It would be awesome to see our government clean out the Board and management of our Environmental Protection Agency and start banning this kind of chemical.
“It would be awesome to see our government clean out the Board and management of our Environmental Protection Agency and start banning this kind of chemical.”
And you thought the reaction to a resource charge on water was extreme, banning glyphosphate would be seen as a ban on farming. It’s that ubiquitous and central to New Zealand agricultural systems they wouldn’t know how to farm without it.
Turns out that glycophospate levels in the cow blood reduce with protocol of betonite clay and sauerkraut juice. Some other stuff too but those are the main things.
DOC and groups like Forest and Bird and people who maintain school grounds would find it a challenge too. Still should happen though, they just lack imagination.
Maybe it is lack of money?? The alternative herbicides are often more expensive and may also have health risks. Most of them have issues with being ecotoxic to soil and/or waterways.
that is an issue too, but in my experience of lots of conversations on this, many people in DOC, Councils, orgs like F and B etc are ideologically committed to glyphosate. Many think it is benign. Monstanto did an amazing PR job on this a few decades ago. Remember Round Up 2 and the adds of the swan on the pond and the dude spraying around the edges? Bought hook line and sinker.
My retired horticultural father in law, stills maintains round-up is inert 15 minutes after application.
At the risk of sounding like a scratched record, the only way this behaviour (spray and walk away ground-keeping, 1080ing the Bush pest control), can be justified is in economic terms.
there are some issues there in terms of economies of scale, supermarket subsidies etc. Also, the people I know on low incomes that have the capacity grow food to varying degrees to make it affordable, and they’re growing organic. Potential there.
True – I use it myself on a block of land on the access road and think of it as less harmful than other herbicides that target both grass & broadleaf species.
Over my working life I have had to use hazardous substances in small quantities and see it as a kind of necessary evil I suppose. I am more cautious these days than many (especially the blokes) and wear a respirator. I have heard older guys say you can drink it!!
Long term plan is to shade out the access road with kanuka etc to eliminate spraying and mowing. That will work for me but I don’t know what the alternatives might be for farming.
Especially around urban areas you could replace Roundup with petrol or electric weed eaters quite easily. It would probably require slightly more frequent maintenance but not significantly so. I think Councils go for spraying because its marginally more convenient.
Not sure what farmers could replace it with because I don’t have experience in that area. No-till farming would help though as weed seeds wouldn’t have the bare earth and sunlight to get established.
Weedeating wouldn’t work on a paddock of old gorse, but a chainsaw would. And then there probably is something organic out there that you could paste onto the stumps to kill off the root system.
Glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine) is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate. It is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops. It was discovered to be an herbicide by Monsanto chemist John E. Franz in 1970.[3] Monsanto brought it to market in 1974 under the trade name Roundup, and Monsanto’s last commercially relevant United States patent expired in 2000.
so it was…..the replacement seems to be in terms of widespread adoption and the timing.
A search for ‘glyphosphate replaced’ brings up some interesting articles.
So the question is what did we do pre 74 to achieve what glyphosphate does now?…obviously something relatively effective (whether effective enough with double the population and climbing may be a different story however) as we managed to farm successfully pre 74
The advent of Roundup allowed a totally new farming system to emerge. Now pasture is renewed every 3-5 years, as that process is much easier with a cheaper and safer herbicide. (than paraquat) Our intensive farming practices depend on the flush of new grass, there’s fertilisers in the equation too.
Previously pastures had to be ploughed to kill the old growth, now it’s spray and drill, or pray on steep country.
The target here shouldn’t just be glyphosphate, but the whole farming system with it’s downstream effects. Replacing glyphosphate with something else won’t stop the environmental disaster that is New Zealand intensive agriculture
k…so if in the past we controlled weed growth and pasture renewal via tillage to a greater extent…and I suspect considerably more physical removal,i.e. grubbing or weeding….then one consequence of a ban on roundup could be increased fossil fuel use in agriculture.
Additionally it appears glyphosphate has enabled additional crop plantings per season according to an article I skimmed earlier, so potentially a reduced yield.
Another benefit of the Roundup / drill model is much reduced soil loss, most of which used to end up as sediment in rivers. Direct drilling is marvellous in this regard.
Yes, it also allowed extra rotations, any yield issues are dealt with by another round with the bulky (fertiliser spreader), so potentially more NPK run off into the river. The gps controls on bulk spreaders are pretty good now too, so application is very accurate hopefully reducing over application like what went on in the past.
Done properly the Roundup model should be lighter on the land, but, human nature / greed intervenes and it becomes a means to produce more to the same effects. So you still have the same effects.
The Roundup tolerant crop thing sort of died, along with the cows. Seed companies are having trouble selling it, and got in even more trouble when they “accidentally” shipped the GE seed rather than what the farmer ordered. Much dancing on the head of the pin over that.
so assuming all the previous it would be fair to observe that a ban on glyphosphate will result in increased carbon emissions (arguably)…a reduced yield (or additional fert or both)…higher labour inputs.
Adding that up equals higher food prices ….and reduced export competitiveness.
That may or may not be a price the wider public is prepared to accept, let alone the ag sector…or it may be acceptable until the effects felt.
Actually a ban on roundup and other forms of industrial farming would result in a massive reduction in atmospheric carbon as pasture that is undisturbed sequesters large amounts of carbon. Killing pasture, and replanting might reduce the amount of soil erosion, but it increases substantially the amount of Carbon that was being stored in the plant and in the soil back into the atmosphere in the form of Methane and CO2. Most of that carbon is actually stored in the micro-organisms in the soil. When you kill the plant you kill the micro-organisms that are dependent upon the plants roots. It is pretty much a symbiotic arrangement. By allowing the plants to grow they establish greater root systems and thereby increase the micro-organisms (fungi and bacteria) that ultimately sequester the atmospheric carbon fed to them by the plant into the soil, increasing the soil carbon.
If we are to really get to grips with mitigating Climate Change and tackling the already massive loading of atmospheric Carbon that is causing the rapidly increasing global temperatures. We need to think quickly how we manage our agriculture and our environment.
You can read all about it in this massive pdf: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i1880e.pdf
@ Macro…thanks for link..am slowly working through it.
I note you state…..”Actually a ban on roundup and other forms of industrial farming would result in a massive reduction in atmospheric carbon”….without the ‘and other forms of industrial farming’ I see no evidence for that….and we are not going to stop farming on an industrial scale for we cannot…but we can perhaps change the intensity and land uses.
The increased CO2 (arguably) I was referring to was the average approx 100kg CO2 p/ hectare a typical tractor will emit when working up ground….an action that may increase without the availability of glyphosphate.
CO2 aside theres still the reduced yields and increased labour inputs and the flow ons to consider.
“Now pasture is renewed every 3-5 year”
Are you sure that’s correct? Pasture that’s managed correctly doesn’t grow broad leafed weeds. Grasses are perennials, they are long lived plants. I just don’t see the point in killing the whole pasture and re sowing. Besides it takes 3 or 4 months for pasture to be properly established. Thats quite a while for land to be not productive.
Considering clover is a important component of pasture, and glyphosphate doesn’t kill clover, there’s no point in applying this weedkiller.
I do know it’s used extensively in horticulture though – vineyards, orchards, etc
In my experience prior to 1974 reseeding was only done when new and better grasses had been developed, or pasture had been managed so poorly, reseeding was the only option. The dairy and sheep and cattle farms I lived on never destroyed whole pastures, ploughed and reseeded. It just wasn’t necessary.
On Lands and Survey blocks young men and women were employed on some sort of scheme to walk the whole farm grubbing out thistles and ragwort.
“Pasture renewal programmes vary widely across NZ, typically ranging from 0%-15% of farm area each year. The average on dairy farms is 5-10% compared to 2-5% on sheep farms. ”
I think Google intends that information it offers is meant to be read.
And understood. Guess it’s just beyond some though.
Assumption there that what the supplier sells the farmer works, or the farmer uses it correctly. Lots can go wrong. Most of what got sown around here will have to be redone next year because climate.
My 3-5 year figure is an observation of reasonably intensive properties around here (Whakatipu) 5-15% gets thrown out if there’s an ag or fodder crop (sometimes both) in the rotation, effectively doubling it or more.
I used to spray a mix of Paraquat and Simozine when i worked in a plant nursery in the mid-1980s. The rules were full wet weather gear and respirator and if you got any on your skin to shower immediately (which i did one day). I thought “fuck this” and found a new job within a few months.
You were lucky! I was using the stuff in the 1960’s working in summer hols while at Uni. The local parks sent me off with a open 44 gal drum on the back of the tractor to spray the gorse at the back of the local grass tennis courts. So off I went – not one item of protective clothing on – because – well what was that?? Anyway unbeknown to us the drum actually had a slight leak. For weeks after you could see where I had been 😈. The tennis club were not pleased!
Fortunately I seem to have avoided getting any of the stuff on me and haven’t had any after affects (that I am aware off 😉 ).
This is a liitle off topic but related –
On 18 February 2018, some of us were involved in a discussion under 5 in Open Mike* where Carolyn Nth posted a call from an organisation called Avaaz for donations to fight a 168 page US court subpoena from Monsanto requiring Avaaz to disclose “every private email, note, or record we have regarding Monsanto, including the names and email addresses of Avaazers who have signed Monsanto campaigns!!”
* link https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-18-02-2018/#comment-1450415
None of us really understood what this was all about so Carolyn and I did some research and posted our results back at 5.2.1 and 5.2.1.1. Lots of links there with background to Avaaz; but in brief, this subpoena is in relation to Avaaz’s campaign against the renewal application by Monsanto and Bayer to the EU and its agencies for Glyphosphate (eg Round-up).
The short story to this is that Avaaz fought a major campaign against the renewal over a year – but in November 2017 the EU renewed the approval of Glyphosphate but only for five years as opposed to the 15 years sought. Monsanto then filed the above mentioned subpoena.
I had been meaning to keep an eye on this and was prompted to do so by your post today. Nothing further on the Avaaz situation since a Feb 23 Guardian article which was still about the subpoena. Avaaz’s website does not provide any obvious update but is still calling for donations ($136K raised so far).
Back on topic –
As part of my research into the above I discovered this link to RNZ’s website, which provides a good source to keep up-to-date on what is happening on Glyphosphate in NZ. There are some good summaries on there on what is currently (eg 23 March) going on with the EPA, for anyone interested.
Note – In the above, I changed glyphosate to glyphosphate in my paras 2 and 3 because I thought I had spelt it wrong. I was right the first time but cannot now change these back. Sorry.
That’s a gutsy response from the many thousands of young people who marched on Washington towards greater gun control and against gun violence yesterday:
“Hundreds of thousands march for gun control in the US”
NRA goes silent in midst of protest.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) went silent on Twitter on Saturday morning, in contrast to its reaction to the nationwide school walkouts against gun violence on March 14, when it tweeted a photo of an assault rifle and the message “I’ll control my own guns, thank you.”
Unusually, President Trump keeps away from making a tweet.
As of early afternoon, Trump himself had yet to weigh in on Twitter about the protests.
Politics is all about pressure
“It’s pretty simple for me,” said Zoe Tate, 11, from Gaithersburg Middle School in Maryland, explaining why she marched in Washington. “I think guns are dumb. It’s scary enough with the security guards we have in school. We don’t need teachers carrying guns now. I find it amazing that I have to explain that idea to adults.”
Said her mother, Maria Blaeuer: “For our kids, feeling safe is fundamental, and they don’t feel safe.”
Large rallies also unfolded in such cities as Boston; New York; Chicago; Houston; Fort Worth, Texas; Minneapolis; and Parkland, Florida, the site of the February 14 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead.
In what can only be described as a desperate plea for attention, the NRA has released a new video that takes aim at survivors of the Parkland shooting, telling them that if their friends hadn’t died, “no one would know your names.”
The video, titled “A March for Their Lies,” was posted to NRA-TV’s YouTube channel just ahead of the student-led March for Our Lives event scheduled for Saturday in Washington, D.C.
In the clip, NRA-TV host Colion Noir lashed out at the teens who survived last month’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, mocking them for their youth and even taunting them about the deaths of their classmates.
Noir brought up the recent school shooting at Great Mills High School in Maryland, telling the Parkland survivors he wished an armed resource officer had been at their school “because your classmates would still be alive, and no one would know your names.”
“The media would have completely and utterly ignored your story,” Noir said, before falsely claiming that the media had not covered the school shooting in Maryland.
They say they’re going to call AR 15’s Rubios, and now this….
Parkland students are wearing a $1.05 "price tag" which represents the total NRA money that went to Marco Rubio divided by the number of Florida students.— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) March 24, 2018
You may have seen in the media that on Monday a petition was handed to the Government which had over 45,000 signatures calling for an end to oil and gas exploration in Aotearoa.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, along with Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw and Minister for Energy and Resources, Megan Woods were there to accept the petition in person, signalling that the Government is listening and considering this strong call to End Oil.
We need New Zealanders all around the country to keep raising your voices, so that our Government hears loud and clear that ending the block offer process for new oil and gas exploration is the right decision.
Our Prime Minister promised several times during the election campaign that climate change would be a priority for her government. Let’s hold them to that promise!
Will you help us End Oil in Aotearoa?
You can do this by:
Writing a personal letter from you or an organisation you are affiliated with to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Energy Minister Megan Woods calling for an end to oil exploration
Writing a letter to the Editor of your local newspaper
Make an appointment with the Labour/NZ First MP that represents your constituency about this
Join the Rally for Climate Justice if you’re in Wellington next week, or help amplify it on social media!
“The time has come for politicians to become activists, and for activists to become politicians.”
J.
In Canada yesterday, federal politicians from three different political parties joined together in an act of civil disobedience.
Former Liberal candidate Briony Penn, Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart were all arrested at Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby tank farm.
Here in New Zealand, civil disobedience from sitting MPs has not been witnessed since the days of the highly successful anti-nuclear ship protests.
It was this sort of powerful direct action leadership, that shifted the whole of parliament in this counttry, including two National Government MPs Marilyn Waring and Michael Minogue to vote for the opposition party’s private members bill to ban nuclear ship visits. To prevent the vote being taken, the National Government Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was forced to call a snap election. The rest is history.
I’m a Grandmother, and anyone who is looking at the climate crisis on this planet, who doesn’t recognise that it’s an emergency, is sleepwalking towards a precipice.
We need to wake up..,
Take responsibility..,
As parents…,
And as grandparents.
Because, I will not slip off this mortal coil thinking there is something more I should have done. And maybe, that I should have gone up Burnaby Mountain on March 23rd.
Elizabeth May
(As she is being arrested on Burnaby Mountain for joining with protesters blockading the Kinder Morgan oil sands pipeline.)
Kia kaha Elizabeth May, Kennedy Stewart and Briony Penn. May your brave stand shift public opinion and the Canadian Government to act against oil sands.
(In this country in my generation; John Minto, Joe Hawk, Whina Cooper, Eva Rickard, to name just a few.)
What do you feel is the importance of these grass roots movements in changing policy?
Extraordinarily important. I’ve said it a million times in every speech that I give. Change never takes from the top — never takes place from the top. It always come from the bottom on up and you can see it right now……
The lesson for Auckland if the city continues to spend public money expanding the motorway system, over investing in public transport, is that Auckland will become a poorer more crime ridden and polluted place.
“By Focusing on Cars Over Public Transportation, Cities Continue to Foster Inequality”
Policies and projects that broaden transportation options beyond driving a car significantly reduce income inequality between urban white and black households and between men and women in cities, according to a recent study published in the journal Local Environment. In cities with this “multimodal” infrastructure, white men see no loss of income even as other demographic groups tend to earn more income, the researchers found. White men are more likely than white women, black men, and black women to own cars.
“Increasing rail capacity means more opportunities for people who do not have cars,” says study co-author Chad Frederick, an assistant professor of sustainability studies and urban planning at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. “Multimodal infrastructure enables more people to participate in a wider labor market.”
“Medellin’s Amazing Metro System: Colombia Uses Public Transport To Drive Societal Change”
“The city [of Medillin] transformed violence and despair into hope and opportunity, using sustainable transport as one of the key levers to drive change,” said ITDP board member Holger Dalkmann.
Let us hope that it includes deeply burying this particular piece of motorway madness from the Nats. beyond all hope of it ever being exhumed to see the light of day.
Our NGO just wrote to Transport Minister of regional development Shane jones and Transport Minister Phil Twyford three days ago on this; here it is.
We want less trucks more rail.
CEAC.
Protecting our environment & health.
In association with other Community Groups, NHTCF and all Government Agencies since 2001.
Public COMMUNITY letter;
22nd March 2018.
Hon’ Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Development & other Ministers.
Dear Ministers,
This is a letter of support for and a challenge to Shane jones as our “champion of all our provinces” We agree Government is to be held accountable and we encourage anyone who wants to hold all authorities accountable for environmental issues should be supported also.
Thank you for your hard work and diligence to keep authorities accountable Shane & Winston.
Our SOE Kiwi rail is now in need of serious investigation as it has also a bad CEO in need of being replaced by a real rail engineer and not just a patsy for the previous National Government policies who hated using rail to lower the climate change emissions, which will become the “nuclear moment our children’s future.”
National encouraged closing regional rail freight in favour of using road freight which is seriously degrading our air and water quality and causing catastrophic weather events and floods, public health injuries, and declining health and this current Labour Government are not yet radically increasing any regional rail freight use to meet their future climate change emissions target that government have signed up to by 2035-50 as a carbon neutral policy.
Save the Gisborne rail service as it is not being considered for inclusion by Labour yet.
Kiwi rail CEO Peter Reidy must go as he is not supporting labour coalition plans to use rail freight policy in line with the Labour party’s 2005-15 “National rail strategy” to connect all ports to rail services to lower climate change emissions.
QUOTE from ISBN 0-478-10005-1 Forward from Pete Hodgson 2005 as Minister of Transport.
“Now we have brought New Zealand’s rail infrastructure back into public ownership, and the vision and objectives of the New Zealand Transport Strategy will be applied to New Zealand’s railway network.
Through the National Rail Strategy, the Government is demonstrating its commitment to retaining the existing network; to investigating the development of a number of new railway lines; and to maximising the use of rail transport. The aim is to move people out of cars for urban journeys, and freight off roads, wherever possible. For freight this means a focus on bulk or containerised loads, including traffic such as milk or logs. For passengers it means a focus on busy urban corridors in the larger centres, and using smart thinking to manage congestion.
This is an exciting time in New Zealand transport, with a dynamic vision beginning to achieve real results, working towards an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable transport system. The Labour Progressive government acknowledges the contribution of the Green Party to the development of this Strategy, and both the Green Party and the United Party’s support of the government’s transport policy.
Hon Pete Hodgson” Minister of Transport 2005
[Ed, you were banned until the 31st. Pulling shit like this is asking for a very long ban to be handed down. Don’t comment until such times as your regular details have been cleared from the blacklist]
Maybe someone could have a crack at explaining just how those Aussie cricket players could be so stupid? Even if they did gain an advantage in the moment how could they possibly think it wouldn’t be caught on camera and expose them for cheats?
Like our white collar criminals here in Aotearoa,
(MOH coleman and Manukau mould, CCTV building engineers, ex PM and ex MOD regards Afghanistan murders and subsequent cover-up), they are above the law and consequences don’t apply to them.
Our ocker cousins have form for this sort of thing.
Shane Warne and his ‘diet pills’ (speed to you and me) and the Chappell brothers disgrace come to mind.
I reckon they are so pissed off at the wife cracks they wanted revenge. Anger clouds the thinking. Especially when you have gone all holier than thou in selfcrighteous indignation.
GlennTurner has very sad stories of the comments made to him by Aussies about his Indian born wife. They have always been able to dish it out but never been great at taking it
Well that is true – except that it was clearly not in the spirit of the game – ie it wasn’t cricket. That’s how the rules develop. Eg the body line series when the Aussies were subjected to a series of fast deliveries directed at the body and a stacked leg side field. That cheating by the English on that occasion led to the rule restricting of the number of fields men behind square leg to two.
Ball tampering has been around for as long as there has been cricket. Some of it more obvious than others. This occasion happens to be a rather obvious and rather more serious example.
Great news – 4000 homes to be built on Unitec land.
Whenever I go there for work which is once or twice a year I alway think what a great development it would be. There are acres and acres (literally 53 hectares) of space right next to a new motorway interchange. For one thing this means the traffic increase will have short runs to the motorway system rather than through streets.
Mount Albert train station just metres from the south eastern corner of this site.
Properly planned a lot of services could be within the new development reducing the need for residents to go elsewhere for daily stuff.
Unitec have wanted to downsize that 53 hectares into 9 for some time now.
You got to wonder why the Nats didn’t think of this – oh that’s right, when they’re not denying the existence of a housing crisis, they are ideologically opposed to fixing it.
I hope that the infrastructure is capable of handling the additional stormwater, gas, fibre, water and roading. And this is to service 10,000 people a development housing the pop. of Queenstown or Gore http://www.tageo.com/index-e-nz-cities-NZ.htm
Imagine 4000 homes in 44 ha. a density of 99/ha. https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2012/02/10/what-does-density-look-like/
Developments like this may be appropriate for a hectare or 2 BUT 44 ha of this ???
And I note for those not experienced within the development industry, that the example on Symonds Street is bordered by public roads, for a development of 44 ha such roading infrastructure would be internal and using some of the 44 h.a, increasing the densities to well beyond 100/ha
It isn’t even 44 ha apparently.
According to the link about the story it is only 29 ha.
Still, Phil sys it will be wonderful and will have parks and shops and all those good things.
What is there that won’t be heaven on earth?
I’ll bet he wouldn’t buy there.
Are you sure about your numbers? In fact do you have a link for this story?
If they are reducing 53 ha to 9 ha that will leave 44 ha for the development.
I would assume that one third of that would be required for roads, services and of course I am sure there will be cycle ways everywhere. No doubt someone who knows more about this than I do will be able to correct this assumption if it is way out. You do say that these services could be within the development.
That leaves about 30 ha or 300,000 square metres.
If there are 4000 homes as you claim that will mean an average land area of, at most, 75 square metres per home.
How many stories is each block going to be? They clearly won’t be single story will they?
How big are the homes going to be?
Are there going to be any parks. Or shops? Or anything else?
This sounds like one of those dreadful high rise developments of pokey little flats that were built after the second world war and that every sensible country is demolishing because they were places that no sensible person wanted to live in.
And this meant to be progress? Is this the best that is being offered?
And when will the places be built?
Good God, it’s even worse than you said.
They are going to buy only 29 hectares. I suggest that you will only get 20 ha to put the houses on.
At 4000 houses that is going to give you a figure of 50 square metres of land per house.
Out of curiosity I had a look at what are the typical minimums for residential properties in New Zealand.
Hamilton will do as an example. For a single dwelling the lowest amount you are allowed is 350 sqm. For an Apartment block it is 150sqm/apartment. That is the absolute minimum. http://www.hamilton.govt.nz/our-council/council-publications/districtplans/ODP/chapter4/Pages/4-4-Rules-General-Standards.aspx
Twyford thinks that only one third of that will be sufficient? Then he has the gall to claim that this is going to get rid of overcrowding?
You accuse me of being in a continual state of misery. If I had to live in the sort of place that idiot is proposing I certainly would be miserable. So I imagine would anyone else living in this country.
Would you think it was acceptable. Would you choose to live in such conditions?
Twyford really is a twat, isn’t he?
You have discovered that have you?
I gave the figures for Hamilton, as a representative New Zealand city.
Those numbers of minimum land size have absolutely nothing to do with how many stories there are in the building.
If they are single dwellings the minimum size of the block of land is, in high density areas, 350 square metres. To have 4000 of them you would have to have a minimum land area of 140 ha for the houses, plus whatever you needed for the streets, parks, footpaths and so on.
Much, much more than at Unitec, isn’t it.
As far as multi-story blocks go that is what is normally referred to as an Apartment Block. Ever heard of them? They are normally multi-story. The minimum is 150 square metres of land per apartment, regardless of the height of the building. That is why I put Apartment Building numbers in. The density Phil Twyford seems to see as entirely reasonable is about three times the maximum allowed in Hamilton. The minimum there is 150 square meters of land per apartment. Kiwibuild is certainly going to provide miserable conditions for anyone who is going to live in them isn’t it if there are only going to be an allocation of 50 square metres?
And they would all be in high rise buildings. Hell on earth in the UK cities which have bowled them.
You put all that on a piece of land with dimensions like 50 metres wide and 80 metres deep? That is about half the land required for a Rugby Field.
What are the numbers in the Auckland District Plan for building density?
How many stories does it have? How big is a typical apartment or a shop?
When you finished did it match the beautiful picture Phil puts forward?
“This is a beautiful and historic piece of land with natural features such as the Oakley Stream running through it. It’s close to education, employment and public transport. This new community will have open spaces, new parks and shops.”
And would you really as described the apartments as being houses, or even homes suitable for a typical family?
It was better than Phil’s – after all it was my show 🙂
The apartments were both integrated beautifully into the town centre with the library and community hall right next door, they were also fully integrated into a brand new underground rail station, plus a really large shopping mall.
95% sold off plans, and they hardly ever come up for sale.
I can see you are going through a grieving cycle for a quarter acre block, with a lawnmower, a great sward of parkland, a church spire ringing bells, mum at home putting out great white sheets on a line, she greets him every evening with scones and a pinafore apron, and every night your dad tucks you – but he leaves the door ajar so you still get a bit of light to keep those bad suburban monsters at bay.
“I can see you”.
If the drivel you spout after this phrase is really what you think I suggest you really should go to Specsavers as the ad suggests.
The only part that has any resemblance to reality is the bit that says
“she greets him every evening with scones and a pinafore apron”.
That doesn’t apply to me though. Your beloved PM seems to be one of the few who provide such a display of blissful house wifery.
Isn’t this story just so sweet? https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/102577041/ed-sheeran-pops-over-to-prime-minister-jacinda-arderns-for-a-cuppa-and-scones
Ad , It would be of interest the family makeup of such developments, from what I have seen, families in such developments are as rare as the Northern White Rhino !!
Yes Ad, like they do in Australia. Some homes are rented, some purchased and as you say, well designed with all amenities. This is 9 km to city centre, has a golf course nearby, parks and open spaces and roading established.
Alwyn,
Would all your negativity at labours home building plan mean that you were also suitably pissed off at national’s nine years of sitting on their butts doing nothing, but selling state house for peanuts, and buying expensive motels to rent to poor homeless families at high prices?
I was pissed off with the way National largely ignored the problem for the first EIGHT years. then in the last year they started doing something, On the other hand it got even worse even faster under the 1999-2008 lot. I wonder who they were?
National sold some state houses. They were either ones where there was no demand, or some that were sitting on enormously valuable blocks where you could get enough for a single old house to build 4 or 5 others. I see no need for the State to continue to retain State Houses worth more than a million dollars.
The current lot also are being quite stupid retaining old 2 bedroom places when the demand is for larger properties.
I am unaware of National buying motels.
I realise that it is against your religion to answer questions but if you really want an opinion on that you are going to have to provide evidence of it happening. Otherwise I am going to suspect that you have just made it up.
I also notice the extensive area currently planted in trees.
Will these be removed and we are left with a sterile high density development.
And as I commented earlier that this proposed development will cater for a pop. of Queenstown or Gore – what support will there be for exisiting schools e.g. Gladstone, Mags etc as Queenstown and Gore have a couple of Primary, an Intermediate and High School https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/102567247/4000-homes-to-be-built-in-mt-albert
And a final observation – I do not believe that 4,000 dwellings are able to be built under the current council zoning, and if I am correct the time it will take time to progress a private plan change, that will involve traffic management, stormwater etc.
I cannot see any physical work well after the 2020 election, let alone occupants- which could beyond 2022.
There still is required resource consents, and there are still years of process from this link …. http://www.mtalbertinc.co.nz/unitec/
When will the first homes start rising? Probably not any time soon – at least on the bulk of the land, because Unitec first needs to sort out its own precinct, and that will take years from start to finish.
While the precinct has been enabled for development; public opening of the roads to the south (Renton, Rhodes and Laurel) needs resource consent and the council will have to assess who would be affected.
Before this, however, Unitec may choose to create a private road which can also be opened to the roads to the south, but the consent process for that would not involve the adjacent community.
Any development on the precinct (buildings, subdivision) will require an ITA, which includes the provision of walking, cycling, vehicle and public transport modes. Additionally, after two years, any resource consent applications for further development will need an updated ITA.
And I note that the fact sheet that accompanies today release is for “• Unitec has already conducted comprehensive due diligence on the site’s housing potential, which suggests it is suitable for a large scale residential development approaching 3,000 houses. ” NOT 3,000-4,000,
Very little of that will be a problem for this development.
There won’t be any appeals because UNITEC is an exceedingly motivated vendor, and they surround the site. The development – as National noted today – has been around for a while and will take none of the regulators or politicians by any surprise. This one will have a very smooth passage.
Re cycleways, there was a major cycleway construction right through the UNITEC site as part of the Waterview Tunnel development. This cycleway in turn links to the SH16 cycleway that goes all the way in to downtown, and all the way up the Northwestern Motorway to Te Atatu. It will be interesting, though, to see how they are going to make sufficient PT service to truly make it a car-free development. Usually parking-absent developments are closer in to town than this.
The big constraint will be an actual developer to take on the job. Things are pretty tight out there.
I suspect however that the Minister’s HLC Company is waiting in the wings, together with Te Whanau O Waipereira and Ngati Whatua property arm.
And the Nats attitude to tertiaries essentially forced Unitec to sell to keep itself open and relevant. The difference will be that Nats would have had some Developer mates lined up with token affordable homes thrown in to appease the peasantry
Remembef there are existing buildings with connected services and the Hospital laundry was a huge operation there too. It woukd have had water and wastewater equivalent of many homes?
Yes Ad good advice for the negative to see it first.
“If you are in Auckland you should pop up and take a look at the site for yourself – it will put your mind at rest.”
On Radio NZ ‘bulldog Collins’ said Labour just borrowed the plan National already had ticked off by them, but the only change was that labour made was it was switched to using Government money where National of course always want to use private financers and their money rather than have a “NZ owned housing development.”
Funny that when you look up the real meaning of “National” it reads essentially (my words) “for the people of the country”‘
National seem to want all overseas investors to own NZ now.
The land has been earmarked for housing for some time. As a former employee there I can tell you we knew it was being sold off for homes and to pay for Unitec’s trade building and hub upgrades, a few years ago.
I remember it was one of John Key’s first proclamations that Hobsonville shouldn’t be forced to have a mixed strata of housing and community because it would ‘sabotage people’s house prices’. That was back in 2007 or something.
If that Nats were allowed to do the same thing at Carrington there’d be 10 mansions each with 12 acres of manicured grounds, tennis courts, and olympic sized swimming pools.
Good win for a families here against spiteful landlords. The low penalty and that these landlords don’t have to give a reason for eviction is two of many, many issues this government badly needs to address in the Tenancy Act.
Just looking at a stuff story on the Plunket society. (moving community funds to head office).
Yes it has a specific role and it is being funded to around $1700 per birth .
Not easy to tell from the website what “actual another pair helping hand services ” they provide but the usual stacks of (lecture style) written advice plus a Thursday podcast for those who have the time (LOL).
But maybe time there was a look at all the funding going into the 0-2 years and the 3-5 years. There seem to be lots of programmes in this area but is all this money actually creating services that are being accessed by those in need.
Some more selected quotes fro Why we can’t afford the Rich
Those who lend at interest certainly don’t want borrowers to default on repayments, but if borrowers clear their debts and fail to borrow anew, that’s bad news for lenders, as it stops their unearned income; if borrowers can be kept in a state of indebtedness, needy yet just solvent, able to pay off compound interest, then that’s ideal for lenders. And of course, with compound interest, when the borrower gets into difficulties, short of defaulting altogether, the lender benefits even more. In the sober language of political economy, it is an extremely ‘regressive’ form of redistribution of income. This means there’s a strong whiff of hypocrisy and deceit about the portrayal of debtors as morally deficient – whether it’s indebted individuals, companies or whole nations – for the creditors’ continued unearned income depends on these debts being renewed!
In other words, it’s the lenders that are morally deficient.
Whatever we think about the ‘justifications’, they are beside the point when it comes to explaining what happens here: lenders charge interest because they can, not because they can show that they deserve it or because it’s good for the economy as a whole. And of course the lenders usually charge as much as the market will bear. Whatever the ‘justifications’, it fits our definition of unearned income.
There’s that moral deficiency again – pure bludging.
Credit is useful, indeed essential for an efficient modern economy, but interest is unearned income and a deadweight cost on economies; it redistributes wealth upwards and it places huge burdens on future generations. It’s therefore ethically questionable and dysfunctional, so rates of interest are best minimised.
Actually, interest needs to be eliminated. It does nothing beneficial for society while becoming a drain on it so as to allow the rich to bludge off of everyone else.
Whoever controls the allocation of credit, whether through using savings deposits or by creating credit money, has considerable power, for they control ‘the commanding heights of the economy’ and can shape its development. But where private banks are allowed to do this, the only responsibility that goes with this power is to their depositors (creditors) and shareholders. As far as they are concerned it doesn’t matter what the loans are for and what their wider economic impact might be, so long as they stay in profit and keep share values rising. This ensures that financial ‘investment’ has little relation to real investment. Today’s financial elite has come to imagine – extraordinarily – that extracting interest payments from people, businesses and governments is a form of wealth creation. For them, money is money, so who cares where it comes from?
My bold.
It’s obviously not wealth creation – it’s wealth extraction from those who actually produce it. The financial sector is a parasite – and that’s putting it nicely.
It’s a job. And It’s no less acceptable to ask them to fly long distance in cattle class than it was to ask me, a large human, to travel long distances in the backseat of a TK crew cab.
Well, if it’s inhumane to have people travelling in cramped quarters with dirty toilets then perhaps we need to regulate the airlines more to ensure that they’re not profiting from such inhumane practices.
Greenpeace New Zealand Director in court for protesting.
“Greenpeace protest: Russel Norman committed for trial”
Russel Norman and Sara Howell refused diversion despite considerable pressure from the Crown to do so. If Norman and Howell had accepted diversion, which meant them pleading guilty. A guilty plea by especially by Russel Norman. Greenpeace’s director would have implicated Greenpeace the organisation, which is facing the same charges as the director. The Crown offer of diversion was not made to the organisation.
If you want to destroy Greenpeace. You have to come through us first. Is the Greenpeace Director’s message to the Government and the Crown.
“Judge-alone Trial”
Norman and Howell appeared before Judge Nevin Dawson on Thursday morning where a judge-alone trial date was set for April 30, 2018.
Mansfield noted it was expected the trial would take one to two weeks and there would be considerable defence evidence, including expert witnesses.
The significance of a judge-alone trial, is that this is a political decision, making this a political trial. The Crown backed by the departing National Government did not want a repeat of the Jury trial that acquitted the Waihopai Three.
It is a disgrace and a perversion of democracy that the Greenpeace director is being tried for protesting, in the first place.
If the Andarko Amendment, or something like it, had been in place during the anti-nuclear ship protests New Zealand’s nuclear weapon free status, of which we are rightly proud of, could not have been achieved.
The AM Show I agree with Mark lets not bag our Australian cousins Cricket test team to much after all everyone makes mistakes and I’m sure there are others who have dune a similar offense chin up guys.
The big anti gun protests in America by the mokopunas is a great thing . I have other words on this subject but I don’t want others using them to attack these other helping the mokopunas you see the mokopunas have impunity Kia Kaha people enough said.
Face book is a good tool for family’s to keep up with each other my children all have a page it is a good tool for business I would have had a page my self but the Gisborne man has been harassing me for longer than face book has been around and that is the reason why I chose not to have a Face Book page .
When I go to Waiapu to a whano function I stay with whano our wharenui fulls up quite fast and there are no hotels up there m8 P.S The new carving to my Marae are going up soon . When my children were younger we use to stay with whano on all our trips but my family is to big now so we stay at hotels now .Ka kite ano
AM Show I’m studying OUR Maori culture at the minute I don’t have a lecturer or mentor this is a good thing as I will come to my own conclusions on this subject.
Nurses should be payed more 10% up at least they treated me humanly and with respect when I need there services . Ka kite ano
I have a Maori cultured relative he has being in the same job for years he is a good leader he told me that he was offered a higher position and declined this was about ten years ago his words were I can’t be bothered with the hassle .
I am going to tell my relative that he has to take the position with more mana my reason is that when Maori take on higher positions with mana they will be helping lift all Maori with them. So this is ECO MAORI challange to all Maori cultured people If you are offered a higher position take it or strive for a higher position in work or life and you will be lifting Maori mana as well you will most likely employ maori and so on enough said . Ka kite ano P.S be nice in the way you go about achieving these challenges I have set for you.
One of my extended whano who is a great orator in Te REO was taken down by lies and decidet. He is a great Ngati-porou leader the gossip was that he was guilty but ECO MAORI found out through other sources that he was framed can’t have them Ngati-porou haveing another great leader.
Kia kaha Ka kite ano P.S his wife gets a lot of air time now Ka pai
Newshub Mike it is a good thing that these sand flies are testing Eco Maori Mana because I won’t trust anyone till they have been tested now .
Te Ihorangi and Whaitiri papa are strong no Ingrid . Te kumrua never tells how sweet it is Ana to kai Ka kite ano
Newshub the Top twins deserve all the fame they have for the wonderful shows they have gifted to us over the years they are the way Kiwi use to be like David Clark Fred Dag an Murry Ball Tui Teka and Billy T James Ka kite ano
The Project Jeremy shonky is getting what he is owed . Yes our Ossie cousins strive to win and yes I watch that game of Cricket all those years ago Eco Maori can’t help but feel sorry for them they have stopped the sheep jokes .My condolences go out to Stan Walker and his Whano and yes whano go to the Doctor and get a check up enough said .Kia kaha Stan Ka kite ano P.S I see
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 ...
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Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
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It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
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Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
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Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
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This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
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The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
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. ...
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 ...
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. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
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 Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Great to see the new German Minister for the Environment banning Glyphosphate:
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-revive-climate-change-phase-out-glyphosate/a-43110900
It would be awesome to see our government clean out the Board and management of our Environmental Protection Agency and start banning this kind of chemical.
“It would be awesome to see our government clean out the Board and management of our Environmental Protection Agency and start banning this kind of chemical.”
And you thought the reaction to a resource charge on water was extreme, banning glyphosphate would be seen as a ban on farming. It’s that ubiquitous and central to New Zealand agricultural systems they wouldn’t know how to farm without it.
FYI there was a study done with cows.
Turns out that glycophospate levels in the cow blood reduce with protocol of betonite clay and sauerkraut juice. Some other stuff too but those are the main things.
DOC and groups like Forest and Bird and people who maintain school grounds would find it a challenge too. Still should happen though, they just lack imagination.
Maybe it is lack of money?? The alternative herbicides are often more expensive and may also have health risks. Most of them have issues with being ecotoxic to soil and/or waterways.
that is an issue too, but in my experience of lots of conversations on this, many people in DOC, Councils, orgs like F and B etc are ideologically committed to glyphosate. Many think it is benign. Monstanto did an amazing PR job on this a few decades ago. Remember Round Up 2 and the adds of the swan on the pond and the dude spraying around the edges? Bought hook line and sinker.
Many believe that it is the lesser of the evils available based on the science with probably carcinogenic being better than immediately toxic.
maybe. Most people I talk to honestly think it’s benign. It just breaks down right?
My retired horticultural father in law, stills maintains round-up is inert 15 minutes after application.
At the risk of sounding like a scratched record, the only way this behaviour (spray and walk away ground-keeping, 1080ing the Bush pest control), can be justified is in economic terms.
Indeed, because in a world where folk are squeezed by food prices, today’s price of organics will be the price of everything, post glyphosate.
there are some issues there in terms of economies of scale, supermarket subsidies etc. Also, the people I know on low incomes that have the capacity grow food to varying degrees to make it affordable, and they’re growing organic. Potential there.
True – I use it myself on a block of land on the access road and think of it as less harmful than other herbicides that target both grass & broadleaf species.
Over my working life I have had to use hazardous substances in small quantities and see it as a kind of necessary evil I suppose. I am more cautious these days than many (especially the blokes) and wear a respirator. I have heard older guys say you can drink it!!
Long term plan is to shade out the access road with kanuka etc to eliminate spraying and mowing. That will work for me but I don’t know what the alternatives might be for farming.
I think in NZ we use it in so may situations where it is just unnecessary. I hang out in organic circles so it’s pretty obvious.
Lol, those dudes should try drinking some roundup (maybe have them google it first).
(given climate change and drought, might want to consider planting less flammable trees).
Yes kanuka are very flammable but are fast growing so can swap them out once they have killed the gorse and grass.
Especially around urban areas you could replace Roundup with petrol or electric weed eaters quite easily. It would probably require slightly more frequent maintenance but not significantly so. I think Councils go for spraying because its marginally more convenient.
Not sure what farmers could replace it with because I don’t have experience in that area. No-till farming would help though as weed seeds wouldn’t have the bare earth and sunlight to get established.
Weedeating wouldn’t work on a paddock of old gorse, but a chainsaw would. And then there probably is something organic out there that you could paste onto the stumps to kill off the root system.
We have been farming for 10,000 years without round up. Just saying.
There are plenty of sustainable ways to manage gorse. Depends on what you want to do with the land instead.
Agree.
Well time the farming lobby was met head on.
Europe buys our farming produce. And still you can see in NZ whole hillsides dead brown with it, to re-sow pasture.
Clean out the EPA.
Well one down and a few more to go:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/101579088/epa-chief-scientist-jacqueline-rowarth-resigns-position-to-take-up-education-role
And get us sued under TPPA?? By a corporate incorporating in a country that can
Yes, absolutely essential to ban this crap.
And we should sue Monsanto (or whatever they call themselves today) for the costs incurred treating cancer resulting from widespread use.
Oh..wait… Tppa
Would that be
Glyphosphate
glyphosate
or glycophosphate ?
what did we do do before 1974?
Glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine) is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate. It is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops. It was discovered to be an herbicide by Monsanto chemist John E. Franz in 1970.[3] Monsanto brought it to market in 1974 under the trade name Roundup, and Monsanto’s last commercially relevant United States patent expired in 2000.
A quick search suggests it was a replacement for DDT
DDT was an insecticide, and evil shit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
You may mean Paraquat, that was a herbicide, and also evil shit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraquat
Glyphosate has the advantage of not being immediately fatal to humans or stock
Fatal non the less. Just a slow death, like the frog sitting in a pot …
so it was…..the replacement seems to be in terms of widespread adoption and the timing.
A search for ‘glyphosphate replaced’ brings up some interesting articles.
So the question is what did we do pre 74 to achieve what glyphosphate does now?…obviously something relatively effective (whether effective enough with double the population and climbing may be a different story however) as we managed to farm successfully pre 74
The advent of Roundup allowed a totally new farming system to emerge. Now pasture is renewed every 3-5 years, as that process is much easier with a cheaper and safer herbicide. (than paraquat) Our intensive farming practices depend on the flush of new grass, there’s fertilisers in the equation too.
Previously pastures had to be ploughed to kill the old growth, now it’s spray and drill, or pray on steep country.
The target here shouldn’t just be glyphosphate, but the whole farming system with it’s downstream effects. Replacing glyphosphate with something else won’t stop the environmental disaster that is New Zealand intensive agriculture
k…so if in the past we controlled weed growth and pasture renewal via tillage to a greater extent…and I suspect considerably more physical removal,i.e. grubbing or weeding….then one consequence of a ban on roundup could be increased fossil fuel use in agriculture.
Additionally it appears glyphosphate has enabled additional crop plantings per season according to an article I skimmed earlier, so potentially a reduced yield.
Another benefit of the Roundup / drill model is much reduced soil loss, most of which used to end up as sediment in rivers. Direct drilling is marvellous in this regard.
Yes, it also allowed extra rotations, any yield issues are dealt with by another round with the bulky (fertiliser spreader), so potentially more NPK run off into the river. The gps controls on bulk spreaders are pretty good now too, so application is very accurate hopefully reducing over application like what went on in the past.
Done properly the Roundup model should be lighter on the land, but, human nature / greed intervenes and it becomes a means to produce more to the same effects. So you still have the same effects.
The Roundup tolerant crop thing sort of died, along with the cows. Seed companies are having trouble selling it, and got in even more trouble when they “accidentally” shipped the GE seed rather than what the farmer ordered. Much dancing on the head of the pin over that.
so assuming all the previous it would be fair to observe that a ban on glyphosphate will result in increased carbon emissions (arguably)…a reduced yield (or additional fert or both)…higher labour inputs.
Adding that up equals higher food prices ….and reduced export competitiveness.
That may or may not be a price the wider public is prepared to accept, let alone the ag sector…or it may be acceptable until the effects felt.
Actually a ban on roundup and other forms of industrial farming would result in a massive reduction in atmospheric carbon as pasture that is undisturbed sequesters large amounts of carbon. Killing pasture, and replanting might reduce the amount of soil erosion, but it increases substantially the amount of Carbon that was being stored in the plant and in the soil back into the atmosphere in the form of Methane and CO2. Most of that carbon is actually stored in the micro-organisms in the soil. When you kill the plant you kill the micro-organisms that are dependent upon the plants roots. It is pretty much a symbiotic arrangement. By allowing the plants to grow they establish greater root systems and thereby increase the micro-organisms (fungi and bacteria) that ultimately sequester the atmospheric carbon fed to them by the plant into the soil, increasing the soil carbon.
If we are to really get to grips with mitigating Climate Change and tackling the already massive loading of atmospheric Carbon that is causing the rapidly increasing global temperatures. We need to think quickly how we manage our agriculture and our environment.
You can read all about it in this massive pdf:
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i1880e.pdf
@ Macro…thanks for link..am slowly working through it.
I note you state…..”Actually a ban on roundup and other forms of industrial farming would result in a massive reduction in atmospheric carbon”….without the ‘and other forms of industrial farming’ I see no evidence for that….and we are not going to stop farming on an industrial scale for we cannot…but we can perhaps change the intensity and land uses.
The increased CO2 (arguably) I was referring to was the average approx 100kg CO2 p/ hectare a typical tractor will emit when working up ground….an action that may increase without the availability of glyphosphate.
CO2 aside theres still the reduced yields and increased labour inputs and the flow ons to consider.
“Now pasture is renewed every 3-5 year”
Are you sure that’s correct? Pasture that’s managed correctly doesn’t grow broad leafed weeds. Grasses are perennials, they are long lived plants. I just don’t see the point in killing the whole pasture and re sowing. Besides it takes 3 or 4 months for pasture to be properly established. Thats quite a while for land to be not productive.
Considering clover is a important component of pasture, and glyphosphate doesn’t kill clover, there’s no point in applying this weedkiller.
I do know it’s used extensively in horticulture though – vineyards, orchards, etc
They renew pasture at a rate of 5-15% of farm area each year.
At 5% it takes 20 years to renew the entire farm, 15% – around every 7 years.
Could you supply a link?
In my experience prior to 1974 reseeding was only done when new and better grasses had been developed, or pasture had been managed so poorly, reseeding was the only option. The dairy and sheep and cattle farms I lived on never destroyed whole pastures, ploughed and reseeded. It just wasn’t necessary.
On Lands and Survey blocks young men and women were employed on some sort of scheme to walk the whole farm grubbing out thistles and ragwort.
LMGTY.
/
That might have been a wee bit uncalled for joe90. Regardless, now sitting on bookmarks bar 🙂
“Pasture renewal programmes vary widely across NZ, typically ranging from 0%-15% of farm area each year. The average on dairy farms is 5-10% compared to 2-5% on sheep farms. ”
I think Google intends that information it offers is meant to be read.
And understood. Guess it’s just beyond some though.
Assumption there that what the supplier sells the farmer works, or the farmer uses it correctly. Lots can go wrong. Most of what got sown around here will have to be redone next year because climate.
My 3-5 year figure is an observation of reasonably intensive properties around here (Whakatipu) 5-15% gets thrown out if there’s an ag or fodder crop (sometimes both) in the rotation, effectively doubling it or more.
I used to spray a mix of Paraquat and Simozine when i worked in a plant nursery in the mid-1980s. The rules were full wet weather gear and respirator and if you got any on your skin to shower immediately (which i did one day). I thought “fuck this” and found a new job within a few months.
You were lucky! I was using the stuff in the 1960’s working in summer hols while at Uni. The local parks sent me off with a open 44 gal drum on the back of the tractor to spray the gorse at the back of the local grass tennis courts. So off I went – not one item of protective clothing on – because – well what was that?? Anyway unbeknown to us the drum actually had a slight leak. For weeks after you could see where I had been 😈. The tennis club were not pleased!
Fortunately I seem to have avoided getting any of the stuff on me and haven’t had any after affects (that I am aware off 😉 ).
Paraquat
2,4,5,T
Agent Orange.
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#New_Zealand
Supposedly you could drink that stuff too.
Funny how many Vietnam vets suffered afterwards though.
And more than a few New Zealand farmers, factory workers and nearby residents too
This is a liitle off topic but related –
On 18 February 2018, some of us were involved in a discussion under 5 in Open Mike* where Carolyn Nth posted a call from an organisation called Avaaz for donations to fight a 168 page US court subpoena from Monsanto requiring Avaaz to disclose “every private email, note, or record we have regarding Monsanto, including the names and email addresses of Avaazers who have signed Monsanto campaigns!!”
* link https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-18-02-2018/#comment-1450415
None of us really understood what this was all about so Carolyn and I did some research and posted our results back at 5.2.1 and 5.2.1.1. Lots of links there with background to Avaaz; but in brief, this subpoena is in relation to Avaaz’s campaign against the renewal application by Monsanto and Bayer to the EU and its agencies for Glyphosphate (eg Round-up).
The short story to this is that Avaaz fought a major campaign against the renewal over a year – but in November 2017 the EU renewed the approval of Glyphosphate but only for five years as opposed to the 15 years sought. Monsanto then filed the above mentioned subpoena.
I had been meaning to keep an eye on this and was prompted to do so by your post today. Nothing further on the Avaaz situation since a Feb 23 Guardian article which was still about the subpoena. Avaaz’s website does not provide any obvious update but is still calling for donations ($136K raised so far).
Back on topic –
As part of my research into the above I discovered this link to RNZ’s website, which provides a good source to keep up-to-date on what is happening on Glyphosphate in NZ. There are some good summaries on there on what is currently (eg 23 March) going on with the EPA, for anyone interested.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/search/results?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=glyphosate&commit=Search
Note – In the above, I changed glyphosate to glyphosphate in my paras 2 and 3 because I thought I had spelt it wrong. I was right the first time but cannot now change these back. Sorry.
Thanks for this update
here here. I agree.
We want change or we will vote you out.
That’s a gutsy response from the many thousands of young people who marched on Washington towards greater gun control and against gun violence yesterday:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/delaney-tarr-march-for-our-lives_us_5ab678d8e4b0decad04a5df7
There’s always hope in the US of A.
I want to see this movement survive beyond the mid-terms.
“Hundreds of thousands march for gun control in the US”
NRA goes silent in midst of protest.
Unusually, President Trump keeps away from making a tweet.
Politics is all about pressure
They’re rattled.
.
In what can only be described as a desperate plea for attention, the NRA has released a new video that takes aim at survivors of the Parkland shooting, telling them that if their friends hadn’t died, “no one would know your names.”
The video, titled “A March for Their Lies,” was posted to NRA-TV’s YouTube channel just ahead of the student-led March for Our Lives event scheduled for Saturday in Washington, D.C.
In the clip, NRA-TV host Colion Noir lashed out at the teens who survived last month’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, mocking them for their youth and even taunting them about the deaths of their classmates.
Noir brought up the recent school shooting at Great Mills High School in Maryland, telling the Parkland survivors he wished an armed resource officer had been at their school “because your classmates would still be alive, and no one would know your names.”
“The media would have completely and utterly ignored your story,” Noir said, before falsely claiming that the media had not covered the school shooting in Maryland.
https://shareblue.com/nra-taunts-parkland-survivors-march-for-our-lives/
The Guardian has given over its editorial this weekend to the student journalists and they are giving great reads. Very inspirational.
They say they’re going to call AR 15’s Rubios, and now this….
…and this is just sad.
Compare with Black Lives Matter. Reminds me of this line in the Columbine movie
“Middle Amercia, now it’s a tragedy, now it’s so sad to see, in upper-classity”
Politics is all about pressure. II
Politics is all about pressure III
In Canada yesterday, federal politicians from three different political parties joined together in an act of civil disobedience.
Former Liberal candidate Briony Penn, Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart were all arrested at Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby tank farm.
Here in New Zealand, civil disobedience from sitting MPs has not been witnessed since the days of the highly successful anti-nuclear ship protests.
It was this sort of powerful direct action leadership, that shifted the whole of parliament in this counttry, including two National Government MPs Marilyn Waring and Michael Minogue to vote for the opposition party’s private members bill to ban nuclear ship visits. To prevent the vote being taken, the National Government Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was forced to call a snap election. The rest is history.
Kia kaha Elizabeth May, Kennedy Stewart and Briony Penn. May your brave stand shift public opinion and the Canadian Government to act against oil sands.
Politics is all about pressure IV
“Bernie Sanders to Parkland Students: You Have the Power to Change America”
(In this country in my generation; John Minto, Joe Hawk, Whina Cooper, Eva Rickard, to name just a few.)
The lesson for Auckland if the city continues to spend public money expanding the motorway system, over investing in public transport, is that Auckland will become a poorer more crime ridden and polluted place.
“By Focusing on Cars Over Public Transportation, Cities Continue to Foster Inequality”
“Medellin’s Amazing Metro System: Colombia Uses Public Transport To Drive Societal Change”
This governments’ transport Government Policy Statement comes out this week.
It’s going to be a goody.
Let us hope that it includes deeply burying this particular piece of motorway madness from the Nats. beyond all hope of it ever being exhumed to see the light of day.
http://www.times.co.nz/news/petition-save-mill-road-corridor-project-launched/
Nutters
https://www.facebook.com/judithcollinsmp/videos/1556452037765877/
1000% Jenny.
Our NGO just wrote to Transport Minister of regional development Shane jones and Transport Minister Phil Twyford three days ago on this; here it is.
We want less trucks more rail.
CEAC.
Protecting our environment & health.
In association with other Community Groups, NHTCF and all Government Agencies since 2001.
Public COMMUNITY letter;
22nd March 2018.
Hon’ Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Development & other Ministers.
Dear Ministers,
This is a letter of support for and a challenge to Shane jones as our “champion of all our provinces” We agree Government is to be held accountable and we encourage anyone who wants to hold all authorities accountable for environmental issues should be supported also.
Thank you for your hard work and diligence to keep authorities accountable Shane & Winston.
Our SOE Kiwi rail is now in need of serious investigation as it has also a bad CEO in need of being replaced by a real rail engineer and not just a patsy for the previous National Government policies who hated using rail to lower the climate change emissions, which will become the “nuclear moment our children’s future.”
National encouraged closing regional rail freight in favour of using road freight which is seriously degrading our air and water quality and causing catastrophic weather events and floods, public health injuries, and declining health and this current Labour Government are not yet radically increasing any regional rail freight use to meet their future climate change emissions target that government have signed up to by 2035-50 as a carbon neutral policy.
Save the Gisborne rail service as it is not being considered for inclusion by Labour yet.
Kiwi rail CEO Peter Reidy must go as he is not supporting labour coalition plans to use rail freight policy in line with the Labour party’s 2005-15 “National rail strategy” to connect all ports to rail services to lower climate change emissions.
http://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/Import/Documents/nationalrailstrategy.pdf
QUOTE from ISBN 0-478-10005-1 Forward from Pete Hodgson 2005 as Minister of Transport.
“Now we have brought New Zealand’s rail infrastructure back into public ownership, and the vision and objectives of the New Zealand Transport Strategy will be applied to New Zealand’s railway network.
Through the National Rail Strategy, the Government is demonstrating its commitment to retaining the existing network; to investigating the development of a number of new railway lines; and to maximising the use of rail transport. The aim is to move people out of cars for urban journeys, and freight off roads, wherever possible. For freight this means a focus on bulk or containerised loads, including traffic such as milk or logs. For passengers it means a focus on busy urban corridors in the larger centres, and using smart thinking to manage congestion.
This is an exciting time in New Zealand transport, with a dynamic vision beginning to achieve real results, working towards an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable transport system. The Labour Progressive government acknowledges the contribution of the Green Party to the development of this Strategy, and both the Green Party and the United Party’s support of the government’s transport policy.
Hon Pete Hodgson” Minister of Transport 2005
Warmest regards,
CEAC Secretary.
[deleted]
[Ed, you were banned until the 31st. Pulling shit like this is asking for a very long ban to be handed down. Don’t comment until such times as your regular details have been cleared from the blacklist]
What are you doing here?
You were given a two week ban on 17 March. By my count we should not be seeing you here until 1 April.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-17-03-2018/#comment-1461968
And yes, I know that you have several avatars and this is one you have used before.
Samples only
https://thestandard.org.nz/russian-to-judgment/#comment-1461762
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-16-03-2018/#comment-1461743
And yes, we know that you went to The Daily Blog while on this ban and asked someone to post a comment here on your behalf which someone duly did.
https://thestandard.org.nz/russian-to-judgment/#comment-1464099
https://thestandard.org.nz/russian-to-judgment/#comment-1464625
Wow veutoviper your research is second to none
Maybe someone could have a crack at explaining just how those Aussie cricket players could be so stupid? Even if they did gain an advantage in the moment how could they possibly think it wouldn’t be caught on camera and expose them for cheats?
http://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/43526870
Like our white collar criminals here in Aotearoa,
(MOH coleman and Manukau mould, CCTV building engineers, ex PM and ex MOD regards Afghanistan murders and subsequent cover-up), they are above the law and consequences don’t apply to them.
Our ocker cousins have form for this sort of thing.
Shane Warne and his ‘diet pills’ (speed to you and me) and the Chappell brothers disgrace come to mind.
NZer called Pringle ball tampered in the 90s playing Pakistan.
The probably thought a test win would outweight the negative press and ICC penalties, which are essentially a slap on the wrist.
I reckon they are so pissed off at the wife cracks they wanted revenge. Anger clouds the thinking. Especially when you have gone all holier than thou in selfcrighteous indignation.
GlennTurner has very sad stories of the comments made to him by Aussies about his Indian born wife. They have always been able to dish it out but never been great at taking it
Well the got away with this in 1981 – so why not now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbOq-oe2kN8
Except underarm was still in the rules at that time. Tampering is, mindlessly on a Level 2 offence
Well that is true – except that it was clearly not in the spirit of the game – ie it wasn’t cricket. That’s how the rules develop. Eg the body line series when the Aussies were subjected to a series of fast deliveries directed at the body and a stacked leg side field. That cheating by the English on that occasion led to the rule restricting of the number of fields men behind square leg to two.
Ball tampering has been around for as long as there has been cricket. Some of it more obvious than others. This occasion happens to be a rather obvious and rather more serious example.
Two words. Aussie. Stupid.
Pity Ritchie Benaud’s no longer with us – he would have some choice words for them – class act was Ritchie.
Examples of how justice is affected by wealth and access to power:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/102350200/exclusive-brethren-members-in-cleanup-operation-after-fatal-crash
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12019494
Great news – 4000 homes to be built on Unitec land.
Whenever I go there for work which is once or twice a year I alway think what a great development it would be. There are acres and acres (literally 53 hectares) of space right next to a new motorway interchange. For one thing this means the traffic increase will have short runs to the motorway system rather than through streets.
Mount Albert train station just metres from the south eastern corner of this site.
Properly planned a lot of services could be within the new development reducing the need for residents to go elsewhere for daily stuff.
Unitec have wanted to downsize that 53 hectares into 9 for some time now.
You got to wonder why the Nats didn’t think of this – oh that’s right, when they’re not denying the existence of a housing crisis, they are ideologically opposed to fixing it.
And they weren’t going to get a contribution to the party coffers out of UNITEC like they could with the SHA malarky.
I hope that the infrastructure is capable of handling the additional stormwater, gas, fibre, water and roading. And this is to service 10,000 people a development housing the pop. of Queenstown or Gore
http://www.tageo.com/index-e-nz-cities-NZ.htm
Imagine 4000 homes in 44 ha. a density of 99/ha.
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2012/02/10/what-does-density-look-like/
Developments like this may be appropriate for a hectare or 2 BUT 44 ha of this ???
And I note for those not experienced within the development industry, that the example on Symonds Street is bordered by public roads, for a development of 44 ha such roading infrastructure would be internal and using some of the 44 h.a, increasing the densities to well beyond 100/ha
It isn’t even 44 ha apparently.
According to the link about the story it is only 29 ha.
Still, Phil sys it will be wonderful and will have parks and shops and all those good things.
What is there that won’t be heaven on earth?
I’ll bet he wouldn’t buy there.
Are you sure about your numbers? In fact do you have a link for this story?
If they are reducing 53 ha to 9 ha that will leave 44 ha for the development.
I would assume that one third of that would be required for roads, services and of course I am sure there will be cycle ways everywhere. No doubt someone who knows more about this than I do will be able to correct this assumption if it is way out. You do say that these services could be within the development.
That leaves about 30 ha or 300,000 square metres.
If there are 4000 homes as you claim that will mean an average land area of, at most, 75 square metres per home.
How many stories is each block going to be? They clearly won’t be single story will they?
How big are the homes going to be?
Are there going to be any parks. Or shops? Or anything else?
This sounds like one of those dreadful high rise developments of pokey little flats that were built after the second world war and that every sensible country is demolishing because they were places that no sensible person wanted to live in.
And this meant to be progress? Is this the best that is being offered?
And when will the places be built?
Here you go.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/03/first-kiwibuild-houses-announced.html
Although being in a constant state of misery might preclude you from being forward-looking and positive about this.
Good God, it’s even worse than you said.
They are going to buy only 29 hectares. I suggest that you will only get 20 ha to put the houses on.
At 4000 houses that is going to give you a figure of 50 square metres of land per house.
Out of curiosity I had a look at what are the typical minimums for residential properties in New Zealand.
Hamilton will do as an example. For a single dwelling the lowest amount you are allowed is 350 sqm. For an Apartment block it is 150sqm/apartment. That is the absolute minimum.
http://www.hamilton.govt.nz/our-council/council-publications/districtplans/ODP/chapter4/Pages/4-4-Rules-General-Standards.aspx
Twyford thinks that only one third of that will be sufficient? Then he has the gall to claim that this is going to get rid of overcrowding?
You accuse me of being in a continual state of misery. If I had to live in the sort of place that idiot is proposing I certainly would be miserable. So I imagine would anyone else living in this country.
Would you think it was acceptable. Would you choose to live in such conditions?
Twyford really is a twat, isn’t he?
You do know they can build buildings of more than one story these days, don’t you?
You have discovered that have you?
I gave the figures for Hamilton, as a representative New Zealand city.
Those numbers of minimum land size have absolutely nothing to do with how many stories there are in the building.
If they are single dwellings the minimum size of the block of land is, in high density areas, 350 square metres. To have 4000 of them you would have to have a minimum land area of 140 ha for the houses, plus whatever you needed for the streets, parks, footpaths and so on.
Much, much more than at Unitec, isn’t it.
As far as multi-story blocks go that is what is normally referred to as an Apartment Block. Ever heard of them? They are normally multi-story. The minimum is 150 square metres of land per apartment, regardless of the height of the building. That is why I put Apartment Building numbers in. The density Phil Twyford seems to see as entirely reasonable is about three times the maximum allowed in Hamilton. The minimum there is 150 square meters of land per apartment. Kiwibuild is certainly going to provide miserable conditions for anyone who is going to live in them isn’t it if there are only going to be an allocation of 50 square metres?
And they would all be in high rise buildings. Hell on earth in the UK cities which have bowled them.
Last suburban housing development I did was in New Lynn.
On about one acre of land, we put:
– 120 apartments
– 70 car parks
– 30 retail stores and restaurants
– 1 major medical centre with 12 specialities
You just need good design.
You put all that on a piece of land with dimensions like 50 metres wide and 80 metres deep? That is about half the land required for a Rugby Field.
What are the numbers in the Auckland District Plan for building density?
How many stories does it have? How big is a typical apartment or a shop?
When you finished did it match the beautiful picture Phil puts forward?
“This is a beautiful and historic piece of land with natural features such as the Oakley Stream running through it. It’s close to education, employment and public transport. This new community will have open spaces, new parks and shops.”
And would you really as described the apartments as being houses, or even homes suitable for a typical family?
The height limits were good.
12 stories for one building, three for the other.
It was better than Phil’s – after all it was my show 🙂
The apartments were both integrated beautifully into the town centre with the library and community hall right next door, they were also fully integrated into a brand new underground rail station, plus a really large shopping mall.
95% sold off plans, and they hardly ever come up for sale.
I can see you are going through a grieving cycle for a quarter acre block, with a lawnmower, a great sward of parkland, a church spire ringing bells, mum at home putting out great white sheets on a line, she greets him every evening with scones and a pinafore apron, and every night your dad tucks you – but he leaves the door ajar so you still get a bit of light to keep those bad suburban monsters at bay.
lol
“I can see you”.
If the drivel you spout after this phrase is really what you think I suggest you really should go to Specsavers as the ad suggests.
The only part that has any resemblance to reality is the bit that says
“she greets him every evening with scones and a pinafore apron”.
That doesn’t apply to me though. Your beloved PM seems to be one of the few who provide such a display of blissful house wifery.
Isn’t this story just so sweet?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/102577041/ed-sheeran-pops-over-to-prime-minister-jacinda-arderns-for-a-cuppa-and-scones
Ad , It would be of interest the family makeup of such developments, from what I have seen, families in such developments are as rare as the Northern White Rhino !!
Oh please.
They have all kinds of families.
New, old, young, small, big.
Even just couples!
Even single people!
Even cats!
It’s just amazing the diversity of reality up in the Big Smoke.
Yes Ad, like they do in Australia. Some homes are rented, some purchased and as you say, well designed with all amenities. This is 9 km to city centre, has a golf course nearby, parks and open spaces and roading established.
Alwyn,
Would all your negativity at labours home building plan mean that you were also suitably pissed off at national’s nine years of sitting on their butts doing nothing, but selling state house for peanuts, and buying expensive motels to rent to poor homeless families at high prices?
I was pissed off with the way National largely ignored the problem for the first EIGHT years. then in the last year they started doing something, On the other hand it got even worse even faster under the 1999-2008 lot. I wonder who they were?
National sold some state houses. They were either ones where there was no demand, or some that were sitting on enormously valuable blocks where you could get enough for a single old house to build 4 or 5 others. I see no need for the State to continue to retain State Houses worth more than a million dollars.
The current lot also are being quite stupid retaining old 2 bedroom places when the demand is for larger properties.
I am unaware of National buying motels.
I realise that it is against your religion to answer questions but if you really want an opinion on that you are going to have to provide evidence of it happening. Otherwise I am going to suspect that you have just made it up.
The Nats wanted private enterprise to put up the money. That amount 29 hectares would require Government investment. Well done Phil.
“You got to wonder why the Nats didn’t think of this”
ummm…. this block of land has been going through the process of being freed up for housing, since 2016… by National.
I have had a look and I can see Unitec itself has been trying to do something on this for a while but no mention of the Nats being involved.
Sad! 😉
I also notice the extensive area currently planted in trees.
Will these be removed and we are left with a sterile high density development.
And as I commented earlier that this proposed development will cater for a pop. of Queenstown or Gore – what support will there be for exisiting schools e.g. Gladstone, Mags etc as Queenstown and Gore have a couple of Primary, an Intermediate and High School
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/102567247/4000-homes-to-be-built-in-mt-albert
And a final observation – I do not believe that 4,000 dwellings are able to be built under the current council zoning, and if I am correct the time it will take time to progress a private plan change, that will involve traffic management, stormwater etc.
I cannot see any physical work well after the 2020 election, let alone occupants- which could beyond 2022.
They already did the plan change.
There’s tonnes of trees in the masterplan.
If you are in Auckland you should pop up and take a look at the site for yourself – it will put your mind at rest.
There still is required resource consents, and there are still years of process from this link ….
http://www.mtalbertinc.co.nz/unitec/
When will the first homes start rising? Probably not any time soon – at least on the bulk of the land, because Unitec first needs to sort out its own precinct, and that will take years from start to finish.
While the precinct has been enabled for development; public opening of the roads to the south (Renton, Rhodes and Laurel) needs resource consent and the council will have to assess who would be affected.
Before this, however, Unitec may choose to create a private road which can also be opened to the roads to the south, but the consent process for that would not involve the adjacent community.
Any development on the precinct (buildings, subdivision) will require an ITA, which includes the provision of walking, cycling, vehicle and public transport modes. Additionally, after two years, any resource consent applications for further development will need an updated ITA.
And I note that the fact sheet that accompanies today release is for “• Unitec has already conducted comprehensive due diligence on the site’s housing potential, which suggests it is suitable for a large scale residential development approaching 3,000 houses. ” NOT 3,000-4,000,
Very little of that will be a problem for this development.
There won’t be any appeals because UNITEC is an exceedingly motivated vendor, and they surround the site. The development – as National noted today – has been around for a while and will take none of the regulators or politicians by any surprise. This one will have a very smooth passage.
Re cycleways, there was a major cycleway construction right through the UNITEC site as part of the Waterview Tunnel development. This cycleway in turn links to the SH16 cycleway that goes all the way in to downtown, and all the way up the Northwestern Motorway to Te Atatu. It will be interesting, though, to see how they are going to make sufficient PT service to truly make it a car-free development. Usually parking-absent developments are closer in to town than this.
The big constraint will be an actual developer to take on the job. Things are pretty tight out there.
I suspect however that the Minister’s HLC Company is waiting in the wings, together with Te Whanau O Waipereira and Ngati Whatua property arm.
And the Nats attitude to tertiaries essentially forced Unitec to sell to keep itself open and relevant. The difference will be that Nats would have had some Developer mates lined up with token affordable homes thrown in to appease the peasantry
Remembef there are existing buildings with connected services and the Hospital laundry was a huge operation there too. It woukd have had water and wastewater equivalent of many homes?
Yes Ad good advice for the negative to see it first.
“If you are in Auckland you should pop up and take a look at the site for yourself – it will put your mind at rest.”
On Radio NZ ‘bulldog Collins’ said Labour just borrowed the plan National already had ticked off by them, but the only change was that labour made was it was switched to using Government money where National of course always want to use private financers and their money rather than have a “NZ owned housing development.”
Funny that when you look up the real meaning of “National” it reads essentially (my words) “for the people of the country”‘
National seem to want all overseas investors to own NZ now.
And Nats were not earmarking 40% to be affordable.
The land has been earmarked for housing for some time. As a former employee there I can tell you we knew it was being sold off for homes and to pay for Unitec’s trade building and hub upgrades, a few years ago.
The Nats wanted private enterprise to put up the money. That amount 29 hectares would require Government investment. Well done Phil.
I remember it was one of John Key’s first proclamations that Hobsonville shouldn’t be forced to have a mixed strata of housing and community because it would ‘sabotage people’s house prices’. That was back in 2007 or something.
If that Nats were allowed to do the same thing at Carrington there’d be 10 mansions each with 12 acres of manicured grounds, tennis courts, and olympic sized swimming pools.
Good win for a families here against spiteful landlords. The low penalty and that these landlords don’t have to give a reason for eviction is two of many, many issues this government badly needs to address in the Tenancy Act.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12018256
NZ Invest are the ones who pretend they’re working for both property investors and first time buyers. Guess they’re not working for renters though.
NZ Invest can rot and die as far as I’m concerned.
That shithead Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi, but nothing happened to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti2bVS40cz0
Just looking at a stuff story on the Plunket society. (moving community funds to head office).
Yes it has a specific role and it is being funded to around $1700 per birth .
Not easy to tell from the website what “actual another pair helping hand services ” they provide but the usual stacks of (lecture style) written advice plus a Thursday podcast for those who have the time (LOL).
But maybe time there was a look at all the funding going into the 0-2 years and the 3-5 years. There seem to be lots of programmes in this area but is all this money actually creating services that are being accessed by those in need.
Kelvin Cruickshank helped find a body.
Only found out today when I had a chance to flick through one of those weekly mags.
I guess I’ll have to re-eveluate my existential belief system then, lol.
Fucking parasite.
+1
Fucking parasites
GOLD!
Some more selected quotes fro Why we can’t afford the Rich
In other words, it’s the lenders that are morally deficient.
There’s that moral deficiency again – pure bludging.
Actually, interest needs to be eliminated. It does nothing beneficial for society while becoming a drain on it so as to allow the rich to bludge off of everyone else.
My bold.
It’s obviously not wealth creation – it’s wealth extraction from those who actually produce it. The financial sector is a parasite – and that’s putting it nicely.
Is this a book?
Yes.
Cheers, I’ll add it to my reading list (haven’t got up to Piketty yet so….I have a long list)
So the Moslems are on the right track?
So was Christianity for awhile.
‘Inhuman ‘ to expect council staff to be denied business class travel!
https://youtu.be/YjQuy0MesMU
It fucking is inhumane to deny any worker comfortable travel!
Hmmm how is it inhumane when hundreds of humans, including me, fly economy.
It’s a job. And It’s no less acceptable to ask them to fly long distance in cattle class than it was to ask me, a large human, to travel long distances in the backseat of a TK crew cab.
Well, if it’s inhumane to have people travelling in cramped quarters with dirty toilets then perhaps we need to regulate the airlines more to ensure that they’re not profiting from such inhumane practices.
Emma Gonzalez is simply amazing.
They’re exercised
#cuban flag
This is what democracy looks like
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/heres-the-latest-photos-from-march-for-our-lives_us_5ab653e7e4b0decad04a44e6
‘
This is not what democracy looks like.
Greenpeace New Zealand Director in court for protesting.
“Greenpeace protest: Russel Norman committed for trial”
Russel Norman and Sara Howell refused diversion despite considerable pressure from the Crown to do so. If Norman and Howell had accepted diversion, which meant them pleading guilty. A guilty plea by especially by Russel Norman. Greenpeace’s director would have implicated Greenpeace the organisation, which is facing the same charges as the director. The Crown offer of diversion was not made to the organisation.
If you want to destroy Greenpeace. You have to come through us first. Is the Greenpeace Director’s message to the Government and the Crown.
“Judge-alone Trial”
The significance of a judge-alone trial, is that this is a political decision, making this a political trial. The Crown backed by the departing National Government did not want a repeat of the Jury trial that acquitted the Waihopai Three.
Who decides whether a jury is used in a criminal trial?
This is not what democracy looks like. II
Greenpeace New Zealand Director in court for protesting.
Political trials need to be heard by the “Little Parliament”.
It is a disgrace and a perversion of democracy that it is not.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-08042011/#comment-317412
It is a disgrace and a perversion of democracy that the Greenpeace director is being tried for protesting, in the first place.
If the Andarko Amendment, or something like it, had been in place during the anti-nuclear ship protests New Zealand’s nuclear weapon free status, of which we are rightly proud of, could not have been achieved.
The AM Show I agree with Mark lets not bag our Australian cousins Cricket test team to much after all everyone makes mistakes and I’m sure there are others who have dune a similar offense chin up guys.
The big anti gun protests in America by the mokopunas is a great thing . I have other words on this subject but I don’t want others using them to attack these other helping the mokopunas you see the mokopunas have impunity Kia Kaha people enough said.
Face book is a good tool for family’s to keep up with each other my children all have a page it is a good tool for business I would have had a page my self but the Gisborne man has been harassing me for longer than face book has been around and that is the reason why I chose not to have a Face Book page .
When I go to Waiapu to a whano function I stay with whano our wharenui fulls up quite fast and there are no hotels up there m8 P.S The new carving to my Marae are going up soon . When my children were younger we use to stay with whano on all our trips but my family is to big now so we stay at hotels now .Ka kite ano
AM Show I’m studying OUR Maori culture at the minute I don’t have a lecturer or mentor this is a good thing as I will come to my own conclusions on this subject.
Nurses should be payed more 10% up at least they treated me humanly and with respect when I need there services . Ka kite ano
I have a Maori cultured relative he has being in the same job for years he is a good leader he told me that he was offered a higher position and declined this was about ten years ago his words were I can’t be bothered with the hassle .
I am going to tell my relative that he has to take the position with more mana my reason is that when Maori take on higher positions with mana they will be helping lift all Maori with them. So this is ECO MAORI challange to all Maori cultured people If you are offered a higher position take it or strive for a higher position in work or life and you will be lifting Maori mana as well you will most likely employ maori and so on enough said . Ka kite ano P.S be nice in the way you go about achieving these challenges I have set for you.
ECO MAORI is Listening to this
https://youtu.be/FM7MFYoylVs?list=PLzyYbaYKbahnDKc2MS0TEl7kGD2LIMr2F
Mana Wahine
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12017134
P.S Te kumara never tells how sweet it is Ana to kai
One of my extended whano who is a great orator in Te REO was taken down by lies and decidet. He is a great Ngati-porou leader the gossip was that he was guilty but ECO MAORI found out through other sources that he was framed can’t have them Ngati-porou haveing another great leader.
Kia kaha Ka kite ano P.S his wife gets a lot of air time now Ka pai
Newshub Mike it is a good thing that these sand flies are testing Eco Maori Mana because I won’t trust anyone till they have been tested now .
Te Ihorangi and Whaitiri papa are strong no Ingrid . Te kumrua never tells how sweet it is Ana to kai Ka kite ano
Newshub the Top twins deserve all the fame they have for the wonderful shows they have gifted to us over the years they are the way Kiwi use to be like David Clark Fred Dag an Murry Ball Tui Teka and Billy T James Ka kite ano
The Project Jeremy shonky is getting what he is owed . Yes our Ossie cousins strive to win and yes I watch that game of Cricket all those years ago Eco Maori can’t help but feel sorry for them they have stopped the sheep jokes .My condolences go out to Stan Walker and his Whano and yes whano go to the Doctor and get a check up enough said .Kia kaha Stan Ka kite ano P.S I see