On October 20, however, the NZ First leader, Winston Peters, from the stage of the Beehive Theatrette, told New Zealand that: “Far too many New Zealanders have come to view today’s capitalism, not as their friend, but as their foe. And they are not all wrong. That is why we believe that capitalism must regain its responsible – its human face. That perception has influenced our negotiations.”
In that moment, it was clear that the revolt against neoliberal economic orthodoxy and the lies of its “experts” had finally reached New Zealand’s shores.
…
Just how much “real change” Jacinda Ardern’s government is willing to countenance will be revealed in the people she chooses to advise her.
the establishments tamed media persona offering advice again. I see that bloke as just another pagani/Williamson/Edwards.
So you’ll be hearing a lot from him whilst the rest get their new themes and let the medication kick in that limits the frothing at the mouth rapid right wing dogma.
The leaders cite management greed, corporate tax dodging and “short termism”, as problems. Their claims, though, seem to be made more out of fear that the people will seek revenge on a system they see as being unfair. they don’t seem concerned about the negative impacts on the lives of too many people, only that the capitalist system will be rejected outright if it is not reformed.
So, there is now a period when ideas for a new direction may get traction.
But I guess we need to beware of the ruling elites just allowing enough change to thwart an outright revolution, rather than really pushing for the changes that the many, and society as a whole, really need.
In my opinion capitalism cannot be ‘reformed’ as it is fundamentally flawed. But undoubtedly people will try to put a “human face” on it and she’ll be right. Yeah, nah!
Would you care to put together your thoughts on what an alternative to capitalism would look like? Because, as flawed as it is, fundamentally capitalism still looks better to most people than alternatives we’ve tried.
Even the most socialist of scandinavian social democracies are still fundamentally capitalist, they’ve just got different settings around how much and what areas of society the state is involved in and how to pay for it.
How so? Their economies all rely on private ownership of land and capital for the purpose of generating profits for their private owners. That’s capitalism. That their state sectors are larger than ours and welfare systems more generous doesn’t change the fact that the fundamental organising principle is capitalism.
All housing owned by the state and allocated on an as need basis with lifetime lease.
Businesses to be self-owned and run by the people who work there.
A UBI of course.
And the state being the only creator of money in the country.
Dropping of all FTA and removal of the country from the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. Replace them all with standards that other countries need to meet before we trade with them.
What percent of the voting population do you reckon would go for that? Versus what percent would fight it with everything they’ve got?
TBH, the idea of a state jobsworth allocating where I live, rather than letting me choose how much of my resources I’m willing to put into where I live and making my best choice within that constraint, is something I’d fight very hard against.
You choose the area and even the house if it’s available. If multiple people are asking for that house then the one with the most need for it gets it. If someone has a new job in the area then they’ll get it over someone who just wants to move to the area.
If there’s a high demand for that area then housing NZ will build more houses in that area to cater to the demand. And the demand will actually be known because they’ll have the applications.
Draco, if you can’t see how that proposal amounts to state jobsworths exercising unwanted control over something that is a major part of people’s lives, then I really can’t help you.
You choose to live somewhere. You look to see if a house is for sale or for rent. If there is you then offer a sum of money. If it’s enough you get the place if not you’re out of luck.
If there isn’t a place available you either build (if a place to build is available) or you’re simply out of luck.
Same would apply if housing was state owned except that there would be no money involved.
But I guess we need to beware of the ruling elites just allowing enough change to thwart an outright revolution, rather than really pushing for the changes that the many, and society as a whole, really need.
That’s what they’ve been doing since the great Depression and it still hasn’t worked. Managed to keep general revolution at bay though.
We need the politicians and the economists to realise that capitalism simply doesn’t and never will do. Then we’ll have the space open for other ideas but that is something that the business community certainly don’t want because then they wouldn’t be able to get rich.
I totally agree wth you, as housing is one of “a basic ‘essential’ neccesity of life & need” (a human right)
Most people dont understand now what the basic needs are and the role of having government.
Government is there to provide “the basic essential nessecities of life” such as power, water, shelter, education, health services, transport, and housing.
Jobs are the premise of bussiness activities, and government supply public servant jobs for their administration.
Bussiness was never set up to garantee all the basic essential nessecities of life.
Bussiness was never set up to garantee all the basic essential nessecities of life.
But that’s what they were supposed to do under the neo-liberal paradigm. That’s what National and ACT mean when they say small government. They’ve failed to do as promised just like they failed in the 19th century and throughout history.
Trotter seem to think New Zealand voted for a revolution. They didn’t. The vote is way too finely balanced for such a claim.
They voted for change, specific things to be fixed such as clean water, housing etc.
If Jacinda Arden wants to be a one term Prime Minister she will follow Chris Trotter’s advice. But she is way smarter than to follow the advice of an ex New Labour activist. I can just imagine what her cabinet colleagues and indeed Helen Clark would think of Trotter’s advice.
That is why talk of failures of capitalism made on “The Nation” were not repeated on “Q & A”. I would say she quickly realised that such talk has way too much political risk. Instead the language shifted to “market failure”, a well understood term in political and social markets.
Your first two paragraphs are correct, but your third one doesn’t follow.
Making dramatic changes toward social democracy will bring huge benefits to New Zealanders, and that would likely shift the Overton window significantly to the left.
I tuned off from watching TV one when this morning during the morning news at 6.45 the ex prime minister Bill English came on TV one to rant about his party’s succcess over the last nine years so where is the new PM then?????
So my embargo of TV one will continue until TV one broadcasts a more balanced and fair coverage of the new Government about to be signed in as our new government today.
Wake up TV One as we are now living with a new government that we want to see sack all you National cling-ons and install a more balanced fair broadcasting team than we have had for the last nine years.
Pathetic display of naked bias against the newly elected government is clearly continuing on our publically owned TV one and this must now be corrected.
The national broadcaster has been infected with right wing lobbyists, a deliberate attempt at undermining the neutral nature we expect as it’s paid for through taxes, Key turned it into a National Party propaganda machine, using public funds and brainwashing the more gullible viewers, and there’s quite a few of them.
We can’t have a minority view point be broadcasted without balancing it with the majorities viewpoint.
I had to laugh this morning as I listened to RNZ news – NZQA can’t figure out why many of the so-called educational institutes which have been deregistered or sanctioned are owned or part owned by Chinese or Indians.
I can’t speak for India, but as one who has lived in China for a few years, the answer is so obvious – corruption and bribery!
In China, you pays your money, you get the results you want!
And the bad ones are well known and reported. Selling Degres and feeding cheap labour into businesses who will pay for 2 yearsso the new graduate can qualify for PR.
They’ve been well know and reported on for quite some time – repeatedly, whether officially or through back channels.
NZQA is finally getting on to it, but their under-resourcing and failures have come too late for many people who’ve been utterly fleeced.
If I can dig into the backgrounds of some of the PTE operators, Labour Supply agencies and contractors using google, foreign media and the companies register, then it’s bloody obvious that NZQA, INZ and the Labour Inspectorate who can call on the resources of Police and other agencies should have been able to do better.
I suspect NZQA’s statement is more about keeping a lid on things until they get a few more wins/prosecutions and have more ‘conversations’ with INZ.
I rember when I was a young my uncle was killing a opossum and when he swung the hammer I was standing behind him and fuck I was spitting out bits of my teeth man that was sore . I was 12 and I did not go to school for 2 weeks I was eating weetbix for 3 weeks .It was my rugby coach that asked what happen to my teeth I told him the story
And it was he that told me to go to the school dentist to get my teeth fixed . I was really
great full as no more pain and I lost a bit of weight I could got to school when I wanted or just stay home and ride horse’s I use to run right over the top of most other players of Rugby/ scrag .
Many thanks to Ros Taylor and Thomas Maxwell Latham our brown men playing a great game for NZ cricket and wining in Inda .This feat should have got major coverage in all our media platforms !!!!!!!!! . The big picture is if we nurture and train all our youth
and provied them more disposable income more of our brown children will climb to the great heights of sports stardom We just need a fair and just society.P.S Hope I got that right. Ka pai
WAR IS FOR IDIOTS Yes these 2 men did not win that game on there own as it takes good Management and a excellent team Wairua to get in to that top spear of our World Sports .
Now all you people that are new to our shores I welcome you and advise you that the Prime Minster Elect will not kick you in the private parts so just relax and keep positive as she will be a fear and just Leader you should beable to see this for your selves .
Our Dollar well don’t treat because a lower dollar is good for us all in some way It won’t crash OUR Dollar is one of the most traded currency in the World so that tell a story in its self our dollar always trades lower when Labour rules its good we will slow down our consumption nation and this is the direction we have to take to save Mother Earth for our grandchildren P.S we will pay our dept faster to.
9 % compulsory Kiwi Saver this will transfer our dept back to our shores .
Everyone has to vote at the next election this will help stop the social media’s influence on our elections . Ka pai
“The Chinese bidder for Landcorp’s Jericho Station in Southland has applied to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) for permission to buy the property, almost five months after his offer was accepted.
Controversy surrounds the sale because a well known Southland farmer Ed Pinckney has also been in contention for the sheep and beef farm, but his offer was refused even though it was only about $200,000 less.”
If there is an alternative NZ purchaser, then the Chinese buyer will need to show the benefits he can offer that the NZ purchaser cannot (i.e. the counter-factual). Fingers crossed he can’t meet the test
First real test for Labour now, to walk the walk.
Although they never said anything about restricting farmland.
The buyer appears to have left it slightly too late. OIO talks about making an application within a timely manner.
One suspects five months after making an offer is not timely. There’s no information as to whether the offeror flagged the prospective purchase with OIO.
If I were the OIO, I’d decline this sale on the basis that the next offer down was only 200k less, and therefore more likely to create opportunities for NZ.
Winston points out that the delay has resulted in an opportunity cost already, in the form of $26 000 of interest per month that would have accrued from an immediate sale to the NZ buyer, meaning the $200 000 difference between the offers would be negated by now.
Nationality isn’t entirely irrelevant. In the area around where I have a part interest in a property, there are a number of properties purchased by Chinese (presumably for landbanking) that have since been left unused and neglected to the point where they become a pest reservoir nuisance to the neighbours. When considering two competing offers, that was certainly a factor in us accepting the lower offer from a local with a track record of being a caring steward of the land, rather than a significantly higher offer from foreign investors.
National’s Stuart Smith (described by Winston Peters during the election as a back-stabbing neo-liberal who has done nothing since he got there),MP for Kaikoura, has spoken about ‘delivering for New Zealanders” who are his constituents.
He said that in three years he had done more than his predecessor (Colin King, National MP for nine years) who he supplanted.
If this is a taste of National Party loyalty, I can understand why Bill English won’t talk about his prospects for staying on as National’s leader.
Stuart Smith’s present position that he will stay on in a “strong opposition” and face a possible nine years languishing there indicates that they certainly intend to break that MMP nine year cycle.
We can look forward to changes in their line-up with the sloughing off mercilessly of their older leadership, and the promotion of aggressive and ruthless younger MPs who seek Ministerial office in their time.
Agreed. His two ideas around supporting increased coastal shipping and the dry dock in Picton are not evidence of much independent effort. His espousal of Friendly Society matters is not an electorate matter. There is a huge amount of rebuilding of social services required in Marlborough. His major effort in this area was to not even read for months a credible critique of these services delivered to him by his constituents.
The only solace from the Stuart Smith grandiose claims is that it may mean that his Kaikoura supporters are fed up with his total inaction on behalf of his constituents.
For instance, many would be surprised to learn of his action to get a new site for the colleges. Really?Labour Janette Walker has done far more for people and she is not even an MP.
Just seen Boag on the AM show, (well that’s not quite right turned her off after watching for about 30 seconds) what a vile twisted evil person who definitely got a personal vendetta against Peters,
Why do they keep getting these has-beens out of the musty old National party morgue, wind them up and let them go full bore without anybody there to give a counter argument? We have had NOTHING but right-wing commentators on this morning including English. No spokesperson from the new government.
It is also about time we had some younger people on the programme, the same age group as Ardern, after all, it is their world now to fix up.
TVNZ 1 is just as bad, man aren’t they all pissed off over Peters going with Labour
I call her Morticia and instead of the morgue I call her place of abode the crypt. That woman has to be the scariest human on the planet, a wake up nightmare apparition. She seriously needs to be removed from the airwaves and put out to hanging out with the bats at night.
Michelle Boag in fact is so horrible that she might repel as many people as she thinks she is influencing! And surely some people would have picked up and been put off by Mike Hosking’s petulant, I am so important (more important in fact than the new PM elect and how dare she keep me waiting) rant on Thursday night.
I think relentless negativity in the form Michele Boag portrays is going to turn people off left right and centre in the face of the positive collaborative attitude to be shown by Ardern and Shaw. So while she is hideous to endure in the short term, she may just do the new Govt a favour if she keeps it up. I agree, though, a horrible horrible woman.
Michelle Boag is known to hold a vendetta and then exact punative utu for the smallest of perceived slights. This is why she continues to gets access to media. However, IMO once a crack appears, it is highly likely that her power base will disintegrate rapidly .
Not sure about that. MB’s got so many cracks showing whilst buildings have been demolished for less as earthquake risks. Yet she continues to survive and grace us all with her spectacular wisdom at least once a week.
There is a brilliant poster going the rounds but I cannot get it to copy and paste it here. Shows the detail of the Blue result in 2014 election then the Red poster result for 2017. Damns the negative complainers. Some one must have it and cleverly post it here. It is very good.
To be fair, you’re only the second. So no matter what you’ll set a record. To make it a challenge you should nominate whether you’re aiming for under or over.
To be fair, it was more like the guy about to be released from jail who is immediately arrested on other warrants the cops just found out about.
A comment that might not have gotten many people banned drew enough moderator attention to bring to light a history of activity from that IP address. 🙂
“about to be released”? He got released. Then it’s like the cops ran his plates for a minor traffic infringement on his way home from jail, saw the past behaviour, and threw him back inside. Still brings a smile, tho.
More like he got released and ran a red light, which got the cops’ attention who then looked up the outstanding warrants. Had he not run a red light, nothing would have happened.
Welcome back Puckish. Please don’t get offended as I say this in jest “I have missed your one-eyed rightwing bullshit’ You’re not really like that, Welcome back looking forward to your opinions.
We hope you will help us fix this broken country now, since the national wrecking ball has done it’s worst to wreck our environment.
See this from our letter sent this morning to Professor James Renwick,
Sad enditement from a careless National Party policy as we see for real now.
—————————————————————————————————————-
24th October 2017.
James Renwick,
Professor School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences.
BSc (Hons), Mathematics, Canterbury, (1977); MSc, Statistics,
Victoria University of Wellington.
Of special interest to our committee is the large increase of freight truck use we are monitoring in HB/Gisborne regions NZ average of 6% annually is now at 12% in Gisborne/HB for freight movements of 36% of NZ exports of our products from both east coast provinces.
I commend your report and will advance this document as signalling a return of freight back to rail in our regions as Hon’ Winston Peters has for several years attended meetings in both East coast provinces has pledged in Government to bring back our mothballed rail system into service again which will have an extremely useful method of helping to reduce our climate change emissions again.
I would like to converse with you in the weeks ahead, and offer our study reports to you as we have conducted them often in collusion with other agencies and may be very useful for your continuing studies also.
Warmest regards,
—————————————————————————————————————- http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970 https://vimeo.com/238677734
A new report http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970 on climate change has painted a stark picture of New Zealand’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. It says climate change is already potentially irreversibly affecting the country’s natural systems, and many aspects of climate change will continue for centuries. Global gross emissions of greenhouse gases rose 50 per cent from 1990 to 2013, mainly due to people burning more fossil fuels for electricity generation, heat, transport, manufacturing and construction. Despite New Zealand’s contribution being quite small at 0.17 per cent, we have the fifth-highest level of emissions per person of the 35 countries in the OECD. Kathryn Ryan speaks with James Renwick, a professor at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University who contributed to the report.
Key findings of ‘Our atmosphere and climate 2017’ report
Ministry for the EnvironmentPLUS
Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ environmental reporting looks at the pressures, state and impacts on the environment and tracks change over time. Here are some key findings from Our atmosphere and climate 2017.
Given that Judith never lies, you might be right.
We’ll find out at the next election.
It’s mean to call English, “Bingles” – perhaps that’s what sank him?
* sings
“Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by her welcome grin
She’s imagining how well you’d fit within her skin
Never smile at a crocodile
Never tip your hat and stop to talk awhile
Never run, walk away, say good-night, not good-day
Clear the aisle but never smile at Mrs Crocodile”
I wonder if she and Paula might be persuaded to sing this as a duet:
A bold hippopotamus was standing one day
On the banks of the cool Shalimar
He gazed at the bottom as he peacefully lay
By the light of the evening star
Away on the hilltop sat combing her hair
His fair hippopotami maid…
In a pinch Gerry might do the male part – he had musical ambitions at one time.
Seriously dude, you need to pick a single handle and stick to it. I’m not even going to bother asking for confirmation because I’ve spent way too much time on this already, but if I see you posting under another name again I will ban you. This is mostly so I don’t have to use my time going into the back end to check what you are doing.
If you don’t know what I am referring to I suggest you look back at past moderation notes. If you have multiple people using your ISP, then let us know.
Its been slowly happening over time, first the dismay at whats happening with diary in the McKenzie then going out on more of our DOC tracks and then a bit of hunting and suddenly its like the environment becomes a little more important then it once was
Heartbreaking story from Peter Watts (sf writer, lapsed marine biologist and ailurophile) on homelessness and mental health in Toronto. Not too different. Maybe Wayne Blimp would like to read it and tell us it doesn’t matter because some statistic or other looks good if you squint the right way.
Apparently if OECD says we are top of something Wayne likes then NZ is great… and nothing to see here. Someone above referred to Wayne as “sane”. If true then he can be quite cold.
Tracey, sane in comparison to Michelle Boag and Mike Hosking. He doesn’t rant and rage and have extreme outlandish opinions. He did say somewhere he was excited by the fresh generational change. So kudos where due.
Three minutes of news that manages to elevate Bill English and rubbish solo mothers. Nice one Radionz and Katherine Hutton. Bill English is given voice time telling of all the sad cases that Social Investment is going to help. (Ironic that this is the government who has worsened the plight of struggling people year by year and caused the eruption of problems like an inflamed boil that couldn’t be ignored.)
Then evidence is quoted about the most likely people to be having troubles – solo mothers comes first, not the fact that it is only a percentage of them who have prison connections, etc. So all are lumped in as being the problem, when so many are struggling on and doing a good job in difficult circumstances.
Professor Jonathan Boston outlines the advantages of social investment, and the requirements for it to be effective which Labour/G/F should meet. Bill Rosenberg, economist points out that attending to basic need such as housing, better wages, rather than pinpointing problem people and targeting them would probably be the way L>G>F would wish to handle it.
My view is that if they combine those two approaches, with attending to need first, and then asking people where they first want help, would drop problems down to half. (And also police be told to stop chasing cars for doing 130kmh on motorways, and looking out for stolen cars at night. Then they could attend other reported crimes faster, at less human and financial cost.)
Listen duration 2′ :44″
Labour is being urged to keep Bill English’s pet social welfare project that identifies high risk families and then focuses government help. The so-called Social Investment Approach uses data to measure how services are being delivered to the most vulnerable and whether they’re working.
(Sounds like targeting to me. What is needed is monitoring and reporting, and revising if assistance is not working. But not with high and unreasonably demanding levels of improvement required. Good things take time. And starting with small goals that are achievable is needed, both for the social workers, and for those being helped, the ‘clients’.)
Greywarshark
That was so evil putting that plonker B English on the Radio NZ prime time news spot when nothing was presented about our new government was offered in person so we need to totally rearrange Radio NZ and fire all the national cling on’s that are still hiding as “national cells” within the new government so take them all out of government.
That is necessary – but the one that is most overdue is Treasury. Long past time the far right ideologues there were ousted in favour of data driven folk. No free lunch for Chicago school trash.
Cleangreen, I don’t understand or like the “we.” Unless you are a member of the Government, then what is this “we.”
(It’s like when the All Blacks win and people say “we won.” Really, I (and probably you) had next to nothing to creating this win. )
Back to RNZ. I think it is particularly stupid to go around firing people on the basis of their political views unless of course they happen to be your political adviser. Radio NZ is considered by others to be “Red Radio.” Me, I think RNZ is too conservative to be called Red.
RNZ is up for rearrangement as it is poised under Labour policy to become the key public broadcasting institution. No doubt the RNZ Board will change, Richard Griffin has been Chair there for about 7 years now and probably was heading for retirement soon anyway. Anyway, there are going to heaps of new people to create and implement this new version of RNZ. I am looking forward to see who is picked and what they do.
Sort of agree @Gristle, but you do have to concede that the gNats began by giving their mates what amounts to corporate welfare in the commercial media sector, then starved public service media as much as possible. When those pesky Red Radio people wouldn’t lay down and die, they started to do their best at stacking the deck. (It still won;t work however).
“Back to RNZ. I think it is particularly stupid to go around firing people on the basis of their political views unless of course they happen to be your political adviser. “
They shouldn’t be fired for their political views, but should be let go if they have an inability to separate those views from their decision making or editing and programming decisions.
It would be ideal to have a clear mission statement from RNZ on how they decide to inform and ensure accuracy balance in reporting and news programmes.
The current mission statement (if Wikipedia is correct)The station’s mission statement requires it to promote and reflect New Zealand in the Pacific, and better relations between New Zealand and Pacific countries. is a bit vague for me, and makes no mention of quality or balanced reporting.
Even this has some problems. I read The Atlantic and know its editorial position is liberal democratic US exceptionalism. I read the Intercept and know its starting point. The issue is when media is presented as unbiased because that just doesn’t happen.
One persons accuracy becomes somebody else’s sin of omission. As their particular perspective is ignored so there goes the balance.
Often news items appear on TV because they are videographic and can be easily encapsulated into 60 seconds. Short form news by its nature is truncated and by its abbreviation it becomes distorted.
Often as the story gets longer the bias becomes obvious and the story will weaken unless evidence and argument is strong.
A second phone call is good to arrange lunch, but makes a poor substitute for the lunch discussion.
“One persons accuracy becomes somebody else’s sin of omission. As their particular perspective is ignored so there goes the balance.”
That is true. But at least that gives the audience a statement to relate to when writing complaints about bias.
“A second phone call is good to arrange lunch, but makes a poor substitute for the lunch discussion.”
Only phrase that comes to mind when reading this is: ain’t that the truth?
Following on from our brief interaction in yesterday’s OM re a Christmas bonus for beneficiaries. I’ve just been in contact with my friend in England who’s on their equivalent of Supported Living payment/Invalids. She informs me she’s been getting a whole 10 quid (so about $20) going way back, and is pretty sure it was for people on all the main benefits, ie the unemployed sick, jobless and sole parents. The latter one’s bonus is based on per child. She was very surprised to receive it last year.
But she’s pretty certain they’ll probably stop it given the Tory Government is currently undertaking a very real programme of passive genocide towards anyone who has the audacity to no be able to work for whatever reason. And no, that’s not hyperbole. Said friend’s had a very close call with them, another is up to about 14 weeks in hospital so far and nearly dead from the stress of dealing with the DWP considering her fit to work. (This is why I can’t watch I Daniel Blake, it’s happening to my friends).
I slightly digress there but it’s always good to emphasise what’s going on in the UK because the Nats were in the process of bringing that policy here and it’s highly likely another 3 years of them would’ve resulted in a massive spike in beneficiary deaths, which we know has already started.
$20 as a Christmas bonus will do bugger all for our financial situation of course, but it would certainly allow for a couple of food treats that we couldn’t consider getting any other time. And it’s not going to bankrupt the country.
From February next year, the car and motorcycle population will not be allowed to increase .
To get a car in Singapore you need a Certificate of Entitlement. But now Singapore is going to cap the total number of cars and motorbikes across the entire country:
A great task for a new Minister of Climate Change would be to show what difference that rail electrification and higher public transport use has made to Auckland’s CO2 emissions. Or maybe for an Associate Minister of Transport.
I am all for this with freight trucks now that we have the latest forecast that trucks are causing 80% of the total transport ‘Climate change emissions’.
So truck use now need to be cut back and the report says we need more freight back on rail.
The report confirms we are now the fifth highest climate change emissions country per population in the world now.
Not a pretty picture is it. No more “roads of national Significance” (RONs) we ow must adopt NZF rail policy on their website, called “Rails of National Importance” (RONI)
A new report http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970 on climate change has painted a stark picture of New Zealand’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. It says climate change is already potentially irreversibly affecting the country’s natural systems, and many aspects of climate change will continue for centuries. Global gross emissions of greenhouse gases rose 50 per cent from 1990 to 2013, mainly due to people burning more fossil fuels for electricity generation, heat, transport, manufacturing and construction. Despite New Zealand’s contribution being quite small at 0.17 per cent, we have the fifth-highest level of emissions per person of the 35 countries in the OECD. Kathryn Ryan speaks with James Renwick, a professor at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University who contributed to the report.
Key findings of ‘Our atmosphere and climate 2017’ report
Ministry for the EnvironmentPLUS
Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ environmental reporting looks at the pressures, state and impacts on the environment and tracks change over time. Here are some key findings from Our atmosphere and climate 2017.
Could this be an organised campaign? When politicians wrongfully blame poor water quality on farming and irrigation (the worst quality is in fact in urban areas), then you encourage anti-farmer sentiment that leads to this.
Wikipedia are asking for another donation and say they are lagging behind their required level.
They say that only 1% of users give. I am sure, like me, people mean to donate but don’t get around to it. I did a while ago but it’s asking time again apparently. Would all of you who value wikipedia go to the donate button on their page.
If any of you are negative about something re wikipedia, please don’t bother to tell us your gripe. Thank you.
Some talk on the Blogosphere & Social Media over recent weeks suggesting that NZF is (in terms of its support-base) a largely “Rural” or “Provincial” or “Very Small Town” Party
To test this idea – I’ve sorted seats into 4 categories & found that
.
31.5% … (58845) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Metro seats (Auckland + Wellington + Christchurch)
29.6% … (55355) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Provincial City seats (ranging in size from Gisborne up to Hamilton)
31.5% … (58766) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Rural seats
7.4% … (13740) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Maori seats
.
While this is a relatively rough & ready methodology, it does nicely highlight the sheer diversity of NZF support in Urban vs Rural terms
NZF certainly derives disproportionate support from Rural & Small Town New Zealand but that by no means defines its voter-base
Yes you could certainly call it a “Provincial” Party
ie 61% of NZF support comes courtesy of Provincial City & Rural New Zealand
But then, by the same token, precisely the same majority of NZFers ‘derive from Urban New Zealand (Metro + Provincial City = 61%)
.
Richard Harman at Politik (English faces uphill battle) has suggested
New Zealand First’s party vote came overwhelmingly from the North Island provincial electorates
Not true
just a large minority = 46% (86136) from the North Island Provincial City & Rural seats
Viewed from another angle – NZF also derives a large minority of its support from our 6 Largest Cities (Auckland Wellington Christchurch Hamilton Tauranga (+ BoP) Dunedin) = 41% (77370)
if labour are serious about becoming a true mmp style party with an eye on the long term , when they are setting up their tax working group they should have a space at the table for Gareth Morgan , he’ s an ideas man with a sound financial brain and who knows top might be a future coalition party .
Yeah I was surprised that a couple of close friends wasted their votes on TOP.
Respect to their policy ideas but to me it was just another rick prick distraction campaign and it wasted a large % of progressive votes. To truly make a difference, Morgan should have quit near the end and endorsed the Greens
Another mate voted Conservative, such are the vagaries of MMP that there are a lot of wasted votes. 🙁
The Spanish federal government is about to impose federal government on Catalonia.
If there was one moment for the European Union to show , in the midst of massive anti-EU votes all around the continent, that it can successfully intervene diplomatically and get leaders to talk rather than trudge down the stony road to civil war, this is the moment to do it.
So far, all we are getting is two dumb-assed Spanish leaders going down really stupid paths with zero dialogue and increased force.
Time for the EU to show what its capacity and purpose really is.
The EU has already give the Catalonia’s the two finger salute during or before the vote to leave Spain.
It would be nice to see the EU have some balls over this, but I’m afraid there’s more chance of Winix winning the Caulfield Cup on Saturday than the EU getting everyone around the table for talks.
“A record number of immigrants accounted for more than 70 percent of population growth in New Zealand in the last year, according to new data from Stats NZ.
The data reveals that our country’s population grew by 100,400 in the year ending June 2017 – and a whopping 72,300 of that was as a result of net migration.”
– it’s clearly adding to the housing shortage which apparently tax payers have to pay to fix at the rate of $1000 a week motel rooms for the poor and lower wages for the working poor and generous subsidies to developers.
Neoliberalism has gone too far. This is a big problem in NZ with business leaching on the backs of the taxpayers for cheaper and cheaper labour so they can make more profits while average Joe suffers.
What about user pays that these business types apparently believe in (apart from for themselves) maybe all these businesses need to make wages and conditions attractive enough for workers to work the jobs at a living wage and being paid $600 p/w when it costs $400 p/w to rent a house, probably doesn’t cut it.
Somehow we have a weird corporate welfare system operating in NZ where NZ taxpayers routinely subsidise 1/3 of someones wages in benefit top ups so they can survive or get a migrant in, with the lure of getting a foot in the door of residency. Supermarkets for example used to be staffed by students, no longer when you can get desperate migrants in full time work in to do it at student rates.
It now costs $400+ p/w for a house, because of the population growth of literally hundreds of thousands coming to NZ to get residency and work permits. And the deregulation of the housing has meant more and more leaky and substandard houses are out of action. We are not even getting to the P problem that has yet to be remedied taking out more housing. Is P safe with a wash down, increasingly it seems it is, but private practise has created a million dollar business our of the misery of P contamination. And that is taking out rental properties and making many homeless and many potential landlords unwilling to rent even if they had the houses which have been sold long ago anyway.
New housing is rocketing in price and now too expensive to build with the lack of training of local workers, lack of enthusiasm of local workers for the pay and conditions offered, deregulation of materials so that many fail and the work needs to be redone (concrete, plumbing etc) and the so called expertise of so called skilled migrants many who can work cheap and ask no questions but low NZ productivity shows a different side of this story which is not showing a successful experiment.
Immigrants and NZs would like to have safer conditions for work than this guy.
Joe 90 put it up on the Labour Day site. I hope we do provide safer conditions and haven’t just sunk to the lowest level ourselves?
A race to the bottom! https://twitter.com/youmuppet_/status/922084798088339457
Looks like Collins is still on the Bill English train, so I expect he’s staying on as leader for some time, as Collins wouldn’t publicly back him if there were any rumblings in caucus about ditching bill.
when Goff got the leadership after Clarke’s reign i felt for the guy as anyone with a brain knew the nats were good for at least two terms , like labour is now, i expect english will be there as long as he wants unless the coalition looks shaky then the sharks will circle english.
Didn’t want to spoil the sugar coated thread with irreverence…
So if plants are getting less nutritious because of climate change, using the pattern of dinosaurs demise, does it mean vegans and vegenauts are going to go first?
True enough, and forgetting sci fi meals in a pill supplements etc. Deep freezers are still going to work so plenty of stockpiles to get through before the carnivores go by the wayside.
Even if existence is only a few weeks more than the veges, even without nutritious vegetables, I’d be okay with lasting out a bit longer by eating my frozen greens lol
Btw, my kid has just turned veggy, which I support as his choice and respect the decision.
Not smug, but if it came down to it, I’d go carrion for an extra week or two. Freezers might go, but fire won’t. Char grilled is still a go’er
The leaf eaters, probably not so much wriggle room.
Interested in whether we can afford it all? Read Bryan Gould. He has about four entries on our finances, with similar titles. It is as if he wanted to make the point so much that he changed each title to have a different impact on a reader with a viewpoint that matched. http://www.bryangould.com/why-does-the-left-so-often-disappoint/
And David Seymour. What a laugh. How come he gets treated seriously and Winston often is not.
The Super Fund is being reinstated. Seymour said it was the wrong priority.
“Household debt is the Greek problem that New Zealand faces. We need to actually get that under control. I think we should be cutting taxes and running less of a surplus in order to give some relief to households,” he said.
The trouble is that NZ households would probably spend all the reduced taxes.
In the year ending September we went on 2.79 million overseas trips, up 253,000.
That doesn’t indicate people holding back and paying off debt.
And the latest annual net migration figures were mostly driven by non-NZ citizens.
This from Business in nelsonmail.co.nz (Fairfax have closed the century old building and its new, forward looking addition and now seems to be only on-line and not every day I think. I got the news around my frozens.)
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive One minister is talking tough while a colleague – whose ministry had acted tough and drawn a barrage of flak – has shown an official softening. Some ministers are doing what Labour was good at, which is distributing public funds to causes regarded as worthy or ...
A ballot for 4 Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Insurance Contracts Bill (Duncan Webb) Income Tax (Clean Transport FBT Exclusion) Amendment Bill (Julie Anne Genter) Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill (Greg Fleming) Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) ...
One of the strongest narratives about "our" spy agencies is that they are basically institutional traitors, working for foreign powers (or just themselves), without any control or oversight by the elected government. And today, we have yet another report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security which explicitly confirms this. ...
“It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April to meet the Prime Minister’s ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tombs, Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago The 5th-century Maskell panel showing Jesus in a loincloth.British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA When Jesus is shown on the cross, he is almost always depicted wearing a loincloth around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the Queen’s crown. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such ...
COMMENTARY:Jewish Voice for Peace The UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday — and for the first time since the beginning of the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians, the United States abstained rather than vetoing it. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, ...
Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
Twenty years ago today, Māori Television launched after much controversy. Jamie Tahana looks back on its survival and impact across two decades. Chad Chambers stepped onto the stage, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his face. His smile beamed as bright as his white freezing works gumboots, ...
The unidentified foreign intelligence operation discussed in a scathing report by New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) last week appears to be a controversial United States intelligence system. The IGIS report said the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was “improper” ...
Tauranga, Rotorua, Wellsford, Onehunga, Westhaven marina – Gavin Strawhan walks the meanish streets of New Zealand in his entertaining debut novel The Call, almost sure to roar into the number 1 position on the Nielsen bestseller chart, its front cover bearing a rave from somebody: “A really good and genuinely ...
On a Thursday in February, at Wellington’s Conservation House, the Conservation Authority, a statutory body advising the eponymous department and minister, Tama Potaka, opened its 195th meeting. Under consideration that afternoon was an agenda item written by Tim Bamford, chief advisor in the Department of Conservation’s biodiversity, heritage and visitors ...
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A lengthy response to the recently released draft Government policy statement on transport will soon be delivered from Auckland Council to Minister of Transport Simeon Brown. A submission raising concerns about funding distribution and the plan’s treatment of Auckland passed through the council’s transport committee on Wednesday, despite some councillors ...
As a young gymnast, Aimee Didierjean was always conscious of making sure her underwear wasn’t showing on the competition floor. A peek of a bra strap, or briefs if a leotard rode up, would cost a gymnast points in her routines. “When I was growing and going through puberty, it ...
Jubi/West Papua Daily Repeated cases of Indonesian military (TNI) soldiers torturing civilians in Papua have been evident, as seen in the viral video depicting the torture of civilians in the Puncak Regency allegedly done by soldiers of Raider 300/Brajawijaya Infantry Battalion. There is a pressing need for stringent law enforcement ...
Winston for DPM and MFA. So far so predictable. Looking forward to hearing the Green portfolios.
Chris Trotter, on Stuff this morning, challenges the Ardern government to bring in advisors for REAL economic change: he recommends Ardern bring on board these people to advise: Jane Kelsey; Sue Bradford; Metiria Turei.
the establishments tamed media persona offering advice again. I see that bloke as just another pagani/Williamson/Edwards.
So you’ll be hearing a lot from him whilst the rest get their new themes and let the medication kick in that limits the frothing at the mouth rapid right wing dogma.
Interesting, though, that the Financial Times is also reporting that some business leaders are talking about the need to change capitalism away from the failures of the last 3-4 decades.
The leaders cite management greed, corporate tax dodging and “short termism”, as problems. Their claims, though, seem to be made more out of fear that the people will seek revenge on a system they see as being unfair. they don’t seem concerned about the negative impacts on the lives of too many people, only that the capitalist system will be rejected outright if it is not reformed.
So, there is now a period when ideas for a new direction may get traction.
But I guess we need to beware of the ruling elites just allowing enough change to thwart an outright revolution, rather than really pushing for the changes that the many, and society as a whole, really need.
In my opinion capitalism cannot be ‘reformed’ as it is fundamentally flawed. But undoubtedly people will try to put a “human face” on it and she’ll be right. Yeah, nah!
Would you care to put together your thoughts on what an alternative to capitalism would look like? Because, as flawed as it is, fundamentally capitalism still looks better to most people than alternatives we’ve tried.
Even the most socialist of scandinavian social democracies are still fundamentally capitalist, they’ve just got different settings around how much and what areas of society the state is involved in and how to pay for it.
I would describe “even the most socialist of scandinavian social democracies” as fundamentally socialist.
How so? Their economies all rely on private ownership of land and capital for the purpose of generating profits for their private owners. That’s capitalism. That their state sectors are larger than ours and welfare systems more generous doesn’t change the fact that the fundamental organising principle is capitalism.
All housing owned by the state and allocated on an as need basis with lifetime lease.
Businesses to be self-owned and run by the people who work there.
A UBI of course.
And the state being the only creator of money in the country.
Dropping of all FTA and removal of the country from the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. Replace them all with standards that other countries need to meet before we trade with them.
What percent of the voting population do you reckon would go for that? Versus what percent would fight it with everything they’ve got?
TBH, the idea of a state jobsworth allocating where I live, rather than letting me choose how much of my resources I’m willing to put into where I live and making my best choice within that constraint, is something I’d fight very hard against.
Who said anything about the state allocating where you live?
“All housing owned by the state and allocated…” isn’t about the state allocating where someone lives?
No.
You choose the area and even the house if it’s available. If multiple people are asking for that house then the one with the most need for it gets it. If someone has a new job in the area then they’ll get it over someone who just wants to move to the area.
If there’s a high demand for that area then housing NZ will build more houses in that area to cater to the demand. And the demand will actually be known because they’ll have the applications.
Draco, if you can’t see how that proposal amounts to state jobsworths exercising unwanted control over something that is a major part of people’s lives, then I really can’t help you.
What control?
Or how about I put it in terms of now:
You choose to live somewhere. You look to see if a house is for sale or for rent. If there is you then offer a sum of money. If it’s enough you get the place if not you’re out of luck.
If there isn’t a place available you either build (if a place to build is available) or you’re simply out of luck.
Same would apply if housing was state owned except that there would be no money involved.
That’s what they’ve been doing since the great Depression and it still hasn’t worked. Managed to keep general revolution at bay though.
We need the politicians and the economists to realise that capitalism simply doesn’t and never will do. Then we’ll have the space open for other ideas but that is something that the business community certainly don’t want because then they wouldn’t be able to get rich.
Draco,
I totally agree wth you, as housing is one of “a basic ‘essential’ neccesity of life & need” (a human right)
Most people dont understand now what the basic needs are and the role of having government.
Government is there to provide “the basic essential nessecities of life” such as power, water, shelter, education, health services, transport, and housing.
Jobs are the premise of bussiness activities, and government supply public servant jobs for their administration.
Bussiness was never set up to garantee all the basic essential nessecities of life.
But that’s what they were supposed to do under the neo-liberal paradigm. That’s what National and ACT mean when they say small government. They’ve failed to do as promised just like they failed in the 19th century and throughout history.
Trotter seem to think New Zealand voted for a revolution. They didn’t. The vote is way too finely balanced for such a claim.
They voted for change, specific things to be fixed such as clean water, housing etc.
If Jacinda Arden wants to be a one term Prime Minister she will follow Chris Trotter’s advice. But she is way smarter than to follow the advice of an ex New Labour activist. I can just imagine what her cabinet colleagues and indeed Helen Clark would think of Trotter’s advice.
That is why talk of failures of capitalism made on “The Nation” were not repeated on “Q & A”. I would say she quickly realised that such talk has way too much political risk. Instead the language shifted to “market failure”, a well understood term in political and social markets.
Your first two paragraphs are correct, but your third one doesn’t follow.
Making dramatic changes toward social democracy will bring huge benefits to New Zealanders, and that would likely shift the Overton window significantly to the left.
I tuned off from watching TV one when this morning during the morning news at 6.45 the ex prime minister Bill English came on TV one to rant about his party’s succcess over the last nine years so where is the new PM then?????
So my embargo of TV one will continue until TV one broadcasts a more balanced and fair coverage of the new Government about to be signed in as our new government today.
Wake up TV One as we are now living with a new government that we want to see sack all you National cling-ons and install a more balanced fair broadcasting team than we have had for the last nine years.
Pathetic display of naked bias against the newly elected government is clearly continuing on our publically owned TV one and this must now be corrected.
+1 cleangreen
The national broadcaster has been infected with right wing lobbyists, a deliberate attempt at undermining the neutral nature we expect as it’s paid for through taxes, Key turned it into a National Party propaganda machine, using public funds and brainwashing the more gullible viewers, and there’s quite a few of them.
We can’t have a minority view point be broadcasted without balancing it with the majorities viewpoint.
Breaking news.The entire National Party caucus have been offered jobs at NZ Post…delivering for New Zealanders.
Are they delivering light bulbs so we would get that “brighter future”?
Tell them we just got it…………..
LOLOLOLOL
Zorb6 LOL
I had to laugh this morning as I listened to RNZ news – NZQA can’t figure out why many of the so-called educational institutes which have been deregistered or sanctioned are owned or part owned by Chinese or Indians.
I can’t speak for India, but as one who has lived in China for a few years, the answer is so obvious – corruption and bribery!
In China, you pays your money, you get the results you want!
And the bad ones are well known and reported. Selling Degres and feeding cheap labour into businesses who will pay for 2 yearsso the new graduate can qualify for PR.
They’ve been well know and reported on for quite some time – repeatedly, whether officially or through back channels.
NZQA is finally getting on to it, but their under-resourcing and failures have come too late for many people who’ve been utterly fleeced.
If I can dig into the backgrounds of some of the PTE operators, Labour Supply agencies and contractors using google, foreign media and the companies register, then it’s bloody obvious that NZQA, INZ and the Labour Inspectorate who can call on the resources of Police and other agencies should have been able to do better.
I suspect NZQA’s statement is more about keeping a lid on things until they get a few more wins/prosecutions and have more ‘conversations’ with INZ.
I rember when I was a young my uncle was killing a opossum and when he swung the hammer I was standing behind him and fuck I was spitting out bits of my teeth man that was sore . I was 12 and I did not go to school for 2 weeks I was eating weetbix for 3 weeks .It was my rugby coach that asked what happen to my teeth I told him the story
And it was he that told me to go to the school dentist to get my teeth fixed . I was really
great full as no more pain and I lost a bit of weight I could got to school when I wanted or just stay home and ride horse’s I use to run right over the top of most other players of Rugby/ scrag .
Many thanks to Ros Taylor and Thomas Maxwell Latham our brown men playing a great game for NZ cricket and wining in Inda .This feat should have got major coverage in all our media platforms !!!!!!!!! . The big picture is if we nurture and train all our youth
and provied them more disposable income more of our brown children will climb to the great heights of sports stardom We just need a fair and just society.P.S Hope I got that right. Ka pai
WAR IS FOR IDIOTS Yes these 2 men did not win that game on there own as it takes good Management and a excellent team Wairua to get in to that top spear of our World Sports .
Now all you people that are new to our shores I welcome you and advise you that the Prime Minster Elect will not kick you in the private parts so just relax and keep positive as she will be a fear and just Leader you should beable to see this for your selves .
Our Dollar well don’t treat because a lower dollar is good for us all in some way It won’t crash OUR Dollar is one of the most traded currency in the World so that tell a story in its self our dollar always trades lower when Labour rules its good we will slow down our consumption nation and this is the direction we have to take to save Mother Earth for our grandchildren P.S we will pay our dept faster to.
9 % compulsory Kiwi Saver this will transfer our dept back to our shores .
Everyone has to vote at the next election this will help stop the social media’s influence on our elections . Ka pai
You Did 100%
“The Chinese bidder for Landcorp’s Jericho Station in Southland has applied to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) for permission to buy the property, almost five months after his offer was accepted.
Controversy surrounds the sale because a well known Southland farmer Ed Pinckney has also been in contention for the sheep and beef farm, but his offer was refused even though it was only about $200,000 less.”
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/98063078/chinese-bidder-for-jericho-sation-seeks-overseas-investment-office-approval
If there is an alternative NZ purchaser, then the Chinese buyer will need to show the benefits he can offer that the NZ purchaser cannot (i.e. the counter-factual). Fingers crossed he can’t meet the test
First real test for Labour now, to walk the walk.
Although they never said anything about restricting farmland.
The buyer appears to have left it slightly too late. OIO talks about making an application within a timely manner.
One suspects five months after making an offer is not timely. There’s no information as to whether the offeror flagged the prospective purchase with OIO.
If I were the OIO, I’d decline this sale on the basis that the next offer down was only 200k less, and therefore more likely to create opportunities for NZ.
Winston points out that the delay has resulted in an opportunity cost already, in the form of $26 000 of interest per month that would have accrued from an immediate sale to the NZ buyer, meaning the $200 000 difference between the offers would be negated by now.
Chinese buying our state asets and “sensitive NZ farmland holdings” must stop now!!!!!!!
Thank you for your post Robert.
Why are you singling out Chinese?
He’s not if you consider that it’s a discussion that began at 7 on a specific case.
No doubt it transcends nationality in other cases.
Yep Once Was Tim.
Like Winston always says “it’s about the policy”
Others like to use rubbish ‘smear talk’ for their ends.
Nationality isn’t entirely irrelevant. In the area around where I have a part interest in a property, there are a number of properties purchased by Chinese (presumably for landbanking) that have since been left unused and neglected to the point where they become a pest reservoir nuisance to the neighbours. When considering two competing offers, that was certainly a factor in us accepting the lower offer from a local with a track record of being a caring steward of the land, rather than a significantly higher offer from foreign investors.
cleangreen thinks its ok to be racist.
Troll talk there, NAKI MAN.
You sound like the racist troll.
If is Hollywood tanking .. what is the outlook for the broader economy ?
https://www.sott.net/article/365140-Nothing-working-in-Hollywood-Big-studios-forced-to-cut-losses-pulling-flops-from-theaters-at-a-fast-pace
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/10/22/hollywoods-biggest-movies-flop-big-time-as-industry
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/98132642/kaikura-mp-stuart-smith-ready-for-opposition-stint?cid=edm:stuff:marlboroughexpress&bid=405433560
National’s Stuart Smith (described by Winston Peters during the election as a back-stabbing neo-liberal who has done nothing since he got there),MP for Kaikoura, has spoken about ‘delivering for New Zealanders” who are his constituents.
He said that in three years he had done more than his predecessor (Colin King, National MP for nine years) who he supplanted.
If this is a taste of National Party loyalty, I can understand why Bill English won’t talk about his prospects for staying on as National’s leader.
Stuart Smith’s present position that he will stay on in a “strong opposition” and face a possible nine years languishing there indicates that they certainly intend to break that MMP nine year cycle.
We can look forward to changes in their line-up with the sloughing off mercilessly of their older leadership, and the promotion of aggressive and ruthless younger MPs who seek Ministerial office in their time.
Only cos there was an earthquake did he do more cos the obvious needed to be done.
Agreed. His two ideas around supporting increased coastal shipping and the dry dock in Picton are not evidence of much independent effort. His espousal of Friendly Society matters is not an electorate matter. There is a huge amount of rebuilding of social services required in Marlborough. His major effort in this area was to not even read for months a credible critique of these services delivered to him by his constituents.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/84399112/marlborough-grey-power-president-calls-for-more-funding-for-social-service-providers
The only solace from the Stuart Smith grandiose claims is that it may mean that his Kaikoura supporters are fed up with his total inaction on behalf of his constituents.
For instance, many would be surprised to learn of his action to get a new site for the colleges. Really?Labour Janette Walker has done far more for people and she is not even an MP.
Just seen Boag on the AM show, (well that’s not quite right turned her off after watching for about 30 seconds) what a vile twisted evil person who definitely got a personal vendetta against Peters,
Why do they keep getting these has-beens out of the musty old National party morgue, wind them up and let them go full bore without anybody there to give a counter argument? We have had NOTHING but right-wing commentators on this morning including English. No spokesperson from the new government.
It is also about time we had some younger people on the programme, the same age group as Ardern, after all, it is their world now to fix up.
TVNZ 1 is just as bad, man aren’t they all pissed off over Peters going with Labour
I call her Morticia and instead of the morgue I call her place of abode the crypt. That woman has to be the scariest human on the planet, a wake up nightmare apparition. She seriously needs to be removed from the airwaves and put out to hanging out with the bats at night.
Rocky Horror Audition awaiting?
Michelle Boag in fact is so horrible that she might repel as many people as she thinks she is influencing! And surely some people would have picked up and been put off by Mike Hosking’s petulant, I am so important (more important in fact than the new PM elect and how dare she keep me waiting) rant on Thursday night.
At least Wayne Mapp is sane.
I think relentless negativity in the form Michele Boag portrays is going to turn people off left right and centre in the face of the positive collaborative attitude to be shown by Ardern and Shaw. So while she is hideous to endure in the short term, she may just do the new Govt a favour if she keeps it up. I agree, though, a horrible horrible woman.
Michelle Boag is known to hold a vendetta and then exact punative utu for the smallest of perceived slights. This is why she continues to gets access to media. However, IMO once a crack appears, it is highly likely that her power base will disintegrate rapidly .
Not sure about that. MB’s got so many cracks showing whilst buildings have been demolished for less as earthquake risks. Yet she continues to survive and grace us all with her spectacular wisdom at least once a week.
Hi Gristle
I was told last nigt that Michelle Boag is related to Matthew Hooten!!!!!!
Can someone cofirm this please?
There is a brilliant poster going the rounds but I cannot get it to copy and paste it here. Shows the detail of the Blue result in 2014 election then the Red poster result for 2017. Damns the negative complainers. Some one must have it and cleverly post it here. It is very good.
The MMP complaining one? Is awesome.
Here it is
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154831776026646&set=a.64591706645.84963.598741645&type=3&theater
Thanks beatie. My wife and I tried to post it on TS so great to see it there now. It is very clever esp. the last bit.
Testing…
Welcome back. The current record for post-election returnees before getting banned again is four hours twenty eight minutes. Your clock has started.
Challenge accepted! 🙂
To be fair, you’re only the second. So no matter what you’ll set a record. To make it a challenge you should nominate whether you’re aiming for under or over.
Its not like I try to get banned, it just seems to happen every now and then
Its good to have you back. There weren’t too many righties left by the time the election rolled around
Over it is then. Good. I mostly enjoy your contributions, not to mention it’s less work for mods.
And yet you spew a racist diatribe and thought that was acceptable.
I suppose racists have been embolden of late.
Can you post the comment you’re referring to as I have no idea what you’re talking about
Forgot the comment that got you banned did you?
We’re talking months ago so yes
Set the record for the longest before banning Pucky.
Who got banned already?
TheExtremist
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-23102017/#comment-1403931
Some people just want to watch the world burn 🙂
To be fair, it was more like the guy about to be released from jail who is immediately arrested on other warrants the cops just found out about.
A comment that might not have gotten many people banned drew enough moderator attention to bring to light a history of activity from that IP address. 🙂
“about to be released”? He got released. Then it’s like the cops ran his plates for a minor traffic infringement on his way home from jail, saw the past behaviour, and threw him back inside. Still brings a smile, tho.
🙂
More like he got released and ran a red light, which got the cops’ attention who then looked up the outstanding warrants. Had he not run a red light, nothing would have happened.
Welcome back Puckish. Please don’t get offended as I say this in jest “I have missed your one-eyed rightwing bullshit’ You’re not really like that, Welcome back looking forward to your opinions.
Thanks for that and well done to Labour for putting together a government
Thanks Puckish rougue,
We hope you will help us fix this broken country now, since the national wrecking ball has done it’s worst to wreck our environment.
See this from our letter sent this morning to Professor James Renwick,
Sad enditement from a careless National Party policy as we see for real now.
—————————————————————————————————————-
24th October 2017.
James Renwick,
Professor School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences.
BSc (Hons), Mathematics, Canterbury, (1977); MSc, Statistics,
Victoria University of Wellington.
Dear James,
Such a pleasure to review your report on Climate change and NZ emissions of emissions it is very sadly needed to be highlighted today.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970
https://vimeo.com/238677734
Of special interest to our committee is the large increase of freight truck use we are monitoring in HB/Gisborne regions NZ average of 6% annually is now at 12% in Gisborne/HB for freight movements of 36% of NZ exports of our products from both east coast provinces.
I commend your report and will advance this document as signalling a return of freight back to rail in our regions as Hon’ Winston Peters has for several years attended meetings in both East coast provinces has pledged in Government to bring back our mothballed rail system into service again which will have an extremely useful method of helping to reduce our climate change emissions again.
I would like to converse with you in the weeks ahead, and offer our study reports to you as we have conducted them often in collusion with other agencies and may be very useful for your continuing studies also.
Warmest regards,
—————————————————————————————————————-
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970
https://vimeo.com/238677734
A new report http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970 on climate change has painted a stark picture of New Zealand’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. It says climate change is already potentially irreversibly affecting the country’s natural systems, and many aspects of climate change will continue for centuries. Global gross emissions of greenhouse gases rose 50 per cent from 1990 to 2013, mainly due to people burning more fossil fuels for electricity generation, heat, transport, manufacturing and construction. Despite New Zealand’s contribution being quite small at 0.17 per cent, we have the fifth-highest level of emissions per person of the 35 countries in the OECD. Kathryn Ryan speaks with James Renwick, a professor at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University who contributed to the report.
Key findings of ‘Our atmosphere and climate 2017’ report
Ministry for the EnvironmentPLUS
Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ environmental reporting looks at the pressures, state and impacts on the environment and tracks change over time. Here are some key findings from Our atmosphere and climate 2017.
Hey, Pucky!
If only National hadn’t overdone the lying, eh!
They might have got back in.
If Judith Collins had been leader National would have gotten over 50%…possibly 🙂
Given that Judith never lies, you might be right.
We’ll find out at the next election.
It’s mean to call English, “Bingles” – perhaps that’s what sank him?
I understand she’s very big in swamps.
So are alligators.
* sings
“Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by her welcome grin
She’s imagining how well you’d fit within her skin
Never smile at a crocodile
Never tip your hat and stop to talk awhile
Never run, walk away, say good-night, not good-day
Clear the aisle but never smile at Mrs Crocodile”
I wonder if she and Paula might be persuaded to sing this as a duet:
A bold hippopotamus was standing one day
On the banks of the cool Shalimar
He gazed at the bottom as he peacefully lay
By the light of the evening star
Away on the hilltop sat combing her hair
His fair hippopotami maid…
In a pinch Gerry might do the male part – he had musical ambitions at one time.
Seriously dude, you need to pick a single handle and stick to it. I’m not even going to bother asking for confirmation because I’ve spent way too much time on this already, but if I see you posting under another name again I will ban you. This is mostly so I don’t have to use my time going into the back end to check what you are doing.
If you don’t know what I am referring to I suggest you look back at past moderation notes. If you have multiple people using your ISP, then let us know.
The “Steak” brothers, Blade, Chuck and Rump? MitM? Puckish! No !
100% weka.
I’m the only Puckish Rogue but unfortunately theres something like a couple of hundred people (probably more) using this ISP
Couple hundred on the same IP with multiple bans in effect? Sheeee-it, that’s one hell of a troll farm!
🙂
It’s not MoBIE is it? They have many Dicks there
I should probably point out that they’re not all mine 🙂
Are you saying that Puckish Rogue is the only handle you have used here?
Crikey! Is Pucky about to exit after only a few short hours???
There might have a been a slight misspoke in there
A True Nat then!
Actually starting to head towards a bluey-greeny type
kicking and screaming and vowing not to try very hard
bluey greeny ?
How so, Pucky (and whatever other handle you’ve used)?
Its been slowly happening over time, first the dismay at whats happening with diary in the McKenzie then going out on more of our DOC tracks and then a bit of hunting and suddenly its like the environment becomes a little more important then it once was
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/98160028/yes-jacinda-ardern-cursed-the-all-blacks-i-was-there
Glad someone satirising the Herald over their article about Jacinda cursing the All Blacks.
Heartbreaking story from Peter Watts (sf writer, lapsed marine biologist and ailurophile) on homelessness and mental health in Toronto. Not too different. Maybe Wayne Blimp would like to read it and tell us it doesn’t matter because some statistic or other looks good if you squint the right way.
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=7710
Apparently if OECD says we are top of something Wayne likes then NZ is great… and nothing to see here. Someone above referred to Wayne as “sane”. If true then he can be quite cold.
Tracey, sane in comparison to Michelle Boag and Mike Hosking. He doesn’t rant and rage and have extreme outlandish opinions. He did say somewhere he was excited by the fresh generational change. So kudos where due.
Unless he is just trying to make himself seem “balanced” in his tilt at being a paid media commentator
Links to Wayne Mapp media comments on the new government mentioned in Reality’s comments.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11935084
He is excited about Jacinda Ardern … Also published on the Spinoff – https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/20-10-2017/i-was-a-national-mp-for-15-years-and-today-im-excited-about-jacinda/
Also Mapp on RNZ – still a Nat:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018618624/ex-national-mp-wayne-mapp-discusses-new-opposition
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/341996/expect-a-vigorous-opposition-former-mp-says
There’s some fundamental quality of humanity missing.
Bill English is a man of few words. His new few words are ‘ I got the most votes ‘. Inserted into every sentence at any opportunity. Poor Eeyore!
I couldnt stand seeing Bill English’s sorry sad sack face any more Fflyod and reached for the eject button.
I felt so much better then.
Three minutes of news that manages to elevate Bill English and rubbish solo mothers. Nice one Radionz and Katherine Hutton. Bill English is given voice time telling of all the sad cases that Social Investment is going to help. (Ironic that this is the government who has worsened the plight of struggling people year by year and caused the eruption of problems like an inflamed boil that couldn’t be ignored.)
Then evidence is quoted about the most likely people to be having troubles – solo mothers comes first, not the fact that it is only a percentage of them who have prison connections, etc. So all are lumped in as being the problem, when so many are struggling on and doing a good job in difficult circumstances.
Professor Jonathan Boston outlines the advantages of social investment, and the requirements for it to be effective which Labour/G/F should meet. Bill Rosenberg, economist points out that attending to basic need such as housing, better wages, rather than pinpointing problem people and targeting them would probably be the way L>G>F would wish to handle it.
My view is that if they combine those two approaches, with attending to need first, and then asking people where they first want help, would drop problems down to half. (And also police be told to stop chasing cars for doing 130kmh on motorways, and looking out for stolen cars at night. Then they could attend other reported crimes faster, at less human and financial cost.)
life and society politics
6:39 am today
New govt urged to keep English’s ‘social investment approach’
From Morning Report, 6:39 am today
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018618937/new-govt-urged-to-keep-english-s-social-investment-approach
Listen duration 2′ :44″
Labour is being urged to keep Bill English’s pet social welfare project that identifies high risk families and then focuses government help. The so-called Social Investment Approach uses data to measure how services are being delivered to the most vulnerable and whether they’re working.
(Sounds like targeting to me. What is needed is monitoring and reporting, and revising if assistance is not working. But not with high and unreasonably demanding levels of improvement required. Good things take time. And starting with small goals that are achievable is needed, both for the social workers, and for those being helped, the ‘clients’.)
Greywarshark
That was so evil putting that plonker B English on the Radio NZ prime time news spot when nothing was presented about our new government was offered in person so we need to totally rearrange Radio NZ and fire all the national cling on’s that are still hiding as “national cells” within the new government so take them all out of government.
That is necessary – but the one that is most overdue is Treasury. Long past time the far right ideologues there were ousted in favour of data driven folk. No free lunch for Chicago school trash.
Cleangreen, I don’t understand or like the “we.” Unless you are a member of the Government, then what is this “we.”
(It’s like when the All Blacks win and people say “we won.” Really, I (and probably you) had next to nothing to creating this win. )
Back to RNZ. I think it is particularly stupid to go around firing people on the basis of their political views unless of course they happen to be your political adviser. Radio NZ is considered by others to be “Red Radio.” Me, I think RNZ is too conservative to be called Red.
RNZ is up for rearrangement as it is poised under Labour policy to become the key public broadcasting institution. No doubt the RNZ Board will change, Richard Griffin has been Chair there for about 7 years now and probably was heading for retirement soon anyway. Anyway, there are going to heaps of new people to create and implement this new version of RNZ. I am looking forward to see who is picked and what they do.
Sort of agree @Gristle, but you do have to concede that the gNats began by giving their mates what amounts to corporate welfare in the commercial media sector, then starved public service media as much as possible. When those pesky Red Radio people wouldn’t lay down and die, they started to do their best at stacking the deck. (It still won;t work however).
“Back to RNZ. I think it is particularly stupid to go around firing people on the basis of their political views unless of course they happen to be your political adviser. “
They shouldn’t be fired for their political views, but should be let go if they have an inability to separate those views from their decision making or editing and programming decisions.
It would be ideal to have a clear mission statement from RNZ on how they decide to inform and ensure accuracy balance in reporting and news programmes.
The current mission statement (if Wikipedia is correct) The station’s mission statement requires it to promote and reflect New Zealand in the Pacific, and better relations between New Zealand and Pacific countries. is a bit vague for me, and makes no mention of quality or balanced reporting.
Even this has some problems. I read The Atlantic and know its editorial position is liberal democratic US exceptionalism. I read the Intercept and know its starting point. The issue is when media is presented as unbiased because that just doesn’t happen.
One persons accuracy becomes somebody else’s sin of omission. As their particular perspective is ignored so there goes the balance.
Often news items appear on TV because they are videographic and can be easily encapsulated into 60 seconds. Short form news by its nature is truncated and by its abbreviation it becomes distorted.
Often as the story gets longer the bias becomes obvious and the story will weaken unless evidence and argument is strong.
A second phone call is good to arrange lunch, but makes a poor substitute for the lunch discussion.
“One persons accuracy becomes somebody else’s sin of omission. As their particular perspective is ignored so there goes the balance.”
That is true. But at least that gives the audience a statement to relate to when writing complaints about bias.
“A second phone call is good to arrange lunch, but makes a poor substitute for the lunch discussion.”
Only phrase that comes to mind when reading this is: ain’t that the truth?
Message for The Chairmen if you see this.
Following on from our brief interaction in yesterday’s OM re a Christmas bonus for beneficiaries. I’ve just been in contact with my friend in England who’s on their equivalent of Supported Living payment/Invalids. She informs me she’s been getting a whole 10 quid (so about $20) going way back, and is pretty sure it was for people on all the main benefits, ie the unemployed sick, jobless and sole parents. The latter one’s bonus is based on per child. She was very surprised to receive it last year.
But she’s pretty certain they’ll probably stop it given the Tory Government is currently undertaking a very real programme of passive genocide towards anyone who has the audacity to no be able to work for whatever reason. And no, that’s not hyperbole. Said friend’s had a very close call with them, another is up to about 14 weeks in hospital so far and nearly dead from the stress of dealing with the DWP considering her fit to work. (This is why I can’t watch I Daniel Blake, it’s happening to my friends).
I slightly digress there but it’s always good to emphasise what’s going on in the UK because the Nats were in the process of bringing that policy here and it’s highly likely another 3 years of them would’ve resulted in a massive spike in beneficiary deaths, which we know has already started.
$20 as a Christmas bonus will do bugger all for our financial situation of course, but it would certainly allow for a couple of food treats that we couldn’t consider getting any other time. And it’s not going to bankrupt the country.
From February next year, the car and motorcycle population will not be allowed to increase .
To get a car in Singapore you need a Certificate of Entitlement. But now Singapore is going to cap the total number of cars and motorbikes across the entire country:
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/lta-scraps-vehicle-growth-rate
Something for even the Greens to aspire to!
The entire country of Singapore
Is miniscule in size, and also has public transport covering its small area space…
A great task for a new Minister of Climate Change would be to show what difference that rail electrification and higher public transport use has made to Auckland’s CO2 emissions. Or maybe for an Associate Minister of Transport.
Bloody good stuff Ed
I am all for this with freight trucks now that we have the latest forecast that trucks are causing 80% of the total transport ‘Climate change emissions’.
So truck use now need to be cut back and the report says we need more freight back on rail.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970
https://vimeo.com/238677734
The report confirms we are now the fifth highest climate change emissions country per population in the world now.
Not a pretty picture is it. No more “roads of national Significance” (RONs) we ow must adopt NZF rail policy on their website, called “Rails of National Importance” (RONI)
A new report http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970 on climate change has painted a stark picture of New Zealand’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. It says climate change is already potentially irreversibly affecting the country’s natural systems, and many aspects of climate change will continue for centuries. Global gross emissions of greenhouse gases rose 50 per cent from 1990 to 2013, mainly due to people burning more fossil fuels for electricity generation, heat, transport, manufacturing and construction. Despite New Zealand’s contribution being quite small at 0.17 per cent, we have the fifth-highest level of emissions per person of the 35 countries in the OECD. Kathryn Ryan speaks with James Renwick, a professor at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University who contributed to the report.
Key findings of ‘Our atmosphere and climate 2017’ report
Ministry for the EnvironmentPLUS
Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ environmental reporting looks at the pressures, state and impacts on the environment and tracks change over time. Here are some key findings from Our atmosphere and climate 2017.
Intimations and innuendo about JA and partner – dirty politics are go over at blubber’s and the sewer.
Gayford becomes Gaylord. It’s always the ingenuity and sophistication of their humour that impresses the most…
Truly NZ’s own Algonquin Round Table…
How long before they go down the homophobic line they did with Clark.
Well it’s a lot worse down in the dungeons of redbaiter’s twisted mind (trueblue nz or something)
This prick.
Could this be an organised campaign? When politicians wrongfully blame poor water quality on farming and irrigation (the worst quality is in fact in urban areas), then you encourage anti-farmer sentiment that leads to this.
http://archive.li/zy8Ss
Wikipedia are asking for another donation and say they are lagging behind their required level.
They say that only 1% of users give. I am sure, like me, people mean to donate but don’t get around to it. I did a while ago but it’s asking time again apparently. Would all of you who value wikipedia go to the donate button on their page.
If any of you are negative about something re wikipedia, please don’t bother to tell us your gripe. Thank you.
No need they are already rich from corporate sponsorship
ropata
It doesn’t appear so as they hae been asking for donations several times inte last several years since the corporates are mountimg attacks on them.
Will do greywarshark.
Some talk on the Blogosphere & Social Media over recent weeks suggesting that NZF is (in terms of its support-base) a largely “Rural” or “Provincial” or “Very Small Town” Party
To test this idea – I’ve sorted seats into 4 categories & found that
.
31.5% … (58845) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Metro seats (Auckland + Wellington + Christchurch)
29.6% … (55355) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Provincial City seats (ranging in size from Gisborne up to Hamilton)
31.5% … (58766) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Rural seats
7.4% … (13740) … of NZF’s Party Vote is derived from Maori seats
.
While this is a relatively rough & ready methodology, it does nicely highlight the sheer diversity of NZF support in Urban vs Rural terms
NZF certainly derives disproportionate support from Rural & Small Town New Zealand but that by no means defines its voter-base
Yes you could certainly call it a “Provincial” Party
ie 61% of NZF support comes courtesy of Provincial City & Rural New Zealand
But then, by the same token, precisely the same majority of NZFers ‘derive from Urban New Zealand (Metro + Provincial City = 61%)
.
Richard Harman at Politik (English faces uphill battle) has suggested
Not true
just a large minority = 46% (86136) from the North Island Provincial City & Rural seats
Viewed from another angle – NZF also derives a large minority of its support from our
6 Largest Cities (Auckland Wellington Christchurch Hamilton Tauranga (+ BoP) Dunedin) = 41% (77370)
Have you ever read The Eight Tribes of New Zealand?
Worth having a look at the Balclutha and Papakura tribes – they capture the flavour of New Zealand First rather well.
You can figure out which one you belong to here:
http://www.8tribes.co.nz/find.php
Cheers Adrick
My dominant tribes are supposedly :
Grey Lynn (Intellectual)
Raglan (Free spirited)
But I suspect also more than a touch of both
Cuba St (Avant Garde) &
Papatoetoe (Unpretentious)
As outrageously contradictory as that might seem
Cheers ad, Papatoe in da house.
if labour are serious about becoming a true mmp style party with an eye on the long term , when they are setting up their tax working group they should have a space at the table for Gareth Morgan , he’ s an ideas man with a sound financial brain and who knows top might be a future coalition party .
keep in mind 2+% voted for his party
Yeah I was surprised that a couple of close friends wasted their votes on TOP.
Respect to their policy ideas but to me it was just another rick prick distraction campaign and it wasted a large % of progressive votes. To truly make a difference, Morgan should have quit near the end and endorsed the Greens
Another mate voted Conservative, such are the vagaries of MMP that there are a lot of wasted votes. 🙁
The Spanish federal government is about to impose federal government on Catalonia.
If there was one moment for the European Union to show , in the midst of massive anti-EU votes all around the continent, that it can successfully intervene diplomatically and get leaders to talk rather than trudge down the stony road to civil war, this is the moment to do it.
So far, all we are getting is two dumb-assed Spanish leaders going down really stupid paths with zero dialogue and increased force.
Time for the EU to show what its capacity and purpose really is.
who’s in the wrong over there?
The EU has already give the Catalonia’s the two finger salute during or before the vote to leave Spain.
It would be nice to see the EU have some balls over this, but I’m afraid there’s more chance of Winix winning the Caulfield Cup on Saturday than the EU getting everyone around the table for talks.
“A record number of immigrants accounted for more than 70 percent of population growth in New Zealand in the last year, according to new data from Stats NZ.
The data reveals that our country’s population grew by 100,400 in the year ending June 2017 – and a whopping 72,300 of that was as a result of net migration.”
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/10/auckland-leads-significant-new-zealand-population-growth.html
What I find ridiculous is still every day we get articles from MSM that the economy and business will suffer if they can’t get any more low paid workers – so apparently Kiwis have to subsidise the housing and infrastructure of all these low paid workers for companies like Sky city and hotels http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/10/queenstown-concerned-about-effect-of-immigration-cuts-on-tourism.html
– it’s clearly adding to the housing shortage which apparently tax payers have to pay to fix at the rate of $1000 a week motel rooms for the poor and lower wages for the working poor and generous subsidies to developers.
Neoliberalism has gone too far. This is a big problem in NZ with business leaching on the backs of the taxpayers for cheaper and cheaper labour so they can make more profits while average Joe suffers.
What about user pays that these business types apparently believe in (apart from for themselves) maybe all these businesses need to make wages and conditions attractive enough for workers to work the jobs at a living wage and being paid $600 p/w when it costs $400 p/w to rent a house, probably doesn’t cut it.
Somehow we have a weird corporate welfare system operating in NZ where NZ taxpayers routinely subsidise 1/3 of someones wages in benefit top ups so they can survive or get a migrant in, with the lure of getting a foot in the door of residency. Supermarkets for example used to be staffed by students, no longer when you can get desperate migrants in full time work in to do it at student rates.
It now costs $400+ p/w for a house, because of the population growth of literally hundreds of thousands coming to NZ to get residency and work permits. And the deregulation of the housing has meant more and more leaky and substandard houses are out of action. We are not even getting to the P problem that has yet to be remedied taking out more housing. Is P safe with a wash down, increasingly it seems it is, but private practise has created a million dollar business our of the misery of P contamination. And that is taking out rental properties and making many homeless and many potential landlords unwilling to rent even if they had the houses which have been sold long ago anyway.
New housing is rocketing in price and now too expensive to build with the lack of training of local workers, lack of enthusiasm of local workers for the pay and conditions offered, deregulation of materials so that many fail and the work needs to be redone (concrete, plumbing etc) and the so called expertise of so called skilled migrants many who can work cheap and ask no questions but low NZ productivity shows a different side of this story which is not showing a successful experiment.
Immigrants and NZs would like to have safer conditions for work than this guy.
Joe 90 put it up on the Labour Day site. I hope we do provide safer conditions and haven’t just sunk to the lowest level ourselves?
A race to the bottom!
https://twitter.com/youmuppet_/status/922084798088339457
Looks like Collins is still on the Bill English train, so I expect he’s staying on as leader for some time, as Collins wouldn’t publicly back him if there were any rumblings in caucus about ditching bill.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/342248/will-english-still-lead-the-national-party
Collins will want Bill or some fall-guy to take the likely 2020 defeat on the chin. Not her.
when Goff got the leadership after Clarke’s reign i felt for the guy as anyone with a brain knew the nats were good for at least two terms , like labour is now, i expect english will be there as long as he wants unless the coalition looks shaky then the sharks will circle english.
Agreed, unless theres a massive falling out Jacinda is there for at least two terms
That’s good, he needs to stay at least 6 months before retiring
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11936301
I actually felt excited reading this , the new govs plans
“Political Roundup: The legitimacy of the Labour-led government.”
For once Bryce Edwards has come down definitely on a topic.
This part the facts:
http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2017/10/has-the-new-nz-government-been-installed-by-an-undemocratic-coup-a-twitter-reply.html
and Dr Edward Willis:
http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2017/10/has-the-new-nz-government-been-installed-by-an-undemocratic-coup-a-twitter-reply.html
Edwards: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11936270
Didn’t want to spoil the sugar coated thread with irreverence…
So if plants are getting less nutritious because of climate change, using the pattern of dinosaurs demise, does it mean vegans and vegenauts are going to go first?
Meat eaters for the pyrrhic win.
I would guess top of the food chain will be affected too 😉 Besides, none of us will survive if the insects don’t.
True enough, and forgetting sci fi meals in a pill supplements etc. Deep freezers are still going to work so plenty of stockpiles to get through before the carnivores go by the wayside.
Even if existence is only a few weeks more than the veges, even without nutritious vegetables, I’d be okay with lasting out a bit longer by eating my frozen greens lol
Btw, my kid has just turned veggy, which I support as his choice and respect the decision.
One good shake of Rūaumoko and there goes the grid. I wouldn’t get too smug 😉
Not smug, but if it came down to it, I’d go carrion for an extra week or two. Freezers might go, but fire won’t. Char grilled is still a go’er
The leaf eaters, probably not so much wriggle room.
Interested in whether we can afford it all? Read Bryan Gould. He has about four entries on our finances, with similar titles. It is as if he wanted to make the point so much that he changed each title to have a different impact on a reader with a viewpoint that matched.
http://www.bryangould.com/why-does-the-left-so-often-disappoint/
And David Seymour. What a laugh. How come he gets treated seriously and Winston often is not.
The Super Fund is being reinstated. Seymour said it was the wrong priority.
“Household debt is the Greek problem that New Zealand faces. We need to actually get that under control. I think we should be cutting taxes and running less of a surplus in order to give some relief to households,” he said.
The trouble is that NZ households would probably spend all the reduced taxes.
In the year ending September we went on 2.79 million overseas trips, up 253,000.
That doesn’t indicate people holding back and paying off debt.
And the latest annual net migration figures were mostly driven by non-NZ citizens.
This from Business in nelsonmail.co.nz (Fairfax have closed the century old building and its new, forward looking addition and now seems to be only on-line and not every day I think. I got the news around my frozens.)