(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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by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Transformers: The disaster of the Great Depression was transformed into a new and fairer society by the democratic socialism of the First Labour Government. The disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic offers a similar transformative possibility to the Labour-NZ First-Green Government. Seize the time, Jacinda! You will never have a better ...
Tamper with The System? Well, we already are. But there's a difference between accidentally trickling sand into a precision gearbox versus formulating a plan to alter it on the fly with improvements in mind. One action is more or less innocently unscrupulous, the other amenable to earning an easy ...
Associate Prof George Thomson, Louise Delany, Prof Nick WilsonWhile it is possible that New Zealand can use intense public health controls to eradicate COVID-19 from the country – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently hospitalised.1 Better resilience ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...
We're about to do something unprecedented as a nation. We hope that by taking this extraordinary action before a single life in New Zealand has been lost to the deadly novel virus we will save tens of thousands of lives. Our lives. We'll do it together, in households, in isolation ...
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”So writes the author of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Old Testament that’s counted as a ‘wisdom’ book and written as if by an unnamed king of Jerusalem. But who would have thought there would be a time ...
I was surprised when the prime minister described the Economic Response to Covid-19 package as the ‘largest peacetime government spend in New Zealand's history’. Reflecting – checking through history – I realised that the term ‘spend’ was crucial and the package had no income tax cuts. Even so, it has ...
Years ago the Argentine sociologist Carlos Weisman wrote a book titled “Living within our Means.” It was a critique of Argentine society that focused on the paradoxical question of why, in a land of plenty, there was so much economic instability, inequality, corruption and political turmoil. His conclusion was basically ...
Parliament will be leading by example and adjourning tomorrow after a special sitting to consider an epidemic notice and state of emergency. Day-to-day oversight of the government will be delegated to a select committee. But that's not the only overight mechanism. The OIA will still be law, and (so far) ...
Michael Baker, University of OtagoOverjoyed. That’s not a word epidemiologists normally use, but that’s how I felt after hearing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement about New Zealand’s COVID-19 shutdown of everything except essential services for at least four weeks from midnight on Wednesday. More than anything, I just ...
How much homelessness is caused by house hoarding? We're about to find out. The pandemic has destroyed tourism, which means that house hoarders who put their hoarded properties up as short-term tourist rentals are now offering them on the ordinary rental market:Property investors are pulling properties from Airbnb to offer ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bruce Lieberman It seems like such a simple, straightforward, empowering idea: plant trees – a lot of trees – all over the world, and watch the planet’s temperature fall. Who doesn’t love a tree or two, even far more – the right ...
According to Newshub, Simon Bridges is open to joining a “grand coalition” with Labour as we hunker down to go into a month long lockdown. The idea is sound. Before now, the role of the opposition was to scrutinise and oppose. In the context of what almost amounts to a ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or ...
We need to be lifting our game against COVID-19. You and I need to help those working to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while they’re trying to lift the testing and treatment efforts. We don’t want to be playing this game running backwards. Best to play it solidly forward, from ...
Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Michael Baker, and Prof Nick WilsonThe NZ Government must do more to clearly articulate its COVID-19 strategy: eradication or ‘flattening the curve’ mitigation. But to do so means understanding the maths and ethics of both these strategies. In this blog, we adapt our work for ...
A few days ago I was starting to write something about the pandemic, which now seems unconscionable. It took the form of a letter to an agony aunt:“Dear Deidre, I have an ugly confession. I am quite excited by Covid-19.”This is how the piece went:“I’m not a psychopath, honest. Although the ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Reviews... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of DisastersThe likelihood of extreme events ...
Last week, the government announced a $12 billion initial package to support people during the pandemic. Today, the Reserve Bank is buying government bonds - effectively printing money - to keep up the money supply during the crisis. Normally such moves would have the right apoplectic. Instead, the National Party ...
I am a pundit, somebody who opines and comments on the news. There are no real qualifications to punditry though having a rudimentary way with words and good general knowledge helps. That is one reason there is a constant oversupply of would-be pundits and why it is quite hard to ...
I recently encountered the following prescription from a Faculty of Education at a leading New Zealand University. At first I wondered if it was another product of the postmodern generator (http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/), designed to create gibberish in the postmodern form, but I’m told it is real: The “schooled” society: Towards the ...
The coronavirus pandemic has of course had a major impact on individual lives and on societies as a whole. But, long after the crisis has passed (assuming it does), we will begin to realise that its real and lasting significance lies in the lessons it has taught us, if only ...
COVID-19 has plunged Aotearoa New Zealand (indeed, the world) into territory that, while maybe not totally unprecedented, certainly hasn’t been seen during the lifetimes of most of us here today. Our borders are closed to non-citizens, we’re being told not to gather in groups of more than 500 outside/100 inside, ...
For the last few weeks, I’ve been urging you to prepare yourself, your family, business, and community for Covid-19. Now it’s time for real action. Yesterday the director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced another 13 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, bringing our total to date to 52. ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 15, 2020 through Sat, Mar 21, 2020 Editor's Pick Now Isn’t the Time to Forget About Our Climate Change EffortsTasha Tilberg, Lindsey Wixson, and Liu Wen photographed ...
by Jan Rivers The article has been corrected to show that it was Ewen MacAskill, former Guardian journalist and not Luke Harding who travelled to meet Edward Snowden with journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras. Some of the Guardian’s well-known journalists who did not sign the protest letter are ...
by Cultural Worker Late March 2020 amidst the virus. With gigs crashing and burning all around it was without much hope that I called a long standing rest home booking: “ Hi, I’m supposed to be entertaining at your place this afternoon – is it still on?” “”If you don’t ...
Whenever people demand real change from their politicians, we're told that "politics is the art of the possible". The implication is that change isn't possible, so we'd better just get used to the sucky status quo. But now that there's a pandemic, a lot of things we were previously told ...
Together: In leading New Zealand through the Covid-19 Pandemic, the Prime Minister could do a lot worse than allow herself to be guided by the spirit of collective sacrifice and co-operation that animated the New Zealanders of 80 years ago. Most Kiwis alive today have had no opportunity to prove their ...
It is said that generals fight the last war. In the case of the early stages of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) they had learned from the Great Depression of the 1930s and they fought intelligently and successfully. Later their advice would be ignored in favour of the Austerians who ...
Solidarity Forever: All over the world, the arrival of the Covid-19 virus has exposed the fragility of the walls we erect around ourselves and our loved ones. It has shattered our illusions of autonomy and revealed to us how utterly dependent we all are on other human-beings. Finally, we see ...
Looking across the various arguments for/against the leading candidates to take the Democratic Nomination, you might honestly be very hard pressed to tell. There are a number of things that have now started happening since Amy Klobuchar and “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg both threw the towel in and immediately (and ...
by Daphna Whitmore Abortion is no longer in the Crimes Act in New Zealand. The law reform passed yesterday and now abortion is a medical matter between a woman and her doctor. Many women’s groups and progressive people have campaigned for reform for decades. The women’s liberation movement and some ...
Doug Specht, University of Westminster and Julio Gimenez, University of Westminster When fake news, misreporting and alternative facts are everywhere, reading the news can be a challenge. Not only is there plenty of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and other scientific topics floating around social media, you also ...
Michael Baker, University of Otago and Nick Wilson, University of OtagoWith some of the toughest border restrictions and a newly-announced NZ$500 million boost to health services, New Zealand is among a small number of countries with a strategy to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. New Zealand is also fortunate in ...
As expected, the government has introduced a sessional order to allow Parliament to operate during the pandemic. You can read it on the Order Paper here, but the short version is that questions and motions can be filed electronicly, select committees can work remotely, and the the Business Committee can ...
Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology; Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology; Timothy Graham, Queensland University of Technology, and Tobias R. Keller, Queensland University of Technology News and views about coronavirus has spread via social media in a way that no health emergency has done before. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, ...
So you’ve recently returned from overseas, come into contact with someone who tested positive, got a bit of a dry cough yourself or perhaps just want to self isolate for 14 days to avoid other people who might have COVID-19. Here are a few tips and tricks to help get ...
Our Good Fortune: Precisely because she has never been an ideologue (she calls herself a “pragmatic idealist”) Jacinda Ardern has a political nimbleness and spontaneity which, when infused with her exceptional emotional intelligence, produces spectacular demonstrations of leadership. Jacinda's empathic political personality contrasts sharply with the less-than-sunny ways of her ...
The Abortion Legislation Bill has just passed its third reading, 68-51. NZ First MPs bailed because their referendum amendment didn't pass, but there were plenty of MPs to provide a majority without them. The bill is a long way from perfect - most significantly, it subjects pregnant people who need ...
As most of the world tries to suppress the coronavirus spread, some countries are going it alone – trying to manage the pandemic through so-called “herd immunity”. Herd immunity means letting a large number of people catch a disease, and hence develop immunity to it, to stop the virus spreading. ...
So, as I sit at home with a very, very slight headache (i.e. not at work when I would otherwise be so), the now familiar figure of Ashley Bloomfield reports eight new confirmed cases of COVID-19 including two in Waikato. A surprise, given that we had just twelve yesterday? No. ...
Many who advocated for, and voted for, the current Coalition – particularly those who voted Labour and the Green Party – expected to see a sea change in the reality of social services. A real, deep change of attitude, approach of process through which the system negotiates the difficult and ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
We know some people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order A New Zealand First member’s bill drawn from the ballot today seeks to overhaul the youth justice system by instigating a system of demerit points for offences committed by young offenders. “The ‘Youth Justice Demerit Point System’ will put an end to ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign AffairsHonourable Ministers, Members of Parliament, members of the diplomatic corps, distinguished guests and official delegates, ladies and gentlemen – Welcome to you all.We are also privileged to have with us here today Ms Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Disarmament and Arms ControlThe Public Advisory Committee for Disarmament and Arms Control (PACDAC) is holding a Parliamentary Symposium on Tuesday to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) hosted by PACDAC Chair and Under-Secretary for Disarmament and ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic DevelopmentThe Provincial Growth Fund is investing $6 million in a land-based aquaculture pilot to see whether yellowtail kingfish can be commercially farmed in Northland, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today.A recirculating land-based aquaculture system will be built and operated ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for ForestryForestry Minister Shane Jones has announced two One Billion Trees programme grants of more than $1.18 million to help hapu and iwi in Northland restore whenua and moana.“Many communities around Aotearoa have benefited from One Billion Trees funding since the programme was launched ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign AffairsAhead of the start of the criminal trial in the Netherlands on 9 March, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has reaffirmed the need to establish truth, accountability and justice for the downing of Flight MH17 ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime MinisterThe Government is investing $19.9 million through the Provincial Growth Fund in a game-changing hydrogen energy facility in South Taranaki, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters announced today.“The development of alternative energy initiatives like this one is vital for the Taranaki region’s economy. ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Minister for Foreign AffairsForeign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand is partnering with countries in the Pacific to ensure they are prepared for, and able to respond to the global threat of Coronavirus (COVID-19).“There are currently no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Minister of Transport Phil Twyford has today announced details of the Government’s support package to keep key air freight moving and ensure New Zealanders retain access to essential goods during the four-week level 4 lockdown. “The Government is working with airlines and air freight operators to ensure New Zealand’s key ...
New Zealand moved up to COVID-19 Alert Level 3 – Restrict New Zealand to move up to COVID-19 Alert Level 4 – Eliminate, in 48 hours Two-staged approach to give people and businesses time to prepare Level 3, from tomorrow Non-essential businesses must close All events and gatherings must be ...
Good afternoon The Cabinet met this morning to discuss our next actions in the fight against COVID-19. Like the rest of the world, we are facing the potential for devastating impacts from this virus. But, through decisive action, and through working together, do we have a small window to get ...
The Government is announcing significant further support for the economy, workers and businesses as the country unites to prepare for Alert Level 4 in the fight against COVID-19. Cabinet today agreed to remove the cap on the Government’s wage subsidy scheme, which will inject a further $4 billion into the ...
The Government is backing the Reserve Bank’s latest action to support the economy by reducing longer-term interest rates, meaning lower costs for businesses and mortgage holders, and a lower currency to help our exporters. The Minister of Finance has signed a memorandum of understanding and a letter of indemnity with ...
The Government has asked the Commerce Commission to take account of the exceptional circumstances created by COVID-19 when monitoring business behaviour in coming weeks. “The purpose of my request to the Commerce Commission is to make sure businesses can work together in ways that will allow them to provide ...
The New Zealand Government has temporarily closed its High Commission in Bridgetown, Barbados and its Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Due to the increasing scarcity of air links in and out of Bridgetown and Yangon, and the pressure COVID-19 is placing ...
Associate Health and Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare has today announced the Government’s plan to support Māori communities and businesses in the face of COVID-19. “Our Government’s $12.1 billion economic package will help many Māori whānau, workers and businesses, whether it’s through wage subsidies, income support and worker redeployment, or ...
The Government and the hospitality industry have worked together to produce guidelines to assist with managing and reducing transmission of COVID-19, Health Minister David Clark announced today. The guidelines developed between the Government, Hospitality New Zealand and SkyCity Entertainment Group, set out how the new restrictions on physical distancing and ...
Four stage Alert System for COVID-19 announced New Zealand moved up to COVID-19 Alert Level 2 – Reduce Contact New Zealanders over 70 and those with certain medical conditions told to stay at home as much as they can to reduce risk of contact with the virus Workplaces to implement ...
Kia ora koutou katoa I’m speaking directly to all New Zealanders today to give you as much certainty and clarity as we can as we fight Covid-19. Over the past few weeks, the world has changed. And it has changed very quickly. In February it would have seemed unimaginable to ...
New Zealand and Singapore have jointly committed to keep supply chains open and to remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker welcomed the commitment. “This is an important collective response, and ...
JOINT MINISTERIAL STATEMENT BY SINGAPORE AND NEW ZEALAND AFFIRMING COMMITMENT TO ENSURING SUPPLY CHAIN CONNECTIVITY AMIDST THE COVID-19 SITUATION The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis. As part of our collective response to combat COVID-19, Singapore and New Zealand are committed to maintaining open and connected supply chains. We ...
Travel restrictions, closing our border to almost all travelers came into force from 23:59 on Thursday 19 March 2020 (NZDT). All airlines were informed of these restrictions before they came into force. Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says “The transit of passengers between Australia and New Zealand has been agreed upon and ...
The Government has allocated $100 million to help redeploy workers affected by the economic impact of COVID-19, with the hard-hit region of Gisborne-Tairāwhiti to be the first helped, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford, Forestry and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. Phil Twyford ...
The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is ramping up support for Tairāwhiti’s wood processing sector to bolster the region’s economy at a time of heightened uncertainty, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. Following earlier announcements today of a regional support package for Tairāwhiti, Minister Jones has also announced a ...
The Coalition Government has stepped in to protect Air New Zealand with a significant financial deal that protects essential routes and allows the company to keep operating. The Government and Air New Zealand have agreed a debt funding agreement through commercial 24-month loan facilities of up to $900 million*. The ...
The Government has taken further measures to protect New Zealanders from the COVID-19 virus, effectively stopping all people from boarding a plane to New Zealand from 11:59pm today, except for returning New Zealanders, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. New Zealanders’ partners, legal guardians or any dependent children travelling with ...
The Government has reinforced its commitment to protecting the health of New Zealanders from COVID-19 through the cancellation of indoor events with more than 100 people. “Protecting the health of New Zealanders is our number one priority, and that means we need to reduce the risks associated with large gatherings,” ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Queenstown nurse tests positive for Covid-19, more detail emerges on case clusters, and NZers in Australia score moderate victory.A Queenstown nurse has tested positive for Covid-19, bringing to light wider fears of health workers. The Otago Daily Times reports the nurse worked at ...
Analysis: Italian doctors say hospitals can serve as a major vector for Covid-19 transmission. Here's what New Zealand is doing to stop that from happening here "The situation here is dismal as we operate well below our normal standard of care," a group of doctors from Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in ...
Covid-19 has disrupted the financial plans of councils and the Government is exploring ways of helping them shoulder an economic crisis without hiking rates during a downturn The Government and councils are discussing ways local bodies can borrow more to avoid slashing services, but one mayor is questioning if it'll be ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
Wellington publisher Mary McCallum went to Womad with 51,000 other people just before the lockdown. It’s a fortnight since people headed home from Womad in New Plymouth, some heading straight into self-isolation as a preventive measure. Held on March 13-15, it was the last large gathering before Government measures ...
What will post-coronavirus China look like? David Williams talks to Kiwi journalist Anna Fifield, of the Washington Post Last week, China’s health authorities said there had been only one new case of local transmission of Covid-19 over the previous five days. In the city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the ...
Contrarian thinking can be provocative, interesting and amusing at the best of times – challenging our assumptions that life is running smoothly. But it can be downright dangerous, writes Peter Bale. Entire countries are trying contrarian approaches to the orthodox epidemiological theory on how to manage a virus that grows exponentially and ...
The most powerful woman in New Zealand sport, Kereyn Smith, has been working furiously through the Olympic meltdown to make sure Kiwi athletes are heard The small office in Kereyn Smith’s Auckland townhouse - until now unused and “somewhat chaotic” - has become New Zealand’s Olympic war room. It’s here in her isolation ...
For Otago students looking forward to a big year Covid-19 has turned the university world upside down, writes a reluctant refugee* I’m writing this on my 19th birthday, stuck at home with just my parents and my blind dog. I share my birthday with two of my best friends and ...
Nurses are the first people you’ll meet if you think you have Covid-19. Here, one of our frontline workers describes the rapid changes both healthcare workers and the public are facing. As told to Josie Adams.I was working at an urgent care clinic in East Auckland when the first reports ...
Introducing a brand new series of charts, graphics and data-visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. This is the first edition – we’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.Information about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand is changing rapidly. This ...
Some countries are now using a serology test, which uses blood or serum samples to look for antibodies we produce in response to the virus. Siouxsie Wiles explains its strengths and weaknesses.Read Toby Morris’s new Side Eye comic, created with Siouxsie Wiles, here. And more of Siouxsie’s writing here. The Spinoff’s Covid-19 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Omar Mubin, Senior Lecturer in human-centred computing & human-computer interaction, Western Sydney University The Australian government has launched an app offering up-to-date advice and information on the COVID-19 pandemic. The Coronavirus Australia app, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Omar Mubin, Senior Lecturer in human-centred computing & human-computer interaction, Western Sydney University The Australian government has launched an app offering up-to-date advice and information on the COVID-19 pandemic. The Coronavirus Australia app, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, ...
The Prime Minister has praised Australia's move to make some Kiwis eligible for its wage subsidy scheme, which Australia's PM says is "more generous" than New Zealand's one. ...
Russia Today (sometimes referred to as Kremlin TV) does not have a widespread reputation as a fair and balanced news source. But occasionally if they say it’s raining, you might want to check outside to see if you need an umbrella.So there is some interest in its reporting of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Thorpe, Professor in Sociology of Sport and Physical Culture, University of Waikato During New Zealand’s four-week lockdown, all sporting facilities, back-country walking trails and parks are closed to stop the spread of coronavirus and avoid injuries. But New Zealanders have high ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Hamilton, Visiting Scholar, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The A$130 billion payment will be benefit six million of Australia’s 13 million employees through their employers. It will ensure each employee kept on in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The secret sauce in the government’s A$130 billion JobKeeper payment is that it will be retrospective, in the best possible way. It’ll not only go to employers who have suffered ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michaela Pascoe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Exercise and Mental Health, Victoria University Medicare-subsidised psychology and psychiatry sessions, as well as GP visits, can now take place via phone and video calls – if clinicians agree not to charge patients out-of-pocket costs for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Sedger, Senior Lecturer, Head of the Viruses and Cytokine Biology group in the School of Life Science, University of Technology Sydney While many scientists are working on developing a coronavirus vaccine, others are busy testing antiviral drugs. Vaccines are generally only ...
Alex Casey delivers her last power rankings for The Bachelorette NZ, where Lily and Lesina make their final decisions. Click here for previous instalments. Well me homies, we have reached the end of our journey together. At times it was slow, like a food tech teacher dragging his brogues through the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Morrison government will provide a flat $1,500 a fortnight JobKeeper payment per employee for businesses to retain or rehire nearly six million workers, in a massive $130 billion six-month wage subsidy scheme to limit ...
David Downs - who doesn't even drink coffee - explains his plan to ensure some favorite cafés are still around when we emerge from lockdown Are you already sick of instant coffee, and missing your morning brew? Well, while you may have to suffer barrista-withdrawal symptoms for few more weeks, moves ...
By RNZ News The Auckland girl’s secondary school Marist College has New Zealand’s biggest Covid-19 cluster with 47 confirmed and probable cases. It is the biggest cluster of infection being tracked by NZ health authorities. The board chairperson Stephen Dallow said the confirmed cases included teachers, students and adults ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Irving, Adjunct Professor, University of Technology Sydney Blood is like milk, not toilet paper. You can’t just buy a lot of it and save it for later – you need to have a regular, fresh supply for patients who need it. ...
Newsroom Pro’s Bernard Hickey and Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr zoom out to lunch to talk about the Reserve Bank’s latest move to help banks lend to corporates. The Reserve Bank announced on Monday it would lend to banks dealing with distressed corporate borrowers, opening a new weekly Open ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacinta Carroll, Senior Research Fellow, Counter Terrorism and Social Cohesion, National Security College, Australian National University There are now nearly 300 cases of COVID-19 linked to passengers who disembarked from the Ruby Princess cruise ship without any health checks from authorities. Amid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Brayshaw, Lecturer, Fashion and Design History, Theory, and Thinking, University of Technology Sydney Once again, global crafting communities are stepping up to help in a crisis, sewing face masks desperately needed in American hospitals to help stop the spread of COVID-19. ...
Retailer Smiths City has reached an agreement with ASB Bank to delay a $1.5 million dollar repayment of a loan due tomorrow. It also said it is starting talks with potential investors to support the business. The company said Covid-19 has caused an unforeseen and unprecedented shock to the business, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Quentin Grafton, Director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University In 1997, a bestselling book by Jared Diamond purported to explain how the West “won” world dominance based on the good luck ...
Figures from around the world show that Covid-19, while vicious and contagious, does behave like other infections, rampaging quickly through a community, hospitalising a small percentage and causing death in an even smaller percentage. The World Health ...
Video of PM Ardern’s Post Cabinet Press Conference is available here: New Zealand Labour Party - #LIVE: Post-Cabinet Press Conference 2 March 2020 Today Cabinet was focused on the response to protect NZers from COVID-19. Ardern outlined ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin To get a correct picture, we need regional data – indeed sub-regional statistics – because the virus does not respect political boundaries. Unfortunately, it is very hard to get regional data from European countries. The Johns Hopkins data – most widely used by the media (and ...
An extract from Jacinda Ardern: A New Kind of Leader, the brand new biography of the prime minister by Madeleine Chapman, formerly of this parish.Out today, Madeleine’s biography of the prime minister is magnificent. We cracked up. We had a wee cry. We’ve never read a political biography like it. Tomorrow ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Misha Ketchell, Editor & Executive Director, The Conversation You might have seen recent mediareports in various outlets of a paper, commissioned by the federal government, reporting the coronavirus advice of a group of experts from Group Of Eight universities. Dated March ...
Analysis: On the face of it, New Zealand's epidemic curve is going exponential. But are case numbers really rising for the same reasons as overseas? If you've been following any news about Covid-19 over the past three months, you've heard of The Curve. It looks, variously, like a sky-high pillar ...
MediaRoom column: A decision to block publication of community newspapers under the State of Emergency could be changed tomorrow. Tim Murphy reports. A decision to stop community newspapers from circulating in the country's suburbs, towns and settlements appears to have been an example of officials scratching their regulatory itch. On Friday, ...
A Waikato berry grower has been ordered to pay over $76,000 for employment law breaches. Olde Berry Farm has been fined $50,000 and forced to pay over $16,000 in unpaid wages and holiday pay. Its managing director, Andrew Molly, has been made personally responsible fo an additional $10,000 in penalties. ...
The Government has set up a dedicated service for reporting fears of price gouging, as Jacinda Ardern flags the expansion of "essential services" Kiwis concerned about potential price gouging at supermarkets during the coronavirus lockdown can now report the issue directly to government officials, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced. Ardern ...
A new report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment into the ban on new petroleum exploration permits outside onshore Taranaki has been welcomed by the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ). "This ...
The takeover offer for Abano Healthcare is off the table - a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said the $150-million takeover scheme agreement with Adams NZ Bidco Ltd. was terminated, with no fees payable by either party, as a result as the material adverse change to the company's ...
The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) contribution to the successful mission to train members of the Iraqi Security Forces to combat ISIS is at an end and the first troops from the final contingent have arrived home. Since December the NZDF has had 45 personnel ...
On Sunday it was reported there is a high demand for New Zealand Police's online form to report lockdown breaches. This news should act as a red flag, signalling the potentially corrosive effects on public trust within Aotearoa that may occur in these troubled times. Concerns have already been expressed ...
The Prime Minister is giving the latest updates on the government's fight against the impact of Covid-19 at her weekly post-Cabinet media conference. Watch live here. ...
Watch the replay of our fourth live Q&A session with Dr Ayesha Verrall, a senior lecturer at Otago University who specialises in infectious diseases. Ayesha Verrall is an infectious diseases physician and senior lecturer at Otago University's Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine (Wellington). Dr Verrall has been monitoring the spread and impact ...
Recognising how much of the burden women are carrying in this crisis - and how much they always carry - may take us closer to a society in which caring work is seen and valued for the essential work it is, writes Jess Berentson-Shaw COVID-19 has thrown a window wide ...
You’ve lost your job and your income has reduced due to the Covid-19 crisis, so how do you hold onto your home? Mortgage adviser Cameron Marcroft talks to Bonnie Sumner.Tell us about the changes you’ve seen since the lockdown began. We’ve had many enquiries coming through from both existing ...
When officials – including police themselves – don’t seem clear on the rules around movement, it makes it harder for everyone to do the right thing, writes Andrew Geddis.Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to eradicate the virus that causes Covid-19 from its shores. To do that, as a ...
The EMA is urging the Government to postpone the planned significant increase to the minimum wage on Wednesday, as employers grapple with keeping their doors open amid COVID-19. Chief Executive Brett O’Riley says that while it may be politically ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Wark, Conjoint Professor, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle As the number of COVID-19 cases around the world continues to climb, hospitals are under increased pressure to provide emergency care for the most severely ill patients. What does ...
Philanthropy New Zealand will release a weekly update to share philanthropic and grantmaking activity and insight as the sector seeks to support communities in the wake of COVID-19. This update is a general public document, provided to Ministers, ...
By Elias Nanau in Port Moresby Indonesia has issued a stern warning over illegal border crossers from Papua New Guinea. This follows Indonesia stepping up its security measures at the border in response to the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. The First Secretary to the governor for West Sepik, Adam ...
As two staff members test positive for Covid-19, police are grappling with ways to keep their workforce safe while still enforcing the rules of the lockdown, Marc Daalder reports Two police staff have tested positive for Covid-19, Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Monday, while nearly 400 others are now in self-isolation ...
The Covid-19 crisis in media has claimed New Zealand’s last surviving radio station solely dedicated to sport. Amid a wider crisis in media funding right now, the first outlet has been forced to close the doors – and it isn’t likely to return.Staff at Radio Sport have been told that the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute New Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates paint a grim picture of the direct economic costs of public health measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, and the need for more government support ...
Tips on how television can help educate your kids, for parents who have to keep working.It feels as if a great many parents are simply flourishing during this lockdown with fairy gardens, bird song and mason jars, daily bongo drum dancing and essays written by three-year-old prodigies about how satisfying ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. There were 76 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, up from the previous day's 63 new cases. Details of how many tests have been completed are now being ...
Supermarkets and some publishers are favoured by the government’s imposition of severe restrictions on what we can do and from whom we can buy during the Covid-19 lock-down. But one consumer watchdog is challenging the legality of an edict by Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi which favours supermarkets while Act leader ...
Robyn Hunt writes on the challenges facing disabled people and what needs to be done to support them as we go into lockdown, and beyond.Disabled people at higher risk need more help. Many of the almost one quarter of New Zealanders who are disabled are doing it hard as the ...
An online focus is coming back to bite newspaper companies, the Otago Daily Times’ editor says. David Williams reports. Despite advertising falling off a cliff, and its community papers dormant, the group editor of the country’s third-biggest publisher says there haven’t been layoffs and it’s unlikely any of its newspapers ...
Cabinet ministers will patch into a video conference this afternoon to discuss the Covid-19 lockdown, including complaints about high prices at supermarkets. ...
Talks will be ongoing between local leaders and Government in an effort to have them deploy both personnel and other resources to Tairāwhiti to support regional measures to contain COVID-19. Mayor Rehette Stoltz, Gisborne District Council ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers' Union is joining calls for the Government to extend submission deadlines for Select Committees during the immediate fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. New Zealand Taxpayers' Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, "Old political ...
FIRST Union welcomes the announcements made by supermarket chains Foodstuffs and Progressive Enterprises that workers will receive lockdown pay increases but is cautioning that the details of these promises matter and all essential workers should be earning ...
By Imelda V. Abano in Manila The novel coronavirus now sweeping the globe has left many countries struggling to cope with rising numbers of infections and journalists grappling with how to best cover this evolving public health crisis. In addition to questions about how governments, health care systems and ...
The government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight in and out of the country - with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight. ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Kia ora e te whānau, welcome to MME with me! I know a lot of us have this little green book on our shelves. Maybe you bought it and never got round to opening ...
The Free Speech Coalition is preparing to launch an urgent judicial review of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s decision to deem non-daily newspapers and publications not an essential service for the purposes of the COVID-19 Level-4 nationwide shutdown. ...
Increasingly concerned home support workers are worried that without adequate personal protective equipment and mandatory protocols for risk assessments, they may end up spreading COVID-19 around the homes and communities they work in. The news that 21 ...
The kiwifruit industry is fighting for survival as it tries to pick and pack the season's crop while enforcing Covid-19 restrictions. The apple industry is also predicting problems with at least 10 percent of the crop not likely to be picked. The nationwide lockdown has come right in the middle ...
Open mike 22/10/2014 
Open mike is your post. 
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...15 hours ago
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...16 hours ago
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...17 hours ago
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...18 hours ago
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...20 hours ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...20 hours ago
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...1 day ago
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...1 day ago
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020 Articles Linked to on Facebook Sun, Mar 22, 2020 In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...2 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...3 days ago
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...3 days ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...3 days ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...4 days ago
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...4 days ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...6 days ago
According to Newshub, Simon Bridges is open to joining a “grand coalition” with Labour as we hunker down to go into a month long lockdown. The idea is sound. Before now, the role of the opposition was to scrutinise and oppose. In the context of what almost amounts to a ...1 week ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or ...1 week ago
A few days ago I was starting to write something about the pandemic, which now seems unconscionable. It took the form of a letter to an agony aunt:“Dear Deidre, I have an ugly confession. I am quite excited by Covid-19.”This is how the piece went:“I’m not a psychopath, honest. Although the ...1 week ago
I am a pundit, somebody who opines and comments on the news. There are no real qualifications to punditry though having a rudimentary way with words and good general knowledge helps. That is one reason there is a constant oversupply of would-be pundits and why it is quite hard to ...1 week ago
The coronavirus pandemic has of course had a major impact on individual lives and on societies as a whole. But, long after the crisis has passed (assuming it does), we will begin to realise that its real and lasting significance lies in the lessons it has taught us, if only ...1 week ago
COVID-19 has plunged Aotearoa New Zealand (indeed, the world) into territory that, while maybe not totally unprecedented, certainly hasn’t been seen during the lifetimes of most of us here today. Our borders are closed to non-citizens, we’re being told not to gather in groups of more than 500 outside/100 inside, ...1 week ago
Looking across the various arguments for/against the leading candidates to take the Democratic Nomination, you might honestly be very hard pressed to tell. There are a number of things that have now started happening since Amy Klobuchar and “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg both threw the towel in and immediately (and ...2 weeks ago
Some fave speeches: ...2 weeks ago
Many who advocated for, and voted for, the current Coalition – particularly those who voted Labour and the Green Party – expected to see a sea change in the reality of social services. A real, deep change of attitude, approach of process through which the system negotiates the difficult and ...2 weeks ago
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark. "Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...15 hours ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...3 days ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...6 days ago
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...12 hours ago
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Queenstown nurse tests positive for Covid-19, more detail emerges on case clusters, and NZers in Australia score moderate victory.A Queenstown nurse has tested positive for Covid-19, bringing to light wider fears of health workers. The Otago Daily Times reports the nurse worked at ...46 mins ago
Analysis: Italian doctors say hospitals can serve as a major vector for Covid-19 transmission. Here's what New Zealand is doing to stop that from happening here "The situation here is dismal as we operate well below our normal standard of care," a group of doctors from Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in ...54 mins ago
Top health officials will front today as the Epidemic Response Committee holds its first public meeting via video conference. ...1 hour ago
Covid-19 has disrupted the financial plans of councils and the Government is exploring ways of helping them shoulder an economic crisis without hiking rates during a downturn The Government and councils are discussing ways local bodies can borrow more to avoid slashing services, but one mayor is questioning if it'll be ...1 hour ago
Wellington publisher Mary McCallum went to Womad with 51,000 other people just before the lockdown. It’s a fortnight since people headed home from Womad in New Plymouth, some heading straight into self-isolation as a preventive measure. Held on March 13-15, it was the last large gathering before Government measures ...2 hours ago
What will post-coronavirus China look like? David Williams talks to Kiwi journalist Anna Fifield, of the Washington Post Last week, China’s health authorities said there had been only one new case of local transmission of Covid-19 over the previous five days. In the city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the ...2 hours ago
Contrarian thinking can be provocative, interesting and amusing at the best of times – challenging our assumptions that life is running smoothly. But it can be downright dangerous, writes Peter Bale. Entire countries are trying contrarian approaches to the orthodox epidemiological theory on how to manage a virus that grows exponentially and ...2 hours ago
The most powerful woman in New Zealand sport, Kereyn Smith, has been working furiously through the Olympic meltdown to make sure Kiwi athletes are heard The small office in Kereyn Smith’s Auckland townhouse - until now unused and “somewhat chaotic” - has become New Zealand’s Olympic war room. It’s here in her isolation ...2 hours ago
For Otago students looking forward to a big year Covid-19 has turned the university world upside down, writes a reluctant refugee* I’m writing this on my 19th birthday, stuck at home with just my parents and my blind dog. I share my birthday with two of my best friends and ...2 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Omar Mubin, Senior Lecturer in human-centred computing & human-computer interaction, Western Sydney University The Australian government has launched an app offering up-to-date advice and information on the COVID-19 pandemic. The Coronavirus Australia app, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, ...8 hours ago
Russia Today (sometimes referred to as Kremlin TV) does not have a widespread reputation as a fair and balanced news source. But occasionally if they say it’s raining, you might want to check outside to see if you need an umbrella. So there is some interest in its reporting of ...9 hours ago
David Downs - who doesn't even drink coffee - explains his plan to ensure some favorite cafés are still around when we emerge from lockdown Are you already sick of instant coffee, and missing your morning brew? Well, while you may have to suffer barrista-withdrawal symptoms for few more weeks, moves ...11 hours ago
Newsroom Pro’s Bernard Hickey and Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr zoom out to lunch to talk about the Reserve Bank’s latest move to help banks lend to corporates. The Reserve Bank announced on Monday it would lend to banks dealing with distressed corporate borrowers, opening a new weekly Open ...14 hours ago
Retailer Smiths City has reached an agreement with ASB Bank to delay a $1.5 million dollar repayment of a loan due tomorrow. It also said it is starting talks with potential investors to support the business. The company said Covid-19 has caused an unforeseen and unprecedented shock to the business, ...14 hours ago
Figures from around the world show that Covid-19, while vicious and contagious, does behave like other infections, rampaging quickly through a community, hospitalising a small percentage and causing death in an even smaller percentage. The World Health ...14 hours ago
Analysis: On the face of it, New Zealand's epidemic curve is going exponential. But are case numbers really rising for the same reasons as overseas? If you've been following any news about Covid-19 over the past three months, you've heard of The Curve. It looks, variously, like a sky-high pillar ...15 hours ago
MediaRoom column: A decision to block publication of community newspapers under the State of Emergency could be changed tomorrow. Tim Murphy reports. A decision to stop community newspapers from circulating in the country's suburbs, towns and settlements appears to have been an example of officials scratching their regulatory itch. On Friday, ...15 hours ago
A Waikato berry grower has been ordered to pay over $76,000 for employment law breaches. Olde Berry Farm has been fined $50,000 and forced to pay over $16,000 in unpaid wages and holiday pay. Its managing director, Andrew Molly, has been made personally responsible fo an additional $10,000 in penalties. ...15 hours ago
The Government has set up a dedicated service for reporting fears of price gouging, as Jacinda Ardern flags the expansion of "essential services" Kiwis concerned about potential price gouging at supermarkets during the coronavirus lockdown can now report the issue directly to government officials, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced. Ardern ...15 hours ago
The takeover offer for Abano Healthcare is off the table - a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said the $150-million takeover scheme agreement with Adams NZ Bidco Ltd. was terminated, with no fees payable by either party, as a result as the material adverse change to the company's ...15 hours ago
On Sunday it was reported there is a high demand for New Zealand Police's online form to report lockdown breaches. This news should act as a red flag, signalling the potentially corrosive effects on public trust within Aotearoa that may occur in these troubled times. Concerns have already been expressed ...15 hours ago
Watch the replay of our fourth live Q&A session with Dr Ayesha Verrall, a senior lecturer at Otago University who specialises in infectious diseases. Ayesha Verrall is an infectious diseases physician and senior lecturer at Otago University's Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine (Wellington). Dr Verrall has been monitoring the spread and impact ...16 hours ago
Recognising how much of the burden women are carrying in this crisis - and how much they always carry - may take us closer to a society in which caring work is seen and valued for the essential work it is, writes Jess Berentson-Shaw COVID-19 has thrown a window wide ...16 hours ago
You’ve lost your job and your income has reduced due to the Covid-19 crisis, so how do you hold onto your home? Mortgage adviser Cameron Marcroft talks to Bonnie Sumner. Tell us about the changes you’ve seen since the lockdown began. We’ve had many enquiries coming through from both existing ...16 hours ago
As two staff members test positive for Covid-19, police are grappling with ways to keep their workforce safe while still enforcing the rules of the lockdown, Marc Daalder reports Two police staff have tested positive for Covid-19, Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Monday, while nearly 400 others are now in self-isolation ...17 hours ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. There were 76 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, up from the previous day's 63 new cases. Details of how many tests have been completed are now being ...18 hours ago
Supermarkets and some publishers are favoured by the government’s imposition of severe restrictions on what we can do and from whom we can buy during the Covid-19 lock-down. But one consumer watchdog is challenging the legality of an edict by Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi which favours supermarkets while Act leader ...18 hours ago
An online focus is coming back to bite newspaper companies, the Otago Daily Times’ editor says. David Williams reports. Despite advertising falling off a cliff, and its community papers dormant, the group editor of the country’s third-biggest publisher says there haven’t been layoffs and it’s unlikely any of its newspapers ...19 hours ago
Cabinet ministers will patch into a video conference this afternoon to discuss the Covid-19 lockdown, including complaints about high prices at supermarkets. ...19 hours ago
The kiwifruit industry is fighting for survival as it tries to pick and pack the season's crop while enforcing Covid-19 restrictions. The apple industry is also predicting problems with at least 10 percent of the crop not likely to be picked. The nationwide lockdown has come right in the middle ...20 hours ago
(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.