(it’s always a good idea to start yr day with a belly-laff..and this one’ll do it for ya..)
..parker has had his thinking cap on…
..and he has come up with what really ails labour..
..and hold onto your seats..!..it’s the colour red…
(..and the fact that labour supporters are members of ‘a cult’..(!)..)
..no no..!..c’mon..!..hear him out..!
“..Like a cult and too red – Parker on Labour..(ed:..breaking news..!..parker has discovered what labours’ problems are..it’s the colour red..(!)..(who knew..?..)
(ed:..any reader-suggestions for a new colour from/for labour..?
..i reckon a pale-blue wd pretty much nail it..eh..?..
..and well done! to that parker ..eh.?
..for his keen analysis/solutions to all that ails labour..
Like, Labour is not National Lite already!!!
SMH in disbelief.
I hope he gets sucked into a black hole of political oblivion, or just switch on to leading ACT. That would suit his ideology I suppose.
Obviously Parker hasn’t any acquaintances who worship the colour blue. I had several conversations before the election with diehard National voters who constantly spoke of the importance of the colour blue *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*.
I can imagine your parties – a whole lot of slobs having a fart competition and boasting about the sexual conquests they’d have if feminism hadn’t turned women against them. Hmm, a bit like Sealord Jones and Back Pussy Tamihere mixed with Jamie Whyte Power and Simon Bridges. Yuck.
Anyone hear Suzie Ferguson’s interview of Len Brown on Morning Report?
The whole tine and content sounded like Cameron Slater provided her with the direction for the interview.
Dirty Politics alive and well.
And now on Morning Report.
Disgraceful.
Really rude interviewing. Gotcha stuff. Rather than any discussion about the need to extend rail. Why does she have to do it that way – she seems to have a particular hatred of mayors of the left because she does the same to Lianne Dalziel.
ALL of morning reports interviews are like this – gyon only looked good on the JK/dirty pol one because of the dumb answers the PM gave – not because the interview method changed
The problem I have framu, what does one listen to or see first thing in the morning for local news
You’ve got Gyon on Morning Report, That dick called Christy complete with simpering sidekick on TV One, and soon we will have prat Henry on Three.
Definitely a need for a completely independent news channel.
@ Paul
I noticed something in her interview on – Does NZ want elite universities? where she was hammering the bit about the salaries perhaps being too high as a way of bringing fees down. They do truly compete against overseas in this, unlike our many CEOs, economists and service providers to gummint who talk their own increments up and up.
Also MPs who are two a penny, and probably should be judged for salary increases from that level!
She let one question get away and that was the amount spent on advertising and promotion, which the speaker assured here was tiny compared to their overall budget, of which salaries amounted to 60%. I believe advertising can be around $2 million which if halved could provide $1m of discretionary money, a useful amount. And does that sum include PR also, which seems to have ballooned as a sapper of budgets in many government-related organisations.
A good point made was that the cpi measures certain household requirements and unis have disproportionate high labour costs so really aren’t so concerned about household matters. (For instance, the rise in the price of cabbages, which was quoted one year when the CPI had risen strongly in the vegetable ‘basket’).
The fact is the educators and researchers are underpaid, micro managed and controlled, while a new class of University “managers” are getting the dosh.
But hose organisations that do need them need competent ones, not managers who are merely competent at climbing the corporate ladder and empire-building.
No, I’m pretty sure that there’s no organisations that need managers. They may need some administration types, and good ones at that, but not managers.
During a debate in the House of Lords, [Lord Freud] appeared to describe the changing number of disabled people likely to receive the employment and support allowance as a “bulge of, effectively, stock”. After a furious response by the people he was talking about, this was transcribed by Hansard as “stopped”, rendering the sentence meaningless. I’ve listened to the word several times on the parliamentary video. Like others, I struggle to hear it as anything but “stock”.
If we’re right, he is not the only person at his department who uses this term. Its website describes disabled people entering the government’s work programme for between three and six months as “3/6Mth stock”. Perhaps this makes sense when you remember that they are a source of profit for the companies running the programme. The department’s delivery plan recommends using “credit reference agency data to cleanse the stock of fraud and error”. To cleanse the stock: remember that.
Is it reassuring or sinister that in the comments of this article by George Monbiot there are people who think this article is an over-reaction to computer language? It’s the programs that call people ‘stock’ and no problem that humans are just repeating it, they don’t really think like that, they say.
Sorry can’t agree with you on that one TRP
I worked for one particular company for over 20 years, The owner who was an officer and a gentleman and a war hero would refer to any member of his staff as a valued member of the company. I am sure he would have been horrified if they were referred as a “human resource.”
We know businesses need resources, but there is not the need to refer to staff as some form of stock item. to be used and abused and possibly sold off in end of year sales.
I have just noticed, I had another silly old sod (SOS) moment
That word creped should have been crept. Ah well, suppose you can’t win them all.
halfcrown- The best I heard in a corporate report and actually used by an HR relative of mine a few years ago was ‘human capital’ but the term doesn’t seem to have taken off.
Shame..I’d already prepared a response (more vehement than halfcrown’s) to the first person who referred to me as human capital but I think Key & co. consider NZ workers as human capital.
Don’t mind ‘Personnel’ as it seems to still regard employees (and employers) as persons.
So David Parker thinks that the colour red is Labour’s problem…..I would have thought it was the colour yellow.
If not the coward’s colour perhaps the white flag of surrender?
All our State houses are to be emptied and sold, NZ is to be plunged into a Middle East War and white collar fraud has been proven to be bleeding our society dry….and this doofus is on about colours and how passionate he can be.
Meanwhile, yesterday (I guess because I was signed up as a Green Party volunteer for the last election), I got an email from Metiria Turei saying the campaign for next election starts today. It asks for donations and lays out the principles for the next election:
We’ll be the best MPs we can be, pushing for our policies wherever we can. And we’ll re-engage young people and disenfranchised voters.
We’re aiming to make sure every New Zealander knows we care about developing a fairer, cleaner and smarter New Zealand all of the time, not just because there’s an election.
[…]
Each election becomes more important than the last. This National government keeps trashing our precious environment and increasing the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.
It’s up to us to think about our long term future and the planet’s survival. The Green Party’s future role depends on us starting the campaign for 2017 today!
That is pretty much what the Greens always do. their aim is to work with any party if it will further th GP agenda. The outcome last term highlighted the differences between Nats and the Greens’ policies, resulting in Nats rebuffing them.
I expect pretty much the same this time round – the Greens therefore highlight just how radically right wing Key’s government is.
Used carefully that refusal can be used to embarass JK as much as possible.
BTW what is it with Nact and others suggesting that the Greens stick only to enviroment policies. The Greens can do as they please, without Nact;’s loud controlling voice .
At the moment the Greens go for sustainable business practices, hardly anti growth, more like a rechannel of effort, and sharing what we have equally.
Some one a little scared perhaps?
I’d like to see Russell/Meretai front footing some of the ‘ we have better business idea’s than you lot because you pinch them”
BTW what is it with Nact and others suggesting that the Greens stick only to enviroment policies.
National are trying to kill off the Greens. They know as well as I do that single issue parties haven’t got snowball’s chance in a furnace of surviving.
A political party, to be relevant, needs to address all of a societies issues.
National’s mates are delusional if they think they can load all the costs of resource depletion and climate change, while they continue with profligate lifestyles, onto the “untermensch” without the pitchforks.
“Capitalism doesn’t work without socialism”.
Greens are hardly extreme, with policies that would have been considered mainstream by Holyoak’s National party.;
In the media coverage that followed, the conversation coalesced around a central idea: even if promised, is privacy truly achievable?
Personally, I still work on the idea that nothing I do on the internet is anonymous.
For the internet to work the computers need to track the data that is sent and received. Cannot get away from that. Even if geo-tagging is turned off the IP address will give the receivers of data packets from you a reasonable idea as to where you are. The telco will know precisely where you are.
The question isn’t whether the data will be recorded, it will be. The question is who gets to look at it afterwards and when.
And, the Flickr Vision team has been working for the last year or so to be able to recognize more than 1000 things in images using deep convolutional neural nets. Incidentally, one of the things we’re pretty good at recognizing is birds!
Interesting that Metiria Turei has been receiving calls from National voters urging the Greens to team up with the Nats because these Nat voters are feeling guilty about voting for Key etc.
well blow me down with a feather ….. expect more as this term goes on …. it will be like the vote for mmp – where later on nobody admits to their voting.
When it comes to provisions for retirement, super etc, I suspect the default perspective many slip into, focuses more on a masculine life trajectory.
In general, women on average earn less than men, and tend to have time out from participating in the paid workforce, in order to raise children, and tend to have smaller amounts in retirement funds or investments.
Stuff has an article today about the trend towards a higher percentage of women working past 65 years, and the problems for women in low paid jobs.
The percentage of women aged 65+ in the workforce has risen from 2 per cent 20 years ago to 15 per cent today. In 20 years, people aged over 65 could occupy 12 per cent of the workforce, up from 5 per cent in 2011. By then, 30 per cent of women this age will be in paid work. Only 10 per cent of women aged 65+ with no formal qualifications are employed, compared with 23 per cent of women with post-school qualifications. Women are now more educated than men in all age brackets except for those over 60.
Well, PI and Maori men, though given secondary consideration, do tend to get more focus in the debates, than do women generally.
Yes, Pakeha men are the dominant consideration with respect to assumptions about life trajectories of older people.
Maori and Pacific men are likely to be in a much more difficult situation as they get older, than Pakeha men, and than large numbers of Pakeha women
But the varying situations of women are generally given even less consideration in the debates.
Women on low pay, especially those with no formal education qualifications, and including a high proportion of Maori and Pacific women, are often in a very difficult position as they get older. They often need to keep working for the income. It’s harder for such women to find work as they get older. And on average they tend to live about 4-5 years longer than Maori or Pacific men.
Such women probably need both super at 65 years, plus at least some part time work, because they are unlikely to have any further savings or investments.
Also, people tend to talk of boomers as all being wealthy, owning their own homes, etc. Yet the stats in the article say that women over 60 overall have fewer formal educational qualifications than younger women.
Yep. Men consistently earn more than women in the same position, and also tend to get higher positions.
NB I was referring to the big difference between PI/Maori earning power vs Pakeha earning power. My sense is that being PI or Maori instead of Pakeha is actually a bigger factor in pay inequality than gender.
The biggest indicator of future earnings is the socio-economic status of your parents and grandparents. Which disproportionately effects Maori, and PI, and totally refutes the idea that New Zealand is a meritocracy where we have “equality of opportunity”.
(The other big indicator, for boys and girls, is the education level of their mother)
I wonder how much it is skewed by what I see around me. Young women in all the retail and service jobs. Young men, especially Maori, without jobs. If you are a young Maori male you would have to be very highly educated to get a job.
Of course it means that the only young Maori males with jobs are in the higher paid ones.
Sue Bradford’s bill advocating openness about pay would have identified whether the problem is gender, or something more complex. Then we could have argued from fact, not impressions.
There is a whole other discussion about how keeping pay rates secret suits employers, and those who discriminate.
With National awards a non-union shop assistant or office worker could point to what the Union members were getting, as a benchmark.
Many of those who reckon they do not need Unions are totally unaware of how much they benefited by the foundations set in wages and conditions by Unions.
There is a whole other discussion about how keeping pay rates secret suits employers, and those who discriminate.
There’s a lot of stuff that’s kept secret because of privacy that benefits the business class. Stuff that shouldn’t be kept private because it affects others thus making it public.
They also , thanks to our judge made laws, get very little out of marriage breakdown, shoulder the bulk of the $ costs of raising the kids, as well as providing the free childcare, and meet any costs for the over 18 crowd. Women should be able to attach the super of the male parent – why not?
A book just published by Bridget Williams here The Picketty Phenomenon- A NZ Perspective. On Radionz this morning there were three commenters Geoff Bertram, Donal Curtin, Susan Guthrie from the Morgan phenomenon! http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20154344
What I have taken from this is not necessarily right but this is how it seems. The idea is to reshape the tax system to reflect fairly where wealth is being produced – from investments etc. The Morgan study on tax is taking the view that all assets should be taxed and that would include the family home. But the tax would be on the individual’s own investment, so it would be a tax on unrealised income from that.
That may be fair on a macro level, but an income-poor person with a house shouldn’t have to sell the house so as to be able to pay for the tax on it, on top of all the other costs relating to house owning including rates, maintenance, repairs. Or sell it to someone else who can afford to pay the tax and outlay for the other costs, and rent it from them. The poor person would then change position from an asset holder to a less certain position as a renter. Which could happen.
It is hard on the poor trying for some social upward mobility and security to have a tax on even part of their house value, that would cause their small amount of discretionary money, available for their non-necessity needs and wants, to transfer to the disposable part from which they must pay for the fixed and other costs imposed by authorities, and service providers.
It is likely they will be stretched to pay their mortgage, which usually will be principal and interest from which banks make considerable income, which is really unearned income. Perhaps the banks should be paying the tax on the property. which is only the buyer’s by convention, and while the payments are made promptly. Under the mortgage the property can be claimed by the bank and sold for recovery in a very short time, a fortnight or month, after failure of the mortgagor to pay their required instalment owing on the required date.
Radionz Notes.
09:20 The Piketty Phenomenon
The global debate on taxing wealth, sparked by economist Thomas Piketty and his proposals for improving income equality. Piketty’s thesis is contained in his bestselling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
The new book, The Piketty Phenomenon collects New Zealand responses to Thomas Piketty’s argument that inherited wealth will always grow faster, on average, than earned wealth.
Three New Zealand economists discuss Piketty’s thesis in the New Zealand context – Geoff Bertram is a research associate at the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University; Susan Guthrie is the co-author of the 2011 book, The Big Kahuna with Gareth Morgan which argued for significant tax and welfare reform to redistribute wealth; and Donal Curtin is the former chief economist at the BNZ and now works as a consultant.
A wealth or capital gains tax, can be net. After interest.
Note that if I build a spec house, I have to pay tax on it, whereas the many people in Auckland whose house prices have risen hundreds of thousands, through no effort of theirs, pay nothing.
And that is why we get housing bubbles and why political parties have such difficulty implementing a CGT. Lazy people looking for the easy way to become rich rather than going out and working for it.
Yes its frakking annoying. Working for a living barely pays in comparison to speculating on bits of ticky tacky construction materials thrown together.
Youth are the new poor and the new underclass …Unless they have rich parents they will never be able to afford a house…let alone tertiary education debt and in particular postgraduate tertiary education …. both in Britain and in New Zealand… Youth have been sold out! …Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss and Prof Antal Fekete gives further background.
“In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss Johnny Rotten challenging Russell Brand and offer the show as a platform for a debate between the two. Max notes that quantitative easing is the central bank equivalent of punk rock gobbing. They highlight several of the many market distortions similar to the insanity leading up to the 1929 market crash – including $140,000 AUD cats.
In the second half, Max continues with his interview of Professor Antal Fekete of FeketeResearch.com about how the 1921 bond market collapse led the US Federal Reserve & Treasury conspiring to illegally introduce open market operation, leading to a situation in which profits in the bond market are risk free while profits in the commodity market are NOT risk free.
* Yet she says she did not consult with Cunliffe before making her decision.
Cunliffe had already given his endorsement to Andrew Little by then and did not change that after Mahuta entered. Mahuta said she had not asked him to.
*”Cunliffe’s decision around the leadership was his. I had no influence over that.”
However, she said he had faced “real challenges” in his year as leader and makes it clear they were from within Labour.
“His closest supporters understood the extent of those challenges, but he didn’t let it deter him from trying to do the best job he could do to get into Government in 2014. You do what you’ve got to do. He was focussed on looking in front of him, but it is hard if leaders are having to look behind them as well.”
* She insists she is not simply positioning for deputy. “People will be assessed on their merits and ability to contribute. If I’m not successful it’s up to the leader to decide.”
*When told she’s a gutsy woman, she replied “got to give it a whirl.”
Mahuta is mother to two young children responsibilities outside Parliament with Tainui. Asked whether she’ll cut some of her tribal work if she is leader, she said she is a woman “and women multitask”. “Women can do amazing things and still continue to be mums.” She said she would wind back some of the tribal work if she was leader.
* Little known fact: She has tattoos of her children’s names on her feet.
Well, since she has now said she is serious about being leader, and not just being deputy, then I am prepared to listen closely to what she has to say and to consider whether to rank her as #1.
Chris Bishop is a future Prime Minister after Sir John retires after a record six terms.
[lprent: I really don’t appreciate diversion trolls at the top of a post. Sure it referred to something in the post. However it had absolutely nothing to do with the actual topic of the post.
Moved to OpenMike and be warned that the next such comment will incur a harsh ban. ]
“Finally, there seem to be some who believe that within the Labour Party there is a small clique of Rogernomic moles who are waiting to regain control of the party. Last time round they supported David Cunliffe, this time they seem to be endorsing Andrew Little, who I am sure is far too sensible to want to be associated with such nonsense.”
That is an interesting way of saying the ABC club is a figment of our imagination! Grant has persuaded him that the core backers of Cunliffe are accusing the ABC of being Rogernomes. That is not the case IMO. Some, like Shearer and Nash, definitely are. I believe that the majority see the ABC club as a bunch of self serving pricks with an over-baked sense of entitlement and lacking in any serious philosophical point of view.
And I thought Cullen is an honourable man.
I have known him since he was an electorate MP.
He has been astute on many issues but, now as a retired senior statesman, having the mana of an elder within the Party, his latest piece really raises questions about him wading into the Primary, lobbying for a particular candidate and revealing the kind of judgment or wisdom that he still may have.
Does his latest move set an example or precedent for other retired senior Parliamentarians to follow?
Who is next in the line of august, esteemed retired Parliamentarians to step forward to lobby for his/her preferred candidate?
Cullen has shown poor communication skills when he talks about the Rogernomic group. He makes it sound like they supported Cunliffe, whereas I thought it was the opposite.
I think that what we need to remember is that Cunliffe was essentially a great conservative manager of the economy. He put in place a low wage, high cost economy and kept taxes slightly lower by the trick of having the state owned power companies charge very high prices. He subsidised employers and further marginalised beneficiaries with Working For Families. That he can support Robertson without mentioning the petulant anti-Cunliffe outbursts does not impress me at all.
Labour is the party that was built by working Kiwis for working Kiwis. We are still that party.
But we have to get our house in order. Because if we don’t then all we have is a bunch of good intentions gone to waste.
We need to fix the machine. We need to bring the pieces of the Labour movement back together and focus them on winning government and making changes we need to to build a fair society.
It’s a big task but it’s one we need to address one step at a time. First we need a caucus that communicates effectively within itself and with focus. Getting to that point will be the first job for the new Leader. Then the Leader and caucus need to reach out to the party and ensure they work well within themselves. Then we need to work alongside our affiliates.
We must find a common cause, within the movement, and with the many, many New Zealanders who want something better for themselves and for their families.
If we don’t find common cause as a movement we will never earn the trust of New Zealanders.
I can do this. I have done this before.
When I became the leader of the EPMU, one of New Zealand’s largest and most powerful unions, it was a house divided. I led the project to bring it together, to modernise it, to bring through new talent. I built a union which took our member’s issues out to the public, to the media, and won the argument again and again. We covered a lot of ground and during that time I dealt with organisations from small business to New Zealand’s biggest corporates on many different issues.
The one unifying thing, across all of these issues, was fairness. We got fair outcomes for our members and for New Zealand workers across the board because we worked together.
We are a party of immensely talented people. But right now we’re working as individuals, not as a collective movement.
We must fix this. We can.
We need to regain New Zealanders’ trust. We need them to know that when we make a promise, we can deliver. We need them to know we stand for them and their ambitions. Not just against what’s wrong but for what is right.
As part of that we must acknowledge the trust MÄori put in Labour in delivering us six of the the seven MÄori seats. They are our voters and we must make good on their return to us. We must ensure that MÄori are represented well within Labour and that advancing their aspirations is a cornerstone of our Party. That’s what being representative is about.
People have asked me why I’m standing. I’m standing because I believe in Labour’s values. I believe in fairness and justice for workers, for families, for all New Zealanders. People aren’t getting a fair go right now, and I won’t tolerate a society in which the very few at the top gain at the expense of the many.
I won’t tolerate a society in which good jobs are destroyed and replaced with insecure work, in which people in the middle are squeezed tighter and tighter by the cost of living and have no way to get ahead. A society in which those at the bottom fall off the edge of the cliff.
These are the principles I have stood for throughout my life and they have been at the core of how I have led. They are the principles that the Labour Party embodies.
But to stand up for those principles we must be a united Party with new ideas and a real plan to win back the trust of New Zealanders.
I can bring the party together. I have the track record to prove it.
Thus far, Andrew Little is saying best… all the things I’ve been thinking for many years. I’m coming more and more to the view he’s the one to lead Labour out of the wilderness. Strong, forthright, doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Just what the party needs.
Given his years with the EPMU he will be accustomed to sticking with the job at hand and not letting others set the narrative for him. Also, they have spent a lot of their vitriol on Cunliffe – it would be hard for them to repeat the same act convincingly. I am very sad about all David Cunliffe has been forced to endure.
@ Tracey
He’s big enough, strong enough to either ignore it or treat it with the contempt it deserves. He’s well known and been around a long time. In one way or another he has assisted thousands upon thousands of workers in the past 30 years, so I doubt that meme will have the kind of outcome his detractors will be hoping for.
I even suspect the media will not buy into it for the simple reason some of them probably have cause to be grateful for his ‘assistance’ in days gone by.
fair comment about media. hadnt thought of that aspect. didnt cunliffe ignore their antics too?
i was saddened to read that when murdochs papers went rabid on whitlam journos went on strike… saddened cos it was done and they are too self interested here to consider such a stance.
Agreed Anne. The EPMU represent journalists and so he will know most of them reasonably well in different circumstances – even those that did not join the union.
Most people can see through the fact this was written after the election, once Armstrong’s slavish support got the Tories in.
I have no respect for him as a journalist.
The CEO is working with board member Georgina Te Heu Heu to make Maori Television a propaganda channel for the Maori Party and the National Party. Mihi Forbes will be next on their list to be pushed out the door.
And what a tragedy that will be … she is delightful with her incisive brilliance. She and John Campbell are the last lights still burning through the fog.
Looks like Little made the best impression. Love this from him:
Tracy Watkins:
Now Little takes a real swipe at the party and the caucus and has a crack at them for “flailing and faffing about” while injustice occurs.
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Yesterday the government released its discussion document on action on agricultural emissions. As sadly usual, it proposed enormous subsidies for farm emissions, including for nitrogen-based fertiliser. This is a huge mistake. In addition to being one of the chief drivers ...
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice conducted a public consultation exercise on whether to hold a review of the Official Information Act (this replaced their previous plans to hold a secret consultation with handpicked people). 285 people submitted on ...
Always Playing Catch-Up: Throughout the 1970s, the purchasing power of the ordinary worker’s pay packet – the only meaningful measure of his or her wealth – was being eaten away every passing year by seemingly inexorable rises in the cost-of-living. ...
The Interim Climate Change Committee's report on Action on agricultural emissions: Evidence, analysis and recommendations was finally released today, and as you might guess from the title, it is recommending that we actually act, rather than let farmers keep ...
On Sunday July 7, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter announced their intention to review the Ministry of Health’s Funded Family Care policy and repeal Part 4Aof the 2000 NZ Public Health and Disability Act. These are festering injustices ...
Agriculture is our biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 48% of the total. It follows that meeting any credible emissions reduction target requires cutting agricultural emissions, most likely by having fewer cows. But National thinks people shouldn't be ...
How scummy is the UK Home Office? This scummy:The Home Office lied to EU member states to remove victims of human trafficking and modern slavery in breach of European law, according to whistleblowers. Legal experts have said the practice is ...
Belle is a lovely fifteen year-old border collie who belongs to our friends and neighbours at Bryan’s Beach, Michael and Judy Corboy. Belle, in her old age, can hardly see or hear, but – as a constant participant at social ...
“We wuz robbed!” is the classic cry of the disappointed losers of a closely contested sporting contest – it is very much to the credit of the Black Caps that we heard no such sentiment from them following the stunning ...
The Youth Parliament is being held this week, and some of the youth MPs are campaigning for a lower voting age:Molly Doyle, 17, is one Youth MP who wants this to change. She is part of a non-partisan campaign run ...
Up till now, Australia has made its living by digging up coal and exporting it to other countries, destroying the global climate in the process. But now they have a new option: exporting solar power:The desert outside Tennant Creek, deep ...
Later this month, thousands of people are expected to march to parliament as part of the #HandsOffOurTamaraki movement. At its heart, the movement is about preserving whānau and demanding that the state stop removing children from their whānau, hapū and iwi. ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh The recent statements made by the former FARC commander, Carlos Lozada (legal name Julian Gallo), where, from his seat in Congress, he praised the Colombian Army demonstrate how low the farianos have sunk. Lozada began by ...
A Woman’s Place is on the Podium was a public meeting in London on 10 July to discuss women’s sports and the impact of transwomen competing against women. The venue was sold out with a packed hall of 750 people. ...
Last month I talked about the no-fly movement: people who refuse to fly or limit it to absolute necessity to avoid destroying the climate. Now, that movement has a somewhat surprising new member: Dutch airline KLM:Dutch airline KLM has launched ...
In the 1960's, humanity faced a terrible threat: global thermonuclear war. Nuclear weapons were uniquely destructive and dangerous, and if more countries got them, the logic of MAD and the pre-emptive strike would put us on a hair-trigger to destruction. ...
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...
Matariki has been and gone, but this year we saw a couple of op-eds arguing that it should be a public holiday, replacing the foreign monarch's fake birthday. And now, New Zealand Republic - a group which campaigns for an ...
The discussion on the quality of economic advice, which we reported last week, has spilled over into a discussion about whether so many senior appointments should be of non-New Zealanders. Recall I discussed the failure to develop career paths within ...
When Nicky Hager revealed US footage of the Operation Burnham raid, obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act, one of the obvious questions was whether Ministers had seen it - and in particular, whether they'd been told that it ...
Northern Ireland is the Alabama of the UK: a backwards region where women and gay people are denied fundamental rights. But Westminster has just decided to fix that:MPs have voted resoundingly to extend same-sex marriage and access to abortion to ...
There's a problem with "synthetic cannabis", and not just the one you think. It's the name.We're in the midst of a wave of news stories that link synthetic drugs to serious harm, through deadly road accidents and accidental overdoses (which ...
Ranjit Kauri, The Dancing Maharani and Other Stories, Swansea, Head and Heart, 2019, £6.99; reviewed by Don Franks Working people are not the same country to country. Our struggles for a better life take place in surroundings of very different ...
Let's Do Them! All Jacinda Ardern has to do to clinch the 2020 General Election is frighten the bejesus out of the electorate by describing in the most graphic terms imaginable what will happen to all the positive beginnings her ...
It may be that we have all misinterpreted the somewhat surprising “bromance” between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. It has been all too easy to assume that it is Kim who is cosying up to Trump rather than the ...
by Michael Roberts So the full circle is completed. The corrupt pro-business conservative New Democracy party in Greece that was ousted by the anti-capitalist Syriza party in 2015 has been returned to office in yesterday’s general election, with an outright ...
When the Australian government passed a series of new spy laws over the last few years, they pinky-promised that they wouldn't use them to spy on journalists and subvert freedom of the press. They lied:The anti-encryption laws passed by the ...
From 1975 to 1989, the spy agencies of South America's right-wing military dictatorships cooperated in Operation Condor, a joint campaign of extermination against the continent's left. Roughly 400,000 people were imprisoned, 30,000 disappeared, and 60,000 murdered - kidnapped, tortured, executed, ...
When she was standing for office, Jacinda Ardern promised she would take abortion out of the Crimes Act. And to be fair, there was some early action on that, with an immediate referral of the issue to the Law Commission ...
When the government introduced the Zero Carbon Bill, people rightly asked what they planned to do to reduce transport emissions, which basicly had no policy at all other than the ETS. Today, they responded, announcing a "feebate" system which would ...
At almost every level, the problem with medicinal cannabis is a lack of good information. In the US, FDA regulations make it hard to research. Most doctors aren't familiar with what research there is and most patients don't know either. ...
Redline is critical of Corbyn for his political weaknesses, but he’s no anti-Semite. There is no substance to the McCarthyist witch-hunt being run by the right wing, and the pro-Israel lobby inside and outside the Labour Party in the UK. ...
The government's billion trees program is the sort of policy which could make a real difference to our emissions and the fight against climate change. But climate scientist Jim Salinger isn't convinced:The Forestry Minister Shane Jones' one billion trees won't ...
Last month the government was celebrating another surplus. Meanwhile, children are starving:One in five children are living in households where putting food on the table is a struggle, according to a new report from the Ministry of Health. It found ...
Show Me The Money! The alternative to state funding of infrastructure is, of course, to fund it by taking on massive amounts of private debt. On this issue, at least, Auckland mayoral challenger, Tamihere, has some solid points to make. ...
If we are to avoid making the earth uninhabitable, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to practically nothing over the next decade. But that will still leave us with the problem of the carbon we have already emitted, which ...
Former Waikato DHB CEO Nigel Murray allegedly misused public funds, spending more than $120,000 of public money on unjustified travel. He was forced to resign and the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation. But despite the SFO finding that the ...
Jeremy Corbyn, we are told, is being advised – not least by his deputy (as well as by some of his would-be successors) – that he must come “off the fence” on the Brexit issue if he wants to bolster ...
The End of Life bill has been read a second time and is now heading for the House for further debate. Personally, I support the proposal. I don't ever epect to take advantage of the Bill's provisions myself, but as ...
Before the substantive issue which this column is about – whether there has been a deterioration in the economic advice given to the government – a paragraph about the budget leaks.read more ...
Below is a translation of the editorial in the June 24 round of weekly workplace bulletins issued all over France by the revolutionary workers’ organisation Lutte Ouvriere. Last Saturday, 8,000 people took to the streets of Belfort (eastern France) to ...
Why hasn't Parliament followed the lead set by our local authorities and declared a climate emergency? The answer is the National Party:The Prime Minister’s admission that she is open to the idea of declaring a climate change emergency is nothing ...
The first full week of the firearms buy-back and amnesty has produced a strong turnout as events roll out nationwide for the first time. “Momentum is slowly starting to build as community collection events are held across the entire country, ...
A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...
Million-dollar start to gun collection eventsPolice Minister Stuart Nash says a solid start has been made to the gun buyback and amnesty after the first weekend of community collection events. “Gun owners will walk away with more than ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash has praised Police and gun owners after the first firearms collection event saw a busy turnout at Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch. “Police officers and staff have put a tremendous effort into planning and logistics for the ...
Seventy-eight new Police constables are heading out to the regions following today’s graduation of a new recruit wing from the Royal New Zealand Police College. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the record high number of new Police officers being recruited, ...
The New Zealand Deerstalkers Association says it will take an active role in the debate on proposed firearm law changes to ensure any future legislation is fair, reasonable and meets the needs of both firearm owners and the general public. ...
The latest Safety of Children in Care report reveals the scale of the challenge facing social workers as they act to better protect children / tamariki and young people / rangatahi in Oranga Tamariki in the system. While the statistics ...
The next round of proposed Arms Act Amendments will further alienate law abiding firearms licence holders from the Government, according to the NZ Outdoors Party. ...
The current law for dividing property on separation is out of date and in need of reform, the Law Commission concludes in its report, Review of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976 – Te Arotake i te Property (Relationships) Act 1976 ...
First National Real Estate Chief Executive Bob Brereton is predicting that homes currently being built as part of a KiwiBuild development, in Te Kauwhata, will not sell and that the Government will be left with 175 homes and few, if ...
A short time ago, kaumatua and kuia representing mana whenua from Te Kawerau ā Maki, Te Ākitai Waiohua, and Tainui, walked onto the land that Fletcher Building owns at Ōruarangi Road, known as Ihumātao, and asked protestors to leave. ...
The Greenpeace climb of the Majestic Tower in Wellington is ignorant grandstanding says the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ). ...
Tuesday, July 23: The two Greenpeace climbers who are scaling the outside of the tallest building in Wellington have unfurled the first of a series of banners. ...
The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that an officer's decision to fire three warning shots to stop a fleeing driver from reversing towards him was not justified. ...
Government figures out today are consistent with what working people have told the Council of Trade Unions in our own survey, that a significant group of working Kiwis are unhappy and dissatisfied at work. Now the Government must act to ...
Deputy State Services Commissioner John Ombler has today announced the outcome of an examination of what led Inland Revenue to commission a public poll that included a question about the political leanings of taxpayers. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is slamming Tracey Martin for wasting money on a meaningless “translation” of a written press statement into a sign language video, when the vast majority of any deaf or hard-of-hearing persons are perfectly capable of reading ...
Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust (Te Mana) and Tūhourangi Tribal Authority (TTA) have announced that they will jointly negotiate with the Crown for the return of the lands at Waimangu and Otūkapuarangi. These lands have been at the centre ...
Government documents reveal the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) approved a shipment of cattle last month, despite the Government announcing a review into live export five days earlier. ...
“The Government’s second round of firearms reforms has hunters concerned that they will be burdened with onerous and unnecessary compliance and costs,” says Game Animal Council Chair Don Hammond. ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) are concerned at the statements by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Police Minister Stuart Nash at the Post-Cabinet Press Conference this afternoon stating that firearm ownership and licences should ...
National’s Climate Change spokesperson Todd Muller told Q+A he has “total confidence” that technology will be developed to mitigate the effects of climate change. “To simply take the New Zealand agriculture sector which is the most emissions efficient ...
PM can’t say whether the Government will meet its KiwiBuild goals. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern couldn’t say whether the Government would meet its goal of building 16-thousand KiwiBuild homes by the end of its first term. She was interviewed on ...
Greenpeace climbers are scaling the outside of the Majestic Centre, the tallest building in Wellington, to reach the headquarters of Austrian oil giant, OMV. ...
Media statement on behalf of Sir Edward Taihākurei Durie and Donna Marie Tai Tokerau Hall: Māori Television has admitted publishing false allegations about former High Court justice, Sir Edward Taihākurei Durie, and his wife, Donna Hall, and it has ...
Announcement today by the Prime Minister of further gun law reform is being shrouded by fear, so that scrutiny of the law is seen as an affront to the victims of the horror attack in March. The Prime Minister acknowledged ...
Misgivings about the practicality and cost of a firearms register is likely to dominate feedback from rural areas on the second round of proposed Arms Act amendments, Federated Farmers says. ...
School Strike 4 Climate NZ organisers Sophie Handford and Raven Maeder delivered a clear message to over 600 local government mayors, chairs, chief executives and councillors at the recent LGNZ conference : make climate change a priority. ...
The Police Association, Te Aka Hāpai backs the government’s emphasis on public safety as the driver of its second tranche of amendments to New Zealand’s firearms law, announced today. ...
The growing housing shortage crisis about more than supply and demand- it is about inequity. Recently released analysis by Kiwibank shows that last year’s “severe” shortage of housing has worsened, with the shortfall growing from 100,000 to 130,0000 ...
One of the country’s largest district health boards has a severe shortage of hospital specialists, says the senior doctors’ union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS). ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is joining opposition to possible regulations on the strength of nicotine vaping liquid. Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “The Government would certainly benefit from regulations on the strength ...
The Meat Industry Association (MIA) is calling for significant changes to the Zero Carbon Bill with a new analysis using the Government’s preferred modelling indicating that the proposed methane targets are excessive if all other gases go to net zero. ...
Victoria University Feminist Organisation and ALRANZ Abortion Rights Aotearoa, in conjunction with the VUW Feminist Law Students, Organise Aotearoa, Fem Force, and with the support of VUW Student Association announced they are sponsoring a march ...
With the Government's firearm buyback scheme starting to draw over 30,000 police man hours away from fighting crime, the safety of law abiding citizens is being compromised. ...
Social Credit Party leader Chris Leitch is calling on the sale of Westland Milk to Chinese company Yili to be put on hold pending an approach to the Government by Westland Milk for funding assistance. ...
Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa seems intent on ensuring the Government’s vaping legislation will heavily target flavours and nicotine levels – a move that would be completely counterproductive to helping Kiwis quit smoking and achieving ...
A new website has launched in response to recent RNZ reporting about Police in Dunedin unlawfully entering people’s homes and breath-testing them. “I was disgusted when I saw what they cops were doing in Dunedin. Their behaviour undermines all of ...
Hundreds of whanau and Maori leaders gathered at a hui in Mangere last weekend where they voted unanimously for an inquiry into Oranga Tamariki. The historic meeting called for a child welfare framework to be developed by Maori, for Maori. ...
The Head of the New Zealand Maori Council has called for the Government to hold an immediate investigation into the global cosmetics company Sephora after they were caught dumping waste hundreds and thousands of waste paper products embedded with ...
Simon Shepherd: The government says its agreement with farmers, that they should pay for agricultural emissions, is historic. But there's no agreement on how. One proposal says farmers should pay a 5 per cent emissions tax. Another suggests farmers ...
The O’Brien Institute for Public Health at Calgary University has just released their report on fluoridation. This institute has, up to now, been staunchly in favour of fluoridation. However, yesterday, with regards to fluoride’s effect on the brain, ...
July 19 (BusinessDesk) - The government is looking to tighten control and impose harsher penalties after the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak revealed cracks in the country's stock management system. ...
Kia Anga Mua Ngā Hapū o Ngāpuhi (KAM) has reached a pivotal milestone following a hui yesterday at Waitangi with the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little. ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can reveal that the Government spent $133,530 on producing its ‘Wellbeing Budget’ document, a cost blowout largely driven by spending on graphic design and photography. The $133,530 price tag compares to $86,268 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese Keane, Associate Professor, Deputy Chair Department of Education, Swinburne University of Technology A cute human-like robot taught students in a small, rural school how to code while also helping them learn ...
After months of protest, the last occupants were moved off Ihumātao in south Auckland by police this afternoon. Don Rowe reports. Most of the occupants of Ihumātao had been moved on. The police, numbering at least 30, had finally made good ...
Hundreds of people marched to Parliament today calling for reform of New Zealand's abortion laws, as Cabinet prepares to consider a bill that would remove abortion from the Crimes Act. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The two Centre Alliance senators, Stirling Griff and Rex Patrick will often be pivotal to the fate of government legislation. The smaller non-Green Senate crossbench ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chongyi Feng, Associate Professor in China Studies, University of Technology Sydney Australian authorities have been told to stop interfering in the case of the Chinese-Australian writer Dr Yang Hengjun who has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Newton Cain, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of Queensland Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape is visiting Australia this week, his first overseas ...
The Greens may have achieved their sought-after mainstream credibility, and scored some wins in government, but commentators warn this will not necessarily result in more votes. On the contrary – it might even result in a loss of enthusiasm from ...
Dr Bryce EdwardsThe supposed end of the 20-year standoff between environmentalists and farmers was announced last week, with the release of the Interim Climate Change Committee’s report on “Action on agricultural emissions”. It was celebrated as an “historic consensus” ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentGovernment Joseph Nunweek (Spinoff): Jacinda Ardern and bringing the ...
The 2019 budget put aside $300m for venture capital for small to medium-sized startups with the hope it will allow businesses to grow locally and stay in New Zealand for longer. In a small rural town on the east coast ...
To give the Pacific a fighting chance Australia and NZ need to take a stand, writes a Fijian litigator and activist.Climate change is now an everyday reality for the Pacific. Its impact on our countries is undeniable. To remain within ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Grové, Educational Psychologist and Lecturer, Monash University Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might ...
Questions about political leanings in surveys by Inland Revenue, DOC and Stats NZ were inappropriate and had the potential to undermine political neutrality, a report has found. ...
Treaty Negotiations Minister Andrew Little says he cannot understand why the previous government ever accepted Ngāpuhi's problematic Tūhoronuku mandate. ...
The Electricity Authority’s latest take on transmission prices has softened the expected hike in power prices for Aucklanders from $176 per year to $21 a year. ...
New Zealanders are as parochial about charity as they are about sport, with only a fraction of the money we donate leaving our shores or even going outside our local areas.Less than 9% of private donations in New Zealand go ...
Infrastructure investor Infratil is looking for potential buyers of a group of mature investments across Australia and NZ's health, education and prison sectors,according to the AFR. ...
A nightmarish and near-fatal high-speed pursuit of a New Zealand Chinese family concluded with a judge rejecting the prosecution’s request for hate crime sentencing. Tze Ming Mok discusses why New Zealand’s approach to hate crime is utterly useless.I don’t like ...
The Māori midwives on the frontline of whānau care and Oranga Tamariki scrutiny say their voices are going unheard and their wisdom unheeded.*All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involvedNewsroom’s powerful investigation into Oranga Tamariki’s attempt ...
From fine art school graduates to hobbyists, magazine-making talent from all over the city is showcased in Auckland Zinefest. Lucy Zee went along to check out the zines and meet some makers.Aucklanders love a festival. If it’s not food, wine ...
Ngāpuhi and Te Rarawa artist Nikau Hindin has recently been taught by ancestors in Hawai’i the skills of beating tapa or barkcloth, reviving as contemporary form a Māori art largely lost after the extinction of the aute plant in Aotearoa. ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has stopped short of committing to a declaration of climate emergency in Parliament, despite again saying she supports such a move. ...
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Australian authorities to drop all charges against four French TV journalists who – in what RSF called an “unacceptable attack on investigative journalism” – were arrested yesterday ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neville Nicholls, Professor emeritus, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University This month the world has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon. But this ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Giancaspro, Lecturer in Law, University of Adelaide Viral photo app FaceApp has taken the world by storm. Launched in 2017, the app has recently enjoyed mass popularity due largely to Hollywood ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University A key element in the success of countering terrorism in Australia has been a series of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney Around one-quarter of the world’s population menstruate. That’s more than 1.9 billion people in the world who will bleed, on average, for 65 days ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese Keane, Associate Professor, Deputy Chair Department of Education, Swinburne University of Technology A cute human-like robot taught students in a small, rural school how to code while also helping them learn ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Podger, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National University There is a case for not proceeding with, or at least further deferring, the legislated increase in employers’ compulsory superannuation contributions from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Ostling, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University Review: Margaret Olley: A Generous Life, and Quilty, QAGOMA Margaret Olley’s exhibition at QAGOMA is titled A Generous Life, referring to ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Second round of gun law changes announced, hundreds with conditions like Down syndrome get early Kiwisaver, and a major refusal to participate in March 15 inquiry.The second major phase of ...
Almost as soon as it was announced, the Royal Commission tasked with probing the lead-up and response to the terrorist attacks in March attracted criticism, both over the process and its engagement with Muslim groups. Former race relations commissioner Joris ...
Following the Silver Ferns’ World Cup victory, another New Zealand team playing korfball – netball’s European cousin - are about to make world championship history of their own. ...
A victim of domestic violence has had to find alternative accommodation after Oranga Tamariki breached her privacy for the second time in three years. ...
While researching NZ on Air for a recent history, Duncan Greive noticed a shocking 30 year trend.News broke over the weekend that Love Island NZ, Three’s biggest announcement of the year, will now not screen in 2019, and realistically is unlikely ...
Joseph Nunweek joins the adoring throngs gathered at the Melbourne Town Hall to watch the New Zealand prime minister. The warm feeling is contagious, but a question hangs in the airThursday, 18 July: a big night for New Zealanders in ...
Open mike 22/10/2014 
Open mike is your post. 
My idealistic position on the role of MPs was articulated by Edmund Burke: ‘Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.’read more ...22 mins ago
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled on the pillage of swamp kauri, stating clearly that export was forbidden unless it had been clearly turned into a finished product. But less than a month later, MPI was again approving minimally carved ...4 hours ago
Having spent the last 3 months in these countries and getting some appreciation of their dependence on fossil fuels – oil, gas, coal – one realises how loopy is the idea popular in societies like New Zealand that have negligible ...8 hours ago
I have been unimpressed with Western corporate media coverage of the tensions involving Iran in the Straits of Hormuz. They repeat the line that Iran is the source of current tensions, that it is a major sponsor of terrorism, that ...2 days ago
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Much like Tuvalu, the manmade climate change Cult love to tell people the Maldives is almost totally underwater. In fact the dishonest Maldives Govt d on the same bandwagon, believing they would receive billions of dollars aid from other Countries ...3 days ago
As the entry on Wikipedia shows (and no, one doesn’t necessarily have to regard Wikipedia as the be-all and end-all of truth, because it isn’t on a great many things, to agree with the following): “…a fallacious argument that concludes ...3 days ago
by Daphna Whitmore The story of how the world awoke to a big injustice is starting to be told. The Pacific Games held this month in Samoa is another chapter. On the podium was Laurel Hubbard, the giant transgender weightlifter, ...3 days ago
Our conversations and push against specific supremacist and ultra-Nationalist groups, and the pseudo-intellectual underpinnings of them, need to mature at all levels. But in doing so, it’s going to have to include a more thorough and brutally honest self-examination ...4 days ago
Something I missed: not only did Youth MPs declare a climate emergency; they also launched a campaign to lower the voting age to 16:Youth Parliament week in Parliament has seen the establishment of Make it 16, a campaign to ...4 days ago
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh This article aims to answer a simple question, whether the conflict is only a rural one or whether it is also urban. The verb ‘to be’ is conjugated in the present tense as ,despite what some ...6 days ago
6 days ago
On Sunday July 7, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter announced their intention to review the Ministry of Health’s Funded Family Care policy and repeal Part 4Aof the 2000 NZ Public Health and Disability Act. These are festering injustices ...1 week ago
Belle is a lovely fifteen year-old border collie who belongs to our friends and neighbours at Bryan’s Beach, Michael and Judy Corboy. Belle, in her old age, can hardly see or hear, but – as a constant participant at social ...1 week ago
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...2 weeks ago
2 weeks ago
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The first full week of the firearms buy-back and amnesty has produced a strong turnout as events roll out nationwide for the first time. “Momentum is slowly starting to build as community collection events are held across the entire country, ...1 day ago
The New Zealand Deerstalkers Association says it will take an active role in the debate on proposed firearm law changes to ensure any future legislation is fair, reasonable and meets the needs of both firearm owners and the general public. ...2 hours ago
The House: Youth MPs have laid down another climate challenge to their real counterparts in the form of an open letter. ...31 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese Keane, Associate Professor, Deputy Chair Department of Education, Swinburne University of Technology A cute human-like robot taught students in a small, rural school how to code while also helping them learn ...51 mins ago
After months of protest, the last occupants were moved off Ihumātao in south Auckland by police this afternoon. Don Rowe reports. Most of the occupants of Ihumātao had been moved on. The police, numbering at least 30, had finally made good ...2 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Newton Cain, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of Queensland Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape is visiting Australia this week, his first overseas ...2 hours ago
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The 2019 budget put aside $300m for venture capital for small to medium-sized startups with the hope it will allow businesses to grow locally and stay in New Zealand for longer. In a small rural town on the east coast ...4 hours ago
To give the Pacific a fighting chance Australia and NZ need to take a stand, writes a Fijian litigator and activist.Climate change is now an everyday reality for the Pacific. Its impact on our countries is undeniable. To remain within ...5 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Grové, Educational Psychologist and Lecturer, Monash University Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might ...5 hours ago
The Electricity Authority’s latest take on transmission prices has softened the expected hike in power prices for Aucklanders from $176 per year to $21 a year. ...6 hours ago
New Zealanders are as parochial about charity as they are about sport, with only a fraction of the money we donate leaving our shores or even going outside our local areas.Less than 9% of private donations in New Zealand go ...6 hours ago
Infrastructure investor Infratil is looking for potential buyers of a group of mature investments across Australia and NZ's health, education and prison sectors,according to the AFR. ...7 hours ago
Mistakes happen but this one was a biggy, and a lack of proactive correction did not look good for the Government. ...7 hours ago
The Māori midwives on the frontline of whānau care and Oranga Tamariki scrutiny say their voices are going unheard and their wisdom unheeded.*All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involvedNewsroom’s powerful investigation into Oranga Tamariki’s attempt ...8 hours ago
From fine art school graduates to hobbyists, magazine-making talent from all over the city is showcased in Auckland Zinefest. Lucy Zee went along to check out the zines and meet some makers.Aucklanders love a festival. If it’s not food, wine ...9 hours ago
Ngāpuhi and Te Rarawa artist Nikau Hindin has recently been taught by ancestors in Hawai’i the skills of beating tapa or barkcloth, reviving as contemporary form a Māori art largely lost after the extinction of the aute plant in Aotearoa. ...9 hours ago
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Australian authorities to drop all charges against four French TV journalists who – in what RSF called an “unacceptable attack on investigative journalism” – were arrested yesterday ...10 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neville Nicholls, Professor emeritus, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University This month the world has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon. But this ...11 hours ago
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(it’s always a good idea to start yr day with a belly-laff..and this one’ll do it for ya..)
..parker has had his thinking cap on…
..and he has come up with what really ails labour..
..and hold onto your seats..!..it’s the colour red…
(..and the fact that labour supporters are members of ‘a cult’..(!)..)
..no no..!..c’mon..!..hear him out..!
“..Like a cult and too red – Parker on Labour..(ed:..breaking news..!..parker has discovered what labours’ problems are..it’s the colour red..(!)..(who knew..?..)
(ed:..any reader-suggestions for a new colour from/for labour..?
..i reckon a pale-blue wd pretty much nail it..eh..?..
..and well done! to that parker ..eh.?
..for his keen analysis/solutions to all that ails labour..
so..in summary:.(cont..)..”
http://whoar.co.nz/2014/like-a-cult-and-too-red-parker-on-labour-ed-breaking-news-parker-has-discovered-what-labours-problems-are-its-the-colour-red-who-knew/
you’re up early 🙂
@ barfly..
i’m always up early..i usually start hunting/gathering stories for whoar @ about 5.00a.m..
..i’ve already done two editorial pieces..
..here’s the other..(lamenting all the brokenwood-hate..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2014/comment-whoar-whats-with-all-the-hate-being-directed-brokenwood/
comment@ whoar:..what’s with all the hate being directed @ ‘brokenwood’..?
(excerpt:..)
‘..and/but i have been amazed at the amount of abuse being heaped on it..
..it seems to be the current ‘dotcom’ for the tv reviewers…let’s all gang up on ‘brokenwood’..whoar..!
..and this reached a nadir on national radio yesterday..with their reviewer phil wallington…
..wallington got quite steamed up..and seems to have taken it personally..
..but you really have to wonder just how much attention wallington paid to what he reviewed..
..as twice in his review he claimed the series was set back in the period of the age of the leads’ old holden car..(!)
..he reviewed this..but he didn’t notice it is set in the present day..(!)..
..(they have cellphones..phil..duh..!..didya notice..?)..’..(cont..)
Like, Labour is not National Lite already!!!
SMH in disbelief.
I hope he gets sucked into a black hole of political oblivion, or just switch on to leading ACT. That would suit his ideology I suppose.
or is the reality that …National is Labour Lite?
Nope…..there mainly just a bunch of sociopaths with good camoflage
@ lesThat was a neat thrust – didn’t see it coming. Ouch. New perspective when lying on the floor looking up your opponent’s baggy shorts!
“Like a cult and too red “
Jeez I’m pleased I haven’t voted yet
Obviously Parker hasn’t any acquaintances who worship the colour blue. I had several conversations before the election with diehard National voters who constantly spoke of the importance of the colour blue *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*.
parker..?..out of touch..?..much…?
..so..in his own words..he wants to become the leader of ‘a cult’..?
..parker has clearly not thought this one thru..
..and what new colour wd he like..?
..does he lean to a puce..?
..or more a turqoise..?
it is refreshing isn’t it pu
i think ‘refresh’ cd be a good new branding-name for labour..
..(you cd make all sort of clean-out/emetic-references in yr advertising..)
..and their new colour..whatever it is..should have some bubbles in it…
..those parker is targeting..like ‘bubbles’..
phillip u
Your mind and imagination about Labour is taking off like a jump jet.
but nowhere near as wild and crazy as they are doing themselves..
..and the basic fact is..that labour have got themselves into the position..
..where the only candidate with any ministerial experience..
..is wannabe cult-leader parker..
(and didn’t helen clark to such a good job of seeing off anyone who was a ‘threat’ during her time..eh..?
..and this is what you get left with..if you do that..)
no it was Shearer who got rid of Leanne Dalziel and Charles Chauvel
This is democracy in action, Phil
Slinging mud and raising these sort of important points publicly, is what a truly democratic party does.
@ bm..
..nah..!..this is just batshit-crazy stuff..
..if you made it up you’d be laffed out of the room..
..as he should be…
I disagree, I like this quote about what sort of party labour should be
A party where you feel comfortable enough to let one rip is the sort of party I’d want to vote for.
Good stuff David Parker.
and yr a rightwing trout..bm..
..so yr kiss of approval is just really ‘anti’-support..
..and as such worthless/meaningless..
I can imagine your parties – a whole lot of slobs having a fart competition and boasting about the sexual conquests they’d have if feminism hadn’t turned women against them. Hmm, a bit like Sealord Jones and Back Pussy Tamihere mixed with Jamie Whyte Power and Simon Bridges. Yuck.
You’ve gotta laugh.
Isn’t this just the middle class answer to everything? – a fresh coat of paint and a bit of titivating. Cos everything’s still alright for them.
I recommend something from Resene. Maybe executive navy blue.
Not yet but re-branding is the corporate answer to bad press.
PU – You missed out the bit where he said he didn’t want to over emphasise this point….
he didn’t need to..
..just saying it was brainfart enough..
..imagine key saying national are ‘too blue’..and are members of ‘a cult’..
..(but he doesn’t want to ‘over-emphasise’ it..)
..right ho..!
I think David Parker should start a new party…great idea!
…and fawn should be the colour
…and it should have a new name as well
….like….Wannabe Party ?
( no longer the Red Labour Party but the Fawn Wannabe Party !)
lol
Anyone hear Suzie Ferguson’s interview of Len Brown on Morning Report?
The whole tine and content sounded like Cameron Slater provided her with the direction for the interview.
Dirty Politics alive and well.
And now on Morning Report.
Disgraceful.
Really rude interviewing. Gotcha stuff. Rather than any discussion about the need to extend rail. Why does she have to do it that way – she seems to have a particular hatred of mayors of the left because she does the same to Lianne Dalziel.
She has really gone downhill since she got the post on MR.
Is she told the line to take or is she just inherently a Tory tool?
“Really rude interviewing. Gotcha stuff.”
ALL of morning reports interviews are like this – gyon only looked good on the JK/dirty pol one because of the dumb answers the PM gave – not because the interview method changed
morning report is a sad pathetic joke
The problem I have framu, what does one listen to or see first thing in the morning for local news
You’ve got Gyon on Morning Report, That dick called Christy complete with simpering sidekick on TV One, and soon we will have prat Henry on Three.
Definitely a need for a completely independent news channel.
i wd like to see brown interviewed ‘hard’..on three subjects/issues..
1)..the not small matter of auckland ratepayers having to fork out/piss down the toilet a million dollars a day..each and every day..
..in interest on the loans that have been wracked up by the council..
..cd he plse detail just what we got for that eyewatering debt..y’know..!..something concrete maybe..?
2)..cd he explain why the council needs p.r.-trouts/spin-doctors numbering in the hundreds..?
..and cd he tell us just what the fuck they all do all/each day..?
..how do they fill all those highly-paid-for hours..?..
(300 x 8= 2,400 hrs each working day..
..12,000 spin-doctor/p.r.-trout-hrs each working week..(!)
..that ratepayers are also forking out for..
..’cos..y’see..to the untrained eye..this number of the clearly un-necessary ..just points to/screams out.. a culture of excess..
..one that needs a serious clean/clear-out..
..how cd it not..?
3..)..i remember in his first campaign how brown harvested all those soft/do-gooder votes/ers..by promising to help house the homeless of auckland..
,.aside from passing legislation making it easier for authorities to ‘move them on’/herd/hide them out of sight..
..cd he plse detail just what he has done ..if anything..to fufill that clear campaign-promise..
..since he has been mayor..and in the position to do just that..?
@ Paul
I noticed something in her interview on – Does NZ want elite universities? where she was hammering the bit about the salaries perhaps being too high as a way of bringing fees down. They do truly compete against overseas in this, unlike our many CEOs, economists and service providers to gummint who talk their own increments up and up.
Also MPs who are two a penny, and probably should be judged for salary increases from that level!
She let one question get away and that was the amount spent on advertising and promotion, which the speaker assured here was tiny compared to their overall budget, of which salaries amounted to 60%. I believe advertising can be around $2 million which if halved could provide $1m of discretionary money, a useful amount. And does that sum include PR also, which seems to have ballooned as a sapper of budgets in many government-related organisations.
A good point made was that the cpi measures certain household requirements and unis have disproportionate high labour costs so really aren’t so concerned about household matters. (For instance, the rise in the price of cabbages, which was quoted one year when the CPI had risen strongly in the vegetable ‘basket’).
The fact is the educators and researchers are underpaid, micro managed and controlled, while a new class of University “managers” are getting the dosh.
Same with doctors/nurses and DHB “managers.”
And yet managers should be paid the least. They don’t produce anything and we don’t need them.
some organisations might not need them.
But hose organisations that do need them need competent ones, not managers who are merely competent at climbing the corporate ladder and empire-building.
No, I’m pretty sure that there’s no organisations that need managers. They may need some administration types, and good ones at that, but not managers.
Is it reassuring or sinister that in the comments of this article by George Monbiot there are people who think this article is an over-reaction to computer language? It’s the programs that call people ‘stock’ and no problem that humans are just repeating it, they don’t really think like that, they say.
Good old NZ’s ACC was criticised a few years back for referring to clients in its reports as “stock”. As in ways of reducing its stock.
Another saying that has creped in is the use of the term “human resource”
We no longer have Personnel Managers, they are Human Resource managers.
As I told some smart arse a few years ago I am not a resource that can be harvested or disregarded when they felt fit.
This type of language dehumanises people and I think it is done for that reason.
Nah, it’s just new words for the same old shit. They know it’s shit, that’s why they have to keep rebranding it.
Actually, it can be seen as a sign of respect for value of workers. Without resources, businesses are nothing.
Sorry can’t agree with you on that one TRP
I worked for one particular company for over 20 years, The owner who was an officer and a gentleman and a war hero would refer to any member of his staff as a valued member of the company. I am sure he would have been horrified if they were referred as a “human resource.”
We know businesses need resources, but there is not the need to refer to staff as some form of stock item. to be used and abused and possibly sold off in end of year sales.
I have just noticed, I had another silly old sod (SOS) moment
That word creped should have been crept. Ah well, suppose you can’t win them all.
halfcrown- The best I heard in a corporate report and actually used by an HR relative of mine a few years ago was ‘human capital’ but the term doesn’t seem to have taken off.
Shame..I’d already prepared a response (more vehement than halfcrown’s) to the first person who referred to me as human capital but I think Key & co. consider NZ workers as human capital.
Don’t mind ‘Personnel’ as it seems to still regard employees (and employers) as persons.
So David Parker thinks that the colour red is Labour’s problem…..I would have thought it was the colour yellow.
If not the coward’s colour perhaps the white flag of surrender?
All our State houses are to be emptied and sold, NZ is to be plunged into a Middle East War and white collar fraud has been proven to be bleeding our society dry….and this doofus is on about colours and how passionate he can be.
Aout what?
Nothing wrong with red.
It’s not knowing what colour you stand for that is Labour’s problem.
They have forgotten their roots since the 1980s.
It’s not knowing what colour you stand for that is Labour’s problem.
Bingo!
Bang on!
Spot on!
Jackpot!
parker is also showing a complete shearer level of idiocy by using such words publicly
exactly what word are the MSM going to use to beat labour over the head with for the next few weeks? cult perhaps?
fecking idiots
Ha Ha, democracy in action.
yep..and one of the downsides..
..is that idiots like you get to have voice too..
..but no system is perfect..
youve said it twice
so what?
Yes, we’re quite aware that you RWNJs don’t like democracy and much prefer being told what to do by someone in power over you.
Meanwhile, yesterday (I guess because I was signed up as a Green Party volunteer for the last election), I got an email from Metiria Turei saying the campaign for next election starts today. It asks for donations and lays out the principles for the next election:
Yet I read a report that the Greens have gone cap in hand to this rogue RW government for policy concessions. What a disgrace.
That is pretty much what the Greens always do. their aim is to work with any party if it will further th GP agenda. The outcome last term highlighted the differences between Nats and the Greens’ policies, resulting in Nats rebuffing them.
I expect pretty much the same this time round – the Greens therefore highlight just how radically right wing Key’s government is.
Used carefully that refusal can be used to embarass JK as much as possible.
BTW what is it with Nact and others suggesting that the Greens stick only to enviroment policies. The Greens can do as they please, without Nact;’s loud controlling voice .
At the moment the Greens go for sustainable business practices, hardly anti growth, more like a rechannel of effort, and sharing what we have equally.
Some one a little scared perhaps?
I’d like to see Russell/Meretai front footing some of the ‘ we have better business idea’s than you lot because you pinch them”
National are trying to kill off the Greens. They know as well as I do that single issue parties haven’t got snowball’s chance in a furnace of surviving.
A political party, to be relevant, needs to address all of a societies issues.
Yep, they are.
National’s mates are delusional if they think they can load all the costs of resource depletion and climate change, while they continue with profligate lifestyles, onto the “untermensch” without the pitchforks.
“Capitalism doesn’t work without socialism”.
Greens are hardly extreme, with policies that would have been considered mainstream by Holyoak’s National party.;
Whisper Controversy Questions the Promise of True Privacy
Personally, I still work on the idea that nothing I do on the internet is anonymous.
For the internet to work the computers need to track the data that is sent and received. Cannot get away from that. Even if geo-tagging is turned off the IP address will give the receivers of data packets from you a reasonable idea as to where you are. The telco will know precisely where you are.
The question isn’t whether the data will be recorded, it will be. The question is who gets to look at it afterwards and when.
Introducing: Flickr PARK or BIRD
Think about it.
Indeed.
Interesting that Metiria Turei has been receiving calls from National voters urging the Greens to team up with the Nats because these Nat voters are feeling guilty about voting for Key etc.
well blow me down with a feather ….. expect more as this term goes on …. it will be like the vote for mmp – where later on nobody admits to their voting.
silly voters
What a load of bollocks.
ok, except for you BM. You will admit to voting for Key wont you.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11345976
This today from Claire Trevett.
NM showing some smarts getting the interview with her and the selfie. As we know selfie’s help win elections.
Interesting NM comments about Cunliffe and what was going on in that Labour caucus!
thanks for this!
There is a voice of honesty and directness there, while still preserving dignity and mana.
I appreciate that and I am looking forward to hearing her speak at the hustings.
When it comes to provisions for retirement, super etc, I suspect the default perspective many slip into, focuses more on a masculine life trajectory.
In general, women on average earn less than men, and tend to have time out from participating in the paid workforce, in order to raise children, and tend to have smaller amounts in retirement funds or investments.
Stuff has an article today about the trend towards a higher percentage of women working past 65 years, and the problems for women in low paid jobs.
and not just a masculine earning trajectory, a pakeha one too. PI and Maori median income is many thousands less per annum than Pakeha.
Well, PI and Maori men, though given secondary consideration, do tend to get more focus in the debates, than do women generally.
Yes, Pakeha men are the dominant consideration with respect to assumptions about life trajectories of older people.
Maori and Pacific men are likely to be in a much more difficult situation as they get older, than Pakeha men, and than large numbers of Pakeha women
But the varying situations of women are generally given even less consideration in the debates.
Women on low pay, especially those with no formal education qualifications, and including a high proportion of Maori and Pacific women, are often in a very difficult position as they get older. They often need to keep working for the income. It’s harder for such women to find work as they get older. And on average they tend to live about 4-5 years longer than Maori or Pacific men.
Such women probably need both super at 65 years, plus at least some part time work, because they are unlikely to have any further savings or investments.
Also, people tend to talk of boomers as all being wealthy, owning their own homes, etc. Yet the stats in the article say that women over 60 overall have fewer formal educational qualifications than younger women.
Yep. Men consistently earn more than women in the same position, and also tend to get higher positions.
NB I was referring to the big difference between PI/Maori earning power vs Pakeha earning power. My sense is that being PI or Maori instead of Pakeha is actually a bigger factor in pay inequality than gender.
The biggest indicator of future earnings is the socio-economic status of your parents and grandparents. Which disproportionately effects Maori, and PI, and totally refutes the idea that New Zealand is a meritocracy where we have “equality of opportunity”.
(The other big indicator, for boys and girls, is the education level of their mother)
I wonder how much it is skewed by what I see around me. Young women in all the retail and service jobs. Young men, especially Maori, without jobs. If you are a young Maori male you would have to be very highly educated to get a job.
Of course it means that the only young Maori males with jobs are in the higher paid ones.
Sue Bradford’s bill advocating openness about pay would have identified whether the problem is gender, or something more complex. Then we could have argued from fact, not impressions.
There is a whole other discussion about how keeping pay rates secret suits employers, and those who discriminate.
With National awards a non-union shop assistant or office worker could point to what the Union members were getting, as a benchmark.
Many of those who reckon they do not need Unions are totally unaware of how much they benefited by the foundations set in wages and conditions by Unions.
There’s a lot of stuff that’s kept secret because of privacy that benefits the business class. Stuff that shouldn’t be kept private because it affects others thus making it public.
I think it is Norway where all tax returns are public.
Australia is busy embarrassing tax dodging corporates at present.
They also , thanks to our judge made laws, get very little out of marriage breakdown, shoulder the bulk of the $ costs of raising the kids, as well as providing the free childcare, and meet any costs for the over 18 crowd. Women should be able to attach the super of the male parent – why not?
A piece on economy and Picketty on Radionz right now Kathryn is going full on and it’s good stuff. Some opinions of worth to hear!
A book just published by Bridget Williams here The Picketty Phenomenon- A NZ Perspective. On Radionz this morning there were three commenters Geoff Bertram, Donal Curtin, Susan Guthrie from the Morgan phenomenon!
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20154344
What I have taken from this is not necessarily right but this is how it seems. The idea is to reshape the tax system to reflect fairly where wealth is being produced – from investments etc. The Morgan study on tax is taking the view that all assets should be taxed and that would include the family home. But the tax would be on the individual’s own investment, so it would be a tax on unrealised income from that.
That may be fair on a macro level, but an income-poor person with a house shouldn’t have to sell the house so as to be able to pay for the tax on it, on top of all the other costs relating to house owning including rates, maintenance, repairs. Or sell it to someone else who can afford to pay the tax and outlay for the other costs, and rent it from them. The poor person would then change position from an asset holder to a less certain position as a renter. Which could happen.
It is hard on the poor trying for some social upward mobility and security to have a tax on even part of their house value, that would cause their small amount of discretionary money, available for their non-necessity needs and wants, to transfer to the disposable part from which they must pay for the fixed and other costs imposed by authorities, and service providers.
It is likely they will be stretched to pay their mortgage, which usually will be principal and interest from which banks make considerable income, which is really unearned income. Perhaps the banks should be paying the tax on the property. which is only the buyer’s by convention, and while the payments are made promptly. Under the mortgage the property can be claimed by the bank and sold for recovery in a very short time, a fortnight or month, after failure of the mortgagor to pay their required instalment owing on the required date.
Radionz Notes.
09:20 The Piketty Phenomenon
The global debate on taxing wealth, sparked by economist Thomas Piketty and his proposals for improving income equality. Piketty’s thesis is contained in his bestselling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
The new book, The Piketty Phenomenon collects New Zealand responses to Thomas Piketty’s argument that inherited wealth will always grow faster, on average, than earned wealth.
Three New Zealand economists discuss Piketty’s thesis in the New Zealand context – Geoff Bertram is a research associate at the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University; Susan Guthrie is the co-author of the 2011 book, The Big Kahuna with Gareth Morgan which argued for significant tax and welfare reform to redistribute wealth; and Donal Curtin is the former chief economist at the BNZ and now works as a consultant.
A wealth or capital gains tax, can be net. After interest.
Note that if I build a spec house, I have to pay tax on it, whereas the many people in Auckland whose house prices have risen hundreds of thousands, through no effort of theirs, pay nothing.
And that is why we get housing bubbles and why political parties have such difficulty implementing a CGT. Lazy people looking for the easy way to become rich rather than going out and working for it.
Well you can see why. I was silly enough to start a business.
If I had spent the same money on leveraging half a dozen rentals in Auckland I would be retired already.
Yes its frakking annoying. Working for a living barely pays in comparison to speculating on bits of ticky tacky construction materials thrown together.
Youth are the new poor and the new underclass …Unless they have rich parents they will never be able to afford a house…let alone tertiary education debt and in particular postgraduate tertiary education …. both in Britain and in New Zealand… Youth have been sold out! …Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss and Prof Antal Fekete gives further background.
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/196944-episode-max-keiser/
“In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss Johnny Rotten challenging Russell Brand and offer the show as a platform for a debate between the two. Max notes that quantitative easing is the central bank equivalent of punk rock gobbing. They highlight several of the many market distortions similar to the insanity leading up to the 1929 market crash – including $140,000 AUD cats.
In the second half, Max continues with his interview of Professor Antal Fekete of FeketeResearch.com about how the 1921 bond market collapse led the US Federal Reserve & Treasury conspiring to illegally introduce open market operation, leading to a situation in which profits in the bond market are risk free while profits in the commodity market are NOT risk free.
So chuffed you go to Max and Stacey for economics classes, Chooky. These guys taught me everything I know!!! 😀
Nanaia Mahuta: In it to win, not just to be Labour deputy leader
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11345976
Some points from the article:
* Yet she says she did not consult with Cunliffe before making her decision.
Cunliffe had already given his endorsement to Andrew Little by then and did not change that after Mahuta entered. Mahuta said she had not asked him to.
*”Cunliffe’s decision around the leadership was his. I had no influence over that.”
However, she said he had faced “real challenges” in his year as leader and makes it clear they were from within Labour.
“His closest supporters understood the extent of those challenges, but he didn’t let it deter him from trying to do the best job he could do to get into Government in 2014. You do what you’ve got to do. He was focussed on looking in front of him, but it is hard if leaders are having to look behind them as well.”
* She insists she is not simply positioning for deputy. “People will be assessed on their merits and ability to contribute. If I’m not successful it’s up to the leader to decide.”
*When told she’s a gutsy woman, she replied “got to give it a whirl.”
Mahuta is mother to two young children responsibilities outside Parliament with Tainui. Asked whether she’ll cut some of her tribal work if she is leader, she said she is a woman “and women multitask”. “Women can do amazing things and still continue to be mums.” She said she would wind back some of the tribal work if she was leader.
* Little known fact: She has tattoos of her children’s names on her feet.
Well, since she has now said she is serious about being leader, and not just being deputy, then I am prepared to listen closely to what she has to say and to consider whether to rank her as #1.
I already did 🙂
I like red. It is the colour of blood, sweat and tears……love, life and roses.
Chris Bishop is a future Prime Minister after Sir John retires after a record six terms.
[lprent: I really don’t appreciate diversion trolls at the top of a post. Sure it referred to something in the post. However it had absolutely nothing to do with the actual topic of the post.
Moved to OpenMike and be warned that the next such comment will incur a harsh ban. ]
Michael Cullen’s statement endorsing Grant Robertson
Thanks Ovid
The last para from Sir Michael
“Finally, there seem to be some who believe that within the Labour Party there is a small clique of Rogernomic moles who are waiting to regain control of the party. Last time round they supported David Cunliffe, this time they seem to be endorsing Andrew Little, who I am sure is far too sensible to want to be associated with such nonsense.”
That is an interesting way of saying the ABC club is a figment of our imagination! Grant has persuaded him that the core backers of Cunliffe are accusing the ABC of being Rogernomes. That is not the case IMO. Some, like Shearer and Nash, definitely are. I believe that the majority see the ABC club as a bunch of self serving pricks with an over-baked sense of entitlement and lacking in any serious philosophical point of view.
That helps Ovid. Michael Cullen can be trusted that his opinion is balanced. Thanks.
And I thought Cullen is an honourable man.
I have known him since he was an electorate MP.
He has been astute on many issues but, now as a retired senior statesman, having the mana of an elder within the Party, his latest piece really raises questions about him wading into the Primary, lobbying for a particular candidate and revealing the kind of judgment or wisdom that he still may have.
Does his latest move set an example or precedent for other retired senior Parliamentarians to follow?
Who is next in the line of august, esteemed retired Parliamentarians to step forward to lobby for his/her preferred candidate?
Cullen has shown poor communication skills when he talks about the Rogernomic group. He makes it sound like they supported Cunliffe, whereas I thought it was the opposite.
I think that what we need to remember is that Cunliffe was essentially a great conservative manager of the economy. He put in place a low wage, high cost economy and kept taxes slightly lower by the trick of having the state owned power companies charge very high prices. He subsidised employers and further marginalised beneficiaries with Working For Families. That he can support Robertson without mentioning the petulant anti-Cunliffe outbursts does not impress me at all.
…”we need to remember is that Cunliffe was essentially a great conservative”…typo?…you mean Cullen?
Yeah. Oops. Maybe someone can edit it for me?? Please.
Andrew Little’s letter:
Labour is the party that was built by working Kiwis for working Kiwis. We are still that party.
But we have to get our house in order. Because if we don’t then all we have is a bunch of good intentions gone to waste.
We need to fix the machine. We need to bring the pieces of the Labour movement back together and focus them on winning government and making changes we need to to build a fair society.
It’s a big task but it’s one we need to address one step at a time. First we need a caucus that communicates effectively within itself and with focus. Getting to that point will be the first job for the new Leader. Then the Leader and caucus need to reach out to the party and ensure they work well within themselves. Then we need to work alongside our affiliates.
We must find a common cause, within the movement, and with the many, many New Zealanders who want something better for themselves and for their families.
If we don’t find common cause as a movement we will never earn the trust of New Zealanders.
I can do this. I have done this before.
When I became the leader of the EPMU, one of New Zealand’s largest and most powerful unions, it was a house divided. I led the project to bring it together, to modernise it, to bring through new talent. I built a union which took our member’s issues out to the public, to the media, and won the argument again and again. We covered a lot of ground and during that time I dealt with organisations from small business to New Zealand’s biggest corporates on many different issues.
The one unifying thing, across all of these issues, was fairness. We got fair outcomes for our members and for New Zealand workers across the board because we worked together.
We are a party of immensely talented people. But right now we’re working as individuals, not as a collective movement.
We must fix this. We can.
We need to regain New Zealanders’ trust. We need them to know that when we make a promise, we can deliver. We need them to know we stand for them and their ambitions. Not just against what’s wrong but for what is right.
As part of that we must acknowledge the trust MÄori put in Labour in delivering us six of the the seven MÄori seats. They are our voters and we must make good on their return to us. We must ensure that MÄori are represented well within Labour and that advancing their aspirations is a cornerstone of our Party. That’s what being representative is about.
People have asked me why I’m standing. I’m standing because I believe in Labour’s values. I believe in fairness and justice for workers, for families, for all New Zealanders. People aren’t getting a fair go right now, and I won’t tolerate a society in which the very few at the top gain at the expense of the many.
I won’t tolerate a society in which good jobs are destroyed and replaced with insecure work, in which people in the middle are squeezed tighter and tighter by the cost of living and have no way to get ahead. A society in which those at the bottom fall off the edge of the cliff.
These are the principles I have stood for throughout my life and they have been at the core of how I have led. They are the principles that the Labour Party embodies.
But to stand up for those principles we must be a united Party with new ideas and a real plan to win back the trust of New Zealanders.
I can bring the party together. I have the track record to prove it.
Thanks Olwyn.
thanks
He speaks for me.
Thus far, Andrew Little is saying best… all the things I’ve been thinking for many years. I’m coming more and more to the view he’s the one to lead Labour out of the wilderness. Strong, forthright, doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Just what the party needs.
how do you think he can best deal with the certain meme of commie far left unionist
Given his years with the EPMU he will be accustomed to sticking with the job at hand and not letting others set the narrative for him. Also, they have spent a lot of their vitriol on Cunliffe – it would be hard for them to repeat the same act convincingly. I am very sad about all David Cunliffe has been forced to endure.
i am not reassured that they have been deterred. little would not have had the wealth and network against him like this govt has… or the media
i wonder if, whoever wins, they start using the word bully alot
i wont be bullied. nzers dont like bullies. key, bennett and collins are bullies…
@ Tracey
He’s big enough, strong enough to either ignore it or treat it with the contempt it deserves. He’s well known and been around a long time. In one way or another he has assisted thousands upon thousands of workers in the past 30 years, so I doubt that meme will have the kind of outcome his detractors will be hoping for.
I even suspect the media will not buy into it for the simple reason some of them probably have cause to be grateful for his ‘assistance’ in days gone by.
Good point Anne! The EPMU is their union.
🙂
fair comment about media. hadnt thought of that aspect. didnt cunliffe ignore their antics too?
i was saddened to read that when murdochs papers went rabid on whitlam journos went on strike… saddened cos it was done and they are too self interested here to consider such a stance.
Agreed Anne. The EPMU represent journalists and so he will know most of them reasonably well in different circumstances – even those that did not join the union.
john armstrong trying to be impartial, after the fact, on dirty politics. or perhaps he is giving key advice
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11346115
Most people can see through the fact this was written after the election, once Armstrong’s slavish support got the Tories in.
I have no respect for him as a journalist.
Question Time today: on the agenda, poverty, housing accords, Key’s communications with Slater, inquiry into Judith Collins dealings with SFO.
Another sound of silencing … the deconstruction of Maori TV now complete by forcing out Julian Wilcox following on from Carol Hirschfeld.
What a fool the new CEO must be to deliberately provoke the loss of these skilled and genius broadcasters.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11346609
The CEO is working with board member Georgina Te Heu Heu to make Maori Television a propaganda channel for the Maori Party and the National Party. Mihi Forbes will be next on their list to be pushed out the door.
I suggest a name change to Kupapa Television. That’s all it’ll be if we let them get away with it.
And what a tragedy that will be … she is delightful with her incisive brilliance. She and John Campbell are the last lights still burning through the fog.
Probably off topic. But please fix the RSS feed to have the full articles in it again. Having only the summaries makes it hard to read offline.
[Nothing is off topic in OM. LPrent? – MS]
OMG Robertson is resurrecting Helen’s Pledge card.
Not the way to move forward IMO
Stuff live on line (tweets) from Labour leadership meeting:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/beehive-live/10646919/Beehive-Live-And-now-to-work
Can’t edit.
Looks like Little made the best impression. Love this from him:
Hell, he’s brave. 😯
Not bad eh, let’s see if Little can hold his nerve over the next few weeks. BTW did you catch the link to my Radio 1 interview, Anne?
Yes I did CR. Great stuff. I couldn’t help wondering if a certain parliamentarian down your way heard it too. 🙂
😈
Maybe Little with Cunliffe as DP. I could maybe buy that.
I sort of like both of them.
Don’t want to vote for the others.