Lincoln University’s professor of agribusiness Keith Woodford estimates that half of dairy exports have been affected.
Source: RadioNZ
The government says no retaliatory protections are envisioned for NZ industry.
In other news the government of economic traitors favours Chinese train builders over the local rail industry.
So in practice under “Free Trade”, the bigger more powerful country gets all the advantage while the leaders of the small country get to prostrate our workforce and our economy before them.
But hasn’t this always been the way?
Even under the Brits in the 19th century when British imperialism was in it’s ascendency the struggle between the “Free Traders” and those in favour of “Tarriff Reform” was played out. Where the strong country Britain set the terms of trade for their dominions, which were then administered by local saptraps. (Just as in modern New Zealand).
By sucking up to the superpower of the day the local mercantile ruling elite benefit at the expense of the rest of the local population. As a result of this craven foreign trade policy, the local elite, get to lead lives of privilege while the rest of us are turned into unemployed or low paid serfs in our own land and the local Maharajas, (Jonkey and co.), working in with their foreign partners live it up.
So in practice under “Free Trade”, the bigger more powerful country gets all the advantage while the leaders of the small country get to prostrate our workforce and our economy before them.
Yep and that’s why we’re worse off now after three decades of neo-liberal policies. The economists even know that the smaller economy in the relationship will always be worse off.
By sucking up to the superpower of the day the local mercantile ruling elite benefit at the expense of the rest of the local population.
Well, they’re kept in power and are reasonably well rewarded for selling out their country but they don’t do as well as the foreign over-lords.
China is smarter at playing the Free Trade game in their own interests than we are. In fact we are shit at it because we naively believe that there is such a thing as even playing field, everyone gets a fair go “free trade”.
It’s a funny old world when Ken Mair comes across as the voice of reason, but his description of Hone’s meltdown last night is spot on:
‘Mr Mair said the change in line-up wasn’t a “cover-up” and Mr Harawira had gone too far.
“Once again, that’s the style of Hone,” he said. “I was taken back by his rather aggressive style, his swearing. I don’t think it’s appropriate in this type of forum; in particular in front of children and some of our kuia [senior women].”‘
That nicely echoes my comment on the ‘Turia’ post that Hone will lose because of his unparalleled ability to annoy mature voters. The young will support him, but as they’re not on the roll, that’s no help to him now. Maybe, by November, his supporters will get the message and enrol, which could make the vote then closer, but for now, he’s toast.
That bullshitting poacher turned gamekeeper Ken Mair, Vice-President of the Maori Party, needn’t nut off about Hone Harawira using the words “bullshit Maori Party tactics” re Solomon’s failure to turn up at the Tai Tokerau education hui last night.
The very same Ken Mair of Moutoua Gardens fame, the menacing, shrill hacksaw voiced dork who had the gathered at Waitangi a few years ago pissing themselves at his self-centred “freestyle” haka.
The idiot who had violent insurgent written all over him, who didn’t give a stuff how many kuia of whatever stripe, or kids, were present when he got off his chain as it suited him.
Hone says “bullshit” and Mair’s clutching his pearls like some startled Edwardian dowager.
There’s none like the converted……….for rank hypocrisy that is.
Away with you Ken Mair…….you egg. You’re not a fraction of the fulla Hone is !
I met Ken Mair on Pakaitore (Moutoa Gardens) during the last days of the occupation in ’95. Despite the tension, the personal attacks he was under, the pressure from his own supporters, he was very welcoming to me and my whanau and took time out to show us around and explain the dispute from his perspective. He was rational, calm and forgiving of my limited understanding of their ties to the river I grew up next to. He was clearly not at all the person maligned in the media or indeed, by you, North.
But perhaps you know Mair better than me or maybe his comment last night just show how far he has come and how far Hone has to go?
Well right back at ya Voice Of Reason………my personal experience of Hone Harawira tells me, using your own words Voice, that Hone Harawira “…..is clearly not at all the person maligned in the media, or indeed by…….” you Voice or by Ken Mair.
Remains that Mair is hardly one to engage such piety over the word “bullshit”, particularly given that Harawira has never come within cooey of Mair’s excesses.
A double standard is hardly the voice of reason Voice of Reason.
“……Mair’s clutching his pearls like some startled Edwardian dowager” … best visual of the year so far ! Thank you for the laughter in the grey drear of it all !
Hey doofus I am 55 and am the proud father of a 5 week old, just because anyone is over 50 they are not dead. I applaud Tipene for standing up and probably doing something that is probably new to him. And all he gets is ” he’s a silly old man” yada yada yada. Hey Millsy come and say it to my face and I WILL show you where moses bought his beer. fucking tosser.
Well maybe you should be a little more careful in some of the generalisations you are making ie he’s 56, he’s a grandfather And as PP can also attest that acting our age is one of the last things we want to do. So say he’s a racist shit head or a what ever and I will keep quiet call any other politician and depending on who they are and i may respond, and not nastily. What got my goat was the inference that at 56 everyone should sit back, and rock their grand children to sleep and act our age.
BTW how is a 56 year old supposed to act like ? what age should i act? you see the endless possibilities in a debate on that fact alone.
Bloody hell! Im eighty and still chasing my lovely wife ,and sometimes catch her.
However it was Charlie Chaplin who squashed all the old wives tale about us old wrinklies. He was born just around the corner from where I was born so perhaps a bit has brushed off ? hopefully !
pink postman – Ooh this is good stuff. You can rely on The Standard for lively anecdotes and repartee with style (and pearls). But when it comes to DF it’s pearls before swine!
That’s pretty encouraging. The production volumes they outlined, if achieved, will make a big difference to the viability of the industry come oil price shocks.
In the new ecology of political discourse, special-interest contributors of the large sums of money now required for the privilege of addressing voters on a wholesale basis are not squeamish about asking for the quo they expect in return for their quid. Politicians who don’t acquiesce don’t get the money they need to be elected and re-elected. And the impact is doubled when special interests make clear — usually bluntly — that the money they are withholding will go instead to opponents who are more than happy to pledge the desired quo. Politicians have been racing to the bottom for some time, and are presently tunneling to new depths. It is now commonplace for congressmen and senators first elected decades ago — as I was — to comment in private that the whole process has become unbelievably crass, degrading and horribly destructive to the core values of American democracy.
And the US does have rules and regulations that, supposedly, control lobbyists etc. I suppose the question now is, are we going to demand that our politicians put in place even stronger rules on transparency? Can’t really expect so from this government as the last time such transparency and regulation was tried we got a faux Democracy Under Attack meme from them that was supported by the MSM.
Interesting little confrontation on NewstalkZB this morning (23.6.11)
NewstalkZB, Thursday 23 June 2011, 7:40 a.m.
Mike Hosking and Alasdair Thompson vs. Helen Kelly
Catherine Delahunty’s new Equal Pay Bill has drawn the ire of two of the National government’s biggest supporters: the Employers and Manufacturers Association and NewstalkZB. Time to get one of those lefty pinko commies onto the programme and deal to her, tag-team fashion.
Whoops! Not only was it was a bad idea, and (as we shall see) badly executed, it never had a chance. Alasdair Thompson up against Helen Kelly? That’s a mis-match made in Employer Hell…
Helen Kelly begins the discussion by pointing out that the statistics are irrefutable, and show women get lower pay across the board. This prompts Thompson to launch into a windy tirade about the “unreliability of statistics” and the “myth” that women get lower pay. Whenever Kelly tries to talk, he shouts her down, and talks relentlessly. Thompson is aided and abetted in this strategy by Hosking, whose contribution consists of thoughtfully saying “Mmmm, yeah” to show he agrees with everything Thompson says.
But Helen Kelly is not one to be intimidated and shut down by such behaviour. Last year she faced down the bully-boys and girls from Peter Jackson Inc., South Pacific Pictures, Warner Bros. and the National government. So a windy and incoherent haranguing from somebody like Alasdair Thompson was never going to de-rail her. She finally insists on being heard, and makes him stop…
KELLY: You can try to talk over me and stop me from speaking, but you won’t succeed. If women and men are equal as you say, why are aged care workers, who do incredibly difficult and responsible work, paid minimum wage?
THOMPSON: That’s got NOTHING to do with them being women! It’s just an all-woman job, that’s why!
HOSKING: Mmm. yeah. You can’t argue with that!
THOMPSON: Look, you have to realize something. Women are different from men.
HOSKING: Mmmm, yeah.
THOMPSON: They get paid less than men do because once a month they, uh, they have, uh, well, they have “sick problems”.
HOSKING: Mmmm, yeah.
THOMPSON: They get pregnant, and have babies. And then they have to stay home and look after sick children.
HOSKING: Mmmm, yeah.
THOMPSON: I don’t like to say this, because it looks like I’m a sexist.
KELLY: Of course. I’m glad you said it, Alasdair. I let you go on and on with that one.
Silence. Even the insensitive and brusque Alisdair Thompson realises he has just been horribly and publicly owned.
HOSKING: Alasdair Thompson and Helen Kelly, thank you very much!
——————————————————–
But that’s not the end of it. Although he has been quite incapable of formulating any response to Helen Kelly while she was on air, Hosking has one more way of getting at her—he can read out any number of hateful texts and e-mails, purportedly from listeners…
HOSKING: “It seems like a bill rooted in feminist ideology”, says this text. This one says: “HELEN KELLY, WHAT A MUPPET!” And there are many more like this! It’s ten to eight!
Interesting fact: NewstalkZB’s slogan is “Fair and Balanced”.
I’ve noticed this tactic from Nats used alot by their MPs in media debates – they talk over their opponents, interrupt with any old argument they can throw out – which doesn’t matter to them because they don’t allow time for the opposition to respond to point out their factual errors and/or ideological slant.
Nikki Kaye has used it against Jacinda Ardern in the debates between them on Citizen A – at least, she used it in the first debate, but Jacinda (and Bomber) were wise to it. In the second debate, Jacinda was more proactive about getting her points across, including telling Kaye calmly but assertively not to interrupt when Kaye did so. Kaye looked a little put out and lost when she wasn’t able to bulldoze through with her lines.
Although, this didn’t stop Kaye by claiming, in her final word, that National had a better record and more committment to public transport in Auckland than Labour.
FFS, as a westie, I noticed the improvement under the Labour-led government in rail transport & station upgrades from the western areas into the city. And National is STILL more committed to their RONS than public transport. Nats think they can swear blue is red and no-one will notice if they talk louder & don’t let the opposition get a word in.
And as for Kaye repeatedly claiming that Nats were not ideologically-driven…..???!!
they talk over their opponents, interrupt with any old argument they can throw out – which doesn’t matter to them because they don’t allow time for the opposition to respond to point out their factual errors and/or ideological slant
The problem stems from the incompetence or bias of the host (in this case, Mike Hosking). A decent and impartial host would have kept the conversation on track. Hosking made no attempt at all to be fair or impartial; in fact, he slavishly endorsed everything Thompson said.
Nikki Kaye used it in the first debate, but Jacinda (and Bomber) were wise to it
I’m impressed by Jacinda Ardern. She’s tough, and regularly shows up Simon Bridges as shallow, vague and poorly prepared. On National Radio last year, Bomber politely but persistently challenged some false statements by Murray McCully’s vile ex-squeeze Michele Boag, reducing her to spluttering incoherence. Obviously Boag doesn’t come across many people brave enough to take her on.
What are the grounds for filing a BSA complaint against Mike ‘Mmmm yeah’ Hosking who effectively encouraged the dissemination of such bad view and attitude by failing to poke and probe Thompson ?
You can file any BSA complaint you want, whether there are grounds or not. The BSA then review it and judge it.
I filed one against The Edge for promoting pot at 8:20am when I was driving to work. The authority said it was very close, but on balance they decided to reject the complaint.
I think if I had pointed out that they were exerting significant amounts of peer-pressure on a fellow radio worker to eat a cannabis muffin and that this was a bad example for children, that they probably would have upheld the complaint. Unfortunately I didn’t consider that angle until after I’d sent the form off.
The thing for Thompson to do … the thing for Thompson – who is a man who doesn’t have “sick problems”, doesn’t get pregnant and have babies, doesn’t have to stay at home and look after the sick – is to apologise for the statements he had made and resign.
Has Alasdair got the balls that he finds so superior for having as a man?
This guy Thompson is a typical Right-Wing ignorant loud-mouth.For years now he has been calling for Youth rates , Lowering the mininum wage and attacking unions. Perhaps now is the time for workers to get even. Lets all demand his resignation and bar him from any simular position. Jim N you mention Michelle Boag well there’s the answer put him on a island with her and a diet of viagra . bloody hell just imagine being embraced by her ? Mind you imagine some poor woman being embraced by Thomson.
I loved Thompson at the Labour Conference last year saying that we should follow the example of Ireland and axe our company tax rates because Ireland had done so well from it, if you ignore the last few years.
I would like to ask Thompson what research he has carried out regarding menstruation and productivity?
51 is the average age of menopause. I suppose he has a different comment for women over 50, slow due to declining reflex as a result of the ageing process.
Does anyone know if Thompson smokes, because smokers can be targeted as not being as productive as non smokers? Obese people have been targeted as well.
Thompson is a fucking douchebag who thinks he’s in 1911, not 2011.
The crap coming out of his mouth doesnt suprise me in the slightest. He (as well as his boyfriends Lowe and O’Reilly) think that all workers are somehow expendable, to be thrown away on a whim.
If Helen Kelly was even remotely her father’s daughter, she would have a picket line outside the studio (and his work) lickety split.
Helen Kelly certainly won that round. Women, all around New Zealand in Australia and globally will be sent this piece of information from any number of women who are appalled at the idiots Thompson and Hosking’ behaviour and who will now realise that while they were putting aside the feminist mantra thinking most men actually liked, respected and wanted them to have equal pay/pay equity, they now know that is, was and will always be a lie.
Women, if they don’t want to deserve the unproductive tag that these men have given them, will ensure that they think very carefully come election time knowing now as they do that Thompson and Hosking, not to mention John Campbell and Paul Holmes are on the side of John Key and Steven Joyce the two men of Hollow Men fame and with neo-conservative contacts globally and with their own agenda for taking away the few rights that women own at present, by reducing women’s safety through closing down refuges, reducing their children’s income which is what the benefit is directed at thereby forcing them to stay with violent partners and thereby having no independent voice to state their needs and to demand real equality.
By directly forcing women into unemployment, this government has a cheap, desperate, voiceless workforce at the mercy of conservative cruelties and and cruel treatment at home if they are unfortunate enough to be forced to stay in an unwanted relationship like that.
Once again we have a backlash against women; once again women are called upon to stand up and fight back.
Morrissey – NewstalkZB – fair and balanced? Interviewer has blonde hair and is a plonker who specialises in planking? Were you listening to Mary Wilson interviewing Thompson from the employers group? He is too grand to have his spiel interrupted to actually answer her question. And is affronted when she persists.
He repeated his comments and says he knows from his own, and others experiences, of women who have monthly time off. And of course they have a propensity to have children (my words). Mary wanted to know how many, what percentage, need extra time off monthly. He is a leader in the employers group and he doesn’t bloody well know. He has no personal, particular to NZ, or general statistics. I think such remarks are rich coming from people in good comfortable situations. They don’t want to recognise that having babies is part of life, creates future customers if that’s how they judge everything, and finally that once they, now enjoying the good things in life, were once babies themselves. And then women are generally being paid less than men, which could be argued was reasonable because of extra time off.
It’s still discrimination when you use a person’s abilities to rule them out for getting paid the same for the same freaking work, even more so when there’s a majority of women who don’t have serious period problems. Plus, expecting females to always “take care of the kids” is likewise sexist, as it paints it as being a solely female role, instead of something guys can do just as well (if they actually get over teh stupid man myths and do it that is).
And the money quote:
“I don’t like saying this because it sounds like I’m sexist but…”
Sheesh, just come out and admit it, instead of the usual pathetic “I’m not x, but…” that is used to oft in an attempt to excuses one inability to overcome ones racist/homophobic/sexists/feminazi*/transphopic biases.
But hey, it’s an old white dudely dude who heads up a club of mostly dudes, so how could he possibly be wrong?…
/sigh
________________________________________
*i.e. the feminists who treat trans, gays, bi’s and heterosexuals as crap, often with a side of treating sex workers as human scum. see “womyn born as womyn” for the keystone example along with the backing ideas. Doesn’t refer to the porn wars due to the fact that monolithic descriptions are failtastic due to the myriad real issues involved.
I’ve read that men think about sex every minute or so, and more often than women. I think their pay should be docked because they are just not keeping their minds on the job.
If Alasdair Thompson puts Michelle Boag on an aged care job, on the minimum wage, what are the chances that Boag will have the part of anatomy which Thompson values so much being docked?
The use of the feminazi term in your post confuses issues. Not only is it invoking Godwin’s Law in respect of feminism failures and trans culture, but it’s a term used by the racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobics (that you refer to in the same sentence) as a way of undermining the good stuff that feminism does.
And you’re ignoring the major problems within feminism that lead me to re-appropriating that term for a slightly better use, then there’s the white, non-disabled, cis face of some of the more mainstream fractions of feminism, not that they’re as problematic as the feminazis, more varying shades of frustration. And while teh term is loaded, I’d rather re-purpose it to a much better end than let the anti-feminist fucktards lord over it
Mind you, I do have troll blood coursing through my veins, so yeah.
I’m not ignoring those problems (I think they need to be critiqued and sorted, although my strategies would be boldly different than yours), I just think appropriating the term in the way that you do creates confusion not clarity.
The campaign was launched by LIANZA — the New Zealand libraries’ national association — last month. It aims to raise the profile of the issue in the General Election campaign this year.
I definitely support this, especially because:
“Charges would be a personal barrier for many and would restrict libraries supporting all members of the public to be well informed.
“A well-informed, educated population brings economic benefits to the whole country, so it’s regressive to restrict libraries’ ability to support such a positive social outcome.
Yep. Same sort of thing happens most Wed. mornings with Steven Joyce and Annette King. King rarely gets a chance to finish what she’s saying before Joyce shouts over the top of her. More often than not she’s replying to a direct question from Hosking but does he intervene and shut Joyce up? No – hardly ever anyway. Just lets him get away with it.
It’s bully boy tactics and I believe part of the reason these Ministers (and their mates) get away with it is because todays crop of media types are scared of them… scared if they stray too far out of line they will lose their positions and prospects. I’m starting to pick up some real parallels with the Muldoon regime when journalists and reporters were overtly terrified of him. This time around though it’s not just one person, but a collective group of them.
Joyce is a very smooth and competent operator, and King handles herself well in those exchanges, I think. But Hosking really is a disgrace; he makes no attempt to be even-handed or even to ask probing questions.
The worst bullying, though, happens on Drivetime with Larry Williams. Compared to Williams, Hosking is indeed “fair and balanced”.
No, not really! Hosking’s terrible. There are some intelligent and hard-working presenters on NewstalkZB, but they are few and far between, and they do not have the prime spots. That’s no accident, it’s company policy. Former CEO Bill Francis said that he preferred extreme right wing hosts like Leighton Smith and Paul Holmes because they were “more entertaining” and “easier to understand”. Naturally, he gave no evidence to back up these statements.
The only way the RWNJs can win the debate is to try and drown out everybody else. If they left it to actual debate on merits and facts they know they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on as nothing they say is related to truth.
So the Speaker has just ruled that Joyce is justified in using the term xenophobic in response to Labour’s questions about the rail engineers, asset sales, and not supporting Kiwi workers and businesses over foreign ones because, according to labour, foreign interests will shift profits overseas. The justification given by the speaker was that Labour used an equally emotive term in the question…. the term being privatisation.
To my fellow lefties out there I need a bit of infrormation regarding some statistics .What was the unemployment figures under the last labour government as against the Nats. Plus what was the sickness benifit figures.
Statistics NZ table builder Annual Household income from 1998 (select “govt transfers”)
Ministry of Social Development benefit stats page (the current one is only from 2000, but the sickness benefit sheet on the 2004 page has 10 year trends going to 1994.).
You might also want to match unemployment rate or benefit levels with quarterly gdp – it’s always looked like an interesting project to me, but I haven’t had the time. Doesn’t quite intersect with my current field 🙂
Steven Joyce was asked some hard questions today by Labour Minister of Communications and Information Technology David Cunliffe concerning Nationals Privatisation plans for New Zealand’s SOEs. Once again the speaker of the house Lockwood Smith came to National’s rescue. Lockwood argued that Joyce didn’t have to answer a question because the Minister disagreed with the word “Privatisation.” What utter Bullshit!
Lockwood equated privatisation with Joyce’s use of xenophobia, and said they were both emotive terms. But Joyce’s claim that opposing asset sales on sovereignty issues is xenophobic doesn’t wash… nevertheless, it’s the line NAct is peddling.
Bullshit right wing constraining of the English language.
The heart of the Left is in emotive rallying cries, and it makes sense that National would want the language of cold hard rational but false neoliberalism to rule instead.
Since when is the word Privatisation out of bounds… because National says so? Calling somebody xenophobic is entirely different, and Anette King rightly stood up for herself. If the Government can’t even get these simple facts right, it’s no wonder New Zealand is in such a mess.
Carol – Perhaps Lockwood should provide a list of words inappropriate because they have emotional contexts.
I can think of Beemer, babies, going forward, at the end of the day, sheepskin, exchange rate, oh lots just off the top of my head. I think there are 72,000 head words or such in my dictionary. Perhaps he should work through it alphabetically and produce a banned list of yucky words.
Two news items, one from Commerce Commission and one showing the real owner’s details. Looks suspiciously like a sale to a foreign company of New Zealand assets owned by the people of Selwyn District and Christchurch City, 100% being sold off to an American company.
The Commerce Commission press release doesn’t mention it is a foreign company, knowing that Matariki sounds like a New Zealand business enterprise and doesn’t acknowledge that probably the Overseas Investment watchdog should be looking into it, unless the Commerce Commission can keep it quiet. Let’s not keep it quiet. Is this the work of CERA, selling off assets already, assets which could provide productive work for generations of Kiwis AND the dividends. Go figure.
‘Scoop >> Business Thursday, 23 June 2011, 9:48 am
1 – Press Release: Commerce Commission
Matariki Forests applies for clearance to acquire the Selwyn Plantation Board’s forestry assets
The Commerce Commission has received an application from Matariki Forests seeking clearance to acquire the forestry assets of the Selwyn Plantation Board.
Matariki Forests is New Zealand’s third largest forestry company and owns exotic forests throughout New Zealand. It is the largest forest owner in Canterbury.
The Selwyn Plantation Board owns exotic forests in Canterbury. It is owned by the Selwyn District Council (60 per cent) and Christchurch City Council (40 per cent).
The clearance application relates to both parties’ involvement in the supply of saw and pulp logs in the Canterbury region. In considering the application, the Commission’s role is to determine whether the acquisition has the effect of substantially lessening competition in a market.
A public version of the application will be available shortly on the Commission’s website:
2 – Matariki Forests, global forester Rayonier’s New Zealand arm, is seeking Commerce Commission permission to buy a swathe of Canterbury forest and farmland owned by the Christchurch City and Selwyn District councils.
Matariki, the country’s third-largest forest owner, lodged the application to buy the assets of the Selwyn Plantation Board, a council-controlled organisation, owned 61 per cent by Selwyn Investment Holdings and 39.3 per cent by Christchurch City Holdings.
Matariki is the New Zealand arm of Rayonier, a global forester based in Florida.
It is unclear whether Overseas Investment Office permission will be required, assuming the Commerce Commission rules the acquisition is not anti-competitive.
• Rayonier seeks clearance to buy Canterbury forests’
Mmm. I hope lots of people are remembering the fact that Anderton was streets ahead of Parker before the first earthquake; now they know that Parker and his followers are simply following NAct’s instructions, just as they will with Auckland’s freed up asset portfolio in 2012 if they get back in.
Labour needs to return these assets back to a 75% required citizen agreement before selling.
I see that Papandreou has succeeded in pushing austerity measures through the greek parliament. This looks bad for the greeks, though I’m not really qualified to judge whether default would have been worse. Bryan Gould seems think it would have been preferable.
“If I have to choose between the posturing of politicians and the greed of bankers on the one hand, and the decent lives of ordinary people on the other, there is no choice. The Greeks must default, abandon the euro and make a fresh start.”
Papandreaou is the inside man for the bankster occupiers of Greece.
I’m glad Gould has come to this conclusion. Greece is being asked to sell off all its real hard assets for pennies on the pound to gain less than 6 months worth of additional debt to pay its current debt.
The financial terrorists are in a race to see who can pick up the most valuable Greek assets at the cheapest price now, because a Greek default is virtually unavoidable.
…though I’m not really qualified to judge whether default would have been worse.
Would be bad for the EU and the Euro(€) (both would probably collapse (Actually, this reminds me of what happened to the Gold Standard in the late 19th century)) but good for the Greeks. Guess why it’s being rammed down the Greeks throat.
When taking issue with Mr Thompson, employer spokesperson, why didn’t Hekia Parata, Minister of Women’s Affairs, put forward the stats that her department should have had to hand if she had bothered to ask them and do her job advocating and advancing women’s lives.
Alasdair Thompson is clearly a fully fledged asshole! He typifies the chauvinistic old man, which is unfortunately a prevalent disease in this country. It’s mainly caught by older males who believe they’re somehow superior to woman, who they believe need to be subservient to the status quo.
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A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Transformers: The disaster of the Great Depression was transformed into a new and fairer society by the democratic socialism of the First Labour Government. The disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic offers a similar transformative possibility to the Labour-NZ First-Green Government. Seize the time, Jacinda! You will never have a better ...
Tamper with The System? Well, we already are. But there's a difference between accidentally trickling sand into a precision gearbox versus formulating a plan to alter it on the fly with improvements in mind. One action is more or less innocently unscrupulous, the other amenable to earning an easy ...
Associate Prof George Thomson, Louise Delany, Prof Nick WilsonWhile it is possible that New Zealand can use intense public health controls to eradicate COVID-19 from the country – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently hospitalised.1 Better resilience ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...
We're about to do something unprecedented as a nation. We hope that by taking this extraordinary action before a single life in New Zealand has been lost to the deadly novel virus we will save tens of thousands of lives. Our lives. We'll do it together, in households, in isolation ...
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”So writes the author of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Old Testament that’s counted as a ‘wisdom’ book and written as if by an unnamed king of Jerusalem. But who would have thought there would be a time ...
I was surprised when the prime minister described the Economic Response to Covid-19 package as the ‘largest peacetime government spend in New Zealand's history’. Reflecting – checking through history – I realised that the term ‘spend’ was crucial and the package had no income tax cuts. Even so, it has ...
Years ago the Argentine sociologist Carlos Weisman wrote a book titled “Living within our Means.” It was a critique of Argentine society that focused on the paradoxical question of why, in a land of plenty, there was so much economic instability, inequality, corruption and political turmoil. His conclusion was basically ...
Parliament will be leading by example and adjourning tomorrow after a special sitting to consider an epidemic notice and state of emergency. Day-to-day oversight of the government will be delegated to a select committee. But that's not the only overight mechanism. The OIA will still be law, and (so far) ...
Michael Baker, University of OtagoOverjoyed. That’s not a word epidemiologists normally use, but that’s how I felt after hearing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement about New Zealand’s COVID-19 shutdown of everything except essential services for at least four weeks from midnight on Wednesday. More than anything, I just ...
How much homelessness is caused by house hoarding? We're about to find out. The pandemic has destroyed tourism, which means that house hoarders who put their hoarded properties up as short-term tourist rentals are now offering them on the ordinary rental market:Property investors are pulling properties from Airbnb to offer ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bruce Lieberman It seems like such a simple, straightforward, empowering idea: plant trees – a lot of trees – all over the world, and watch the planet’s temperature fall. Who doesn’t love a tree or two, even far more – the right ...
According to Newshub, Simon Bridges is open to joining a “grand coalition” with Labour as we hunker down to go into a month long lockdown. The idea is sound. Before now, the role of the opposition was to scrutinise and oppose. In the context of what almost amounts to a ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or ...
We need to be lifting our game against COVID-19. You and I need to help those working to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while they’re trying to lift the testing and treatment efforts. We don’t want to be playing this game running backwards. Best to play it solidly forward, from ...
Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Michael Baker, and Prof Nick WilsonThe NZ Government must do more to clearly articulate its COVID-19 strategy: eradication or ‘flattening the curve’ mitigation. But to do so means understanding the maths and ethics of both these strategies. In this blog, we adapt our work for ...
A few days ago I was starting to write something about the pandemic, which now seems unconscionable. It took the form of a letter to an agony aunt:“Dear Deidre, I have an ugly confession. I am quite excited by Covid-19.”This is how the piece went:“I’m not a psychopath, honest. Although the ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Reviews... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of DisastersThe likelihood of extreme events ...
Last week, the government announced a $12 billion initial package to support people during the pandemic. Today, the Reserve Bank is buying government bonds - effectively printing money - to keep up the money supply during the crisis. Normally such moves would have the right apoplectic. Instead, the National Party ...
I am a pundit, somebody who opines and comments on the news. There are no real qualifications to punditry though having a rudimentary way with words and good general knowledge helps. That is one reason there is a constant oversupply of would-be pundits and why it is quite hard to ...
I recently encountered the following prescription from a Faculty of Education at a leading New Zealand University. At first I wondered if it was another product of the postmodern generator (http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/), designed to create gibberish in the postmodern form, but I’m told it is real: The “schooled” society: Towards the ...
The coronavirus pandemic has of course had a major impact on individual lives and on societies as a whole. But, long after the crisis has passed (assuming it does), we will begin to realise that its real and lasting significance lies in the lessons it has taught us, if only ...
COVID-19 has plunged Aotearoa New Zealand (indeed, the world) into territory that, while maybe not totally unprecedented, certainly hasn’t been seen during the lifetimes of most of us here today. Our borders are closed to non-citizens, we’re being told not to gather in groups of more than 500 outside/100 inside, ...
For the last few weeks, I’ve been urging you to prepare yourself, your family, business, and community for Covid-19. Now it’s time for real action. Yesterday the director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced another 13 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, bringing our total to date to 52. ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 15, 2020 through Sat, Mar 21, 2020 Editor's Pick Now Isn’t the Time to Forget About Our Climate Change EffortsTasha Tilberg, Lindsey Wixson, and Liu Wen photographed ...
by Jan Rivers The article has been corrected to show that it was Ewen MacAskill, former Guardian journalist and not Luke Harding who travelled to meet Edward Snowden with journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras. Some of the Guardian’s well-known journalists who did not sign the protest letter are ...
by Cultural Worker Late March 2020 amidst the virus. With gigs crashing and burning all around it was without much hope that I called a long standing rest home booking: “ Hi, I’m supposed to be entertaining at your place this afternoon – is it still on?” “”If you don’t ...
Whenever people demand real change from their politicians, we're told that "politics is the art of the possible". The implication is that change isn't possible, so we'd better just get used to the sucky status quo. But now that there's a pandemic, a lot of things we were previously told ...
Together: In leading New Zealand through the Covid-19 Pandemic, the Prime Minister could do a lot worse than allow herself to be guided by the spirit of collective sacrifice and co-operation that animated the New Zealanders of 80 years ago. Most Kiwis alive today have had no opportunity to prove their ...
It is said that generals fight the last war. In the case of the early stages of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) they had learned from the Great Depression of the 1930s and they fought intelligently and successfully. Later their advice would be ignored in favour of the Austerians who ...
Solidarity Forever: All over the world, the arrival of the Covid-19 virus has exposed the fragility of the walls we erect around ourselves and our loved ones. It has shattered our illusions of autonomy and revealed to us how utterly dependent we all are on other human-beings. Finally, we see ...
Looking across the various arguments for/against the leading candidates to take the Democratic Nomination, you might honestly be very hard pressed to tell. There are a number of things that have now started happening since Amy Klobuchar and “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg both threw the towel in and immediately (and ...
by Daphna Whitmore Abortion is no longer in the Crimes Act in New Zealand. The law reform passed yesterday and now abortion is a medical matter between a woman and her doctor. Many women’s groups and progressive people have campaigned for reform for decades. The women’s liberation movement and some ...
Doug Specht, University of Westminster and Julio Gimenez, University of Westminster When fake news, misreporting and alternative facts are everywhere, reading the news can be a challenge. Not only is there plenty of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and other scientific topics floating around social media, you also ...
Michael Baker, University of Otago and Nick Wilson, University of OtagoWith some of the toughest border restrictions and a newly-announced NZ$500 million boost to health services, New Zealand is among a small number of countries with a strategy to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. New Zealand is also fortunate in ...
As expected, the government has introduced a sessional order to allow Parliament to operate during the pandemic. You can read it on the Order Paper here, but the short version is that questions and motions can be filed electronicly, select committees can work remotely, and the the Business Committee can ...
Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology; Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology; Timothy Graham, Queensland University of Technology, and Tobias R. Keller, Queensland University of Technology News and views about coronavirus has spread via social media in a way that no health emergency has done before. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, ...
So you’ve recently returned from overseas, come into contact with someone who tested positive, got a bit of a dry cough yourself or perhaps just want to self isolate for 14 days to avoid other people who might have COVID-19. Here are a few tips and tricks to help get ...
Our Good Fortune: Precisely because she has never been an ideologue (she calls herself a “pragmatic idealist”) Jacinda Ardern has a political nimbleness and spontaneity which, when infused with her exceptional emotional intelligence, produces spectacular demonstrations of leadership. Jacinda's empathic political personality contrasts sharply with the less-than-sunny ways of her ...
The Abortion Legislation Bill has just passed its third reading, 68-51. NZ First MPs bailed because their referendum amendment didn't pass, but there were plenty of MPs to provide a majority without them. The bill is a long way from perfect - most significantly, it subjects pregnant people who need ...
As most of the world tries to suppress the coronavirus spread, some countries are going it alone – trying to manage the pandemic through so-called “herd immunity”. Herd immunity means letting a large number of people catch a disease, and hence develop immunity to it, to stop the virus spreading. ...
So, as I sit at home with a very, very slight headache (i.e. not at work when I would otherwise be so), the now familiar figure of Ashley Bloomfield reports eight new confirmed cases of COVID-19 including two in Waikato. A surprise, given that we had just twelve yesterday? No. ...
Many who advocated for, and voted for, the current Coalition – particularly those who voted Labour and the Green Party – expected to see a sea change in the reality of social services. A real, deep change of attitude, approach of process through which the system negotiates the difficult and ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
We know some people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order A New Zealand First member’s bill drawn from the ballot today seeks to overhaul the youth justice system by instigating a system of demerit points for offences committed by young offenders. “The ‘Youth Justice Demerit Point System’ will put an end to ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign AffairsHonourable Ministers, Members of Parliament, members of the diplomatic corps, distinguished guests and official delegates, ladies and gentlemen – Welcome to you all.We are also privileged to have with us here today Ms Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Disarmament and Arms ControlThe Public Advisory Committee for Disarmament and Arms Control (PACDAC) is holding a Parliamentary Symposium on Tuesday to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) hosted by PACDAC Chair and Under-Secretary for Disarmament and ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic DevelopmentThe Provincial Growth Fund is investing $6 million in a land-based aquaculture pilot to see whether yellowtail kingfish can be commercially farmed in Northland, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today.A recirculating land-based aquaculture system will be built and operated ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for ForestryForestry Minister Shane Jones has announced two One Billion Trees programme grants of more than $1.18 million to help hapu and iwi in Northland restore whenua and moana.“Many communities around Aotearoa have benefited from One Billion Trees funding since the programme was launched ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign AffairsAhead of the start of the criminal trial in the Netherlands on 9 March, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has reaffirmed the need to establish truth, accountability and justice for the downing of Flight MH17 ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime MinisterThe Government is investing $19.9 million through the Provincial Growth Fund in a game-changing hydrogen energy facility in South Taranaki, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters announced today.“The development of alternative energy initiatives like this one is vital for the Taranaki region’s economy. ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Minister for Foreign AffairsForeign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand is partnering with countries in the Pacific to ensure they are prepared for, and able to respond to the global threat of Coronavirus (COVID-19).“There are currently no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Minister of Transport Phil Twyford has today announced details of the Government’s support package to keep key air freight moving and ensure New Zealanders retain access to essential goods during the four-week level 4 lockdown. “The Government is working with airlines and air freight operators to ensure New Zealand’s key ...
New Zealand moved up to COVID-19 Alert Level 3 – Restrict New Zealand to move up to COVID-19 Alert Level 4 – Eliminate, in 48 hours Two-staged approach to give people and businesses time to prepare Level 3, from tomorrow Non-essential businesses must close All events and gatherings must be ...
Good afternoon The Cabinet met this morning to discuss our next actions in the fight against COVID-19. Like the rest of the world, we are facing the potential for devastating impacts from this virus. But, through decisive action, and through working together, do we have a small window to get ...
The Government is announcing significant further support for the economy, workers and businesses as the country unites to prepare for Alert Level 4 in the fight against COVID-19. Cabinet today agreed to remove the cap on the Government’s wage subsidy scheme, which will inject a further $4 billion into the ...
The Government is backing the Reserve Bank’s latest action to support the economy by reducing longer-term interest rates, meaning lower costs for businesses and mortgage holders, and a lower currency to help our exporters. The Minister of Finance has signed a memorandum of understanding and a letter of indemnity with ...
The Government has asked the Commerce Commission to take account of the exceptional circumstances created by COVID-19 when monitoring business behaviour in coming weeks. “The purpose of my request to the Commerce Commission is to make sure businesses can work together in ways that will allow them to provide ...
The New Zealand Government has temporarily closed its High Commission in Bridgetown, Barbados and its Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Due to the increasing scarcity of air links in and out of Bridgetown and Yangon, and the pressure COVID-19 is placing ...
Associate Health and Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare has today announced the Government’s plan to support Māori communities and businesses in the face of COVID-19. “Our Government’s $12.1 billion economic package will help many Māori whānau, workers and businesses, whether it’s through wage subsidies, income support and worker redeployment, or ...
The Government and the hospitality industry have worked together to produce guidelines to assist with managing and reducing transmission of COVID-19, Health Minister David Clark announced today. The guidelines developed between the Government, Hospitality New Zealand and SkyCity Entertainment Group, set out how the new restrictions on physical distancing and ...
Four stage Alert System for COVID-19 announced New Zealand moved up to COVID-19 Alert Level 2 – Reduce Contact New Zealanders over 70 and those with certain medical conditions told to stay at home as much as they can to reduce risk of contact with the virus Workplaces to implement ...
Kia ora koutou katoa I’m speaking directly to all New Zealanders today to give you as much certainty and clarity as we can as we fight Covid-19. Over the past few weeks, the world has changed. And it has changed very quickly. In February it would have seemed unimaginable to ...
New Zealand and Singapore have jointly committed to keep supply chains open and to remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker welcomed the commitment. “This is an important collective response, and ...
JOINT MINISTERIAL STATEMENT BY SINGAPORE AND NEW ZEALAND AFFIRMING COMMITMENT TO ENSURING SUPPLY CHAIN CONNECTIVITY AMIDST THE COVID-19 SITUATION The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis. As part of our collective response to combat COVID-19, Singapore and New Zealand are committed to maintaining open and connected supply chains. We ...
Travel restrictions, closing our border to almost all travelers came into force from 23:59 on Thursday 19 March 2020 (NZDT). All airlines were informed of these restrictions before they came into force. Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says “The transit of passengers between Australia and New Zealand has been agreed upon and ...
The Government has allocated $100 million to help redeploy workers affected by the economic impact of COVID-19, with the hard-hit region of Gisborne-Tairāwhiti to be the first helped, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford, Forestry and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. Phil Twyford ...
The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is ramping up support for Tairāwhiti’s wood processing sector to bolster the region’s economy at a time of heightened uncertainty, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. Following earlier announcements today of a regional support package for Tairāwhiti, Minister Jones has also announced a ...
The Coalition Government has stepped in to protect Air New Zealand with a significant financial deal that protects essential routes and allows the company to keep operating. The Government and Air New Zealand have agreed a debt funding agreement through commercial 24-month loan facilities of up to $900 million*. The ...
The Government has taken further measures to protect New Zealanders from the COVID-19 virus, effectively stopping all people from boarding a plane to New Zealand from 11:59pm today, except for returning New Zealanders, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. New Zealanders’ partners, legal guardians or any dependent children travelling with ...
The Government has reinforced its commitment to protecting the health of New Zealanders from COVID-19 through the cancellation of indoor events with more than 100 people. “Protecting the health of New Zealanders is our number one priority, and that means we need to reduce the risks associated with large gatherings,” ...
Alex Casey delivers her last power rankings for The Bachelorette NZ, where Lily and Lesina make their final decisions. Click here for previous instalments. Well me homies, we have reached the end of our journey together. At times it was slow, like a food tech teacher dragging his brogues through the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Morrison government will provide a flat $1,500 a fortnight JobKeeper payment per employee for businesses to retain or rehire nearly six million workers, in a massive $130 billion six-month wage subsidy scheme to limit ...
David Downs - who doesn't even drink coffee - explains his plan to ensure some favorite cafés are still around when we emerge from lockdown Are you already sick of instant coffee, and missing your morning brew? Well, while you may have to suffer barrista-withdrawal symptoms for few more weeks, moves ...
By RNZ News The Auckland girl’s secondary school Marist College has New Zealand’s biggest Covid-19 cluster with 47 confirmed and probable cases. It is the biggest cluster of infection being tracked by NZ health authorities. The board chairperson Stephen Dallow said the confirmed cases included teachers, students and adults ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Irving, Adjunct Professor, University of Technology Sydney Blood is like milk, not toilet paper. You can’t just buy a lot of it and save it for later – you need to have a regular, fresh supply for patients who need it. ...
Newsroom Pro’s Bernard Hickey and Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr zoom out to lunch to talk about the Reserve Bank’s latest move to help banks lend to corporates. The Reserve Bank announced on Monday it would lend to banks dealing with distressed corporate borrowers, opening a new weekly Open ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacinta Carroll, Senior Research Fellow, Counter Terrorism and Social Cohesion, National Security College, Australian National University There are now nearly 300 cases of COVID-19 linked to passengers who disembarked from the Ruby Princess cruise ship without any health checks from authorities. Amid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Brayshaw, Lecturer, Fashion and Design History, Theory, and Thinking, University of Technology Sydney Once again, global crafting communities are stepping up to help in a crisis, sewing face masks desperately needed in American hospitals to help stop the spread of COVID-19. ...
Retailer Smiths City has reached an agreement with ASB Bank to delay a $1.5 million dollar repayment of a loan due tomorrow. It also said it is starting talks with potential investors to support the business. The company said Covid-19 has caused an unforeseen and unprecedented shock to the business, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Quentin Grafton, Director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University In 1997, a bestselling book by Jared Diamond purported to explain how the West “won” world dominance based on the good luck ...
Figures from around the world show that Covid-19, while vicious and contagious, does behave like other infections, rampaging quickly through a community, hospitalising a small percentage and causing death in an even smaller percentage. The World Health ...
Video of PM Ardern’s Post Cabinet Press Conference is available here: New Zealand Labour Party - #LIVE: Post-Cabinet Press Conference 2 March 2020 Today Cabinet was focused on the response to protect NZers from COVID-19. Ardern outlined ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin To get a correct picture, we need regional data – indeed sub-regional statistics – because the virus does not respect political boundaries. Unfortunately, it is very hard to get regional data from European countries. The Johns Hopkins data – most widely used by the media (and ...
An extract from Jacinda Ardern: A New Kind of Leader, the brand new biography of the prime minister by Madeleine Chapman, formerly of this parish.Out today, Madeleine’s biography of the prime minister is magnificent. We cracked up. We had a wee cry. We’ve never read a political biography like it. Tomorrow ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Misha Ketchell, Editor & Executive Director, The Conversation You might have seen recent mediareports in various outlets of a paper, commissioned by the federal government, reporting the coronavirus advice of a group of experts from Group Of Eight universities. Dated March ...
Analysis: On the face of it, New Zealand's epidemic curve is going exponential. But are case numbers really rising for the same reasons as overseas? If you've been following any news about Covid-19 over the past three months, you've heard of The Curve. It looks, variously, like a sky-high pillar ...
MediaRoom column: A decision to block publication of community newspapers under the State of Emergency could be changed tomorrow. Tim Murphy reports. A decision to stop community newspapers from circulating in the country's suburbs, towns and settlements appears to have been an example of officials scratching their regulatory itch. On Friday, ...
A Waikato berry grower has been ordered to pay over $76,000 for employment law breaches. Olde Berry Farm has been fined $50,000 and forced to pay over $16,000 in unpaid wages and holiday pay. Its managing director, Andrew Molly, has been made personally responsible fo an additional $10,000 in penalties. ...
The Government has set up a dedicated service for reporting fears of price gouging, as Jacinda Ardern flags the expansion of "essential services" Kiwis concerned about potential price gouging at supermarkets during the coronavirus lockdown can now report the issue directly to government officials, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced. Ardern ...
A new report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment into the ban on new petroleum exploration permits outside onshore Taranaki has been welcomed by the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ). "This ...
The takeover offer for Abano Healthcare is off the table - a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said the $150-million takeover scheme agreement with Adams NZ Bidco Ltd. was terminated, with no fees payable by either party, as a result as the material adverse change to the company's ...
The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) contribution to the successful mission to train members of the Iraqi Security Forces to combat ISIS is at an end and the first troops from the final contingent have arrived home. Since December the NZDF has had 45 personnel ...
On Sunday it was reported there is a high demand for New Zealand Police's online form to report lockdown breaches. This news should act as a red flag, signalling the potentially corrosive effects on public trust within Aotearoa that may occur in these troubled times. Concerns have already been expressed ...
The Prime Minister is giving the latest updates on the government's fight against the impact of Covid-19 at her weekly post-Cabinet media conference. Watch live here. ...
Watch the replay of our fourth live Q&A session with Dr Ayesha Verrall, a senior lecturer at Otago University who specialises in infectious diseases. Ayesha Verrall is an infectious diseases physician and senior lecturer at Otago University's Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine (Wellington). Dr Verrall has been monitoring the spread and impact ...
Recognising how much of the burden women are carrying in this crisis - and how much they always carry - may take us closer to a society in which caring work is seen and valued for the essential work it is, writes Jess Berentson-Shaw COVID-19 has thrown a window wide ...
You’ve lost your job and your income has reduced due to the Covid-19 crisis, so how do you hold onto your home? Mortgage adviser Cameron Marcroft talks to Bonnie Sumner.Tell us about the changes you’ve seen since the lockdown began. We’ve had many enquiries coming through from both existing ...
When officials – including police themselves – don’t seem clear on the rules around movement, it makes it harder for everyone to do the right thing, writes Andrew Geddis.Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to eradicate the virus that causes Covid-19 from its shores. To do that, as a ...
The EMA is urging the Government to postpone the planned significant increase to the minimum wage on Wednesday, as employers grapple with keeping their doors open amid COVID-19. Chief Executive Brett O’Riley says that while it may be politically ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Wark, Conjoint Professor, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle As the number of COVID-19 cases around the world continues to climb, hospitals are under increased pressure to provide emergency care for the most severely ill patients. What does ...
Philanthropy New Zealand will release a weekly update to share philanthropic and grantmaking activity and insight as the sector seeks to support communities in the wake of COVID-19. This update is a general public document, provided to Ministers, ...
By Elias Nanau in Port Moresby Indonesia has issued a stern warning over illegal border crossers from Papua New Guinea. This follows Indonesia stepping up its security measures at the border in response to the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. The First Secretary to the governor for West Sepik, Adam ...
As two staff members test positive for Covid-19, police are grappling with ways to keep their workforce safe while still enforcing the rules of the lockdown, Marc Daalder reports Two police staff have tested positive for Covid-19, Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Monday, while nearly 400 others are now in self-isolation ...
The Covid-19 crisis in media has claimed New Zealand’s last surviving radio station solely dedicated to sport. Amid a wider crisis in media funding right now, the first outlet has been forced to close the doors – and it isn’t likely to return.Staff at Radio Sport have been told that the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute New Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates paint a grim picture of the direct economic costs of public health measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, and the need for more government support ...
Tips on how television can help educate your kids, for parents who have to keep working.It feels as if a great many parents are simply flourishing during this lockdown with fairy gardens, bird song and mason jars, daily bongo drum dancing and essays written by three-year-old prodigies about how satisfying ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. There were 76 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, up from the previous day's 63 new cases. Details of how many tests have been completed are now being ...
Supermarkets and some publishers are favoured by the government’s imposition of severe restrictions on what we can do and from whom we can buy during the Covid-19 lock-down. But one consumer watchdog is challenging the legality of an edict by Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi which favours supermarkets while Act leader ...
Robyn Hunt writes on the challenges facing disabled people and what needs to be done to support them as we go into lockdown, and beyond.Disabled people at higher risk need more help. Many of the almost one quarter of New Zealanders who are disabled are doing it hard as the ...
An online focus is coming back to bite newspaper companies, the Otago Daily Times’ editor says. David Williams reports. Despite advertising falling off a cliff, and its community papers dormant, the group editor of the country’s third-biggest publisher says there haven’t been layoffs and it’s unlikely any of its newspapers ...
Cabinet ministers will patch into a video conference this afternoon to discuss the Covid-19 lockdown, including complaints about high prices at supermarkets. ...
Talks will be ongoing between local leaders and Government in an effort to have them deploy both personnel and other resources to Tairāwhiti to support regional measures to contain COVID-19. Mayor Rehette Stoltz, Gisborne District Council ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers' Union is joining calls for the Government to extend submission deadlines for Select Committees during the immediate fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. New Zealand Taxpayers' Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, "Old political ...
FIRST Union welcomes the announcements made by supermarket chains Foodstuffs and Progressive Enterprises that workers will receive lockdown pay increases but is cautioning that the details of these promises matter and all essential workers should be earning ...
By Imelda V. Abano in Manila The novel coronavirus now sweeping the globe has left many countries struggling to cope with rising numbers of infections and journalists grappling with how to best cover this evolving public health crisis. In addition to questions about how governments, health care systems and ...
The government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight in and out of the country - with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight. ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Kia ora e te whānau, welcome to MME with me! I know a lot of us have this little green book on our shelves. Maybe you bought it and never got round to opening ...
The Free Speech Coalition is preparing to launch an urgent judicial review of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s decision to deem non-daily newspapers and publications not an essential service for the purposes of the COVID-19 Level-4 nationwide shutdown. ...
Increasingly concerned home support workers are worried that without adequate personal protective equipment and mandatory protocols for risk assessments, they may end up spreading COVID-19 around the homes and communities they work in. The news that 21 ...
The kiwifruit industry is fighting for survival as it tries to pick and pack the season's crop while enforcing Covid-19 restrictions. The apple industry is also predicting problems with at least 10 percent of the crop not likely to be picked. The nationwide lockdown has come right in the middle ...
The Reserve Bank is ramping up support for businesses and banks by accepting corporate debt and other assets as security for loans to banks. The latest measure is designed to pump more money into the economy through the banking system. Assistant governor Christian Hawkesby said the aim is to encourage ...
The first days of national lockdown have truly brought out the best in our social media stars. Alex Casey counts down the classics. Yesterday I got served with the Instagram notification that normally only pops up around Christmas-time. “You’re all caught up!” it chirps, “you’ve seen every post from the last ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, writer and doctor Glenn Colquhoun goes full epistolary, with a letter to Hone Tūwhare – and his Travelling Band of Constant Companions.Kia ...
By John Gerritsen of RNZ News The $5 billion foreign student industry is facing a massive downturn with as many as half of this year’s enrolments now in doubt. Immigration New Zealand figures show that of 76,203 valid study visas at 15 March, 60,348 were in New Zealand, and ...
As New Zealand looks toward an uncertain future in all areas of life, Auckland school principal Claire Amos sees an opportunity to change high school education for the better. The last week has been an interesting one for school leaders. Monday arrived, it was all on – schools were closing the ...
The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report, she’s expecting the country to be restricted to visitors for some time after the lockdown period ends. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University 2019 was the year Australians confronted the fact that a healthy environment is more than just a pretty waterfall in a national park; a nice ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yale Z Wong, Research Associate, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney ZMinimising health risks has rightly been the focus of discussion during the coronavirus outbreak. This includes efforts to protect both frontline public transport employees and the travelling public. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tyler Riordan, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland Along with home delivery of groceries, pharmaceuticals and alcohol, demand for food delivery is booming. Services such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo have become essential to cafes and restaurants that can now only sell ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nishanathe Dahanayake, PhD Candidate, Ethics/Philosophy, University of New England The coronavirus pandemic is challenging our health, work, family, food and fun. It’s also disturbing our peace of mind and forcing us to question our own existence. We are each asking our own ...
ASB sees 6 percent GDP fall in 2020; Chorus, King Salmon and Stride reassure their profits are still on track; Augusta withdraws fund on rent relief fears; US stocks slide again; US jobs data looms ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Conditions for leaving lockdown explored, nation’s first death from Covid-19 reported, and Australian govt continues to discriminate against NZers.When will the Covid-19 lockdown across New Zealand end? Short answer – when it’s actually safe to do so. Officially, the current state ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
People over 70 and those with underlying health conditions faced the lockdown four days before the rest of the country - but some of the elderly still aren't taking any notice. ...
Steve Braunias presents a photo essay of the one thing that New Zealanders are holding close to their hearts during the Lockdown: their bookshelves. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's bookcase at Premier House in Wellington. The photograph which she posted this weekend on her Instagram page reveals two novels by Elizabeth ...
Police start “initial” investigation into abuse at a notorious psychiatric hospital. David Williams reports The Government has missed a 90-day deadline for responding to a United Nations committee over torture at Lake Alice’s child and adolescent unit in the 1970s. However, in a move that might represent a glimmer of ...
Emma Espiner makes a slow and deliberate trip to the supermarket yesterday, where she finds we are approaching social distancing in a very New Zealand way It took me three attempts to go to the supermarket. Two days ago I saw the cheerless conga line snaking around the car park ...
Dr Neal Curtis looks at all the points of implicit trust within society, and how Covid-19 is revealing how important this trust is As I stood in the queue to get into our local supermarket it was encouraging to see how carefully people were engaging in social distancing to minimise ...
From growing up on the remote East Cape to becoming a Black Fern and a lawyer, Ruahei Demant wants to show young Māori that anything is possible. In the long run, Ruahei Demant wants to be a sports lawyer. But in the short term, the Black Ferns first-five is juggling her ...
Having toughed it out alone with Covid-19 and survived, one Kiwi man learned the hard way how self-isolation really can save lives, writes Jill Herron Choosing to self-isolate early with only Sophie the spaniel as company led to a lonesome, rough ride through Covid-19 for a Christchurch asthmatic – but ...
Open mike 23/06/2011 
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...4 hours ago
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...5 hours ago
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...7 hours ago
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...8 hours ago
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...9 hours ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...9 hours ago
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...24 hours ago
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...1 day ago
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020 Articles Linked to on Facebook Sun, Mar 22, 2020 In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...2 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...2 days ago
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...2 days ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...3 days ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...3 days ago
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...3 days ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...5 days ago
According to Newshub, Simon Bridges is open to joining a “grand coalition” with Labour as we hunker down to go into a month long lockdown. The idea is sound. Before now, the role of the opposition was to scrutinise and oppose. In the context of what almost amounts to a ...1 week ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or ...1 week ago
A few days ago I was starting to write something about the pandemic, which now seems unconscionable. It took the form of a letter to an agony aunt:“Dear Deidre, I have an ugly confession. I am quite excited by Covid-19.”This is how the piece went:“I’m not a psychopath, honest. Although the ...1 week ago
I am a pundit, somebody who opines and comments on the news. There are no real qualifications to punditry though having a rudimentary way with words and good general knowledge helps. That is one reason there is a constant oversupply of would-be pundits and why it is quite hard to ...1 week ago
The coronavirus pandemic has of course had a major impact on individual lives and on societies as a whole. But, long after the crisis has passed (assuming it does), we will begin to realise that its real and lasting significance lies in the lessons it has taught us, if only ...1 week ago
COVID-19 has plunged Aotearoa New Zealand (indeed, the world) into territory that, while maybe not totally unprecedented, certainly hasn’t been seen during the lifetimes of most of us here today. Our borders are closed to non-citizens, we’re being told not to gather in groups of more than 500 outside/100 inside, ...1 week ago
Looking across the various arguments for/against the leading candidates to take the Democratic Nomination, you might honestly be very hard pressed to tell. There are a number of things that have now started happening since Amy Klobuchar and “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg both threw the towel in and immediately (and ...2 weeks ago
Some fave speeches: ...2 weeks ago
Many who advocated for, and voted for, the current Coalition – particularly those who voted Labour and the Green Party – expected to see a sea change in the reality of social services. A real, deep change of attitude, approach of process through which the system negotiates the difficult and ...2 weeks ago
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark. "Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...4 hours ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...2 days ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...5 days ago
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...1 hour ago
Alex Casey delivers her last power rankings for The Bachelorette NZ, where Lily and Lesina make their final decisions. Click here for previous instalments. Well me homies, we have reached the end of our journey together. At times it was slow, like a food tech teacher dragging his brogues through the ...29 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Morrison government will provide a flat $1,500 a fortnight JobKeeper payment per employee for businesses to retain or rehire nearly six million workers, in a massive $130 billion six-month wage subsidy scheme to limit ...44 mins ago
David Downs - who doesn't even drink coffee - explains his plan to ensure some favorite cafés are still around when we emerge from lockdown Are you already sick of instant coffee, and missing your morning brew? Well, while you may have to suffer barrista-withdrawal symptoms for few more weeks, moves ...44 mins ago
Newsroom Pro’s Bernard Hickey and Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr zoom out to lunch to talk about the Reserve Bank’s latest move to help banks lend to corporates. The Reserve Bank announced on Monday it would lend to banks dealing with distressed corporate borrowers, opening a new weekly Open ...3 hours ago
Retailer Smiths City has reached an agreement with ASB Bank to delay a $1.5 million dollar repayment of a loan due tomorrow. It also said it is starting talks with potential investors to support the business. The company said Covid-19 has caused an unforeseen and unprecedented shock to the business, ...4 hours ago
Figures from around the world show that Covid-19, while vicious and contagious, does behave like other infections, rampaging quickly through a community, hospitalising a small percentage and causing death in an even smaller percentage. The World Health ...4 hours ago
Analysis: On the face of it, New Zealand's epidemic curve is going exponential. But are case numbers really rising for the same reasons as overseas? If you've been following any news about Covid-19 over the past three months, you've heard of The Curve. It looks, variously, like a sky-high pillar ...4 hours ago
MediaRoom column: A decision to block publication of community newspapers under the State of Emergency could be changed tomorrow. Tim Murphy reports. A decision to stop community newspapers from circulating in the country's suburbs, towns and settlements appears to have been an example of officials scratching their regulatory itch. On Friday, ...4 hours ago
A Waikato berry grower has been ordered to pay over $76,000 for employment law breaches. Olde Berry Farm has been fined $50,000 and forced to pay over $16,000 in unpaid wages and holiday pay. Its managing director, Andrew Molly, has been made personally responsible fo an additional $10,000 in penalties. ...4 hours ago
The Government has set up a dedicated service for reporting fears of price gouging, as Jacinda Ardern flags the expansion of "essential services" Kiwis concerned about potential price gouging at supermarkets during the coronavirus lockdown can now report the issue directly to government officials, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced. Ardern ...4 hours ago
The takeover offer for Abano Healthcare is off the table - a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said the $150-million takeover scheme agreement with Adams NZ Bidco Ltd. was terminated, with no fees payable by either party, as a result as the material adverse change to the company's ...4 hours ago
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says while she has found no evidence of price gouging, the public will be able to to report any they see. ...4 hours ago
On Sunday it was reported there is a high demand for New Zealand Police's online form to report lockdown breaches. This news should act as a red flag, signalling the potentially corrosive effects on public trust within Aotearoa that may occur in these troubled times. Concerns have already been expressed ...5 hours ago
Watch the replay of our fourth live Q&A session with Dr Ayesha Verrall, a senior lecturer at Otago University who specialises in infectious diseases. Ayesha Verrall is an infectious diseases physician and senior lecturer at Otago University's Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine (Wellington). Dr Verrall has been monitoring the spread and impact ...5 hours ago
Recognising how much of the burden women are carrying in this crisis - and how much they always carry - may take us closer to a society in which caring work is seen and valued for the essential work it is, writes Jess Berentson-Shaw COVID-19 has thrown a window wide ...5 hours ago
You’ve lost your job and your income has reduced due to the Covid-19 crisis, so how do you hold onto your home? Mortgage adviser Cameron Marcroft talks to Bonnie Sumner. Tell us about the changes you’ve seen since the lockdown began. We’ve had many enquiries coming through from both existing ...6 hours ago
As two staff members test positive for Covid-19, police are grappling with ways to keep their workforce safe while still enforcing the rules of the lockdown, Marc Daalder reports Two police staff have tested positive for Covid-19, Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Monday, while nearly 400 others are now in self-isolation ...7 hours ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. There were 76 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, up from the previous day's 63 new cases. Details of how many tests have been completed are now being ...7 hours ago
Supermarkets and some publishers are favoured by the government’s imposition of severe restrictions on what we can do and from whom we can buy during the Covid-19 lock-down. But one consumer watchdog is challenging the legality of an edict by Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi which favours supermarkets while Act leader ...7 hours ago
An online focus is coming back to bite newspaper companies, the Otago Daily Times’ editor says. David Williams reports. Despite advertising falling off a cliff, and its community papers dormant, the group editor of the country’s third-biggest publisher says there haven’t been layoffs and it’s unlikely any of its newspapers ...8 hours ago
Cabinet ministers will patch into a video conference this afternoon to discuss the Covid-19 lockdown, including complaints about high prices at supermarkets. ...8 hours ago
The kiwifruit industry is fighting for survival as it tries to pick and pack the season's crop while enforcing Covid-19 restrictions. The apple industry is also predicting problems with at least 10 percent of the crop not likely to be picked. The nationwide lockdown has come right in the middle ...10 hours ago
The Reserve Bank is ramping up support for businesses and banks by accepting corporate debt and other assets as security for loans to banks. The latest measure is designed to pump more money into the economy through the banking system. Assistant governor Christian Hawkesby said the aim is to encourage ...10 hours ago
Supermarkets are set to open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday as the Government places extra scrutiny on their behaviour and pricing. ...12 hours ago
The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report, she’s expecting the country to be restricted to visitors for some time after the lockdown period ends. ...12 hours ago
ASB sees 6 percent GDP fall in 2020; Chorus, King Salmon and Stride reassure their profits are still on track; Augusta withdraws fund on rent relief fears; US stocks slide again; US jobs data looms ...14 hours ago
Steve Braunias presents a photo essay of the one thing that New Zealanders are holding close to their hearts during the Lockdown: their bookshelves. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's bookcase at Premier House in Wellington. The photograph which she posted this weekend on her Instagram page reveals two novels by Elizabeth ...15 hours ago
Police start “initial” investigation into abuse at a notorious psychiatric hospital. David Williams reports The Government has missed a 90-day deadline for responding to a United Nations committee over torture at Lake Alice’s child and adolescent unit in the 1970s. However, in a move that might represent a glimmer of ...15 hours ago
Emma Espiner makes a slow and deliberate trip to the supermarket yesterday, where she finds we are approaching social distancing in a very New Zealand way It took me three attempts to go to the supermarket. Two days ago I saw the cheerless conga line snaking around the car park ...16 hours ago
Dr Neal Curtis looks at all the points of implicit trust within society, and how Covid-19 is revealing how important this trust is As I stood in the queue to get into our local supermarket it was encouraging to see how carefully people were engaging in social distancing to minimise ...16 hours ago
From growing up on the remote East Cape to becoming a Black Fern and a lawyer, Ruahei Demant wants to show young Māori that anything is possible. In the long run, Ruahei Demant wants to be a sports lawyer. But in the short term, the Black Ferns first-five is juggling her ...16 hours ago
Having toughed it out alone with Covid-19 and survived, one Kiwi man learned the hard way how self-isolation really can save lives, writes Jill Herron Choosing to self-isolate early with only Sophie the spaniel as company led to a lonesome, rough ride through Covid-19 for a Christchurch asthmatic – but ...16 hours ago
In an under reported story of how our leaders are cravenly selling us out;
Free trade it seems, only works one way.
China puts tariff on NZ dairying despite free trade pact.
The government says no retaliatory protections are envisioned for NZ industry.
In other news the government of economic traitors favours Chinese train builders over the local rail industry.
So in practice under “Free Trade”, the bigger more powerful country gets all the advantage while the leaders of the small country get to prostrate our workforce and our economy before them.
But hasn’t this always been the way?
Even under the Brits in the 19th century when British imperialism was in it’s ascendency the struggle between the “Free Traders” and those in favour of “Tarriff Reform” was played out. Where the strong country Britain set the terms of trade for their dominions, which were then administered by local saptraps. (Just as in modern New Zealand).
By sucking up to the superpower of the day the local mercantile ruling elite benefit at the expense of the rest of the local population. As a result of this craven foreign trade policy, the local elite, get to lead lives of privilege while the rest of us are turned into unemployed or low paid serfs in our own land and the local Maharajas, (Jonkey and co.), working in with their foreign partners live it up.
Yep and that’s why we’re worse off now after three decades of neo-liberal policies. The economists even know that the smaller economy in the relationship will always be worse off.
Well, they’re kept in power and are reasonably well rewarded for selling out their country but they don’t do as well as the foreign over-lords.
China is smarter at playing the Free Trade game in their own interests than we are. In fact we are shit at it because we naively believe that there is such a thing as even playing field, everyone gets a fair go “free trade”.
Please wakeup and grow up NZ.
If you mean that they’re playing at free trade without actually allowing it you’d be right.
I always thought when Helen Clark was extolling the virtues of the free trade agreement that the Chinese would shit on us somewhere down the line.
Hone attempts to persuade Maori Party supporters to vote for Kelvin Davis.
It’s a funny old world when Ken Mair comes across as the voice of reason, but his description of Hone’s meltdown last night is spot on:
‘Mr Mair said the change in line-up wasn’t a “cover-up” and Mr Harawira had gone too far.
“Once again, that’s the style of Hone,” he said. “I was taken back by his rather aggressive style, his swearing. I don’t think it’s appropriate in this type of forum; in particular in front of children and some of our kuia [senior women].”‘
That nicely echoes my comment on the ‘Turia’ post that Hone will lose because of his unparalleled ability to annoy mature voters. The young will support him, but as they’re not on the roll, that’s no help to him now. Maybe, by November, his supporters will get the message and enrol, which could make the vote then closer, but for now, he’s toast.
That bullshitting poacher turned gamekeeper Ken Mair, Vice-President of the Maori Party, needn’t nut off about Hone Harawira using the words “bullshit Maori Party tactics” re Solomon’s failure to turn up at the Tai Tokerau education hui last night.
The very same Ken Mair of Moutoua Gardens fame, the menacing, shrill hacksaw voiced dork who had the gathered at Waitangi a few years ago pissing themselves at his self-centred “freestyle” haka.
The idiot who had violent insurgent written all over him, who didn’t give a stuff how many kuia of whatever stripe, or kids, were present when he got off his chain as it suited him.
Hone says “bullshit” and Mair’s clutching his pearls like some startled Edwardian dowager.
There’s none like the converted……….for rank hypocrisy that is.
Away with you Ken Mair…….you egg. You’re not a fraction of the fulla Hone is !
I met Ken Mair on Pakaitore (Moutoa Gardens) during the last days of the occupation in ’95. Despite the tension, the personal attacks he was under, the pressure from his own supporters, he was very welcoming to me and my whanau and took time out to show us around and explain the dispute from his perspective. He was rational, calm and forgiving of my limited understanding of their ties to the river I grew up next to. He was clearly not at all the person maligned in the media or indeed, by you, North.
But perhaps you know Mair better than me or maybe his comment last night just show how far he has come and how far Hone has to go?
Well right back at ya Voice Of Reason………my personal experience of Hone Harawira tells me, using your own words Voice, that Hone Harawira “…..is clearly not at all the person maligned in the media, or indeed by…….” you Voice or by Ken Mair.
Remains that Mair is hardly one to engage such piety over the word “bullshit”, particularly given that Harawira has never come within cooey of Mair’s excesses.
A double standard is hardly the voice of reason Voice of Reason.
“……Mair’s clutching his pearls like some startled Edwardian dowager” … best visual of the year so far ! Thank you for the laughter in the grey drear of it all !
Ah, yeah……..”Mr Out-West Machine Politician Aching To Be An MP” Greg……..
Well North don’t you agree it is not the best of looks for Hone?
I hope Solomon is okay – he deserves praise and he is a good man IMO. The voters will vote as they want to vote and that’s the way it should be.
I back Hone 110% as noted here /turia-on-te-tai-tokerau/#comments
The guy’s 56 years old, and a grandfather FFS.
He really needs to grow up and act his age.
I really hope he loses this weekend.
Hey doofus I am 55 and am the proud father of a 5 week old, just because anyone is over 50 they are not dead. I applaud Tipene for standing up and probably doing something that is probably new to him. And all he gets is ” he’s a silly old man” yada yada yada. Hey Millsy come and say it to my face and I WILL show you where moses bought his beer. fucking tosser.
Jesus fucking christ Deadly, I was talking about Hone Hawawira, not Mr Tipene (who IMO come across as far more dignified than Mr Hawawira).
This is not the first time you have the wrong end of the stick.
It seems we are crossing swords more often than not on this blog.
Well maybe you should be a little more careful in some of the generalisations you are making ie he’s 56, he’s a grandfather And as PP can also attest that acting our age is one of the last things we want to do. So say he’s a racist shit head or a what ever and I will keep quiet call any other politician and depending on who they are and i may respond, and not nastily. What got my goat was the inference that at 56 everyone should sit back, and rock their grand children to sleep and act our age.
BTW how is a 56 year old supposed to act like ? what age should i act? you see the endless possibilities in a debate on that fact alone.
If I hurt your feelings I am sorry.
Feelings not hurt – I have had worse over the past 11 years of being online.
Point taken.
Still think Hone’s an idiot though.
56 year olds (or 16 year olds for that matter) should not go into a meeting mouthing off for a start. Anything else, I’m not really bothered.
Yes he is and getting more idiotic by the day.
Bloody hell! Im eighty and still chasing my lovely wife ,and sometimes catch her.
However it was Charlie Chaplin who squashed all the old wives tale about us old wrinklies. He was born just around the corner from where I was born so perhaps a bit has brushed off ? hopefully !
Good to see an old timer such as yourself getting to use the internet/world wide web.
Bet you never thought you would be using technology such as this when you were younger…
pink postman – Ooh this is good stuff. You can rely on The Standard for lively anecdotes and repartee with style (and pearls). But when it comes to DF it’s pearls before swine!
Reading that article and the party positions…what’s been happening with kohanga reo?
Bio fuels about to take off in the avaition industry..
That’s pretty encouraging. The production volumes they outlined, if achieved, will make a big difference to the viability of the industry come oil price shocks.
Climate of Denial
And the US does have rules and regulations that, supposedly, control lobbyists etc. I suppose the question now is, are we going to demand that our politicians put in place even stronger rules on transparency? Can’t really expect so from this government as the last time such transparency and regulation was tried we got a faux Democracy Under Attack meme from them that was supported by the MSM.
Goldman Sachs buys into MediaWorks
Yeah. You read that right. National and Goldman Sachs are just now completing their plans to steal the November New Zealand election.
I wonder who the lead IB in the sale of our state assets are going to be.
http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=goldman-takes-13-mediaworks-stake&ScoopSrc=scoopit_latest
That $43.3 million ‘loan’ to bail out MediaWorks seems to have made it a great buy
My giddy aunt….
Interesting little confrontation on NewstalkZB this morning (23.6.11)
NewstalkZB, Thursday 23 June 2011, 7:40 a.m.
Mike Hosking and Alasdair Thompson vs. Helen Kelly
Catherine Delahunty’s new Equal Pay Bill has drawn the ire of two of the National government’s biggest supporters: the Employers and Manufacturers Association and NewstalkZB. Time to get one of those lefty pinko commies onto the programme and deal to her, tag-team fashion.
Whoops! Not only was it was a bad idea, and (as we shall see) badly executed, it never had a chance. Alasdair Thompson up against Helen Kelly? That’s a mis-match made in Employer Hell…
Helen Kelly begins the discussion by pointing out that the statistics are irrefutable, and show women get lower pay across the board. This prompts Thompson to launch into a windy tirade about the “unreliability of statistics” and the “myth” that women get lower pay. Whenever Kelly tries to talk, he shouts her down, and talks relentlessly. Thompson is aided and abetted in this strategy by Hosking, whose contribution consists of thoughtfully saying “Mmmm, yeah” to show he agrees with everything Thompson says.
But Helen Kelly is not one to be intimidated and shut down by such behaviour. Last year she faced down the bully-boys and girls from Peter Jackson Inc., South Pacific Pictures, Warner Bros. and the National government. So a windy and incoherent haranguing from somebody like Alasdair Thompson was never going to de-rail her. She finally insists on being heard, and makes him stop…
KELLY: You can try to talk over me and stop me from speaking, but you won’t succeed. If women and men are equal as you say, why are aged care workers, who do incredibly difficult and responsible work, paid minimum wage?
THOMPSON: That’s got NOTHING to do with them being women! It’s just an all-woman job, that’s why!
HOSKING: Mmm. yeah. You can’t argue with that!
THOMPSON: Look, you have to realize something. Women are different from men.
HOSKING: Mmmm, yeah.
THOMPSON: They get paid less than men do because once a month they, uh, they have, uh, well, they have “sick problems”.
HOSKING: Mmmm, yeah.
THOMPSON: They get pregnant, and have babies. And then they have to stay home and look after sick children.
HOSKING: Mmmm, yeah.
THOMPSON: I don’t like to say this, because it looks like I’m a sexist.
KELLY: Of course. I’m glad you said it, Alasdair. I let you go on and on with that one.
Silence. Even the insensitive and brusque Alisdair Thompson realises he has just been horribly and publicly owned.
HOSKING: Alasdair Thompson and Helen Kelly, thank you very much!
——————————————————–
But that’s not the end of it. Although he has been quite incapable of formulating any response to Helen Kelly while she was on air, Hosking has one more way of getting at her—he can read out any number of hateful texts and e-mails, purportedly from listeners…
HOSKING: “It seems like a bill rooted in feminist ideology”, says this text. This one says: “HELEN KELLY, WHAT A MUPPET!” And there are many more like this! It’s ten to eight!
Interesting fact: NewstalkZB’s slogan is “Fair and Balanced”.
Plus @ Anne 11.34am below:
I’ve noticed this tactic from Nats used alot by their MPs in media debates – they talk over their opponents, interrupt with any old argument they can throw out – which doesn’t matter to them because they don’t allow time for the opposition to respond to point out their factual errors and/or ideological slant.
Nikki Kaye has used it against Jacinda Ardern in the debates between them on Citizen A – at least, she used it in the first debate, but Jacinda (and Bomber) were wise to it. In the second debate, Jacinda was more proactive about getting her points across, including telling Kaye calmly but assertively not to interrupt when Kaye did so. Kaye looked a little put out and lost when she wasn’t able to bulldoze through with her lines.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1106/S00046/citizen-a-nikki-kaye-jacinda-ardern-debate-2.htm
Although, this didn’t stop Kaye by claiming, in her final word, that National had a better record and more committment to public transport in Auckland than Labour.
FFS, as a westie, I noticed the improvement under the Labour-led government in rail transport & station upgrades from the western areas into the city. And National is STILL more committed to their RONS than public transport. Nats think they can swear blue is red and no-one will notice if they talk louder & don’t let the opposition get a word in.
And as for Kaye repeatedly claiming that Nats were not ideologically-driven…..???!!
they talk over their opponents, interrupt with any old argument they can throw out – which doesn’t matter to them because they don’t allow time for the opposition to respond to point out their factual errors and/or ideological slant
The problem stems from the incompetence or bias of the host (in this case, Mike Hosking). A decent and impartial host would have kept the conversation on track. Hosking made no attempt at all to be fair or impartial; in fact, he slavishly endorsed everything Thompson said.
Nikki Kaye used it in the first debate, but Jacinda (and Bomber) were wise to it
I’m impressed by Jacinda Ardern. She’s tough, and regularly shows up Simon Bridges as shallow, vague and poorly prepared. On National Radio last year, Bomber politely but persistently challenged some false statements by Murray McCully’s vile ex-squeeze Michele Boag, reducing her to spluttering incoherence. Obviously Boag doesn’t come across many people brave enough to take her on.
This is blatant chauvinism and prejudice openly showing their real faces.
Can someone castrate this Thompson guy please ?
“Women earn less due to periods – EMA boss”
http://www.3news.co.nz/Women-earn-less-due-to-periods—EMA-boss/tabid/423/articleID/216183/Default.aspx
What are the grounds for filing a BSA complaint against Mike ‘Mmmm yeah’ Hosking who effectively encouraged the dissemination of such bad view and attitude by failing to poke and probe Thompson ?
You can file any BSA complaint you want, whether there are grounds or not. The BSA then review it and judge it.
I filed one against The Edge for promoting pot at 8:20am when I was driving to work. The authority said it was very close, but on balance they decided to reject the complaint.
I think if I had pointed out that they were exerting significant amounts of peer-pressure on a fellow radio worker to eat a cannabis muffin and that this was a bad example for children, that they probably would have upheld the complaint. Unfortunately I didn’t consider that angle until after I’d sent the form off.
Well, I’ve been wondering if I have to pray in the right words to the BSA.
http://www.bsa.govt.nz/general-complaint/
Complaint form
Cheers. I’m thinking that I would be better off posting my used tampon to Thompson, if only I were a menstruating woman.
Wow! And Thompson is now saying that
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/5182270/Womens-sick-day-comments-outrage
Wow! So Thompson doesn’t support a youth wage then?
The thing for Thompson to do … the thing for Thompson – who is a man who doesn’t have “sick problems”, doesn’t get pregnant and have babies, doesn’t have to stay at home and look after the sick – is to apologise for the statements he had made and resign.
Has Alasdair got the balls that he finds so superior for having as a man?
And now Alasdair Thompson provides an excellent demonstration in how not to really apologise:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/5182270/Womens-sick-day-comments-outrage
I didn’t breed and am well menopausal. Where is my pay rise then Mr Thompson??
This guy Thompson is a typical Right-Wing ignorant loud-mouth.For years now he has been calling for Youth rates , Lowering the mininum wage and attacking unions. Perhaps now is the time for workers to get even. Lets all demand his resignation and bar him from any simular position. Jim N you mention Michelle Boag well there’s the answer put him on a island with her and a diet of viagra . bloody hell just imagine being embraced by her ? Mind you imagine some poor woman being embraced by Thomson.
I loved Thompson at the Labour Conference last year saying that we should follow the example of Ireland and axe our company tax rates because Ireland had done so well from it, if you ignore the last few years.
He actually said that shit the dumb bastard.
In that scenario and if Boag is well over the reproductive age, the gene pool for the future is safe.
However, that means the gene pool would be more valuable and so please don’t tell John Key or he will sell that.
I would like to ask Thompson what research he has carried out regarding menstruation and productivity?
51 is the average age of menopause. I suppose he has a different comment for women over 50, slow due to declining reflex as a result of the ageing process.
Does anyone know if Thompson smokes, because smokers can be targeted as not being as productive as non smokers? Obese people have been targeted as well.
Thompson is a fucking douchebag who thinks he’s in 1911, not 2011.
The crap coming out of his mouth doesnt suprise me in the slightest. He (as well as his boyfriends Lowe and O’Reilly) think that all workers are somehow expendable, to be thrown away on a whim.
If Helen Kelly was even remotely her father’s daughter, she would have a picket line outside the studio (and his work) lickety split.
Helen Kelly certainly won that round. Women, all around New Zealand in Australia and globally will be sent this piece of information from any number of women who are appalled at the idiots Thompson and Hosking’ behaviour and who will now realise that while they were putting aside the feminist mantra thinking most men actually liked, respected and wanted them to have equal pay/pay equity, they now know that is, was and will always be a lie.
Women, if they don’t want to deserve the unproductive tag that these men have given them, will ensure that they think very carefully come election time knowing now as they do that Thompson and Hosking, not to mention John Campbell and Paul Holmes are on the side of John Key and Steven Joyce the two men of Hollow Men fame and with neo-conservative contacts globally and with their own agenda for taking away the few rights that women own at present, by reducing women’s safety through closing down refuges, reducing their children’s income which is what the benefit is directed at thereby forcing them to stay with violent partners and thereby having no independent voice to state their needs and to demand real equality.
By directly forcing women into unemployment, this government has a cheap, desperate, voiceless workforce at the mercy of conservative cruelties and and cruel treatment at home if they are unfortunate enough to be forced to stay in an unwanted relationship like that.
Once again we have a backlash against women; once again women are called upon to stand up and fight back.
Morrissey – NewstalkZB – fair and balanced? Interviewer has blonde hair and is a plonker who specialises in planking? Were you listening to Mary Wilson interviewing Thompson from the employers group? He is too grand to have his spiel interrupted to actually answer her question. And is affronted when she persists.
He repeated his comments and says he knows from his own, and others experiences, of women who have monthly time off. And of course they have a propensity to have children (my words). Mary wanted to know how many, what percentage, need extra time off monthly. He is a leader in the employers group and he doesn’t bloody well know. He has no personal, particular to NZ, or general statistics. I think such remarks are rich coming from people in good comfortable situations. They don’t want to recognise that having babies is part of life, creates future customers if that’s how they judge everything, and finally that once they, now enjoying the good things in life, were once babies themselves. And then women are generally being paid less than men, which could be argued was reasonable because of extra time off.
Morrissey – NewstalkZB – fair and balanced?
Another of their slogans is “Tune Your Mind”.
And that is not a joke.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/women-s-monthly-problems-reduce-productivity-ema-boss-4258057
/facepalm
It’s still discrimination when you use a person’s abilities to rule them out for getting paid the same for the same freaking work, even more so when there’s a majority of women who don’t have serious period problems. Plus, expecting females to always “take care of the kids” is likewise sexist, as it paints it as being a solely female role, instead of something guys can do just as well (if they actually get over teh stupid man myths and do it that is).
And the money quote:
Sheesh, just come out and admit it, instead of the usual pathetic “I’m not x, but…” that is used to oft in an attempt to excuses one inability to overcome ones racist/homophobic/sexists/feminazi*/transphopic biases.
But hey, it’s an old white dudely dude who heads up a club of mostly dudes, so how could he possibly be wrong?…
/sigh
________________________________________
*i.e. the feminists who treat trans, gays, bi’s and heterosexuals as crap, often with a side of treating sex workers as human scum. see “womyn born as womyn” for the keystone example along with the backing ideas. Doesn’t refer to the porn wars due to the fact that monolithic descriptions are failtastic due to the myriad real issues involved.
I’ve read that men think about sex every minute or so, and more often than women. I think their pay should be docked because they are just not keeping their minds on the job.
If Alasdair Thompson puts Michelle Boag on an aged care job, on the minimum wage, what are the chances that Boag will have the part of anatomy which Thompson values so much being docked?
LOL Carol
Hehehehe…
+ 1n hours pay docked for every porno-mail they send.
The use of the feminazi term in your post confuses issues. Not only is it invoking Godwin’s Law in respect of feminism failures and trans culture, but it’s a term used by the racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobics (that you refer to in the same sentence) as a way of undermining the good stuff that feminism does.
And you’re ignoring the major problems within feminism that lead me to re-appropriating that term for a slightly better use, then there’s the white, non-disabled, cis face of some of the more mainstream fractions of feminism, not that they’re as problematic as the feminazis, more varying shades of frustration. And while teh term is loaded, I’d rather re-purpose it to a much better end than let the anti-feminist fucktards lord over it
Mind you, I do have troll blood coursing through my veins, so yeah.
I’m not ignoring those problems (I think they need to be critiqued and sorted, although my strategies would be boldly different than yours), I just think appropriating the term in the way that you do creates confusion not clarity.
I do take your point about troll blood though.
Campaign to keep Public Libraries free:
http://kapitiindependentnews.net.nz/home/keep-libraries-free/
The campaign was launched by LIANZA — the New Zealand libraries’ national association — last month. It aims to raise the profile of the issue in the General Election campaign this year.
I definitely support this, especially because:
“Charges would be a personal barrier for many and would restrict libraries supporting all members of the public to be well informed.
“A well-informed, educated population brings economic benefits to the whole country, so it’s regressive to restrict libraries’ ability to support such a positive social outcome.
Yep. Same sort of thing happens most Wed. mornings with Steven Joyce and Annette King. King rarely gets a chance to finish what she’s saying before Joyce shouts over the top of her. More often than not she’s replying to a direct question from Hosking but does he intervene and shut Joyce up? No – hardly ever anyway. Just lets him get away with it.
It’s bully boy tactics and I believe part of the reason these Ministers (and their mates) get away with it is because todays crop of media types are scared of them… scared if they stray too far out of line they will lose their positions and prospects. I’m starting to pick up some real parallels with the Muldoon regime when journalists and reporters were overtly terrified of him. This time around though it’s not just one person, but a collective group of them.
oops: meant to be reply to Morrissey
Joyce is a very smooth and competent operator, and King handles herself well in those exchanges, I think. But Hosking really is a disgrace; he makes no attempt to be even-handed or even to ask probing questions.
The worst bullying, though, happens on Drivetime with Larry Williams. Compared to Williams, Hosking is indeed “fair and balanced”.
No, not really! Hosking’s terrible. There are some intelligent and hard-working presenters on NewstalkZB, but they are few and far between, and they do not have the prime spots. That’s no accident, it’s company policy. Former CEO Bill Francis said that he preferred extreme right wing hosts like Leighton Smith and Paul Holmes because they were “more entertaining” and “easier to understand”. Naturally, he gave no evidence to back up these statements.
The only way the RWNJs can win the debate is to try and drown out everybody else. If they left it to actual debate on merits and facts they know they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on as nothing they say is related to truth.
170,000 jobs = Aspirational or Bullshit? You’re spoilt for choice.
And, coming up next, even the military is losing jobs:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5182350/Hundreds-of-military-staff-face-redundancy
You would have thought that Christchurch needs help ?
Can this government see dots to join ? Any dots at all ? Hello HELLo ?
I like the way the Standard Icon looks in the address bar. To me, it looks like a hamburger. This makes me happy.
lol it does!
What do you reckon the Kiwiblog one looks like?
lol ahahaha – or is it just my warped mind?
Umm. A pile of shit?
So the Speaker has just ruled that Joyce is justified in using the term xenophobic in response to Labour’s questions about the rail engineers, asset sales, and not supporting Kiwi workers and businesses over foreign ones because, according to labour, foreign interests will shift profits overseas. The justification given by the speaker was that Labour used an equally emotive term in the question…. the term being privatisation.
51 minute company delay in raising Pike River alarm, Mine Rescue not allowed access
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10733977
Funny how this gets revealed on the same day as the Christchurch housing buyout package
To my fellow lefties out there I need a bit of infrormation regarding some statistics .What was the unemployment figures under the last labour government as against the Nats. Plus what was the sickness benifit figures.
No nutty replies from the Right please.
Not sure exactly what you’re after, so here are some good places to start looking.
Statistics NZ table builder quarterly unemployment figures from1990
Statistics NZ table builder Annual Household income from 1998 (select “govt transfers”)
Ministry of Social Development benefit stats page (the current one is only from 2000, but the sickness benefit sheet on the 2004 page has 10 year trends going to 1994.).
You might also want to match unemployment rate or benefit levels with quarterly gdp – it’s always looked like an interesting project to me, but I haven’t had the time. Doesn’t quite intersect with my current field 🙂
No Confidence
Steven Joyce was asked some hard questions today by Labour Minister of Communications and Information Technology David Cunliffe concerning Nationals Privatisation plans for New Zealand’s SOEs. Once again the speaker of the house Lockwood Smith came to National’s rescue. Lockwood argued that Joyce didn’t have to answer a question because the Minister disagreed with the word “Privatisation.” What utter Bullshit!
Lockwood equated privatisation with Joyce’s use of xenophobia, and said they were both emotive terms. But Joyce’s claim that opposing asset sales on sovereignty issues is xenophobic doesn’t wash… nevertheless, it’s the line NAct is peddling.
Bullshit right wing constraining of the English language.
The heart of the Left is in emotive rallying cries, and it makes sense that National would want the language of cold hard rational but false neoliberalism to rule instead.
Since when is the word Privatisation out of bounds… because National says so? Calling somebody xenophobic is entirely different, and Anette King rightly stood up for herself. If the Government can’t even get these simple facts right, it’s no wonder New Zealand is in such a mess.
Carol – Perhaps Lockwood should provide a list of words inappropriate because they have emotional contexts.
I can think of Beemer, babies, going forward, at the end of the day, sheepskin, exchange rate, oh lots just off the top of my head. I think there are 72,000 head words or such in my dictionary. Perhaps he should work through it alphabetically and produce a banned list of yucky words.
Exactly, jackal & prism. Saying privatisation is an (negatively) emotive word is totally (right wing) ideological on the part of the Speaker.
I’d also add, kicking the tyres, ambishoush for New Zild, mum and dad investors, more 100% pure than…….
FIFY
Carol Just another one. I can’t stand hearing people who boost themselves by saying they are ‘passionate’ about something. Sounds totally pseudo.
Asset Sales to foreignors under the radar?
Two news items, one from Commerce Commission and one showing the real owner’s details. Looks suspiciously like a sale to a foreign company of New Zealand assets owned by the people of Selwyn District and Christchurch City, 100% being sold off to an American company.
The Commerce Commission press release doesn’t mention it is a foreign company, knowing that Matariki sounds like a New Zealand business enterprise and doesn’t acknowledge that probably the Overseas Investment watchdog should be looking into it, unless the Commerce Commission can keep it quiet. Let’s not keep it quiet. Is this the work of CERA, selling off assets already, assets which could provide productive work for generations of Kiwis AND the dividends. Go figure.
‘Scoop >> Business Thursday, 23 June 2011, 9:48 am
1 – Press Release: Commerce Commission
Matariki Forests applies for clearance to acquire the Selwyn Plantation Board’s forestry assets
The Commerce Commission has received an application from Matariki Forests seeking clearance to acquire the forestry assets of the Selwyn Plantation Board.
Matariki Forests is New Zealand’s third largest forestry company and owns exotic forests throughout New Zealand. It is the largest forest owner in Canterbury.
The Selwyn Plantation Board owns exotic forests in Canterbury. It is owned by the Selwyn District Council (60 per cent) and Christchurch City Council (40 per cent).
The clearance application relates to both parties’ involvement in the supply of saw and pulp logs in the Canterbury region. In considering the application, the Commission’s role is to determine whether the acquisition has the effect of substantially lessening competition in a market.
A public version of the application will be available shortly on the Commission’s website:
http://www.comcom.govt.nz/clearances-register
2 – Matariki Forests, global forester Rayonier’s New Zealand arm, is seeking Commerce Commission permission to buy a swathe of Canterbury forest and farmland owned by the Christchurch City and Selwyn District councils.
Matariki, the country’s third-largest forest owner, lodged the application to buy the assets of the Selwyn Plantation Board, a council-controlled organisation, owned 61 per cent by Selwyn Investment Holdings and 39.3 per cent by Christchurch City Holdings.
Matariki is the New Zealand arm of Rayonier, a global forester based in Florida.
It is unclear whether Overseas Investment Office permission will be required, assuming the Commerce Commission rules the acquisition is not anti-competitive.
• Rayonier seeks clearance to buy Canterbury forests’
Good post Jum. I wonder if this sort of deal would get so far if Jim Anderton had been Mayor?
Prism,
Mmm. I hope lots of people are remembering the fact that Anderton was streets ahead of Parker before the first earthquake; now they know that Parker and his followers are simply following NAct’s instructions, just as they will with Auckland’s freed up asset portfolio in 2012 if they get back in.
Labour needs to return these assets back to a 75% required citizen agreement before selling.
*big loud sigh*
Let’s show this one again. New Zealand assets being stolen all over the place. And now the election.
‘Colonial Viper 5
23 June 2011 at 10:14 am
Goldman Sachs buys into MediaWorks
Yeah. You read that right. National and Goldman Sachs are just now completing their plans to steal the November New Zealand election.
I wonder who the lead IB in the sale of our state assets are going to be.
http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=goldman-takes-13-mediaworks-stake&ScoopSrc=scoopit_latest
Reply
I see that Papandreou has succeeded in pushing austerity measures through the greek parliament. This looks bad for the greeks, though I’m not really qualified to judge whether default would have been worse. Bryan Gould seems think it would have been preferable.
“If I have to choose between the posturing of politicians and the greed of bankers on the one hand, and the decent lives of ordinary people on the other, there is no choice. The Greeks must default, abandon the euro and make a fresh start.”
http://www.bryangould.net/id162.html
Papandreaou is the inside man for the bankster occupiers of Greece.
I’m glad Gould has come to this conclusion. Greece is being asked to sell off all its real hard assets for pennies on the pound to gain less than 6 months worth of additional debt to pay its current debt.
The financial terrorists are in a race to see who can pick up the most valuable Greek assets at the cheapest price now, because a Greek default is virtually unavoidable.
Would be bad for the EU and the Euro(€) (both would probably collapse (Actually, this reminds me of what happened to the Gold Standard in the late 19th century)) but good for the Greeks. Guess why it’s being rammed down the Greeks throat.
When taking issue with Mr Thompson, employer spokesperson, why didn’t Hekia Parata, Minister of Women’s Affairs, put forward the stats that her department should have had to hand if she had bothered to ask them and do her job advocating and advancing women’s lives.
Asshole of the Week Award – Alasdair Thompson
Alasdair Thompson is clearly a fully fledged asshole! He typifies the chauvinistic old man, which is unfortunately a prevalent disease in this country. It’s mainly caught by older males who believe they’re somehow superior to woman, who they believe need to be subservient to the status quo.
I would love to post him my used tampon, if only I were menstruating.
You could always email him a picture: alasdair.thompson@ema.co.nz
I notice they have one “token” woman on the EMA board. One out of seven… I rest my case.
http://www.ema.co.nz/our_people.asp
The board should be revamped. Offer a seat to Helen Clark and a former Minister in charge of employment law.
They needed one to get the coffee.
Colonial Viper – Not if it was Dame Margaret Bazley. She would take her seat as one of the boys.
Jim Nald
If we could just get some more women scientists, you could get your wish…
Or I could get some from the supermarket, squirt some tom tom sauce,
put them in the mail to him and send him the tompons