Up early to watch dawn service on ODT, so was glancing at sites I'd not looked at for a while. I guess this is not as bad as the RSA's (Rhodesian Services Association) cooption of ANZAC day up in Tauranga, but the ignorance of history is astonishing – especially when linked to the slogan; "Lest we Forget"
The Military Service Act 1916 required the registration of non-Māori men aged between 20 and 46. They were sorted into two divisions – the unmarried or recently married, and everyone else. Some were chosen by ballot, initially from the first division and later from the second, and sent to training camps…
Men who objected to military service could appeal to the Military Service Board and about half of those called up did so. They could appeal on grounds of family hardship, public interest (that they were carrying out socially useful work at home) or religious objection. The boards rejected most appeals and unsuccessful appellants who refused to serve were imprisoned.
Oof! "Today we wear the puppy..", but I did like that she continued on despite the flub rather than drawing more attention with correction. Eg "Centenary.. uh; Centennial" just now.
Prayers now, which I can't be bothered with – one advantage of the Pandemic is that I don't have to pretend quiet respect for that.
What kind of clueless arsehole do you have to be to stand at the front of an ANZAC day crowd unmasked and chatting during the moment of silence between the Last Post and Reveille? Camera held on them for an uncomfortably long time too! There were enough unmasked that I am glad I didn't attend for my own safety's sake, but at least most had the grace to remain silent during the heart of the event.
I am actually slightly nauseated. But then I am also rather hungover, so it could be a bit of that too.
Anyway, to expand on my earlier point regarding the "Freedom" those NZers who participated in the "Great War" had:
The opening of a national memorial in Dunedin for conscientious objectors has been held up as a celebration of courage and prompted an apology from Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson.
The memorial includes an abstract depiction of Field Punishment No1, for which men were tied to posts and had their hands tightly bound behind their backs for hours at a time during World War 1.
Opening the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden yesterday, Mr Robertson said the punishment was a gross and inhumane form of state-sponsored torture.
‘‘I want to say sorry {-} it was wrong.’’
Mr Robertson said the apology was personal, rather than officially from the Government, and he acknowledged the suffering of conscientious objectors…
Several speakers, including Mr Robertson, referred to the 1881 invasion of Parihaka, which happened the same year Mr Baxter was born.
Why was this not an official governmental apology? Would that open them to claims for compensation from the tortured's descendants or something? I mean; ka pai ki Robertson for making the statement as an individual citizen, but it does ring a little hollow with his role as deputy PM.
Only Quakers, Christadelphians and, later, Seventh-day Adventists were automatically exempted from military service. Most other conscientious objectors were imprisoned for up to two years with hard labour, and sometimes returned to prison if they still refused to go to war. Fourteen especially determined conscientious objectors were forcibly shipped overseas and faced severe punishments – they included Archibald Baxter who later wrote about his experiences. At the end of the war New Zealand was the only country to deny conscientious objectors voting rights or employment in the public service or local bodies – for 10 years…
His son, the poet James K. Baxter, later wrote:
When I was only semen in a gland
Or less than that, my father hung
From a torture post at Mud Farm
Because he would not kill.
The giant $5.4 billion Hells Gates Dam project has received guaranteed funding, unlocking the agriculture sector in some of the driest parts of northern Australia.
Key points:
The federal government has committed $5.4 billion to building Hells Gates Dam.
The 2,100-gigalitre dam is forecast to unlock agriculture in northern Australia.
The dam is still subject to a business case and environmental approvals.
But the project remains subject to a business case expected in June this year, and other environmental approvals.
The Federal Government has since committed $54M towards Phase 1 of the Project which includes the $30M for the first stage of Big Rocks Weir at Charters Towers. The final Business Case for Big Rocks Weir was delivered to the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy and North Queensland Water Infrastructure Authority on 21 August 2020 and has had both State and Federal governments commit $60M for the construction of Big Rocks Weir.
The remaining $24M is for the Business Case of the Hells Gates Dam, including geotechnical and cultural heritage assessments, construction proposals, enhanced economic modelling works, environmental impact and social assessment and engineering investigations. The Business Case will assess and provide further investigative works into the findings of the feasibility study completed in 2018.
Coincidentally the latest Caspian Report covered some of the history of this plan.
The money shot….'Neither party wants to acknowledge the real causes of our inflation: explosive housing costs driven by leveraged investment demand and super-powered by monopoly power across most of the economy.'
Vote Luxon for PM and risk following Sri Lanka into economic disaster.
If you love tax cuts be warned
Causes of Sri Lanka’s Economic crisis
Lack of Foreign Reserves: Sri Lanka “has been running a trade deficit for decades.” …..
Hits to the Tourism Industry: …..such hits worsened the nation’s ability to repay its debt.
Agri-Sector Crisis: In 2021, the Rajapaksa government, with the aim of moving toward 100% organic agriculture, chose to ban chemical fertilizers. This decimated farmers’ yields,….
Ill-Advised Tax Cuts: In a bid to revitalize the economy, the government cut taxes. However, this had the backfiring effect of greatly impacting government revenue. The action also “prompted rating agencies to downgrade Sri Lanka to near default levels,”…..”
Government Mismanagement: Rather than supporting the local economy and boosting its exports, the Sri Lankan government has been borrowing vast sums of money to fund public services and imported goods…..
Russia-Ukraine Conflict: The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has led to a staggering “price inflation of crude oil, sunflower oil and wheat.”….
While our government may not be able to control things like hits to the tourism sector by the covid crisis.
Or rising costs of crude oil and wheat due to the war in Ukraine.
Or making unavoidable cuts to our agricultural emissions to save the planet.
Over the things our government can control, New Zealand would be very poorly served if we copied Sri Lanka's "Ill advised" tax cuts.
The other thing that sunk the Sri Lanka economy was that country’s massive amount of overseas borrowing.
The legacy of massive overseas borrowing by the Key government to bail out the financiers and billionaire investors who lost their investments after the GFC also has to be accounted for in this country.
You paint a misleading picture Ad. It is always better to deal in facts.
The profligate high-spending Key/English government added a huge amount to public debt between 2008-17 after the Clark/Cullen government of 1999-2008 had massively reduced public debt. The Ardern/Robertson government, 2017-onwards, was in the process of reducing public debt as the pandemic hit when, of course, public debt was bound to balloon.
You can see this from the 25 year chart on this site.
good info bearded .Luxons slip ups and selfishness shown up by direct questioning from Jack Tane put Nationals policy of crumbs for the poor and huge tax windfalls for the well off and the very well off like Luxon in the spotlight. Luxons plan was as inflationary as Labours as well so own goal by Luxon.Tane should have asked Luxon if he would cut Air NZ bailout to.Luxon was fuming by the end of the interview.Tane only mentioned the tax cuts Luxon would get from his parliamentry salary $18,000 a year not the income from his 7 rental properties and other investments maybe up to $30,000 a year plus in tax cuts. While the vast majority do it hard .Then govt revenue drops and no doubt National would have to cut spending on public services like Health,education,policing, and welfare denying payments to the homeless and disadvantaged.
And the books will be worse then forecast,due to the problem with falling asset values.The NZ superannuation fund lost 1.2 billion in the first two months of this year,which will have doubled in the last 2 months.
Those ethical investments are good creators of wealth destruction.
ACC will have a double problem with falling investment values,and increased medical costs not due to more accidents,but increased wages for health such as vehicle registration,fuel levy,income levy etc.
It is bad Ad, but could be miles worse. I have just read an article on Stephanie Browitt a survivor of Te Puia o Whakari White Island.
It is humbling and uplifting and says a great deal about the human spirit and our ability to overcome difficulties. Despair does more damage.
Hindsight is being clever after the fact. Luxon may think he has a handle on things, and yes he may improve with advice, but truly steam was coming out his ears and he was very red with shock at being challenged by Tame.
This is a double whammy, Pandemic dollars plus the oil shock/ wheat/ sunflower oil/ all combining to create difficult conditions.
Robertson and we are between a rock and a hard place. I don’t think the Opposition has any answers, just move the pieces and pay their piper.
We are a very inter related World now, and Luxon is no diplomat.
Sri Lanka has been operating a fixed exchange rate to reach the present situation. NZ went through a similar currency crisis in 1984 and has floated its exchange rate since.
The differences are NZ has a lot more space for fiscal policy interventions, the country mostly borrows in NZ currency (so if the govt wants any such debt to be repaid, or guaranteed the country has the means to make that payment).
As a result of this the countries are not really comparable.
You are correct Nic, Sri Lanka and New Zealand are not directly comparable.
But it would be foolish to ignore the lesson of Sri Lanka. Because you reap what you sow.
The Grim reaper.
Christopher Luxon sharpens his metaphorical scythe for tax cuts.
You reap what you sow.
Sri Lankan lessons: as you sow, so you reap
Abdul Bayes | Published: April 24, 2022 21:53:25
…..The reasons for such a sorry state of affairs of the Sri Lankan economy can be traced back to several factors.
First, the present government of Sri Lanka went for a dramatic reduction in both personal and corporate taxes resulting in lower revenue earnings and bigger budget deficit…..
Second, the president of the country declared in April 2021 that use of chemical fertilisers would be banned to pave the way for organic farming……
The takeaway lesson for New Zealand is this; If you really want to take radical measures to protect the environment and the climate, you must be prepared to tax the rich to pay for it.
Luxon on climate change.
'Random' [sic] government activity at huge cost is dangerous..
Pretentious necessity
@ 2;00 minutes ….if we look at transport, ….. we know there is a good technology and pathway to solve those emissions over the next 15 years.
@ 2:50 minutes …we've got an Emissions Trading Scheme.
@ 3:15 minutes ….the danger is a government that goes in with a lot of random activity at huge cost.
@ 3:50 minutes ….The market will sort that out.
@ 4:20 minutes …When we are talking about agriculture.
There is no obvious technological pathway to deal with agricultural emissions.
Unfortunately that narrative places the rich in the benefactor position of paying for a countries climate policy. Since they are paying they will ultimately determine the terms of the transition off fossil fuel. I don't think this is going to accelerate the transition. This is unfortunate as NZ can afford to fund many transitional policies as is, and wont actually face such a currency crisis as a result.
Reuters has articles describing the Central Bank devaluing to slow foreign exchange losses and the Rupee is otherwise described as a closed currency (not available outside Sri Lanka).
"Sri Lanka has a floating exchange rate system since 2001 which allowed the independent adjustment of the exchange rate according to the market forces of demand and supply. However, there could be interventions in the market for the purpose of curbing excess volatility in the exchange rate. The CBSL prescribes maximum net open position (NOP) limits for LCBs and closely monitors the activities in the domestic foreign exchange market to ensure an orderly functioning of the market."
I think its floating inside Sri Lanka is how to read that. But clearly their arrangements are not providing financial stability due to the amount of foreign denominated debt the country has taken on.
Not at all…it is quite evident that the suppliers of goods from offshore no longer accept the Rupee as payment and want hard currency and Sri Lanka has run out of reserves…a situation any economy, including NZ could face,
Confidence in a currency is tied to collateral and its obvious all confidence in the Sri Lankan economy has been lost….a floating exchange rate dosnt function when confidence is lost.
Theatre company tries to put on a queer culture sex education show for teens and their parents. Called The Family Sex Show (yes, really). All hell breaks loose. Stock writes a very funny but also nuanced and intelligent post about what happened and what the problems are and in the process breaks the binary.
The Family Sex Show was advertised as suitable for 5yrs +.
Link to the cleaned up website that now doesn’t suggest children use Google to search for “animals that masturbate” so they can draw pictures of them, can be found here:
hmm, I'm seeing conflicting things about the age bracket. But yeah, that's pretty clear, and yep, their sense of what's ok is well off. But we knew that from the name. I wish I could feel some confidence that lessons might be learned.
The title "the family sex show" is a red flag for me.
Introduction to knowledge about sex (and sex itself ) needs to be age appropriate.
Animals masturbating? Please. As an adult I don't see why I need to know about that. What is the purpose of getting kids to google search it? It embeds the idea that you can search for things of a sexual nature on the net……..
I am glad to hear apple a putting in a filter on their devices that filters out nudity. Good.
60,000 of new irrigated land on the other side of the Queensland ranges, funded by the Morrison government. One big new dam and several major reservoirs.
If the Australian Federal government wants to essentially replace much of Ukraine's agricultural production, pulling all the climate change floodwater from Queensland and tunneling it through the ranges to the west, and link up with the Murray-Darling, would be the way to do it.
I imagine there are plenty of areas in New Zealand that could easily grow wheat. For instance, Central Otago, where they tend to have very dry, hot summers.
Who knows, going forward, wheat production could become more profitable and less damaging to the environment than dairy production given that the set up and ongoing costs should be a lot lower I imagine.
Further to that, there is quite a bit of grain production in that area already, so could potentially be expanded.
Canterbury produces 70% of the worlds carrot seed.Agree on the land pricing,that was a result of low livestock prices and wool.There is still with some arable farmers who use livestock when they rotate the land to lie fallow,and put it back into pasture.
With constant droughts and rivers drying up and suffering degradation from nitrogen run off , cryptosporidiam andfaecal matter. Growing grains such as wheat and sunflower would be far more enviromentaly sustainable. With high prices profitable as well. also Chinas expansionism it would be smart to reduce our dpendence on Dairy production.
Arable farming is inherently risky….the returns are seasonal and fluctuate…especially when compared to dairy with its consistent output and monthly cheques.
As many cropping farmers are want to say, arable farming is a capital gain game….the capital outlay to return is considerable and dont really reflect the risks…and everyone in the chain clips the ticket.
My son Grant who was a Trade Cert Baker in a former life, tells me New Zealand produces flour that tends to make a heavy / wet crumb. It was mixed with Australian flour to lighten the crumb. With dry conditions and growing temperatures and improved varieties our wheat crumb may improve.
Other valuable crops could be sunflowers for oil and hemp for clothing As dairy prices go into retreat, other farming may begin.
UK think tank report on Russia's imperial delusion, what went wrong, expectations and conclusions.
The foremost conclusion is that Russia is now preparing, diplomatically, militarily and economically, for a protracted conflict
[…]
The pattern is universal.Almost all of Russia’s modern military hardware is dependent upon complex electronics imported from the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, China and further afield.57
[…]
Finally, the Russian decision to double down is a high-stakes gamble. If Russia mobilises and eventually overcomes Ukrainian resistance then NATO will face an aggressive, isolated and militarised state. If Russia loses then President Putin has now begun radicalising the population in the pursuit of policies that he will struggle to deliver. Failure to defeat the Ukrainian state after relentlessly comparing it to the Nazi regime may have serious consequences for Putin and those around him. To frame a conflict as existential and to lose must necessarily call the suitability of a leader into question among Russia’s political elites. NATO states therefore need to consider how to manage escalation pathways that follow if Russia is not only defeated in Donbas but finds its newly mobilised and poorly trained troops, with few remaining stocks of precision munitions, unable to deliver a victory in the summer. The death of Putin’s political project is plausible, but it has already inflicted immense damage internationally and risks doing considerably more.
So far, Russia’s attempts to expand its available military manpower has rested on pressuring conscripts to sign contracts of service and reducing the requirements for people to join without prior military service. For Russia to significantly increase its numbers it would need to retain its last round of conscripts and call up reserves. Both of these are politically contentious in Russia. Nevertheless, the propaganda narrative and local initiatives to rally support appear to be creating an environment in which 9 May can be used as a fulcrum to mobilise a much larger force. It appears increasingly likely that rather than use it to announce victory, the Russian government will instead use 9 May as the day on which the ‘special military operation’ is officially framed as a ‘war’
Probably scrambling up more forces by declaring war is possible. I think the biggest issue for the Russians will be arming the new troops.
I have seen a number of videos of Russian soldiers using vintage rifles etc. And, they are having trouble manufacturing new gear to replace the existing equipment being lost due to the sanctions.
As someone often critical of poor legislation, I appreciated this report from RNZ:
For an insight into how drafting works, The House [Phil Smith]chatted with Cassie Nicholson (who as Chief Parliamentary Counsel is the chief executive of the PCO) and Richard Wallace (who heads the drafting team) about the art of drafting law.
All law begins with a policy idea. Sometimes PCO is involved in that early, feeding back on how it could (and couldn’t) work. Cassie Nicholson says the entry point can vary. “Sometimes [we get] a fully formed policy paper to comment on, sometimes an idea that then we work with the agency to flesh out, but it can vary from quite detailed to a very high level idea.”
This early work is done with the policy and legal folk inside a ministry. Nicholson says this is “because we want ministers to be making a decision on as close to fully formed policy as possible, something that can actually be built when it comes to us”.
Wallace describes this as “testing the policy,” Nicholson calls it “kicking the tyres, (in a really gentle, friendly way) to make sure that actually we've worked through the logic and the wrinkles; we understand the anticipated flow-on consequences, both for the real world and the statute book”. No actual law is written until the policy is approved by cabinet so PCO doesn’t waste its time writing legislation that will never be law.
I was impressed at how they incorporate the principle of reflexivity into praxis:
Once it is approved, the PCO received drafting instructions outlining the legal effect to be achieved. Thankfully, no-one sits down and just blats out law from start to finish. Wallace says it’s an iterative process sending out drafts to government departments. “We continue doing that until we're all comfortable that we've addressed all the issues and that what we've got actually works. So we're not trying to do it on a single shot.”
Here's an insight into the psychology that comes into play:
Richard Wallace describes constructing law as both storytelling and puzzle solving. It is also answering hundreds of questions about what is really wanted.
You can summarise that last sentence as stakeholder interactivity. The Q+A format drives the process of design towards optimal output – in theory. As a grouch like me would point out, results suggest the theory often gets flawed by the practice!
The Parliamentary Counsel is not an individual but a large team… not just lawyers. They comprise publishing experts (who publish legislation), and IT and web teams (the law is published online); plus all the others that make an office run. PCO doesn’t offer legal advice to Parliament or the Government. That’s the Office of the Clerk’s team (for Parliament), and the Solicitor General at the Crown Law Office (for Government).
Wait a sec. "Its boss describes it as “the Government's legislative advisors”. So legal advice and legislative advice are different critters. Ok, got it. A fine distinction!
Crown Law, parts of DPMC, and legal counsel within the sponsoring Departments also have strong drafting roles. Some Departments are a lot better at gaming out the operational practise of new legislation than others.
Didn't make the msm last year, but a noteworthy report from the leading edge:
researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google’s quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine “time crystal.”
Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy.
Physics grad went huh??
In addition, a separate research group claimed earlier this month to have created a time crystal in a diamond. “The consequence is amazing: You evade the second law of thermodynamics,” said Roderich Moessner, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, and a co-author on the Google paper. That’s the law that says disorder always increases.
The time crystal is a new category of phases of matter, expanding the definition of what a phase is. All other known phases, like water or ice, are in thermal equilibrium: their constituent atoms have settled into the state with the lowest energy permitted by the ambient temperature, and their properties don’t change with time. The time crystal is the first “out-of-equilibrium” phase: It has order and perfect stability despite being in an excited and evolving state.
“This is just this completely new and exciting space that we’re working in now,” said Vedika Khemani, a condensed matter physicist now at Stanford who co-discovered the novel phase while she was a graduate student and co-authored the new paper with the Google team.
A revolutionary paradigm-shifter, seemingly plausible due to replication (two teams of physicists), but we await further developments that may point to utility.
The new time crystal demo marks one of the first times a quantum computer has found gainful employment.
With yesterday’s preprint, which has been submitted for publication, and other recent results, researchers have fulfilled the original hope for quantum computers. In his 1982 paper proposing the devices, the physicist Richard Feynman argued that they could be used to simulate the particles of any imaginable quantum system. A time crystal exemplifies that vision. It’s a quantum object that nature itself probably never creates, given its complex combination of delicate ingredients. Imaginations conjured the recipe, stirred by nature’s most baffling laws.
Quanta presents a summary of that recipe on their page. It uses this triad:
1. many-body localisation (a row of particles get stuck in synch)
2. eigenstate order (they retain symmetry when spin-flipped)
3. periodic driver (laser light triggers system flipping which perseveres)
A 2015 paper described it in these words:
when you tickle a localized chain of spins with a laser in a particular way, they’ll flip back and forth, moving between two different many-body localized states in a repeating cycle forever without absorbing any net energy from the laser.
Thus authenticity to claim the first workable demonstration of the mythical perpetual-motion machine. Now the challenge is to invent uses that users deem valuable…
A climate activist, Wynn Bruce, has died after setting himself on fire outside the US Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court had heard arguments in late February on an important environmental case that could restrict or even eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to control pollution. The court’s conservative majority had voiced skepticism of the agency’s authority to regulate carbon emissions, suggesting that a decision by the justices could deal a sharp blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.
…
Bruce set himself on fire in an apparent imitation of Vietnamese monks who burned themselves to death in protest during the Vietnam War. His Facebook page commemorated the death of Thich Nhat Hanh, an influential Zen Buddhist master and anti-war activist who died in January.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in a letter he wrote in 1965 to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had idolized those monks. Kritee cited that letter in another tweet on Bruce’s death Sunday morning.
“The press spoke then of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. It is not even a protest,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote of the monks, adding that “to burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with utmost courage, frankness, determination and sincerity.”
If it was indeed a protest then it must be witnessed. At it's end a protest is a performance, and if it is ignored then it is futile. Sadly for Wynn Bruce, and for all of us, it is seemingly easier to despair the systemic inaction of the status quo powers.
I encourage anyone feeling despair to reach out to those around you, like action on climate change, we can all support each other through this, be it just conversation and a cuppa, advice and encouragement, all the way through to developing and honing skills in gardening and composting, to reusing and reprocessing materials; We can all work towards food and material sustainability and that really helps to feel more positive.
In the last 13 years, nearly 160 Tibetan Buddhists have set themselves on fire in opposition to the Chinese government’s violent suppression of their country and national identity.
Bruce belonged to Shambhala, a Boulder-born Buddhist organization. He was also a regular presence at virtual sanghas, online gatherings of Buddhists to reflect and meditate, according to other members.
Last December, Bruce posted a quote attributed to Carl Sagan to his Facebook. “Don’t sit this one out,” it read. “Do something. You are – by accident of fate – alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of (y)our planet.”
In 2018, environmental advocate and civil rights lawyer David Buckel set himself on fire in Brooklyn. In a statement he emailed to multiple news outlets the morning of his death, Buckel explained that his “early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”
One must respect another's intent in ending their lives via such signalling. Not for us to judge spiritual motivations. The assumption that changes in public policy will result (triggered by mass realisation that they must happen) is based on a misread of mass psychology, unfortunately…
Are you saying that an isolated act, assuming it political, of self-immolation is not affecting public policy change or that any isolated and individual act is ineffective? Either way, it sounds your personal belief (aka reckon) rather than a generally accepted fact.
When a single act of self-immolation catalyses a movement, as has happened in other countries, you will be hard-pushed to ignore and categorically deny its influence in each and every case.
Yeah, just my take on the effect it seems to have on western countries. Your point is valid – a single immolation triggered the Arab Spring phenomenon that brought down a couple of dictators & threatened a few others.
So I suppose a better generalisation would be that the catalysis effect is culture-dependent. The symbolism activates a shared feeling that is likely to ramp up via contagion in suitable cultural/political contexts…
Population transfers, summary executions, mass deportations and the beginnings of an attempt to erase a nation and it's people from the textbooks.
But sure, it's all about de-nazification and NATO.
/
"Here in the Federation Council they found out that not all children" from the liberated territories of Donbass "have sufficient command of the Russian language. They will be retrained."
On February 24, Vladimir Putin announced the start of a "special operation" and Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Immediately after that, employees of the Enlightenment group of companies, one of the largest and oldest publishers of educational and pedagogical literature in the country, were urged to remove the “incorrect” references to Ukraine and Kyiv from all school textbooks. "Mediazona" talked with the editors of the publishing house about how the "cleansing" of history, geography and literature is going on.
[…]
So, from paragraphs that give examples of the heraldry of different states, including flags, a few years ago it was strongly recommended to remove the flag of Ukraine and replace it with the flag of any other country. If it is necessary to give an example of the capital in the chapter, Kyiv was replaced by another capital. “A couple of times I had to remove the US flag as well, but it’s simpler there, our program pays little attention to world history,” says one of the Enlightenment employees. Now editors should remove references to Ukraine wherever possible.
“That is, we are faced with the task of making it as if Ukraine simply does not exist,” his colleague says. “It's much worse when the textbook just doesn't mention a country. A person grows up without a knowledge base about some country, and then it is much easier for him to believe what he is told about it from TV.
The hardest part is for those who work on history textbooks: it is often impossible to remove references to Ukraine and Kyiv without compromising the content, then you have to change the wording to more “safe” ones.
Ljubljana, Slovenia (Reuters)Slovenia's populist Prime Minister, Janez Janša, lost a national election on Sunday as the environmentalist Freedom Movement party won more votes than his SDS party, according to preliminary figures from election authorities.
Janša, who had hoped to win a fourth term in office, conceded that he had been defeated in the vote, adding however that his SDS party had secured more votes than ever before.
"The results are what they are. Congratulations to the relative winner," Janša said, addressing his supporters.
The election had been expected to be tight but the official preliminary figures showed the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, leading with 34.34% of the vote, far more than expected, while the SDS secured 23.83%, based on 98.20% of counted ballots.
That would give the Freedom Movement, which campaigned on a transition to green energy, an open society and the rule of law, 40 seats in the 90-seat parliament, and the SDS 28 seats.
kicked off deal negotiations with Elon Musk on Sunday [who] has been meeting with Twitter shareholders in the last few days, seeking support for his bid… Many Twitter shareholders reached out to the company after Musk outlined a detailed financing plan for his bid on Thursday and urged it not to let the opportunity for a deal slip away, Reuters reported earlier.
The social media company adopted a poison pill after Musk made his offer to prevent him from raising his more than 9% stake in the company above 15% without negotiating a deal with its board. In response, Musk has threatened to launch a tender offer that he could use to register Twitter shareholder support for his bid on Sunday.
Liberals are freaked. Dunno why, but useful insights here:
Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor and professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, lamented that Musk was seeking to “control one of the most important ways the public now receives news” and “be the wizard behind the curtain” deciding what gets projected onto the world’s computer screens. Max Boot, a one-time conservative pundit now aligned with Democrats as a result of his opposition to Donald Trump, even suggested on Twitter that there was cause to worry about the future of democracy itself if Musk were to acquire the platform.
I have no doubt that a lot of right-wing complaints of oppression on Twitter are whiny grievance politics. In a recent study led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, two-thirds of “strong Republican” Twitter users thought it was “anti-conservative” to suspend accounts pushing the QAnon conspiracy theory about global pedophile cabals. The same study found that in the six months after the 2020 election, pro-Trump accounts were roughly five times more likely to get suspended on Twitter than ones supporting Joe Biden
Users have been banned, suspended and otherwise censored not only for attacking specific transgender women, but for making general statements such as, “All rapists are men. In U.K. law, rape is committed by a person with a penis.” Meanwhile, tweets that appear to call for the violent rape of a mainstream, left-of-center journalist who has been accused of transphobia for writing about the complexities of gender transition for minors are allowed to stay up.
This is less about intentional discrimination than about the instinctive progressive biases of many of the top staff at Twitter. Del Harvey, a Twitter veteran who served as the company’s vice president for trust and safety until last October, has been fairly open about her belief that preventing “harm” to “marginalized” users—women, racial minorities, LBGT people, etc.—should take priority. However noble the intent, this is a prescription for nannyism at best (especially since progressive discourse defines “harm” very broadly) and political bias at worst.
You can see why Musk wants to clean the thing up, eh? Then there's this glimpse into the twits & their leverage on the msm…
I do think one potentially good lesson from the Musk/Twitter saga would be to prompt a rethinking of the extent to which we have made Twitter our “town square”—given that only one in five Americans use it and 10 percent of users provide 80 percent of the content. (Notably, Twitter’s policing of election-fraud and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories has not prevented large segments of the population from embracing them.)
Part of Twitter’s outsize importance is that it’s the playpen of choice for media and for political activists. It can be a useful tool for news gathering and discussion, but it can also create a faux consensus increasingly adrift from the real world. Too many journalists are too married to Twitter.
Gates replied, “Sorry to say I haven’t closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.”
Musk confirmed that the messages were real and added that he did not leak them to the New York Times… Musk told Gates that he was unable to take his philanthropy on climate change seriously in light of Gates’ short position against Tesla.
Humanity is divided into serious folk & fun folk? Well, some are a bit of both, eh? Ole Bill was just having a bit of fun but young Elon didn't see the funny side.
"It's part of a larger conversation, because there are councils all around the country right now that are talking about the idea of co-governance. It's a very important kaupapa."
In a statement on Friday, Coffey said: "This is a Local Bill, so the changes are being requested by the Rotorua District Council, not the Government. As such, the Rotorua District Council will need to consider the implications of the Bill of Rights analysis, alongside the select sommittee."
"The proposed arrangements in the Bill would make the number of council members for the Māori ward disproportionately higher than the number of council members for the General ward in comparison to their respective populations," Parker wrote in his legal analysis published on Friday.
"As the disadvantaged group is those on the General roll, changing representation arrangements away from proportional representation therefore creates a disadvantage for non-Māori as they cannot in future elect to change rolls."
Parker concluded: "The Bill appears to limit the right to be free from discrimination affirmed in s 19 of the Bill of Rights Act and cannot be justified."
"As the disadvantaged group is those on the General roll, changing representation arrangements away from proportional representation therefore creates a disadvantage for non-Māori as they cannot in future elect to change rolls."
I imagine you have a vote in your ward and an at large vote.
As to proportion..
"The Council is currently pursuing a law change to enable an undemocratic representation model to be implemented. The model it prefers would consist of three Māori ward seats, three general ward seats, and four at-large seats. However, adopting this arrangement would give the 19,791 citizens on the Māori roll 2.6 times the voting power of the 51,618 citizens on the general roll.
The proposed model is not only unfair, it is also unlawful. Clause 2 of Schedule 1A of the Local Electoral Act requires representation from wards to be proportional to their electoral populations. "
107 years ago the Ottoman Empire kicked off it's effort to exterminate it's two million Armenian subjects. New Zealand is yet to acknowledge Armenian suffering. For shame.
I ran across a recent essay from The Brothers Krynn, which attempts to map common horror monsters onto the Seven Deadly Sins: https://canadianculturecorner.substack.com/p/horror-monsters-and-vice My interest, however, is not in the meat of the piece, but rather the opening paragraph: It is an interesting fact that in recent decades, Vampires have ...
Buzz from the Beehive Transport Minister Simeon Brown dutifully issued advice to all road users to keep safe on our roads during the Easter weekend. He encouraged them to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. ...
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealanders recently learned about a new feature film. It will be about former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – and taxpayers will subsidise it to the tune of NZ$800,000. Ardern had nothing personally to do with either the film or the subsidy. But her government’s ...
TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above that was recorded yesterday afternoon above between and The Kākā’s climate correspondent : An independent review panel into the emergency response to Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bayconcluded “that ...
There are now only a few days left to give feedback on the Draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport 2024-34 (see our earlier post this week on GPS submission guides). As we’ve reported, the GPS is a disaster for Local Government, so we were particularly interested to hear ...
Willis has pledged to go ahead with the debt-funded tax cuts, despite growing opposition from her own supporters worried about appearing fiscally irresponsible. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for ...
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
COMMENTARY:By Ronny Kareni Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding. Nowhere is this more evident ...
Analysis - Nicola Willis is holding firm on tax cuts despite the economic outlook being worse than forecast and critics urging her to wait, writes Peter Wilson for The Week In Politics. ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 29 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tombs, Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago The 5th-century Maskell panel showing Jesus in a loincloth.British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA When Jesus is shown on the cross, he is almost always depicted wearing a loincloth around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the Queen’s crown. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such ...
COMMENTARY:Jewish Voice for Peace The UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday — and for the first time since the beginning of the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians, the United States abstained rather than vetoing it. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, ...
Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
Twenty years ago today, Māori Television launched after much controversy. Jamie Tahana looks back on its survival and impact across two decades. Chad Chambers stepped onto the stage, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his face. His smile beamed as bright as his white freezing works gumboots, ...
Up early to watch dawn service on ODT, so was glancing at sites I'd not looked at for a while. I guess this is not as bad as the RSA's (Rhodesian Services Association) cooption of ANZAC day up in Tauranga, but the ignorance of history is astonishing – especially when linked to the slogan; "Lest we Forget"
https://twitter.com/Te_Taipo/status/1518183580794466304
https://teara.govt.nz/en/conscription-conscientious-objection-and-pacifism/page-1
Oof! "Today we wear the puppy..", but I did like that she continued on despite the flub rather than drawing more attention with correction. Eg "Centenary.. uh; Centennial" just now.
Prayers now, which I can't be bothered with – one advantage of the Pandemic is that I don't have to pretend quiet respect for that.
What kind of clueless arsehole do you have to be to stand at the front of an ANZAC day crowd unmasked and chatting during the moment of silence between the Last Post and Reveille? Camera held on them for an uncomfortably long time too! There were enough unmasked that I am glad I didn't attend for my own safety's sake, but at least most had the grace to remain silent during the heart of the event.
I am actually slightly nauseated. But then I am also rather hungover, so it could be a bit of that too.
Anyway, to expand on my earlier point regarding the "Freedom" those NZers who participated in the "Great War" had:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/conscientious-objectors-commemorated
Why was this not an official governmental apology? Would that open them to claims for compensation from the tortured's descendants or something? I mean; ka pai ki Robertson for making the statement as an individual citizen, but it does ring a little hollow with his role as deputy PM.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/conscription-conscientious-objection-and-pacifism/page-2
Has anyone seen any commentary in the Australian federal election campaign about the New Bradford Plan?
I can see Queensland Labor are pretty keen especially after the last big floods.
Was just thinking about whether Australia would go full-noise nationbuilding to replace Ukrainian wheat production, in time.
New Bradfield scheme on agenda as north Queensland prepares for floods (brisbanetimes.com.au)
Mad Bob (Bob Katter), usually have something on the Bradford Plan as it's one of his "Pet Projects".
Actually the scheme has been assured funding. Still subject to a business case being released in June.
More info here.
Coincidentally the latest Caspian Report covered some of the history of this plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGrDOR7lBQ4
Lovely and even-handed work by Mr Hickey this morning on the political economy of inflation and real estate capitalism.
The dirty little secrets inside our nation of inflation (substack.com)
Hickey absolutely nails it.
The money shot….'Neither party wants to acknowledge the real causes of our inflation: explosive housing costs driven by leveraged investment demand and super-powered by monopoly power across most of the economy.'
Vote Luxon for PM and risk following Sri Lanka into economic disaster.
If you love tax cuts be warned
While our government may not be able to control things like hits to the tourism sector by the covid crisis.
Or rising costs of crude oil and wheat due to the war in Ukraine.
Or making unavoidable cuts to our agricultural emissions to save the planet.
Over the things our government can control, New Zealand would be very poorly served if we copied Sri Lanka's "Ill advised" tax cuts.
The other thing that sunk the Sri Lanka economy was that country’s massive amount of overseas borrowing.
The legacy of massive overseas borrowing by the Key government to bail out the financiers and billionaire investors who lost their investments after the GFC also has to be accounted for in this country.
Actually it's this Labour government that has borrowed the most in many decades.
Both our public and private sector debt is astonishingly high under this government.
You paint a misleading picture Ad. It is always better to deal in facts.
The profligate high-spending Key/English government added a huge amount to public debt between 2008-17 after the Clark/Cullen government of 1999-2008 had massively reduced public debt. The Ardern/Robertson government, 2017-onwards, was in the process of reducing public debt as the pandemic hit when, of course, public debt was bound to balloon.
You can see this from the 25 year chart on this site.
https://tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/government-debt
The clear message being Vote Labour/Green for sound financial management.
good info bearded .Luxons slip ups and selfishness shown up by direct questioning from Jack Tane put Nationals policy of crumbs for the poor and huge tax windfalls for the well off and the very well off like Luxon in the spotlight. Luxons plan was as inflationary as Labours as well so own goal by Luxon.Tane should have asked Luxon if he would cut Air NZ bailout to.Luxon was fuming by the end of the interview.Tane only mentioned the tax cuts Luxon would get from his parliamentry salary $18,000 a year not the income from his 7 rental properties and other investments maybe up to $30,000 a year plus in tax cuts. While the vast majority do it hard .Then govt revenue drops and no doubt National would have to cut spending on public services like Health,education,policing, and welfare denying payments to the homeless and disadvantaged.
Excellent all round thanks Bearded Git. Selected stats can often skew the view.
Your cited graph net debt exploding under Labour-Greens in 2020-2021.
Back in 2019 Roberston sort-of still had a debt target.
Grant Robertson blurs the line on his debt target | Stuff.co.nz
But he’s basically given up. Net core Government debt is now $123 billion, 35% of our GDP.
Grant Robertson urges caution after Government books bounce back from Covid – NZ Herald
Much of that he threw at employers as wage subsidies to keep us sane in 2020.
Treasury has warned about the implications.
Treasury warning to Government: Trillions of dollars in 'unsustainable' debt cycle – NZ Herald
A decently-briefed Luxon would not find it hard to show where this debt has not been good for us.
And the books will be worse then forecast,due to the problem with falling asset values.The NZ superannuation fund lost 1.2 billion in the first two months of this year,which will have doubled in the last 2 months.
Those ethical investments are good creators of wealth destruction.
ACC will have a double problem with falling investment values,and increased medical costs not due to more accidents,but increased wages for health such as vehicle registration,fuel levy,income levy etc.
It "exploded" because of the pandemic as i said before,,,d'oh.
You would have just crashed the economy would you?
Shovelling an untagged $60b was not the only way to address the crisis.
Our grandchildren are going to be paying for the set of decisions they made in a hurry in April 2020.
New Zealand Gross GDP 43.6% Nett GDP 11.6%
Norway Gross GDP 41.4% Nett GDP -121%
Sweden Gross GDP 37.3% Nett GDP 5.5%
U K Gross GDP 104.5%Nett GDP 91.8%
USA Gross GDP 133.9%Nett GDP 98.7
Germany Gross GDP 69.7%Nett GDP 50.1
Australia Gross GDP 57.3%Nett GDP 34.4
Now NZ’s is 53% during a pandemic and a war?
How does New Zealand compare? You decide.
History is making that public debt binge and easy Reserve Bank money to make the evaluation decision pretty easy:
Pandemic response funding
+Reserve Bank credit availability
+manufactured house price spike
+global supply chain crisis
+Ukraine War
= local and global inflation and interest rates heading for 10% per year
So Patricia you can decide out of the following consequences:
$4 91 per litre petrol, $3.9 per litre diesel,
$7 for a bag of apples,
Mortgage payments doubling in a year,
And the quickest and highest class separation since 1985.
Anyone here remember October 1987?
Is it any different anywhere else?
… is not an argument in anyone's favour. Nor particularly relevant to us: it is our government that intervened the most per capita across the OECD..
We have 3 weeks to Budget 2022 and to the Carbon Zero budget.
Will the greatest and fastest debt+public subsidy in our history get us anywhere?
It is bad Ad, but could be miles worse. I have just read an article on Stephanie Browitt a survivor of Te Puia o Whakari White Island.
It is humbling and uplifting and says a great deal about the human spirit and our ability to overcome difficulties. Despair does more damage.
Hindsight is being clever after the fact. Luxon may think he has a handle on things, and yes he may improve with advice, but truly steam was coming out his ears and he was very red with shock at being challenged by Tame.
This is a double whammy, Pandemic dollars plus the oil shock/ wheat/ sunflower oil/ all combining to create difficult conditions.
Robertson and we are between a rock and a hard place. I don’t think the Opposition has any answers, just move the pieces and pay their piper.
We are a very inter related World now, and Luxon is no diplomat.
Sri Lanka has been operating a fixed exchange rate to reach the present situation. NZ went through a similar currency crisis in 1984 and has floated its exchange rate since.
The differences are NZ has a lot more space for fiscal policy interventions, the country mostly borrows in NZ currency (so if the govt wants any such debt to be repaid, or guaranteed the country has the means to make that payment).
As a result of this the countries are not really comparable.
You are correct Nic, Sri Lanka and New Zealand are not directly comparable.
But it would be foolish to ignore the lesson of Sri Lanka. Because you reap what you sow.
The Grim reaper.
Christopher Luxon sharpens his metaphorical scythe for tax cuts.
You reap what you sow.
The takeaway lesson for New Zealand is this; If you really want to take radical measures to protect the environment and the climate, you must be prepared to tax the rich to pay for it.
Luxon on climate change.
'Random' [sic] government activity at huge cost is dangerous..
Unfortunately that narrative places the rich in the benefactor position of paying for a countries climate policy. Since they are paying they will ultimately determine the terms of the transition off fossil fuel. I don't think this is going to accelerate the transition. This is unfortunate as NZ can afford to fund many transitional policies as is, and wont actually face such a currency crisis as a result.
Sri Lanka floated the Rupee in 2001….as always the lender determines the conditions of the credit.
Do you have a source for that claim?
Reuters has articles describing the Central Bank devaluing to slow foreign exchange losses and the Rupee is otherwise described as a closed currency (not available outside Sri Lanka).
"Sri Lanka has a floating exchange rate system since 2001 which allowed the independent adjustment of the exchange rate according to the market forces of demand and supply. However, there could be interventions in the market for the purpose of curbing excess volatility in the exchange rate. The CBSL prescribes maximum net open position (NOP) limits for LCBs and closely monitors the activities in the domestic foreign exchange market to ensure an orderly functioning of the market."
https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/financial-system/financial-markets/domestic-foreign-exchange-market
A floating exchange rate is neither a panacea nor is it immune to manipulation.
I think its floating inside Sri Lanka is how to read that. But clearly their arrangements are not providing financial stability due to the amount of foreign denominated debt the country has taken on.
NZs situation is quite far from that.
Not at all…it is quite evident that the suppliers of goods from offshore no longer accept the Rupee as payment and want hard currency and Sri Lanka has run out of reserves…a situation any economy, including NZ could face,
Confidence in a currency is tied to collateral and its obvious all confidence in the Sri Lankan economy has been lost….a floating exchange rate dosnt function when confidence is lost.
It is a fair weather mechanism.
The foreign debts of Sri Lanka are not a recent thing.
One of the main reasons importers would not want to accept Rupee is because the only exchange market for that is inside Sri Lanka.
NZs situation is quite far from that.
The Sri Lankan Rupee is as tradable as the NZD….if you can find any takers
Top Traded Currencies
NZ comes in at #11.
Yep, we're a speculative currency that trades WAAAAAY above requirement.
Theatre company tries to put on a queer culture sex education show for teens and their parents. Called The Family Sex Show (yes, really). All hell breaks loose. Stock writes a very funny but also nuanced and intelligent post about what happened and what the problems are and in the process breaks the binary.
https://twitter.com/wekatweets/status/1518337821831958528?s=21
The Family Sex Show was advertised as suitable for 5yrs +.
Link to the cleaned up website that now doesn’t suggest children use Google to search for “animals that masturbate” so they can draw pictures of them, can be found here:
https://thefamilysexshow.com/tfss
The Family Sex Show
It’s indicative of how far they are removed from age-appropriate content, to see what still remains after they have “scrubbed” their site.
hmm, I'm seeing conflicting things about the age bracket. But yeah, that's pretty clear, and yep, their sense of what's ok is well off. But we knew that from the name. I wish I could feel some confidence that lessons might be learned.
I had a good look when the story broke, and took particular notice of the recommended age for the tour venues. At that time is was definitely 5yrs+.
Might have changed since the issue was highlighted.
I was mostly following on twitter, and as per usual there was a lot of exclammation and not a lot of backing up.
Sorry, meant had a good look at the website and the venues promoting, not just tweets.
I got that 🙂 You had a better look at it than me.
The title "the family sex show" is a red flag for me.
Introduction to knowledge about sex (and sex itself ) needs to be age appropriate.
Animals masturbating? Please. As an adult I don't see why I need to know about that. What is the purpose of getting kids to google search it? It embeds the idea that you can search for things of a sexual nature on the net……..
I am glad to hear apple a putting in a filter on their devices that filters out nudity. Good.
Always found this pretty funny…and sad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAWZyRkhL7w
And here we are…
/
https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1517694818041880577
Can you elaborate on where you think 'here' is? And how you think we got there?
Here is innocents endangered. Rhetoric got us there.
Clarity not a strong point?
What rhetoric and from whom?
60,000 of new irrigated land on the other side of the Queensland ranges, funded by the Morrison government. One big new dam and several major reservoirs.
Morrison’s green light for Queensland’s Hells Gates Dam threatens Great Barrier Reef, experts warn | Queensland | The Guardian
This is the first part of the New Bradfield Scheme that is a revised version of the big Bradfield Scheme of 1942.
New Bradfield scheme on agenda as north Queensland prepares for floods (brisbanetimes.com.au)
This is irrigation on a terraforming scale.
If the Australian Federal government wants to essentially replace much of Ukraine's agricultural production, pulling all the climate change floodwater from Queensland and tunneling it through the ranges to the west, and link up with the Murray-Darling, would be the way to do it.
I imagine there are plenty of areas in New Zealand that could easily grow wheat. For instance, Central Otago, where they tend to have very dry, hot summers.
Who knows, going forward, wheat production could become more profitable and less damaging to the environment than dairy production given that the set up and ongoing costs should be a lot lower I imagine.
Further to that, there is quite a bit of grain production in that area already, so could potentially be expanded.
https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/rural-life-other/grain-production-passes-1million-tonnes
There's not a lot of wheat left growing in Canterbury now that it's almost fully irrigated. It's solid dairy as far as the eye can see,
But it's odd going up to Houhora in the Far North and seeing what was pretty average dairy country converted into avocados.
Then you must have one eye closed….wheat production has steadily increased in NZ since the dairy boom began and around 80% of it is from Canterbury.
Its also the largest pea production area in the Southern hemisphere,with the longest harvest season.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rural/2020/02/longest-pea-harvest-in-the-world-underway-in-canterbury.html
Peas are a huge growth crop.
They are being used as gluten free substitutes in an array of new foods.
Gluten-free is going to be a big thing going forward given the amount of wheat production going off-line with the current conflict.
The problem is for many countries "gluten-free" means zero food.
Rice,corn,peas, potatos,cassava….fruit,veges ,plenty of GF crops to replace …wheat.
Fill your boots.
I am aware of the volumes Russia and Ukraine produce.
Regardless of war…25,000 die of starvation every day around the world.
I read somewhere over 20% of food produced is…wasted.
If you really want to scare yourself.
Interesting observations by PZ there Red.
Insightful comments too.
Zeihan regards Russia's whole existence is threatened!
A perfect storm mounting for rampant inflation….and the nuclear option.
And as mentioned in the article, seed crops…a lot of seed grown here to supply offshore producers.
But if it was so easy (and profitable) there wouldnt have been the mass conversion to dairy in the region that has occurred the past 20 years or so.
A lot of the conversions wernt by choice….as said before, inflated property values are not only a housing problem.
Canterbury produces 70% of the worlds carrot seed.Agree on the land pricing,that was a result of low livestock prices and wool.There is still with some arable farmers who use livestock when they rotate the land to lie fallow,and put it back into pasture.
With constant droughts and rivers drying up and suffering degradation from nitrogen run off , cryptosporidiam andfaecal matter. Growing grains such as wheat and sunflower would be far more enviromentaly sustainable. With high prices profitable as well. also Chinas expansionism it would be smart to reduce our dpendence on Dairy production.
Arable farming is inherently risky….the returns are seasonal and fluctuate…especially when compared to dairy with its consistent output and monthly cheques.
As many cropping farmers are want to say, arable farming is a capital gain game….the capital outlay to return is considerable and dont really reflect the risks…and everyone in the chain clips the ticket.
My son Grant who was a Trade Cert Baker in a former life, tells me New Zealand produces flour that tends to make a heavy / wet crumb. It was mixed with Australian flour to lighten the crumb. With dry conditions and growing temperatures and improved varieties our wheat crumb may improve.
Other valuable crops could be sunflowers for oil and hemp for clothing As dairy prices go into retreat, other farming may begin.
UK think tank report on Russia's imperial delusion, what went wrong, expectations and conclusions.
The foremost conclusion is that Russia is now preparing, diplomatically, militarily and economically, for a protracted conflict
[…]
The pattern is universal. Almost all of Russia’s modern military hardware is dependent upon complex electronics imported from the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, China and further afield.57
[…]
Finally, the Russian decision to double down is a high-stakes gamble. If Russia mobilises and eventually overcomes Ukrainian resistance then NATO will face an aggressive, isolated and militarised state. If Russia loses then President Putin has now begun radicalising the population in the pursuit of policies that he will struggle to deliver. Failure to defeat the Ukrainian state after relentlessly comparing it to the Nazi regime may have serious consequences for Putin and those around him. To frame a conflict as existential and to lose must necessarily call the suitability of a leader into question among Russia’s political elites. NATO states therefore need to consider how to manage escalation pathways that follow if Russia is not only defeated in Donbas but finds its newly mobilised and poorly trained troops, with few remaining stocks of precision munitions, unable to deliver a victory in the summer. The death of Putin’s political project is plausible, but it has already inflicted immense damage internationally and risks doing considerably more.
https://static.rusi.org/special-report-202204-operation-z-web.pdf
The image on the cover of that report is remarkably striking. Will read.
Them turrets get around and fuck the crews. Cannon fodder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3oz1H86qfk
https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/russian-tanks-ukraine-turrets-blown-off/
Another chilling quote:
Probably scrambling up more forces by declaring war is possible. I think the biggest issue for the Russians will be arming the new troops.
I have seen a number of videos of Russian soldiers using vintage rifles etc. And, they are having trouble manufacturing new gear to replace the existing equipment being lost due to the sanctions.
Troop plus equipment do not equal capability. There is one hell of a lot more to it than this – you may find this extremely interesting.
Thank you for that. That was a really good read, and very informative.
Have you seen this latest video that adds quite a bit of weight to the theory going around for awhile that Putin has some serious disease such as Parkinsons or cancer.
Certainly looks a bit weird, and not the normal way people tend to sit at a table.
Seems alot more composed and lucid than the leader of the …free' world imo.
LOL. Probably not wrong there.
His right side doesn't look too flash.
https://twitter.com/Team_Stollberg/status/1498762759357480969
https://twitter.com/AIertaMundiaI/status/1517346393446391808
As someone often critical of poor legislation, I appreciated this report from RNZ:
I was impressed at how they incorporate the principle of reflexivity into praxis:
Here's an insight into the psychology that comes into play:
You can summarise that last sentence as stakeholder interactivity. The Q+A format drives the process of design towards optimal output – in theory. As a grouch like me would point out, results suggest the theory often gets flawed by the practice!
Wait a sec. "Its boss describes it as “the Government's legislative advisors”. So legal advice and legislative advice are different critters. Ok, got it. A fine distinction!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/the-house/audio/2018838304/painting-the-legal-jigsaw-one-piece-at-a-time
Crown Law, parts of DPMC, and legal counsel within the sponsoring Departments also have strong drafting roles. Some Departments are a lot better at gaming out the operational practise of new legislation than others.
I wonder how long it’ll be before someone on the opposition’s benches tries this.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/24/angela-rayner-hits-back-at-claims-of-basic-instinct-tactics-to-distract-pm?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Or maybe the Daily Herald.
Not very likely, still waiting for them to expose their mythical "big brains".
https://twitter.com/Thefinnigans/status/1518323753364590592?cxt=HHwWgMCs1ZjalZIqAAAA
Chooks are scary.
https://twitter.com/Abraxsys/status/1517937912574140422
They are a forest bird after all – very cool.
Helping a mate with his emus I often thought thank dog chooks aren't this big.
I sometimes thought tramping in NZ would have been a very different proposition if the moa was not extinct
Didn't make the msm last year, but a noteworthy report from the leading edge:
Physics grad went huh??
A revolutionary paradigm-shifter, seemingly plausible due to replication (two teams of physicists), but we await further developments that may point to utility.
Quanta presents a summary of that recipe on their page. It uses this triad:
1. many-body localisation (a row of particles get stuck in synch)
2. eigenstate order (they retain symmetry when spin-flipped)
3. periodic driver (laser light triggers system flipping which perseveres)
A 2015 paper described it in these words:
Thus authenticity to claim the first workable demonstration of the mythical perpetual-motion machine. Now the challenge is to invent uses that users deem valuable…
A climate activist, Wynn Bruce, has died after setting himself on fire outside the US Supreme Court.
…
If it was indeed a protest then it must be witnessed. At it's end a protest is a performance, and if it is ignored then it is futile. Sadly for Wynn Bruce, and for all of us, it is seemingly easier to despair the systemic inaction of the status quo powers.
I encourage anyone feeling despair to reach out to those around you, like action on climate change, we can all support each other through this, be it just conversation and a cuppa, advice and encouragement, all the way through to developing and honing skills in gardening and composting, to reusing and reprocessing materials; We can all work towards food and material sustainability and that really helps to feel more positive.
There's context:
One must respect another's intent in ending their lives via such signalling. Not for us to judge spiritual motivations. The assumption that changes in public policy will result (triggered by mass realisation that they must happen) is based on a misread of mass psychology, unfortunately…
Are you saying that an isolated act, assuming it political, of self-immolation is not affecting public policy change or that any isolated and individual act is ineffective? Either way, it sounds your personal belief (aka reckon) rather than a generally accepted fact.
When a single act of self-immolation catalyses a movement, as has happened in other countries, you will be hard-pushed to ignore and categorically deny its influence in each and every case.
Yeah, just my take on the effect it seems to have on western countries. Your point is valid – a single immolation triggered the Arab Spring phenomenon that brought down a couple of dictators & threatened a few others.
So I suppose a better generalisation would be that the catalysis effect is culture-dependent. The symbolism activates a shared feeling that is likely to ramp up via contagion in suitable cultural/political contexts…
Population transfers, summary executions, mass deportations and the beginnings of an attempt to erase a nation and it's people from the textbooks.
But sure, it's all about de-nazification and NATO.
/
"Here in the Federation Council they found out that not all children" from the liberated territories of Donbass "have sufficient command of the Russian language. They will be retrained."
https://twitter.com/md_rud/status/1514170489761148931
On February 24, Vladimir Putin announced the start of a "special operation" and Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Immediately after that, employees of the Enlightenment group of companies, one of the largest and oldest publishers of educational and pedagogical literature in the country, were urged to remove the “incorrect” references to Ukraine and Kyiv from all school textbooks. "Mediazona" talked with the editors of the publishing house about how the "cleansing" of history, geography and literature is going on.
[…]
So, from paragraphs that give examples of the heraldry of different states, including flags, a few years ago it was strongly recommended to remove the flag of Ukraine and replace it with the flag of any other country. If it is necessary to give an example of the capital in the chapter, Kyiv was replaced by another capital. “A couple of times I had to remove the US flag as well, but it’s simpler there, our program pays little attention to world history,” says one of the Enlightenment employees. Now editors should remove references to Ukraine wherever possible.
“That is, we are faced with the task of making it as if Ukraine simply does not exist,” his colleague says. “It's much worse when the textbook just doesn't mention a country. A person grows up without a knowledge base about some country, and then it is much easier for him to believe what he is told about it from TV.
The hardest part is for those who work on history textbooks: it is often impossible to remove references to Ukraine and Kyiv without compromising the content, then you have to change the wording to more “safe” ones.
https://zona.media/article/2022/04/23/enlightenment
google translate
More stuff catching on fire in Russia. Now it is an oil refinery between Ukraine and Moscow mysteriously catching fire.
Prior to that there was a mysterious fire at a weapons research facility.
The there was a fire at a Russia's biggest chemical plant.
Now the fire I just mentioned above.
Lots of people smoking where they shouldn't perhaps?
Perhaps the quickest way to stop the war might be to target all the vodka factories. Inhumane I know …
Yes!! How to pass that idea on to the Ukrainians?
Hard to be grateful to the French for retaining Macron, but there it is.
You can probably thank Poots for a good chunk of that outcome.
Poots is on a roll.
Ljubljana, Slovenia (Reuters)Slovenia's populist Prime Minister, Janez Janša, lost a national election on Sunday as the environmentalist Freedom Movement party won more votes than his SDS party, according to preliminary figures from election authorities.
Janša, who had hoped to win a fourth term in office, conceded that he had been defeated in the vote, adding however that his SDS party had secured more votes than ever before.
"The results are what they are. Congratulations to the relative winner," Janša said, addressing his supporters.
The election had been expected to be tight but the official preliminary figures showed the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, leading with 34.34% of the vote, far more than expected, while the SDS secured 23.83%, based on 98.20% of counted ballots.
That would give the Freedom Movement, which campaigned on a transition to green energy, an open society and the rule of law, 40 seats in the 90-seat parliament, and the SDS 28 seats.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/25/europe/slovenia-election-environmentalists-beat-populists-intl/index.html
Cleaned up but unlikely to ever be forgotten.
https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1518213277515497472
Musk/Twitter saga update: https://www.reuters.com/article/twitter-m-a-musk-investors-exclusive-idUSKCN2MG0K7
So Twitter
Liberals are freaked. Dunno why, but useful insights here:
You can see why Musk wants to clean the thing up, eh? Then there's this glimpse into the twits & their leverage on the msm…
Bill Gates shorted Tesla.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496?cxt=HHwWgMC-qeK8_Y8qAAAA
And there were consequences…
Humanity is divided into serious folk & fun folk? Well, some are a bit of both, eh? Ole Bill was just having a bit of fun but young Elon didn't see the funny side.
Microsoft share price has lost 20% this year,Twitter is up 10% on the Musk offer.
As the US Fed has forced short positions on the SNAG stocks such as the FANG's,all the Billionaires will have downgrades in their wealth positions.
Seems to me that Musk is a bored rich boy who gets his kicks seeing how he can manipulate markets…..too much money and spare time.
They all are,the troublesome ones are at the WEF meetings,some of the thinking being out of the worst dystopian novels.
Joyful celebrations in France overnight.
https://twitter.com/steve_hanke/status/1518377269743529985
Macron wins by around 5 million votes with around 12 million non voters
NOT much of a choice under the runoff system,and Macron will have the problem of increased ECB interest rates,that will now come sooner then later.
and a population thats not afraid to take to streets.
Car burning season is coming regardless of who won the election.
https://www.thelocal.fr/20191231/is-the-famous-french-tradition-of-torching-cars-dying-out/
Can anyone explain how the proposed Rotorua Council elections would work?
https://letstalk.rotorualakescouncil.nz/letstalk-rotorualakescouncil-nz-local-bill
"It's part of a larger conversation, because there are councils all around the country right now that are talking about the idea of co-governance. It's a very important kaupapa."
In a statement on Friday, Coffey said: "This is a Local Bill, so the changes are being requested by the Rotorua District Council, not the Government. As such, the Rotorua District Council will need to consider the implications of the Bill of Rights analysis, alongside the select sommittee."
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/04/attorney-general-david-parker-deems-rotorua-council-s-proposed-m-ori-ward-restructure-discriminatory.html
"The proposed arrangements in the Bill would make the number of council members for the Māori ward disproportionately higher than the number of council members for the General ward in comparison to their respective populations," Parker wrote in his legal analysis published on Friday.
"As the disadvantaged group is those on the General roll, changing representation arrangements away from proportional representation therefore creates a disadvantage for non-Māori as they cannot in future elect to change rolls."
Parker concluded: "The Bill appears to limit the right to be free from discrimination affirmed in s 19 of the Bill of Rights Act and cannot be justified."
Yes, I saw that. What I don't understand is how the voting would work. What is the at large vote? Does everyone get two votes (ward and at large)?
Lol, kind of like Māori now.
I imagine you have a vote in your ward and an at large vote.
As to proportion..
"The Council is currently pursuing a law change to enable an undemocratic representation model to be implemented. The model it prefers would consist of three Māori ward seats, three general ward seats, and four at-large seats. However, adopting this arrangement would give the 19,791 citizens on the Māori roll 2.6 times the voting power of the 51,618 citizens on the general roll.
The proposed model is not only unfair, it is also unlawful. Clause 2 of Schedule 1A of the Local Electoral Act requires representation from wards to be proportional to their electoral populations. "
https://www.democracyaction.org.nz/rotorua_lakes_council_pushing_for_maori_co_governance
Onya, Glen.
/
https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/1518306626675134467
107 years ago the Ottoman Empire kicked off it's effort to exterminate it's two million Armenian subjects. New Zealand is yet to acknowledge Armenian suffering. For shame.
Countries that Recognize the Armenian Genocide
https://www.armenian-genocide.org/recognition_countries.html
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/a-stain-on-our-moral-record