Maybe. We could get to a ceasefire, but not a peace deal. The problem I think is that the Kremlin thinks that it will be a re-run of Crimea – and Europe will quickly revert back to business as usual after it is over.
That is a forlorn hope – a frozen conflict is the best we can hope for. With Russia decaying into a larger more dangerous version of North Korea over the next few decades as it becomes yet another client state of the CCP.
I don't think the US wants a peace deal unless it is one that re-establishes the status quo ante, and also allows Ukraine to become a NATO member state sitting on Russia's border.
Nordstream is back to its reduced level of 40% of capacity (not enough to increase storage levels for Europe winter)
In the release Putin stated that there was another turbine that had problems ( 26 july) gas flow is work in progress.Which is why the ECB doubled down on interest hike.
Yeah. The game here is that the Kremlin still thinks it can go back to business as usual when fighting ends – as it must eventually. After all oil and gas is 40% of their GDP and the Russians don't want to be throwing their tar baby out with the Ukrainian bathwater.
They know that just shutting the oil and gas flow down abruptly will destroy both their infrastructure (the oil wells and lines will freeze and become useless, and gas cannot be stored much), absolutely burn off all trust, and hand over the business to the competitors such as Khazikstan. So instead of this they come up with plausible lies about production problems and reduce flows rather than turn them off.
As a strategy it is understandable – but a weak one that is destined to fail.
Here is a piece that should be required reading for pretty much every Western journalist writing on the Ukrainian conflict…but then it seems to be quite clear that responsible, contextualized reporting is not what they are there to deliver….
Calling Putin ‘Hitler’ to Smear Diplomacy as ‘Appeasement’
"previously noted how evidence-free caricatures in Western media of Putin as irrational (and perhaps psychotic) make diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine crisis seem pointless. Tracing a connection between Putin and Hitler is an even more insidious attempt to make the idea of a negotiated end to the war seem like a moral outrage."
An article pretending to be fair while scrupulously avoiding placing any responsibility on Russia or Putin. For instance it even goes out of it's way to misrepresent it's own data in a call out box highlighting a NORC poll on who Ukrainians believe is responsible for the war:
According to a Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center poll, 58% of Ukrainians believe the US bears “a great deal/some responsibility” for the war in Ukraine.
Completely omitting that the same number for Russia is 85% and a glance at the whole table clearly shows that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians point to Putin's Russia bearing the largest part of the blame.
You see what you want to see…from the linked article-
'A poll of Ukrainians conducted by the Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center—6/9-6/22—found 58% thought the US bore “some” or “a great deal of responsibility” for the current conflict, along with 55% for NATO, while 82% said the same of Russia. This majority opinion in Ukraine would be difficult to utter in an establishment US media outlet.)(my bold).
The quote I lifted was in the highlighted text box.
If you check the data they have done a sneaky trick and combined those with both a strong opinion and diluted it with those who reported a milder or even possibly neutral one.
For Russian responsibility the strong number is 82% and some number is 3%. Adding these together you get 85% blaming Russia – but of course the overwhelming majority very strongly so.
Compared to the US the strong number is way lower at 26% and the some number higher at 33% – adding up to 58%. But in this case the 58% consists of a quite different mix of respondents. (And if you just look at those who reported a strong view – the difference between 82% and 26% is night and fucking day.)
But worse still the quote you link to (the body text that is in brackets) – is goes out of it's way to be even more deceptive:
found 58% thought the US bore “some” or “a great deal of responsibility” for the current conflict, along with 55% for NATO, while 82% said the same of Russia.
I hardly see pointing out Western MSM's outrageous pro war/no negotiating stance is gaslighting..but then you seem more than happy for the Ukrainians and Russians to die like dogs in and unwinnable war, so your response is of little interest.
Like I said..let your fingers do the walking…I can't be bothered trolling through endless pages of pro war propaganda to find something that is so plainly obvious to anyone serious to see and understand….or maybe more importantly not massively biased to the point of being a dangerous fantasists or feeble minded enough to be swayed by the fore mentioned endless pro war propaganda…though probably usually a bit of both.
The poll is obviously biased. One would expect Ukranians to vote for 85% Russian responsibility. However, that 58% think think the US has "a great deal/some responsibility" seems a more significant statistic.
The two numbers as I explained above – simply do not represent the same information and are not comparable in the way the article uses it.
I accept there are no ideal, lily-white actors in this mess – and this data more or less reflects what I would expect – that in the real world motivations are messy. When Ukrainians say that the US and NATO hold a strong or some responsibility for this war, we should be careful not to assume too much. For all we know they might be saying we blame them for not intervening sooner when Russia annexed Crimea, or even earlier.
But there is just one person who could definitively stop this catastrophe tomorrow – and we all know who that is.
Putin is a fascist. Hitler was a fascist, as were Franco, Mussolini and Pinochet. Drawing from history to discover lessons on how to deal with fascists leads to some obvious conclusions, including that NZ's leftists have always made it a priority to fight fascist wherever they may be found from the Ebro river in Spain to the deserts of Libya. On the left, we do not make excuses for fascists.
It is also a red herring to say that the Western media is smearing diplomacy. Diplomacy is about negotiation and dialogue. So far, Putin has offered neither. He maintains his brutal war aim of the total, violent conquest and subjugation of a nation that is showing in it's ferocious resistance that it is not of a mind to be easily conquered and subjugated. The only diplomacy that will bring Putin to the negotiating table is the diplomacy of high explosives via HIMARS, M270s, PzHb2000s, M109s, AHS Krabs, the supply of western tanks like the M1 Abrams and jet fighters like the F-16.
I'll think you'll find that once his army is in tatters and routed from the battlefield Putin (assuming he is still around) will be much more open to a bit of traditional diplomacy. When that point arrives, we can talk about appeasement from a position of superior firepower.
"I'll think you'll find that once his army is in tatters and routed from the battlefield"…..it never fails to amaze me how well propaganda works.
Ukraine are and losing right now as you read this…their poor boys are being slaughtered by overwhelming Artillery/Rocket and Missile fire, the intensity of which hasn't been witnessed since the Red Army swept the Nazi war machine from the battlefield.
"Traditionally, in Russian military doctrine, manoeuvring troops support the artillery rather than the reverse. The preferred role of massed artillery and rockets systems is to destroy enemy formations, whilst manoeuvring infantry and tank formations have the role to fix the enemy."
" For this reason, it is widely recognised that the use of en masse indirect fire support at the tactical level is a signature characteristic of the Russian way of war. This explains why Russian military formations have a quantitatively superior artillery, with a broader variety of munitions available and the ability to strike at longer ranges than similar Western formations."
I think Putin made many overtures for talks prior to the invasion, but has been rebuffed each time. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has been willing to abide by the Minsk agreements, though I think Ukraine has more to blame for this than Russia – however I could be wrong. Zelenskyy himself seems to have favoured peace talks, but he seems to have been overruled by the army – what wwould you call a state in which the army overrules its president? – I would call that a fascist state.
(On Peter the Great) "You might think he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands, But he seized nothing; he reclaimed it! It seems it has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen…"
Sound like a reasonable guy open to suave French diplomacy to you? He see it as his mission to recreate the Russian empire by conquest – why do you think Sweden and Finland are racing to join NATO? Those guys know by bitter experience how brutal an imperial and reactionary Russia can be.
As for the Ukraine is Nazi stuff, you have got to understand the Russian national myth on this that Putin believes in. The USSR defeated Nazi Germany. Therefore Russia, as the ultimate victor over Nazism, cannot ever be Nazi. furthermore, anyone who RESISTS Russia within it's "greater Russia" borders must automatically be a Nazi, since to not be a patriotic Russian can only be explained in terms of being a Nazi.
The Taxpayers Onion is boo-hooing about being banned, BANNED I TELLS YA, from LGNZ (Local Government New Zealand conferences from here to eternity and have sent out a STERN WARNING to councillors around the country!
it's not all good from my pov, it's just another piece of unnecessary work for us as mods. From people who know better (not just you, this aspect of moderation is coming from a range of regulars).
It’s very hard to not see this as a disrespect of the site. Again, not just you, it’s happening every few days or do, people who have had it explained just doing what they want anyway. I don’t think it’s intentional disrespect, maybe more a distracted disrespect.
The style (text), spelling mistakes, and inconsistencies not to mention the language don’t give you any pause to consider its veracity? Did you check the source of the e-mail?
Sorry, Incognito – the quote I supplied was from the prelude, written by someone else, on behalf of the communication from the Taxpayers Onion, that followed.
showing that staff members acting on behalf of the organisation (and in an organised campaign) assumed false identities to lodge requests with the New Zealand Government's science research agency. After refusing to comment for two days, representatives from the Union admitted they had used false identities in this way.
The Herald investigation found that all of the email accounts used for the requests were linked to one particular email address of a Taxpayers' Union staff member by way of account recovery processes
"There are obvious questions to be answered around whether the Minister’s office had any involvement in this decision. We note the LGNZ official who notified us of the decision is a recent Ministerial staffer. Given the many criticisms of Stuart Crosby selling out to the Government, this looks like yet another corruption of LGNZ's purported mission to promote democracy."
“Astoundingly, when we put to LGNZ that the revoking of our registration was ‘utu’ for past criticisms, the LGNZ representative conceded that it was!"
Were/are the good folks from the NZ Taxpayers Union barred from attendance at the LGNZ conference/s?
In passing the other day I did read about this, I though it outrageous that the Taxpayers Union folks were insisting that since 100% of the funding for Local and Central government comes from taxpayers and ratepayers then those people should be in the room when matters concerning the running of the Country or the Regions are being discussed or debated.
Outrageous I tells ya!!!
Silly folks obviously haven't got the message that democracy only operates during elections.
What would be the basis for cancelling these people? I mean I can't stand what RR did to the country. But Peter Williams? The sports guy? Farrar? Isn't he the guy who runs Curia polls?
What is the reason for cancelling these people? Are they any sort of threat?
If it is just because they will criticise what is being said and write about it then surely this is a bit bloody dangerous.
There is a difference between being an astroturf group purporting to represent citizens and actually having any such mandate. Good on LGNZ for refusing access to bad faith actors.
So how do we the people hold local government to account? Get them to do their job? Get them to at least abide by their own Regional Plans and bylaws? I don't say 'vote them out'. You know damn well Sacha that a shit load of damage can be done in that three year window.
And its a seriously bad look to exclude any group from conferences pertaining to democratically elected and running-entirely-on- rates- and- taxes organisations. There should be nothing discussed at these functions that is hidden from us. Absolutely nothing.
At least allow attendance with no speaking rights, and sue their arses off if they report 'misinformation'.
It is reasonable to argue that it did not operate during the last New Zealand election.
Didn't the Labour Party hold their big opening meeting. Then, before the National Party opening, they increased the lockdown level so that a full scale opening was impossible for the National Party.
What would be the basis for cancelling these people? I mean I can't stand what RR did to the country. But Peter Williams? The sports guy? Farrar? Isn't he the guy who runs Curia polls?
What is the reason for cancelling these people? Are they any sort of threat?
If it is just because they will criticise what is being said and write about it then surely this is a bit bloody dangerous.
Probably Stuart Crosby had some ideas about what kind of participation these guys would have. Also, if your in the big leagues of pro National party spin then constructive involvement in government is "selling out".
who decides which are the shitheads? And what happens when the shitheads have more power and decide that cancel culture is a good idea after all (we sanctioned it so we can hardly complain when it's turned on us).
When someone puts up the details about what actually happened with TU and the councils, I'll have an opinion about that, maybe I will think the ban is fair enough. Or maybe I'll be less impressed when it's say climate activists making submissions about Fonterra being banned from talking about climate.
Agree Weka about cancelling people. Its all well and good until it is your side being cancelled.
And actually I think it is weak to cancel people. Use good arguements, listen to your opponents as there could be a grain of truth in what they are sayin
g.
Cancelling people most likely sends them underground.
Same with the Leo Molloy stuff. The cries against Guy Williams for Platforming Molloy just play into Molloy’s hands. Streisand effect and all that.
Williams allowed people to see Molloy for what he is. People can make their own decisons based on that. But when you get people piling on Guy it will more than likely increase Molloys vote. Like it or not, I think this is the case
I don't believe in unlimited free speech either. Not sure I would place TU quite in the same league as Nazis though and there are obvious problems in doing so in the NZ context.
The question is what do any of these people have to do with Local Government that is more that just the basic ratepayer? They are an astroturf organisation at best. Why should the LGNZ let them in?
Not sure how to post a "permanent link". The one I did post is to the Groundswell page where the most recent post is the one I'm referring to. Too hard. Won't bother 🙂
I just went to their main page, found the first post, clicked on the time stamp, and copied this URL. It's only one step more than what you are doing already
I am not a supporter of NZ First or Winston Peters and I did not follow this court case. Nevertheless it sounds like yet another DP attempt to discredit NZ First and by association its leader:
As far as the SFO is concerned I presume they had little choice but to pass the matter on to the police, but someone or some people were after their blood just before the last election?
Dodgy scheme involving big sums but carefully designed by Peters' associates so the party officials could not be breaking the Electoral Act that the prosecution relied on.
Very similar to the way Roger Douglas pocketed huge donations to spend as he wished during an election campaign rather than passing them through the party he supposedly belonged to at the time.
Justice Jagose released his reserved decision today.
He ruled the money was not a party donation, where the money needs to have been donated to any person who is involved in the administration of the affairs of the party.
Justice Jagose found the men were not involved in the administration of the party.
They were entitled to have control of the money and therefore the judge found there was no fraud as alleged by the SFO.
The pair had repeatedly denied they collected money that should have been treated as donations – and therefore declared to the Electoral Commission.
Because that what it is. No energy = no tech = no suburbs however resilient.
There really is only one clear path through this paradox – nuclear energy. It is not perfect, there will be rats to swallow, but there is nothing else well understood and available now.
And to be clear I am not being confrontational for the sake of it. I have nothing against resilience or Retrosuburbia in itself. Hell I paid for the book. But as long as the developing world keeps building coal power stations pretty nothing else we do matters all that much.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Because that what it is. No energy = no tech = no suburbs however resilient.
As I've said to you before, you either patently don't understand what the powerdown is, or you choose to misrepresent it. That you think it means no energy makes this really obvious. You are just plain wrong. eg Holmgren talks about power generation and appropriate use, using industrial tech.
I won't let people run such misrepresentational lines under posts I put up. At some point if you want to learn what the powerdown is, there will be conversations for that.
This is the most absurd abuse of moderation you have pulled yet.
I was speaking directly to the topic of industrialisation that I have a lifetime of education, experience and expertise in. Your inability to tolerate a legitimate challenge to your fixed views and then to abuse your power as moderator to derail the discussion is just wrong.
I resigned as a moderator because I could no longer stomach being associated with such dishonest and cowardly behaviour that fundamentally betrays the spirit purpose of moderation – and here you are repeating it. As I have often said – giving someone a little power quickly reveals their true character.
I won't let people run such misrepresentational lines under posts I put up.
The post was under Notices and Features. There was no indication who put it up.
Because that what it is. No energy = no tech = no suburbs however resilient.
The powerdown doesn't mean no energy. It doesn't mean no tech. It doesn't mean no industrial tech. I'm sick of explaining this to you.
When you say it means no energy, you are making shit up. It doesn't matter if I authored the post or not, I'm still not letting people make shit up. No-one else would be allowed to do this either.
Your inability to tolerate a legitimate challenge to your fixed views…
I'm only shifting your comments though. The reason I am is that I've engaged many times in the past with the false part of your argument (as a commenter and as a mod) and you just don't listen, you keep misrepresenting the thing you are arguing against. Then when I point out the problem, you attack me. These are pretty basic debate rules: don't distort the argument, don't attack the person.
People challenge my ideas all the time, and then we debate. When you are willing to do that without distorting the thing you are critiquing, there won't be a problem.
And I am sick of you pretending to know you understand anything about industrialisation when I am fairly sure – prove me wrong – you have never set foot in a large scale heavy industrial plant in your life.
And I don't mean some little kiwi light manufacturer – I mean this scale. I spent my whole working life in these places, designing, building. commissioning the automation systems that make them work. I understand the processes, the material and energy transformations intimately.
The alternative is “Powerdown,” a strategy that will require tremendous effort and economic sacrifice in order to reduce per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develop alternative energy sources, distribute resources more equitably, and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time.
First of all the 'tremendous effort and economic sacrifice' is quantitatively unspecified. What is more it places all the burden for this on the top 1b or so people in the developed world, while pretending the other 7b or so do not exist and will be content to remain poor forever. The numbers do not add up without some political means to impose austerity and poverty on the world – again forever.
Then it suggests alternative energy sources can replace fossil fuels, yet solar wind and battery are very unlikely to do this – so far their total generation contribution barely matches the older nuclear capacity we are incomprehensibly turning off – much less replace the massive supply and reliability of fossil fuel generation. In some geographies SWB will work well enough to be a useful transitional tech, but long-term it locks us into a mean, miserable world deficient in everything.
And then it demands ' and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time. '. What exactly does systematically mean in this context – another Maoist One Child policy – only global in scope. That's a downright dystopian and authoritarian anti-human vision right there.
Besides it ignores the simple reality that all developing and industrialised nations are already reducing their populations quite naturally – the only places on earth where population is still rising from high birth rates are in the already powered down nations in Africa. Completely contradictory.
The problem here is that I did all of this hippie inspired, alt-tech, powerdown, resilience stuff in the 80's. It has it's place and I retain a soft-spot for it – but saving the planet it ain't going to cut mustard.
First of all the 'tremendous effort and economic sacrifice' is quantitatively unspecified. What is more it places all the burden for this on the top 1b or so people in the developed world, while pretending the other 7b or so do not exist and will be content to remain poor forever.
You just made that up right? You didn't see someone like Heinberg advocating for the wealthy countries to power down and leave the poor countries to remain poor.
The numbers do not add up without some political means to impose austerity and poverty on the world – again forever.
Again, this is your thinking. Imo it comes from your ideological opposition to powerdown and your belief that anything other than global BAU will lead to Terrible Things. This is a failure of knowledge of the large body of work done by various pd and transition people and groups, and a lack of imagination.
It's an analysis that also ignores that we are out of time and have to drop GHGs now, fast.
Your definition of Powerdown seems to depend on which question you are answering.
If you want it to save the world, then in order to make any meaningful difference the top 1b in the developed world will have to make a 'tremendous sacrifice'.
If you want it to sound not so scary then Powerdown is like – we get to keep all the good industrial tech we like, but somehow turn off all the bad things we don't like. Even when you really offer no idea how to disentangle them.
Listen up: we are going to lose everything. All of it. If we don't reduce GHGs fast. This isn't fringe theory, it's the mainstream prediction now.
The powerdown offers us some solutions. It doesn't solve all of the problems, it's not a panacea. In particular, it offers places like NZ and Oz an immediate way to start reducing GHGs, and shifting use from the systems that are killing the planet to ones that fit better into resiliency and sustainability methods.
I haven't given you a definition of the powerdown, I've simply responded to each time you interpret it through your industrial mindset and pointed out where you are missing the point.
If you want it to save the world, then in order to make any meaningful difference the top 1b in the developed world will have to make a 'tremendous sacrifice'.
Yes, we will. It's still less of a sacrifice than if we continue with BAU. Tremendous sacrifice doesn't have to mean nasty brutish and short, but it will if we don't act soon.
If you want it to sound not so scary then Powerdown is like – we get to keep all the good industrial tech we like, but somehow turn off all the bad things we don't like. Even when you really offer no idea how to disentangle them.
I didn't say we get to keep all the good industrial tech we like. We're past that, that's the point. Had we fronted up to CC in the 70s and 80s, we might have been able to transition to a green tech society, but that opportunity is gone, we no longer have the time for that.
What we can do is keep the stuff that we can keep. I already pointed out that if we don't drop GHGs soon we will lose it all anyway. But if we were to transition now, I can't see why we can't keep glass and steel for instance. And yes, I understand the massive complexity of the globarl steel supply chain at a lay person level, but I'm not saying we get to keep that. I'm saying we should transition to sustainability (because that's the only way we survive), and as part of that we should look at how best to manage steel as a crucial resource.
Good/bad is another unhelpful binary. The area I have the best sense of is food. Some argue that we can't replace industrial ag, but people are doing this all the time already. We already have those techs and systems to transition to. What we don't have is the political and social buy in, and imo arguments like I'm having with you today are part of the reason why. You are blocking it, because you can't see how it would work. Instead of learning how it might work, you put up lots of reasons why it won't without even understanding what it is.
The link displays the source of electricity production. You can modify the search by country, the 2nd link is the NZ position. The world position Coal & Gas dominance is a concern and how to replace our dependancy with BAU ??
one obvious part of it is to lessen how much power we need. BAU isn't going to survive. It's just not. We can't green it in time, and there is still a massive amount of our economies that is extractive and degenerative not renewable and regenerative.
There's a cross over with food production. Obviously shipping chilled food across the globe and then across country is massively wasteful. But on top of that we waste a huge amount of the food produced 15 – 30%. That's a waste of the food, but it's also a waste of the embodied energy (farming, transport, packaging, labour, and so on).
There is no cross over with food production ( changes in agronomy being an eschatological problem) as Borlaug said .
some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things
In his Nobel acceptance speech he quantified the problem as such.( on the green revolution)
I often ask the critics of modern agricultural technology what the world would have been like without the technological advances that have occurred, largely during the past 50 years. For those whose main concern is protecting the “environment,” let’s look at the positive impact that the application of science-based technology has had on land use.
Had the global cereal yields of 1950 still prevailed in 1999, we would have needed nearly 1.8 billion ha of additional land of the same quality – instead of the 600 million that was used – to equal the current global harvest (see Figure 1 at the end of text). Obviously, such a surplus of land was not available, and certainly not in populous Asia, where the population has increased from 1.2 to 3.8 billion over this time period. Moreover, if more environmentally fragile land had been brought into agricultural production, think of the impact on soil erosion, loss of forests and grasslands, biodiversity and extinction of wildlife species that would have ensued.
To meet the shared economic pathways (ipcc) we need to sustain the global population at 8 billion by 2050 and 6 billion by 2100.We hit the 8 billion number in november this year,so we need to state there is a limit to growth at our present population (and significantly reduce immigration) to sustain our economic capacity .
Here we are living beyond our economic means (its debt funded) as we are already struggling to pay our way,(unsustainable due to high immigration and infrastructure costs to meet the existing demands).
I was pointing to energy used in the global supply of food.
what the world would have been like without the technological advances that have occurred, largely during the past 50 years.
We probably wouldn't have climate catastrophe.
At the same time, we invented new forms of contraception. We could have made that easily accessible to any woman who wanted or needed it.
Moreover, if more environmentally fragile land had been brought into agricultural production, think of the impact on soil erosion, loss of forests and grasslands, biodiversity and extinction of wildlife species that would have ensued.
But we did bring more fragile land into ag, and we continue to do so. In a perpetual growth world that will never end.
I don't get your point. At the end of your comment you talk about the limits of growth. Borlaug appears to not understand it so why quote him?
And yes, NZ has a set of specific problems from the growth economy spurred on by neoliberalism.
No there was two parts,firstly the population growth in emergent countries was sustained by technological advancement,the postwar dream was that global poverty and hunger was to be eliminated.
Borlaug who started in the 1930's depression with the US forestry corp,planting windbreaks and shelter belts to reduce soil ,and moisture loss (Duststorms etc) on the US plains saw what poverty was in real terms.
Removal of the programmes funding especially into Africa saw that marginal land was needed to meet population growth from disease suppression.( the constraints were mostly from Europe,and continue with them stating last month that they would allow funding for African LNG,but not allow them to produce fertilizer)
The use of fertilizers have allowed both an increase in population and life expectancy globally.
From an energy perspective it is only in the last decade where technological development has made renewables cost efficient (over time nuclear is very cost efficient) in the 70's and 80's we only had hydro and geothermal.In NZ over the last 15 years electricity generation and consumption are flatlining (only the mix of generation and use have changed)
For the second half of the century it brought a greater stability,then the first 50 years.In the US it allowed a decrease in agriculture jobs and a move to higher paying factory work,a decrease in the birth rate,higher education,then reversal with a war (yom kippur) an oil shock,energy shock and price inflation,etc increase in crime,disease sort of like today.
Without the GR developing countries GDP would have been 1/2 of today.Emerging markets that changed from subsistence farming,developed a middle class that brought some stability from the "colonel regimes" but unstable due to capital flight.
The Europe experiment ( trading e=mc2 for Russian CH4) will be tested this winter and with it the european socio economic dream as energy austerity takes place.
Despite the importance attributed to it (and there is no doubt of its impact) …as far as Im concerned finance and 'money' ultimately mean little….real resources are what count.
“The gap in efficacy and competitiveness between nuclear and other options is continually growing. Supporting nuclear, rather than energy efficiency, wind and solar, slows down climate action, bleeds taxpayers, forgoes jobs and forces unnecessarily large and regressive burdens on consumers”.
Despite intensifying propaganda, even government data shows this military-backed technology to be, in reality, an expensive, slow, unreliable, risky and unpopular way to deliver affordable, secure, zero-carbon energy.
Of these claims the only one with any merit is that it is expensive in it's current form.
The primary reason is that the industry is insanely over-regulated and over-engineered. The secondary reason is that conventional project-based builds are exceedingly complex and prone to delays due to relatively minor matters cascading into GANTT charts.
(Indeed this is not an issue confined to the nuclear industry – I have seen the same delays and cost over-runs across the whole of the engineering business. The current commercial and contract models we are legally compelled to work under are well overdue some serious reform.)
But here is a point few people think about – if climate change really is the existential threat we expect it to be – then the expense really does not matter.
And even this objection goes away when we consider that all the next gen designs – and yes they will be delivered this decade – are going to be factory built machines delivered to the point of use as a commodity asset. This change alone will make the economics directly competitive with coal on a levelised cost basis.
Why go to that expense, in resources and labour, when we already have cheaper and easier energy efficient options.
Like the enthusiasm for hydrogen cars, nuclear power is a money making exercise for the proponents, not a viable solution.
BTW. Wind is already cheaper and more reliable than coal. And the plant is much simpler and easier to produce thann either. Nuclear would have to do a lot better than “Matching coal”.
Of course if reactors are developed that solve the problems, i.e. Fusion? all bets are off. But after billions thrown at it over decades, nuclear energy is no closer to solving the blatantly obvious issues.
We are already powering down. Many processes in industry are much more energy efficient than they used to be. To give just one area. . That is part of the answer. Investment in NZ, and elsewhere into renewables is long overdue and is another part.
Magical solutions just direct money away from proven technology, and makes Snake oil salesmen, rich!
Like the enthusiasm for hydrogen cars, nuclear power is a money making exercise for the proponents, not a viable solution.
If I was proposing hydrogen cars you might have a point, but I was not. At that scale lithium batteries are a better engineering fit. But as you go bigger the weight of the battery increases and you wind up expending a larger and larger fraction of the stored energy just moving the battery about. The same goes if you attempt to extend the range.
Therefore there is an effective upper limit on the size and range of vehicle batteries will be useful in. A battery powered Seuzmax is not feasible with any foreseeable tech.
On the other hand hydrogen is exceptionally energy dense, about twice that of petrol. Storing lots of energy without incurring a huge weight penalty is not a problem. So even though the total energy efficiency for hydrogen is initially lower, once the weight and range reach a certain point – hydrogen becomes the optimum choice.
And if you have generated that hydrogen using carbon free solar, wind or nuclear energy – you really don't care so much about the lower efficiency or cost for that matter.
And besides – using hydrogen for transport is not a priority in my view – the obvious and most effective use is in Direct Hydrogen Conversion in steel making.
Wind is already cheaper and more reliable than coal. And the plant is much simpler and easier to produce thann either. Nuclear would have to do a lot better than “Matching coal”.
Currently, nuclear power is the most reliable. It has supplied the US with well over 20% of our yearly power needs for the last thirty years 1. Nuclear power plants have the ability to produce power during 93% of the year, which is more than 2 times more reliable than natural gas and coal, and 2.5 to 3.5 times more reliable than wind and solar energy.
Of course, nuclear energy isn’t without its problems – namely, the waste it produces, which is highly toxic and requires careful storage and disposal. There’s also the risk of the damage power plants can cause if they encounter a major problem.
After nuclear, the most reliable sources are (in order):
The reliability of renewable sources is solvable by building more plants throughout the grid area, and/or using stored power.
Even then much less expensive and a hell of a lot safer than nuclear.
I did have thoughts that nuclear maybe the best option for countries like Germany. Advances in wind, solar and tidal/wave energy, and storage have now changed that equation.
As for hydrogen. We will start to see hydrogen fueled ships very soon. It needs to be regarded as a weight efficient battery however, utilising sustainably produced hydrogen, rather than an energy source. The sums just don't add up for land transport, especially cars, that can have power supplied directly from the grid. The whole car paradigm needs to change. Most city commuters don't need cars. They need Golf carts, or scooters, where public transport doesn’t work.
Even then much less expensive and a hell of a lot safer than nuclear.
I have covered off the cost aspect above. Although I might add that SWB can be cheap on an installed nameplate capacity basis, because you have to so grossly overbuild it – as the Germans have discovered – that it becomes very expensive indeed.
The Germans have gone all in on wind like no-one else, yet as I linked above – it produces in reality barely 10% net extra generation and it needs constant backing up with natural gas or lignite burning coal stations.
(Lignite has the peculiar property that it is about 20% water by weight and this means the plants need to be run steadily. As a result it makes a very poor SWB backup. And apparently the Germans are running some very peculiar accounting to make this fact less obvious.)
And that is before you consider what happens as the solar and wind penetration starts to rise, the storage and grid complexity costs also rise exponentially.
Not to mention the vast areas of land involved, the relatively short lifespan of solar panels and wind turbines, the vast amount of materials and waste they produce – all negatives that never get mentioned.
Yes I am more than happy to accept technical progress in the SWB field will continue – just as it will for nuclear – but some honesty around the limitations is necessary.
As soon as you start mentioning "vast areas of land" required, and resource use and lifespan of wind turbines etc, I start questioning the sources you are using.
Germany is far from utilising more than a small fraction of their possible renewables. And they would be one of the worst off for renewables.
Safety of nuclear power. You forgot to calculate total risk per unit of power over the whole lifetime of the plant, plus the decades of risk from the stored waste after deccom.. It changes the risk and expense numbers greatly.
Any calculation of solar and wind footprints show they use a small fraction of the land area we use for agriculture, let alone the total land area available. F
Unlike biofuels for one example. That, to replace oil in NZ, would use our viable growing land and then some, while requiring replacement fertilisers using even more land.
You can work it out yourself, but we did some of it on here a while back.
I have linked to this TEDx some years back. David McKay was (he passed away recently) a physicist. The talk was given some years back, but the method of analysis still holds.
As I have said repeatedly, SWB makes sense in some favoured geopgraphies, but it has it's limits.
But worse than this, you must into account the inevitable doubling or tripling of current demand due to the 7b or so people in the developing world continue to become more prosperous..
Then I would double that again to allow for the energy needed to extract carbon from the atmosphere if we are really serious about the climate (as distinct from merely collapsing the economy). You arrive at a rough back of envelope total global energy demand by mid-century that is somewhere between 4 – 10 times the current number.
You forgot to calculate total risk per unit of power over the whole lifetime of the plant, plus the decades of risk from the stored waste after deccom.
Your first claim can be set aside – the data referenced is indeed based on the lifetime of all nuclear plants already operating.
Your second claim assumes a hazard that has never happened. So far no-one has ever been harmed by spent solid fuel rod storage, which represents a much lower risk than many other serious waste streams from many other industries.
And I get kind of tired pointing this out – we already know that 97% of the energy in so called spent fuel rods remains. The French re-process their spent rods and effective recycle the uranium. We also understand that 'fast spectrum' reactors can consume this existing stockpile as fresh fuel. Otherwise known as Waster Burners this approach reduces the volume of waste by better than 95% and the time needed to securely store down to a manageable few hundred years. (And really only the first few decades are critical.
However reactor designs that remove the Xenon (it is a gas) fairly quickly because they are working in a liquid phase are able to mitigate this problem substantially. Better still molten salt designs have a strong negative coefficient of reactivity; if you add more thermal load which cools the core, the reactivity innately rises and the power generation intrinsically rises to match the new load. And vice versa. This makes them very good load following machines on a timeframe of 10s of minutes.
Another approach is just to run the reactor at close to nameplate all the time and divert the electrical output instantaneously between grid loads and an energy store – such has heating a mass of non-nuclear molten salt or generating carbon free hydrogen. In this way you can schedule nuclear down to milliseconds
So yes while nuclear is conventionally best suited for relatively fixed base load applications, in reality this is not a limitation.
I have quite a few friends who live on low incomes. They choose this lifestyle because they don't want to be working 40 hours a week. They also grow a sizeable chunk of their own food, which reduces their weekly budget needs considerably.
This isn't a panacea, but it's easy to see how such food security creates a buffer during a recession. We could be enabling this for many people.
We have one of the least safe urban environments for cycling in the OECD and one of the highest levels of car ownership and use.
Good on your friends. I'm sure they exist. But this government is now forking out billions and billions a month on everyone including your friends just to help them survive.
This is the year that people just hang on for dear life.
and? People still grow food in winter, they preserve food too. NZ knows how to store grains. Meat is available all year round. Dairy and eggs too, although it's debatable if that's sustainable.
I'm hearing friends now talk about the fact that we may not be able to travel like we used to. These are people who have travelled a lot.
Maybe now, finally, people will car pool and ride share.
The government definitely has some big challenges. Hanging on for dear life won't work unless we think somehow next year everything is going to come right. It's also not our only choice. Those that really are having to hang on for dear life need those better off to change and fast.
At the moment the vast majority of New Zealanders are under immense financial pressure and mental pressure. There's no maybe's on that. There's no silver lining. Most things are getting worse very fast.
No, there's no sign of major transport mode change. Great if they do, but mode change tends to happen in summer.
Advising the poor about how to grow vegetables is just patronising cant.
The people who are preparing for the worst are on the right track.
Advising the poor about how to grow vegetables is just patronising cant.
I didn't do that though. I'm saying people who can can set up systems, and help those that can't. Shit loads of people in this country would be growing food if they had the tools, skills and land. We have those three things in abundance. Wealthy people can pay people to grow food they don't have time to, giving people that love gardening meaningful work. None of this hard, and none of it requires a massive shift other than for some imagination* and dropping the fatalistic it's too hard, it's too late, can't be done messaging.
*or letting the people who already get it have the funds and power to just get on with it.
This is what happens when you try and deny biological sex.
An easy fix is for people to tick female if they are …..female.
It will be interesting to see how this is managed. The most pragmatic thing and the thing that would help our over burdened health system would be to inform trans and non binary people who are women to tick the female box so they can ensure they get the correct medical follow up for their sex.
The most pragmatic thing and the thing that would help our over burdened health system ….
Thank you Anker. I do my MSM reading at 5am and that particular contribution caught my bleary eye and more than deserves a place here. I nearly posted meself…but couldn't find the phraseology that wasn't judgey.
And I kinda got a little tense when Fearless Reporter used the phrase 'people with cervixes…'
….used as an example of marginalisation and poor healthcare.
No, no, no, Molly…it's so much more than that.
Moira Clunie is the project lead at rainbow organisation Te Ngākau Kahukura and said "it's a massive issue of health equity" that meant there was a group of people who could be subject to poorer health outcomes.
There are probably a bunch of men who demand we refer to them as women missing out on their prostate screenings as well. Science denial comes around to bite them sooner or later.
Not a massive issue of health equity. Its a massive own goal. But they will turn it into an issue which adds to their "victim" status……..sorry if that seems a bit unkind, but really I am just a little over the msm single narrative on this.
Where does the government get its understanding of reality. $860,000 IS affordable for a 1st home or at the lower end $550,000 for 1 bedroom ??🤬 . I am well aware that the kiwibuild managers are in the market with fixed price contracts, don’t they follow the media 18% increase in costs yet the poor contactor and stubbie has to take all the risk. Time for these guys to get out of their office and try to have some connection with the REAL world- because theire is none being displayed currently. https://www.kiwibuild.govt.nz/about-kiwibuild/home-price-caps/
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Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
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Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
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A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
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The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
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Poor old Joe Biden has Covid. Hopefully just gets a mild dose like I did.
US President Joe Biden tests positive for Covid-19, has mild symptoms | RNZ News
Yes lucky he is double vaxxed and has also had two…booster shots.
A 'tricky' virus…indeed.
Will the new Russian Gazprom deal on supplying EU gas and the Russia-Ukraine deal on exporting grain be the start of the peace deal we all need?
Maybe. We could get to a ceasefire, but not a peace deal. The problem I think is that the Kremlin thinks that it will be a re-run of Crimea – and Europe will quickly revert back to business as usual after it is over.
That is a forlorn hope – a frozen conflict is the best we can hope for. With Russia decaying into a larger more dangerous version of North Korea over the next few decades as it becomes yet another client state of the CCP.
I don't think the US wants a peace deal unless it is one that re-establishes the status quo ante, and also allows Ukraine to become a NATO member state sitting on Russia's border.
I think they're more likely to view it as a rerun of the Minsk agreement.
A bad faith ruse to buy time
Nordstream is back to its reduced level of 40% of capacity (not enough to increase storage levels for Europe winter)
In the release Putin stated that there was another turbine that had problems ( 26 july) gas flow is work in progress.Which is why the ECB doubled down on interest hike.
Yeah. The game here is that the Kremlin still thinks it can go back to business as usual when fighting ends – as it must eventually. After all oil and gas is 40% of their GDP and the Russians don't want to be throwing their tar baby out with the Ukrainian bathwater.
They know that just shutting the oil and gas flow down abruptly will destroy both their infrastructure (the oil wells and lines will freeze and become useless, and gas cannot be stored much), absolutely burn off all trust, and hand over the business to the competitors such as Khazikstan. So instead of this they come up with plausible lies about production problems and reduce flows rather than turn them off.
As a strategy it is understandable – but a weak one that is destined to fail.
Here is a piece that should be required reading for pretty much every Western journalist writing on the Ukrainian conflict…but then it seems to be quite clear that responsible, contextualized reporting is not what they are there to deliver….
Calling Putin ‘Hitler’ to Smear Diplomacy as ‘Appeasement’
https://fair.org/slider/calling-putin-hitler-to-smear-diplomacy-as-appeasement/
"previously noted how evidence-free caricatures in Western media of Putin as irrational (and perhaps psychotic) make diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine crisis seem pointless. Tracing a connection between Putin and Hitler is an even more insidious attempt to make the idea of a negotiated end to the war seem like a moral outrage."
An article pretending to be fair while scrupulously avoiding placing any responsibility on Russia or Putin. For instance it even goes out of it's way to misrepresent it's own data in a call out box highlighting a NORC poll on who Ukrainians believe is responsible for the war:
Completely omitting that the same number for Russia is 85% and a glance at the whole table clearly shows that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians point to Putin's Russia bearing the largest part of the blame.
Gaslighting.
You see what you want to see…from the linked article-
'A poll of Ukrainians conducted by the Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center—6/9-6/22—found 58% thought the US bore “some” or “a great deal of responsibility” for the current conflict, along with 55% for NATO, while 82% said the same of Russia. This majority opinion in Ukraine would be difficult to utter in an establishment US media outlet.)(my bold).
A very measured and telling summation imo.
The quote I lifted was in the highlighted text box.
If you check the data they have done a sneaky trick and combined those with both a strong opinion and diluted it with those who reported a milder or even possibly neutral one.
For Russian responsibility the strong number is 82% and some number is 3%. Adding these together you get 85% blaming Russia – but of course the overwhelming majority very strongly so.
Compared to the US the strong number is way lower at 26% and the some number higher at 33% – adding up to 58%. But in this case the 58% consists of a quite different mix of respondents. (And if you just look at those who reported a strong view – the difference between 82% and 26% is night and fucking day.)
But worse still the quote you link to (the body text that is in brackets) – is goes out of it's way to be even more deceptive:
Spot the hilarious fuck up.
I hardly see pointing out Western MSM's outrageous pro war/no negotiating stance is gaslighting..but then you seem more than happy for the Ukrainians and Russians to die like dogs in and unwinnable war, so your response is of little interest.
.but then you seem more than happy for the Ukrainians and Russians to die like dogs in and unwinnable war,
Citation needed.
Look at the maps…
So no citation – as expected.
Like I said..let your fingers do the walking…I can't be bothered trolling through endless pages of pro war propaganda to find something that is so plainly obvious to anyone serious to see and understand….or maybe more importantly not massively biased to the point of being a dangerous fantasists or feeble minded enough to be swayed by the fore mentioned endless pro war propaganda…though probably usually a bit of both.
If you want to understand this war from a broader perspective and a reasonably even handed one at that – start here.
The poll is obviously biased. One would expect Ukranians to vote for 85% Russian responsibility. However, that 58% think think the US has "a great deal/some responsibility" seems a more significant statistic.
The two numbers as I explained above – simply do not represent the same information and are not comparable in the way the article uses it.
I accept there are no ideal, lily-white actors in this mess – and this data more or less reflects what I would expect – that in the real world motivations are messy. When Ukrainians say that the US and NATO hold a strong or some responsibility for this war, we should be careful not to assume too much. For all we know they might be saying we blame them for not intervening sooner when Russia annexed Crimea, or even earlier.
But there is just one person who could definitively stop this catastrophe tomorrow – and we all know who that is.
Putin is a fascist. Hitler was a fascist, as were Franco, Mussolini and Pinochet. Drawing from history to discover lessons on how to deal with fascists leads to some obvious conclusions, including that NZ's leftists have always made it a priority to fight fascist wherever they may be found from the Ebro river in Spain to the deserts of Libya. On the left, we do not make excuses for fascists.
It is also a red herring to say that the Western media is smearing diplomacy. Diplomacy is about negotiation and dialogue. So far, Putin has offered neither. He maintains his brutal war aim of the total, violent conquest and subjugation of a nation that is showing in it's ferocious resistance that it is not of a mind to be easily conquered and subjugated. The only diplomacy that will bring Putin to the negotiating table is the diplomacy of high explosives via HIMARS, M270s, PzHb2000s, M109s, AHS Krabs, the supply of western tanks like the M1 Abrams and jet fighters like the F-16.
I'll think you'll find that once his army is in tatters and routed from the battlefield Putin (assuming he is still around) will be much more open to a bit of traditional diplomacy. When that point arrives, we can talk about appeasement from a position of superior firepower.
"I'll think you'll find that once his army is in tatters and routed from the battlefield"…..it never fails to amaze me how well propaganda works.
Ukraine are and losing right now as you read this…their poor boys are being slaughtered by overwhelming Artillery/Rocket and Missile fire, the intensity of which hasn't been witnessed since the Red Army swept the Nazi war machine from the battlefield.
"Traditionally, in Russian military doctrine, manoeuvring troops support the artillery rather than the reverse. The preferred role of massed artillery and rockets systems is to destroy enemy formations, whilst manoeuvring infantry and tank formations have the role to fix the enemy."
" For this reason, it is widely recognised that the use of en masse indirect fire support at the tactical level is a signature characteristic of the Russian way of war. This explains why Russian military formations have a quantitatively superior artillery, with a broader variety of munitions available and the ability to strike at longer ranges than similar Western formations."
https://finabel.org/long-live-the-king-of-battle-the-return-to-centrality-of-artillery-in-warfare-and-its-consequences-on-the-military-balance-in-europe/
Ukraine are and losing right now as you read this…
To paraphrase Churchill on the promises of Putin's generals:
, "In three days Kiev will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Some chicken; some neck!
Defeatists and appeasers always wish to hurry the arrival of the conqueror, for in conquest they see opportunity for advancement.
I think Putin made many overtures for talks prior to the invasion, but has been rebuffed each time. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has been willing to abide by the Minsk agreements, though I think Ukraine has more to blame for this than Russia – however I could be wrong. Zelenskyy himself seems to have favoured peace talks, but he seems to have been overruled by the army – what wwould you call a state in which the army overrules its president? – I would call that a fascist state.
Putin just recently:
(On Peter the Great) "You might think he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands, But he seized nothing; he reclaimed it! It seems it has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen…"
Sound like a reasonable guy open to suave French diplomacy to you? He see it as his mission to recreate the Russian empire by conquest – why do you think Sweden and Finland are racing to join NATO? Those guys know by bitter experience how brutal an imperial and reactionary Russia can be.
As for the Ukraine is Nazi stuff, you have got to understand the Russian national myth on this that Putin believes in. The USSR defeated Nazi Germany. Therefore Russia, as the ultimate victor over Nazism, cannot ever be Nazi. furthermore, anyone who RESISTS Russia within it's "greater Russia" borders must automatically be a Nazi, since to not be a patriotic Russian can only be explained in terms of being a Nazi.
I recently read Stalingrad -the fateful siege,by british author Antony Beevor.
It mentioned that Hitlers operation Barbarossa armies had 275,000 ukrainian troops fighting the Russians.
Russian resistance at Stalingrad and their counter attack and encirclement of Von Paulus' 6th Army,was the turning point in the war .
The comparison is apt.
Filtration camps = concentration camps.
The Taxpayers Onion is boo-hooing about being banned, BANNED I TELLS YA, from LGNZ (Local Government New Zealand conferences from here to eternity and have sent out a STERN WARNING to councillors around the country!
[unattributed link deleted]
That e-mail smells like a fake. Where did you find it?
I've deleted it in the meantime. Same deal as below, if you provide the correct info, I will put it back in the comment.
Your quote came from someone else, but your comment made it look like it came from the Taxpayers Union.
You can probably find the TU statement online and link to that. Or you can provide the details of the email sender who wrote the original quote.
Both would make the issue more easily understood.
All good. Don't mind being quashed 🙂
it's not all good from my pov, it's just another piece of unnecessary work for us as mods. From people who know better (not just you, this aspect of moderation is coming from a range of regulars).
Won't do it again.
bookmarking, because people keep saying this.
It’s very hard to not see this as a disrespect of the site. Again, not just you, it’s happening every few days or do, people who have had it explained just doing what they want anyway. I don’t think it’s intentional disrespect, maybe more a distracted disrespect.
Emailed to my Council account.
There was a great deal more in the body.
The style (text), spelling mistakes, and inconsistencies not to mention the language don’t give you any pause to consider its veracity? Did you check the source of the e-mail?
Something is off here …
What were you expecting, you do realize Jordan Williams is a lawyer by profession don't you?
A better handling of the English language is expected too much of a Lawyer? It reads like a Nigerian scam.
Sorry, Incognito – the quote I supplied was from the prelude, written by someone else, on behalf of the communication from the Taxpayers Onion, that followed.
Not like they got no history of devious/nefarious behaviour
Interesting the Maori dislikers use of Utu? Of course thats only…Mr Jordan Williams spin
Also Interesting…ol’ Ruth Richardsons involvement…brrrr. Icy chill..
LOL! Guess who’s the Minister of LG …
LOL ?
Mr Guyton,
Were/are the good folks from the NZ Taxpayers Union barred from attendance at the LGNZ conference/s?
In passing the other day I did read about this, I though it outrageous that the Taxpayers Union folks were insisting that since 100% of the funding for Local and Central government comes from taxpayers and ratepayers then those people should be in the room when matters concerning the running of the Country or the Regions are being discussed or debated.
Outrageous I tells ya!!!
Silly folks obviously haven't got the message that democracy only operates during elections.
I guess, Rosemary, they became deplorable in the eyes of LGNZ.
“Former Minister of Finance, Hon Ruth Richardson – banned.
Former Broadcaster, Peter Williams – banned.
Political commentator, David Farrar – banned.”
If they don't agree with you then cancel them. That's the way.
100% Jimmy.
What would be the basis for cancelling these people? I mean I can't stand what RR did to the country. But Peter Williams? The sports guy? Farrar? Isn't he the guy who runs Curia polls?
What is the reason for cancelling these people? Are they any sort of threat?
If it is just because they will criticise what is being said and write about it then surely this is a bit bloody dangerous.
I didn't cancel them.
You seem to be blissfully unaware… 🙂
There is a difference between being an astroturf group purporting to represent citizens and actually having any such mandate. Good on LGNZ for refusing access to bad faith actors.
Sasha is correct. Sasha is smart. Ignore Sasha at your peril 🙂
as Beyonce says
So how do we the people hold local government to account? Get them to do their job? Get them to at least abide by their own Regional Plans and bylaws? I don't say 'vote them out'. You know damn well Sacha that a shit load of damage can be done in that three year window.
And its a seriously bad look to exclude any group from conferences pertaining to democratically elected and running-entirely-on- rates- and- taxes organisations. There should be nothing discussed at these functions that is hidden from us. Absolutely nothing.
At least allow attendance with no speaking rights, and sue their arses off if they report 'misinformation'.
LGNZ events are not designed as a way for citizens to lobby councils. You may argue they should be but it is not their function.
can always set up a protest at the door. Not really TU's style though.
Very good point Rosemary
"democracy only operates during elections."
It is reasonable to argue that it did not operate during the last New Zealand election.
Didn't the Labour Party hold their big opening meeting. Then, before the National Party opening, they increased the lockdown level so that a full scale opening was impossible for the National Party.
Coincidence? I really don't think so.
Don'tya just love nutcase conspiracy theorists?
The right in NZ is entering Donald territory!
Those folk only want democracy when they can use it to further their own spin. lol. No wonder they are banned.
100% Jimmy.
What would be the basis for cancelling these people? I mean I can't stand what RR did to the country. But Peter Williams? The sports guy? Farrar? Isn't he the guy who runs Curia polls?
What is the reason for cancelling these people? Are they any sort of threat?
If it is just because they will criticise what is being said and write about it then surely this is a bit bloody dangerous.
Probably Stuart Crosby had some ideas about what kind of participation these guys would have. Also, if your in the big leagues of pro National party spin then constructive involvement in government is "selling out".
That Goebbels fella should be able to take the podium whenever he likes.. #freedumb
It's like Godwin never even existed.
Or changed his mind
https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/896884949634232320
who decides which are the shitheads? And what happens when the shitheads have more power and decide that cancel culture is a good idea after all (we sanctioned it so we can hardly complain when it's turned on us).
When someone puts up the details about what actually happened with TU and the councils, I'll have an opinion about that, maybe I will think the ban is fair enough. Or maybe I'll be less impressed when it's say climate activists making submissions about Fonterra being banned from talking about climate.
Agree Weka about cancelling people. Its all well and good until it is your side being cancelled.
And actually I think it is weak to cancel people. Use good arguements, listen to your opponents as there could be a grain of truth in what they are sayin
g.
Cancelling people most likely sends them underground.
Same with the Leo Molloy stuff. The cries against Guy Williams for Platforming Molloy just play into Molloy’s hands. Streisand effect and all that.
Williams allowed people to see Molloy for what he is. People can make their own decisons based on that. But when you get people piling on Guy it will more than likely increase Molloys vote. Like it or not, I think this is the case
Must be time for this again. Nothing new here.
https://twitter.com/WealthandWant/status/1549764318002118658
I don't believe in unlimited free speech either. Not sure I would place TU quite in the same league as Nazis though and there are obvious problems in doing so in the NZ context.
Godwin appears to be talking about neo and proto Nazis in the US/Trump context, btw. Which was always fair game.
The question is what do any of these people have to do with Local Government that is more that just the basic ratepayer? They are an astroturf organisation at best. Why should the LGNZ let them in?
Visu, I don't know what they have that the basic ratepayers don't have other than quite a few rate payer members.
But if ordinary rate payers are allowed to go, I would wonder why a group who supposedly represents rate payers doesn't.
It is not an event for ratepayers to attend. These astroturfers think they are special.
It is not an event for ratepayers to attend.
Why? Seriously Sacha, why?
No big conspiracy. It has always been an event for people who work in local govt – like an industry conference.
Is not a substitute for engaging the citizens they serve. Or for astroturfers claiming a mandate.
Groundswell going full-nut-case:
[deleted]
TAKEOVER BY STATE CONTROL!!!
Eeeek!!
https://www.facebook.com/GroundswellNZ/ (if you must).
that's not a permanent link. If you provide a permanent link I will reinstate the copy and paste.
To get a permanent link, click on the date/time stamp of the post and then copy and paste the URL into a TS comment.
Not sure how to post a "permanent link". The one I did post is to the Groundswell page where the most recent post is the one I'm referring to. Too hard. Won't bother 🙂
It's quite simple, and I just explained how to do it in the comment you are replying to.
But sure, this isn't FB, it's not a place to just drop random out of context controversial quotes without political commentary.
I just went to their main page, found the first post, clicked on the time stamp, and copied this URL. It's only one step more than what you are doing already
https://www.facebook.com/GroundswellNZ/posts/pfbid0d9vkp7sfgnWVGMcdLZacjr54a6eiLoDeQTS3pQNYTqpwZtD6mgmqcr4dbQ5G3kFHl
and voila, TS now embeds the post for us.
Sweet. All good. Won't do that again.
I am not a supporter of NZ First or Winston Peters and I did not follow this court case. Nevertheless it sounds like yet another DP attempt to discredit NZ First and by association its leader:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/129142963/duo-found-not-guilty-in-new-zealand-first-foundation-political-donations-case
As far as the SFO is concerned I presume they had little choice but to pass the matter on to the police, but someone or some people were after their blood just before the last election?
Dodgy scheme involving big sums but carefully designed by Peters' associates so the party officials could not be breaking the Electoral Act that the prosecution relied on.
Very similar to the way Roger Douglas pocketed huge donations to spend as he wished during an election campaign rather than passing them through the party he supposedly belonged to at the time.
Mavericks find accountability inconvenient.
I was wrong about the law they tried with
https://twitter.com/GraemeEdgeler/status/1550305698864852998
Simplest summary I've seen – it was a Clayton's donation, your honour https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/07/22/nz-first-foundation-donations-accused-found-not-guilty/
Binary framing of powerdown vs industrial tech
Because that what it is. No energy = no tech = no suburbs however resilient.
There really is only one clear path through this paradox – nuclear energy. It is not perfect, there will be rats to swallow, but there is nothing else well understood and available now.
And to be clear I am not being confrontational for the sake of it. I have nothing against resilience or Retrosuburbia in itself. Hell I paid for the book. But as long as the developing world keeps building coal power stations pretty nothing else we do matters all that much.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
As I've said to you before, you either patently don't understand what the powerdown is, or you choose to misrepresent it. That you think it means no energy makes this really obvious. You are just plain wrong. eg Holmgren talks about power generation and appropriate use, using industrial tech.
I won't let people run such misrepresentational lines under posts I put up. At some point if you want to learn what the powerdown is, there will be conversations for that.
This is the most absurd abuse of moderation you have pulled yet.
I was speaking directly to the topic of industrialisation that I have a lifetime of education, experience and expertise in. Your inability to tolerate a legitimate challenge to your fixed views and then to abuse your power as moderator to derail the discussion is just wrong.
I resigned as a moderator because I could no longer stomach being associated with such dishonest and cowardly behaviour that fundamentally betrays the spirit purpose of moderation – and here you are repeating it. As I have often said – giving someone a little power quickly reveals their true character.
I won't let people run such misrepresentational lines under posts I put up.
The post was under Notices and Features. There was no indication who put it up.
Symptomatic of the rise of the more authoritarian left, that and cancel culture…
Direct quote,
The powerdown doesn't mean no energy. It doesn't mean no tech. It doesn't mean no industrial tech. I'm sick of explaining this to you.
When you say it means no energy, you are making shit up. It doesn't matter if I authored the post or not, I'm still not letting people make shit up. No-one else would be allowed to do this either.
I'm only shifting your comments though. The reason I am is that I've engaged many times in the past with the false part of your argument (as a commenter and as a mod) and you just don't listen, you keep misrepresenting the thing you are arguing against. Then when I point out the problem, you attack me. These are pretty basic debate rules: don't distort the argument, don't attack the person.
People challenge my ideas all the time, and then we debate. When you are willing to do that without distorting the thing you are critiquing, there won't be a problem.
And I am sick of you pretending to know you understand anything about industrialisation when I am fairly sure – prove me wrong – you have never set foot in a large scale heavy industrial plant in your life.
And I don't mean some little kiwi light manufacturer – I mean this scale. I spent my whole working life in these places, designing, building. commissioning the automation systems that make them work. I understand the processes, the material and energy transformations intimately.
And I understand Powerdown just fine thank you:
First of all the 'tremendous effort and economic sacrifice' is quantitatively unspecified. What is more it places all the burden for this on the top 1b or so people in the developed world, while pretending the other 7b or so do not exist and will be content to remain poor forever. The numbers do not add up without some political means to impose austerity and poverty on the world – again forever.
Then it suggests alternative energy sources can replace fossil fuels, yet solar wind and battery are very unlikely to do this – so far their total generation contribution barely matches the older nuclear capacity we are incomprehensibly turning off – much less replace the massive supply and reliability of fossil fuel generation. In some geographies SWB will work well enough to be a useful transitional tech, but long-term it locks us into a mean, miserable world deficient in everything.
And then it demands ' and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time. '. What exactly does systematically mean in this context – another Maoist One Child policy – only global in scope. That's a downright dystopian and authoritarian anti-human vision right there.
Besides it ignores the simple reality that all developing and industrialised nations are already reducing their populations quite naturally – the only places on earth where population is still rising from high birth rates are in the already powered down nations in Africa. Completely contradictory.
The problem here is that I did all of this hippie inspired, alt-tech, powerdown, resilience stuff in the 80's. It has it's place and I retain a soft-spot for it – but saving the planet it ain't going to cut mustard.
You just made that up right? You didn't see someone like Heinberg advocating for the wealthy countries to power down and leave the poor countries to remain poor.
Again, this is your thinking. Imo it comes from your ideological opposition to powerdown and your belief that anything other than global BAU will lead to Terrible Things. This is a failure of knowledge of the large body of work done by various pd and transition people and groups, and a lack of imagination.
It's an analysis that also ignores that we are out of time and have to drop GHGs now, fast.
Your definition of Powerdown seems to depend on which question you are answering.
If you want it to save the world, then in order to make any meaningful difference the top 1b in the developed world will have to make a 'tremendous sacrifice'.
If you want it to sound not so scary then Powerdown is like – we get to keep all the good industrial tech we like, but somehow turn off all the bad things we don't like. Even when you really offer no idea how to disentangle them.
Listen up: we are going to lose everything. All of it. If we don't reduce GHGs fast. This isn't fringe theory, it's the mainstream prediction now.
The powerdown offers us some solutions. It doesn't solve all of the problems, it's not a panacea. In particular, it offers places like NZ and Oz an immediate way to start reducing GHGs, and shifting use from the systems that are killing the planet to ones that fit better into resiliency and sustainability methods.
I haven't given you a definition of the powerdown, I've simply responded to each time you interpret it through your industrial mindset and pointed out where you are missing the point.
Yes, we will. It's still less of a sacrifice than if we continue with BAU. Tremendous sacrifice doesn't have to mean nasty brutish and short, but it will if we don't act soon.
I didn't say we get to keep all the good industrial tech we like. We're past that, that's the point. Had we fronted up to CC in the 70s and 80s, we might have been able to transition to a green tech society, but that opportunity is gone, we no longer have the time for that.
What we can do is keep the stuff that we can keep. I already pointed out that if we don't drop GHGs soon we will lose it all anyway. But if we were to transition now, I can't see why we can't keep glass and steel for instance. And yes, I understand the massive complexity of the globarl steel supply chain at a lay person level, but I'm not saying we get to keep that. I'm saying we should transition to sustainability (because that's the only way we survive), and as part of that we should look at how best to manage steel as a crucial resource.
Good/bad is another unhelpful binary. The area I have the best sense of is food. Some argue that we can't replace industrial ag, but people are doing this all the time already. We already have those techs and systems to transition to. What we don't have is the political and social buy in, and imo arguments like I'm having with you today are part of the reason why. You are blocking it, because you can't see how it would work. Instead of learning how it might work, you put up lots of reasons why it won't without even understanding what it is.
The link displays the source of electricity production. You can modify the search by country, the 2nd link is the NZ position. The world position Coal & Gas dominance is a concern and how to replace our dependancy with BAU ??
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix#:~:text=Globally%20we%20see%20that%20coal,and%20solar%20are%20growing%20quickly.
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix#:~:text=Globally%20we%20see%20that%20coal,and%20solar%20are%20growing%20quickly.
one obvious part of it is to lessen how much power we need. BAU isn't going to survive. It's just not. We can't green it in time, and there is still a massive amount of our economies that is extractive and degenerative not renewable and regenerative.
There's a cross over with food production. Obviously shipping chilled food across the globe and then across country is massively wasteful. But on top of that we waste a huge amount of the food produced 15 – 30%. That's a waste of the food, but it's also a waste of the embodied energy (farming, transport, packaging, labour, and so on).
There is no cross over with food production ( changes in agronomy being an eschatological problem) as Borlaug said .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
In his Nobel acceptance speech he quantified the problem as such.( on the green revolution)
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/borlaug-lecture.pdf
To meet the shared economic pathways (ipcc) we need to sustain the global population at 8 billion by 2050 and 6 billion by 2100.We hit the 8 billion number in november this year,so we need to state there is a limit to growth at our present population (and significantly reduce immigration) to sustain our economic capacity .
Here we are living beyond our economic means (its debt funded) as we are already struggling to pay our way,(unsustainable due to high immigration and infrastructure costs to meet the existing demands).
I was pointing to energy used in the global supply of food.
We probably wouldn't have climate catastrophe.
At the same time, we invented new forms of contraception. We could have made that easily accessible to any woman who wanted or needed it.
But we did bring more fragile land into ag, and we continue to do so. In a perpetual growth world that will never end.
I don't get your point. At the end of your comment you talk about the limits of growth. Borlaug appears to not understand it so why quote him?
And yes, NZ has a set of specific problems from the growth economy spurred on by neoliberalism.
No there was two parts,firstly the population growth in emergent countries was sustained by technological advancement,the postwar dream was that global poverty and hunger was to be eliminated.
Borlaug who started in the 1930's depression with the US forestry corp,planting windbreaks and shelter belts to reduce soil ,and moisture loss (Duststorms etc) on the US plains saw what poverty was in real terms.
Removal of the programmes funding especially into Africa saw that marginal land was needed to meet population growth from disease suppression.( the constraints were mostly from Europe,and continue with them stating last month that they would allow funding for African LNG,but not allow them to produce fertilizer)
The use of fertilizers have allowed both an increase in population and life expectancy globally.
From an energy perspective it is only in the last decade where technological development has made renewables cost efficient (over time nuclear is very cost efficient) in the 70's and 80's we only had hydro and geothermal.In NZ over the last 15 years electricity generation and consumption are flatlining (only the mix of generation and use have changed)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
The trouble is that it was always a stop gap.
For the second half of the century it brought a greater stability,then the first 50 years.In the US it allowed a decrease in agriculture jobs and a move to higher paying factory work,a decrease in the birth rate,higher education,then reversal with a war (yom kippur) an oil shock,energy shock and price inflation,etc increase in crime,disease sort of like today.
I believe it was (correction) Borlaug who said "it has bought us some time. that is all"
Without the GR developing countries GDP would have been 1/2 of today.Emerging markets that changed from subsistence farming,developed a middle class that brought some stability from the "colonel regimes" but unstable due to capital flight.
The Europe experiment ( trading e=mc2 for Russian CH4) will be tested this winter and with it the european socio economic dream as energy austerity takes place.
Despite the importance attributed to it (and there is no doubt of its impact) …as far as Im concerned finance and 'money' ultimately mean little….real resources are what count.
Ok, but I don't see the connection with my comment about one aspect of the powerdown (food supply and waste)
Time for the government to tell the truth about nuclear power | Letters | The Guardian
“The gap in efficacy and competitiveness between nuclear and other options is continually growing. Supporting nuclear, rather than energy efficiency, wind and solar, slows down climate action, bleeds taxpayers, forgoes jobs and forces unnecessarily large and regressive burdens on consumers”.
From your reference:
Of these claims the only one with any merit is that it is expensive in it's current form.
The primary reason is that the industry is insanely over-regulated and over-engineered. The secondary reason is that conventional project-based builds are exceedingly complex and prone to delays due to relatively minor matters cascading into GANTT charts.
(Indeed this is not an issue confined to the nuclear industry – I have seen the same delays and cost over-runs across the whole of the engineering business. The current commercial and contract models we are legally compelled to work under are well overdue some serious reform.)
But here is a point few people think about – if climate change really is the existential threat we expect it to be – then the expense really does not matter.
And even this objection goes away when we consider that all the next gen designs – and yes they will be delivered this decade – are going to be factory built machines delivered to the point of use as a commodity asset. This change alone will make the economics directly competitive with coal on a levelised cost basis.
Why go to that expense, in resources and labour, when we already have cheaper and easier energy efficient options.
Like the enthusiasm for hydrogen cars, nuclear power is a money making exercise for the proponents, not a viable solution.
BTW. Wind is already cheaper and more reliable than coal. And the plant is much simpler and easier to produce thann either. Nuclear would have to do a lot better than “Matching coal”.
Of course if reactors are developed that solve the problems, i.e. Fusion? all bets are off. But after billions thrown at it over decades, nuclear energy is no closer to solving the blatantly obvious issues.
We are already powering down. Many processes in industry are much more energy efficient than they used to be. To give just one area. . That is part of the answer. Investment in NZ, and elsewhere into renewables is long overdue and is another part.
Magical solutions just direct money away from proven technology, and makes Snake oil salesmen, rich!
Like the enthusiasm for hydrogen cars, nuclear power is a money making exercise for the proponents, not a viable solution.
If I was proposing hydrogen cars you might have a point, but I was not. At that scale lithium batteries are a better engineering fit. But as you go bigger the weight of the battery increases and you wind up expending a larger and larger fraction of the stored energy just moving the battery about. The same goes if you attempt to extend the range.
Therefore there is an effective upper limit on the size and range of vehicle batteries will be useful in. A battery powered Seuzmax is not feasible with any foreseeable tech.
On the other hand hydrogen is exceptionally energy dense, about twice that of petrol. Storing lots of energy without incurring a huge weight penalty is not a problem. So even though the total energy efficiency for hydrogen is initially lower, once the weight and range reach a certain point – hydrogen becomes the optimum choice.
And if you have generated that hydrogen using carbon free solar, wind or nuclear energy – you really don't care so much about the lower efficiency or cost for that matter.
And besides – using hydrogen for transport is not a priority in my view – the obvious and most effective use is in Direct Hydrogen Conversion in steel making.
Wind is already cheaper and more reliable than coal. And the plant is much simpler and easier to produce thann either. Nuclear would have to do a lot better than “Matching coal”.
Well that might be true in some favourable circumstances – but this source suggests quite the opposite:
The reliability of renewable sources is solvable by building more plants throughout the grid area, and/or using stored power.
Even then much less expensive and a hell of a lot safer than nuclear.
I did have thoughts that nuclear maybe the best option for countries like Germany. Advances in wind, solar and tidal/wave energy, and storage have now changed that equation.
As for hydrogen. We will start to see hydrogen fueled ships very soon. It needs to be regarded as a weight efficient battery however, utilising sustainably produced hydrogen, rather than an energy source. The sums just don't add up for land transport, especially cars, that can have power supplied directly from the grid. The whole car paradigm needs to change. Most city commuters don't need cars. They need Golf carts, or scooters, where public transport doesn’t work.
Hydrogen for steel making is, of course, already happening. https://emagazines.com/Account/ExpressLoginVerify?vc=87dc3b42-bb16-4830-8b5b-ae769632553c&ct=c172740c-ad0e-48bb-95ee-72b8c109e4d8&plid=82
There are some advances in low emmission gas power plants as well. The oil industry may make this work. As they have a very strong incentive to do so.
Even then much less expensive and a hell of a lot safer than nuclear.
I have covered off the cost aspect above. Although I might add that SWB can be cheap on an installed nameplate capacity basis, because you have to so grossly overbuild it – as the Germans have discovered – that it becomes very expensive indeed.
The Germans have gone all in on wind like no-one else, yet as I linked above – it produces in reality barely 10% net extra generation and it needs constant backing up with natural gas or lignite burning coal stations.
(Lignite has the peculiar property that it is about 20% water by weight and this means the plants need to be run steadily. As a result it makes a very poor SWB backup. And apparently the Germans are running some very peculiar accounting to make this fact less obvious.)
And that is before you consider what happens as the solar and wind penetration starts to rise, the storage and grid complexity costs also rise exponentially.
Not to mention the vast areas of land involved, the relatively short lifespan of solar panels and wind turbines, the vast amount of materials and waste they produce – all negatives that never get mentioned.
Yes I am more than happy to accept technical progress in the SWB field will continue – just as it will for nuclear – but some honesty around the limitations is necessary.
As for the safety aspect – well you already know perfectly well nuclear is one of the best by a very substantial margin. Nuclear could have delivered us a fully decarbonised world decades ago. But instead fearmongering ideologues blocked it.
As soon as you start mentioning "vast areas of land" required, and resource use and lifespan of wind turbines etc, I start questioning the sources you are using.
Germany is far from utilising more than a small fraction of their possible renewables. And they would be one of the worst off for renewables.
Safety of nuclear power. You forgot to calculate total risk per unit of power over the whole lifetime of the plant, plus the decades of risk from the stored waste after deccom.. It changes the risk and expense numbers greatly.
Any calculation of solar and wind footprints show they use a small fraction of the land area we use for agriculture, let alone the total land area available. F
Unlike biofuels for one example. That, to replace oil in NZ, would use our viable growing land and then some, while requiring replacement fertilisers using even more land.
You can work it out yourself, but we did some of it on here a while back.
I have linked to this TEDx some years back. David McKay was (he passed away recently) a physicist. The talk was given some years back, but the method of analysis still holds.
As I have said repeatedly, SWB makes sense in some favoured geopgraphies, but it has it's limits.
But worse than this, you must into account the inevitable doubling or tripling of current demand due to the 7b or so people in the developing world continue to become more prosperous..
Then I would double that again to allow for the energy needed to extract carbon from the atmosphere if we are really serious about the climate (as distinct from merely collapsing the economy). You arrive at a rough back of envelope total global energy demand by mid-century that is somewhere between 4 – 10 times the current number.
You forgot to calculate total risk per unit of power over the whole lifetime of the plant, plus the decades of risk from the stored waste after deccom.
Your first claim can be set aside – the data referenced is indeed based on the lifetime of all nuclear plants already operating.
Your second claim assumes a hazard that has never happened. So far no-one has ever been harmed by spent solid fuel rod storage, which represents a much lower risk than many other serious waste streams from many other industries.
And I get kind of tired pointing this out – we already know that 97% of the energy in so called spent fuel rods remains. The French re-process their spent rods and effective recycle the uranium. We also understand that 'fast spectrum' reactors can consume this existing stockpile as fresh fuel. Otherwise known as Waster Burners this approach reduces the volume of waste by better than 95% and the time needed to securely store down to a manageable few hundred years. (And really only the first few decades are critical.
The point is that we already have several perfectly responsible ways to handle spent fuel. (David Le Blanc has designed more real world reactors than most people have owned cars.)
Nuclear has the same issue as lignite…..flat generation necessitating surge demand support..i.e gas.
flat generation necessitating surge demand support
Existing PWR designs yes. Once you ramp them down there is a period of some hours while you have to let the Xenon fission byproduct decay away before you can effectively ramp back up again.
However reactor designs that remove the Xenon (it is a gas) fairly quickly because they are working in a liquid phase are able to mitigate this problem substantially. Better still molten salt designs have a strong negative coefficient of reactivity; if you add more thermal load which cools the core, the reactivity innately rises and the power generation intrinsically rises to match the new load. And vice versa. This makes them very good load following machines on a timeframe of 10s of minutes.
Another approach is just to run the reactor at close to nameplate all the time and divert the electrical output instantaneously between grid loads and an energy store – such has heating a mass of non-nuclear molten salt or generating carbon free hydrogen. In this way you can schedule nuclear down to milliseconds
So yes while nuclear is conventionally best suited for relatively fixed base load applications, in reality this is not a limitation.
If anyone didn't see a recession coming, China, our largest trading partner in all our key exports, is about to take us down with them.
Economists See China 2022 GDP Below 4% on Covid, Global Risks – BNN Bloomberg
I have quite a few friends who live on low incomes. They choose this lifestyle because they don't want to be working 40 hours a week. They also grow a sizeable chunk of their own food, which reduces their weekly budget needs considerably.
This isn't a panacea, but it's easy to see how such food security creates a buffer during a recession. We could be enabling this for many people.
It's the middle of winter, nothing is growing.
We have near-zero elasticity in petrol use.
We have one of the least safe urban environments for cycling in the OECD and one of the highest levels of car ownership and use.
Good on your friends. I'm sure they exist. But this government is now forking out billions and billions a month on everyone including your friends just to help them survive.
This is the year that people just hang on for dear life.
and? People still grow food in winter, they preserve food too. NZ knows how to store grains. Meat is available all year round. Dairy and eggs too, although it's debatable if that's sustainable.
I'm hearing friends now talk about the fact that we may not be able to travel like we used to. These are people who have travelled a lot.
Maybe now, finally, people will car pool and ride share.
The government definitely has some big challenges. Hanging on for dear life won't work unless we think somehow next year everything is going to come right. It's also not our only choice. Those that really are having to hang on for dear life need those better off to change and fast.
At the moment the vast majority of New Zealanders are under immense financial pressure and mental pressure. There's no maybe's on that. There's no silver lining. Most things are getting worse very fast.
No, there's no sign of major transport mode change. Great if they do, but mode change tends to happen in summer.
Advising the poor about how to grow vegetables is just patronising cant.
The people who are preparing for the worst are on the right track.
I didn't do that though. I'm saying people who can can set up systems, and help those that can't. Shit loads of people in this country would be growing food if they had the tools, skills and land. We have those three things in abundance. Wealthy people can pay people to grow food they don't have time to, giving people that love gardening meaningful work. None of this hard, and none of it requires a massive shift other than for some imagination* and dropping the fatalistic it's too hard, it's too late, can't be done messaging.
*or letting the people who already get it have the funds and power to just get on with it.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/471419/gender-diverse-people-missing-cervical-screenings-due-to-health-software-setup
This is what happens when you try and deny biological sex.
An easy fix is for people to tick female if they are …..female.
It will be interesting to see how this is managed. The most pragmatic thing and the thing that would help our over burdened health system would be to inform trans and non binary people who are women to tick the female box so they can ensure they get the correct medical follow up for their sex.
The most pragmatic thing and the thing that would help our over burdened health system ….
Thank you Anker. I do my MSM reading at 5am and that particular contribution caught my bleary eye and more than deserves a place here. I nearly posted meself…but couldn't find the phraseology that wasn't judgey.
And I kinda got a little tense when Fearless Reporter used the phrase 'people with cervixes…'
Well, it's not as if people highlighted the importance of adding a gender field instead of changing the sex one. Did they?
Retains accuracy, and beneficial for collating information to improve transgender healthcare.
It was trans advocates and allies that spoke against such a measure.
And now it's used as an example of marginalisation and poor healthcare.
….used as an example of marginalisation and poor healthcare.
No, no, no, Molly…it's so much more than that.
Moira Clunie is the project lead at rainbow organisation Te Ngākau Kahukura and said "it's a massive issue of health equity" that meant there was a group of people who could be subject to poorer health outcomes.
Where's the eye -roll emoji when you need it?
"Where's the eye -roll emoji when you need it?"
Cheers, Rosemary.
Daughter and I had a quiet chuckle because I'd said exactly the same when posting my comment.
There are probably a bunch of men who demand we refer to them as women missing out on their prostate screenings as well. Science denial comes around to bite them sooner or later.
Not a massive issue of health equity. Its a massive own goal. But they will turn it into an issue which adds to their "victim" status……..sorry if that seems a bit unkind, but really I am just a little over the msm single narrative on this.
This denies people without a womb the opportunity of a cervical smear test.
Could being female be a white elephant in some wombs?
Where does the government get its understanding of reality. $860,000 IS affordable for a 1st home or at the lower end $550,000 for 1 bedroom ??🤬 . I am well aware that the kiwibuild managers are in the market with fixed price contracts, don’t they follow the media 18% increase in costs yet the poor contactor and stubbie has to take all the risk. Time for these guys to get out of their office and try to have some connection with the REAL world- because theire is none being displayed currently.
https://www.kiwibuild.govt.nz/about-kiwibuild/home-price-caps/
"Where does the government get its understanding of reality. "
Good question, Herodotus.
(One I could only attempt to answer with much disdain, and some swearing. So I'm self-censoring.)