunting up 2016,18&19 details – have enough tabs open as it is). Also not the only protest in Portland that day:
https://katu.com/news/local/protesters-at-j20-demonstration-march-through-southeast-portland
https://katu.com/news/local/portland-organizer-gregory-mckelvey-accepts-job-in-atlanta-living-room
but this Disclose.tv thread looks a bit dodgy
Who knows? I mean look at this dodgy old codger in Mittens.
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1352047055754166274
The Global Disinformation Index seems to think that they know. Naming Disclose.tv as one of the top 10 biggest profiteers from publishing election disinformation in November 2020.
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1352394019352027136?s=20
https://disinformationindex.org/about/
BTW Demonstrating that they are willing to photoshop Sanders for the lols doesn’t really help your case does it Poisson?
https://twitter.com/erocdrahs/status/1352323716143853570
Hopefully, in the next few days, we will see some details about those eight arrested.
Stop spreading disinformation,the link was to Seattle NOT Portland,it is also in the mainstream media
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/protesters-march-through-downtown-seattle-arrests-made-for-property-damage/
I hope you will do better in this years NCEA comprehension exams.
Poisson, yeah – I should have been more specific about my search terms; "Antifa protest", was clearly insufficient, but quicker to type. The Seattle protest looks more minor, so only two arrests there.
I would apologize for derailing your thread, but seeing as you were doing that to Andre yourself, won't.
No police in sight so they're probably snofwake trumpkins.
Grainne Moss has just stepped down as boss of Oranga Tamariki.
Sir Wira Gardiner is the new Acting.
All fine to get the scalp of a senior public servant if that's the game you hunt.
But now the Maori leadership who hunted her will be owning the results.
Pretty much. When the government got serious about child abuse and changed the law to allow uplift where the threat was clear Maori activists and leaders couldn't see past their reflexive sense of grievance.
Maori leadership has chosen not to see James Whakaruru as the victim of child abuse with painful questions about Maori culpability, preferring to focus on the easy portrayal of the likes of Te Rangi Whakaruru and Benny Haerewa as victims of colonisation. As you say, now they will get their chance to own the results.
It is highly probable that all roles will be reversed….hopefully not to the detriment of those the organisation is expected to protect.
The report on this from last year is pretty hard work:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/01/increasing-numbers-of-m-ori-babies-being-removed-from-families-despite-falling-rates-of-abuse-report.html
The 2020 report found that moving Maori babies into state care happens earlier than it does for non-Māori – with the decision increasingly being made before the child is even born.
"There were eight times more concerns reported for unborn Māori babies in 2019, as compared with 2004. In that same time, reported concerns for non-Māori increased only 4.5 times.
In 2010 there were 36 approvals for unborn Māori children to be removed from their families at birth – by 2017 that had risen to 93, despite findings of actual abuse decreasing over that same period.
In 2019, 0.67 percent of pēpi aged three months or under were taken into state care, but only 0.13 percent of non-Māori.
Urgent decisions to remove pepi doubled over the last decade, but stayed the same for non-Māori."
Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft had words to say about that.
"And 48 percent of pregnant women whose pēpi were taken into state care before birth had been in state care themselves at some point."
"From 2014 to 2017, the removal of Māori babies ordered into state custody before birth almost doubled."
Yes , the stats are difficult reading but that wasnt my point (and it may be premature in any case, the organisation is still state led)….I was suggesting that rather than Maori highlighting the failings of the state organisation, it is likely that the state (and certainly others) will highlight any failings of a Maori led response….and my concern is the objective is lost.
Though as already noted it would be difficult to do any worse than the existing structure
Even though it is a low bar, surely things can only improve with new management. Less of the corporate/'market' driven focus.
email to RNZ…
Professor Stephen Hoadley starts his talk about the state of democracy in the USA by stating that Venezuela is a third world county and implying that it's democracy and thereby it's elections are and where undemocratic.
Jesse I would have thought that you would have enough knowledge around world politics to push back on this false narrative Mr. Hoadley openly used, which is widely known as fake news.
Ecumenical observers declare Venezuela’s elections transparent and efficient
https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/ecumenical-observers-declare-venezuelas-elections-transparent-and-efficient/
Venezuela's Maduro invites UN, EU observers to December elections
https://www.france24.com/en/20200903-venezuela-s-maduro-invites-un-eu-observers-to-december-elections
International Observers Back up Venezuela's Elections Results
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/International-Observers-Back-up-Venezuelas-Elections-Results–20201208-0006.html
Please read a correction on this matter to correct the record for RNZ listeners.
Best
Adrian
Hawkes Bay
If true (which I doubt) it says a lot about the IQ of the average voter in Venezuela, ie the ones that are left with half the county voting with their feet vs a fraudulent ballot box
What evidence do you have that it was fraudulent, Red? You sound like Trump.
The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog) The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy plus the millions who have left Venezuela just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
"The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog)"you are quite right, the BBC are Liberal free market attack dogs, so have a common enemy in Venezuela.
The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog)
???!!?? You are obviously unfamiliar with their role of megaphone for the right wing British regime—most shamefully in the persecution of the dissenting journalist Julian Assange. The BBC's short-lived democratic deviation in 2003, when Andrew Gilligan went rogue and actually told the truth about Blair and Campbell's manipulation of documents leading up to the destruction of Iraq, was soon ended.
The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy
The Trump regime, that is.
plus the millions who have left Venezuela
They left a country under brutal, and illegal, sanctions. That shows what suffering has been inflicted on the country by the United States, the U.K., and Colombia; it does not imply they are opponents of their elected government.
just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
???? You have no evidence to back up your claim, other than the word of the Trump regime.
Well written, Adrian. Steve Hoadley is an extremely unsavoury commentator, not a lot different from the likes of Michael Bassett and Waikato's notorious Dov Bing. During the November 2012 escalation in Israeli terror against the citizens of Gaza, named with brutal sarcasm "Operation Pillar of Defense", Hoadley went onto Radio Rhema and expressed his support not for the victims, but the killers.
I fear that you're wasting your time trying to reason with Jesse Mulligan; he's one of the more susceptible and easily bamboozled broadcasters. He was, and presumably still is, a true believer in the Russiagate nonsense, as we can see in this 2016 interview with another dodgy academic, Al Gillespie….
[This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content. To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts, which is no better than those puerile images that you’re so fond of. Lastly, it is about something utterly trivial that happened years ago.
Cut out the crap and stop the ad homs for the sake of it. Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet. This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito]
Yes listening to Mulligan (which I only do very rarely these days) is like listening to a slightly sophisticated teenage radio show…along with most of his music choices, morning report has pretty much sunk to that same level now as well. It seems like serious unbiased news is well and truly a thing of the past on RNZ now (with the rare exception of course)…lucky we still RNZ concert.
See my Moderation note @ 3:29 PM.
This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content.
Adrian Thornton made the comment about Prof. Hoadley's unfounded and politically incendiary claims about Venezuela—Adrian called them a "false narrative"—and he also expressed his disappointment at the quality, or lack of quality, in Jesse Mulligan's performance. I simply reinforced Adrian's points by providing evidence of even worse performances in the past by Hoadley and Mulligan. Both of the examples I provided were accurate; they were neither ad hominem nor snide.
To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts
I provided 14 lines of a larger transcript to illustrate my point about Mulligan's credulous and ill informed comments. It is indeed realistic, and any lack of gravity is entirely due to the two people involved in that awful conversation.
Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet.
I kept my comment rigorously to the point. It amplified the comment made by another poster. How was it not relevant?
This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito
You are wielding your hammer again, and threatening me, for what? My comment was directly relevant to the points made by another poster, I made nothing up, I used no foul language.
A 'third world' country that sends oxygen to it's extremely rich neighbour. Simply because people need it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/healthcoronavirus-brazil-venezuela/venezuela-to-send-oxygen-to-brazil-for-covid-19-treatment-idUSL1N2JQ0T4
The poor suffering Venezuelans are more concerned with more basic commodores like dependable utilities and food A shortage of Oxygen is the least of their worries A bit of virtue signalling by Maduro and his henchmen that’s all this is ie a puff piece
'shortage of Oxygen is the least of their worries'
I think your knowledge of Venezuela is minimal, and that your bigotry drives you to simply makes things up to support what you opine.
' poor suffering Venezuelans '
As if you really cared a jot about Venezuelans.
I found this an interesting viewpoint from an USAn who is usually not too political (except where being trans in Trump's Amerika is involved – so yeah; quite political now I think of it). It's unscripted, and the second half is mostly about Star Trek; because that's a lens through which she finds the world makes sense (the; Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, slogan certainly gets many repetitions). This quote starts at 5:39 and seems worth transcribing before the progression of the algorithm eclipses it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTqMGg7WYjk
Which got me thinking about some people who went from the (not too far) left to acolytes of conspiracy theories this year. Faith always seems to trump evidence (pun not intentional, but not removed either). Extremism's counter is not contrary extremism but centrism? Unfortunately the Earth's biosphere may not have time for a return to the status quo.
@McFlock
Wasn't Yeltsin putting down a coup, not fomenting one?
It's an interesting question isn't it. Before that incident, Gorbachov was in charge, but afterwards, it was Yeltsin. So realpolitik analysts consider that the real coup was Yeltsin's
lol I suspect it was more that the coup destroyed the Soviet Union, but left Russia intact. But fair call, he did walk out on top.
And so did the KGB. Nice thing about being the greasy eminince is that you can switch favourites when things look bad, I guess 🙂
Yep, just another case of good ol' fashioned US election meddling…(1996 election)
Overriding Democracy: American Intervention in Yeltsin’s 1996 Reelection Campaign
https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/uahistjrnl/article/id/622/
US agents helped Yeltsin break coup
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/us-agents-helped-yeltsin-break-coup-1436470.html
lol
k whatevs.
lol
Funnily enough, it's not that I actually doubt either claim, the link of his that was relevant to my comment seems reasonable. I just can't be bothered getting into a debate about whether it was right or wrong to [checks notes] assist in some small way to stop communist hardliners gaining power through military force.
The other link was quite sweet – I was almost tempted to be the fourth person to download the article just to see if what Adrian thought it said was actually what it said. But if I can't be bothered to debate a link that was relevant to what I'd said, I'm not going to go off on a tangent.
I'm working on just letting more bullshit go these days.
A good exercise in not getting drawn into pointless time wasting adventures.
Sometimes it's just easier to laugh, especially when it involves the usual half dozen russian defence squad.
Surely you know Mcflocks's 'lol' was not brought on by his finding anything humourous but as attempt to ridicule the author of the comment he was replying to. I doubt he was laughing.
What I found slightly amusing was his need to further explain himself because he thought your 'lol' was similarly meant for him, and you further having to assure him that you weren't seeking to ridicule him.
Dare I suggest a room?
If you really want to interpret my motives for commenting, try considering whether I am more inclined to interact with Al1en rather than Adrian.
Open Mike is a handy enough "room", thanks.
This isn't a text chat room for teenagers you two, at least try to speak like grown ups.
ok boomer.
And using the reply button. You pesky kid lol
This documentary has never been more relevant than it is today, and in the context of the last 30 years it's no wonder that Chomsky is still clinging to 'hope' for political change in the USA. The media's complicity in the political process has never been stronger. It used to be called propaganda but it's also called 'Manufactured Consent'
Produced in 1992, it runs for 2hr 47min and considers the propaganda model of communication and the politics of the mass-communications business, with emphasis on Chomsky's ideas and career. He's a brilliant communicator, and this alone makes watching and following this documentary quite easy despite it's length.
In the context of some of the discussion above quoting media sources, this is a must watch.
Perhaps it will be shown on the Maori Channel sometime, it's virtually the only NZ TV station to run intelligent and thought provoking programs that challenge the status quo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuwmWnphqII