Toby Manhire: "Campbell, who did a good job at keeping things rolling, at one point observed, “You sound like you’re both on auto-pilot,” he was mostly right, except that would have required leaving the ground."
Trish Sherson: "Real politics is live, off script, a contest of ideas with tough questions. Collins owned it."
Morgan Godfery: "The prime minister had it all over her: on the border, on housing, on education, and in personality. "
Ben Thomas: "Ardern was strangely hesitant."
Justin Giovannetti: "When asked about her plan for poverty reduction, Collins responded with ripping up the RMA. Campbell was incredulous, voters were probably confused."
Madeleine Chapman: "both leaders argued about who could commit the hardest to not taxing property. In my mind, we all lost tonight. And I will spend the next seven working days of my life fake-smiling and announcing “my husband is Samoan, so talofa” to everyone I meet. In that sense, Judith Collins won simply by saying something so ridiculous that she’ll be living rent-free in my brain until the next debate."
Steve Braunias has written an article for the Guardian on the leaders' debate. The link is below. One notable quote…
After the curious stage direction, Campbell gave a warm welcome to Ardern and Collins, and revealed that he was holding nothing more sinister than a brand new clipboard. The next 90 minutes were all downhill.
“I tell you what, John,” she kept saying, and one of the things she told him over and over is that she had experience as a small business owner. “I once was one.” She treated the debate as a kind of autobiography in instalments.
Old Jude's really quite skillful, don't you think? No flies on her in this regard.
When there is very little of relevance that you can confidently dominate the debate with, revert to repetitive and vague historical recollections, including inane self promotion.
And then hope that it might appeal to the emotions of a number of the disillusioned or worried, (in this case small and medium business operators), or any other target audience which you know will be feeling some pain or distress at the time you take to the podium.
Then hope like Hell that your murmurings will convince the target audience that their suffering and predicament was brought about by your opponent, or those who advised him or her and also by those who continue to do so.
Maybe Ardern was just plain tired , pandemic to navigate NZ through since March and electioneering since July. She knew it and had to tread cautiously first time around.
Janet I would think you're 100% right. The knowledge that the election would be over now if not having to be fitted round wilfully ignorant people undoing the efforts of those really doing God's work on earth leads to pockets of depression. She may have been on the edge of one of them.
And for those not wishing to sleepwalk to the polls, just roll over and go back to sleep, (perhaps until 2023).
Another way, if are worried that you might be accused of NOT voting or you are getting a bit nervous about being caught out abstaining from the three yearly habit, is to go to the nearest polling place, walk in, and then out.
After you've done and then just mill around (smoke a ciggy if you're that way inclined, or sip on a water for about 20 minutes) and then leave with an old "I voted" sticker from 2017 or 2014 that you brought with you, stuck to your jacket, shirt or blouse.
Collins made her points rather than answer the actual questions. The arrogance was on show with those cutaway shots so her media minders have work to do unless that's the desired outcome.
Collin's is hardly going to make any impact trying to play Ardern at her particular skills, because a) she isn’t that cuddly feely, b) She would look incincere, so pointing out basic points is pretty much all she has to go with at this late stage I think.
I did think Collins got the better of Ardern with coming across to your average normal voter who doesn't particularly follow politics, with plain speak tbh, while Ardern's normally excellent communication skills kind of had an off night.
If anything, to me it looked oddly like Ardern had just over practiced the thing and was just sticking to a routine or script, with no improv' when Collins pointed things out.
If you like full on cringe you would have picked Collins over Ardern. Her performance was on par with what a certain Don Brash could produce, even Bridges probably would have been more convincing.
Collins response of "that we know of!" to Ardern's statement on the tiny amount of border/quarantine breaches was one such example.
I guess it comes down to how you prefer you leader to come across.
Different voters prefer different things. If you like the touchy feely persona, Ardern is always going to win (although she had an off night last night). If you prefer just basic truthful points rammed at you then you would go Collins.
And if you are a die hard voter for either party, you are going to view each persons performance with rose coloured glasses and ignore the flaws of your preferred.
An old trick that seasoned or street smart politicians on the offensive often come up with is having it appear that they are trying to be polite and truthful, when all they are trying to do is to dislodge their opponent and dominate the debate.
Ardern seems to be aware of this tactic and has obviously been quite well coached in relation to avoiding repetitive distraction. For example, repetitive title errors or name pronunciations"errors".
Expressing opinion as to package it as a "truthful presentation" is another tactic which is well used. It is commonly acceptable just as long as the opinion expressed cannot be legitimately challenged as being erroneous or non-factual at the time that opinion is provided.
This is as old a trick as using percentages of percentages to embellish or appear to exaggerate a statement so as to give it impact.
Say the unemployment figure for women in NZ from Sept 2017 through to Sept 2018 decreased from 5.4% to 4%, some might convey it this way; "The number of registered unemployed women in NZ dropped by about 22% during Sept 2017 and Sept 2018".
Quite entertaining really.
All I am suggesting is that we all need to be careful with our definition of the word; "truthful", especially when quoting politicians lines.
No matter what her minders have told her she must change – and it's obvious her minders have said there's a lot she needs to change – there's nothing Collins can do to mask her abject narcissism and multiple personality disorders.
I was a bit put off by the hype- Wendy Petrie over the poll results, as if they were handed down to Moses as gospel to the repeated gushy ad with Campbell.
I am not the target audience, I have made up my mind and will be early voting.
@ Dennis Frank …yep with you there..I fucking love political debates, and this one I actually thought was pretty good, it showed for anyone who bothered to watch the whole thing where both political parties lined up and where the light was between them…the environment was obviously the most stark difference between them, while Madeleine Chapman summed up housing and capital gains (which is also of course directly related to inequality and poverty outcomes etc)…"both leaders argued about who could commit the hardest to not taxing property. In my mind, we all lost tonight."
I found Ardern to be quite uncharismatic which combined with an awful semi pleading delivery style was quite hard to watch, while Collins left me with the feeling that I cannot excuse anyone who would actually vote for someone so seething with uncontrolled rage and a barely contained nasty streak that spilled out time and time again in almost every sideways look and glance she made at Ardren..she seemed to me to be quite unhinged.
Indeed. Someone ought to explain biological signalling to her! Viewers read the plea as a sign of weakness. Sincere, genuine leftists use the plea style out of habit, presuming others have rapport, empathy, and will give the reasoning due consideration. My guess is that their assumption is valid for about 20% of the audience. Inept politics to use it then, eh?
" Sincere, genuine leftists use the plea style out of habit" exactly right, which is why I have been advocating taking a hard line for years…stop asking and start demanding change from these fuckers..no more bended knees and more clenched fists of righteous outrage imo.
The problem in NZ is that we have never strung up any politician from a lamp post by their feet, so there is no historical reference for them to have any fear of us..hence their demeaning, insulting and frankly outrageous shift over the past thirty or so years to regarding the population as mere consumers rather active citizens.
Really? I can't think of any Leftist politicians or activists that do/have ever done the plea gesture so often..if at all..ever.
It has certainly never been used to create change or forward momentum. Infact the only political figures who tend towards that sort of thing are possibly James Shaw and Justin Trudeau..add Ardern to that list..and it looks rather like a Centrist's trying hard not to look like centrists technique…pleading with the voters to buy into their fragile narrative with its elusive promises.
That being said..qudos to Shaw for managing to talk about inequality at the finance debate…
“…so seething with uncontrolled rage and a barely contained nasty streak that spilled out time and time again in almost every sideways look and glance she made at Ardern…she seemed to me to be quite unhinged."
Spot on, wholly accurate assessment. I cannot add a thing to it. Would be good if the commentators had the balls to say so, too, although many wouldn't have the tools to detect it.
A lot of dreams are in tatters around the town, and a lot who thought it was all over in April are going like never before, so a very interesting town right now.
It's a bit different to actually have an election campaign in town, usually it's a pretty subdued affair with just the local candidates and maybe a senior Nat down on a fundraiser. This time the work is going in and it's all on. Labour actually putting up a viable local candidate along with the current situation has really got things going.
They played a short clip on breakfast news and I couldn't believe how much Robertson – who doesn't normally seem a big man – towered over the pipsqueaks on either side of him. One of whom was Goldsmith.
Tova just now reckoned that Seymour won. He seems to be flavour of the month, so wouldn't surprise me.
"ACT leader David Seymour announced the party's tourism policy at an event at the Te Anau Club last night, calling for privately run managed isolation facilities, and allowing rich foreigners to pay to use them for a New Zealand holiday. "
edit
We need to be retreating from barefoot tourism but still need to keep overseas tourists' money cycling through the economy. You express horror at the idea of wealthy coming here to managed isolation prior to being able to tour round the country using some of the expensive infrastructure set up for such people. And also it would I hope have a dedicated set of workers earning, is not a disgraceful or impractical idea.
Until we get organised shipping set up that perhaps follows the seasons, and sails around the tornado areas as much as possible, then having an airline running reducing kilometres to bring people here, and enable NZs to go to certain places, requires the two-way coming and going numbers to keep viable.
Who has thought about how shipping could serve us? Can we expand the numbers of berths on container ships? I have an old advertisement advertising these on a 'banana boat'. And can we provide business for the Greeks again? The Fairstar and the Fairsky ships were owned by Onassiss I think. They did a busy trade in the 1960-70s.
" You express horror at the idea of wealthy coming here to managed isolation prior to being able to tour round the country using some of the expensive infrastructure set up for such people. And also it would I hope have a dedicated set of workers earning, is not a disgraceful or impractical idea."
I express horror? Dont imagine what I express. I merely stated
" Lets not forget what act really is… "
and linked to an article. But hey your comment paints a picture.
Well you know what thought thought…Anyway you seem to want to be on both ends of the game. You decry neoliberalism…while praising an idea that stems exactly from there. Huh?
Thanks to both neolib nats and neolib "labour". NZ did away with our our NZ Apprenticeship scheme and became a hospitality/waiter/waitress/touristguide/bartender/service industry neolib playground.
If you cant see the Irony here? I cant help you across the road to it.
Labour seems to be getting back to what they are supposed to be. I really hope so.
No. I briefly thought I should watch it, then decided a better use of my time would be to find a rusty old can-opener and give myself an anesthetic-free vasectomy.
Did not watch. Working. Caught the odd snippet here and there.
I doubt I missed much, to be honest. I find Collins personally repellent and I try to avoid watching her in the same way I actively avoid reading anything written by Mike Hosking and his similarly awful wife. Life is too short to spend it shrieking at the television. I've spend decades watching National ruin everything they touch, and National would have to stop being National for me to ever consider voting for them. The current incarnation is probably the worst I've ever witnessed.
"National ruin everything they touch", unlike Lange and the Graham Scott Puppet Show.
"In late 1979 Mr Scott moved to the Treasury, eventually becoming secretary in 1986. He worked closely with the fourth Labour Government as it reformed the New Zealand economy in the 1980s."
The main point of a debate is the post-debate momentum- did an underdog 'wipe the floor' with their opponent? Was there a "show me the money" moment? Did someone drop a clanger?
Facts matter, but most people won't have watched the debate. They will probably see the distilled coverage, though. That's the bit that affects the outcome.
The problem with debates is that they are not easy to fact check on the fly. Nationals claims tend to lose in the long run when properly fact checked.
National tend to claim a lot of things that when fact checked are shown to be made up of cherry picked data that falls over, or put up claims they are they ones who could better balance the books when they can not even seam to get the accounting right on their alternate budget.
Look at the holes slowly showing up in Nationals alternate budget as people start to go through the numbers. First an easy to catch mistake they have owned up to and now a second big hole they are not admitting to.
Judith's claims that NSW in Australia dealt better with Covid 19 than NZ with fewer restriction, another claim that falls over when the full numbers are looked at and not cherry picked.
National in a debate are like a boxer that hits below the belt every time the ref is not looking to win a match. They toss in cherry picked and misleading data all the time to win debates and it is hard to win a debate against someone with actual facts when they have "Alternate Facts" they will use to score points on you.
Quite right Anne – I play my TV through a good Hi Fi sound system, and distinctly heard 'Miss Ardern'. Mind you, I doubt if it matters in terms of votes. Judith is trying to sound nice, but every so often I find myself wondering if she is a sour cow or a sour sow. That may sound sexist, so maybe I should balance it with full of bull, and boring bore..
The nasty Muldoon persona does not help. It is actually a bit piggy, I think.
The debate needed a better camera person/s. We were often looking at the back of Jacinda's head, though we never saw the back of John's or Judith's!! What was that about??
Leaders debates like this are about personality and not the facts, about building popularity through charisma rather than informing people and have them make informed choices.
Because of this I consider such debates detrimental to democracy.
Ardern, for her part, a now hardened political professional, seemed determined to avoid creating a viral Internet meme out of the night. If that were the intent, she achieved it.
The tactic from Collins seems to try to get under Ardern’s skin, while Ardern seemed to be trying to be relentlessly optimistic and nice – presumably to draw a contrast between the two. She consistently hewed back to Labour talking points. Both leaders fell back to entrenched positions and didn't answer a lot of questions.
How much extra tax did it bring to the coffers. They will need some to help pay for their coffins.
However we need extra tax to help provide living people with decent basics, of which we have a thriving market selling off to toffs from NZ and overseas. Come and buy anything you like, our houses for instance, (and our farms, by the dozens), and get lots of moolah. Then pile it in one of your spare rooms with a diving board like Grandpa Duck used, though that silly duffer had piles of gold coins. But the wealthy aren't too sensitive, he probably never noticed the hard edges.
But I wonder how much CGT here would have raised because the poor here do feel the hard edges of everything.
Bomber's cultural analysis features the Top 8 Green Party Woke Alienations. The photo of the Wellington Twitteratti Green Activists ready for their next micro aggression policing social media lynch mob shows the traditional side of wokesterism.
It’s like the woke middle class identity politics mummy blogger trans ally Green Party cancel culture militant cyclist humourless vegan micro aggression policing activists are incapable of understanding how their behaviour over the last 3 years on social media has done nothing other than alienate voters to the point the Greens are now in danger of sinking beneath 5%.
Not only like that. It is that. They think
they are speaking truth to power by endlessly calling people out for breaches of woke mantra, but to everyone else they are simply toxic.
When you are class left, the demarkation of power in society is between the richest 1% and their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us, that’s how we win the democratic majority, but when you are a woke Identity Politics activist, all men are rapists, all white people are racist and anyone supporting free speech is an actual uniform wearing Nazi.
Yes, yes, but that's been obvious the past year or more, so why not learn the lesson? He can't – he's so fixated on bitching about the problem. If a faction seems to discredit a party in the public mind, you fix that problem by changing the public mind. That's what political management is for.
Why have the Green caucus not used their moral authority to make that happen? Because too many of them are wokesters themselves, perhaps. Because those who aren't lack sufficient leverage. It's a failure of collective leadership.
Bradbury has been banging on about the same thing for some time. I think he is ageing mentally, getting into that inflexible style of thinking that is so prevalent in the older age group.
Perhaps his blog has had its day as a therapeutic outlet for his boiling stresses, and he has gone to excess so often that he has poisoned any fertile ground around him where inspiration and creatively beneficial ideas might grow about better policies and wise politicians.
" woke middle class identity politics mummy blogger trans ally Green Party cancel culture militant cyclist humourless vegan micro aggression policing activists"
This interests me. As the world we are living in becomes more and more complex; ideas surface and add to those already circulating, they fracture and multiply like the brooms of the Sorcerer's apprentice, do we dig our heels in and sweep the nuanced plethora of new ideas away with our broom of conservatism and condemnation (listen to Magic talkback if you don't know what I mean) or do we surge forward, into the morass of fractionated thinking; meet those challenging ideas head-on and ride the wave of knowledge they represent? I reckon, catch the wave. Bomber seems to want to build a sandcastle on the beach, while wearing a knotted handkerchief on his head.
The irony of his past three years line – is he started the three years saying the same thing and has repeated it ad nauseum throughout the entire period.
He basically wants to silence the Green Party on identity politics society concerns and reduce it to class and environment economics (not sure how that relates to historic party support for Maori self-government/revival aspiration, multi-cultural society and feminist concerns).
He has basically taken up the Free Speech rights are at risk line of the ACT Party protecting white race man civilisation from the woke threat – which is what one would expect from someone who keeps meeting Sean Plunkett and the insolvent wage subsidy dependent libertarian.
He will claim the polls prove him right – but that is cynical – minor parties in government lose support, and minor parties out of it but in parliament gain. As per 2002 – Alliance down and United Party up. This time NZF and Greens down and ACT up.
Awlful to watch. Did anyone else think Campbell cut Jacinda off far more than Collins. ? I also noticed quite frequently when Jacinda was talking the camera went to Judith. And I am not sure about this but an after thought was that the camera angle favoured Judith. ……..interested to hear if others noticed this.
Thought Jacinda was not at her best. This is rare. Seem to remember first tv debate Jacinda was in with English didn’t go so well.
I think it would be great if someone fact checked the debate. Collins said something about building houses and that I am sure was crap.
campbell didn’t address competency of the two parties. I think that is a serious omission.
national could spout any policy, but surely it blindingly obvious that they. Have lied, acted unethically and made major mistakes
"Did anyone else think Campbell cut Jacinda off far more than Collins.?"
YES
"I also noticed quite frequently when Jacinda was talking the camera went to Judith. And I am not sure about this but an afterthought was that the camera angle favoured Judith. ……..interested to hear if others noticed this."
YES. Also, I noticed that the focus was on Collins pulling stupid faces and slightly off focus on Ardern. Being a photographer this is a technique used to highlight the main subject,
Also Campbell did not shut Collins up when Ardern was speaking so Ardern could not finish what she was saying.
Agreed 100% John Campbell may live for these debates but he did not ask any clarifying questions, nor was he actively listening to what Jacinda was saying, cutting her off at the end of her first point, more than once.
The camera work and the lighting favoured Judith greatly, shaving at least 15 years off her face. The shadows showed Jacinda's almost gaunt look of 3 years of unrelenting responsibility, and the knowledge of what is ahead.
However, I feel Jacinda's lack of reaction led to overconfidence on Judith's part, and Judith clearly showed her lack of respect and her scoffing "give back double" nature.
The insincere swap between charm and scoffing was quite marked
Jesicca Much MacKay is excited to lead "her" next debate!! "Judith did so well." "When is yours?" says John…..the ego of these people is amazing. It is all about them of course.
I didn't watch the debate because Collins repulses me. So l appreciate the updates. Sounds like Collins had more energy on the night but Ardern stuck to her high road approach.
Ardern's main weapon is that she is a normal adult humanbeing and comes across as such. Sadly a rarity among senior politicians.
I didn't watch because I just find it all incredibly stupid anyway … and I find Judith's mantra of "hurting people double who hurt her" incredibly juvenile.
Making enemies just means there are fewer and fewer people on your side and fewer people willing to go the extra mile to help you. It seems like an odd way to be a politician.
Excellent comment! How many non-voters would have been enticed to vote now after watching this show on TV, if they watched at all? Is this format good for voter engagement?
I did not watch for one reason only – Judith Collins' sheer nastiness. I just don't choose to spend my time witnessing that sort of behaviour. We have had more than enough of National Party members and hangers on behaving disgracefully this year.
Talking to friends this morning, they picked up on the eye rolling etc.etc. One used the words 'hate her' which is their usual way of talking.
"Shifting Arctic ice, raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere, and methane leaks in the North Sea are all warning signs that we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilisation will require dramatic interventions.
Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently.
Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected."
The letter from Public Service Association (PSA) union members to senior managers was written in February this year but workers say little has changed since.
The Chief Ombudsman inspected the unit in March and found it breached the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel or Degrading Treatment.
In the strongly worded letter to Capital and Coast District Health Board, 28 staff detailed a list of what they called urgent and critical problems.
They described the ward – Te Whare O Matairangi, Wellington's acute in-patient mental health facility – as severely overcrowded, under-resourced and unsafe – both for workers and patients.
The letter gave examples such as a homicidal patient showing up with a bag of weapons, and a staff member being sexually assaulted.
At the time it was written, most of the patients in the unit had a criminal or violent past including assaulting staff, significant stalking behaviour, arson and drug use.
PSA organiser Alexandra Ward said the 29-bed unit was over capacity for 11 months of the past year, sometimes caring for 34 people at a time.
so our pm who odds on will be on after the election still PM and could also govern alone, and then any legislation resulting from the cannabis vote can be whatever labour decides (captains call)will not tell us what her personal views are. Ffs you are a leader what are you afraid of ?? That your opinions may result is losing a few votes. Your opinion has more than any other in deciding how any law is shaped.
imo this is steep walking to a victory, I hope that labour does not govern alone because they do not deserve to allow NZ to drift further. And their First past the post strategy just shows how they think the greens deserve to be managed… with distaste.
I don't agree, remember Keys support of the flag, many people voted to keep the flag to spite Key. Adern staying out of it is sensible, as well as her right, to keep her decision private. Also, the euthanasia bill being supported by Seymour makes me question by own beliefs around it (I support it, or do I? I'm not 100% sure, coz Seymour supports it, loudly).
Our PM and labour keeping out of it is ALL political as IMO they want to win and govern on their own and will do whatever to achieve this (no team including The Greens). What happens if the vote is 45-55 or even 50-50?We have been given no indication as to what any law will look like or if should the vote be too close what then? So totally disagree.
Labour will be averse to taking risks that might dent their commanding lead over the National opposition party in recent political opinion polls. I'm guessing their strategists are pretty comfortable letting National indulge in risky business, and there's been plenty of that since the Bridges-Ross spat kicked off, Boag-Walker, Andrew ‘Balloon-Falloon’, and ‘Merv from Manurewa’ being recent examples.
It's worse than that. Brexit has antagonized the US and Eu leading to a probable economic crisis on which Judith does not seem to have a constructive position.
[This user handle and e-mail address are now blacklisted. Please use the pair that you last used on 21 Aug and that we had agreed on previously, thanks.
You are wasting Moderator time each time you change your user name and/or e-mail address and you have never provided a good reason why you are doing it.
I did ask you again only 2 days ago but you simply ignored the note so I wasted even more time on your antics when I gave you the benefit of doubt – Incognito]
Thoughts from abroad – Headlines from UK The Telegraph: You will have to search for more details yourself. This is just to show the drift of the thinking of the UK.
'Despite 10,000 new cases a day the French are embracing life – not imposing new rules.. From the Travel Correspondent.
(The French have large numbers of cases of Covid19 and are still enjoying life. Fool or hardy? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.)
Oxford’s Sir John Bell: ‘We’re not going to beat the second wave’ Oxford University has announced that clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine are to resume in the UK At lunchtime on Tuesday, Sir John Bell received a call telling him that the groundbreaking Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial would, regretfully, be paused.
(So UK is at sixes and sevens. But they know what they are doing, right. Trust us to do the right thing is the Conservative approach – now they've kicked Labour and Corbyn to the side.)
'We can beat Covid without lockdowns, says top German virologist Hendrik Streeck argues big gatherings in closed spaces amplify the spread, but going to shops or hairdressers are manageable levels of risk'
Margaret Atwood wants to see The Handmaid's Tale scenario remain a fiction!
And Brexit, the entitled classes from which Boris has arisen stamps its foot over EU intransigence or something. It's all their fault. The bad-faith EU is furious that the UK now has a backstop of its own The PM is offering Brussels a choice: negotiate fairly, or the whole country will leave without a deal
Are we feeling a little anxious while we wait for the election and the Right waffle on about things, and thrust sharp things into the thread of our democracy and then grab our arms and say 'Look at these holes we found', that they made themselves? And all the time the Left are doing a pretty-good job. Here is Jonathan Pie relating the cares and woes of the UK people about their Right government, that is attempting to lead them all up the garden path, like a character out of P.G.Wodehouse.
Boris is advancing fast, he's a father now, and getting into confused grandfather territory at supersonic speed; reminiscent of the joke I got out of the paper years ago and put on the fridge:
"My grandfather's a little forgetful, but he likes to give me advice. One day he took me aside, and left me there." Ron Richards* (Witty & Wise.)
*Ron Richards (22 January 1929 – 30 April 2009) was a British record producer, manager and promoter, best known for discovering The Hollies. and – The record producer Ron Richards played a central part in the British “beat boom” of the 1960s, taking charge of the Beatles' first recording .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Richards_(producer)
A friend who is a mortgage advisor told me that the banks apparently refuse to lend to people whose businesses either received the wage subsidy or who did receive the wage subsidy themselves. So yeah, anyone who thought that the low lever interests would benefit the houseless is in for serious disappointment.
At this stage the housing market – private, social and commercial – and the official response to it is nothing more but a farce.
Yes, Judith Collins sat down with an “adoring supporter” who has a tattoo of the latest leader of the opposition on one of his thighs. Could this be a turning point in Collins' election campaign (worked for Trump) – maybe we'll all see more of her soon.
It is with the cost of paying a mortgage or limitation on access to finance to buy.
A guy called Bollard said he would not need to increase the OCR to constrain inflation resulting from rising land and property value if the government introduced a mortgage surcharge instead – then the OCR would be lower and so would the dollar to the advantage of exporters.
But now over a decade later and still nothing. The RBG gets rid of the equity requirement and cuts the OCR and so of course property values will rise.
This will change as soon as the government adds a mortgage surcharge or taxes equity in property (TOP) or a land tax. Of course only taxing property equity wealth over $M is Green policy.
Lower interest rates only benefit those with access to property finance, a mortgage surcharge is the balance to this so that government can help tenants and finance homes for first home buyers or build more state houses.
We used as first home buyers, to get a 25 year mortgage at an affordable rate, and that was a good start. It encouraged people to settle into stable lives etc etc. But though you would think that good people in government roles would want that, I think that this evil neolib economics is actually keen to keep people on the hop, make them work harder, not be complacent, and ensure that they didn't have anything to sink savings into, underpay them so they had to borrow so business would profit from the interest they had to pay to provide the necessities demanded in a 'developed' economy, and keeping more money flowing in the economy.
It is such a twisted approach that ordinary people don't comprehend it; don't understand the diabolical nature of the financial people at the top who twiddle the economy's knobs.
It used to be expressed that government gave first home buyers a step up into the housing market to get them started. But neolib doesn't want people to even get started. Don Brash didn't think that people should be tying their money up in their own house. Though the system produced a stable and relatively happy country pleased and proud most of the time.
Not the way we are now with an attitude of the quick or the dead, and lack of generosity towards others, competing for stuff all the time. To the people at the top the hoi polloi are just to be used as if life was a cockfight, and the hens get slaughtered if they don't produce enough eggs. As you can tell, I am pretty disillusioned – the NZ spirit is mainly found in bottles now.
Judith Collins is just a trashy piece of trailer trash. Her "poor wee thing" describing Jacinda Adern is classic "how low can you get" – uncouth is another description or as my old grannie used to say to me "all hair oil and no socks". She is a disgrace to any position of responsibility or representation of our country. Jacinda Adern should never have to be put in a position that she has to even engage with her. Fine porcelain versus crude pottery. Trump is the company Collins deserves.
I think it's a major miscalculation to think people are flocking to Labour and a self described bold progressive because they think she'll be moderate and consersative.
What if labours rise in the polls is due to non voters who jacindas boldness turned on and who need change and former Nat voters whose lives have fallen apart and this moderate tinkering approach makes them stay home. Honestly. Labours dropped in the polls since it announced policy and showed it's cautious af direction. Labours messaging just seems so wrong for the times.
Labour desperately needs to start exciting people again. People who were excited are getting bored and despondent. Maybe I'm wrong maybe people are flocking to her because they want a self described transformational progressive to not be bold or transformational and middle class people are flocking to Labour cos they want everything to stay the same. I think it's a bit of both
They'll need a cast-iron gut to keep the meal down – but it's a dirty job that needs doing. They might even become a genuine conservative (in the best sense of the word) party. One worthy of respect – which we don't have at present.
Trust the hard left to whine about it. Calling an anxious voter looking for policy change 'hard left' is hard Ad. It's nervousness really – probably better left unsaid at this stage.
Maybe those who really want "bold transformational progressives" have already flocked – the rest are hunkering down, still hoping to weather a 'storm' that shall not pass.
A former senior government manager planted a spy camera in an Auckland gym's changing room capturing video of a naked couple, then went on to plant the camera on at least three more occasions, the Auckland High Court has heard.
Police appealing the man's discharge without conviction and permanent name suppression, argued his offending, which took place on at least four separate days, was not taken into account by District Court Judge Clare Bennett.
RNZ and NZME also challenged the man's name suppression.
I wonder if we have here the Judge adopting Queen Victoria’s moral levels whereby if one doesn’t want one’s mind to be sullied by distasteful scuttlebutt, one just doesn’t listen. The Queen is supposed to have said, “I don’t want to know that.” The better secondary schools now probably don’t even study DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
‘We’re better than that’, is the quote of the new century, to be applied to bloody massacres, and derelictions of duty by well-paid government officials. I can say that, without a qualm, that bit about well-paid, because it seems to be an absolute dead cert these days as the anointed move up the line following the well-worn Peter’s Principle Curve.
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
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Spinoff has a team verdict on the leaders' debate: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/22-09-2020/leaders-debate-the-verdicts/
Toby Manhire: "Campbell, who did a good job at keeping things rolling, at one point observed, “You sound like you’re both on auto-pilot,” he was mostly right, except that would have required leaving the ground."
Trish Sherson: "Real politics is live, off script, a contest of ideas with tough questions. Collins owned it."
Morgan Godfery: "The prime minister had it all over her: on the border, on housing, on education, and in personality. "
Ben Thomas: "Ardern was strangely hesitant."
Justin Giovannetti: "When asked about her plan for poverty reduction, Collins responded with ripping up the RMA. Campbell was incredulous, voters were probably confused."
Madeleine Chapman: "both leaders argued about who could commit the hardest to not taxing property. In my mind, we all lost tonight. And I will spend the next seven working days of my life fake-smiling and announcing “my husband is Samoan, so talofa” to everyone I meet. In that sense, Judith Collins won simply by saying something so ridiculous that she’ll be living rent-free in my brain until the next debate."
Steve Braunias has written an article for the Guardian on the leaders' debate. The link is below. One notable quote…
Braunias is such a good writer.
First TV debate between Ardern and Collins avoids being a horror show
She told him what.
Exactly Dennis. It's a good one.
Old Jude's really quite skillful, don't you think? No flies on her in this regard.
When there is very little of relevance that you can confidently dominate the debate with, revert to repetitive and vague historical recollections, including inane self promotion.
And then hope that it might appeal to the emotions of a number of the disillusioned or worried, (in this case small and medium business operators), or any other target audience which you know will be feeling some pain or distress at the time you take to the podium.
Then hope like Hell that your murmurings will convince the target audience that their suffering and predicament was brought about by your opponent, or those who advised him or her and also by those who continue to do so.
Ardern has done truckloads of speeches with radiant anecdotes and transcendent aspiration.
Absent.
Maybe she prefers we just sleepwalk to the polls.
Maybe Ardern was just plain tired , pandemic to navigate NZ through since March and electioneering since July. She knew it and had to tread cautiously first time around.
Janet I would think you're 100% right. The knowledge that the election would be over now if not having to be fitted round wilfully ignorant people undoing the efforts of those really doing God's work on earth leads to pockets of depression. She may have been on the edge of one of them.
And for those not wishing to sleepwalk to the polls, just roll over and go back to sleep, (perhaps until 2023).
Another way, if are worried that you might be accused of NOT voting or you are getting a bit nervous about being caught out abstaining from the three yearly habit, is to go to the nearest polling place, walk in, and then out.
After you've done and then just mill around (smoke a ciggy if you're that way inclined, or sip on a water for about 20 minutes) and then leave with an old "I voted" sticker from 2017 or 2014 that you brought with you, stuck to your jacket, shirt or blouse.
That'll be sure to do the trick.
Personally found the whole debate totally underwhelming.
Thought Ardern was flat and Collins, was just stating points we all knew, and Campbell was just irritating.
Collin's probably pipped it, but neither were particularly inspiring me to think vote for them.
Collins made her points rather than answer the actual questions. The arrogance was on show with those cutaway shots so her media minders have work to do unless that's the desired outcome.
Different styles I think.
Collin's is hardly going to make any impact trying to play Ardern at her particular skills, because a) she isn’t that cuddly feely, b) She would look incincere, so pointing out basic points is pretty much all she has to go with at this late stage I think.
I did think Collins got the better of Ardern with coming across to your average normal voter who doesn't particularly follow politics, with plain speak tbh, while Ardern's normally excellent communication skills kind of had an off night.
If anything, to me it looked oddly like Ardern had just over practiced the thing and was just sticking to a routine or script, with no improv' when Collins pointed things out.
If you like full on cringe you would have picked Collins over Ardern. Her performance was on par with what a certain Don Brash could produce, even Bridges probably would have been more convincing.
Collins response of "that we know of!" to Ardern's statement on the tiny amount of border/quarantine breaches was one such example.
I guess it comes down to how you prefer you leader to come across.
Different voters prefer different things. If you like the touchy feely persona, Ardern is always going to win (although she had an off night last night). If you prefer just basic truthful points rammed at you then you would go Collins.
And if you are a die hard voter for either party, you are going to view each persons performance with rose coloured glasses and ignore the flaws of your preferred.
"truthful points" Judith? spare us!! Se incognito’s quotes.
Codger? Truthful? C'mon man.
An old trick that seasoned or street smart politicians on the offensive often come up with is having it appear that they are trying to be polite and truthful, when all they are trying to do is to dislodge their opponent and dominate the debate.
Ardern seems to be aware of this tactic and has obviously been quite well coached in relation to avoiding repetitive distraction. For example, repetitive title errors or name pronunciations"errors".
Expressing opinion as to package it as a "truthful presentation" is another tactic which is well used. It is commonly acceptable just as long as the opinion expressed cannot be legitimately challenged as being erroneous or non-factual at the time that opinion is provided.
This is as old a trick as using percentages of percentages to embellish or appear to exaggerate a statement so as to give it impact.
Say the unemployment figure for women in NZ from Sept 2017 through to Sept 2018 decreased from 5.4% to 4%, some might convey it this way; "The number of registered unemployed women in NZ dropped by about 22% during Sept 2017 and Sept 2018".
Quite entertaining really.
All I am suggesting is that we all need to be careful with our definition of the word; "truthful", especially when quoting politicians lines.
No matter what her minders have told her she must change – and it's obvious her minders have said there's a lot she needs to change – there's nothing Collins can do to mask her abject narcissism and multiple personality disorders.
Straw poll….how many subjected themselves to the full 90 mins?
Yes…..0
No….1
Another no from me, I tried to stay engaged.
I was a bit put off by the hype- Wendy Petrie over the poll results, as if they were handed down to Moses as gospel to the repeated gushy ad with Campbell.
I am not the target audience, I have made up my mind and will be early voting.
who was the target audience I wonder?…insomniacs?
Psychiatrists.
Yes for me. And regretted it.
Yes…..1
No….2
Yes I watched it all. Regret? Not really – you risk missing a gotcha or king-hit moment if you yield to the tedium.
@ Dennis Frank …yep with you there..I fucking love political debates, and this one I actually thought was pretty good, it showed for anyone who bothered to watch the whole thing where both political parties lined up and where the light was between them…the environment was obviously the most stark difference between them, while Madeleine Chapman summed up housing and capital gains (which is also of course directly related to inequality and poverty outcomes etc)…"both leaders argued about who could commit the hardest to not taxing property. In my mind, we all lost tonight."
I found Ardern to be quite uncharismatic which combined with an awful semi pleading delivery style was quite hard to watch, while Collins left me with the feeling that I cannot excuse anyone who would actually vote for someone so seething with uncontrolled rage and a barely contained nasty streak that spilled out time and time again in almost every sideways look and glance she made at Ardren..she seemed to me to be quite unhinged.
awful semi pleading delivery
Indeed. Someone ought to explain biological signalling to her! Viewers read the plea as a sign of weakness. Sincere, genuine leftists use the plea style out of habit, presuming others have rapport, empathy, and will give the reasoning due consideration. My guess is that their assumption is valid for about 20% of the audience. Inept politics to use it then, eh?
" Sincere, genuine leftists use the plea style out of habit" exactly right, which is why I have been advocating taking a hard line for years…stop asking and start demanding change from these fuckers..no more bended knees and more clenched fists of righteous outrage imo.
The problem in NZ is that we have never strung up any politician from a lamp post by their feet, so there is no historical reference for them to have any fear of us..hence their demeaning, insulting and frankly outrageous shift over the past thirty or so years to regarding the population as mere consumers rather active citizens.
Really? I can't think of any Leftist politicians or activists that do/have ever done the plea gesture so often..if at all..ever.
It has certainly never been used to create change or forward momentum. Infact the only political figures who tend towards that sort of thing are possibly James Shaw and Justin Trudeau..add Ardern to that list..and it looks rather like a Centrist's trying hard not to look like centrists technique…pleading with the voters to buy into their fragile narrative with its elusive promises.
That being said..qudos to Shaw for managing to talk about inequality at the finance debate…
It's the tedium that’s interesting to see.
“…so seething with uncontrolled rage and a barely contained nasty streak that spilled out time and time again in almost every sideways look and glance she made at Ardern…she seemed to me to be quite unhinged."
Spot on, wholly accurate assessment. I cannot add a thing to it. Would be good if the commentators had the balls to say so, too, although many wouldn't have the tools to detect it.
Got bored after 10 mins.
Queenstown one was much better.
Would have been a good night, 400 turnout is pretty good for Queenstown But we're right at the front end with Covid economic effects, so a lot of motivated people.
A lot of dreams are in tatters around the town, and a lot who thought it was all over in April are going like never before, so a very interesting town right now.
It's a bit different to actually have an election campaign in town, usually it's a pretty subdued affair with just the local candidates and maybe a senior Nat down on a fundraiser. This time the work is going in and it's all on. Labour actually putting up a viable local candidate along with the current situation has really got things going.
They played a short clip on breakfast news and I couldn't believe how much Robertson – who doesn't normally seem a big man – towered over the pipsqueaks on either side of him. One of whom was Goldsmith.
Tova just now reckoned that Seymour won. He seems to be flavour of the month, so wouldn't surprise me.
Did anyone learn anything of import at the Queenstown debate?
Yes. Act really is on a roll.
Goldsmith is flat.
Robertson needs a lot better lines than "we've got policy coming"
Lets not forget what act really is…
"ACT leader David Seymour announced the party's tourism policy at an event at the Te Anau Club last night, calling for privately run managed isolation facilities, and allowing rich foreigners to pay to use them for a New Zealand holiday. "
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/426599/act-tourism-policy-bold-but-operators-question-uptake
edit
We need to be retreating from barefoot tourism but still need to keep overseas tourists' money cycling through the economy. You express horror at the idea of wealthy coming here to managed isolation prior to being able to tour round the country using some of the expensive infrastructure set up for such people. And also it would I hope have a dedicated set of workers earning, is not a disgraceful or impractical idea.
Until we get organised shipping set up that perhaps follows the seasons, and sails around the tornado areas as much as possible, then having an airline running reducing kilometres to bring people here, and enable NZs to go to certain places, requires the two-way coming and going numbers to keep viable.
Who has thought about how shipping could serve us? Can we expand the numbers of berths on container ships? I have an old advertisement advertising these on a 'banana boat'. And can we provide business for the Greeks again? The Fairstar and the Fairsky ships were owned by Onassiss I think. They did a busy trade in the 1960-70s.
" You express horror at the idea of wealthy coming here to managed isolation prior to being able to tour round the country using some of the expensive infrastructure set up for such people. And also it would I hope have a dedicated set of workers earning, is not a disgraceful or impractical idea."
I express horror? Dont imagine what I express. I merely stated
" Lets not forget what act really is… "
and linked to an article. But hey your comment paints a picture.
I thought that you thought that the idea was a significant one. It actually is important whether ACT said it or not.
Well you know what thought thought…Anyway you seem to want to be on both ends of the game. You decry neoliberalism…while praising an idea that stems exactly from there. Huh?
Thanks to both neolib nats and neolib "labour". NZ did away with our our NZ Apprenticeship scheme and became a hospitality/waiter/waitress/touristguide/bartender/service industry neolib playground.
If you cant see the Irony here? I cant help you across the road to it.
Labour seems to be getting back to what they are supposed to be. I really hope so.
so no then.
Yes an no.
Was listening to the stream on the web while watching TV, and tbf for a bit of it, my attention to the tv won over the stream in my attention span
10 minutes was plenty.
NO and that is the right question !
Not a single second.
Yes
No. I briefly thought I should watch it, then decided a better use of my time would be to find a rusty old can-opener and give myself an anesthetic-free vasectomy.
Did not watch. Working. Caught the odd snippet here and there.
I doubt I missed much, to be honest. I find Collins personally repellent and I try to avoid watching her in the same way I actively avoid reading anything written by Mike Hosking and his similarly awful wife. Life is too short to spend it shrieking at the television. I've spend decades watching National ruin everything they touch, and National would have to stop being National for me to ever consider voting for them. The current incarnation is probably the worst I've ever witnessed.
"National ruin everything they touch", unlike Lange and the Graham Scott Puppet Show.
"In late 1979 Mr Scott moved to the Treasury, eventually becoming secretary in 1986. He worked closely with the fourth Labour Government as it reformed the New Zealand economy in the 1980s."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/804306/An-old-hand-sees-the-parallels
Didn't watch.
The main point of a debate is the post-debate momentum- did an underdog 'wipe the floor' with their opponent? Was there a "show me the money" moment? Did someone drop a clanger?
Facts matter, but most people won't have watched the debate. They will probably see the distilled coverage, though. That's the bit that affects the outcome.
The problem with debates is that they are not easy to fact check on the fly. Nationals claims tend to lose in the long run when properly fact checked.
National tend to claim a lot of things that when fact checked are shown to be made up of cherry picked data that falls over, or put up claims they are they ones who could better balance the books when they can not even seam to get the accounting right on their alternate budget.
Look at the holes slowly showing up in Nationals alternate budget as people start to go through the numbers. First an easy to catch mistake they have owned up to and now a second big hole they are not admitting to.
Judith's claims that NSW in Australia dealt better with Covid 19 than NZ with fewer restriction, another claim that falls over when the full numbers are looked at and not cherry picked.
National in a debate are like a boxer that hits below the belt every time the ref is not looking to win a match. They toss in cherry picked and misleading data all the time to win debates and it is hard to win a debate against someone with actual facts when they have "Alternate Facts" they will use to score points on you.
Collins said that Agriculture contributed 0.02 % to the Worlds pollution.
Quite true but the Agriculture contributing 48% of NZ's pollution more relevant. But who cares in such a non debate.
Sort of interesting that she 'knew" that, when she she was well out with number of covid deaths in aust states.
And her 'scrapping' the RMA fills me with dread. Remember what happened last time the Natz did that —LEAKY BUILDINGS.
Mould deserves freedom, you know.
Jacinda, "Ms Ardern" pointed that out, and that transport was a further 20%.
Actually I'm sure she was saying "Miss Ardern" Patricia.
The one thing I took away from the debate is that Judith Collins showed us what a nasty cow she really is.
Quite right Anne – I play my TV through a good Hi Fi sound system, and distinctly heard 'Miss Ardern'. Mind you, I doubt if it matters in terms of votes. Judith is trying to sound nice, but every so often I find myself wondering if she is a sour cow or a sour sow. That may sound sexist, so maybe I should balance it with full of bull, and boring bore..
The nasty Muldoon persona does not help. It is actually a bit piggy, I think.
Or how about crushing boar?
I reckon Piggy Jude is about right. Muldoon reincarnated in female form.
She is nowhere near as competent as Muldoon was in his prime..
True, but she doesn't know it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
The debate needed a fact checker.
The debate needed a better camera person/s. We were often looking at the back of Jacinda's head, though we never saw the back of John's or Judith's!! What was that about??
Yes I particularly noticed that too – the lighting was not balanced over the two speakers – often a bit "dark "on Ardern .
Good – we need aware viewers to complain and let TVNZ know that we understand their biased editing techniques.
With an electric shock capability.
Leaders debates like this are about personality and not the facts, about building popularity through charisma rather than informing people and have them make informed choices.
Because of this I consider such debates detrimental to democracy.
What a smart line from Madeline Chapman. (See No 1 Dennis @ 6.19 from Spinoff.)
I thought her line "In my mind we all lost tonight" was the closer to the mark
CGT did nothing to Australia's housing market.
There are other ways of reigning in the ponzi scheme….if the will is there.
How much extra tax did it bring to the coffers. They will need some to help pay for their coffins.
However we need extra tax to help provide living people with decent basics, of which we have a thriving market selling off to toffs from NZ and overseas. Come and buy anything you like, our houses for instance, (and our farms, by the dozens), and get lots of moolah. Then pile it in one of your spare rooms with a diving board like Grandpa Duck used, though that silly duffer had piles of gold coins. But the wealthy aren't too sensitive, he probably never noticed the hard edges.
But I wonder how much CGT here would have raised because the poor here do feel the hard edges of everything.
I guess because it was poorly executed.
Green voter attacks Green Party: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/09/23/why-are-the-greens-dying-and-what-happens-if-they-do/
Bomber's cultural analysis features the Top 8 Green Party Woke Alienations. The photo of the Wellington Twitteratti Green Activists ready for their next micro aggression policing social media lynch mob shows the traditional side of wokesterism.
Not only like that. It is that. They think
Yes, yes, but that's been obvious the past year or more, so why not learn the lesson? He can't – he's so fixated on bitching about the problem. If a faction seems to discredit a party in the public mind, you fix that problem by changing the public mind. That's what political management is for.
Why have the Green caucus not used their moral authority to make that happen? Because too many of them are wokesters themselves, perhaps. Because those who aren't lack sufficient leverage. It's a failure of collective leadership.
The answer is in the question.
Bradbury has been banging on about the same thing for some time. I think he is ageing mentally, getting into that inflexible style of thinking that is so prevalent in the older age group.
Perhaps his blog has had its day as a therapeutic outlet for his boiling stresses, and he has gone to excess so often that he has poisoned any fertile ground around him where inspiration and creatively beneficial ideas might grow about better policies and wise politicians.
" woke middle class identity politics mummy blogger trans ally Green Party cancel culture militant cyclist humourless vegan micro aggression policing activists"
This interests me. As the world we are living in becomes more and more complex; ideas surface and add to those already circulating, they fracture and multiply like the brooms of the Sorcerer's apprentice, do we dig our heels in and sweep the nuanced plethora of new ideas away with our broom of conservatism and condemnation (listen to Magic talkback if you don't know what I mean) or do we surge forward, into the morass of fractionated thinking; meet those challenging ideas head-on and ride the wave of knowledge they represent? I reckon, catch the wave. Bomber seems to want to build a sandcastle on the beach, while wearing a knotted handkerchief on his head.
That rant reveals more about Bradbury than the party. What a word salad.
The irony of his past three years line – is he started the three years saying the same thing and has repeated it ad nauseum throughout the entire period.
He basically wants to silence the Green Party on identity politics society concerns and reduce it to class and environment economics (not sure how that relates to historic party support for Maori self-government/revival aspiration, multi-cultural society and feminist concerns).
He has basically taken up the Free Speech rights are at risk line of the ACT Party protecting white race man civilisation from the woke threat – which is what one would expect from someone who keeps meeting Sean Plunkett and the insolvent wage subsidy dependent libertarian.
He will claim the polls prove him right – but that is cynical – minor parties in government lose support, and minor parties out of it but in parliament gain. As per 2002 – Alliance down and United Party up. This time NZF and Greens down and ACT up.
Bradbury is a pain in the ass.
I think it would be great if someone fact checked the debate. Collins said something about building houses and that I am sure was crap.
campbell didn’t address competency of the two parties. I think that is a serious omission.
national could spout any policy, but surely it blindingly obvious that they. Have lied, acted unethically and made major mistakes
Some fact-checking:
https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2020/08/election-2020-the-whole-truth/#/1193304839/the-avocados-will-be-fine
https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2020/08/election-2020-the-whole-truth/#/1193304232/collins-jobless-numbers-claim
"Did anyone else think Campbell cut Jacinda off far more than Collins.?"
YES
"I also noticed quite frequently when Jacinda was talking the camera went to Judith. And I am not sure about this but an afterthought was that the camera angle favoured Judith. ……..interested to hear if others noticed this."
YES. Also, I noticed that the focus was on Collins pulling stupid faces and slightly off focus on Ardern. Being a photographer this is a technique used to highlight the main subject,
Also Campbell did not shut Collins up when Ardern was speaking so Ardern could not finish what she was saying.
Agree with you on all points U made
Agreed 100% John Campbell may live for these debates but he did not ask any clarifying questions, nor was he actively listening to what Jacinda was saying, cutting her off at the end of her first point, more than once.
The camera work and the lighting favoured Judith greatly, shaving at least 15 years off her face. The shadows showed Jacinda's almost gaunt look of 3 years of unrelenting responsibility, and the knowledge of what is ahead.
However, I feel Jacinda's lack of reaction led to overconfidence on Judith's part, and Judith clearly showed her lack of respect and her scoffing "give back double" nature.
The insincere swap between charm and scoffing was quite marked
Jesicca Much MacKay is excited to lead "her" next debate!! "Judith did so well." "When is yours?" says John…..the ego of these people is amazing. It is all about them of course.
I watched the first 5 minutes, but then found this!!! Really interesting!
"New Zealand's oldest surviving observatory falling down in a field, held up only by a tree"
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/122815070/new-zealands-oldest-surviving-observatory-falling-down-in-a-field-held-up-only-by-a-tree
Judith looked liked she was auditioning for Mean Girls.
John doing his fanboy impersonation.
Jacinda the only adult in the room.
I didn't watch the debate because Collins repulses me. So l appreciate the updates. Sounds like Collins had more energy on the night but Ardern stuck to her high road approach.
Ardern's main weapon is that she is a normal adult humanbeing and comes across as such. Sadly a rarity among senior politicians.
I didn't watch because I just find it all incredibly stupid anyway … and I find Judith's mantra of "hurting people double who hurt her" incredibly juvenile.
Making enemies just means there are fewer and fewer people on your side and fewer people willing to go the extra mile to help you. It seems like an odd way to be a politician.
This is totally anecdotal but a friend of a friend works for a Nat List MP. She said they’ve all started looking for new jobs.
Goldsmith's staff who check his numbers have clocked off already too.
Well if anyone still has the will to do so after last night we can vote in 10 days (and counting)
Excellent comment! How many non-voters would have been enticed to vote now after watching this show on TV, if they watched at all? Is this format good for voter engagement?
How many non voters would waste their time watching a non debate?
bullseye.
I did not watch for one reason only – Judith Collins' sheer nastiness. I just don't choose to spend my time witnessing that sort of behaviour. We have had more than enough of National Party members and hangers on behaving disgracefully this year.
Talking to friends this morning, they picked up on the eye rolling etc.etc. One used the words 'hate her' which is their usual way of talking.
"Shifting Arctic ice, raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere, and methane leaks in the North Sea are all warning signs that we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilisation will require dramatic interventions.
Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently.
Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected."
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/107187/mariana-mazzucato-sees-no-alternative-radical-overhaul-corporate-governance-finance
They will have a policy for this, right? Surely?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12367232
so our pm who odds on will be on after the election still PM and could also govern alone, and then any legislation resulting from the cannabis vote can be whatever labour decides (captains call)will not tell us what her personal views are. Ffs you are a leader what are you afraid of ?? That your opinions may result is losing a few votes. Your opinion has more than any other in deciding how any law is shaped.
imo this is steep walking to a victory, I hope that labour does not govern alone because they do not deserve to allow NZ to drift further. And their First past the post strategy just shows how they think the greens deserve to be managed… with distaste.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12355405
I don't agree, remember Keys support of the flag, many people voted to keep the flag to spite Key. Adern staying out of it is sensible, as well as her right, to keep her decision private. Also, the euthanasia bill being supported by Seymour makes me question by own beliefs around it (I support it, or do I? I'm not 100% sure, coz Seymour supports it, loudly).
Our PM and labour keeping out of it is ALL political as IMO they want to win and govern on their own and will do whatever to achieve this (no team including The Greens). What happens if the vote is 45-55 or even 50-50?We have been given no indication as to what any law will look like or if should the vote be too close what then? So totally disagree.
We appear to have a risk averse Labour Party.
Labour will be averse to taking risks that might dent their commanding lead over the National opposition party in recent political opinion polls. I'm guessing their strategists are pretty comfortable letting National indulge in risky business, and there's been plenty of that since the Bridges-Ross spat kicked off, Boag-Walker, Andrew ‘Balloon-Falloon’, and ‘Merv from Manurewa’ being recent examples.
There’s a lot riding on Collins’ eyebrows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2020_New_Zealand_general_election#Graphical_summary
At the end, when Campbell was wrapping up, he spoke of one of the two leaders being the Prime Minister.
Interestingly, Ardern was looking straight ahead and Collins? She was looking at Ardern.
It's the eyes that give us away………….
It's worse than that. Brexit has antagonized the US and Eu leading to a probable economic crisis on which Judith does not seem to have a constructive position.
[This user handle and e-mail address are now blacklisted. Please use the pair that you last used on 21 Aug and that we had agreed on previously, thanks.
You are wasting Moderator time each time you change your user name and/or e-mail address and you have never provided a good reason why you are doing it.
I did ask you again only 2 days ago but you simply ignored the note so I wasted even more time on your antics when I gave you the benefit of doubt – Incognito]
See my second Moderation note to you in 2 days @ 11:59 AM.
Thoughts from abroad – Headlines from UK The Telegraph: You will have to search for more details yourself. This is just to show the drift of the thinking of the UK.
'Despite 10,000 new cases a day the French are embracing life – not imposing new rules.. From the Travel Correspondent.
(The French have large numbers of cases of Covid19 and are still enjoying life. Fool or hardy? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.)
Oxford’s Sir John Bell: ‘We’re not going to beat the second wave’
Oxford University has announced that clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine are to resume in the UK
At lunchtime on Tuesday, Sir John Bell received a call telling him that the groundbreaking Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial would, regretfully, be paused.
(So UK is at sixes and sevens. But they know what they are doing, right. Trust us to do the right thing is the Conservative approach – now they've kicked Labour and Corbyn to the side.)
'We can beat Covid without lockdowns, says top German virologist
Hendrik Streeck argues big gatherings in closed spaces amplify the spread, but going to shops or hairdressers are manageable levels of risk'
Margaret Atwood wants to see The Handmaid's Tale scenario remain a fiction!
And Brexit, the entitled classes from which Boris has arisen stamps its foot over EU intransigence or something. It's all their fault.
The bad-faith EU is furious that the UK now has a backstop of its own
The PM is offering Brussels a choice: negotiate fairly, or the whole country will leave without a deal
Are we feeling a little anxious while we wait for the election and the Right waffle on about things, and thrust sharp things into the thread of our democracy and then grab our arms and say 'Look at these holes we found', that they made themselves? And all the time the Left are doing a pretty-good job. Here is Jonathan Pie relating the cares and woes of the UK people about their Right government, that is attempting to lead them all up the garden path, like a character out of P.G.Wodehouse.
Boris is advancing fast, he's a father now, and getting into confused grandfather territory at supersonic speed; reminiscent of the joke I got out of the paper years ago and put on the fridge:
"My grandfather's a little forgetful, but he likes to give me advice. One day he took me aside, and left me there." Ron Richards* (Witty & Wise.)
* Ron Richards (22 January 1929 – 30 April 2009) was a British record producer, manager and promoter, best known for discovering The Hollies. and – The record producer Ron Richards played a central part in the British “beat boom” of the 1960s, taking charge of the Beatles' first recording .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Richards_(producer)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/122845115/tick-tick-podcast-the-economic-phoney-war-and-what-will-happen-to-house-prices
House prices will not take a hit because the wealthy will continue to buy them all up so nobody else can afford them.
A friend who is a mortgage advisor told me that the banks apparently refuse to lend to people whose businesses either received the wage subsidy or who did receive the wage subsidy themselves. So yeah, anyone who thought that the low lever interests would benefit the houseless is in for serious disappointment.
At this stage the housing market – private, social and commercial – and the official response to it is nothing more but a farce.
Yes, Judith Collins sat down with an “adoring supporter” who has a tattoo of the latest leader of the opposition on one of his thighs. Could this be a turning point in Collins' election campaign (worked for Trump) – maybe we'll all see more of her soon.
https://www.ktnv.com/now-trending/ohio-man-has-donald-trumps-face-tattooed-on-arm
https://www.wnep.com/article/news/local/trump-stamp-man-gets-trump-tattoo-on-lower-back-after-losing-bet/523-a89bac84-d7eb-4523-9551-83a5e89c7825
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3937678/British-roofer-38-gets-huge-tattoo-Donald-Trump-leg-says-doesn-t-mind-criticism-great-art-controversial.html
@ 22 The "minds" (I use the term advisedly : ) of them . Gotta laugh
Let me know if you'd like some more.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
would you like to be out for the day?
Once a month I'm allowed out for the day.
The way to reduce house prices is known.
It is with the cost of paying a mortgage or limitation on access to finance to buy.
A guy called Bollard said he would not need to increase the OCR to constrain inflation resulting from rising land and property value if the government introduced a mortgage surcharge instead – then the OCR would be lower and so would the dollar to the advantage of exporters.
But now over a decade later and still nothing. The RBG gets rid of the equity requirement and cuts the OCR and so of course property values will rise.
This will change as soon as the government adds a mortgage surcharge or taxes equity in property (TOP) or a land tax. Of course only taxing property equity wealth over $M is Green policy.
Lower interest rates only benefit those with access to property finance, a mortgage surcharge is the balance to this so that government can help tenants and finance homes for first home buyers or build more state houses.
We used as first home buyers, to get a 25 year mortgage at an affordable rate, and that was a good start. It encouraged people to settle into stable lives etc etc. But though you would think that good people in government roles would want that, I think that this evil neolib economics is actually keen to keep people on the hop, make them work harder, not be complacent, and ensure that they didn't have anything to sink savings into, underpay them so they had to borrow so business would profit from the interest they had to pay to provide the necessities demanded in a 'developed' economy, and keeping more money flowing in the economy.
It is such a twisted approach that ordinary people don't comprehend it; don't understand the diabolical nature of the financial people at the top who twiddle the economy's knobs.
Yes a government could waive the mortgage surcharge for first home buyers …
It used to be expressed that government gave first home buyers a step up into the housing market to get them started. But neolib doesn't want people to even get started. Don Brash didn't think that people should be tying their money up in their own house. Though the system produced a stable and relatively happy country pleased and proud most of the time.
Not the way we are now with an attitude of the quick or the dead, and lack of generosity towards others, competing for stuff all the time. To the people at the top the hoi polloi are just to be used as if life was a cockfight, and the hens get slaughtered if they don't produce enough eggs. As you can tell, I am pretty disillusioned – the NZ spirit is mainly found in bottles now.
I think Collins sounded more like Trump. Me me me, I know best, Vote for me,
Judith Collins is just a trashy piece of trailer trash. Her "poor wee thing" describing Jacinda Adern is classic "how low can you get" – uncouth is another description or as my old grannie used to say to me "all hair oil and no socks". She is a disgrace to any position of responsibility or representation of our country. Jacinda Adern should never have to be put in a position that she has to even engage with her. Fine porcelain versus crude pottery. Trump is the company Collins deserves.
She is starting to make John Key look reasonable.
I'll tell you what. The sooner this election comes round, the better.
I think it's a major miscalculation to think people are flocking to Labour and a self described bold progressive because they think she'll be moderate and consersative.
What if labours rise in the polls is due to non voters who jacindas boldness turned on and who need change and former Nat voters whose lives have fallen apart and this moderate tinkering approach makes them stay home. Honestly. Labours dropped in the polls since it announced policy and showed it's cautious af direction. Labours messaging just seems so wrong for the times.
Labour desperately needs to start exciting people again. People who were excited are getting bored and despondent. Maybe I'm wrong maybe people are flocking to her because they want a self described transformational progressive to not be bold or transformational and middle class people are flocking to Labour cos they want everything to stay the same. I think it's a bit of both
Labour still has the highest polling it's had in thirty years.
Sure we're not exciting, but not-exciting is effectively eating National.
Trust the hard left to whine about it.
"Labour … is effectively eating National"
They'll need a cast-iron gut to keep the meal down – but it's a dirty job that needs doing. They might even become a genuine conservative (in the best sense of the word) party. One worthy of respect – which we don't have at present.
Trust the hard left to whine about it. Calling an anxious voter looking for policy change 'hard left' is hard Ad. It's nervousness really – probably better left unsaid at this stage.
If people want bold transformational progressives, why aren't they flocking to the Greens?
Good question
Maybe those who really want "bold transformational progressives" have already flocked – the rest are hunkering down, still hoping to weather a 'storm' that shall not pass.
edit
This is a good bit of goss and shows our system is working at weeding out the baddies eventually, somewhat.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/426737/spy-camera-case-police-appeal-suppression-of-former-government-employee
A former senior government manager planted a spy camera in an Auckland gym's changing room capturing video of a naked couple, then went on to plant the camera on at least three more occasions, the Auckland High Court has heard.
Police appealing the man's discharge without conviction and permanent name suppression, argued his offending, which took place on at least four separate days, was not taken into account by District Court Judge Clare Bennett.
RNZ and NZME also challenged the man's name suppression.
I wonder if we have here the Judge adopting Queen Victoria’s moral levels whereby if one doesn’t want one’s mind to be sullied by distasteful scuttlebutt, one just doesn’t listen. The Queen is supposed to have said, “I don’t want to know that.” The better secondary schools now probably don’t even study DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
‘We’re better than that’, is the quote of the new century, to be applied to bloody massacres, and derelictions of duty by well-paid government officials. I can say that, without a qualm, that bit about well-paid, because it seems to be an absolute dead cert these days as the anointed move up the line following the well-worn Peter’s Principle Curve.
"Westpac has agreed to pay a record $A1.3 billion ($NZ1.4b) fine for major breaches of money laundering and terror financing laws."
https://www.odt.co.nz/business/westpac-cops-record-fine-australia
I've often wondered….why is westpac our NZ Govt's Bank? Maybe Kiwibank should be…