So, the Swedish government has just collapsed, and with it come the very high prospect of fresh elections.
This probably needs is own post, but when Sweden does get fresh elections, we are very likely to see the social democratic party take a hiding.
Sweden was one of the pioneers of a very socialised state with heavy taxes and a very strong social network of services from cradle to the grave (for those old enough to remember the 1970s, ABBA paid between 56 and 85% tax to the Swedish government on their huge earnings).
I've been pointing out for a while now that New Zealand is very much a global outlier as a social democratic government – even in our mild form.
Across Europe the social democratic cause has collapsed in Austria, Germany, increasingly Britain, and now it's just had a pretty big reversal in Sweden.
Of those that remain other than New Zealand, Denmark, Finland and Spain are still going OK. Denmark's version got back with a strong anti-immigration theme which has continued. The social democratic movement has declined at the same time as the welfare state has been challenged by mass immigration.
We might have expected after the revival of state interventionism across the world last year that there would be fresh purpose to parties that saw the good in the strongly redistributive state. Maybe that's still to come.
Meantime, even the Scandinavian model has taken yet another hit.
Other than the outliers, the social democratic effort is now at its lowest point.
Some of the reasons for the political discontent are not discussed, not accepted and politically incorrect. But people will and do react.
All the mentioned countries had an influx, and still have of large numbers of refugees and additionally of economic immigrants on the coat tail of the refugees who are getting state support in form of housing, cash and vouchers, special grants etc. Often higher than any beneficiary in the very same country.
This has basically drained the countries dry of funds for those who have paid into the scheme – the citizen and taxpayers of the respective country. One needs to remember that the tax is divided into Social welfare components, be it health, unemployment or retirement and other. Hence the astronomical "tax take". In other words taxpayers contribute from their wages to their cost in form of taxation rather then privatised insurance individually. In contrast NZ has a general taxation system and I think only ACC and Kiwi saver are the exceptions. ACC is compulsory but Kiwi saver is not.
The Social Democratic systems across Europe are very similar in terms of taxation. Under above circumstance, there are experiences where one own family's welfare is curtailed i.e. elderly have not enough to survive, and being ask to contribute more. This will spell disaster. This is the reason why Europe is moving to conservative politics or even further right. Some seriously consider similar regimes like Erdogan has established. When the own citizenry is being made to suffer the call is always for a strong politicians. This is dangerous and should not be underestimated.
Lets watch this to learn from a highly social minded people what an assumption that nothing ever has consequences and everybody is a philanthropist can do.
If unwanted and untrammeled immigration were the primary cause for the decline of such social democratic movements, rather than a late contributing factor, we would have seen a whole bunch more political instability than we've had.
Rather what it tells me is that some states were far more brittle than they appeared from the outside, and substantially made brittle both institutionally and in their voters because the GFC and the EU austerity responses had made their societies so weak.
Immigration is part of the answer in Scandinavia – it has seriously disrupted a previously homogenous society. But that doesn't work in Australia, New Zealand or Singapore, where they have had controlled waves of immigration that have not really tested the strength of the welfare state to deliver.
There's a fair few reasons for the collapse of social democrat movements.
Ad – Australia, New Zealand and Singapore never had to support fully from the word go millions of refugees, EU 1400 per person per month = NZ $ 2800 per person per month plus child care, plus accommodation – meaning actual housing not hotels, healthcare etc. There are actual cases where the taxpayer is getting not enough to live on despite having paid into the social fund for 45 years. All the rhetoric of we care etc. goes out the window. Its human nature and applies to everybody, no exceptions. The Brussels Brigade is demanding more and more to the detriment of sovereign countries in the misled belief that EU can function like the USA. In a nutshell, the people of EU have had enough and even the most placid starting to get not just stroppy but outright agro. Believe me, my family lives there.
Absolutely, that's why the danish social Democratic party was anti immigration and anti refugee… and it won …working class people in Europe don't like what's happened since the migrant crisis. They just don't. I'm not saying it's right or wrong I find it fascinating that it's clearly an issue for working class voters and most modern social Democratic parties just ignore it. Nz labour could hardly be called a massively pro immigration party heading into 2017 either.
In fact if you'll recall the nz labour party was highly criticized locally and overseas for wanting to lower immigration and foreign ownership, they even had a list of Chinese sounding names!! these policies may not have registered with the pollsters but they certainly did at the local pubs, and I've always found working class pubs to be far more insync with the public mood than academics, ideologues and media.
Germanys social Democratic party is dead not just because it supported the Tory govt but also cos it supported the huge amounts of migrants, Uk labour is associated with a whole list of things but one thing people don't like to talk about is working class Brits associate it's last term of govt with mass immigration and freedom of movement.
Same with the us democrats. Open borders sanctuary cities etc etc etc
If you asked most working class kiwis they'd not only like to stop all immigration for a couple years but they'd like to stop kiwis from coming home.
It's weird the modern left worships MJS and the first three labour governments but never likes to talk about those governments extremely racist immigration policies which were all about protecting local labour markers …. this was left wing policy which is why Winston peters appeals to a lot of socially conservative labour voters
People are stressing out about their housing situations, their kids housing situations and if there is a massive collapse in the nz housing market or economy nz is absolutely bripe for a populist anti immigration party ( I hope it never happens, I'm an internationalist, not a globalist I like multiculturalism)
Social democratic parties have mostly not ever been able to come to grips with the effects that globalism of capital and labour have had on their domestic working class and it's crippled their parties, NZ labour particularly if you look at the fourth and fifth labour govts is incredibly lucky to have survived and not gone the way of the Greek, icelandic or Netherlands labour parties.
Nz hasn't, yet, had the kinds of refugee crisis that Europe had (we will when climate change really hits) Europe had ten million refugees in a couple years, a couple years after the gfc, they have more terrorist incidents than you can shake a stick at and have genuine hard right populists who are able to seriously manipulate the working class into thinking this is the fault of the left not right wing wars and economics and with the neoliberal eu wanting more and more sovereignty…. It might actually play well for parties like UK labour to fully become eurosceptic parties…
Maybe not…
One does have to wonder what would have happened had labour been a pro brexit party after the referendum and accepted the results but promised a better deal not a referendum on a deal.
Good points Foreign Waka. And going further – why are there so many refugees – wars being declared by resource-hungry big powers often, usually? The strong countries driven by their elites are willing to crucify the people in foreign and their own countries. The neolib economic system was meant to open up the world to predator interests. We see the results.
Going into space. The wet dream of men with too much in their hands, money, opportunity, single-minded drive, competition with peers, and the admiration of the gullible. And tech robotics, and profit driven use of them, also again men's love of complex machinery, novelty.
And in the future, more areas being led to famine as is the case apparently right now in Tigray, Ethiopia. Gwyn Dyer did one of his informative columns on them. It has happened before, but that is not enough for the callous blood lust of some Ethiopians.
Women in future, as the understanding of what a woman is, and more homosexuals choose not to cross-gender, and the state and men find having babies and looking after them just a burden to them and the planet, I foresee that women will become a sub-group. Certainly rights only obtained after much effort are being wiped, and mothers are to be manipulated.
In China, it was a one child policy and girls were not part of the mainstay of the social fabric, so were unwelcome.
In Peru – Keiko Fujimori’s supporters have also been urging her to resume the forced sterilisation of the rural poor that was initiated by her father Alberto, during the 1990s. The official health figures in Peru show that 270,000 women and 22,000 men were sterilised
In USA – It's different. Women, individually want the right of choice about abortion and sterilisation, not have fertility enforced on them, but; the US Catholic Bishops Conference passed a remit a few days ago calling for the drawing up of a statement on the Eucharist intended to eventually deny Biden access to Communion, because of his support for abortion rights.,,
If the only government one can form is to sit on the fence between the left and the right, sooner or later they'll try to pull you apart like a wishbone.
Chris Penk in the news twice in one week. Once with his remark about wanting to be leader one day. Made on Newshub Nation. And today using the f word in tweet about Winston.
In a political sense Penk shows he's is an out of touch jerk. It's all right to be a smart arse out the back with the boys and girls over a beer but if he's that stupid as to not realise the naivety of his tweet he's in the wrong business.
Well, maybe the right business if National wants to stay where it is in the public's eyes.
(Any chance David Seymour will pop up his head and criticise the evident "cancel culture"?)
Peters didn't traverse the party's review into what went wrong last year in his speech, but said there was a growing sentiment among the public that the Government needed NZ First.
"We were pilloried for being the handbrake, but since the last election hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are coming to understand why we were essential and now why we are missed."
Canadian Politician Derek Sloan and 3 medical professionals-who say they represent hundreds of their colleagues -said last week in a press conference the Canadian Government is suppressing information about the harmful effects of lockdown, vaccine risks in children, and the efficacy of certain covid treatments.
The College of physicians and surgeons of Ontario CPSO issued a dire statement late April threatening doctors who spoke out about what they witnessed in their local hospitals and communities. "The purpose of CPSO is to protect the public" said Sloane '' ,not stifle legitimate scientific enquiry or dissent by professional Doctors" He says his office was flooded with calls from doctors, nurses, and other scientific experts who said they have been threatened and blocked from sharing their stories.
'I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it " Voltaire !!!
[Hysterical Pete, you’re now in Pre-Moderation until you can provide a comment that does not sound like it’s coming from a full-blown conspiracy nutbar and contains a decent link – Incognito]
Just in case anyone really wonders, I googled the quote, and got 5 pages of results, every single one of which comes from a well-known lying disinformation rabid anti-vax site.
Me too. Not because I'd be banning people, but with the safety of being a mod I'd be saying a lot more of what I really want to say. Which would make other mods uncomfortable.
Thanks for looking it up Andre so we can confirm our strong suspicions and keep the facts as we know them clean and understandable. It's hard to find your way through the fog of dark suspicions otherwise; and people can be so certain about them. All they need is to find one hole in something accepted and the deluge follows. We have to keep our finger on the hole in the dyke like the Dutch story!
These attacks were by and large not pursued through normal channels of scientific discussion. Her research became the target of an aggressive campaign that included insults, errors, misinformation, social media posts, behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers, and complaints to her employer. The goal appeared to be to undermine and discredit her work. The controversy was something deliberately manufactured, and the attacks primarily consisted of repeated assertions of preconceived opinions. She learned first-hand the antagonism that could be provoked by inconvenient scientific findings.
The inequities are laid out in a series of briefings, obtained by RNZ under the Official Information Act, from ACC to its Minister Carmel Sepuloni, after the corporation analysed claims data between June 2015 and July 2020.
Green Party ACC spokesperson Jan Logie, who has campaigned for successive governments to address inequalities in the scheme, said the biases were inevitable because the Accident Compensation Act, developed in the 1970s, "just hadn't kept up" with changes in society.
"It was developed at a time where mostly it was men going out to work, and doing particular types of work," she said. As a result, there was a "very strong bias" in favour of working men, she said.
"At the moment, women, Māori and Pasifika are bearing the burden of that failure."
You could say this for ALL social services as even a women earning will become a "handbag" to her partner/husband as soon as it comes to applying for all sorts of support. It almost feels like the 60's, we are launching rockets and yet women are still treated like extension of males. Moon landing rockabilly, we haven't moved at all.
An inequality not mentioned is that when a person dies from an injury and they do not have an executor the next of kin is unable to access the person's ACC file. This is distressing when the information on the injury form differs to what the surgeon wrote in the patients surgery notes.
Everyone else which I have contacted with the authorisation from the next of kin has given me the dead person's file.
ACC told me that even if I gave them the surgeons notes that ACC could be taken to court were they to give me the file as the person's privacy would be breached. The Privacy Commissioner's Office told me that they do not advocate for a dead man.
My response was a dead man has no rights and ACC cannot make a correct decision when the true extent of the injury was not stated on the injury form.
Totally reasonable arguments raised by a part-time landlording corporate lawyer with a preference for biking downhill fuelled by discounted Martinborough pinot noir and erecting election hoardings. I hope that encourages Standardistas to read bwaghorn's worthy recommendation (hint- you need to get past the opening paragraphs' rather well-disguised 'chinaman').
What, an another unsavoury National MP? Chris Penk joining the ranks now. Do they train them at an unfit for public office school? Always plenty of candidates.
To maintain the atmosphere of superiority and high pricing I remember that a NZ company I think Lands for Bags destroyed new bags at the end of a season. Putting them out at sale prices would detract from their desirability and allure. That attitude makes sense when dealing with the high-end of society and fashion. The price put on bags with top-end designers names is pure BS on sale to air-heads.
My scavenging, bin diver extraordinaire mate routinely drags all manner of small appliances home, we're talking dozens here, and in an attempt to rewire them, tasks me to find tools to deal with the proprietary fasteners used. I only manage to find the occasional screw bit so most end up back where they came from, the bin.
Are they genuinely brand-new, or maybe warranty returns that didn't work when the customer first plugged it in?
I've yet to need to get into something and haven't been able to using just a fairly basic set of security screw driver bits. I'd be awfully curious which brands feel the need to make it harder than that to get in.
Unsold brand spankers from big box outlets. And the jaycar is one of several kits and yet he's still routinely defeated by slightly mis-matched drives designed to strip/single use destruction and odd-ball centre pin security fasteners.
defeated by slightly mis-matched drives designed to strip/single use destruction and odd-ball centre pin security fasteners.
Yeah I know what you mean!
Mind you this is no modern idiosyncrasy. I had a '29 model A Ford way back. One saturday driving back home over the wainui hill she started running on 3 cylinders. So Back home. Just before Uni final exams. Had to take the head off to see what was wrong. One collapsed 3rd piston! Not a bit – left all in the sump! Thank goodness for splash lubrication. So then the task was to remove the con rod and find a replacement piston. Henry Ford wasn't having any after parts shinnanigans going on and all the bolts nuts and threads were weird sizing – especially the threads which were very fine. So fine that the nuts was now welded onto the con rod bolts. After wrecking two of my dads special sockets I asked a friend who was an AA mechanic – "How do you get those nuts off?" "With a chisel!"
we also hope that even though this platform no longer will be around, that hong kong journalists will continue to hold ground, and pursue the truth. last but not least, thanks to the anchors, editors, and other colleagues behind the scene …
for accepting a mission impossible, a mission in response to today's society. thanks again to all of you for your support. to the people of hong kong, stay strong. may we meet down the road. bye bye."
Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper and website could shut down this weekend if authorities do not agree to the board’s request to unfreeze its assets, after the arrest of its senior editors and executives last week.
According to various local reports on Monday afternoon, an internal memo said Next Digital, Apple Daily’s parent company, would seek restored access to its accounts so it can pay staff, but that if this did not happen by Friday it would make a decision to stop publication of the pro-democracy title.
The potential end of the 26-year-old paper comes after a police operation in which officers raided the homes of five executives, including Apple Daily’s editor-in-chief, Ryan Law, and arrested them under the national security law, before raiding the newsroom with an unprecedented warrant allowing the seizure of journalistic materials.
"The department for safeguarding the national security of the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) arrested the editor-in-chief and four directors on suspicion of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.
This was the second time Apply Daily, founded and owned by Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who bears multiple charges including conspiracy to collude with foreign countries or forces to endanger national security, has been raided since the national security law for Hong Kong came into force on June 30, 2020.
Senior Superintendent of Hong Kong police Steve Li Kwai-wah told reporters after the arrests that strong evidence showed that dozens of questionable articles published by Apple Daily since 2019 played a very crucial part in the conspiracy which provided the ammunition for foreign countries and institutions or organizations to impose sanctions on China and the Hong Kong region.
Police raided the offices of Apple Daily following a search warrant, in accordance with Article 43 of the national security law for Hong Kong, which stipulates that when handling cases concerning offence endangering national security, the department for safeguarding national security of the Hong Kong police may take measures such as a search of premises, vehicles, vessels, aircraft and other relevant places and electronic devices that may contain evidence of an offense. "
Myanmar: on the brink of collapse
The strangling of the press On World Press Freedom Day, on 3 May, 50 journalists were detained in Myanmar while dozens more journalists were evading arrest warrants, according to the non-profit organisation Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Journalists are predominantly charged under section 505(a) of the penal code, which criminalises the spread of information that could cause disobedience within the police or armed forces and is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Courage and terror in Myanmar Lives and livelihoods have been laid down for democracy. The economy is on the brink of collapse. The world must support the people’s quest to end military rule once and for all, writes Preeti Jha.
This would reduce competition wouldn't it? If we can't have one SOE? operating our small nation's electricity, which would be the practical way to go – with some way of monitoring for price and effectiveness – then it is likely to be worse if there are just a few players, I would think?
Could someone who knows about such things give a valid opinion? Has Mercury got a good record?
On situation in HK.
Put it down to the American and western covert actions, trying to pierce the soft underbelly of China. It was never going to work, unless this is what the west wanted, trying to increase revolt by the people of HK, who in the most part did not support the bullshit umbrella actions of the hegemonic US.
They cause the reactions by the interfered Countries all over the World. America is only truly free to the elite classes, so fuck your crocodile tears.
I guess he was looking at this one right in front of him that he could put a link to. Is that a reasonable answer to your rather pointed question? One does want to approach matters in an equality-based not biased, way.
What does it have to do with the colour of her skin? If she was white, yellow or green I still think the sentence should be harsher. My comment was regarding the judge who seems to be afraid to actually hand down a sentence that may actually deter her as she is obviously a repeat offender and needs to be stopped. She didn't learn from 2012 so needs a harsher sentence.
I think the judge in this case should also start issuing appropriate sentences (and this repeat offender is white).
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
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There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
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I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
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Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Photo by Jari Hytönen on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Williams Veazey, ARC DECRA Research Fellow, University of Sydney DavideAngelini/Shutterstock In the 2007 film The Bucket List Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two main characters who respond to their terminal cancer diagnoses by rejecting experimental treatment. Instead, they go ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohan Singh, Professor of Agri-Food Biotechnology, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Melbourne., The University of Melbourne Tanja Esser/Shutterstock Australia’s vital agriculture sector will be hit hard by steadily rising global temperatures. Our climate is already ...
The Acumen Edelman Trust barometer reported that New Zealand’s political trust score now sits below the global average, a topic explored in a recent discussion paper by Maxim Institute. ...
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman says, "The Fast-Track Bill is the most damaging piece of environmental legislation any Government has introduced in living memory. People are angry, and it’s time to march." ...
The school lunches programme has been retained – and will be extended to some preschoolers. So how is it going to cost $107 million less? To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. The minister with many hats David Seymour wears a number of hats, but this week ...
“Show us the bird,” I found myself muttering at times while reading Hard by the Cloud House by Peter Walker, a deeply thoughtful, often hilarious, at times rambling – but somehow delightfully so – search for the story of a big bird. But not just any bird: the bird. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, UK edition DPVUE .images/Shutterstock Your home was probably designed for a climate that no longer exists. As long as humanity continues to burn fossil fuel, padding the heat-trapping blanket of gases in Earth’s atmosphere, the ...
A senior lawyer has filed a complaint about tikanga becoming a required law school module. Law lecturer Carwyn Jones explains what he’s getting wrong. “…the first law of Aotearoa, a law that served the needs of tangata whenua for a thousand years before the arrival of tauiwi.”– Ani Mikaere ...
In 2019, an Auckland woman woke up from surgery to find that she had undergone a treatment she didn’t consent to. She tells Alex Casey about her experience. From her very first period at the age of 14, Laura experienced “debilitating” levels of pain that forced her to withdraw from ...
In the gloom following director-general Al Morrison’s job cuts in 2013, the Department of Conservation restructured its operations arm. Eleven conservancy districts were whittled into six new “conservation delivery” regions, under which the Rēkohu/Wharekauri/Chatham Islands area, comprising 40 scattered islands more than 800km east of Christchurch, was tethered to the ...
One of th e country’s top litigation lawyers says New Zealand is seeing a lift in court action between companies. Chapman Tripp partner Justin Graham, who oversees a team of around 80 litigation specialists, says the courts are now so log-jammed that it’s taking over two years to get cases ...
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Comment: Concerns about the state of the economy are creeping up to the top of firms’ list of challenges. That’s evident in both surveys and the tone of our recent client discussions. Skimming the past few weeks of eco-news, it’s not hard to see why. – Retail card spending fell ...
Opinion: Could former co-leader James Shaw still make a difference to working with National? The post How the Greens could be contenders appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: What if we got rid of our existing drug laws and replaced them with a new law that legalised and carefully regulated all psychoactive substances, from cannabis to MDMA, methamphetamine and LSD to magic mushrooms? And which also included legal drugs such as alcohol and nicotine. “Wow,” you might ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government is talking up the crucial role of gas as a transition fuel “through to 2050 and beyond”. In a gas strategy to be released on Thursday, the government envisages the fuel’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Next week the government will again next try to get its legislation through to deal with non-citizens who won’t cooperate with efforts to deport them. The bill, which the opposition and crossbench refused to rush ...
A long-term project that will set out an alternative vision for Aotearoa that looks beyond the narrow confines of the policy straight jacket adopted by successive governments. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bree Hurst, Associate Professor, Faculty of Business and Law, QUT, Queensland University of Technology TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock A much-awaited report into Coles and Woolworths has found what many customers have long believed – Australia’s big supermarkets engage in price gouging. What started ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney The Albanese government wanted to avoid an inquiry into its migration amendment bill. The report, handed down yesterday by a senate committee that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne Lobbying is at the heart of government. Who has access to and influence over key government officials shapes the decisions governments make – and how they make them. The ability to influence ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Myfany Turpin, Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, Linguistics and Ethnobiology, University of Sydney The act representing Australia at this year’s Eurovision contest has sadly not qualified for the grand final. Yet for Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross, the duo that makes up Electric Fields, ...
In announcing changes to the school lunches programme, David Seymour said kids would no longer be served ‘woke’ foods. To clear up any confusion, The Spinoff has compiled a guide to the wokeness levels of some common food items. Apple = NOT WOKE Avocado = WOKE Avocado, smashed = EVEN ...
The Minister Responsible for GCSB and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security have been notified of this review, and have been provided a finalised Terms of Reference. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Minglu Chen, Senior Lecturer, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney Robert Way/Shutterstock As the past few years have illustrated so clearly, the Australia-China relationship is complicated. As such, it is crucial for Australians to develop a more nuanced understanding of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mariana Campbell, Research Lecturer, Conservation, Charles Darwin University Marilyn Connell Australian freshwater turtles are facing an alarming trend. Almost half of these species are listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus) is one of Australia’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debbie Passey, Digital Health Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne Algorithms have become integral to our lives. From social media apps to Netflix, algorithms learn your preferences and prioritise the content you are shown. Google Maps and artificial intelligence are nothing without ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josephine Barbaro, Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, Psychologist, La Trobe University Unsplash We’ve come a long way in terms of understanding that everyone thinks, interacts and experiences the world differently. In the past, autistic people, people with attention deficit hyperactive disorder ...
PNG Post-Courier Papua New Guinea’s deputy opposition leader James Nomane has accused the government of “reckless economic management” that has forced devaluation to manage loan repayments in foreign currency and placate the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Prime Minister James Marape “must stop lying to the people of Papua New Guinea”, ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Bookseller Confessional, in which we get to know Aotearoa’s booksellers. This week: Jane Arthur, author of Brown Bird, and former bookseller at Good Books.The book I wish I’d writtenI have been working on not comparing myself to others. On accepting that what I can ...
The final decision on the Wellington District Plan makes it official: High-density housing is legal across most of Wellington. Housing minister Chris Bishop has announced his decision on the Wellington District Plan, approving a series of amendments to radically upzone most of Wellington, allowing tens of thousands of new townhouses ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to ...
RNZ News As Israel presses ahead with strikes in Rafah and seizing the Rafah crossing from Egypt, aid agencies are sounding the alarm of a “catastrophic humanitarian situation”. Rafah was “significant” because it was the only part in Gaza that had not been terribly damaged by the conflict, United Nations ...
With funding set to be scrapped for the Hamilton-Auckland commuter train, Te Huia enthusiast Georgie Dansey argues for it to be thrown a lifeline. It’s 5.45am and the chain of my crappy old bike falls off slugging up the one hill in Hamilton. I contemplate yeeting the bike into the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Cooke, Honorary Fellow, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland We feel ecological grief when we lose places, species or ecosystems we value and love. These losses are a growing threat to mental health and wellbeing globally. We all see ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shauna Brail, Associate Professor, Institute for Management & Innovation, University of Toronto A shift to hybrid and remote work continues to affect worker presence in Toronto’s downtown.(Shutterstock) Downtown Toronto, the core of Canada’s largest city, continues to reel from the lingering ...
Responding to an Auditor-General's report slamming failures in the administration of the 2023 General Election, Taxpayers’ Union Policy and Public Affairs Manager, James Ross, said: ...
Productivity apps now make up a big chunk of the software market. But do they work? And why do they all have AI integrations?Despite being firmly on the record as a physical planner fan, I sometimes dream of something better than my pretty diary and its scrawled, ugly, interior ...
The Taxpayers’ Union says the Beehive need to lead by example, following reports of more than $50,000 spent upgrading video conferencing equipment and furniture in the Prime Minister’s office. Taxpayers’ Union Campaign Manager, Connor Molloy, ...
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So, the Swedish government has just collapsed, and with it come the very high prospect of fresh elections.
This probably needs is own post, but when Sweden does get fresh elections, we are very likely to see the social democratic party take a hiding.
Sweden was one of the pioneers of a very socialised state with heavy taxes and a very strong social network of services from cradle to the grave (for those old enough to remember the 1970s, ABBA paid between 56 and 85% tax to the Swedish government on their huge earnings).
I've been pointing out for a while now that New Zealand is very much a global outlier as a social democratic government – even in our mild form.
Across Europe the social democratic cause has collapsed in Austria, Germany, increasingly Britain, and now it's just had a pretty big reversal in Sweden.
Of those that remain other than New Zealand, Denmark, Finland and Spain are still going OK. Denmark's version got back with a strong anti-immigration theme which has continued. The social democratic movement has declined at the same time as the welfare state has been challenged by mass immigration.
We might have expected after the revival of state interventionism across the world last year that there would be fresh purpose to parties that saw the good in the strongly redistributive state. Maybe that's still to come.
Meantime, even the Scandinavian model has taken yet another hit.
Other than the outliers, the social democratic effort is now at its lowest point.
Some of the reasons for the political discontent are not discussed, not accepted and politically incorrect. But people will and do react.
All the mentioned countries had an influx, and still have of large numbers of refugees and additionally of economic immigrants on the coat tail of the refugees who are getting state support in form of housing, cash and vouchers, special grants etc. Often higher than any beneficiary in the very same country.
This has basically drained the countries dry of funds for those who have paid into the scheme – the citizen and taxpayers of the respective country. One needs to remember that the tax is divided into Social welfare components, be it health, unemployment or retirement and other. Hence the astronomical "tax take". In other words taxpayers contribute from their wages to their cost in form of taxation rather then privatised insurance individually. In contrast NZ has a general taxation system and I think only ACC and Kiwi saver are the exceptions. ACC is compulsory but Kiwi saver is not.
The Social Democratic systems across Europe are very similar in terms of taxation. Under above circumstance, there are experiences where one own family's welfare is curtailed i.e. elderly have not enough to survive, and being ask to contribute more. This will spell disaster. This is the reason why Europe is moving to conservative politics or even further right. Some seriously consider similar regimes like Erdogan has established. When the own citizenry is being made to suffer the call is always for a strong politicians. This is dangerous and should not be underestimated.
Lets watch this to learn from a highly social minded people what an assumption that nothing ever has consequences and everybody is a philanthropist can do.
If unwanted and untrammeled immigration were the primary cause for the decline of such social democratic movements, rather than a late contributing factor, we would have seen a whole bunch more political instability than we've had.
Rather what it tells me is that some states were far more brittle than they appeared from the outside, and substantially made brittle both institutionally and in their voters because the GFC and the EU austerity responses had made their societies so weak.
Immigration is part of the answer in Scandinavia – it has seriously disrupted a previously homogenous society. But that doesn't work in Australia, New Zealand or Singapore, where they have had controlled waves of immigration that have not really tested the strength of the welfare state to deliver.
There's a fair few reasons for the collapse of social democrat movements.
Ad – Australia, New Zealand and Singapore never had to support fully from the word go millions of refugees, EU 1400 per person per month = NZ $ 2800 per person per month plus child care, plus accommodation – meaning actual housing not hotels, healthcare etc. There are actual cases where the taxpayer is getting not enough to live on despite having paid into the social fund for 45 years. All the rhetoric of we care etc. goes out the window. Its human nature and applies to everybody, no exceptions. The Brussels Brigade is demanding more and more to the detriment of sovereign countries in the misled belief that EU can function like the USA. In a nutshell, the people of EU have had enough and even the most placid starting to get not just stroppy but outright agro. Believe me, my family lives there.
Absolutely, that's why the danish social Democratic party was anti immigration and anti refugee… and it won …working class people in Europe don't like what's happened since the migrant crisis. They just don't. I'm not saying it's right or wrong I find it fascinating that it's clearly an issue for working class voters and most modern social Democratic parties just ignore it. Nz labour could hardly be called a massively pro immigration party heading into 2017 either.
In fact if you'll recall the nz labour party was highly criticized locally and overseas for wanting to lower immigration and foreign ownership, they even had a list of Chinese sounding names!! these policies may not have registered with the pollsters but they certainly did at the local pubs, and I've always found working class pubs to be far more insync with the public mood than academics, ideologues and media.
Germanys social Democratic party is dead not just because it supported the Tory govt but also cos it supported the huge amounts of migrants, Uk labour is associated with a whole list of things but one thing people don't like to talk about is working class Brits associate it's last term of govt with mass immigration and freedom of movement.
Same with the us democrats. Open borders sanctuary cities etc etc etc
If you asked most working class kiwis they'd not only like to stop all immigration for a couple years but they'd like to stop kiwis from coming home.
It's weird the modern left worships MJS and the first three labour governments but never likes to talk about those governments extremely racist immigration policies which were all about protecting local labour markers …. this was left wing policy which is why Winston peters appeals to a lot of socially conservative labour voters
People are stressing out about their housing situations, their kids housing situations and if there is a massive collapse in the nz housing market or economy nz is absolutely bripe for a populist anti immigration party ( I hope it never happens, I'm an internationalist, not a globalist I like multiculturalism)
Social democratic parties have mostly not ever been able to come to grips with the effects that globalism of capital and labour have had on their domestic working class and it's crippled their parties, NZ labour particularly if you look at the fourth and fifth labour govts is incredibly lucky to have survived and not gone the way of the Greek, icelandic or Netherlands labour parties.
Nz hasn't, yet, had the kinds of refugee crisis that Europe had (we will when climate change really hits) Europe had ten million refugees in a couple years, a couple years after the gfc, they have more terrorist incidents than you can shake a stick at and have genuine hard right populists who are able to seriously manipulate the working class into thinking this is the fault of the left not right wing wars and economics and with the neoliberal eu wanting more and more sovereignty…. It might actually play well for parties like UK labour to fully become eurosceptic parties…
Maybe not…
One does have to wonder what would have happened had labour been a pro brexit party after the referendum and accepted the results but promised a better deal not a referendum on a deal.
Good points Foreign Waka. And going further – why are there so many refugees – wars being declared by resource-hungry big powers often, usually? The strong countries driven by their elites are willing to crucify the people in foreign and their own countries. The neolib economic system was meant to open up the world to predator interests. We see the results.
Going into space. The wet dream of men with too much in their hands, money, opportunity, single-minded drive, competition with peers, and the admiration of the gullible. And tech robotics, and profit driven use of them, also again men's love of complex machinery, novelty.
And in the future, more areas being led to famine as is the case apparently right now in Tigray, Ethiopia. Gwyn Dyer did one of his informative columns on them. It has happened before, but that is not enough for the callous blood lust of some Ethiopians.
Women in future, as the understanding of what a woman is, and more homosexuals choose not to cross-gender, and the state and men find having babies and looking after them just a burden to them and the planet, I foresee that women will become a sub-group. Certainly rights only obtained after much effort are being wiped, and mothers are to be manipulated.
In China, it was a one child policy and girls were not part of the mainstay of the social fabric, so were unwelcome.
In Peru – Keiko Fujimori’s supporters have also been urging her to resume the forced sterilisation of the rural poor that was initiated by her father Alberto, during the 1990s. The official health figures in Peru show that 270,000 women and 22,000 men were sterilised
In USA – It's different. Women, individually want the right of choice about abortion and sterilisation, not have fertility enforced on them, but; the US Catholic Bishops Conference passed a remit a few days ago calling for the drawing up of a statement on the Eucharist intended to eventually deny Biden access to Communion, because of his support for abortion rights.,,
As Vox News noted, US politicians who support the death penalty have never been similarly threatened by the US Bishops for flouting the Church’s clear opposition to executions. This opposition was re-stated by Pope Francis in an encyclical called Fratelli Tutti last October.. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2106/S00067/on-the-lancets-stance-against-the-olympic-games-and-on-the-us-culture-battles-over-abortion.htm
Sorry I couldn't get access to the Gwynne Dyer piece on Ethiopia despite lots of looking – I saw it in the Christchurch Press just this morning.
If the only government one can form is to sit on the fence between the left and the right, sooner or later they'll try to pull you apart like a wishbone.
The nationalists called the vote, the ex-communists withdrew their support. Is that a slip to the right, or is it both extremes flexing their muscles?
Chris Penk in the news twice in one week. Once with his remark about wanting to be leader one day. Made on Newshub Nation. And today using the f word in tweet about Winston.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/winston-peters-called-national-party-sex-maniacs-judith-collins-responds-to-barb/LASZHB4UVDTGRUIYR2RILG4FPA/
More jostling for position for Deputy Leader behind Luxon?
And ha! They've since "cancelled" the tweet.
In a political sense Penk shows he's is an out of touch jerk. It's all right to be a smart arse out the back with the boys and girls over a beer but if he's that stupid as to not realise the naivety of his tweet he's in the wrong business.
Well, maybe the right business if National wants to stay where it is in the public's eyes.
(Any chance David Seymour will pop up his head and criticise the evident "cancel culture"?)
Winston First is polling at about 1%.
Canadian Politician Derek Sloan and 3 medical professionals-who say they represent hundreds of their colleagues -said last week in a press conference the Canadian Government is suppressing information about the harmful effects of lockdown, vaccine risks in children, and the efficacy of certain covid treatments.
The College of physicians and surgeons of Ontario CPSO issued a dire statement late April threatening doctors who spoke out about what they witnessed in their local hospitals and communities. "The purpose of CPSO is to protect the public" said Sloane '' ,not stifle legitimate scientific enquiry or dissent by professional Doctors" He says his office was flooded with calls from doctors, nurses, and other scientific experts who said they have been threatened and blocked from sharing their stories.
'I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it " Voltaire !!!
[Hysterical Pete, you’re now in Pre-Moderation until you can provide a comment that does not sound like it’s coming from a full-blown conspiracy nutbar and contains a decent link – Incognito]
Please provide a link when you quote an article like that.
Just in case anyone really wonders, I googled the quote, and got 5 pages of results, every single one of which comes from a well-known lying disinformation rabid anti-vax site.
Glad I'm not a moderator..
Me too. Not because I'd be banning people, but with the safety of being a mod I'd be saying a lot more of what I really want to say. Which would make other mods uncomfortable.
Thanks for looking it up Andre so we can confirm our strong suspicions and keep the facts as we know them clean and understandable. It's hard to find your way through the fog of dark suspicions otherwise; and people can be so certain about them. All they need is to find one hole in something accepted and the deluge follows. We have to keep our finger on the hole in the dyke like the Dutch story!
"they've been blocked from telling their stories" yet somehow continue to tell their stories.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall!!!…but you're an historian, right?
/
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/
See my Moderation note @ 11:50 am.
Heh.
The fat libels,the problematic issue of heresy.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033062021000670
ACC reports to its Minister about its problematic relationship with certain population groups: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/445178/acc-biased-against-women-maori-and-pasifika-agency-s-own-analysis-shows
You could say this for ALL social services as even a women earning will become a "handbag" to her partner/husband as soon as it comes to applying for all sorts of support. It almost feels like the 60's, we are launching rockets and yet women are still treated like extension of males. Moon landing rockabilly, we haven't moved at all.
An inequality not mentioned is that when a person dies from an injury and they do not have an executor the next of kin is unable to access the person's ACC file. This is distressing when the information on the injury form differs to what the surgeon wrote in the patients surgery notes.
Everyone else which I have contacted with the authorisation from the next of kin has given me the dead person's file.
ACC told me that even if I gave them the surgeons notes that ACC could be taken to court were they to give me the file as the person's privacy would be breached. The Privacy Commissioner's Office told me that they do not advocate for a dead man.
My response was a dead man has no rights and ACC cannot make a correct decision when the true extent of the injury was not stated on the injury form.
The Courts allowing the Peter Ellis appeal to proceed after his death is an example of a dead man having rights.
Ellis did the appeal when he was alive. It was heard after he died.
The point I am making is that I cannot advocate for a dead man unless I can have discussions with ACC as they do not have the full information.
The full injury needs to be argued that it is not a normal consequence of the treatment.
The coroner, HDC and the DHB have all mislead each other. ACC misleads itself.
Not really an inequality but distressing to experience all the same.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/opinion/300338373/government-needs-to-make-uteturn
A uteload of reasons why townies need their utes!
Totally reasonable arguments raised by a part-time landlording corporate lawyer with a preference for biking downhill fuelled by discounted Martinborough pinot noir and erecting election hoardings. I hope that encourages Standardistas to read bwaghorn's worthy recommendation (hint- you need to get past the opening paragraphs' rather well-disguised 'chinaman').
What, an another unsavoury National MP? Chris Penk joining the ranks now. Do they train them at an unfit for public office school? Always plenty of candidates.
As if built in deliberate obsolescence wasn't enough.
Online giant Amazon is destroying millions of items of unsold stock every year, products that are often new and unused, ITV News can reveal.
Footage gathered by ITV News shows waste on an astonishing level.
And this is from just one of 24 fulfilment centres they currently operate in the UK.
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-21/amazon-destroying-millions-of-items-of-unsold-stock-in-one-of-its-uk-warehouses-every-year-itv-news-investigation-finds
To maintain the atmosphere of superiority and high pricing I remember that a NZ company I think Lands for Bags destroyed new bags at the end of a season. Putting them out at sale prices would detract from their desirability and allure. That attitude makes sense when dealing with the high-end of society and fashion. The price put on bags with top-end designers names is pure BS on sale to air-heads.
Do you think this link fits:
In the yards of nearly every dealer in the country you'll find brand new small appliances binned minus their leads.
How do you know that joe90? I haven't seen that reported.
My scavenging, bin diver extraordinaire mate routinely drags all manner of small appliances home, we're talking dozens here, and in an attempt to rewire them, tasks me to find tools to deal with the proprietary fasteners used. I only manage to find the occasional screw bit so most end up back where they came from, the bin.
Are they genuinely brand-new, or maybe warranty returns that didn't work when the customer first plugged it in?
I've yet to need to get into something and haven't been able to using just a fairly basic set of security screw driver bits. I'd be awfully curious which brands feel the need to make it harder than that to get in.
Unsold brand spankers from big box outlets. And the jaycar is one of several kits and yet he's still routinely defeated by slightly mis-matched drives designed to strip/single use destruction and odd-ball centre pin security fasteners.
Yeah I know what you mean!
Mind you this is no modern idiosyncrasy. I had a '29 model A Ford way back. One saturday driving back home over the wainui hill she started running on 3 cylinders. So Back home. Just before Uni final exams. Had to take the head off to see what was wrong. One collapsed 3rd piston! Not a bit – left all in the sump! Thank goodness for splash lubrication. So then the task was to remove the con rod and find a replacement piston. Henry Ford wasn't having any after parts shinnanigans going on and all the bolts nuts and threads were weird sizing – especially the threads which were very fine. So fine that the nuts was now welded onto the con rod bolts. After wrecking two of my dads special sockets I asked a friend who was an AA mechanic – "How do you get those nuts off?" "With a chisel!"
They've won. Freedom of the press is done in Hong Kong.
https://twitter.com/lokmantsui/status/1406979448411365378
we also hope that even though this platform no longer will be around, that hong kong journalists will continue to hold ground, and pursue the truth. last but not least, thanks to the anchors, editors, and other colleagues behind the scene …
for accepting a mission impossible, a mission in response to today's society. thanks again to all of you for your support. to the people of hong kong, stay strong. may we meet down the road. bye bye."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/21/hong-kong-apple-daily-newspaper-crisis-talks-avert-shutdown-advisor-says
"The department for safeguarding the national security of the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) arrested the editor-in-chief and four directors on suspicion of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.
This was the second time Apply Daily, founded and owned by Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who bears multiple charges including conspiracy to collude with foreign countries or forces to endanger national security, has been raided since the national security law for Hong Kong came into force on June 30, 2020.
Senior Superintendent of Hong Kong police Steve Li Kwai-wah told reporters after the arrests that strong evidence showed that dozens of questionable articles published by Apple Daily since 2019 played a very crucial part in the conspiracy which provided the ammunition for foreign countries and institutions or organizations to impose sanctions on China and the Hong Kong region.
Police raided the offices of Apple Daily following a search warrant, in accordance with Article 43 of the national security law for Hong Kong, which stipulates that when handling cases concerning offence endangering national security, the department for safeguarding national security of the Hong Kong police may take measures such as a search of premises, vehicles, vessels, aircraft and other relevant places and electronic devices that may contain evidence of an offense. "
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1226466.shtml
Intriguing PoV, but it's clear why it's happening, imho. Meanwhile, in Myanmar…
Myanmar coup latest: Urban warfare erupts in Mandalay
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Myanmar-Coup/Myanmar-coup-latest-Urban-warfare-erupts-in-Mandalay
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/445193/mercury-nz-plans-to-buy-trustpower-s-retail-business-for-441m
This would reduce competition wouldn't it? If we can't have one SOE? operating our small nation's electricity, which would be the practical way to go – with some way of monitoring for price and effectiveness – then it is likely to be worse if there are just a few players, I would think?
Could someone who knows about such things give a valid opinion? Has Mercury got a good record?
"Has Mercury got a good record?"
Bohemian Rhapsody isn't bad.
Hah. Without a song and a dance what are we? Thank you for the music, for giving it to me.
On situation in HK.
Put it down to the American and western covert actions, trying to pierce the soft underbelly of China. It was never going to work, unless this is what the west wanted, trying to increase revolt by the people of HK, who in the most part did not support the bullshit umbrella actions of the hegemonic US.
And fuck the people of Hong Kong and the one country, two systems promise of self-determination, right?
No. Fuck the interference of the hegemonic US.
They cause the reactions by the interfered Countries all over the World. America is only truly free to the elite classes, so fuck your crocodile tears.
Ah, the old "stop making me hit my own people" line, huh.
What is wrong with these judges. Harsher sentences need to be handed out, not a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket. This is a repeat offender.
Elderly conned of life savings for P and pokie money by serial scammer | Stuff.co.nz
Why, despite the wet bus ticket dished out to dozens of thieves who took advantage of their special positions that you've not bothered to comment on, does a drug addicted brown woman rate a mention?
Heh. Though in mitigation, perhaps Stuff failed to inform Jimmy of these other cases in the same prominent manner that they did for the brown woman?
I guess he was looking at this one right in front of him that he could put a link to. Is that a reasonable answer to your rather pointed question? One does want to approach matters in an equality-based not biased, way.
What does it have to do with the colour of her skin? If she was white, yellow or green I still think the sentence should be harsher. My comment was regarding the judge who seems to be afraid to actually hand down a sentence that may actually deter her as she is obviously a repeat offender and needs to be stopped. She didn't learn from 2012 so needs a harsher sentence.
I think the judge in this case should also start issuing appropriate sentences (and this repeat offender is white).
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dunedin-court-gives-repeat-drink-driver-home-detention-for-latest-offence/YUHZ7G7ANB7ZI2425NHUQ7JY44/
Respect.
https://twitter.com/secondzeit/status/1407171536272838657
Context
https://twitter.com/richardhills777/status/1407086961035137024