Am I the only one who is feeling more than a little perturb about the deathly quite around where the money is coming from for support workers? Where exactly is the cash going to come from to pay the new wages?
We have a government currently dedicated to austerity as an economic policy, we have an opposition who say they will manage the austerity economic policy better. Both seem hell bent on ignoring the costs of support work for the elderly and disabled.
I’m seeing nothing, so I’m going to have a stab in the dark here. That the money is not there, so the people who need the support – will be the ones who suffer. The new wages will be payed, but the hours will be less, and those who are suffering the most will ultimately pay, by getting less (Austrity 101, or making the uber rich happy, by making the poor suffer).
If we had a left that supported social democracy, and choice in political economy then we could have a debate. As it stands, there will be no debate because the left is dominated in this country by people who are committed to austerity. Then there are those who won’t take any criticism, because there is an election. Here though is a real problem, who pays to alleviate suffering? The uber rich point blankly refuse, their hangers on refuse as well.
No one want to engage with the needs going forward we have associated with support work, and extended care. And where is the money, if we can spend billions of our tax on oil, why can’t we pay decent wages and look after our aged and disabled? And why can’t we even talk about political economy or where we want our tax dollars spent?
@BM – agreed, Key ran up debt, sold off the assets and spent the money on his mates and staying in power.
A good time was had by many and it made him popular until his actions came to light, such as the power sell offs would have made more money in dividends already, the state houses are sitting empty and the poor subsidised by tax payers are paying $200 per night for a dodgy hotel with zero signs of any changes and it’s getting worse, the economy is dependant on ponzi scheme immigration scams, the corporations that are taking over Silver Fern Farms and Cadbury are closing down the factories and works and making people redundant. The schools, hospitals and transport networks are overflowing…
P.S. I think Adam is talking about National’s austerity to low paid workers… non workers… and the numbers are growing in the low wage, zero hour contract, economy being created.
And yes, in my view in NZ it is like two different societies operating in alternative universes, Planet Key and Planet Earth, and it’s expanding – otherwise known as inequality.
You really do live in an alternative reality. The money was not “spent oh his mates”.
The increased debt from 2009 to 2013, which amounted to around $50 billion, was to keep the economy going and to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes.
Through 2009 and 2010 there were large increases in welfare spending due to unemployment increasing to around 8% due to the GFC, and a lot of pump priming to keep businesses afloat and increased infrastructure spend.
Then in 2010 and 2011 the earthquakes, which cost about $20 billion in direct govt payments.
In 2010/11 the annual deficit got out to $20 billion (as I recall) due to the combination of the GFC and the earthquakes. I recall thinking we can’t sustain this; we have to get out of this by getting on top of all non essential govt spending. However, there were real increases in health and education spending.
Getting on top of things took another two years. It also meant no wage increases in the state sector in 2010 and 201, though of course people still went up on annual scales (teachers, nurses, police, defence all have 10 step salary scales).
I am sure you will mention tax cuts, but the big shift was largely self funding by reducing income tax, but increasing GST, the “tax switch”.
So in NZ, no real austerity. Fortunately China also meant we got back to positive growth much earlier than the rest of the OECD. But managing govt expenditure is part of that. Look at the contrast with Australia which also has the China market.
EQC dos not cover all the roads, bridges, pipes etc plus the red zone land, most of which can now only be used as parks.
The new govt buildings, such as the justice sector are vastly more than any insurance return.
The $20 billion cost to govt is on top of insurance payouts, which went mostly to homeowners and commercial property owners.
Large sums had to be spent to support businesses, emergency housing, alternative govt services, lots of overtime for all sorts of govt paid workers.
The latest reconstruction estimates are over $40 billion (which covers everything not just the literal cost of new buildings). More than half of which is not covered by insurance.
Sure $40 billion is a boost to the local economy, but the money has to be found, and most of it did not come from insurance. About $20 billion over 5 years or so directly from taxpayers or govt borrowing.
New Zealand’s austerity was far more subtle than in the UK, the USA and Europe.
Anyway, most of our public sector was outsourced or privatised in the 1990’s in Ruth’s first round of austerity.
For instance, Joyce’s pet ministey, MOBIE is a facade with most of its work outsourced to the private sector. It doesnt even own the buildings that it operates on. Same with MSD and MPI.
Let me remind you of the tax cuts for the high income earners.If the budget was under so much pressure then this should not have been done & the rates should have been put up.
And if?? there was a gst/income tax switch then you are confirming that you robbed the poor to pay the rich ” someone’s mates”
But there wasn’t really a Gst /tax switch was there and each of those measures cost about $2 billion a year so $4 billion by 9 years=$36 billion and all of that went to the rich. There would have been a lot of alternative mileage out of that money.
And the size of the welfare bill is a consequence of continuing with strong immigration so we have a bloated workforce – more than we have jobs for
As to China – the Nacts took the best terms of trade we had had in many a long year and made sure none of it trickled down.
Good questions adam.
I fear the problem will escalate rapidly as the boomers age and the following generation voters will not tolerate “excessive” expenditure on the boomers because it is the boomers who have ruined things for them, and there will be overwhelming numbers of aged boomers demanding support. In short we will reap what we have sown.
garibaldi, the boomers as you call them have paid 14% interest rates on their mortgage for their roof over their head. Many have still not paid off their house that does not resemble any of those mansions you see advertised on TV.
They were the first to get hammered with increased education fees and had to go through more than one recession. Not only that, but any savings that were there were squandered away with the swindles of high flyers and the new neo lib policies (i.e. BNZ). There were no breaks for their expenditure when the mother of all budgets hit in the early 80’s. It took most likely more than a good part of 15 years for most to recover from the financial juggernaut. These years are also lost in means of career and getting improvement of income to make up for the losses. We are talking about average people and not magazine cutouts.
Your comments are being devoid of any understanding what the average person out there has to be content with but keeps going without bleating and complaining to get some handout or wealth transfer based on “I am entitled”.
And whilst I understand that things have not improved a hell of a lot as kiwis have voted for a right wing government keeping on with these neo lib policies, it is still true today as it was 100 years ago. Get working, saving and build something for the future. Put a bit aside when ever possible for the so called rainy day. You might not get rich, but you have a chance to build a live like everybody else.
Just don’t pick on the oldies who are in their twilight years and just want to see their life out in reasonable comfort without having to be euthanized off to get the hands on a few dollars.
Vino, I am not so sure and if he is, than I find his comments offensive to anyone who has worked 40-50 years and then get told that they had it too good to deserve any decent living in their twilight years.
There is already enough elder abuse out there without getting this kind of encouragement. If anything will increase, than that kind of abuse will.
What a society – where the weakest are treated like that.
Confession – I was born in 1946, so I am among the first boomers. I believe our generation lost the plot, but were especially tricked by the election when Lange first got in. That is the only time I ever voted for antisocial right-wing policies, but like so many others, I had no idea at the time that bloody Roger and friends were going to screw us all over, and that Lange, for all his wit, would have little idea of what was happening until too late. I thought I was voting left against right-wing Muldoon. (He was right-wing at the time, but nobody explained to us how Roger etc were going to shift all those goalposts and slant the field.)
Like you, I feel it is very unfair to blame boomers, but the fact is that even after Rogernomics, the majority of boomers (and the following generation) were stupid enough to vote for governments that would carry on those policies, not reverse them. Unfair as it is, we may well reap what we few tried to vote against sowing.
Thank you In Vino, you have covered it accurately.
Foreign waka…. We would have very good cover in our retirement if it hadn’t been for Muldoon and his dancing Cossacks.
I’m not picking on the oldies, I am one and I am pointing out the folly of what we, as a generation, have knowingly done.
I understand your sentiment In Vino, especially if I look at the selfish generation that has been raised as a result – pendulum swinging etc.
I do however recognize what is right and what is wrong and having children in poverty and elderly joining is so wrong on so many levels. To point at times past to justify an other horrid chapter is hopefully not what anyone likes to see.
As to the voting pattern, I belief that those who have vested interests will and do vote, but the large portion of younger people think that by not voting they will “show” their discontent. This logic is either just laziness to get involved really or stupidity, lets just name it for what it is. And yes, it is the baby boomers who raised these lazy thinkers.
This ought not to be a precursor to have older people treated like dirt. We have to reiterate the dignity of humanity, it is a duty not a choice. Otherwise we are going backwards, with disturbed minds dishing out cruelty.
Adam, you are right to wonder. I know that hours have been cut for workers who have a range of hours in their contracts. So yes, right rate, less hours.
BM There were many subtle and unsubtle cuts and extra taxes to pay for those tax cuts. Austerity has led to homelessness suicides and an ever growing divide.
Well, given that ‘everyone’ is operating under the umbrella of liberalism, we can confidently say that if money is made available for support-workers on a no-strings basis (unlikely), then money is going to come away from somewhere else.
Same as, if money is going to be made available for children in poverty, then that money is going to be taken away from somewhere or some-one else too.
These is room for reprioritising. But not much.
I look at a liberal economy a bit like how I’d look at a balloon. Squeeze *here* and all that happens is that a bulge pops up *there*. It would be a joke if it didn’t have real world and utterly predictable consequences.
Maybe under liberalism, the immediate pressure can be taken off of support workers and others. And in return, roads deteriorate or libraries are shut down – or whatever other slicing and dicing a “creative” liberal government can think up, by way of removing the day to day signs of a society being bled and hammered for the sake of preserving the integrity of an economic and political theory predicated on opportunity and ephemeral individual liberty and benign or impartial market rules and mechanisms.
Liberal capitalism. Fucking over workers since 18 whatever.
But hey! Big thumbs up. We’re free from the shackles of collective identity! Did someone mention class? Silly person. We are free now. And we are working on that equal opportunity thing now. Give it time. Embrace it. Be thankful for what the future will most surely hold. And yes, we’ve always approached the future on our knees.
This is the risk we run, as Māori, when we dig into Australian soil to create places or points of belonging, no matter how well we think we have consulted with indigenous peoples. That soil is not ours and will never be ours.
That doesn’t mean to say we can’t be Māori on that soil. How can we not be? We should guard and protect and develop our cultural expressions — but why not have cultural clubs and centres?
We should protect our language, our rituals, our mourning and our celebrating, even in little ways as our whānau did for our Dad in 2012 when we laid him to rest in Australia.
And there he lies, ever, ever, the manuhiri.
But we must be wary of transplanting our notions of being tangata whenua to the whenua of others, and risk wreaking yet another layer of colonisation upon those home peoples.
We must never forget who we are. And we must never forget who we are not.
Yes I really liked the article and I too found it came from a great angle. I really liked this
“But we must be wary of transplanting our notions of being tangata whenua to the whenua of others, and risk wreaking yet another layer of colonisation upon those home peoples.”
Adam,
No secret at all. It is all provided for in the 2017 budget. That is why no-one suggests, even on the left, that it is all smoke and mirrors.
One good thing about the NZ government finances is that everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures. The benefit of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1993.
It also means alternative budgets of the opposition have to be designed on the basis of the Treasury figures.
I’m not suggesting smoke and mirrors, I’m suggesting that austerity is a policy that does not work. And that the left should stop supporting it.
As for the budget figures, if they like all the ones in retaliation to disabled like the last few years, then I will see them as the mythology that they are.
…everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures.
Apart from Nick Smith when he’s ACC Minister in 2009. Or when the National Party lies about housing affordability. Or how deferred maintenance is a surplus.
Wayne – why are we even having to discuss it? Why not use fulltime job equivalents the way farmers use stock units?
Fact is the current government’s performance has been risible – only the combination of faked or uncollected stats and a sabotaged media has saved them from being stoned in the streets. And the media are becoming wise to the lies.
Heather du Plessis Allen comes out giving some hard stick to English and the Natz over the Barclay issue! The Natz ego massaging media is beginning to wake up to the ugly truth of what Natz is all about, something which HDPA alludes to in her piece.
However, why isn’t Key also getting some stick at the same time? After all he was PM at the time of the whole dirty business and like English covered up what Barclay did, so he also deserves equal condemnation as well.
Don’t wish to disillusion you, but these Tory propagandists will return to type closer to the election. They know which way their bread is buttered.
The left must not rely on the media.
Heather and hubby are shills for nact so this is the ‘balance’ piece they claim a moral high ground with when their obvious bias and scant regard for intellectual rigour is pointed out.
Just leading Labour and the Left with a little teaser to think the media and MSM are not really that bad, just wait for Dirty Politics 3 to get under way, if its anything like the USA & UK Elections we could have a rip snorter of an Election Build Up.
The media & MSM will be trying to paint NZF in a bad light as they realise Winston & NZF are the key to this Election and it is not what their owners the Multinational Corporates and the International Bankers desire ?
I’ve just tweeted this to Radio NZ and Wallace Chapman – who are interviewing the, in my considered opinion, PHONY Suzie Dawson (new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party, this morning Sunday 25 June 2017:
____________________________
Where’s your due diligence on Suzie Dawson Radio NZ?
I am so jealous. Oh if we were to have a Labour leader who was welcomed by the young like this, and who would not be afraid to quote Shelley to them from the pyramid stage:
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
Suzie Dawson (Suzette Maree Dawson) is now the new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party.
BEWARE!
This is what one of Suzette Maree Dawson’s key supporters Ben Cooney said about me on a live-streamed video of the 8 December 2012 anti-TPPA protest in Auckland – which was posted on Suzie Dawson’s PRIVATE website – Occupy Savvy.
“Here’s Penny Bright – SIS informant”
This is why, in my opinion, decent people and genuine political activists should have NOTHING to do with either Suzie Dawson or Ben Cooney.
Day 8 of Penny Bright (Penelope Mary Bright)’s weird fixation on Suzi Dawson. Ever consider you might do better persuading people if you didn’t act like a reject from ACCForum?
Wowzers… the OUTGOING PM is digging himself an even deeper hole on Q+A atm, well worth a watch, good journalism by Corrin, live link stream here, will post interview when it comes up later.
And English shows a complete lacks of transparency and honesty throughout the interview.
Watched this, then the Corbyn speech.
The difference is that Jeremy Corbyn has real integrity and a vision for all of us.
English meanwhile pimps for the elite.
Wow still lying there bill. You said what was on your mind – bullshit. You lied and have continued to lie. Now your fucked cos we all know you lied and you know we know but you can’t change your story because then it is solidified. Lying bastards like you disgrace yourself and your God beliefs.
I’m repeating this here as it is more appropriate than the “Racist attack on a marae” post:
Q&A have just done a hatchet job on Labour. A very good interview with Andrew Little, the content of which was totally ignored by the panel ( Josie Pagani , John Tamihere and Michelle Boag), who proceeded to repeat all the crap of the past few days. And this gem from Josie Pagani:
Labour are hypocrites because they have been accusing foreign students of being the cause of the housing crisis and now they’re bringing them here to work for them.
I kid you not. She said this.
I might add they ignored the content of the marae chairman’s interview too. It was a concerted effort to attack Andrew Little and Labour. Tamihere never stood up for his own people either although his muttering was so bad it was hard to hear what he was saying.
“Using foreign students to campaign against foreign students.”
A real zinger that cuts to quick of the issue.
So Anne, your spinning won’t help. Labour was caught out fair and square. I personally find it unbelievable that Labour could have ever thought it a good idea to bring in 90 overseas students to be the ground workers (90 students working 40 hours a week is a hell a lot of campaign work). And John Tamihere also pointed out the sense of unease about bringing in foreign students to do what a party should be able to do using enthusiastic local people.
After all the rest of us rely on volunteers in the weekend, typically around 20 or so on Saturdays
Sure 20 per electorate that would be about right. We used to routinely get that on week nights for doing isthmus phone calling – and I suspect that they still do.
So how many electorates in Auckland where these volunteers were doing canvassing in? Divide 90 by that. How many in the country on phone dial? Divide 90 by that.
The National party usually pays most of its canvassers at minimal wages (I hear usually below minimum wage), either using students or the Farrar push polling system. Because that is the only way that they can get canvassing work done – I can’t remember the last time I saw any canvassing volunteers in Auckland. Certainly the paid canvassers never report any.
Frankly your example is just hypocritical. Admit it, the main reason that the National party stalwarts are upset about this (apart from the Maori thing) is that these are overseas volunteers rather than paid minions. Something that has become so rare in the National party that they keep looking at it as being a revolutionary activity.
My experience, over a twenty year period in North Shore (not that long ago) is that all local electioneering is done by volunteers, including phoning.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland), a stint at the Takapuna market on Sunday, and phoning on a week night usually with Young Nats. No-one was paid anything, it was all volunteer.
I cannot imagine it has changed in any material way in the last five years, except for digital platforms.
National has a much larger membership base than any other party (in recent years as many as 35,000) so getting volunteers is not that hard. The Young Nats have really grown in the last few years, and are always keen to help. They do so voluntarily. Both at the local level and the national level.
They, like all National activists are motivated by the ideals of choice and personal freedom both socially and economically, and therefore getting National in, and keeping Labour out!
So I don’t believe you about National electorates using paid canvassers.
As for David Farrar, he has his own polling firm, and I guess does polling for all sorts of organisations, not just National. He therefore has to pay his workers, since he is running a business.
Pretending that raffle tickets are membership applications isn’t it?
As for personal freedom, how much personal freedom do homeless people have? If your members are motivated by that then why do your policies destroy so many lives?
The obvious conclusion is that your members can’t tell when they’re being lied to.
OAB
Unlike you National deals in reality. That is the members are actually signed up members, who complete an actual membership form. Maybe that is not the case with the political parties you are most familiar with.
You have the names and addresses of 35k people who don’t know when they’re being lied to? Nah, surely some of them are deceitful and corrupt too: when the lies are exposed, like with Bill English’s lies, for example, they deny and blame someone else.
Still, that’s the company you keep.
[There’s a moderation note for your attention over here] – Bill
National has never dealt in reality. They’re always proclaiming delusion as their driving force.
That’s why they oppose saving the environment.
That’s why they’re for shifting ever more of the countries wealth to the rich while saying that it will make everyone better off.
That’s why they ignore science to ram through their policies.
They do all that they can to make a few people rich at everyone else’s expense and then get surprised when their polices inevitably fail.
The obvious conclusion is that National Party members want to be presented with lies appearing ingenuous but actually unscrupulous and substantially believable, that they can adopt and embrace.
This is my position in a longer and more detailed version of yours OAB.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland),
Oh you mean those weedy looking kids with ultra short backs and sides… expensive blue and white striped blazers… and matching striped panama hats (must have cost the Nats a pretty penny) who used to lounge around the Takapuna street bars talking loudly and showing off? 😀
He’s just assisting with the “repeat a lie often enough” thing. If Wayne above is correct, he may even be getting paid for it (in fact, I hope so – who would embarrass themselves like that for free?).
Calling the volunteers foreign students is disingenuous – most people understand foreign students to be people on student visas studying in NZ. The volunteers are domestic students in their home countries, volunteering abroad, and attempting to pretend they are in any way related is poppycock.
Ho… listen to you Wayne. You come here regularly and indulge in pure spin and misrepresentation.
Labour was not “caught fair and square”. IT WAS NOT A LABOUR RUN PROGRAMME. It was run by an independent organisation who did not do their homework properly. Even though the participants were genuinely trying to assist Labour (oh, what a shocking sin) they should not have used Labour’s name during the recruitment process. You are are being traditionally selective in your responses and, in the process, I call you out as a cheat. But then we know Nats are especially prone to such behaviour.
I congratulate Labour for picking up the tabs and running with the programme for the sake of the fresh young idealists who are trying to make a difference in this seriously corrupt world. In a bygone era I was one of them, so I understand their enthusiasm and applaud them for it.
Re- Josie Pagani. There were no quote marks around my claim concerning her comment. Unlike you [apparently] I don’t always have the time to check up what exactly was said so I paraphrased. Her level of expertise as a commentator leaves a huge amount to be desired, and it disappoints me that the MSM use her as a so-called left commentator when every intelligent, informed individual knows she is nothing of the sort.
Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys.
“Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys…….”
A new economic consensus is quickly replacing the neoliberal one to which Blair and Clinton, as well as Thatcher and Reagan, subscribed; politicians are scrambling to articulate it, often blatantly breaking with their own history. Certainly, May’s frantic left-wing posturing against inequality and social division confirmed that the Anglo-American revolution of the 1980s — built around a strong prejudice against government and for free markets — is over. At least in Britain. May, the conservative daughter of a country vicar, will probably be best remembered for advancing, inadvertently, a counterrevolution of the left.
Locked out the googlebots at the firewall and the site has calmed down a lot. It explains a lot about the unexpected site dropouts in the past couple of weeks.
They were repeatably from several servers re-requesting the same bad URL over and over again.
The googlebots had been previously exempted from the usual crawler rules because they were so well behaved. And they were running less than the denial of service rules.
🙂 Yeah it is a problem with computing. Damn near every explanation sounds like a excursion into a long fantasy land story arc. Which in many respects is exactly what it is. In particular the whole net is just an extended story of shared perceptions about how it should operate.
Our hospitals are struggling to cope with the numbers of patients and the lack of money. They are also struggling with a Minister of Health who seems to show little interest in cost-effective preventative health measures, like taxing sweetened beverages. The FIZZ Symposium which will be held tomorrow at Auckland Hospital will have the latest information on this issue of sugar and health.
This government is good at ignoring evidence-based information, while it is very susceptible to lobbying by the NZ Initiative, The NZ Food and Grocery Council and the Tax Payers’ Union. I find the Tax Payers’ Union strong opposition to a sugar tax rather at odds with their website slogan: “Championing Value For Money From Every Tax Dollar”
If reducing sugar intake by taxing sugar leads to a reduction in health issues, then surely this will make the tax payers’ health dollar go further.
The aims of the Taxpayers’ Union are:
To reduce wasteful spending by central and local government;
To increase transparency and accountability of government spending;
To increase institutional checks on government spending;
To enable New Zealanders to easily scrutinise government spending;
To lower the tax burden on New Zealanders; and To promote evidence based public policy.
However, it was pleasing to see that the Taxpayers’ Union has questioned the following:
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Auditor General’s office to investigate today’s revelations regarding the use of former Prime Minister John Key’s taxpayer funded ‘leaders budget’ to, allegedly, cover-up allegations of wrongdoing by National Party backbench MP, Todd Barclay.
Jordan Williams, the Union’s Executive Director, said, “We need to know whether Parliamentary Service did acknowledge that there was an illegal recording made by an MP. If so, why didn’t the agency refer it straight to the Police?”
I reckon that they are safe TMM, requesting that as there can be no response to it. But it leaves Taxpayers Union looking good so that they can carry out their real purpose to do the dirty on the Left.
UGH!!!!!
I reread the disgusting Carrick Graham written “Whaleoil “slag-off of Tony Falkenstein who was a speaker at the previous FIZZ symposium. This type of hatchet job (Falkenstein being being called a two-bit-hooker with absolutely no evidence whatsoever) was exposed by Nicky Hager in his Dirty Politics Book, (p 85).
These personal attacks of people working for the public good need to be exposed. There should be no intimidation of those who wish to attend the symposium either.
This not doing anything about sugar laden drinks fits well within the Gnats do-nothing policy (unless there is money in it for them and their patrons.) They are paid to provide a PR cover of interested, concerned appearance.
Have a look at the lovely Gladys Knight as she advises –
Do Nothing Till you Hear from Me. (I think Gnats are looking for a way to use this as their theme at this election, and not pay anything till they hear from the lawyers.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEm9vivjW1E
The only credit that I saw for Bill English over the interviews with Paddy and with Corin, was that Bill did answer the questions. A past PM Key would have skidded, slipped and digressed and was impossible to interview. Bill still ended up in the pooh but he did answer the questions. (Wish Corin would let him speak though!)
Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.
Just think of what would have happened if the MSM in this country had done the same for Key’s lies.
Tax cuts for NZ. The modern economic equivalent of the old medical profession treatment of bleeding the patient to cure them. Poor kiwi lies wan yet still more of the same. When we die the excuse will be ‘It was God’s will’.
This is what we have GST for folks. If they get it up to 20% Roger Douglas’ mob will have got their flat tax.
Received national party advertising propaganda today.
Membership/donation form with an insert about the outgoing PM
Oh hell no don’t be asking me for money or to join your party.. was like wtf… found that tasteless boarding on offensive.
The insert was titled, “We’re working for NZ”, picture of the outgoing PM against a farming background. The flyer was all about him, there was no ‘we’re’ in either of the two images… no I take that back, I see sheep, about six of them. Nada about the local candidate (tbh that really surprised me), just Bill and his six sheep working for NZ.
Baaaaaaa baaaaaa haaahaaa what national getting 25%? After all my post was all about national, gosh Red, if you say so, I mean I’m not a national supporter, but I don’t think I would have guessed that low. But hey this Barclay thing is continually ongoing, so you may be correct.
Will check in with you on the eve of the 23rd, to let you know how close your guess was at national only getting 25%
Dude it’s the lying and lack of action by the outgoing government that has been and is enduring. Standby the news is on, am sure we will hear more about Barclay any moment now.
No one cares, beltway rubbish, news leading with sailing and rugger here a wager if labour win Powerade next election I will self impose a 10 week exile from commenting here, if national led government you do the same, let’s test your convictions You game ?😀
Correction Powerade should read power before spell and grammar zealots on this site hunt me down, site for some reason won’t let me edit and predictive text is not my friend
Hmmm Red I’m all about numbers, I would have gone for 11 or 9 but not 10 weeks. So instead let’s do it from Sabbat to Sabbat
From the midnight the day after spring equinox (23rd September), result should be in by then, until Beltane in the Southern Hemisphere, known in the North as Samhain, also known on a commercial level as Halloween
From midnight on the day after Spring Equinox until the final minute of Sabbat on the last day of October, if National wins I won’t comment on TS.
For you Red, when national loses, no commenting from the first minute of the 24th Sept until the last minute of 31st October.
Hasn’t the intern thing already dropped of the media’s targeting?
On the Barclay/English affair Newsroom just published another piece with new information. And BE also released some new fodder for the MSM and social media. I expect tomorrow’s news will be full of that.
Nah Bill confirming his lies even after those interviews today. I think more to come – we got all next week for the drip drip drip. Gnats are going to use up a few dead cats on this one. Maybe a sex scandal will get it out of the news but I suspect not lol not the way bills going…
60 marae slaves have turned down offers to be relocated. Must be Stockholm Syndrome.
The Todd thing stinks bad, the Nats turned to their arsenal and the biggest ordinate they could spin up and hand to Hootie and The Blowfish is this stupid slaves in slums claptrap.
If that’s the best their armory has to offer they have much bigger problems than axe in hand Bill standing next to the fallen Cherry tree.
Because anonymous internet guy says so? Oh no, we’re fucked!
Comments are only worth the arguments contained in them (whether explicit or implicit). Unsupported assertions have a total value of 0, and repeating unsupported assertions multiplies 0 to get a cumulative value of, er let’s see… oh, yes: 0. Whenever you’re ready, feel free to raise yourself above being a no-net-worth commenter.
Cinny
I had to stop after 3.5 minutes. What a long shaggy sheep song, very good, and well understoood. And using some sharpened No.8 fencing wire for the needle on the vinyl – that’s creative.
National promoting further tax cuts and increased wages at the National Party Convention, relief at last for the lower socio-economic groups here in NZ ?
Bill must have been an awesome dad. “Yes, the baby did just spend some time with a very intent expression on his face and now the room smells of shit, but the fact of a full nappy hasn’t been established – so I’m off down the pub.”
I’ll be honest I’ve never seen such a group of slow learners as the people I see here on the standard, it’s really head scratching stuff because you guys aren’t dumb there just seems to be quite a disconnect with reality.
Key was no God, he was as polarising as he was popular.
English’s more conservative “gee shucks” country boy approach has far more supporters than it does detractors, he’ll probably end up more popular than Key.
Maybe unless Barclay taped himself telling blinglish about taping, and blinglish’s subsequent advice or lack thereof. And Collins might want a 2 month gig as PM for her CV – it’ll really help with the prospective log and milk customers.
Yeah he was a real hero for the gnats last time he led them to an election record loss wasnt it? You think those gnat MPs have forgotten that? I dont think so. And here he is again stuffing it up lol go billshitter go
Because if you asked random people to list their top 50 concerns Todd would be lucky to make many lists. Unfortunately for Bill I think the tiny bit that will stick in the minds of people more concerned about Shortland Street plots than Todd whatisname is ‘Bill fibbed’.
That’s why nats are so shit at workplace safety: their instinct is to minimise the perceived extent of their own offending, isolate themselves from their colleagues’ offending, but the thought of eliminating tory corruption never occurs to them.
None of this is going to effect Bill English in the slightest.
I expect not. Right-wingers don’t seem to have a problem with either crimes or the covering-up thereof by their leaders. However, those of us who expect better are free to try and promote that as a concept.
“The board and the selection committee knew Barclay had:
– already broken National Party rules by releasing the name of a challenging candidate.
– breached the rules by speaking to the media between the close of nomination and the close of the pre-selection process.
– spoken to his electoral office staff about employment matters that breached a confidentiality agreement.
– not declared police had asked him to be interviewed over the taping of conversations of staffer Glenys Dickson on his candidate nomination form.
– got staff in his Gore electorate office to canvass delegates to support his reselection when it was outside their contractual obligations and a misuse of taxpayer money.
And there were issues around a $5000 loan Barclay had been given by the party for campaigning. At this point the loan had not been repaid or disclosed in the campaign donation register.”
I must say tomorrow mornings live interviews with the outgoing PM will be interesting. And what do you know, Radio Live are talking about the Barclay thing as I’m typing.
In late February the police began investigating Barclay about the use of an interception device to unlawfully record Dickson.
Davie says not long after, he also got a “rark up” from another board member Glenda Hughes about supplying the police with the text messages he’d received from Bill English .
“They made up part of my statement to the police and Glenda was furious I’d given them to the police.”
After Dickson complained to the police, Hughes urged her to withdraw the complaint.
Gee thanks Cinny. Just when Bill must have believed that it was all over, ka-boom. Some of the details were already known but there is more and linking it all together is great.
Though there is less to bother Bill than I had hoped. Expect Bill tomorrow on Morning Report he will say every Board has its moments of disagreement so nothing new. He will suggest that Labour has its troubles too etc etc.
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from 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 public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
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:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
The thing about life’s little victories is that they can be followed by a defeat.Reader Darryl told me on Monday night:Test again Dave. My “head cold” last week became COVID within 24 hours, and is still with me. I hear the new variants take a bit longer to show up ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Angus Deaton on rethinking his economics IMFLocal scoop: The people behind Tamarind, the firm that left a $500m cleanup bill for taxpayers at Taranaki’s Tui oil well, are back operating in Taranaki under a different company name. Jonathan ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
Today marks a tragic milestone for New Zealanders as the Coalition Government side with big tobacco to repeal the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins and Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
Reacting to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s refusal to rule out introducing new taxes at the budget, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “Today’s refusal to rule out new taxes suggests the Government is nothing more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne Aila Images/Shutterstock Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they ...
He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah. Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University A year ago, the AUKUS agreement was formally announced between Australian and UK Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese and Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden. The agreement mapped out the “optimal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Helwig, Associate Professor, Electro-Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern Queensland SmartS/Shutterstock Steam locomotives clattering along railway tracks. Paddle steamers churning down the Murray. Dreadnought battleships powered by steam engines. Many of us think the age of steam has ended. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carrie Leonetti, Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Victims who experience family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand are treated differently, depending on which part of the justice system they turn to for help. But a new member’s bill ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tesch, Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies, Australian National University In perhaps the least surprising news of the year, Vladimir Putin has triumphed at the Russian ballot box and been enthroned for the fifth time as president. He ...
The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has stopped a byelection for the Madang Open seat being held until an appeal filed by former MP Bryan Kramer is concluded. Kramer had appealed to the Supreme Court over a National Court decision not to review his application of the Leadership Tribunal decision ...
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby Despite a “historic” ceasefire agreement in Papua New Guinea between Enga authorities and tribal leaders after months of bitter warfare, a young woman has been found brutally killed near Kaekin village, Wapenamanda. Despite the peace agreement and signing concluded in Port Moresby last Thursday ...
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud is a sadder and slower entry into his canon of true story-telling, leaning heavily on a verdict about the cost of a single work of art. Hollywood heavyweight Ryan Murphy has had a bit of “ick” about him in the last few years. ...
Am I the only one who is feeling more than a little perturb about the deathly quite around where the money is coming from for support workers? Where exactly is the cash going to come from to pay the new wages?
We have a government currently dedicated to austerity as an economic policy, we have an opposition who say they will manage the austerity economic policy better. Both seem hell bent on ignoring the costs of support work for the elderly and disabled.
I’m seeing nothing, so I’m going to have a stab in the dark here. That the money is not there, so the people who need the support – will be the ones who suffer. The new wages will be payed, but the hours will be less, and those who are suffering the most will ultimately pay, by getting less (Austrity 101, or making the uber rich happy, by making the poor suffer).
If we had a left that supported social democracy, and choice in political economy then we could have a debate. As it stands, there will be no debate because the left is dominated in this country by people who are committed to austerity. Then there are those who won’t take any criticism, because there is an election. Here though is a real problem, who pays to alleviate suffering? The uber rich point blankly refuse, their hangers on refuse as well.
No one want to engage with the needs going forward we have associated with support work, and extended care. And where is the money, if we can spend billions of our tax on oil, why can’t we pay decent wages and look after our aged and disabled? And why can’t we even talk about political economy or where we want our tax dollars spent?
Christ, the National government did the complete opposite of austerity.
You guys really do live in some alternative universe.
@BM – agreed, Key ran up debt, sold off the assets and spent the money on his mates and staying in power.
A good time was had by many and it made him popular until his actions came to light, such as the power sell offs would have made more money in dividends already, the state houses are sitting empty and the poor subsidised by tax payers are paying $200 per night for a dodgy hotel with zero signs of any changes and it’s getting worse, the economy is dependant on ponzi scheme immigration scams, the corporations that are taking over Silver Fern Farms and Cadbury are closing down the factories and works and making people redundant. The schools, hospitals and transport networks are overflowing…
P.S. I think Adam is talking about National’s austerity to low paid workers… non workers… and the numbers are growing in the low wage, zero hour contract, economy being created.
And yes, in my view in NZ it is like two different societies operating in alternative universes, Planet Key and Planet Earth, and it’s expanding – otherwise known as inequality.
Save NZ
You really do live in an alternative reality. The money was not “spent oh his mates”.
The increased debt from 2009 to 2013, which amounted to around $50 billion, was to keep the economy going and to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes.
Through 2009 and 2010 there were large increases in welfare spending due to unemployment increasing to around 8% due to the GFC, and a lot of pump priming to keep businesses afloat and increased infrastructure spend.
Then in 2010 and 2011 the earthquakes, which cost about $20 billion in direct govt payments.
In 2010/11 the annual deficit got out to $20 billion (as I recall) due to the combination of the GFC and the earthquakes. I recall thinking we can’t sustain this; we have to get out of this by getting on top of all non essential govt spending. However, there were real increases in health and education spending.
Getting on top of things took another two years. It also meant no wage increases in the state sector in 2010 and 201, though of course people still went up on annual scales (teachers, nurses, police, defence all have 10 step salary scales).
I am sure you will mention tax cuts, but the big shift was largely self funding by reducing income tax, but increasing GST, the “tax switch”.
So in NZ, no real austerity. Fortunately China also meant we got back to positive growth much earlier than the rest of the OECD. But managing govt expenditure is part of that. Look at the contrast with Australia which also has the China market.
The chch eq were from a government expenditure POV close to a zero to small financial gain.
EQC dos not cover all the roads, bridges, pipes etc plus the red zone land, most of which can now only be used as parks.
The new govt buildings, such as the justice sector are vastly more than any insurance return.
The $20 billion cost to govt is on top of insurance payouts, which went mostly to homeowners and commercial property owners.
Large sums had to be spent to support businesses, emergency housing, alternative govt services, lots of overtime for all sorts of govt paid workers.
The latest reconstruction estimates are over $40 billion (which covers everything not just the literal cost of new buildings). More than half of which is not covered by insurance.
Sure $40 billion is a boost to the local economy, but the money has to be found, and most of it did not come from insurance. About $20 billion over 5 years or so directly from taxpayers or govt borrowing.
Um no,that figure is one of those imaginary memes,that spread around media releases,without attribution.
Being an arbitrary number,it is questionable.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/the-rebuild/70084887/How-much-is-the-Government-really-spending-to-fix-Christchurch
The total infrastructure roads and pipes etc is met by the insurers in part,with the remainder being the sector (port ,orion, council and government)
The total cost to date is 7 billion on infrastructure.
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/-/media/ReserveBank/Files/Publications/Bulletins/2016/2016feb79-3.pdf
New Zealand’s austerity was far more subtle than in the UK, the USA and Europe.
Anyway, most of our public sector was outsourced or privatised in the 1990’s in Ruth’s first round of austerity.
For instance, Joyce’s pet ministey, MOBIE is a facade with most of its work outsourced to the private sector. It doesnt even own the buildings that it operates on. Same with MSD and MPI.
That bit really pisses me off. It’s always far, far cheaper for a government to own the buildings they use than paying rent to a capitalist.
But paying rent to a capitalist increases GDP and profits. It just doesn’t actually improve the nation.
Let me remind you of the tax cuts for the high income earners.If the budget was under so much pressure then this should not have been done & the rates should have been put up.
And if?? there was a gst/income tax switch then you are confirming that you robbed the poor to pay the rich ” someone’s mates”
But there wasn’t really a Gst /tax switch was there and each of those measures cost about $2 billion a year so $4 billion by 9 years=$36 billion and all of that went to the rich. There would have been a lot of alternative mileage out of that money.
And the size of the welfare bill is a consequence of continuing with strong immigration so we have a bloated workforce – more than we have jobs for
As to China – the Nacts took the best terms of trade we had had in many a long year and made sure none of it trickled down.
Good questions adam.
I fear the problem will escalate rapidly as the boomers age and the following generation voters will not tolerate “excessive” expenditure on the boomers because it is the boomers who have ruined things for them, and there will be overwhelming numbers of aged boomers demanding support. In short we will reap what we have sown.
garibaldi, the boomers as you call them have paid 14% interest rates on their mortgage for their roof over their head. Many have still not paid off their house that does not resemble any of those mansions you see advertised on TV.
They were the first to get hammered with increased education fees and had to go through more than one recession. Not only that, but any savings that were there were squandered away with the swindles of high flyers and the new neo lib policies (i.e. BNZ). There were no breaks for their expenditure when the mother of all budgets hit in the early 80’s. It took most likely more than a good part of 15 years for most to recover from the financial juggernaut. These years are also lost in means of career and getting improvement of income to make up for the losses. We are talking about average people and not magazine cutouts.
Your comments are being devoid of any understanding what the average person out there has to be content with but keeps going without bleating and complaining to get some handout or wealth transfer based on “I am entitled”.
And whilst I understand that things have not improved a hell of a lot as kiwis have voted for a right wing government keeping on with these neo lib policies, it is still true today as it was 100 years ago. Get working, saving and build something for the future. Put a bit aside when ever possible for the so called rainy day. You might not get rich, but you have a chance to build a live like everybody else.
Just don’t pick on the oldies who are in their twilight years and just want to see their life out in reasonable comfort without having to be euthanized off to get the hands on a few dollars.
As I read his last sentence, I suspect that Garibaldi himself is an oldie boomer, Foreign Waka.
Vino, I am not so sure and if he is, than I find his comments offensive to anyone who has worked 40-50 years and then get told that they had it too good to deserve any decent living in their twilight years.
There is already enough elder abuse out there without getting this kind of encouragement. If anything will increase, than that kind of abuse will.
What a society – where the weakest are treated like that.
Confession – I was born in 1946, so I am among the first boomers. I believe our generation lost the plot, but were especially tricked by the election when Lange first got in. That is the only time I ever voted for antisocial right-wing policies, but like so many others, I had no idea at the time that bloody Roger and friends were going to screw us all over, and that Lange, for all his wit, would have little idea of what was happening until too late. I thought I was voting left against right-wing Muldoon. (He was right-wing at the time, but nobody explained to us how Roger etc were going to shift all those goalposts and slant the field.)
Like you, I feel it is very unfair to blame boomers, but the fact is that even after Rogernomics, the majority of boomers (and the following generation) were stupid enough to vote for governments that would carry on those policies, not reverse them. Unfair as it is, we may well reap what we few tried to vote against sowing.
Thank you In Vino, you have covered it accurately.
Foreign waka…. We would have very good cover in our retirement if it hadn’t been for Muldoon and his dancing Cossacks.
I’m not picking on the oldies, I am one and I am pointing out the folly of what we, as a generation, have knowingly done.
I understand your sentiment In Vino, especially if I look at the selfish generation that has been raised as a result – pendulum swinging etc.
I do however recognize what is right and what is wrong and having children in poverty and elderly joining is so wrong on so many levels. To point at times past to justify an other horrid chapter is hopefully not what anyone likes to see.
As to the voting pattern, I belief that those who have vested interests will and do vote, but the large portion of younger people think that by not voting they will “show” their discontent. This logic is either just laziness to get involved really or stupidity, lets just name it for what it is. And yes, it is the baby boomers who raised these lazy thinkers.
This ought not to be a precursor to have older people treated like dirt. We have to reiterate the dignity of humanity, it is a duty not a choice. Otherwise we are going backwards, with disturbed minds dishing out cruelty.
Hi Foreign Waka
Horribly True? Let’s hope not. You are right in saying that young people need to engage and vote. Let us pray…
Adam, you are right to wonder. I know that hours have been cut for workers who have a range of hours in their contracts. So yes, right rate, less hours.
BM There were many subtle and unsubtle cuts and extra taxes to pay for those tax cuts. Austerity has led to homelessness suicides and an ever growing divide.
Perhaps it would help a bit to read this, Adam. Grant Robertson’s speech to business people down south.
http://www.labour.org.nz/grant_robertson_speech_to_otago_southland_employers_assn
Well, given that ‘everyone’ is operating under the umbrella of liberalism, we can confidently say that if money is made available for support-workers on a no-strings basis (unlikely), then money is going to come away from somewhere else.
Same as, if money is going to be made available for children in poverty, then that money is going to be taken away from somewhere or some-one else too.
These is room for reprioritising. But not much.
I look at a liberal economy a bit like how I’d look at a balloon. Squeeze *here* and all that happens is that a bulge pops up *there*. It would be a joke if it didn’t have real world and utterly predictable consequences.
Maybe under liberalism, the immediate pressure can be taken off of support workers and others. And in return, roads deteriorate or libraries are shut down – or whatever other slicing and dicing a “creative” liberal government can think up, by way of removing the day to day signs of a society being bled and hammered for the sake of preserving the integrity of an economic and political theory predicated on opportunity and ephemeral individual liberty and benign or impartial market rules and mechanisms.
Liberal capitalism. Fucking over workers since 18 whatever.
But hey! Big thumbs up. We’re free from the shackles of collective identity! Did someone mention class? Silly person. We are free now. And we are working on that equal opportunity thing now. Give it time. Embrace it. Be thankful for what the future will most surely hold. And yes, we’ve always approached the future on our knees.
A very interesting article.
https://e-tangata.co.nz/news/and-there-he-lies-ever-ever-the-manuhiri
Thank you for posting this article. It provides a perspective that I had not previously considered and deserves to be widely read.
Yes I really liked the article and I too found it came from a great angle. I really liked this
“But we must be wary of transplanting our notions of being tangata whenua to the whenua of others, and risk wreaking yet another layer of colonisation upon those home peoples.”
Adam,
No secret at all. It is all provided for in the 2017 budget. That is why no-one suggests, even on the left, that it is all smoke and mirrors.
One good thing about the NZ government finances is that everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures. The benefit of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1993.
It also means alternative budgets of the opposition have to be designed on the basis of the Treasury figures.
I’m not suggesting smoke and mirrors, I’m suggesting that austerity is a policy that does not work. And that the left should stop supporting it.
As for the budget figures, if they like all the ones in retaliation to disabled like the last few years, then I will see them as the mythology that they are.
When you say you re going to stop austerity, this happens.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/jeremy-corbyn-glastonbury-speech-review-pyramid-stage-donald-trump-bridges-not-walls-a7806641.html
…everyone in parliament irrespective of party who actually looks at the government books trusts the figures.
Apart from Nick Smith when he’s ACC Minister in 2009. Or when the National Party lies about housing affordability. Or how deferred maintenance is a surplus.
Absolute trustiness.
Right – like the lie that counts one hour a week as employment.
And the failure to collect data on poverty.
That’s smoke.
Stuart Munro,
80% of all new jobs are full-time.
Wayne – why are we even having to discuss it? Why not use fulltime job equivalents the way farmers use stock units?
Fact is the current government’s performance has been risible – only the combination of faked or uncollected stats and a sabotaged media has saved them from being stoned in the streets. And the media are becoming wise to the lies.
Wasn’t that stat about 80% of *all* jobs including recent ones? Got any links for just the past few years?
Heather du Plessis Allen comes out giving some hard stick to English and the Natz over the Barclay issue! The Natz ego massaging media is beginning to wake up to the ugly truth of what Natz is all about, something which HDPA alludes to in her piece.
However, why isn’t Key also getting some stick at the same time? After all he was PM at the time of the whole dirty business and like English covered up what Barclay did, so he also deserves equal condemnation as well.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11881114
Don’t wish to disillusion you, but these Tory propagandists will return to type closer to the election. They know which way their bread is buttered.
The left must not rely on the media.
Heather and hubby are shills for nact so this is the ‘balance’ piece they claim a moral high ground with when their obvious bias and scant regard for intellectual rigour is pointed out.
Dogma all the way with Nats media poodles.
Just leading Labour and the Left with a little teaser to think the media and MSM are not really that bad, just wait for Dirty Politics 3 to get under way, if its anything like the USA & UK Elections we could have a rip snorter of an Election Build Up.
The media & MSM will be trying to paint NZF in a bad light as they realise Winston & NZF are the key to this Election and it is not what their owners the Multinational Corporates and the International Bankers desire ?
I’ve just tweeted this to Radio NZ and Wallace Chapman – who are interviewing the, in my considered opinion, PHONY Suzie Dawson (new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party, this morning Sunday 25 June 2017:
____________________________
Where’s your due diligence on Suzie Dawson Radio NZ?
What is her proven track as a NZ ‘activist’?
Seen this?
http://www.indymedia.org.nz/articles/715
Penny Bright
‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption campaigner’.
NZ political activist since 1972.
2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki.
Exposing the $1.6 billion Tamaki ‘Regeneration’ – GENTRIFICATION $CAM.
Pretty petty penny
I am so jealous. Oh if we were to have a Labour leader who was welcomed by the young like this, and who would not be afraid to quote Shelley to them from the pyramid stage:
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154970248731939/
So jealous!
Inspirational
IMHO Corbyn’s inspirational speech at Glastonbury would make fine video post all of it’s own here on a damp Sunday.
I can even helpfully provide a link to the whole thing….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSEmuPMwvMQ
The absolute boy.
Wow.
Just wow.
Here’s the EVIDENCE – which proves why, in my considered opinion, Suzie Dawson is ABSOLUTELY not to be trusted.
https://www.facebook.com/1261190663892805/videos/1743674342311099/
Suzie Dawson (Suzette Maree Dawson) is now the new ‘Leader’ of the Internet Party.
BEWARE!
This is what one of Suzette Maree Dawson’s key supporters Ben Cooney said about me on a live-streamed video of the 8 December 2012 anti-TPPA protest in Auckland – which was posted on Suzie Dawson’s PRIVATE website – Occupy Savvy.
“Here’s Penny Bright – SIS informant”
This is why, in my opinion, decent people and genuine political activists should have NOTHING to do with either Suzie Dawson or Ben Cooney.
Penny Bright.
‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption campaigner’.
NZ political activist since 1972.
2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki.
Exposing the $1.6 billion Tamaki ‘Regeneration’ – GENTRIFICATION $CAM.
#ThinkForYourself
Day 8 of Penny Bright (Penelope Mary Bright)’s weird fixation on Suzi Dawson. Ever consider you might do better persuading people if you didn’t act like a reject from ACCForum?
For the keen, Penny’s previous demented shrieking about this can be found here: https://thestandard.org.nz/the-return-of-kim-dotcom-and-the-internet-party-and-the-nz-journalist-seeking-asylum-in-russia/
In my CONSIDERED opinion and as a PROVEN collector of placards in my yard, someone needs to get a new hobby.
Penny, you are not alone, stay strong
Wowzers… the OUTGOING PM is digging himself an even deeper hole on Q+A atm, well worth a watch, good journalism by Corrin, live link stream here, will post interview when it comes up later.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/live-stream-q-a-q15157
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/full-interview-said-in-my-mind-time-bill-english-defends-public-statements-todd-barclay-affair?auto=5482458693001
Interview is up.
And English shows a complete lacks of transparency and honesty throughout the interview.
Watched this, then the Corbyn speech.
The difference is that Jeremy Corbyn has real integrity and a vision for all of us.
English meanwhile pimps for the elite.
Cheers for that Craig.
Wow still lying there bill. You said what was on your mind – bullshit. You lied and have continued to lie. Now your fucked cos we all know you lied and you know we know but you can’t change your story because then it is solidified. Lying bastards like you disgrace yourself and your God beliefs.
Bet key is smirking about all this.
I’m repeating this here as it is more appropriate than the “Racist attack on a marae” post:
Q&A have just done a hatchet job on Labour. A very good interview with Andrew Little, the content of which was totally ignored by the panel ( Josie Pagani , John Tamihere and Michelle Boag), who proceeded to repeat all the crap of the past few days. And this gem from Josie Pagani:
Labour are hypocrites because they have been accusing foreign students of being the cause of the housing crisis and now they’re bringing them here to work for them.
I kid you not. She said this.
I might add they ignored the content of the marae chairman’s interview too. It was a concerted effort to attack Andrew Little and Labour. Tamihere never stood up for his own people either although his muttering was so bad it was hard to hear what he was saying.
Josie Pagani.
Need I say more?
Better still, Josie said;
“Using foreign students to campaign against foreign students.”
A real zinger that cuts to quick of the issue.
So Anne, your spinning won’t help. Labour was caught out fair and square. I personally find it unbelievable that Labour could have ever thought it a good idea to bring in 90 overseas students to be the ground workers (90 students working 40 hours a week is a hell a lot of campaign work). And John Tamihere also pointed out the sense of unease about bringing in foreign students to do what a party should be able to do using enthusiastic local people.
After all the rest of us rely on volunteers in the weekend, typically around 20 or so on Saturdays
Are you happy with our ranking of 34 mount of 41 for child wellbeing?
Is your conscience clear about your contribution to this?
What about lying bill english Wayne. You happy with his lies? You comfortable with that level of integrity?
Wayne. Please don’t be a spinner.
Sure 20 per electorate that would be about right. We used to routinely get that on week nights for doing isthmus phone calling – and I suspect that they still do.
So how many electorates in Auckland where these volunteers were doing canvassing in? Divide 90 by that. How many in the country on phone dial? Divide 90 by that.
The National party usually pays most of its canvassers at minimal wages (I hear usually below minimum wage), either using students or the Farrar push polling system. Because that is the only way that they can get canvassing work done – I can’t remember the last time I saw any canvassing volunteers in Auckland. Certainly the paid canvassers never report any.
Frankly your example is just hypocritical. Admit it, the main reason that the National party stalwarts are upset about this (apart from the Maori thing) is that these are overseas volunteers rather than paid minions. Something that has become so rare in the National party that they keep looking at it as being a revolutionary activity.
My experience, over a twenty year period in North Shore (not that long ago) is that all local electioneering is done by volunteers, including phoning.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland), a stint at the Takapuna market on Sunday, and phoning on a week night usually with Young Nats. No-one was paid anything, it was all volunteer.
I cannot imagine it has changed in any material way in the last five years, except for digital platforms.
National has a much larger membership base than any other party (in recent years as many as 35,000) so getting volunteers is not that hard. The Young Nats have really grown in the last few years, and are always keen to help. They do so voluntarily. Both at the local level and the national level.
They, like all National activists are motivated by the ideals of choice and personal freedom both socially and economically, and therefore getting National in, and keeping Labour out!
So I don’t believe you about National electorates using paid canvassers.
As for David Farrar, he has his own polling firm, and I guess does polling for all sorts of organisations, not just National. He therefore has to pay his workers, since he is running a business.
a much larger membership base
Pretending that raffle tickets are membership applications isn’t it?
As for personal freedom, how much personal freedom do homeless people have? If your members are motivated by that then why do your policies destroy so many lives?
The obvious conclusion is that your members can’t tell when they’re being lied to.
OAB
Unlike you National deals in reality. That is the members are actually signed up members, who complete an actual membership form. Maybe that is not the case with the political parties you are most familiar with.
You have the names and addresses of 35k people who don’t know when they’re being lied to? Nah, surely some of them are deceitful and corrupt too: when the lies are exposed, like with Bill English’s lies, for example, they deny and blame someone else.
Still, that’s the company you keep.
[There’s a moderation note for your attention over here] – Bill
National has never dealt in reality. They’re always proclaiming delusion as their driving force.
That’s why they oppose saving the environment.
That’s why they’re for shifting ever more of the countries wealth to the rich while saying that it will make everyone better off.
That’s why they ignore science to ram through their policies.
They do all that they can to make a few people rich at everyone else’s expense and then get surprised when their polices inevitably fail.
The obvious conclusion is that National Party members want to be presented with lies appearing ingenuous but actually unscrupulous and substantially believable, that they can adopt and embrace.
This is my position in a longer and more detailed version of yours OAB.
In the election campaign we usually did Saturday canvasing (the 20 was in North Shore alone, not elsewhere in Auckland),
Oh you mean those weedy looking kids with ultra short backs and sides… expensive blue and white striped blazers… and matching striped panama hats (must have cost the Nats a pretty penny) who used to lounge around the Takapuna street bars talking loudly and showing off? 😀
‘At some point people are going to admit this 2 month old story about a Labour intern slave scandal was just a distraction from Bill & Todd.’
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/06/24/at-some-point-people-are-going-to-admit-this-2month-old-story-about-a-labour-intern-slave-scandal-was-just-a-distraction-from-bill-todd/
No was rebranding of labour to slavelabour , Catchy, will stick a lot longer than Barclay gate
Troll
He’s just assisting with the “repeat a lie often enough” thing. If Wayne above is correct, he may even be getting paid for it (in fact, I hope so – who would embarrass themselves like that for free?).
Calling the volunteers foreign students is disingenuous – most people understand foreign students to be people on student visas studying in NZ. The volunteers are domestic students in their home countries, volunteering abroad, and attempting to pretend they are in any way related is poppycock.
Ho… listen to you Wayne. You come here regularly and indulge in pure spin and misrepresentation.
Labour was not “caught fair and square”. IT WAS NOT A LABOUR RUN PROGRAMME. It was run by an independent organisation who did not do their homework properly. Even though the participants were genuinely trying to assist Labour (oh, what a shocking sin) they should not have used Labour’s name during the recruitment process. You are are being traditionally selective in your responses and, in the process, I call you out as a cheat. But then we know Nats are especially prone to such behaviour.
I congratulate Labour for picking up the tabs and running with the programme for the sake of the fresh young idealists who are trying to make a difference in this seriously corrupt world. In a bygone era I was one of them, so I understand their enthusiasm and applaud them for it.
Re- Josie Pagani. There were no quote marks around my claim concerning her comment. Unlike you [apparently] I don’t always have the time to check up what exactly was said so I paraphrased. Her level of expertise as a commentator leaves a huge amount to be desired, and it disappoints me that the MSM use her as a so-called left commentator when every intelligent, informed individual knows she is nothing of the sort.
Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys.
“Now back to the real story of criminal conduct and corrupt cover-ups by the most senior members of the National Party and their unprincipled junior lackeys…….”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11881739
Courtesy of cinny on OM. Released this evening. 😉
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/06/25/35873/barclay-affair-what-the-board-knew
Yes it was disappointing that the panel today consisted of three right wingers. No balance.
The Rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the Death Throes of Neoliberalism
Take that as you will.
How come we get Hosking and Garner and Mulligan
five days a week on television, but never see this guy?….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdACEzbjG-w
This is great and he has also done this interview, which is well worth listening to.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/jun/23/frankie-boyle-grenfell-tower-residents-were-treated-as-less-than-human
Beard, waist coat, glasses, champagne socialist be weary
Is the word you were struggling for ‘wary’?
Silly boy..
curse you lot unmasking my atrocious spelling daily, I Can’t deny it, it’s bloody poor, Like angry Andy I need to improve 😀
Ahh, don’t we all? This still leaves you on the wrong side of the argument, sorry.
And I’m going to have to change my tipple- I used to drink chardonnay.
What about Richardson – the worst..
Best test opener for black caps however for some while , does not take himself to seriously, what’s your beef
His extremist right wing views expressed on Garner’s awful show.
His commentary is about as aesthetically pleasing as his 5 runs off 50 deliveries.
He is quite a repulsive person
Why do you watch it ?
No.
Do you care about our ranking at 34 prof 41 in the OECD for child wellbeing ?
Ed – he doesn’t watch that…
They should bring back the excellent Paul Henry.
Do you care about the level of child poverty in New Zealand?
Stunned Mullet – are you so stunned that you have confused the meaning of ‘excellent’?
Ed, so glad you brought that up
OMG isn’t he horrid, I’ve been hitting mute and switching streams when he speaks.
He should stick to sports and the block because he comes across as an arrogant tosser, on the AM show.
We should get him to tour.
Locked out the googlebots at the firewall and the site has calmed down a lot. It explains a lot about the unexpected site dropouts in the past couple of weeks.
They were repeatably from several servers re-requesting the same bad URL over and over again.
The googlebots had been previously exempted from the usual crawler rules because they were so well behaved. And they were running less than the denial of service rules.
Complained to google.
Thanks for that unintelligible explanation lprent. (Just joking. Some learn a lot and some a little with every communication from you.) Thanks.
🙂 Yeah it is a problem with computing. Damn near every explanation sounds like a excursion into a long fantasy land story arc. Which in many respects is exactly what it is. In particular the whole net is just an extended story of shared perceptions about how it should operate.
Our hospitals are struggling to cope with the numbers of patients and the lack of money. They are also struggling with a Minister of Health who seems to show little interest in cost-effective preventative health measures, like taxing sweetened beverages.
The FIZZ Symposium which will be held tomorrow at Auckland Hospital will have the latest information on this issue of sugar and health.
This government is good at ignoring evidence-based information, while it is very susceptible to lobbying by the NZ Initiative, The NZ Food and Grocery Council and the Tax Payers’ Union. I find the Tax Payers’ Union strong opposition to a sugar tax rather at odds with their website slogan: “Championing Value For Money From Every Tax Dollar”
If reducing sugar intake by taxing sugar leads to a reduction in health issues, then surely this will make the tax payers’ health dollar go further.
http://www.taxpayers.org.nz/what_we_stand_for
I look forward to the Taxpayers’ Union supporting the evidence-based policy which could arise from the FIZZ symposium.
https://www.iticket.co.nz/events/2017/jun/taxing-sugary-drinks
However, it was pleasing to see that the Taxpayers’ Union has questioned the following:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1706/S00271/thats-taxpayer-money-not-your-hush-money.htm
I reckon that they are safe TMM, requesting that as there can be no response to it. But it leaves Taxpayers Union looking good so that they can carry out their real purpose to do the dirty on the Left.
UGH!!!!!
I reread the disgusting Carrick Graham written “Whaleoil “slag-off of Tony Falkenstein who was a speaker at the previous FIZZ symposium. This type of hatchet job (Falkenstein being being called a two-bit-hooker with absolutely no evidence whatsoever) was exposed by Nicky Hager in his Dirty Politics Book, (p 85).
These personal attacks of people working for the public good need to be exposed. There should be no intimidation of those who wish to attend the symposium either.
This not doing anything about sugar laden drinks fits well within the Gnats do-nothing policy (unless there is money in it for them and their patrons.) They are paid to provide a PR cover of interested, concerned appearance.
Have a look at the lovely Gladys Knight as she advises –
Do Nothing Till you Hear from Me. (I think Gnats are looking for a way to use this as their theme at this election, and not pay anything till they hear from the lawyers.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEm9vivjW1E
The only credit that I saw for Bill English over the interviews with Paddy and with Corin, was that Bill did answer the questions. A past PM Key would have skidded, slipped and digressed and was impossible to interview. Bill still ended up in the pooh but he did answer the questions. (Wish Corin would let him speak though!)
T r u m p ’ s L i e s
Just think of what would have happened if the MSM in this country had done the same for Key’s lies.
Politican less than truthful, newsflash
Why do you think that’s acceptable?
Or is it just that they’re your preferred politicians and you don’t mind them lying?
Headline nobody has seen, ever: “Trump statement reasonable and truthful.”
Did you thoroughly search Breitbart, Fox and RT before making that assertion?
My mistake, I should have written “News headline[…]”
English tries to put a bad week behind him by promising tax cuts
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/94055949/pm-bill-english-tries-to-put-a-bad-week-behind-him-by-promising-tax-cuts
Tax cuts for NZ. The modern economic equivalent of the old medical profession treatment of bleeding the patient to cure them. Poor kiwi lies wan yet still more of the same. When we die the excuse will be ‘It was God’s will’.
This is what we have GST for folks. If they get it up to 20% Roger Douglas’ mob will have got their flat tax.
Received national party advertising propaganda today.
Membership/donation form with an insert about the outgoing PM
Oh hell no don’t be asking me for money or to join your party.. was like wtf… found that tasteless boarding on offensive.
The insert was titled, “We’re working for NZ”, picture of the outgoing PM against a farming background. The flyer was all about him, there was no ‘we’re’ in either of the two images… no I take that back, I see sheep, about six of them. Nada about the local candidate (tbh that really surprised me), just Bill and his six sheep working for NZ.
I feel a sheep song coming on ….. just for the outgoing PM and his six sheep who are working for NZ 😀 Maestro… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG6JFrWjGTE
25pc cinny , 25pc I say again, lower than Cunner same time in 2014
Do you care about the fact we are 34th out of 41 OECD countries for child well-being?
That’s a silly subjective stat ed, 25pc is simply fact, government must be doing something right
Baaaaaaa baaaaaa haaahaaa what national getting 25%? After all my post was all about national, gosh Red, if you say so, I mean I’m not a national supporter, but I don’t think I would have guessed that low. But hey this Barclay thing is continually ongoing, so you may be correct.
Will check in with you on the eve of the 23rd, to let you know how close your guess was at national only getting 25%
Ok, Barclay gate, employment spat will disappear, slavelabour Has an enduring quality about it
Dude it’s the lying and lack of action by the outgoing government that has been and is enduring. Standby the news is on, am sure we will hear more about Barclay any moment now.
No one cares, beltway rubbish, news leading with sailing and rugger here a wager if labour win Powerade next election I will self impose a 10 week exile from commenting here, if national led government you do the same, let’s test your convictions You game ?😀
Correction Powerade should read power before spell and grammar zealots on this site hunt me down, site for some reason won’t let me edit and predictive text is not my friend
Hmmm Red I’m all about numbers, I would have gone for 11 or 9 but not 10 weeks. So instead let’s do it from Sabbat to Sabbat
From the midnight the day after spring equinox (23rd September), result should be in by then, until Beltane in the Southern Hemisphere, known in the North as Samhain, also known on a commercial level as Halloween
From midnight on the day after Spring Equinox until the final minute of Sabbat on the last day of October, if National wins I won’t comment on TS.
For you Red, when national loses, no commenting from the first minute of the 24th Sept until the last minute of 31st October.
Deal?
Deal 😀
Deal.. virtual handshake and all that. 😀
Your desperation has an endearing quality about it.
Hasn’t the intern thing already dropped of the media’s targeting?
On the Barclay/English affair Newsroom just published another piece with new information. And BE also released some new fodder for the MSM and social media. I expect tomorrow’s news will be full of that.
For political junkies may be for the average voter slavelabour will hang around a lot longer on the campaign trail and in voters subconscious
Nah Bill confirming his lies even after those interviews today. I think more to come – we got all next week for the drip drip drip. Gnats are going to use up a few dead cats on this one. Maybe a sex scandal will get it out of the news but I suspect not lol not the way bills going…
We still don’t know why National backed Barclay for so long, including at the last selection process 😉
Plus there’s the police investigation, and the Clutha-Southland selection investigation process.
Mate, it’s being hammered in the media, and the PM just pointed out that he’s been lying again.
60 marae slaves have turned down offers to be relocated. Must be Stockholm Syndrome.
The Todd thing stinks bad, the Nats turned to their arsenal and the biggest ordinate they could spin up and hand to Hootie and The Blowfish is this stupid slaves in slums claptrap.
If that’s the best their armory has to offer they have much bigger problems than axe in hand Bill standing next to the fallen Cherry tree.
LOL
But know one cares, it won’t move the polls, slave labour will
Because anonymous internet guy says so? Oh no, we’re fucked!
Comments are only worth the arguments contained in them (whether explicit or implicit). Unsupported assertions have a total value of 0, and repeating unsupported assertions multiplies 0 to get a cumulative value of, er let’s see… oh, yes: 0. Whenever you’re ready, feel free to raise yourself above being a no-net-worth commenter.
Oh dear, a campaign all about Bill English, what could go wrong….
I think I saw that picture before, 2002 wan’t it?
Cinny
I had to stop after 3.5 minutes. What a long shaggy sheep song, very good, and well understoood. And using some sharpened No.8 fencing wire for the needle on the vinyl – that’s creative.
National promoting further tax cuts and increased wages at the National Party Convention, relief at last for the lower socio-economic groups here in NZ ?
So Barclay offered to play the tape to english – spose that confirms one lie.
Too many bill you’re not going to make it…
Bill must have been an awesome dad. “Yes, the baby did just spend some time with a very intent expression on his face and now the room smells of shit, but the fact of a full nappy hasn’t been established – so I’m off down the pub.”
From the house in Dipton, or the one in Wellington?
I think Bill is probably a fantastic Dad, he’s a good bloke. Good blokes are crappy liars. His words and body language/tone have been juxtaposed.
That’s ok, we all lie. Now back to what matters. How can we get more of us saying ‘Geeez, I’m loving life.’
None of this is going to effect Bill English in the slightest.
Of course..
Did it have any effect on John Key?
No, no it didn’t.
I’ll be honest I’ve never seen such a group of slow learners as the people I see here on the standard, it’s really head scratching stuff because you guys aren’t dumb there just seems to be quite a disconnect with reality.
I’m guessing it must be a left wing thing?
Is Bill English John Key?
Um, I won’t answer that, it’s the subject of a police investigation, um, I really don’t want to answer that, um, no, I guess no he isn’t….
Key ain’t English remember?
Key was no God, he was as polarising as he was popular.
English’s more conservative “gee shucks” country boy approach has far more supporters than it does detractors, he’ll probably end up more popular than Key.
Maybe unless Barclay taped himself telling blinglish about taping, and blinglish’s subsequent advice or lack thereof. And Collins might want a 2 month gig as PM for her CV – it’ll really help with the prospective log and milk customers.
Yeah he was a real hero for the gnats last time he led them to an election record loss wasnt it? You think those gnat MPs have forgotten that? I dont think so. And here he is again stuffing it up lol go billshitter go
English failed because of Shipley and he was up against Clark
That woman was fucking hideous and so disliked I doubt Key would have done much better than English in 2001.
So what you’re saying is that we consistently overestimate the ability of the RW voter to give a damn?
The alternative is a complete shit sandwich, no one’s in a hurry to have that.
That’s what the RW voter always gives us because they’re so accepting of the lies of their leaders.
Do you care about our ranking at 34 out of 41 in the OECD for child well-being ?
I find it disturbing that you’re fine with politicians lying so blatantly and engaging in crimes tghat should be sending them to jail.
Of course, if it was Left politicians lying you’d be screaming blue murder.
So why did Key go BM?
Sounding a bit hollow there lol
True. Coz the bit of his soul that might have been affected was in the 49% he sold off a while back.
Nor should it, he’s a first rate farmer.
David, you seem a bit more on to it than most around here.
Why do think the Todd Barcley “scandal” will have little effect on Bill English’s popularity or how people vote?
Because if you asked random people to list their top 50 concerns Todd would be lucky to make many lists. Unfortunately for Bill I think the tiny bit that will stick in the minds of people more concerned about Shortland Street plots than Todd whatisname is ‘Bill fibbed’.
Very true.
Your last sentence, Like you, say everyone tells the odd fib can’t see it being the career ender everyone on here thinks it’s going to be.
Good you admit he’s a liar. Pity he’s too weak to own up – I spose he has always got another Sunday coming up hasn’t he.
“Odd fib”
Odd fib!
Orchestrated litany, this stream, this gush, this torrent, BM.
That’s why nats are so shit at workplace safety: their instinct is to minimise the perceived extent of their own offending, isolate themselves from their colleagues’ offending, but the thought of eliminating tory corruption never occurs to them.
Prima facie, He’s been covering up a crime and that comes with up to seven years of jail.
That’s not the odd fib. That’s an orchestrated series of lies designed to mislead and prevent the application of justice.
RWNJS: Law N Order – for the little people but not for RWNJ politicians.
What won’t you defend?
‘affect’ is the verb you are struggling for, BM (back at 21, where BM demonstrates weakness in syntax, along with other nonsense.
Fuck off you boring pedantic ball bag.
Shouldn’t there be a comma after “fuck off”?
Lost cause – BM is a semi-literate dumb-arse, who is still spouting nonsense.
He’s a RWNJ which has being ‘a semi-literate dumb-arse’ as a pre-requisite.
You’re so good at sticking to blog etiquette.
None of this is going to effect Bill English in the slightest.
I expect not. Right-wingers don’t seem to have a problem with either crimes or the covering-up thereof by their leaders. However, those of us who expect better are free to try and promote that as a concept.
They don’t have to behave better – as long as they face a robust set of punishments.
Oh to have a dictophone rolling in the Fresh Sir JK’s place.
“Oh don’t tell them that Bill….too late. They’ve got you on toast now Sport.”
Weka you’re bang on in your comments 18 above.
MSN just published more info via Newsroom..
“The board and the selection committee knew Barclay had:
– already broken National Party rules by releasing the name of a challenging candidate.
– breached the rules by speaking to the media between the close of nomination and the close of the pre-selection process.
– spoken to his electoral office staff about employment matters that breached a confidentiality agreement.
– not declared police had asked him to be interviewed over the taping of conversations of staffer Glenys Dickson on his candidate nomination form.
– got staff in his Gore electorate office to canvass delegates to support his reselection when it was outside their contractual obligations and a misuse of taxpayer money.
And there were issues around a $5000 loan Barclay had been given by the party for campaigning. At this point the loan had not been repaid or disclosed in the campaign donation register.”
Lolz the dodgy board lead by Peter – let’s not change the fishing laws because I’ve shares in Sanford – Goodfellow. What a surprise, not.
I must say tomorrow mornings live interviews with the outgoing PM will be interesting. And what do you know, Radio Live are talking about the Barclay thing as I’m typing.
Excerpt from Newsroom story:
Well I never. And a former senior police officer.
In the morn billshit could well lie and say he slept well last night.
Gee thanks Cinny. Just when Bill must have believed that it was all over, ka-boom. Some of the details were already known but there is more and linking it all together is great.
Though there is less to bother Bill than I had hoped. Expect Bill tomorrow on Morning Report he will say every Board has its moments of disagreement so nothing new. He will suggest that Labour has its troubles too etc etc.