It has to be John Roughan, only he is that big an idiot. I tell you what, if Andrew Little thinks he is going to get a rational law and order debate in the MSM where this sort of poorly thought out drivel is proudly presented as a masthead editorial, he is going to be sorely disappointed.
Whoever wrote that editorial doesn’t understand the basic underlying principles of the common law, let alone criminal justice law reform.
But when it turns out they have committed a crime, does the reason they aroused suspicion matter more than the crime? That is the question many will be asking when they read about this case.
Does the Herald understand the reason why the courts throw out cases if they involve Police abuse of their authority? That is the question many will be asking when they read this editorial.
You know, NZME is going to put it’s NZ Herald “premium content” behind a paywall soon.
Do they seriously think people will pay to read that sort of utterly stupid bullshit?
The “quality” of the “premium product” that NZME says it can charge for is very poor. The one question they never ask themselves when they blame everyone but themselves for the failure of the traditional MSM to deal with the rise of the internet is a simple one – If they don’t respect the quality of their own content, why would they expect their readers to want to pay for it?
Any number of people make good money on the internet. Youtubers, Twitch streamers, subcription only only media like the The Young Turks. NZME need to work out why people donate enough money to make a lot of streamers very rich, but they won’t spare a brass razoo for NZME’s rubbish.
The Herald is little more than a suburban giveaway that aspires to be the Daily Mail. If they really wanted a paywall to work, they’d spend the next 12 months concentrating an getting a dramatic increase in the quality of their content. Otherwise, why would you pay to read a ridiculous piece like that editorial when you can (attempt to) read an equally nonsensical view on law and order from David Garrett for free?
+1 Sanctuary – also Herald is so busy supporting the right wingers they fail to understand that they are actually cannibalising their own readers by promoting policy pushing people to work harder and have less disposable income and therefore less time to read newspapers and less interest in hearing about the right wing propaganda every day, day in, day out.
After dirty politics when some of their reporters were caught out, did they do anything about it to gain back credibility by removing those journos, nope, even the right wingers can’t trust the Herald reporting.
In fact there were quite a few right wingers reading the left wing blogs to actually find out what real issues there were out there and what people really thought.
When people were able to comment online, it was heavily censored and guess what, people can’t be bothered commenting if it takes too long or does not appear because these days people expect real time dialogue and can’t be bothered reading if the commentary is one sided.
Exactly. A whole lot of thick in that article, I feel more dumb for having read it. Soon I’ll be listening to Hosking and voting National against my best interests.
In the UK, being attacked by the corporate media is seen as a sign you’re doing the correct thing.
“Attacks on Jeremy Corbyn by the rightwing press are leading to large spikes in his support base immediately after negative newspaper articles, according to data seen by the Guardian.
Figures from Momentum come days after Labour went on the offensive over reports in the Daily Mail, the Sun and other newspapers that Corbyn met a Czechoslovakian spy in the 1980s.
The group said negative stories in the Daily Mail worked as effective recruitment tools. Facebook posts encouraging supporters to join reached twice as many people when they featured a Daily Mail headline, and Facebook posts advertising job roles reached up to 10 times as many people when featuring a headline from the newspaper.
Ash Sarkar from Novara Media said each time the papers sensationally attacked Corbyn it reinforced “the sense that he must be getting something right”.
“It’s also unwittingly punctured one of the key Tory myths, which is competence in all things,” she said. “With Ben Bradley having to issue this grovelling apology, and the marked and hurried climbdown by senior Tory MPs who really went for Corbyn, we found out there’s one thing worse than malevolence; it’s incompetence.”“
YES Ed it is now time for lefties and Labour of the Papatuanuku/ World to be heard .
Its time for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party to shine brightly in Great Britain.
Its is time for a Government that delivers for the 99.9 % of he tangata/ the people .
Its time to have a humane honorable Government that respects OUR mokos /grandchildrens future ie the environment and EQUALITY for all ruling
Great Britain.
Kia kaha. P.S could the good people make a donation to Thestandard website they provide a excellent service for US lefties so we can voice our truthful opinions.
Ka kite ano
Train delays – the industrial action by the Rail & Maritime Transport Union.
As usual, we are only getting one side of the story from MSM. I’ve read through the comments at https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2018/02/25/trains-get-whole-lot-crowded/ and it appears to me that AT is pushing a penny-pinching approach, as evidenced by the budget document released “in error” in January.
I think the union will get far more sympathy than the whingers expect. People will see AT/Transdev shafting the managers to pinch pennies when the whole story comes out. Copy/paste of union media release below.
MEDIA RELEASE
Rail & Maritime Transport Union
26 February 2018
Auckland rail workers refuse overtime due to safety concerns
Auckland rail workers have overwhelmingly voted to take industrial action as their employer insists on cutting staff on commuter trains.
Beginning tomorrow, rail workers who are members of the RMTU will take a ban on overtime.
“Transdev and Auckland Transport aren’t budging on driver-only operation, which will severely compromise passenger safety,” says John Kerr, Rail and Maritime Transport Union organiser.
“This plan will make locomotive engineers – the people driving the trains –responsible for passenger assistance and security. This isn’t safe, and rail workers won’t put their passengers at risk like this.”
The workers have been in collective bargaining with French-owned multinational Transdev, since May. Auckland Transport is involved in the negotiations, but is also pushing the driver-only model.
However, preliminary results from a survey by the Public Transport Users Association have revealed nearly all passengers support keeping safety critical staff on trains.
“Train managers are the first responders in medical emergencies; they ensure all passengers, including those with disabilities, can safely board and disembark; they’re a deterrent to anti-social behaviour. With train managers on every train, the public can feel safe knowing a skilled, uniformed member of staff is never far away,” says John Kerr.
“An overtime ban will affect services, so we hope management will start listening.
“We issued notice of the ban on Saturday afternoon and AT immediately
announced a reduced train timetable. Our members don’t want to inconvenience the public, and we know they support us in not compromising their safety, so we’re calling on AT and Transdev to resolve this dispute.”
“We had a positive meeting with both AT and Transdev on Friday and have another scheduled for next Wednesday. If we make progress we can call off the overtime ban, if not our members are also willing to take full-day strikes.”
“We call on Auckland Council and central government to step in and tell Transdev to keep our passenger trains safe.”
ENDS
For more information contact:
John Kerr
Organiser
Rail and Maritime Transport Union
Mobile: 027 246 4941
If you are female, very young, or very old, being in a train carriage alone at night is not a fun place to be.
The oresence of train managers presence manages a whole group of people to be more civil. And by that I mean late adolescent males, and drunk people.
It is utterly bizarre that the government has very recently gone to the trouble of legislatively empowering train guards to have a much stronger enforcement role on trains, only for the contractors to fire them.
Perth’s “TransPerth” public transport system has a great public transport system and the trains are regularly monitored by Transport Inspectors who have the authority to issue on the spot fines or infringement notices if a passenger or group of passengers are behaving badly http://www.transperth.wa.gov.au/Contact-Us/Fines-and-Infringements.
We travel to Perth regularly for family reasons, and always use the public transport as it is both quicker and and cheaper than car.
We have never experienced any problems and the inspectors and bus drivers are very helpful.
I gather that AT is trying to model itself on the Perth model, but the elephant in the room has always been the fact that they are dealing with private companies. It seems that the only real way that New Zealand can improve it’s public transport is to take it back and run it ourselves along successful overseas models.
Are you sure about the operation of the Perth Buses?
According to Wiki
“Bus services in Perth are operated by three private companies with services divided into 11 zones that are re-tendered every 10 years”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transperth
If they don’t have any trouble operating a good service with private companies why should AT not be able to?
What we do
Get the people of Perth where they want to go.
On a typical week day we operate more than 11,200 timetabled bus services, 1,000 train services and nearly 400 school bus services.
We also operate 80 ferry services on a typical weekday from September to April, and 60 services from May to August.
In total we run a fleet of over 1,100 buses, 222 rail cars and two ferries.
We operate as part of the Western Australian State Government’s Public Transport Authority (PTA).
“Bus Contractors
The bus companies that operate Transperth bus services do their own recruiting. Please contact them about jobs for bus drivers. For their contact details go to About Us.”
and even more terrible
“Customer Service
We outsource our call centre operations to Serco. To see current vacancies, please go to SEEK and enter ‘Customer Service Serco Australia Transperth’ in the keywords field.”
Serco! Scream!
I think that you must have used the private bus contractors. You just didn’t realise it.
I go to Perth fairly regularly. At least once a year anyway. As you say, the service is very good, regardless of who is providing it. Far better than the Wellington buses, certainly. I have difficulty with walking and balance and the bloody Wellington drivers pull out and lurch off before I can get seated. Bastards.
OK! So what it seems is that they obviously keep a very close watch on the bus operators – all the busses I have seen (and like you I travel to Perth at least once a year) are all in the same livery too, so you wouldn’t know. Just owned by a different company.
As for the call centre – well! well! well! Seems like for once Serco have actually got something right. I use the online route planner regularly. No problems at all. The information office at Perth Station is also very good.
I don’t understand why non-passengers are even permitted on the platforms. Changing this would make a difference, especially later at night on outskirt train stations.
The ease of use, ticketing simplicity I used over twenty years ago on London Rail, makes a mockery of the AT Hop card, which has the benefit (?) if new technology to aid it.
Alwyn you know already full well that Kiwirail is not fully nationalised: it is one of those oddities that Rogernomes gave us: State-Owned Enterprises. As such it has to pretend it is private and give a dividend to its owner (the government) which has quietly underfunded it, and tilted the field in favour of private trucks operating on roads, and so on..
But that time is coming to an end with the catastrophe of global warming. NZ will have to take proper control of Rail, and switch away from roads the volume of traffic that adds to our carbon footprint. Ed is right. But you are a long way from appreciating unpleasant realities like that, aren’t you Alwyn?
However it is in just a few places.
The Main Trunk from Auckland to Wellington.
The Auckland/Hamilton/Tauranga triangle.
The West Coast to Christchurch for the coal trade.
Probably the route from Picton to Christchurch.
That’s it for freight.
For passengers it is the Wellington urban area.
The rest of the country is simply unsuitable. Routes like Napier to Gisborne are only of interest to nineteenth century technology loving idiots.
I realise that is very hard to accept for people like yourself but you really are going to have to start appreciating these, to you, unpleasant realities. Unfortunately you are a long way from that, aren’t you Vino?
If they do without train managers then I expect schools to manage the train saftey of all their students using the trains as well as their social behaviour.
I’ve been on a train when college boys (from one of the better decile 10 schools) behaved appallingly badly. The conductors can’t kick them off for bad behaviour because their parent’s whine about poor little Hunter having to walk home.
why should the schools be bothered to manage the behavior of ‘college boys’ after school? Why not just ban ‘college boys’ and drunk people from trains?
Why not task the parents? Schools are there to teach people how to read, write and do math. Parents should teach their children to behave like nice good people.
Anything else you want schools to manage? And by schools you mean teachers? Which teachers, the ones accredited or the teachers aides? Does this new job also apply to ‘teachers’ of charter schools or will they be exempt?
How about we just hire train attendants that go up and down the carriage to check if people have tickets and maybe just maybe even tell someone to take their feet of the bench? Too expensvie? oh dear.
not erupting, i think really this question should be asked if we want to have ‘college boys’ – a description that i took from the commentator – to be managed on trains.
really what did i say that you took offense too? that i believe teachers should be for teaching and parents should be there for managing their children? Oh dear.
As a semi-retired teacher, I think Sabine makes a good point. Added to Interval and Lunch-time Canteen Control duty, teachers should also by roster have to travel with their students both before and after school at least twice a week, perhaps armed as Trump suggests, so as to be able to keep the peace on the train. The train company would then need fewer staff, and could make more profit. Win-win all round.
After all, teachers do all this because they are vocationally driven, and don’t need to be paid anything for it.
Good thinking, Sabine.
The trains used to be amazing, you could buy your ticket on the train, (it used to be only $1.50 per stage), it was quick and reliable, staff were amazing and rushed to help, if you had a children in a pram SO MUCH EASIER on trains to get the pram on safely.
I have heard since they have increased the train prices while reducing the user experience, such as stopped the conductors on the trains so you have to queue to buy a ticket now, in typical neoliberal style.
Buses are a nightmare in particular for pram users, gave up using a bus with the surly unhelpful drivers and difficulty in managing children, when you had a pram, paying, putting the pram down while ensuring kids are not escaping and then putting it back up, not exactly an easy or safe experience on buses.
Buses are also very slow, it’s hard to work out stops if you are going to a new place (unlike a train), buses don’t turn up, often you need 2 because routes are so poorly planned.
Going a bit further on a bus doesn’t work because of the expense, lack of time table, difficulty if you are not within walking distance of stop and you have to park a car. etc etc. Forget it, if you work multiple jobs and have to get from one to another it could take you hours on public transport and you’d probably lose your job as you could not arrive reliably.
Basically those that moan about people not using the buses and public transport enough, clearly don’t use buses themselves or just do very simple journeys and never get first hand experience of what a nightmare it is and the simplest things for customers are missing while behind the scenes clearly all money seems to being spent on advisers working out how to make it a worse experience for the customers but easy for themselves to put the money into their own salaries of middle and upper management and , lowering wages of the actual drivers, while increasing fares and putting out their hand for more rates money.
Tired of increasing rates and funnelling over 50% of the over 1 billion a year into Auckland Transport while having such Moron’s there making transport in their own image!
HOP cards for example. You need to pay $10 to get one. Just lost mine and now need to replace it and the money on it. Only certain places sell them. Getting a children’s HOP sounds harder than getting residency in this country. Clearly a child getting a cheaper fare is treated with suspicion as some sort of criminal activity from whoever the Moron was that designed the HOP card system. Apparently they want to expire them after months when Japan the money lasts for 10 years!
I heard the tender of the IT for HOP was ‘questionable’ in the least and was way more expensive than it should have been. In NZ we pay gold and get peanuts service, but nobody notices because many making decions are so far removed from real life and the systems are some sort of botch job of tech of another country with a moronic custom job on top with arrogant clueless managers micromanaging everything.
If you want to have a low wage, gig and precariat culture then it helps to design a public transport system around local conditions if you want people to use it.
Another premium piece of writing by the Herald.
Hawkesby pimping for English and the Nats.
Bet she’s hoping the paywall doesn’t go up.
No one would pay to read this garbage.
Given the successful Seattle experience (a 62% increase, phased in over 20 months), I’d like to see the evidence Treasury’s relying on to make these assertions.
I can blame Treasury for saying it, white-Antoine, if they’re full of shit. Their minimum wage rise assertion is false; if you have evidence that their other assertions are true, let’s see it.
Obviously you have the evidence already, though, because you asserted that they “can’t be blamed”, so you must have a basis for that assertion.
Real world evidence, mind – not some economic theory litany.
What part of “real world evidence” are you having trouble with, white-Antoine? Finding some?
Treasury’s overarching message was that in a strong economy minimum wage increases, if relatively small and frequent, would have little impact.
And the Seattle experience shows that “relatively small” can be translated as “up to at least 62% in 20 months”.
Now, you made another assertion: “Sometimes minimum wage rises affect unemployment”. I’m calling you out: provide some real world evidence for this assertion, or admit that you have none.
Really, just Google “minimum wage effects employment”. There are lots of real world examples. Throw a dart at your screen if you need help picking one.
and if you want anything else you’re on your own: I don’t particularly like you and have no intention of spending any more of my day discussing the minimum wage with you.
You think Nick Hanauer is the only person to have published similar findings. I see your two opinion-pieces and raise you three meta analyses:
Hafner et al, Card et al, Doucouliagos & Stanley, all conclude the same thing: minimum wage rises do not affect the unemployment rate.
Which is exactly the same conclusion that Sir Michael Cullen forced Treasury to acknowledge. Treasury even managed to carry on telling the truth about it over the last ten years, although I note that Steven Joyce’s pet project is still pushing the same propaganda as you.
Stop posting propaganda and white-anting the things you don’t understand, and I’ll stop schooling you.
The phrasing from Gallagher indicates that there is coalition resistance.
A fresh government with as strong a momentum as this one will not give one ounce of monkey shit about Treasury’s feelings.
The Minister needs to show gumption and state clearly that at 4.6% headline unemployment, and even NEET numbers falling, there is no better time to really ramp up all of the underlying baseline wage levels.
And once he has done that, since they are massively subsidising employers through the Working For Families increase, and since headline unemployment is so low, they should also increase the unemployment benefit.
in 1998 the first ‘open’ job advert – in a window in a large business in Wellington – read, Warehouse person wanted, heavy lifting required, Youth rates apply.
Whats not to like about youth rates? Why hire dad when you can hire the kid for half the price.
Is Jacobi the Rowarth of trade?
Is he ‘another academic ‘?
“Sackur: Yeah but he’s (Joy) a scientist, it’s based on research, it’s not an opinion he’s plucked from the air.
Key: He’s one academic, and like lawyers, I can provide you with another one that will give you a counterview. “
Chinese quisling tells NZers to welcome our new Totalitarian Communist Overlords
After I asked why the sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind are so mindlessly apathetic when it comes to Chinese influence in our political system, Chinese quisling Stephen Jacobi demands we all go back to sleep.
Stephen of course is the executive director of the NZ China council so is paid to spread propaganda to welcome our new Totalitarian Communist Overlords.
That a prominent academic who has highlighted the influence of China over our political institutions and who has then be threatened and her home robbed isn’t something to fear Stephen boldly proclaims, it’s really just an ‘ anti-China narrative’ that will ‘unintentionally tap into a prejudice against Chinese people which has raised its head several times in our history’.
As predicted KiwiBuild will be a complete and utter failure.
46,000 builders short by 2020.
KiwiBuild apartments and houses to be priced up to $600,000 in Auckland could still be well out of reach of their target market.
insufficient first home buyers willing and able to purchase 100,000 KiwiBuild houses
MBIE papers released to Newshub Nation say an analysis of the Auckland housing market in 2015 suggested only 25,000 private rental households in paid employment in the city made enough to buy a $500,000 house.
-Twyford said he’s looking at ways to make KiwiBuild more affordable including shared equity schemes and he’s not ruling out the Government retaining part ownership of the properties.
But that could create funding issues for the flagship policy, as it is supposed to be funded by an initial $2 billion capital injection, which is to be recycled into more KiwiBuild houses as the completed ones are sold.
My understanding (based on some stuff nearly a decade old now) is that NZ real estate commissions are high by global standards. This is why there has been a proliferation of the so-called private sale companies. Winding them back, and looking at some other dysfunctional activities like offshore advertising of NZ properties is probably overdue. The former can be regulated, the latter should never have been legal.
Lol, I’m sure you would support Labour to crash the market. Problem is, we need a broader plan otherwise National will just fuck it up again next time it is in power.
One of the reasons that land is so expensive in Auckland is because there is so little of it.
All the easy build land has already been built on. To develop a subdivision these days required heaps of civil engineering, because developers want flat sections where they can lay a concrete slab and stick up a ticky tacky quickly to on sell at a huge profit. The environmental destruction that these projects entail has to be seen to be believed. Take the hillsides around Orewa for instance – “Millwater” and the new development to the north next to the “holiday highway” – I walked up and down those steep hills a few years back setting out retaining wall, after retaining wall, as the diggers, moxies and scrappers, roared in. I see sections for sale in Warkworth now from $420,000! That’s over an hours drive (little public transport) from Auckland.
What we need to be doing – and the recently announced Regional Development package is a start – is to help people to move away from this totally crowded small isthmus that constitutes Auckland, to the regions where there is more space for people to live a more fulfilling life.
sorry, but what happens when the regions are filled up?
Think that problem can be put off for another day? It’s already happening. I live in the regions and many of us don’t want more Aucklanders thanks. One of the clear things happening already is that Aucklanders selling up and moving south bring their higher equity with them and thus push the land prices up both by being able to out bid locals and by increasing the need for development. Auckland isn’t the only place where subdivisions are pushing up land prices.
We need to move to a steady state economy and that includes putting a cap on population. Until lefties are willing to talk about population all we are doing is promoting solutions that spread the problems around. While that might increase the wellbeing for Aucklanders in the short and medium term, it’s unsustainable and it lowers the wellbeing of people in other places.
that’s not about Aucklanders btw, it applies to any city that is overcrowded and thinks moving to the regions solves the problem.
it may, but until people are supporting and promoting a steady state economy all they’re saying is let’s spread the problem around and make other people’s lives worse.
I live in the regions too, and yes I appreciate the problem you espouse.
I also agree that we need to move to a steady state economy and fast.
However I’m not sure if you have visited Auckland in the recent past, but over the past few years it has become vastly overpopulated. There is a flight into Auckland Airport almost every 3 mins during the day. Sitting in the arrival area at Auckland international is mind blowing. People pouring out of the security/customs area in a constant stream. A couple of years back it was never like that. From Auckland Airport “Fast Facts sheet pdf https://www.aucklandairport.co.nz/~/media/Files/…/Fast%20Facts%202013.pdf
Projected growth
24 million passengers a year
by 2025.
and they are well on the way to that!
The demand for housing and the resulting homelessness it creates is getting worse not better. It’s not just those who have the finance that are moving out of the city – the poor are as well. Here in Thames there are at least a dozen rough sleepers in the town sleeping wherever they can find shelter – and that is a town of 7500. Our food bank – like all others around the country – is stretched and food parcels were up around 12% last year.
Basically Auckland is the gateway for most people coming to this country but it is built on a tiny strip of land and thus is really unsuitable as a site for a major city. If we are to house the thousands who are struggling to find a suitable place to lay their heads then we need to think seriously about sharing the load, and ways to limit our population growth.
I haven’t been to Auckland recently, but I feel reasonably up to date with the problems it is having. Not least because those problems are causing problems elsewhere in NZ too.
I’m just resisting the framing of ‘shift to the regions and all will be well’. I see lots of lefties saying this, and I think it’s short sighted and ignorant of the bigger picture. Unlike you most of those lefties aren’t thinking about sustainability in its truer sense and are largely devoid of considerations for the ecologies of the regions (or Auckland for that matter). And still so many lefties keep saying the mantra that population isn’t an issue.
I’m all for limiting immigration on this basis too btw.
“I’m just resisting the framing of ‘shift to the regions and all will be well’.”
I agree. This is short sighted, and somewhat deluded.
Many have contributed to the infrastructure, services and amenities of our big cities, and they are desirable for that reason. Not to mention the vast social and community networks at play. To relinquish these for monetary reasons is understandable on a personal level. To promote it as a solution is problematic.
@ Molly
It’s not just for monetary reasons Molly – the need for people to exit Auckland is for humanity reasons as well. You know the experiments they used to perform in Psychology where they would place more and more rats into a confined space. Eventually the rats would turn on each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
It’s a bit like that now. There really just isn’t the room anymore. To make room, hillsides have to be flattened and stablilized , or else current accommodation pulled down and rebuilt as high rise – neither of which options are cheap. We have seen the results of cheap high risers in the recent past in London.
@Weka
Yes we need to think of ways to be limiting our population growth – but it s not just a national problem but also a global one. We can put in place restrictions to immigration, etc but this country is under huge pressure globally to take in more both from a humanitarian standpoint and from other interests – and I don’t just mean the wealthy few buying up their boltholds in Central.
NZ ranks poorly in developed nations wrt the number of refugees we take each year – not only in actual numbers but also as a rate per capita – far fewer on both counts than that despised country next door, Australia. /sarc https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/71899378/how-new-zealands-refugee-quota-stacks-up-internationally
On our doorstep we have a growing crisis with rising sea levels. with around 120,000 people on Tuvalu and Kiribati whose Islands are threatened. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/08/australia-and-nz-should-allow-open-migration-for-pacific-islanders-threatened-by-climate-says-report
Then there is the concept of fairness…
New Zealand is around the same size as Philippines. Philippines is approximately 300,000 sq km, while New Zealand is approximately 268,838 sq km. Meanwhile, the population of Philippines is ~103 million people (98 million fewer people live in New Zealand).
If we consider ourselves to be good global citizens…
I don’t know. It is a problem just too big for me.
My position on that is to reduce immigration and increase refugee take. Also, fuck rich people in Queenstown. Their ecological footprint could be used to sustain far more people than them.
@macro “It’s not just for monetary reasons Molly – the need for people to exit Auckland is for humanity reasons as well.”
You are right, I should have more accurately stated “individual choice” reasons.
I’m an Aucklander by birth, and while struggling, I can’t imagine that the exodus of Aucklanders does anything at a societal level – even while improving the wellbeing of those that go.
I am pissed off at the situation, and refuse to leave the immense infrastructure generations have paid for to the already financially well-endowed.
As mentioned, moving to the regions is an individual solution and one that works for many. In terms of addressing the fundamental issue of housing, it is only a deferment and as such – is not an effective solution.
NZ also suffers from having had a wealth of land to use (appropriate) when we began town planning.
So, given the car-centric mindset, and the ability to go further – planners, transport planners, architects and builders have learned and expertly honed competence in housing that is not restricted by space or concerned with community. And NZers have accepted that as the benchmark.
Even now, when you look out over newly built suburbs, they most often contain detached, single story houses, plonked in the middle of an ever-decreasing section size.
We are still wasting the land we are developing, by the way we plan, design and build.
TBH though. This is only one part of the housing problem.
The quickest and easiest and fairest way, is to stop immigration in NZ until we have enough houses to buy and rent at prices people can afford on local wages.
Not believing “soon we will have affordable housing”… everything those people say is about making more $$$ for themselves from ‘freeing up land’ with zoning, SHA’s or deregulation or PPP’s or handouts for developers and building firms. Funny enough all their suggestions have not produced affordable housing, but shot up rents and house and land prices, go figure!
Our lax immigration laws bought in by the Natz are making the crisis worse, because they are adding more people from overseas so corporations don’t have to pay/train local people and some are getting $20k for the privilege in a backhander to get a work permit.
The new workers are working on luxury places like the Hyatt for other people often owned by multinational companies or business that seem more like scams than businesses. Then there are scams on top of the scams. It’s a ponzi scheme with Kiwi taxpayers picking up the tab.
Our schools, roads and hospitals are full, when we have the lowest birth rate for decades. Productivity is down, employment is fake and we need to have WFF and so forth subsidising wages.
What about business beware, the Hyatt should have done their homework before starting construction for example and if they collapse (a false hope) – great opportunity for some local company to buy that prime site might lower the price of land, instead of the taxpayers and ratepayers subsidising their building work.
We desperately need a vehicle to train apprentices, not just for chippies but for all the other trades as well.
The only way that’s going to happen is if the government steps up to the plate.
Unfortunately, now Labours committed it’self to this Kiwibuild bull shit, the opportunity to actually fix the foundation issues affecting NZ housing has been missed.
It can be done in conjunction. Government can manage to juggle more than one ball at a time. It’s probably that given the last few years you’ve forgotten.
Won’t happen Twyford has staked his career on the success of Kiwibuild, state houses are going to be pushed to the back of the queue.
Anyway, governments are only interested in passing the work off to private construction companies, the concept of having a government department that is anything more than paper shuffling desk jockeys seems a bit beyond them.
Work underway on Wairoa-Napier line
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Contributor:
Fuseworks MediaFuseworks Media
Monday, 26 February, 2018 – 09:27
Work will begin on the reinstatement of the Napier to Wairoa rail line today, just two days after the Government announced its funding through the Provincial Growth Fund for the project.
“Contractors will start cutting back vegetation at Eskdale and will be working north over coming weeks,” KiwiRail Acting Group General Manager Network Services Henare Clarke says.
“A fortnight after that work on the line’s drains and culverts will begin.
“The first log train is expected to run on the line by the end of the year.
“This is a good time to remind people to expect trains or machinery travelling on the track at all times.
“It is six years since the line between Wairoa and Napier was in regular use, so people will need to take extra care around it now that work is underway.
“The work will see an increase in movements along that track.
“Everyone needs to expect trains and other rail vehicles using the line at any time from either direction.
“They should only cross the line at level crossings – to cross the line anywhere else is both dangerous and illegal,” Mr Clarke says.
The re-opening of the line was announced on Friday. KiwiRail has been working with Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and Napier Port to re-open the line.
The Government has allocated $5 million to the project, which is expected to take two years to fully complete.
Following Friday’s announcement, KiwiRail Chief Executive Peter Reidy said it was good news for the region and good news for New Zealand.
“It’s a vote of confidence in our customers and our staff.
“KiwiRail is committed to enabling sustainable and inclusive economic growth and the Government’s investment in promoting rail in the regions will enable us to step up that work.
“Moving logs by rail takes pressure off the roads, and reduces greenhouse gases. The Wairoa-Napier road is not designed to cope with the growing volumes of logs now that the ‘Wall of Wood” is coming on stream and rail is the ideal way of getting that timber to overseas customers.
“We have estimated that using the Wairoa-Napier line to move the logs could take up to 5,714 trucks a year off the road, and reduce carbon emissions by 1292 tonnes,” Mr Reidy said.
What is the subsidy that tax and ratepayers pay for heavy trucks, BM?
This is the cost in the Hawkes Bay.
“Hastings District Council has been consulting with industry and rural communities to assess which routes should be brought up to the new standards and, therefore, which of its 30 bridges need upgrading.
The estimate cost of upgrading 18 of its bridges to a level that will allow larger loads will cost Hastings’ rural ratepayers about $5 million over the next 5-7 years.
This includes the transport agency subsidy of 54 per cent of the overall $10.3 million.”
The bridges needed upgrade for bigger trucks is subsidised by half by rural ratepayers?
By the way, BM, I hope you are right for that would be fair that trucks pay the true cost of their haulage. Any figures that would prove your assertion?
BM – what about the welfare system and those who have no house to live in and staying at a $1000 per week motel room, surely they should be priorities over the luxury market?
The problem is, the luxury market has taken many of the building staff but the locals can’t afford to buy or rent the buildings. The buildings being built are not affordable – they are being designed for somebody else.
If corporations are so desperate for construction workers the visa should be only for $100,000 plus salary to come here and they make sure they pay the taxes and it’s not a scam. Surprisingly I think you will see a return of industry training workers. You can actually learn to tile and stop in days, it’s not that difficult so not sure why Malysians were needed to work illegally. Deregulation and listening to lobby groups have caused a disaster in construction. Everything is wrong, doing more of the same bringing in scam workers and driving housing demand is making things worse.
A skilled builder should be on $100,000 anyway so therefore the visa criteria should only be for the higher paid skilled staff.
Also immigration need to start putting in an ACC and health tax on every visitors visa as well as mandatory health insurance, because like this unfortunate incident, many are coming to NZ having accidents and the locals keep picking up the tab which is yet another reason our health system is failing.
I’d prefer my tax dollars to go to a hospital and school servicing local kids and community not helping the Hyatt and the like with corporate welfare and labour issues and more and more tourists needing NZ health and roading services while the profits from their stay go to multinationals.
I personally would chop Working for Families (the whole bloody lot), interest free student loans and the first year free study to pay for a state house buildng scheme. The money lost by users of those schemes would find its way back to them in the form of lower rents.
KJT 7.1.1.2
Simple, obvious. No reason to not start it now to begin in earnest with a small team in june, full mode next year. Apprentices and guaranteed work, might have them on bond and they have to go where sent for a while, like we used to do with teachers and doctors?
Someone owns the land and is hoping to profit by its sale.
Development – people who own contracting businesses are hoping to cash in on the development work. Seems fair.
And something, a tough-enough entity, needs to ensure that the enthusiasm doesn’t outpace a creaking, antique infrastructure so the inevitable crash can be averted. (Electricity supply. Sewerage. Public transport. Water supplies.)
Opening the sluice gates and flooding the area might work for irrigation yet a big flood of dwellings, roads, and loss of valuable arable lands just to calm the cries of one little city seems downright dumb.
There’s little that’s efficient in old Auckland. Start spreading the goods of employment opportunities to more places around the country. And if Auckland wants to be The Place in NZ – make it much easier/cheaper to travel to – and depart from.
Can still buy a perfectly adequate small 3 bedroom transportable house for around $140k.
Part of the cost increase are stricter requirements, insulation, double glazing and bracing. And the idea that a standard house now has two bathrooms, family room, and large garage built on.
Agree land prices are into stupid territory. Only immigration, risk free lending on mortgages, and tax free investment in housing, has allowed the bubble to continue.
You trust the crap that comes out of MBIE? Wasn’t that long ago they were telling everyone that minimum wage rises cause unemployment.
Still, it’s good of them to acknowledge that they are incapable; that bolsters the case to asset strip Steven Joyce’s pet project of its useful elements and discard the rest.
That sentence in the comment needs a slight modification.
Move the word capable back one place and delete the last 5 words.
“Does the current Govt actually have a capable Minister?”
The answer appears to be No.
> Legislation from Twyford is coming down the pipeline of a scale that is going to blow people away, and pleasantly appeal to those with good memories.
“They have done more already in four months than National (motorways and Christchurch excepted) did in nine whole years. ”
Citation?
As far as I can tell so far all they have done is roll back a bunch of work National did, agree in princilpal to sign up to the same TPPA that National agreed, only without the US involved so without a big chunk of the benefit, start talking weasel words about why they are no longer going to be able to enter Pike River (because they actually have to be accountable now, not so easy to put peoples lives at risk unnecessarily when you are actually in power), dump their flagship water tax, hide Labours deputy as he has been shown to be inept, and defend an un-defendable Kiwibuild policy which sees a $600k house as an affordable first home for 50,000 Auckland first home buyers.
I can’t wait to see what they announce in May, but if you are that excited about what they have done already, I don’t hold out much hope of sharing your enthusiasm then either.
Well, I’m not the greatest cheerleader for the coalition but it’s silly to say that’s all they’ve done. For a start you’ve missed out the families package and the free tertiary education.
You are clearly another one of those on the hard left who will never be happy with whatever this government does, no matter at what speed or depth.
Can you show me another MMP government that has done something like this list in its first 100 days:
– First year term of tertiary education free. Implemented, and already helping tens of thousands of young people right now.
– Increase student allowances by $50 a week. Implemented, and already helping tens of thousands of young people right now.
– Minimum standards for rental housing. Rolled out right now.
– Overseas buyers banned from buying existing houses. Implemented, and real estate markets already cooling significantly across key areas.
– Housing New Zealand selloff. Stopped.
– Form Affordable Housing Authority and start Kiwibuild. Started, more announcements to come.
– Increase Paid Parental Leave, plus full Families Package. Implemented, already helping tens of thousands of New Zealanders, and tens of thousands more in the coming winter.
– Increase mimimum wage to $16.50. Implemented 1 April 2018.
– Commit to multi-billion light rail system from downtown Auckland to Auckland airport. Underway.
– Set Zero Carbon Emissions goal. Underway.
– Celebrate a successful Waitangi Day as we have not seen in over 40 years.
I am sure you will decry all of it as mere sops to the masses and the entire structure of capitalism hasn’t been removed overnight, therefore you can keep doing a sad hard-left beatdown.
Thankfully the polls are massively telling this Labour-led government that they are on the right track, people are seeing that they have real political skill, and they are well set to double and redouble their implementation for the remaining term and for many more terms to come,
Could you stop referring to people as “hard left” – this is a meme used by the right to avoid discourse. It’s embarrassing to see it used in the same manner on TS.
“First year term of tertiary education free.”
A bit more thought should have been given to this. Many students don’t know what they want to do, and will take time after secondary school to consider further study options. This has removed a financial reason to do so, and will most likely result in an influx of first-year students that go into courses or careers that are not a good fit. It would have been more considered to provide all those in their last year of study with free education. They will be the ones feeling the pinch, and it would have provided an immediate boost to those who will graduate. As it is, they will have the sense of “just missing the boat”.
” Increase student allowances by $50 a week. Implemented, and already helping tens of thousands of young people right now. “
… for those eligible…
All the housing items are not going to solve the crisis. This discussion has been made before.
“Increase Paid Parental Leave, plus full Families Package. Implemented, already helping tens of thousands of New Zealanders, and tens of thousands more in the coming winter.”
Band-aid to the issue of lower wages, and of no help to those on benefits.
“– Increase mimimum wage to $16.50. Implemented 1 April 2018. “
Minimum wage should be equal to living wage. Anything else is below subsistence.
“– Commit to multi-billion light rail system from downtown Auckland to Auckland airport. Underway. “
Been planned for years, as it should be. Not really sorting out the issue of public transport for all South Aucklanders, just those that are getting on a plane.
“– Set Zero Carbon Emissions goal. Underway. “
This means nothing, until implemented in effective ways.
” Celebrate a successful Waitangi Day as we have not seen in over 40 years.”
I’m guessing many have not seen it because they have never been there. It is arrogant to make this assertion of “success” for a number of reasons. Most importantly, for all those who have celebrated this occasion over the years without needing acknowledgment from external sources.
And there is the issue of the contradiction of “holding the government to account, and transparency” and the haste to sign the TPPA.
The backing down on the water resource issues.
The failure to support any meaningful dialogue on beneficiaries – and the support systems that are provided.
Don’t discount these concerns, because we are not the true believers that you require us all to be.
TS is valuable because of the critique provided. This examination does not stop because the government has changed.
“First year term of tertiary education free.”
Why don’t the Labour Coalition ask peopleto send them a tweet to give their Considered Opinion and anecdotes from real experience about touted policies?
Having real experience, the citizen can spot pinholes in a policy at ten paces. ‘Not good enough, it doesn’t make allowance for the x factor, which is nearly a constant in my and others’ classes’, is an example of a possible education response. Opinion to remedy would follow, ‘If …. was done as a start of each day, it would settle the children in a positive mood, and it could even be repeated before each class.’
Some things could be run as pilots and then if successful could be introduced as the norm. Going forward together instead of having autocratic orders from above – I think that would be popular with those who are invested in the idea of thriving community and well-being.
On the hard left – most of the hard left on this site have offered very little bitter criticism of the new government. Constructive criticism, but we were always going to do that. Molly does a good job of highlighting many issues, and offering constructive criticism. I know the centre can’t handle much criticism, but them the breaks.
I also think most of the left, get that labour NZ1 and the Greens have a real nasty enemy stopping any, and all progress. The civil service. It’s a topic which we avoid, and personally I think we should not. Many parts of the civil service are broken, or deeply ideological.
I think historians will be very harsh on the last national government for it’s heavy stacking of the civil service (management in particular) with political lackeys and sycophants. Time will tell.
I am about as left wing as Keith Holyoak, or Muldoon.
As a supporter of genuine social democracy, and making capitalism work as it is supposed to. For everyone!
Most of the “hard left” on this site are light years away from real “hard left” solutions, such as “Workers seizing the means of production”.
Do you consider Bolger, “Hard left” also?
He is one of the many who realise that the Neo-liberal paradigm was a failure.
I suppose you will think that BM is also “hard left”, agreeing with Government addressing the lack of apprenticeship training.
When a return to the, sensible, and successful, “welfare State” run for its own citizens benefit, is called “hard left” by Labour party apologists, it is no wonder why the parliamentary “Soft left’ has lost voters..
Poor wages and conditions have caused a lot of the problem. The industry have got used to paying lemon wages and conditions, no forward planning or investment in training in their own industry and now whining and expect golden peaches or government to procure them their preferred workers (cheap and cheerful).
I doubt MBIE could boil an egg without causing a fire. They would probably have to redesign the kitchen furniture at a cost of 2 million, apply for more funding and call them in 18 months.
Too many cooks lapping up right wing solutions after all the Natz redundancies only the worst of the worst probably left in government advisory roles.
The root cause of the housing lies in the complete lack of regulation by National to curb the deliberate and calculated investment from foreign countries, and in particular one which was Government sanctioned, NZ had the largest increase of Housing prices of any country in the world and twice that of it’s nearest competitor, Australia, the horse has long bolted but the Govt responsible has been discarded, thankfully.
Like so many things, the current Coalition has a huge job to correct the mistakes of the previous Govt, it will take some time, but history shows the Coalition is up to task.
Weka, crashing the housing market is not a solution, it would cause serious harm to the economy, increasing stocks and reducing demand (immigration), better regulation over speculation and rental prices.
Not sure how we can afford the infrastructure, transport and health care and counter the additional pollution to help the multinationals get their conference and tourism and luxury apartments and mega mansions quicker.
(Maybe part of the issue, is that so much construction is taken up by luxury market for tourists, conference centers and people who don’t live here while the local’s can’t afford to live in their own cities, pay power and transport and water costs anymore
You can’t even get that ‘free’ swim anymore with 30 Auckland beaches closed for pollution levels exceeding the requirement with no sign that the Auckland council is prepared to do anything about it, in fact they are applying to continue their approach.
DoublePlusGood – it only works if you have a closed system. In NZ we have 100,000’s of temp and permanent people flooding in yearly. This is ARTIFICIAL and of course could be stopped to allow the demand to abate.
Good morning Duncan on TV3 AM show did you read some of The book on my Tepuna Ropata Wahawaha.
Theres a phenomon here in Aotearoa that is any books on Maori History is very hard to find I have seen your name pop up a few times the Gardiner name .
My Huawei is faster than my computer its a p8 lite cost $250 this is my 3rd one the first one is in a hole in Tauranga under a house the second one I gave to my eldiest mokos
and this one is going good .P.S I have been reading up on my Tepuna .
Ka kite ano
Julie Ann Genter wants the police to be stopping and checking us more for alcohol overdosing. Believes it should make a difference. Makes a connection between the lack and a rise in traffic accidents?
correlation?
I’ve done some work on alcohol related fatalities over time. In the last batch I did a few years ago there was an anomaly in the data and when we went back and checked with the source we were told it was because the police had reduced road side check for alcohol because they had run out of money.
It could be correlation rather causation but I can’t think of a likelier reason.
Ms Genter also referred to more traffic on the roads. It may be that the accident rate per 1000 or whatever the measure, has remained steady but the total has gone up because of the increased mass, ie the problem could be:
*more, increased traffic, some of which are poorer drivers from overseas,
*massive trucks, very long and hard to pass,
*increased stress from racing to get to work on crowded roads when the worker has only an hour or two’s work and must get there on time. (I’m thinking of people taking an hour to get to work two or three hours, and an hour to get home and on the way to drop/pick-up children at creche/playschool, and each hour has to be paid for even if subsidised to some extent.)
*the increased traffic stretching far back from lights and blocking roads giving access to the motorway, so relying on people’s courtesy and co-operation, first to get onto the main road/motorway and then to be able to move across to the needed lane for turning right etc.
*and anxiety and stress to get further on to achieve journey’s end and being fixed on that in almost gridlock conditions and not wanting to bother with courtesies to other hapless motorists .
And savenz says more on the sort of difficulties some drivers may be dealing with at 3.3.
And also we need to have along with death statistics, also serious accidents involving ambulance and/or hospital care numbers. This might take some more work to collate but it is time that tight stats were achieved, not just something that is convenient to count.
It never ceases to amaze me that these “city planners” and pundits don’t understands that road size and capacity is limited by size and amount of large vehicles clogging them.
So we see many more trucks on our roads today (three time more than were on our road two decades ago)
So truck gridlock is very seldom at all used to explain the increases of traffic accidents and I cannot think why they all every time now simply just ignore the elephant (truck) in the room here.
Nobody ever seems to think of taxing the trucks further but it’s the first thing on everybody’s mind when it comes to domestic transport.
Apparently poor truckers also need a import drivers in as there is also another +skill+ shortage – luckily you can pay $3000 bribe to get a license here. Win, win.
Who would think in a country where everyone drives everywhere, you can not get abundant staff for your $18 p/h 10 hour day, contract truck jobs?
Another industry on the government teat whining with poor wages and conditions while the tax payers have to waste more and more money on repairing the roads (also driving down productivity with all the road works everywhere, delaying everyone).
Many thanks to Obama for making his visit non public it makes me happy that shonky in not going to get any Mana from the Obama visit congratulations to the Warriors and
the Black Caps for there wins .
We pay rent for our houses why can’t we just get mortgages backed by the government for the first 5 years till there is enough equity in the property to guarantee that the banks will get there money if the loan goes bad thats what the deposit is all about Know. This move will help slow down inequality .
Ka pai ka kite ano
Revelations that law students and solicitors had sex on the boardroom table following an evening of heavy drinking at Russell McVeagh’s Auckland office have put the leading law firm under public scrutiny again.
Radionz
Involvement in the at partner level. A bit vague on specifics.
Why aren’t they calling it an orgy? It sounds like an orgy. Are the press deliberately avoiding the description or is this technically not an orgy? Enquiring minds…
It is interesting to do a flip in imagination and place a situation in a different arena. What would be the tone if it was reported as taking place on a marae, (heaven forbid), in a gang headquarters (called ‘blocking’), at a music festival (think about the concern about groping), in a church, a local business that wasn’t of the legal persuasion?
Yeah – shame there’s no easy way of locking these guys up. Basic problem is that these ‘name’ firms have the power to distribute favours via the intern system – and then they extract their ‘reward’ in return.
As always – the need is to break private power, perhaps by ending the intern system, forcibly splitting firms up when they get too big, attacking their wealth through the taxation system.
If your definition of ‘consensual’ is unwilling to consider power relationships then it’s worthless.
I could equally say that native Americans ‘consented’ to being confined to reservations (which they did via treaties and agreements in the nineteenth century) and that therefore there was no problem, nothing to see and it was all above board.
The existence of some form of proximate consent doesn’t tell us very much about what’s really happening. But I think you know that.
It seems that you are a bloke mikes. While it is not impossible that you could feel ‘pressure’ to advance your career or prospects with sexual favours, it is more likely to happen to females.
And these young women have spent countless hours studying to be lawyers and have a chance of getting a job in a prestigious firm which will likely drive their interns on very little pay to put in long hours of work similar to that of hospital registrars getting work experience. The would-be lawyers would no doubt be carried away by fervour, admiration, alcohol and having got ’embedded almost literally’ in the culture of apparent sophistication. Lawyers can be clever in the art of sophistry. Perhaps the word is – ‘Everybody does it if you want to get on’; they are young and vulnerable, and likely to feel very unhappy the next day and very conflicted. And it is not the sort of thing that their parents would understand – who to talk to for wisdom who understands the practices?
Getting women drunk in order to bed them…. that’s how it is.
If she is drunk do you really think she is in a state of mind to make an informed decision?
Just lie back you don’t have to do anything, shhhhh don’t worry all the interns do it, I won’t say anything, you wouldn’t want me to hurt you would you? … you are so beautiful… blahhhhhh blah freaking blah
Drunk woman just gets it over and done with to stop being pressured and harrassed by him, sadly she’s not capable of anything else, he’s been pouring her drinks all night from the handy dandy drinks cabinet in the board room.
Then makes out he’s the good guy, calls and pays for a cab to get her home. the next day at work he apologises, excusing his behaviour because he was drunk. Meanwhile she blocks it out, pretends it didn’t happen as she is so ashamed and embarrassed about it.
Good on the people for setting up the Mokos to go to the Kermadec Islands they will get to see a pristine environment I m envious .
I went to the Auckland Island down south the seals had a virus there weren’t many seals at that time 25 we went on the Islands and looked at all the plants .
I had a good time we saw a white shark killing a seal or trying to the seal kept swimming behind the shark.
Ka kite ano
30 year old man steals ambulance in Dunedin while staff are attending emergency.
Driving while disqualified.
This is an example of the sort of person who could be put in stocks for a morning as a punishment. I think stocks need to be brought back for this type of crime to add an extra tool for discouraging doltish, hooliganish type of behaviour. Having more jobs of a physical sort doing useful things would also be helpful in keeping down this type of crime!
Apparently NZDF has been running journalist-free workshops on public accountability, with a straight face. Puts me in mind of the old Yes Minister back and forth “How’s the Campaign for Open Government going?” “I can’t talk about that.”
Of interest to some here is a reference to Wayne Mapp:
Ironically, journalists were not invited to General Keating’s workshop on transparency and accountability a few months later. Lawyers, academics and NGOs were welcome, but media – those whose job it is to monitor powerful institutions like the NZDF – were banned.
One attendee observed that “the workshop was notable for not addressing the elephants in the room” – the allegations in Hit and Run and The Valley. When Wayne Mapp, National’s former defence minister, stood and referred to one of these elephants, the silence was deafening.
Credit where it’s due, good on Wayne for being the voice in the room to raise hard topics.
I say we should not have active military forces fighting in foreign wars. And especially not in these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan , which have no moral bases for their inception, nor continuation.
There’s the old line from WW1 that “a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends”.
But the issue in the link is that our military is out of our control, because it is out of our sight.
It’s not enough that maybe Cabinet know where our soldiers are and maybe what they get up to (assuming reports aren’t sanitised, big assumption). We need to know where they go, and what they get up to – warts and all.
For those freaking out about either side of the gun debate over Florida right now, neither side is addressing the issue. Ban this, ban that from one side and put in armed guards from the other.
Here is a little experiment if you will take it. Go find out how many students were killed by shootings in schools in the last 10 years. Then go find out how many students killed themselves during the same period of time. The sheer number of suicides will make you weep.
In fact it will so outweigh the number killed or even wounded in shootings that it will possibly make you ask the real question here, NO ONE IS ASKING.
What is so wrong in our society and in our system of education that so many children are choosing death? Those committing suicide are making the same choice as most shooters; they are just not taking others with them. That is why this is the first time we have a mass school shooting with the shooter taken alive.
Most of these shootings are a sick and twisted form of suicide by cop! So the question here is not do we ban guns, or mags, or do we put an armed guard in every door way?
No the questions are how have we changed so abruptly in the last 30 years to make so many children wish to kill themselves and others and what do we change in the system to reverse it?
Bluntly we are now running schools like prisons, and people kill each other and themselves in prisons every day. No one wants to admit this, cuz “all teachers are heroes” etc. But a simple look at the numbers will leave any honest person with no other conclusion
Here we are nearly five months into a Labour led government and Brian Edwards appears unable to acknowledge such on his http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz blog site.
Wonder if it is that he, like Her Majestie’s Opposition, still hasn’t quite come to terms with the election result?
I predicted this. I looked at stats from countries like France and NSW in Oz that proponents of lowering the limit quoted, and easily saw that it was not lowering the limit that was effective. It was the increased number of checkpoints that were introduced soon after.
So what does National Govt in NZ do? Go for the look-good, cheap option of lowering the limit by just the stroke of a pen, act all smarmy as if some real good were being done, but then cut Police (and heaps of other important social) funding so that unlike all other civilised countries, we end up with fewer checkpoints.
So we now have a whole lot of people fined $200 for being above an unnecessarily low alcohol level, and, more tragically, more deaths from more people driving well above the old level because they are far less afraid of being caught. I drive a lot and have not been checked for over a year now.
National got its fake budget surplus by cutting funding for important things like this. There should be prison sentences for those responsible.
(Sad to say, they are ultimately the stupid people who voted National into power.)
Personally I agree with the lower level, but safety rules are pointless if you don’t enforce them.
But yeah – it’s an act of hubris to assume that people who vote for your opponents are idiots… and then you look at nats getting reelected after shit like this…
All I can see from that story is that lowering the blood-alcohol limit from “low” to “even lower” is irrelevant to the issue of drunk drivers killing themselves and others. I don’t see anything counter-intuitive in that – the people in question were over the old limit as well as the new limit, so you wouldn’t expect any effect.
Maybe not help[ed by, Cops wasting their time on people who have had one or two drinks, when, as the statistics tell us, most drink driving accidents are caused by people well over the limit.
I Say THE NZ Breakers Basketball team new Owners whom are Sports Stars and Sports people will be a winning team Andrew Saville from TVNZ 1 NEWS Ka pai Ka kite ano
You people think it OK to breach mine and my Whano privacy rights you start the attack on my Mana so I use my Mana to defend myself someones rating starts dropping and you throw all your toys out of your cot. I warned people that I support to stay loyal to ECO MAORI.
What do you expect me to do carry on supporting people who are benefiting from my support. I know that you will toss me a side just like a used toy if I lose my Mana you chose to believe the lies when it suit you you know the source has not been proven in a court of law and you still spread it like it is the truth .
At least I can say that I am loyal humble honest and respectfull. I’m proud of My Maori culture I’m proud to be a Kiwi I’m not going to let anyone walk over my Mana or pass water on my Mana.
I have used my Mana to benefit the poor people I have used it to lift Tangata whenua and brown tangatas Mana. MSM think it OK to publish all these bad stories about brown people but when you get a little taste of your own medicine out comes the tissues GROW UP your articles damage real people lives to hope I didn’t break your glass bubbles.
You people know exactly how the system work. Ana to kai
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Plainly, the claims being tossed around in the media last year that the new terminal envisaged by Auckland International Airport was a gold-plated “Taj Mahal” extravagance were false. With one notable exception, the Commerce Commission’s comprehensive investigation has ended up endorsing every other aspect of the airport’s building programme (and ...
Movements clustered around the Right, and Far Right as well, are rising globally. Despite the recent defeats we’ve seen in the last day or so with the win of a Democrat-backed challenger, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, over her Republican counterpart, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, in the battle for ...
In February 2025, John Cook gave two webinars for republicEN explaining the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. 20 February 2025: republicEN webinar part 1 - BUST or TRUST? The scientific consensus on climate change In the first webinar, Cook explained the history of the 20-year scientific consensus on climate change. How do ...
After three decades of record-breaking growth, at about the same time as Xi Jinping rose to power in 2012, China’s economy started the long decline to its current state of stagnation. The Chinese Communist Party ...
The Pike River Coal mine was a ticking time bomb.Ventilation systems designed to prevent methane buildup were incomplete or neglected.Gas detectors that might warn of danger were absent or broken.Rock bolting was skipped, old tunnels left unsealed, communication systems failed during emergencies.Employees and engineers kept warning management about the … ...
Regional hegemons come in different shapes and sizes. Australia needs to think about what kind of hegemon China would be, and become, should it succeed in displacing the United States in Asia. It’s time to ...
RNZ has a story this morning about the expansion of solar farms in Aotearoa, driven by today's ground-breaking ceremony at the Tauhei solar farm in Te Aroha: From starting out as a tiny player in the electricity system, solar power generated more electricity than coal and gas combined for ...
After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and almost a year before the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, US President George H W Bush proclaimed a ‘new world order’. Now, just two months ...
Warning: Some images may be distressing. Thank you for those who support my work. It means a lot.A shopfront in Australia shows Liberal leader Peter Dutton and mining magnate Gina Rinehart depicted with Nazi imageryUS Government Seeks Death Penalty for Luigi MangioneMangione was publicly walked in front of media in ...
Aged care workers rallying against potential roster changes say Bupa, which runs retirement homes across the country, needs to focus on care instead of money. More than half of New Zealand workers wish they had chosen a different career according to a new survey. Consumers are likely to see a ...
The scurrilous attacks on Benjamin Doyle, a list Green MP, over his supposed inappropriate behaviour towards children has dominated headlines and social media this past week, led by frothing Rightwing agitators clutching their pearls and fanning the flames of moral panic over pedophiles and and perverts. Winston Peter decided that ...
Twilight Time Lighthouse Cuba, Wigan Street, Wellington, Sunday 6 April, 5:30pm for 6pm start. Twilight Time looks at the life and work of Desmond Ball, (1947-2016), a barefooted academic from ‘down under’ who was hailed by Jimmy Carter as “the man who saved the world”, as he proved the fallacy ...
The landedAnd the wealthyAnd the piousAnd the healthyAnd the straight onesAnd the pale onesAnd we only mean the male ones!If you're all of the above, then you're ok!As we build a new tomorrow here today!Lyrics Glenn Slater and Allan Menken.Ah, Democracy - can you smell it?It's presently a sulphurous odour, ...
US President Donald Trump’s unconventional methods of conducting international relations will compel the next federal government to reassess whether the United States’ presence in the region and its security assurances provide a reliable basis for ...
Things seem to be at a pretty low ebb in and around the Reserve Bank. There was, in particular, the mysterious, sudden, and as-yet unexplained resignation of the Governor (we’ve had four Governors since the Bank was given its operational autonomy 35 years ago, and only two have completed their ...
Long story short:PMChristopher Luxon said in January his Government was ‘going for growth’ and he wanted New Zealanders to develop a ‘culture of yes.’ Yet his own Government is constantly saying no, or not yet, to anchor investments that would unleash real private business investment and GDP growth. ...
Long story short:PMChristopher Luxon said in January his Government was ‘going for growth’ and he wanted New Zealanders to develop a ‘culture of yes.’ Yet his own Government is constantly saying no, or not yet, to anchor investments that would unleash real private business investment and GDP growth. ...
For decades, Britain and Australia had much the same process for regulating media handling of defence secrets. It was the D-notice system, under which media would be asked not to publish. The two countries diverged ...
For decades, Britain and Australia had much the same process for regulating media handling of defence secrets. It was the D-notice system, under which media would be asked not to publish. The two countries diverged ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission.In this article, I make a not-entirely-serious case for ripping out Spaghetti Junction in Auckland, replacing it with a motorway tunnel, and redeveloping new city streets and neighbourhoods above it instead. What’s ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission.In this article, I make a not-entirely-serious case for ripping out Spaghetti Junction in Auckland, replacing it with a motorway tunnel, and redeveloping new city streets and neighbourhoods above it instead. What’s ...
In short this morning in our political economy:The Nelson Hospital crisis revealed by 1News’Jessica Roden dominates the political agenda today. Yet again, population growth wasn’t planned for, or funded.Kāinga Ora is planning up to 900 house sales, including new ones, Jonathan Milne reports for Newsroom.One of New Zealand’s biggest ...
In short this morning in our political economy:The Nelson Hospital crisis revealed by 1News’Jessica Roden dominates the political agenda today. Yet again, population growth wasn’t planned for, or funded.Kāinga Ora is planning up to 900 house sales, including new ones, Jonathan Milne reports for Newsroom.One of New Zealand’s biggest ...
The war between Russia and Ukraine continues unabated. Neither side is in a position to achieve its stated objectives through military force. But now there is significant diplomatic activity as well. Ukraine has agreed to ...
One of the first aims of the United States’ new Department of Government Efficiency was shutting down USAID. By 6 February, the agency was functionally dissolved, its seal missing from its Washington headquarters. Amid the ...
If our strategic position was already challenging, it just got worse. Reliability of the US as an ally is in question, amid such actions by the Trump administration as calling for annexation of Canada, threating ...
Small businesses will be exempt from complying with some of the requirements of health and safety legislation under new reforms proposed by the Government. The living wage will be increased to $28.95 per hour from September, a $1.15 increase from the current $27.80. A poll has shown large opposition to ...
Summary A group of senior doctors in Nelson have spoken up, specifically stating that hospitals have never been as bad as in the last year.Patients are waiting up to 50 hours and 1 death is directly attributable to the situation: "I've never seen that number of patients waiting to be ...
Although semiconductor chips are ubiquitous nowadays, their production is concentrated in just a few countries, and this has left the US economy and military highly vulnerable at a time of rising geopolitical tensions. While the ...
Health and Safety changes driven by ACT party ideology, not evidence said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi President Richard Wagstaff. Changes to health and safety legislation proposed by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden today comply with ACT party ideology, ignores the evidence, and will compound New ...
In short in our political economy this morning:Fletcher Building is closing its pre-fabricated house-building factory in Auckland due to a lack of demand, particularly from the Government.Health NZ is sending a crisis management team to Nelson Hospital after a 1News investigation exposed doctors’ fears that nearly 500 patients are overdue ...
Exactly 10 years ago, the then minister for defence, Kevin Andrews, released the First Principles Review: Creating One Defence (FPR). With increasing talk about the rising possibility of major power-conflict, calls for Defence funding to ...
In events eerily similar to what happened in the USA last week, Greater Auckland was recently accidentally added to a group chat between government ministers on the topic of transport.We have no idea how it happened, but luckily we managed to transcribe most of what transpired. We share it ...
Hi,When I look back at my history with Dylan Reeve, it’s pretty unusual. We first met in the pool at Kim Dotcom’s mansion, as helicopters buzzed overhead and secret service agents flung themselves off the side of his house, abseiling to the ground with guns drawn.Kim Dotcom was a German ...
Come around for teaDance me round and round the kitchenBy the light of my T.VOn the night of the electionAncient stars will fall into the seaAnd the ocean floor sings her sympathySongwriter: Bic Runga.The Prime Minister stared into the camera, hot and flustered despite the predawn chill. He looked sadly ...
Has Winston Peters got a ferries deal for you! (Buyer caution advised.) Unfortunately, the vision that Peters has been busily peddling for the past 24 hours – of several shipyards bidding down the price of us getting smaller, narrower, rail-enabled ferries – looks more like a science fiction fantasy. One ...
Completed reads for March: The Heart of the Antarctic [1907-1909], by Ernest Shackleton South [1914-1917], by Ernest Shackleton Aurora Australis (collection), edited by Ernest Shackleton The Book of Urizen (poem), by William Blake The Book of Ahania (poem), by William Blake The Book of Los (poem), by William Blake ...
First - A ReminderBenjamin Doyle Doesn’t Deserve ThisI’ve been following posts regarding Green MP Benjamin Doyle over the last few days, but didn’t want to amplify the abject nonsense.This morning, Winston Peters, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister, answered the alt-right’s prayers - guaranteeing amplification of the topic, by going on ...
US President Donald Trump has shown a callous disregard for the checks and balances that have long protected American democracy. As the self-described ‘king’ makes a momentous power grab, much of the world watches anxiously, ...
They can be the very same words. And yet their meaning can vary very much.You can say I'll kill him about your colleague who accidentally deleted your presentation the day before a big meeting.You can say I'll kill him to — or, for that matter, about — Tony Soprano.They’re the ...
Back in 2020, the then-Labour government signed contracted for the construction and purchase of two new rail-enabled Cook Strait ferries, to be operational from 2026. But when National took power in 2023, they cancelled them in a desperate effort to make the books look good for a year. And now ...
The fragmentation of cyber regulation in the Indo-Pacific is not just inconvenient; it is a strategic vulnerability. In recent years, governments across the Indo-Pacific, including Australia, have moved to reform their regulatory frameworks for cyber ...
Welcome to the March 2025 Economic Bulletin. The feature article examines what public private partnerships (PPPs) are. PPPs have been a hot topic recently, with the coalition government signalling it wants to use them to deliver infrastructure. However, experience with PPPs, both here and overseas, indicates we should be wary. ...
Willis announces more plans of plans for supermarketsYesterday’s much touted supermarket competition announcement by Nicola Willis amounted to her telling us she was issuing a 6 week RFI1 that will solicit advice from supermarket players.In short, it was an announcement of a plan - but better than her Kiwirail Interislander ...
This was the post I was planning to write this morning to mark Orr’s final day. That said, if the underlying events – deliberate attempts to mislead Parliament – were Orr’s doing, the post is more about the apparent uselessness of Parliament (specifically the Finance and Expenditure Committee) in holding ...
Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC’s plan to build a plant in the United States looks like a move made at the behest of local officials to solidify US support for Taiwan. However, it may eventually lessen ...
This is a Guest Post by Transport Planner Bevan Woodward from the charitable trust Movement, which has lodged an application for a judicial review of the Governments Setting of Speed Limits Rule 2024 Auckland is at grave risk of having its safer speed limits on approx. 1,500 local streets ...
We're just talkin' 'bout the futureForget about the pastIt'll always be with usIt's never gonna die, never gonna dieSongwriters: Brian Johnson / Angus Young / Malcolm YoungMorena, all you lovely people, it’s good to be back, and I have news from the heartland. Now brace yourself for this: depending on ...
Today is the last day in office for the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Adrian Orr. Of course, he hasn’t been in the office since 5 March when, on the eve of his major international conference, his resignation was announced and he stormed off with no (effective) notice and no ...
Treasury and Cabinet have finally agreed to a Crown guarantee for a non-Government lending agency for Community Housing Providers (CHPs), which could unlock billions worth of loans and investments by pension funds and banks to build thousands of more affordable social homes. Photo: Lynn GrievesonMōrena. Long stories shortest:Chris Bishop ...
Australia has plenty of room to spend more on defence. History shows that 2.9 percent of GDP is no great burden in ordinary times, so pushing spending to 3.0 percent in dangerous times is very ...
In short this morning in our political economy:Winston Peters will announce later today whether two new ferries are rail ‘compatible’, requiring time-consuming container shuffling, or the more efficient and expensive rail ‘enabled,’ where wagons can roll straight on and off.Nicola Willisthreatened yesterday to break up the supermarket duopoly with ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 23, 2025 thru Sat, March 29, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a ...
For prospective writers out there, Inspired Quill, the publisher of my novel(s) is putting together a short story anthology (pieces up to 10,000 words). The open submission window is 29th March to 29th April. https://www.inspired-quill.com/anthology-submissions/ The theme?This anthology will bring together diverse voices exploring themes of hope, resistance, and human ...
Prime minister Kevin Rudd released the 2009 defence white paper in May of that year. It is today remembered mostly for what it said about the strategic implications of China’s rise; its plan to double ...
In short this morning in our political economy:Voters want the Government to retain the living wage for cleaners, a poll shows.The Government’s move to provide a Crown guarantee to banks and the private sector for social housing is described a watershed moment and welcomed by Community Housing Providers.Nicola Willis is ...
The recent attacks in the Congo by Rwandan backed militias has led to worldwide condemnation of the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame. Following up on the recent Fabian Zoom with Mikela Wrong and Maria Amoudian, Dr Rudaswinga will give a complete picture of Kagame’s regime and discuss the potential ...
New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors.Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological.PPPs come in ...
How Australia funds development and defence was front of mind before Tuesday’s federal budget. US President Donald Trump’s demands for a dramatic lift in allied military spending and brutal cuts to US foreign assistance meant ...
Questions 1. Where and what is this protest?a. Hamilton, angry crowd yelling What kind of food do you call this Seymour?b.Dunedin, angry crowd yelling Still waiting, Simeon, still waitingc. Wellington, angry crowd yelling You’re trashing everything you idiotsd. Istanbul, angry crowd yelling Give us our democracy back, give it ...
Two blueprints that could redefine the Northern Territory’s economic future were launched last week. The first was a government-led economic strategy and the other an industry-driven economic roadmap. Both highlight that supporting the Northern Territory ...
Abortion care at Whakatāne Hospital has been quietly shelved, with patients told they will likely have to travel more than an hour to Tauranga to get the treatment they need. ...
Thousands of New Zealanders’ submissions are missing from the official parliamentary record because the National-dominated Justice Select Committee has rushed work on the Treaty Principles Bill. ...
Today’s announcement of 10 percent tariffs for New Zealand goods entering the United States is disappointing for exporters and consumers alike, with the long-lasting impact on prices and inflation still unknown. ...
The National Government’s choices have contributed to a slow-down in the building sector, as thousands of people have lost their jobs in construction. ...
Willie Apiata’s decision to hand over his Victoria Cross to the Minister for Veterans is a powerful and selfless act, made on behalf of all those who have served our country. ...
The Privileges Committee has denied fundamental rights to Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, breaching their own standing orders, breaching principles of natural justice, and highlighting systemic prejudice and discrimination within our parliamentary processes. The three MPs were summoned to the privileges committee following their performance of a haka ...
April 1 used to be a day when workers could count on a pay rise with stronger support for those doing it tough, but that’s not the case under this Government. ...
Winston Peters is shopping for smaller ferries after Nicola Willis torpedoed the original deal, which would have delivered new rail enabled ferries next year. ...
The Government should work with other countries to press the Myanmar military regime to stop its bombing campaign especially while the country recovers from the devastating earthquake. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Government to scrap proposed changes to Early Childhood Care, after attending a petition calling for the Government to ‘Put tamariki at the heart of decisions about ECE’. ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill today that will remove the power of MPs conscience votes and ensure mandatory national referendums are held before any conscience issues are passed into law. “We are giving democracy and power back to the people”, says New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters. ...
Welcome to members of the diplomatic corp, fellow members of parliament, the fourth estate, foreign affairs experts, trade tragics, ladies and gentlemen. ...
In recent weeks, disturbing instances of state-sanctioned violence against Māori have shed light on the systemic racism permeating our institutions. An 11-year-old autistic Māori child was forcibly medicated at the Henry Bennett Centre, a 15-year-old had his jaw broken by police in Napier, kaumātua Dean Wickliffe went on a hunger ...
Confidence in the job market has continued to drop to its lowest level in five years as more New Zealanders feel uncertain about finding work, keeping their jobs, and getting decent pay, according to the latest Westpac-McDermott Miller Employment Confidence Index. ...
The Greens are calling on the Government to follow through on their vague promises of environmental protection in their Resource Management Act (RMA) reform. ...
“Make New Zealand First Again” Ladies and gentlemen, First of all, thank you for being here today. We know your lives are busy and you are working harder and longer than you ever have, and there are many calls on your time, so thank you for the chance to speak ...
Hundreds more Palestinians have died in recent days as Israel’s assault on Gaza continues and humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, is blocked. ...
National is looking to cut hundreds of jobs at New Zealand’s Defence Force, while at the same time it talks up plans to increase focus and spending in Defence. ...
It’s been revealed that the Government is secretly trying to bring back a ‘one-size fits all’ standardised test – a decision that has shocked school principals. ...
The Green Party is calling for the compassionate release of Dean Wickliffe, a 77-year-old kaumātua on hunger strike at the Spring Hill Corrections Facility, after visiting him at the prison. ...
The Green Party is calling on Government MPs to support Chlöe Swarbrick’s Member’s Bill to sanction Israel for its unlawful presence and illegal actions in Palestine, following another day of appalling violence against civilians in Gaza. ...
The Green Party stands in support of volunteer firefighters petitioning the Government to step up and change legislation to provide volunteers the same ACC coverage and benefits as their paid counterparts. ...
At 2.30am local time, Israel launched a treacherous attack on Gaza killing more than 300 defenceless civilians while they slept. Many of them were children. This followed a more than 2 week-long blockade by Israel on the entry of all goods and aid into Gaza. Israel deliberately targeted densely populated ...
Living Strong, Aging Well There is much discussion around the health of our older New Zealanders and how we can age well. In reality, the delivery of health services accounts for only a relatively small percentage of health outcomes as we age. Significantly, dry warm housing, nutrition, exercise, social connection, ...
Shane Jones’ display on Q&A showed how out of touch he and this Government are with our communities and how in sync they are with companies with little concern for people and planet. ...
The Government’s new planning legislation to replace the Resource Management Act will make it easier to get things done while protecting the environment, say Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop and Under-Secretary Simon Court. “The RMA is broken and everyone knows it. It makes it too hard to build ...
Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay has today launched a public consultation on New Zealand and India’s negotiations of a formal comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. “Negotiations are getting underway, and the Public’s views will better inform us in the early parts of this important negotiation,” Mr McClay says. We are ...
More than 900 thousand superannuitants and almost five thousand veterans are among the New Zealanders set to receive a significant financial boost from next week, an uplift Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says will help support them through cost-of-living challenges. “I am pleased to confirm that from 1 ...
Progressing a holistic strategy to unlock the potential of New Zealand’s geothermal resources, possibly in applications beyond energy generation, is at the centre of discussions with mana whenua at a hui in Rotorua today, Resources and Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is in the early stages ...
New annual data has exposed the staggering cost of delays previously hidden in the building consent system, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I directed Building Consent Authorities to begin providing quarterly data last year to improve transparency, following repeated complaints from tradespeople waiting far longer than the statutory ...
Increases in water charges for Auckland consumers this year will be halved under the Watercare Charter which has now been passed into law, Local Government Minister Simon Watts and Auckland Minister Simeon Brown say. The charter is part of the financial arrangement for Watercare developed last year by Auckland Council ...
There is wide public support for the Government’s work to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity protections, says Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard. “The Ministry for Primary Industries recently completed public consultation on proposed amendments to the Biosecurity Act and the submissions show that people understand the importance of having a strong biosecurity ...
A new independent review function will enable individuals and organisations to seek an expert independent review of specified civil aviation regulatory decisions made by, or on behalf of, the Director of Civil Aviation, Acting Transport Minister James Meager has announced today. “Today we are making it easier and more affordable ...
The Government will invest in an enhanced overnight urgent care service for the Napier community as part of our focus on ensuring access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown has today confirmed. “I am delighted that a solution has been found to ensure Napier residents will continue to ...
Health Minister Simeon Brown and Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey attended a sod turning today to officially mark the start of construction on a new mental health facility at Hillmorton Campus. “This represents a significant step in modernising mental health services in Canterbury,” Mr Brown says. “Improving health infrastructure is ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has welcomed confirmation the economy has turned the corner. Stats NZ reported today that gross domestic product grew 0.7 per cent in the three months to December following falls in the June and September quarters. “We know many families and businesses are still suffering the after-effects ...
The sealing of a 12-kilometre stretch of State Highway 43 (SH43) through the Tangarakau Gorge – one of the last remaining sections of unsealed state highway in the country – has been completed this week as part of a wider programme of work aimed at improving the safety and resilience ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters says relations between New Zealand and the United States are on a strong footing, as he concludes a week-long visit to New York and Washington DC today. “We came to the United States to ask the new Administration what it wants from ...
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee has welcomed changes to international anti-money laundering standards which closely align with the Government’s reforms. “The Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) last month adopted revised standards for tackling money laundering and the financing of terrorism to allow for simplified regulatory measures for businesses, organisations and sectors ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour says he welcomes Medsafe’s decision to approve an electronic controlled drug register for use in New Zealand pharmacies, allowing pharmacies to replace their physical paper-based register. “The register, developed by Kiwi brand Toniq Limited, is the first of its kind to be approved in New ...
The Coalition Government’s drive for regional economic growth through the $1.2 billion Regional Infrastructure Fund is on track with more than $550 million in funding so far committed to key infrastructure projects, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. “To date, the Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF) has received more than 250 ...
[Comments following the bilateral meeting with United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio; United States State Department, Washington D.C.] * We’re very pleased with our meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this afternoon. * We came here to listen to the new Administration and to be clear about what ...
The intersection of State Highway 2 (SH2) and Wainui Road in the Eastern Bay of Plenty will be made safer and more efficient for vehicles and freight with the construction of a new and long-awaited roundabout, says Transport Minister Chris Bishop. “The current intersection of SH2 and Wainui Road is ...
The Ocean Race will return to the City of Sails in 2027 following the Government’s decision to invest up to $4 million from the Major Events Fund into the international event, Auckland Minister Simeon Brown says. “New Zealand is a proud sailing nation, and Auckland is well-known internationally as the ...
Improving access to mental health and addiction support took a significant step forward today with Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey announcing that the University of Canterbury have been the first to be selected to develop the Government’s new associate psychologist training programme. “I am thrilled that the University of Canterbury ...
Health Minister Simeon Brown has today officially opened the new East Building expansion at Manukau Health Park. “This is a significant milestone and the first stage of the Grow Manukau programme, which will double the footprint of the Manukau Health Park to around 30,000m2 once complete,” Mr Brown says. “Home ...
The Government will boost anti-crime measures across central Auckland with $1.3 million of funding as a result of the Proceeds of Crime Fund, Auckland Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee say. “In recent years there has been increased antisocial and criminal behaviour in our CBD. The Government ...
The Government is moving to strengthen rules for feeding food waste to pigs to protect New Zealand from exotic animal diseases like foot and mouth disease (FMD), says Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard. ‘Feeding untreated meat waste, often known as "swill", to pigs could introduce serious animal diseases like FMD and ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held productive talks in New Delhi today. Fresh off announcing that New Zealand and India would commence negotiations towards a Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, the two Prime Ministers released a joint statement detailing plans for further cooperation between the two countries across ...
Agriculture and Trade Minister Todd McClay signed a new Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) today during the Prime Minister’s Indian Trade Mission, reinforcing New Zealand’s commitment to enhancing collaboration with India in the forestry sector. “Our relationship with India is a key priority for New Zealand, and this agreement reflects our ...
Agriculture and Trade Minister Todd McClay signed a new Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) today during the Prime Minister’s Indian Trade Mission, reinforcing New Zealand’s commitment to enhancing collaboration with India in the horticulture sector. “Our relationship with India is a key priority for New Zealand, and this agreement reflects our ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of two new Family Court Judges. The new Judges will take up their roles in April and May and fill Family Court vacancies at the Auckland and Manukau courts. Annette Gray Ms Gray completed her law degree at Victoria University before joining Phillips ...
Health Minister Simeon Brown has today officially opened Wellington Regional Hospital’s first High Dependency Unit (HDU). “This unit will boost critical care services in the lower North Island, providing extra capacity and relieving pressure on the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and emergency department. “Wellington Regional Hospital has previously relied ...
Namaskar, Sat Sri Akal, kia ora and good afternoon everyone. What an honour it is to stand on this stage - to inaugurate this august Dialogue - with none other than the Honourable Narendra Modi. My good friend, thank you for so generously welcoming me to India and for our ...
Nearly 25 years after the "corngate" saga, the debate on genetic modification is back thanks to the Gene Technology Bill currently in select committee. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Brodie, Research Scientist in Marine Ecology, CSIRO jittawit21, Shutterstock Picture this: you’re lounging on a beautiful beach, soaking up the sun and listening to the soothing sound of the waves. You run your hands through the warm sand, only to ...
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist Although New Zealand and Australia seem to have escaped the worst of Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, some Pacific Islands stand to be hit hard — including a few that aren’t even “countries”. The US will impose a base tariff of 10 percent on all ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton both agree Australia should react to US President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff regime by continuing to seek a special deal. They just disagree about which of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Orlando, Researcher, Digital Literacy and Digital Wellbeing, Western Sydney University UK Prime Minster Keir Starmer met with Adolescence writer Jack Thorne to discuss adolescent safety at Downing Street on Monday. Jack Taylor/ GettyImages Netflix’s Adolescence has ignited global debate. ...
By Anneke Smith,RNZ News political reporter A stoush between the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and a Jewish community leader has flared up following a showdown at Parliament. Appearing before a parliamentary select committee today, Dr Stephen Rainbow was asked about his recent apology for incorrect comments he made about ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rakesh Gupta, Associate Professor of Accounting & Finance, Charles Darwin University US President Donald Trump’s new trade war will not only send shockwaves through the global economy – it also upsets efforts to tackle the urgent issue of climate change. Trump has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Toohey, Professor of Law, UNSW Sydney It had the hallmarks of a reality TV cliffhanger. Until recently, many people had never even heard of tariffs. Now, there’s been rolling live international coverage of so-called “Liberation Day”, as US President Donald Trump ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Fuller, Clinical Trials Director, Department of Endocrinology, RPA Hospital, University of Sydney mavo/Shutterstock In the ever-changing wellness industry, one diet obsession has captured and held TikTok’s attention: protein. Whether it’s sharing snaps of protein-packed meals or giving tutorials to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Maslow, Associate Professor, International Relations, University of Tokyo Two months into US President Donald Trump’s second term, the liberal international order is on life support. Alliances and multilateral institutions are now seen by the United States as burdens. Europe and ...
Starving public services of resources, gutting the workforce and then proposing private market solutions has been a key strategy of this government, says Vanessa Cole, spokesperson for Public Housing Futures. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley Geyle, Ecologist, Charles Darwin University Sarah Maclagan/Author provided The greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is one of Australia’s most iconic yet at-risk animals — and the last surviving bilby species. Once found across 70% of Australia, its range has contracted by ...
The government’s own Regulatory Impact Statement acknowledges that organic producers will bear the financial burden of adapting to the risks posed by GMO expansion. ...
The committee has "rammed it through with outrageous haste", with a report now expected tomorrow, but excluding thousands of submissions, Duncan Webb says. ...
The US president’s sweeping programme of global tariffs will hit every country abroad, including New Zealand, and dramatically raise prices at home. This is an excerpt from The World Bulletin, our weekly global current affairs newsletter exclusively for Spinoff Members. Sign up here.In a dramatic, flag-draped address from the White ...
Alex Casey talks to Bariz Shah and Saba Afrasyabi, the couple who launched a project to change 51 lives in honour of those lost in the Christchurch mosque attacks. When Bariz Shah and Saba Afrasyabi walked into Naeem’s house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, they knew immediately that he needed their help. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Deane, Professor of Trade Law, Taxation and Climate Change, Queensland University of Technology US President Donald Trump has imposed a range of tariffs on all products entering the US market, with Australian exports set to face a 10% tariff, effective April ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra US President Donald Trump singled out Australia’s beef trade for special mention in his announcement that the United States would impose a 10% global tariff as well as “reciprocal tariffs” on many countries. In ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley Geyle, Ecologist, Charles Darwin University Sarah Maclagan/Author provided The greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is one of Australia’s most iconic yet at-risk animals — and the last surviving bilby species. Once found across 70% of Australia, its range has contracted by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra US President Donald Trump singled out Australia’s beef trade for special mention in his announcement that the United States would impose a 10% global tariff as well as “reciprocal tariffs” on many countries. In ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Shutterstock Recent media coverage in the Nine newspapers highlights a surge in non-medical ultrasound providers offering “reassurance ultrasounds” to expectant parents. The service has resulted in serious harms, such as misdiagnosed ectopic pregnancies and ...
The three MPs whose rule-breaking haka caught the world’s attention didn’t attend their scheduled hearing yesterday. Constitutional law expert Andrew Geddis has the rundown of what happened, why, and what’s likely to come next. I see Te Pāti Māori and the privileges committee are in some sort of stand-off – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Turner, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University The Eurasian and North American tectonic plates in Thingvellir National Park, Iceland.Nido Huebl/Shutterstock Earth is the only known planet which has plate tectonics today. The constant movement of these giant slabs of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra US President Donald Trump singled out Australia’s beef trade for special mention in his announcement that the United States would impose a 10% global tariff as well as “reciprocal tariffs” on many countries. In ...
Meta has stolen millions of books to train its AI, including books by kaituhi Māori. What does that mean for mātauranga and its status as taonga? New Zealand authors are among the millions whose books have been pirated and scraped by Meta to train its AI. The New Zealand Society of ...
Some hoped the open of the New Zealand markets would open with a bounce as certain tariffs fell short of the worst-case scenario, but investors were met with a deflated thud.The New Zealand market fell immediately as stock market darling Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s shares were punished, with no update ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Heaslip, Senior Lecturer in Naval History, University of Portsmouth How the Shuqiao barges may be used to ferry troops ashore. X (formerly Twitter) China’s intentions when it comes to Taiwan have been at the centre of intense discussion for years. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kiera Vaclavik, Professor of Children’s Literature & Childhood Culture, Queen Mary University of London This spring, Babe is returning to cinemas to mark the 30th anniversary of its release in 1995. The much-loved family film tells the deceptively simple but emotionally powerful ...
Because the ends ALWAYS justifies the means.
Just when you thought the Herald couldn’t become anymore bovinely stupid in it’s reflexive worship of white male authority, along comes this:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=12000738
It has to be John Roughan, only he is that big an idiot. I tell you what, if Andrew Little thinks he is going to get a rational law and order debate in the MSM where this sort of poorly thought out drivel is proudly presented as a masthead editorial, he is going to be sorely disappointed.
Whoever wrote that editorial doesn’t understand the basic underlying principles of the common law, let alone criminal justice law reform.
But when it turns out they have committed a crime, does the reason they aroused suspicion matter more than the crime? That is the question many will be asking when they read about this case.
Does the Herald understand the reason why the courts throw out cases if they involve Police abuse of their authority? That is the question many will be asking when they read this editorial.
You know, NZME is going to put it’s NZ Herald “premium content” behind a paywall soon.
Do they seriously think people will pay to read that sort of utterly stupid bullshit?
The “quality” of the “premium product” that NZME says it can charge for is very poor. The one question they never ask themselves when they blame everyone but themselves for the failure of the traditional MSM to deal with the rise of the internet is a simple one – If they don’t respect the quality of their own content, why would they expect their readers to want to pay for it?
Any number of people make good money on the internet. Youtubers, Twitch streamers, subcription only only media like the The Young Turks. NZME need to work out why people donate enough money to make a lot of streamers very rich, but they won’t spare a brass razoo for NZME’s rubbish.
The Herald is little more than a suburban giveaway that aspires to be the Daily Mail. If they really wanted a paywall to work, they’d spend the next 12 months concentrating an getting a dramatic increase in the quality of their content. Otherwise, why would you pay to read a ridiculous piece like that editorial when you can (attempt to) read an equally nonsensical view on law and order from David Garrett for free?
+1 Sanctuary – also Herald is so busy supporting the right wingers they fail to understand that they are actually cannibalising their own readers by promoting policy pushing people to work harder and have less disposable income and therefore less time to read newspapers and less interest in hearing about the right wing propaganda every day, day in, day out.
After dirty politics when some of their reporters were caught out, did they do anything about it to gain back credibility by removing those journos, nope, even the right wingers can’t trust the Herald reporting.
In fact there were quite a few right wingers reading the left wing blogs to actually find out what real issues there were out there and what people really thought.
When people were able to comment online, it was heavily censored and guess what, people can’t be bothered commenting if it takes too long or does not appear because these days people expect real time dialogue and can’t be bothered reading if the commentary is one sided.
Exactly. A whole lot of thick in that article, I feel more dumb for having read it. Soon I’ll be listening to Hosking and voting National against my best interests.
In the UK, being attacked by the corporate media is seen as a sign you’re doing the correct thing.
“Attacks on Jeremy Corbyn by the rightwing press are leading to large spikes in his support base immediately after negative newspaper articles, according to data seen by the Guardian.
Figures from Momentum come days after Labour went on the offensive over reports in the Daily Mail, the Sun and other newspapers that Corbyn met a Czechoslovakian spy in the 1980s.
The group said negative stories in the Daily Mail worked as effective recruitment tools. Facebook posts encouraging supporters to join reached twice as many people when they featured a Daily Mail headline, and Facebook posts advertising job roles reached up to 10 times as many people when featuring a headline from the newspaper.
Ash Sarkar from Novara Media said each time the papers sensationally attacked Corbyn it reinforced “the sense that he must be getting something right”.
“It’s also unwittingly punctured one of the key Tory myths, which is competence in all things,” she said. “With Ben Bradley having to issue this grovelling apology, and the marked and hurried climbdown by senior Tory MPs who really went for Corbyn, we found out there’s one thing worse than malevolence; it’s incompetence.”“
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/25/anti-corbyn-rightwing-press-attacks-boost-momentum-support-daily-mail
YES Ed it is now time for lefties and Labour of the Papatuanuku/ World to be heard .
Its time for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party to shine brightly in Great Britain.
Its is time for a Government that delivers for the 99.9 % of he tangata/ the people .
Its time to have a humane honorable Government that respects OUR mokos /grandchildrens future ie the environment and EQUALITY for all ruling
Great Britain.
Kia kaha. P.S could the good people make a donation to Thestandard website they provide a excellent service for US lefties so we can voice our truthful opinions.
Ka kite ano
Train delays – the industrial action by the Rail & Maritime Transport Union.
As usual, we are only getting one side of the story from MSM. I’ve read through the comments at https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2018/02/25/trains-get-whole-lot-crowded/ and it appears to me that AT is pushing a penny-pinching approach, as evidenced by the budget document released “in error” in January.
I think the union will get far more sympathy than the whingers expect. People will see AT/Transdev shafting the managers to pinch pennies when the whole story comes out. Copy/paste of union media release below.
MEDIA RELEASE
Rail & Maritime Transport Union
26 February 2018
Auckland rail workers refuse overtime due to safety concerns
Auckland rail workers have overwhelmingly voted to take industrial action as their employer insists on cutting staff on commuter trains.
Beginning tomorrow, rail workers who are members of the RMTU will take a ban on overtime.
“Transdev and Auckland Transport aren’t budging on driver-only operation, which will severely compromise passenger safety,” says John Kerr, Rail and Maritime Transport Union organiser.
“This plan will make locomotive engineers – the people driving the trains –responsible for passenger assistance and security. This isn’t safe, and rail workers won’t put their passengers at risk like this.”
The workers have been in collective bargaining with French-owned multinational Transdev, since May. Auckland Transport is involved in the negotiations, but is also pushing the driver-only model.
However, preliminary results from a survey by the Public Transport Users Association have revealed nearly all passengers support keeping safety critical staff on trains.
“Train managers are the first responders in medical emergencies; they ensure all passengers, including those with disabilities, can safely board and disembark; they’re a deterrent to anti-social behaviour. With train managers on every train, the public can feel safe knowing a skilled, uniformed member of staff is never far away,” says John Kerr.
“An overtime ban will affect services, so we hope management will start listening.
“We issued notice of the ban on Saturday afternoon and AT immediately
announced a reduced train timetable. Our members don’t want to inconvenience the public, and we know they support us in not compromising their safety, so we’re calling on AT and Transdev to resolve this dispute.”
“We had a positive meeting with both AT and Transdev on Friday and have another scheduled for next Wednesday. If we make progress we can call off the overtime ban, if not our members are also willing to take full-day strikes.”
“We call on Auckland Council and central government to step in and tell Transdev to keep our passenger trains safe.”
ENDS
For more information contact:
John Kerr
Organiser
Rail and Maritime Transport Union
Mobile: 027 246 4941
If you are female, very young, or very old, being in a train carriage alone at night is not a fun place to be.
The oresence of train managers presence manages a whole group of people to be more civil. And by that I mean late adolescent males, and drunk people.
It is utterly bizarre that the government has very recently gone to the trouble of legislatively empowering train guards to have a much stronger enforcement role on trains, only for the contractors to fire them.
Perth’s “TransPerth” public transport system has a great public transport system and the trains are regularly monitored by Transport Inspectors who have the authority to issue on the spot fines or infringement notices if a passenger or group of passengers are behaving badly
http://www.transperth.wa.gov.au/Contact-Us/Fines-and-Infringements.
We travel to Perth regularly for family reasons, and always use the public transport as it is both quicker and and cheaper than car.
We have never experienced any problems and the inspectors and bus drivers are very helpful.
I gather that AT is trying to model itself on the Perth model, but the elephant in the room has always been the fact that they are dealing with private companies. It seems that the only real way that New Zealand can improve it’s public transport is to take it back and run it ourselves along successful overseas models.
Are you sure about the operation of the Perth Buses?
According to Wiki
“Bus services in Perth are operated by three private companies with services divided into 11 zones that are re-tendered every 10 years”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transperth
If they don’t have any trouble operating a good service with private companies why should AT not be able to?
From the Transperth website:
http://www.transperth.wa.gov.au/about-us
There are a few other bus services in Perth that I have seen – but I have never used them.
From the same website you linked to I see
“Bus Contractors
The bus companies that operate Transperth bus services do their own recruiting. Please contact them about jobs for bus drivers. For their contact details go to About Us.”
and even more terrible
“Customer Service
We outsource our call centre operations to Serco. To see current vacancies, please go to SEEK and enter ‘Customer Service Serco Australia Transperth’ in the keywords field.”
Serco! Scream!
I think that you must have used the private bus contractors. You just didn’t realise it.
I go to Perth fairly regularly. At least once a year anyway. As you say, the service is very good, regardless of who is providing it. Far better than the Wellington buses, certainly. I have difficulty with walking and balance and the bloody Wellington drivers pull out and lurch off before I can get seated. Bastards.
OK! So what it seems is that they obviously keep a very close watch on the bus operators – all the busses I have seen (and like you I travel to Perth at least once a year) are all in the same livery too, so you wouldn’t know. Just owned by a different company.
As for the call centre – well! well! well! Seems like for once Serco have actually got something right. I use the online route planner regularly. No problems at all. The information office at Perth Station is also very good.
I don’t understand why non-passengers are even permitted on the platforms. Changing this would make a difference, especially later at night on outskirt train stations.
The ease of use, ticketing simplicity I used over twenty years ago on London Rail, makes a mockery of the AT Hop card, which has the benefit (?) if new technology to aid it.
Nationalise rail
Best idea I’ve seen for ages. Everything would be wonderful then eh?
Works for the French. And even the British had the good sense to let the French run Eurostar.
So how come you don’t seem to think the railways aren’t wonderful here?
You do realise that the railways in New Zealand are State owned don’t you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Railways_Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiwiRail
Perhaps you can explain what is the difference if we were to “nationalise” what is already nationalised?
Or perhaps you are proposing we hand over the operation of our railways to the French?
Alwyn you know already full well that Kiwirail is not fully nationalised: it is one of those oddities that Rogernomes gave us: State-Owned Enterprises. As such it has to pretend it is private and give a dividend to its owner (the government) which has quietly underfunded it, and tilted the field in favour of private trucks operating on roads, and so on..
But that time is coming to an end with the catastrophe of global warming. NZ will have to take proper control of Rail, and switch away from roads the volume of traffic that adds to our carbon footprint. Ed is right. But you are a long way from appreciating unpleasant realities like that, aren’t you Alwyn?
Rail has its place, even in New Zealand.
However it is in just a few places.
The Main Trunk from Auckland to Wellington.
The Auckland/Hamilton/Tauranga triangle.
The West Coast to Christchurch for the coal trade.
Probably the route from Picton to Christchurch.
That’s it for freight.
For passengers it is the Wellington urban area.
The rest of the country is simply unsuitable. Routes like Napier to Gisborne are only of interest to nineteenth century technology loving idiots.
I realise that is very hard to accept for people like yourself but you really are going to have to start appreciating these, to you, unpleasant realities. Unfortunately you are a long way from that, aren’t you Vino?
and the banks.
With you there Ed (3.1.2) all the way. I’d go one further and say bring back nationalisation of all our public services.
I’ve spent a lot of time on Korean subways. They’re rated among the best in the world.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2010/08/123_72180.html
They do not have or miss train managers, but are very safe.
If they do without train managers then I expect schools to manage the train saftey of all their students using the trains as well as their social behaviour.
I’ve been on a train when college boys (from one of the better decile 10 schools) behaved appallingly badly. The conductors can’t kick them off for bad behaviour because their parent’s whine about poor little Hunter having to walk home.
why should the schools be bothered to manage the behavior of ‘college boys’ after school? Why not just ban ‘college boys’ and drunk people from trains?
Why not task the parents? Schools are there to teach people how to read, write and do math. Parents should teach their children to behave like nice good people.
Anything else you want schools to manage? And by schools you mean teachers? Which teachers, the ones accredited or the teachers aides? Does this new job also apply to ‘teachers’ of charter schools or will they be exempt?
How about we just hire train attendants that go up and down the carriage to check if people have tickets and maybe just maybe even tell someone to take their feet of the bench? Too expensvie? oh dear.
Sabine
Don’t erupt eh and dump all aggravation you feel on a hapless commenter!
not erupting, i think really this question should be asked if we want to have ‘college boys’ – a description that i took from the commentator – to be managed on trains.
really what did i say that you took offense too? that i believe teachers should be for teaching and parents should be there for managing their children? Oh dear.
As a semi-retired teacher, I think Sabine makes a good point. Added to Interval and Lunch-time Canteen Control duty, teachers should also by roster have to travel with their students both before and after school at least twice a week, perhaps armed as Trump suggests, so as to be able to keep the peace on the train. The train company would then need fewer staff, and could make more profit. Win-win all round.
After all, teachers do all this because they are vocationally driven, and don’t need to be paid anything for it.
Good thinking, Sabine.
The trains used to be amazing, you could buy your ticket on the train, (it used to be only $1.50 per stage), it was quick and reliable, staff were amazing and rushed to help, if you had a children in a pram SO MUCH EASIER on trains to get the pram on safely.
I have heard since they have increased the train prices while reducing the user experience, such as stopped the conductors on the trains so you have to queue to buy a ticket now, in typical neoliberal style.
Buses are a nightmare in particular for pram users, gave up using a bus with the surly unhelpful drivers and difficulty in managing children, when you had a pram, paying, putting the pram down while ensuring kids are not escaping and then putting it back up, not exactly an easy or safe experience on buses.
Buses are also very slow, it’s hard to work out stops if you are going to a new place (unlike a train), buses don’t turn up, often you need 2 because routes are so poorly planned.
Going a bit further on a bus doesn’t work because of the expense, lack of time table, difficulty if you are not within walking distance of stop and you have to park a car. etc etc. Forget it, if you work multiple jobs and have to get from one to another it could take you hours on public transport and you’d probably lose your job as you could not arrive reliably.
Basically those that moan about people not using the buses and public transport enough, clearly don’t use buses themselves or just do very simple journeys and never get first hand experience of what a nightmare it is and the simplest things for customers are missing while behind the scenes clearly all money seems to being spent on advisers working out how to make it a worse experience for the customers but easy for themselves to put the money into their own salaries of middle and upper management and , lowering wages of the actual drivers, while increasing fares and putting out their hand for more rates money.
Tired of increasing rates and funnelling over 50% of the over 1 billion a year into Auckland Transport while having such Moron’s there making transport in their own image!
HOP cards for example. You need to pay $10 to get one. Just lost mine and now need to replace it and the money on it. Only certain places sell them. Getting a children’s HOP sounds harder than getting residency in this country. Clearly a child getting a cheaper fare is treated with suspicion as some sort of criminal activity from whoever the Moron was that designed the HOP card system. Apparently they want to expire them after months when Japan the money lasts for 10 years!
I heard the tender of the IT for HOP was ‘questionable’ in the least and was way more expensive than it should have been. In NZ we pay gold and get peanuts service, but nobody notices because many making decions are so far removed from real life and the systems are some sort of botch job of tech of another country with a moronic custom job on top with arrogant clueless managers micromanaging everything.
If you want to have a low wage, gig and precariat culture then it helps to design a public transport system around local conditions if you want people to use it.
National professed that privatisation makes services better’ !!!!!!
What a crock of shit that was Steven Bloody Joyce!!!!!
You fucked up royally again didn’t you just eh???
Another premium piece of writing by the Herald.
Hawkesby pimping for English and the Nats.
Bet she’s hoping the paywall doesn’t go up.
No one would pay to read this garbage.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12001968
Treasury against scrapping youth rate:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/101746361/labour-warned-if-economy-turns-minimum-wage-plans-will-hit-the-young-and-unskilled
Time to scrap some tired thinkers from treasury
The Treasury was instrumental in the neoliberal revolution.
It would say that.
Given the successful Seattle experience (a 62% increase, phased in over 20 months), I’d like to see the evidence Treasury’s relying on to make these assertions.
You don’t need evidence when you have a religion.
The cult of neoliberalism.
You are really not the one to talk of a lack of evidence.
Hows that google search going?
Just another right wing troll
Solkta is not right wing. You need to come to terms with the fact that you have critics on the left, Ed.
Off topic solka.
Solka is having a sulk eh?
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sulk
You can hardly blame Treasury for saying it, but nor can you blame Labour for ignoring them, given their election platform.
Check back in a few years to see what has happened to the unemployment rate…
A.
I can blame Treasury for saying it, white-Antoine, if they’re full of shit. Their minimum wage rise assertion is false; if you have evidence that their other assertions are true, let’s see it.
Obviously you have the evidence already, though, because you asserted that they “can’t be blamed”, so you must have a basis for that assertion.
Real world evidence, mind – not some economic
theorylitany.It’s silly to say that the minimum wage rise assertion is unequivocally false.
Sometimes minimum wage rises affect unemployment, sometimes not, it depends on the wage rise and the circumstances.
We will see what happens here (to the extent that the effects are distinguishable from other things affecting the economy).
A.
What part of “real world evidence” are you having trouble with, white-Antoine? Finding some?
Treasury’s overarching message was that in a strong economy minimum wage increases, if relatively small and frequent, would have little impact.
And the Seattle experience shows that “relatively small” can be translated as “up to at least 62% in 20 months”.
Now, you made another assertion: “Sometimes minimum wage rises affect unemployment”. I’m calling you out: provide some real world evidence for this assertion, or admit that you have none.
Really, just Google “minimum wage effects employment”. There are lots of real world examples. Throw a dart at your screen if you need help picking one.
A.
That was lazy and foolish of you, white-Antoine.
Business Insider was the top link:
Got it?
Here’s a refutation of that article
https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2016/05/29/americas-worst-minimum-wage-pundit/#1ff645724414
and a more authoritative review
https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2015-37.pdf
and if you want anything else you’re on your own: I don’t particularly like you and have no intention of spending any more of my day discussing the minimum wage with you.
A.
You think Nick Hanauer is the only person to have published similar findings. I see your two opinion-pieces and raise you three meta analyses:
Hafner et al, Card et al, Doucouliagos & Stanley, all conclude the same thing: minimum wage rises do not affect the unemployment rate.
Which is exactly the same conclusion that Sir Michael Cullen forced Treasury to acknowledge. Treasury even managed to carry on telling the truth about it over the last ten years, although I note that Steven Joyce’s pet project is still pushing the same propaganda as you.
Stop posting propaganda and white-anting the things you don’t understand, and I’ll stop schooling you.
The phrasing from Gallagher indicates that there is coalition resistance.
A fresh government with as strong a momentum as this one will not give one ounce of monkey shit about Treasury’s feelings.
The Minister needs to show gumption and state clearly that at 4.6% headline unemployment, and even NEET numbers falling, there is no better time to really ramp up all of the underlying baseline wage levels.
And once he has done that, since they are massively subsidising employers through the Working For Families increase, and since headline unemployment is so low, they should also increase the unemployment benefit.
in 1998 the first ‘open’ job advert – in a window in a large business in Wellington – read, Warehouse person wanted, heavy lifting required, Youth rates apply.
Whats not to like about youth rates? Why hire dad when you can hire the kid for half the price.
Time to replace Treasury with a suitable alternative. Closer to the people and the country’s real economy, but not in bed with any politicians.
Jacobi who pumped for the TPPA now takes a swipe at Professor Brady.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12001632
First a break in, now a hit job from Jacobi
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11995384
Is Jacobi the Rowarth of trade?
Is he ‘another academic ‘?
“Sackur: Yeah but he’s (Joy) a scientist, it’s based on research, it’s not an opinion he’s plucked from the air.
Key: He’s one academic, and like lawyers, I can provide you with another one that will give you a counterview. “
Bradbury agrees with me.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/02/26/chinese-quisling-tells-nzers-to-welcome-our-new-totalitarian-communist-overlords/
As predicted KiwiBuild will be a complete and utter failure.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/02/doubts-over-kiwibuild-s-affordability.html
There’s Keys rockstar economy for you, looks like most of Auckland requires some form of state housing support.
The issue is land cost and development.
That’s what Labours need to be focusing on, not the building of 600k first homes that hardly any first home buyers can afford.
The only building of houses Labour should be doing is the building of state houses.
If the government listened to the things you believe they’d be called “the opposition”.
I don’t know. Land *is too expensive, so how about we crash the property market. Seems the sensible solution to the problems BM names.
One obvious solution is to reduce the returns to real estate companies – they drove the house price inflation.
how could that be done?
My understanding (based on some stuff nearly a decade old now) is that NZ real estate commissions are high by global standards. This is why there has been a proliferation of the so-called private sale companies. Winding them back, and looking at some other dysfunctional activities like offshore advertising of NZ properties is probably overdue. The former can be regulated, the latter should never have been legal.
Crashing the market is probably the best and most effective option for Labour
A bit of short-term pain for long-term gain.
Everyone knows the housing market needs to crash.
However the banks that profited by pushing prices up, should share the pain with homeowners.
Jubilee
Pay to play – banks should not enjoy access to the lucrative mortgage market without providing a tangible corresponding social benefit.
Lol, I’m sure you would support Labour to crash the market. Problem is, we need a broader plan otherwise National will just fuck it up again next time it is in power.
Which, if Labour crashed the housing market, would be in approx 2.5 years
which is why BM is suddenly saying it’s a good idea.
One of the reasons that land is so expensive in Auckland is because there is so little of it.
All the easy build land has already been built on. To develop a subdivision these days required heaps of civil engineering, because developers want flat sections where they can lay a concrete slab and stick up a ticky tacky quickly to on sell at a huge profit. The environmental destruction that these projects entail has to be seen to be believed. Take the hillsides around Orewa for instance – “Millwater” and the new development to the north next to the “holiday highway” – I walked up and down those steep hills a few years back setting out retaining wall, after retaining wall, as the diggers, moxies and scrappers, roared in. I see sections for sale in Warkworth now from $420,000! That’s over an hours drive (little public transport) from Auckland.
What we need to be doing – and the recently announced Regional Development package is a start – is to help people to move away from this totally crowded small isthmus that constitutes Auckland, to the regions where there is more space for people to live a more fulfilling life.
sorry, but what happens when the regions are filled up?
Think that problem can be put off for another day? It’s already happening. I live in the regions and many of us don’t want more Aucklanders thanks. One of the clear things happening already is that Aucklanders selling up and moving south bring their higher equity with them and thus push the land prices up both by being able to out bid locals and by increasing the need for development. Auckland isn’t the only place where subdivisions are pushing up land prices.
We need to move to a steady state economy and that includes putting a cap on population. Until lefties are willing to talk about population all we are doing is promoting solutions that spread the problems around. While that might increase the wellbeing for Aucklanders in the short and medium term, it’s unsustainable and it lowers the wellbeing of people in other places.
that’s not about Aucklanders btw, it applies to any city that is overcrowded and thinks moving to the regions solves the problem.
> We need to move to a steady state economy and that includes putting a cap on population.
Still, the steady state economy may involve a higher proportion of people living in the regions.
A.
it may, but until people are supporting and promoting a steady state economy all they’re saying is let’s spread the problem around and make other people’s lives worse.
I live in the regions too, and yes I appreciate the problem you espouse.
I also agree that we need to move to a steady state economy and fast.
However I’m not sure if you have visited Auckland in the recent past, but over the past few years it has become vastly overpopulated. There is a flight into Auckland Airport almost every 3 mins during the day. Sitting in the arrival area at Auckland international is mind blowing. People pouring out of the security/customs area in a constant stream. A couple of years back it was never like that. From Auckland Airport “Fast Facts sheet pdf
https://www.aucklandairport.co.nz/~/media/Files/…/Fast%20Facts%202013.pdf
and they are well on the way to that!
The demand for housing and the resulting homelessness it creates is getting worse not better. It’s not just those who have the finance that are moving out of the city – the poor are as well. Here in Thames there are at least a dozen rough sleepers in the town sleeping wherever they can find shelter – and that is a town of 7500. Our food bank – like all others around the country – is stretched and food parcels were up around 12% last year.
Basically Auckland is the gateway for most people coming to this country but it is built on a tiny strip of land and thus is really unsuitable as a site for a major city. If we are to house the thousands who are struggling to find a suitable place to lay their heads then we need to think seriously about sharing the load, and ways to limit our population growth.
I haven’t been to Auckland recently, but I feel reasonably up to date with the problems it is having. Not least because those problems are causing problems elsewhere in NZ too.
I’m just resisting the framing of ‘shift to the regions and all will be well’. I see lots of lefties saying this, and I think it’s short sighted and ignorant of the bigger picture. Unlike you most of those lefties aren’t thinking about sustainability in its truer sense and are largely devoid of considerations for the ecologies of the regions (or Auckland for that matter). And still so many lefties keep saying the mantra that population isn’t an issue.
I’m all for limiting immigration on this basis too btw.
“I’m just resisting the framing of ‘shift to the regions and all will be well’.”
I agree. This is short sighted, and somewhat deluded.
Many have contributed to the infrastructure, services and amenities of our big cities, and they are desirable for that reason. Not to mention the vast social and community networks at play. To relinquish these for monetary reasons is understandable on a personal level. To promote it as a solution is problematic.
@ Molly
It’s not just for monetary reasons Molly – the need for people to exit Auckland is for humanity reasons as well. You know the experiments they used to perform in Psychology where they would place more and more rats into a confined space. Eventually the rats would turn on each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
It’s a bit like that now. There really just isn’t the room anymore. To make room, hillsides have to be flattened and stablilized , or else current accommodation pulled down and rebuilt as high rise – neither of which options are cheap. We have seen the results of cheap high risers in the recent past in London.
@Weka
Yes we need to think of ways to be limiting our population growth – but it s not just a national problem but also a global one. We can put in place restrictions to immigration, etc but this country is under huge pressure globally to take in more both from a humanitarian standpoint and from other interests – and I don’t just mean the wealthy few buying up their boltholds in Central.
NZ ranks poorly in developed nations wrt the number of refugees we take each year – not only in actual numbers but also as a rate per capita – far fewer on both counts than that despised country next door, Australia. /sarc
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/71899378/how-new-zealands-refugee-quota-stacks-up-internationally
On our doorstep we have a growing crisis with rising sea levels. with around 120,000 people on Tuvalu and Kiribati whose Islands are threatened.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/08/australia-and-nz-should-allow-open-migration-for-pacific-islanders-threatened-by-climate-says-report
Then there is the concept of fairness…
New Zealand is around the same size as Philippines. Philippines is approximately 300,000 sq km, while New Zealand is approximately 268,838 sq km. Meanwhile, the population of Philippines is ~103 million people (98 million fewer people live in New Zealand).
If we consider ourselves to be good global citizens…
I don’t know. It is a problem just too big for me.
My position on that is to reduce immigration and increase refugee take. Also, fuck rich people in Queenstown. Their ecological footprint could be used to sustain far more people than them.
@macro
“It’s not just for monetary reasons Molly – the need for people to exit Auckland is for humanity reasons as well.”
You are right, I should have more accurately stated “individual choice” reasons.
I’m an Aucklander by birth, and while struggling, I can’t imagine that the exodus of Aucklanders does anything at a societal level – even while improving the wellbeing of those that go.
I am pissed off at the situation, and refuse to leave the immense infrastructure generations have paid for to the already financially well-endowed.
As mentioned, moving to the regions is an individual solution and one that works for many. In terms of addressing the fundamental issue of housing, it is only a deferment and as such – is not an effective solution.
Same thing’s happening in the north, I can see
that wouldn’t surprise me. Looks like it is happening everywhere.
NZ also suffers from having had a wealth of land to use (appropriate) when we began town planning.
So, given the car-centric mindset, and the ability to go further – planners, transport planners, architects and builders have learned and expertly honed competence in housing that is not restricted by space or concerned with community. And NZers have accepted that as the benchmark.
Even now, when you look out over newly built suburbs, they most often contain detached, single story houses, plonked in the middle of an ever-decreasing section size.
We are still wasting the land we are developing, by the way we plan, design and build.
TBH though. This is only one part of the housing problem.
The quickest and easiest and fairest way, is to stop immigration in NZ until we have enough houses to buy and rent at prices people can afford on local wages.
Not believing “soon we will have affordable housing”… everything those people say is about making more $$$ for themselves from ‘freeing up land’ with zoning, SHA’s or deregulation or PPP’s or handouts for developers and building firms. Funny enough all their suggestions have not produced affordable housing, but shot up rents and house and land prices, go figure!
Our lax immigration laws bought in by the Natz are making the crisis worse, because they are adding more people from overseas so corporations don’t have to pay/train local people and some are getting $20k for the privilege in a backhander to get a work permit.
The new workers are working on luxury places like the Hyatt for other people often owned by multinational companies or business that seem more like scams than businesses. Then there are scams on top of the scams. It’s a ponzi scheme with Kiwi taxpayers picking up the tab.
Our schools, roads and hospitals are full, when we have the lowest birth rate for decades. Productivity is down, employment is fake and we need to have WFF and so forth subsidising wages.
What about business beware, the Hyatt should have done their homework before starting construction for example and if they collapse (a false hope) – great opportunity for some local company to buy that prime site might lower the price of land, instead of the taxpayers and ratepayers subsidising their building work.
I agree.Government should be building State rentals by the thousands, and using that to train apprentice construction workers.
I completely agree with you there.
We desperately need a vehicle to train apprentices, not just for chippies but for all the other trades as well.
The only way that’s going to happen is if the government steps up to the plate.
Unfortunately, now Labours committed it’self to this Kiwibuild bull shit, the opportunity to actually fix the foundation issues affecting NZ housing has been missed.
It can be done in conjunction. Government can manage to juggle more than one ball at a time. It’s probably that given the last few years you’ve forgotten.
Won’t happen Twyford has staked his career on the success of Kiwibuild, state houses are going to be pushed to the back of the queue.
Anyway, governments are only interested in passing the work off to private construction companies, the concept of having a government department that is anything more than paper shuffling desk jockeys seems a bit beyond them.
So, because Labour are now in government you are supportive of more state housing. Or is this just a position that you can criticise from?
Essentially BM, I am asking if you are an advocate of the state providing housing for NZers regardless of government composition?
yet another regional rail success for Phil Twyford as our best Minister of Transport for years since Pete Hodgson.
http://www.voxy.co.nz/business/5/304498
Work underway on Wairoa-Napier line
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Contributor:
Fuseworks MediaFuseworks Media
Monday, 26 February, 2018 – 09:27
Work will begin on the reinstatement of the Napier to Wairoa rail line today, just two days after the Government announced its funding through the Provincial Growth Fund for the project.
“Contractors will start cutting back vegetation at Eskdale and will be working north over coming weeks,” KiwiRail Acting Group General Manager Network Services Henare Clarke says.
“A fortnight after that work on the line’s drains and culverts will begin.
“The first log train is expected to run on the line by the end of the year.
“This is a good time to remind people to expect trains or machinery travelling on the track at all times.
“It is six years since the line between Wairoa and Napier was in regular use, so people will need to take extra care around it now that work is underway.
“The work will see an increase in movements along that track.
“Everyone needs to expect trains and other rail vehicles using the line at any time from either direction.
“They should only cross the line at level crossings – to cross the line anywhere else is both dangerous and illegal,” Mr Clarke says.
The re-opening of the line was announced on Friday. KiwiRail has been working with Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and Napier Port to re-open the line.
The Government has allocated $5 million to the project, which is expected to take two years to fully complete.
Following Friday’s announcement, KiwiRail Chief Executive Peter Reidy said it was good news for the region and good news for New Zealand.
“It’s a vote of confidence in our customers and our staff.
“KiwiRail is committed to enabling sustainable and inclusive economic growth and the Government’s investment in promoting rail in the regions will enable us to step up that work.
“Moving logs by rail takes pressure off the roads, and reduces greenhouse gases. The Wairoa-Napier road is not designed to cope with the growing volumes of logs now that the ‘Wall of Wood” is coming on stream and rail is the ideal way of getting that timber to overseas customers.
“We have estimated that using the Wairoa-Napier line to move the logs could take up to 5,714 trucks a year off the road, and reduce carbon emissions by 1292 tonnes,” Mr Reidy said.
Do you realise that 5,714 trucks a year actually works out at 15 trucks a day?
Or to take it down further not even one per hour per day.
God that Twyford is a fuck wit.
BM, you do know that the damage caused by one 18 wheel 5 axle 40 ton truck is somewhere between the damage caused by 5-9600 cars.
That is, 5,714 times 5000 equivalent to 28 million cars.
Or 78,273 cars per day
3261 cars per hour.
54 per minute
1 car every .9 of a second.
Or at the high end 54 million cars.
That is, per day 150,286 cars
or per hour, 6291 cars
per minute 104 cars
1.7 cars per second.
Some authorities say that such a truck causes 138000 the damage of a car.
I’m not sure that my calculator application can handle those numbers!
God, that BM is a fuckwit.
Still far cheaper moving logs by road than by rail.
What is the subsidy that tax and ratepayers pay for heavy trucks, BM?
This is the cost in the Hawkes Bay.
“Hastings District Council has been consulting with industry and rural communities to assess which routes should be brought up to the new standards and, therefore, which of its 30 bridges need upgrading.
The estimate cost of upgrading 18 of its bridges to a level that will allow larger loads will cost Hastings’ rural ratepayers about $5 million over the next 5-7 years.
This includes the transport agency subsidy of 54 per cent of the overall $10.3 million.”
The bridges needed upgrade for bigger trucks is subsidised by half by rural ratepayers?
By the way, BM, I hope you are right for that would be fair that trucks pay the true cost of their haulage. Any figures that would prove your assertion?
How about the trucks paying the true cost of the damage they cause? What then?
What would happen if trains were only made to pay a fraction of the cost and maintenance of the rail bed over which they travel? What then?
BTW, a two lane road is designed to carry 13000 cars a day.
5714 trucks at 9600 cars per truck equivalent causes the same damage to 12 roads at the maximum design usage of such a road.
Twelve times!
What fraction of the cost of damage do trucks pay?
What what what BM??
“The only way that’s going to happen is if the government steps up to the plate.”
Isn’t that against everything the free market believes in???
The free market has failed and government called in to fix it up?
I’m not an ideologue, whatever works.
There’s a shortage of tradespeople we need more tradespeople, private industry isn’t supplying enough, the ball is now back in the government’s court.
Make it happen Labour.
You are right there BM. Sometimes truth is self evident.
BM – what about the welfare system and those who have no house to live in and staying at a $1000 per week motel room, surely they should be priorities over the luxury market?
The problem is, the luxury market has taken many of the building staff but the locals can’t afford to buy or rent the buildings. The buildings being built are not affordable – they are being designed for somebody else.
If corporations are so desperate for construction workers the visa should be only for $100,000 plus salary to come here and they make sure they pay the taxes and it’s not a scam. Surprisingly I think you will see a return of industry training workers. You can actually learn to tile and stop in days, it’s not that difficult so not sure why Malysians were needed to work illegally. Deregulation and listening to lobby groups have caused a disaster in construction. Everything is wrong, doing more of the same bringing in scam workers and driving housing demand is making things worse.
A skilled builder should be on $100,000 anyway so therefore the visa criteria should only be for the higher paid skilled staff.
Also immigration need to start putting in an ACC and health tax on every visitors visa as well as mandatory health insurance, because like this unfortunate incident, many are coming to NZ having accidents and the locals keep picking up the tab which is yet another reason our health system is failing.
Many are elderly visitors and need expensive health care but don’t feel the need to take out any insurance with Kiwi taxpayers picking up the tab. Why would you, if you can afford a lawyer and get a bit of publicity ACC will pay out.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1801/S00585/acc-approved-for-the-not-botulism-kochumman-family.htm
I’d prefer my tax dollars to go to a hospital and school servicing local kids and community not helping the Hyatt and the like with corporate welfare and labour issues and more and more tourists needing NZ health and roading services while the profits from their stay go to multinationals.
I personally would chop Working for Families (the whole bloody lot), interest free student loans and the first year free study to pay for a state house buildng scheme. The money lost by users of those schemes would find its way back to them in the form of lower rents.
KJT 7.1.1.2
Simple, obvious. No reason to not start it now to begin in earnest with a small team in june, full mode next year. Apprentices and guaranteed work, might have them on bond and they have to go where sent for a while, like we used to do with teachers and doctors?
Yes, it was an excellent scheme.
Is the issue land cost and development?
Someone owns the land and is hoping to profit by its sale.
Development – people who own contracting businesses are hoping to cash in on the development work. Seems fair.
And something, a tough-enough entity, needs to ensure that the enthusiasm doesn’t outpace a creaking, antique infrastructure so the inevitable crash can be averted. (Electricity supply. Sewerage. Public transport. Water supplies.)
Opening the sluice gates and flooding the area might work for irrigation yet a big flood of dwellings, roads, and loss of valuable arable lands just to calm the cries of one little city seems downright dumb.
There’s little that’s efficient in old Auckland. Start spreading the goods of employment opportunities to more places around the country. And if Auckland wants to be The Place in NZ – make it much easier/cheaper to travel to – and depart from.
Just to put it into perspective how much the cost of land has increased.
In Hamilton back in 2000, you could pick up an 800sq meter section in a top area for $75,000
An equivalent section these days $460,000.
http://harcourts.co.nz/Property/830922/HM51264/17-Sylvester-Crescent
That’s what’s making housing unaffordable.
and a house in the same street is almost twice the price.
The cost of building a house has probably doubled but that’s if you want a bespoke house, production line /kitset housing you’d cut that cost in half.
The section prices are the killer and there’s nothing you can do about that.
Can still buy a perfectly adequate small 3 bedroom transportable house for around $140k.
Part of the cost increase are stricter requirements, insulation, double glazing and bracing. And the idea that a standard house now has two bathrooms, family room, and large garage built on.
Agree land prices are into stupid territory. Only immigration, risk free lending on mortgages, and tax free investment in housing, has allowed the bubble to continue.
you forgot shadow finance
The section prices are the killer and there’s nothing you can do about that.
Auckland land prices are forecast to fall this year.
So you cut the cost of the improvements in half and run on a break-even model rather than profiteering model.
And the houses end up in the range of the original kiwibuild plan.
Ahem! Someone was listening to BM!
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2018/02/economist-reveals-how-to-make-kiwibuild-homes-cheaper.html
Simply, this economist says by the government leasing the land to the owner at a peppercorn rental, as is done overseas, half the cost is removed.
$75,000 = $255,000 in today’s money.
You trust the crap that comes out of MBIE? Wasn’t that long ago they were telling everyone that minimum wage rises cause unemployment.
Still, it’s good of them to acknowledge that they are incapable; that bolsters the case to asset strip Steven Joyce’s pet project of its useful elements and discard the rest.
Does the current Govt actually have a Minister capable of restructuring a large Ministry?
A.
Yes.
That sentence in the comment needs a slight modification.
Move the word capable back one place and delete the last 5 words.
“Does the current Govt actually have a capable Minister?”
The answer appears to be No.
Q. “Did the previous Govt actually have a capable Minister?”
A. “Steven Joyce”.
*snorts of derision*
MBIE is only a temporary home for Kiwibuild.
Legislation from Twyford is coming down the pipeline of a scale that is going to blow people away, and pleasantly appeal to those with good memories.
> Legislation from Twyford is coming down the pipeline of a scale that is going to blow people away, and pleasantly appeal to those with good memories.
That is your hope, we’ll see what happens.
A.
Hope so. I think you are in a position to know, and white-Antoine isn’t.
[shrug] You could be right. Let’s ask. Ad, is your comment based on insider knowledge? Should we take it as a semi-official leak?
A.
You just need a few months of patience.
Just relax a bit.
They have done more already in four months than National (motorways and Christchurch excepted) did in nine whole years.
Budget in May will give you more of the programme coming up.
Consider it a teaser.
“They have done more already in four months than National (motorways and Christchurch excepted) did in nine whole years. ”
Citation?
As far as I can tell so far all they have done is roll back a bunch of work National did, agree in princilpal to sign up to the same TPPA that National agreed, only without the US involved so without a big chunk of the benefit, start talking weasel words about why they are no longer going to be able to enter Pike River (because they actually have to be accountable now, not so easy to put peoples lives at risk unnecessarily when you are actually in power), dump their flagship water tax, hide Labours deputy as he has been shown to be inept, and defend an un-defendable Kiwibuild policy which sees a $600k house as an affordable first home for 50,000 Auckland first home buyers.
I can’t wait to see what they announce in May, but if you are that excited about what they have done already, I don’t hold out much hope of sharing your enthusiasm then either.
Well, I’m not the greatest cheerleader for the coalition but it’s silly to say that’s all they’ve done. For a start you’ve missed out the families package and the free tertiary education.
A.
You are clearly another one of those on the hard left who will never be happy with whatever this government does, no matter at what speed or depth.
Can you show me another MMP government that has done something like this list in its first 100 days:
– First year term of tertiary education free. Implemented, and already helping tens of thousands of young people right now.
– Increase student allowances by $50 a week. Implemented, and already helping tens of thousands of young people right now.
– Minimum standards for rental housing. Rolled out right now.
– Overseas buyers banned from buying existing houses. Implemented, and real estate markets already cooling significantly across key areas.
– Housing New Zealand selloff. Stopped.
– Form Affordable Housing Authority and start Kiwibuild. Started, more announcements to come.
– Increase Paid Parental Leave, plus full Families Package. Implemented, already helping tens of thousands of New Zealanders, and tens of thousands more in the coming winter.
– Increase mimimum wage to $16.50. Implemented 1 April 2018.
– Commit to multi-billion light rail system from downtown Auckland to Auckland airport. Underway.
– Set Zero Carbon Emissions goal. Underway.
– Celebrate a successful Waitangi Day as we have not seen in over 40 years.
I am sure you will decry all of it as mere sops to the masses and the entire structure of capitalism hasn’t been removed overnight, therefore you can keep doing a sad hard-left beatdown.
Thankfully the polls are massively telling this Labour-led government that they are on the right track, people are seeing that they have real political skill, and they are well set to double and redouble their implementation for the remaining term and for many more terms to come,
Could you stop referring to people as “hard left” – this is a meme used by the right to avoid discourse. It’s embarrassing to see it used in the same manner on TS.
“First year term of tertiary education free.”
A bit more thought should have been given to this. Many students don’t know what they want to do, and will take time after secondary school to consider further study options. This has removed a financial reason to do so, and will most likely result in an influx of first-year students that go into courses or careers that are not a good fit. It would have been more considered to provide all those in their last year of study with free education. They will be the ones feeling the pinch, and it would have provided an immediate boost to those who will graduate. As it is, they will have the sense of “just missing the boat”.
” Increase student allowances by $50 a week. Implemented, and already helping tens of thousands of young people right now. “
… for those eligible…
All the housing items are not going to solve the crisis. This discussion has been made before.
“Increase Paid Parental Leave, plus full Families Package. Implemented, already helping tens of thousands of New Zealanders, and tens of thousands more in the coming winter.”
Band-aid to the issue of lower wages, and of no help to those on benefits.
“– Increase mimimum wage to $16.50. Implemented 1 April 2018. “
Minimum wage should be equal to living wage. Anything else is below subsistence.
“– Commit to multi-billion light rail system from downtown Auckland to Auckland airport. Underway. “
Been planned for years, as it should be. Not really sorting out the issue of public transport for all South Aucklanders, just those that are getting on a plane.
“– Set Zero Carbon Emissions goal. Underway. “
This means nothing, until implemented in effective ways.
” Celebrate a successful Waitangi Day as we have not seen in over 40 years.”
I’m guessing many have not seen it because they have never been there. It is arrogant to make this assertion of “success” for a number of reasons. Most importantly, for all those who have celebrated this occasion over the years without needing acknowledgment from external sources.
And there is the issue of the contradiction of “holding the government to account, and transparency” and the haste to sign the TPPA.
The backing down on the water resource issues.
The failure to support any meaningful dialogue on beneficiaries – and the support systems that are provided.
Don’t discount these concerns, because we are not the true believers that you require us all to be.
TS is valuable because of the critique provided. This examination does not stop because the government has changed.
Thanks for that meaty comment Molly.
“First year term of tertiary education free.”
Why don’t the Labour Coalition ask peopleto send them a tweet to give their Considered Opinion and anecdotes from real experience about touted policies?
Having real experience, the citizen can spot pinholes in a policy at ten paces. ‘Not good enough, it doesn’t make allowance for the x factor, which is nearly a constant in my and others’ classes’, is an example of a possible education response. Opinion to remedy would follow, ‘If …. was done as a start of each day, it would settle the children in a positive mood, and it could even be repeated before each class.’
Some things could be run as pilots and then if successful could be introduced as the norm. Going forward together instead of having autocratic orders from above – I think that would be popular with those who are invested in the idea of thriving community and well-being.
On the hard left – most of the hard left on this site have offered very little bitter criticism of the new government. Constructive criticism, but we were always going to do that. Molly does a good job of highlighting many issues, and offering constructive criticism. I know the centre can’t handle much criticism, but them the breaks.
I also think most of the left, get that labour NZ1 and the Greens have a real nasty enemy stopping any, and all progress. The civil service. It’s a topic which we avoid, and personally I think we should not. Many parts of the civil service are broken, or deeply ideological.
I think historians will be very harsh on the last national government for it’s heavy stacking of the civil service (management in particular) with political lackeys and sycophants. Time will tell.
“Hard left”?
I am about as left wing as Keith Holyoak, or Muldoon.
As a supporter of genuine social democracy, and making capitalism work as it is supposed to. For everyone!
Most of the “hard left” on this site are light years away from real “hard left” solutions, such as “Workers seizing the means of production”.
Do you consider Bolger, “Hard left” also?
He is one of the many who realise that the Neo-liberal paradigm was a failure.
I suppose you will think that BM is also “hard left”, agreeing with Government addressing the lack of apprenticeship training.
When a return to the, sensible, and successful, “welfare State” run for its own citizens benefit, is called “hard left” by Labour party apologists, it is no wonder why the parliamentary “Soft left’ has lost voters..
FFS.
Indeed.
Poor wages and conditions have caused a lot of the problem. The industry have got used to paying lemon wages and conditions, no forward planning or investment in training in their own industry and now whining and expect golden peaches or government to procure them their preferred workers (cheap and cheerful).
To many employers have got used to tax payers and employees covering their costs.
It used to be called, “featherbedding”.
I doubt MBIE could boil an egg without causing a fire. They would probably have to redesign the kitchen furniture at a cost of 2 million, apply for more funding and call them in 18 months.
Too many cooks lapping up right wing solutions after all the Natz redundancies only the worst of the worst probably left in government advisory roles.
The root cause of the housing lies in the complete lack of regulation by National to curb the deliberate and calculated investment from foreign countries, and in particular one which was Government sanctioned, NZ had the largest increase of Housing prices of any country in the world and twice that of it’s nearest competitor, Australia, the horse has long bolted but the Govt responsible has been discarded, thankfully.
Like so many things, the current Coalition has a huge job to correct the mistakes of the previous Govt, it will take some time, but history shows the Coalition is up to task.
Weka, crashing the housing market is not a solution, it would cause serious harm to the economy, increasing stocks and reducing demand (immigration), better regulation over speculation and rental prices.
A housing market crash is part of the normal cycle.
Can’t see how ever ratcheting “market” rents are OK, but a crash in house prices is not.
Housing markets can stall for a number of years and that is also a correction.
Don’t worry BM plenty of help on the way!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12000376
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11990284
Not sure how we can afford the infrastructure, transport and health care and counter the additional pollution to help the multinationals get their conference and tourism and luxury apartments and mega mansions quicker.
(Maybe part of the issue, is that so much construction is taken up by luxury market for tourists, conference centers and people who don’t live here while the local’s can’t afford to live in their own cities, pay power and transport and water costs anymore
You can’t even get that ‘free’ swim anymore with 30 Auckland beaches closed for pollution levels exceeding the requirement with no sign that the Auckland council is prepared to do anything about it, in fact they are applying to continue their approach.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10779897
yep, lets dig deeper ditches, rent them by the square meter…..profit.
National, still devoid of ideas but full of blame.
Building the houses increases the supply, which lowers prices, making housing more affordable. Duh.
DoublePlusGood – it only works if you have a closed system. In NZ we have 100,000’s of temp and permanent people flooding in yearly. This is ARTIFICIAL and of course could be stopped to allow the demand to abate.
Oh yes, this definitely has to be in the context of not having ludicrous, unsustainable population growth.
NZ has the third largest immigration in the world per capita, after Israel and Luxembourg.
Funny enough the obvious never comes to mind with right wingers when they plan and execute a crisis, shock doctrine style.
BM
Go get a builders job you could do a far more ‘meaningful’ contrabution to our well being.
Good morning Duncan on TV3 AM show did you read some of The book on my Tepuna Ropata Wahawaha.
Theres a phenomon here in Aotearoa that is any books on Maori History is very hard to find I have seen your name pop up a few times the Gardiner name .
My Huawei is faster than my computer its a p8 lite cost $250 this is my 3rd one the first one is in a hole in Tauranga under a house the second one I gave to my eldiest mokos
and this one is going good .P.S I have been reading up on my Tepuna .
Ka kite ano
Julie Ann Genter wants the police to be stopping and checking us more for alcohol overdosing. Believes it should make a difference. Makes a connection between the lack and a rise in traffic accidents?
correlation?
I’ve done some work on alcohol related fatalities over time. In the last batch I did a few years ago there was an anomaly in the data and when we went back and checked with the source we were told it was because the police had reduced road side check for alcohol because they had run out of money.
It could be correlation rather causation but I can’t think of a likelier reason.
Ms Genter also referred to more traffic on the roads. It may be that the accident rate per 1000 or whatever the measure, has remained steady but the total has gone up because of the increased mass, ie the problem could be:
*more, increased traffic, some of which are poorer drivers from overseas,
*massive trucks, very long and hard to pass,
*increased stress from racing to get to work on crowded roads when the worker has only an hour or two’s work and must get there on time. (I’m thinking of people taking an hour to get to work two or three hours, and an hour to get home and on the way to drop/pick-up children at creche/playschool, and each hour has to be paid for even if subsidised to some extent.)
*the increased traffic stretching far back from lights and blocking roads giving access to the motorway, so relying on people’s courtesy and co-operation, first to get onto the main road/motorway and then to be able to move across to the needed lane for turning right etc.
*and anxiety and stress to get further on to achieve journey’s end and being fixed on that in almost gridlock conditions and not wanting to bother with courtesies to other hapless motorists .
And savenz says more on the sort of difficulties some drivers may be dealing with at 3.3.
And also we need to have along with death statistics, also serious accidents involving ambulance and/or hospital care numbers. This might take some more work to collate but it is time that tight stats were achieved, not just something that is convenient to count.
It never ceases to amaze me that these “city planners” and pundits don’t understands that road size and capacity is limited by size and amount of large vehicles clogging them.
So we see many more trucks on our roads today (three time more than were on our road two decades ago)
So truck gridlock is very seldom at all used to explain the increases of traffic accidents and I cannot think why they all every time now simply just ignore the elephant (truck) in the room here.
Are they afraid of the powerful truck lobby?????
grow some balls folks for gods sake.
Nobody ever seems to think of taxing the trucks further but it’s the first thing on everybody’s mind when it comes to domestic transport.
Apparently poor truckers also need a import drivers in as there is also another +skill+ shortage – luckily you can pay $3000 bribe to get a license here. Win, win.
Who would think in a country where everyone drives everywhere, you can not get abundant staff for your $18 p/h 10 hour day, contract truck jobs?
Another industry on the government teat whining with poor wages and conditions while the tax payers have to waste more and more money on repairing the roads (also driving down productivity with all the road works everywhere, delaying everyone).
Could be a factor. We often had the Booze Bus on our Park side Street.
But not since November.???
Many thanks to Obama for making his visit non public it makes me happy that shonky in not going to get any Mana from the Obama visit congratulations to the Warriors and
the Black Caps for there wins .
We pay rent for our houses why can’t we just get mortgages backed by the government for the first 5 years till there is enough equity in the property to guarantee that the banks will get there money if the loan goes bad thats what the deposit is all about Know. This move will help slow down inequality .
Ka pai ka kite ano
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/351245/fresh-allegations-at-law-firm-this-should-not-be-happening
Revelations that law students and solicitors had sex on the boardroom table following an evening of heavy drinking at Russell McVeagh’s Auckland office have put the leading law firm under public scrutiny again.
Radionz
And the toilets (Herald).
Involvement in the at partner level. A bit vague on specifics.
Why aren’t they calling it an orgy? It sounds like an orgy. Are the press deliberately avoiding the description or is this technically not an orgy? Enquiring minds…
New collective noun – an orgy of lawyers.
Run into the boardroom folks – drinkies and orgy-porgy!
It is interesting to do a flip in imagination and place a situation in a different arena. What would be the tone if it was reported as taking place on a marae, (heaven forbid), in a gang headquarters (called ‘blocking’), at a music festival (think about the concern about groping), in a church, a local business that wasn’t of the legal persuasion?
Thinking about jails and then thinking about gangs, this essay from Greg Newbold et al is of interest.
https://teara.govt.nz/mi/gangs/print
Why would all those lawyers be banging on a marae?
A.
Antoine
It was just a mind exercise. Why not try it.
Not to be taken literally. How old are you I wonder?
Location makes no difference, just add alcohol and it’s all the same.
Professional educated men loading young women with booze then taking advantage of them?
Surely not?? !!!!
So proud of these brave women for speaking out.
Yeah – shame there’s no easy way of locking these guys up. Basic problem is that these ‘name’ firms have the power to distribute favours via the intern system – and then they extract their ‘reward’ in return.
As always – the need is to break private power, perhaps by ending the intern system, forcibly splitting firms up when they get too big, attacking their wealth through the taxation system.
“shame there’s no easy way of locking these guys up”
For what? Having consensual sex?
If your definition of ‘consensual’ is unwilling to consider power relationships then it’s worthless.
I could equally say that native Americans ‘consented’ to being confined to reservations (which they did via treaties and agreements in the nineteenth century) and that therefore there was no problem, nothing to see and it was all above board.
The existence of some form of proximate consent doesn’t tell us very much about what’s really happening. But I think you know that.
It seems that you are a bloke mikes. While it is not impossible that you could feel ‘pressure’ to advance your career or prospects with sexual favours, it is more likely to happen to females.
And these young women have spent countless hours studying to be lawyers and have a chance of getting a job in a prestigious firm which will likely drive their interns on very little pay to put in long hours of work similar to that of hospital registrars getting work experience. The would-be lawyers would no doubt be carried away by fervour, admiration, alcohol and having got ’embedded almost literally’ in the culture of apparent sophistication. Lawyers can be clever in the art of sophistry. Perhaps the word is – ‘Everybody does it if you want to get on’; they are young and vulnerable, and likely to feel very unhappy the next day and very conflicted. And it is not the sort of thing that their parents would understand – who to talk to for wisdom who understands the practices?
As weka says in a different context :
weka 7.1.1.1.1.2
25 February 2018 at 11:45 am
What OAB said. The issue is of abuse of power.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-25-02-2018/#comment-1453826
Mike…
Getting women drunk in order to bed them…. that’s how it is.
If she is drunk do you really think she is in a state of mind to make an informed decision?
Just lie back you don’t have to do anything, shhhhh don’t worry all the interns do it, I won’t say anything, you wouldn’t want me to hurt you would you? … you are so beautiful… blahhhhhh blah freaking blah
Drunk woman just gets it over and done with to stop being pressured and harrassed by him, sadly she’s not capable of anything else, he’s been pouring her drinks all night from the handy dandy drinks cabinet in the board room.
Then makes out he’s the good guy, calls and pays for a cab to get her home. the next day at work he apologises, excusing his behaviour because he was drunk. Meanwhile she blocks it out, pretends it didn’t happen as she is so ashamed and embarrassed about it.
That’s how it happens, that’s reality.
Close down the company.
Simple.
Cinny 1000% Senior Partners using their position and power. So wrong.
Deluded girls thinking it will help their careers.
That’s the best case.
It could be women facing peer and career pressure to get drunk, then to do things they’re not comfortable with when they are drunk.
I trust no council or government work will be given to this company.
Good on the people for setting up the Mokos to go to the Kermadec Islands they will get to see a pristine environment I m envious .
I went to the Auckland Island down south the seals had a virus there weren’t many seals at that time 25 we went on the Islands and looked at all the plants .
I had a good time we saw a white shark killing a seal or trying to the seal kept swimming behind the shark.
Ka kite ano
That would’ve been outstanding going to visit the Auckland Islands EM- somewhere I’ve always wanted to get to but haven’t found the time.
How long did it take you to sail down ?
Hi Daniel you are getting more air time Ka pai I like seeing honest humble respected people on 1 NEWS TVNZ.
Ka kite ano
30 year old man steals ambulance in Dunedin while staff are attending emergency.
Driving while disqualified.
This is an example of the sort of person who could be put in stocks for a morning as a punishment. I think stocks need to be brought back for this type of crime to add an extra tool for discouraging doltish, hooliganish type of behaviour. Having more jobs of a physical sort doing useful things would also be helpful in keeping down this type of crime!
Could make a few dollars selling rotten fruit to throw at them as well!
Jon Stephenson talking about the need for public oversight of NZDF on Stuff today.
Apparently NZDF has been running journalist-free workshops on public accountability, with a straight face. Puts me in mind of the old Yes Minister back and forth “How’s the Campaign for Open Government going?” “I can’t talk about that.”
Of interest to some here is a reference to Wayne Mapp:
Credit where it’s due, good on Wayne for being the voice in the room to raise hard topics.
well done Wayne.
Thanks for the link McFlock.
I say we should not have active military forces fighting in foreign wars. And especially not in these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan , which have no moral bases for their inception, nor continuation.
As always on this topic it’s a personal opinion.
War is the enemy of working people.
There’s the old line from WW1 that “a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends”.
But the issue in the link is that our military is out of our control, because it is out of our sight.
It’s not enough that maybe Cabinet know where our soldiers are and maybe what they get up to (assuming reports aren’t sanitised, big assumption). We need to know where they go, and what they get up to – warts and all.
Completely agree with your assertion McFlock. Full disclosure of all military operations is the only way.
My view is a step further, we should not be there at all.
I don’t think it’s so much “further” as that they are completely separate issues.
*SIgh*really.
I’d think by now you’d know a lot of times posts veer off, that’s the way it goes on this site.
If you want purity, you could try kiwiblog. (tongue firmly in cheek with that comment)
veering is one thing, but I don’t like it when they jump the rails onto another track entirely.
You done that many a time with my posts
Right, into another universe.
maybe the segue wasn’t obvious
Speaking of segues’
Forget the banter between me and McFlock – go read what McFlock posted, worth the time out of your day to do so!
Now go back here https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-26-02-2018/#comment-1454195
+1
Sharing this from a facebook noticeboard………..
The brighter future is here
For those freaking out about either side of the gun debate over Florida right now, neither side is addressing the issue. Ban this, ban that from one side and put in armed guards from the other.
Here is a little experiment if you will take it. Go find out how many students were killed by shootings in schools in the last 10 years. Then go find out how many students killed themselves during the same period of time. The sheer number of suicides will make you weep.
In fact it will so outweigh the number killed or even wounded in shootings that it will possibly make you ask the real question here, NO ONE IS ASKING.
What is so wrong in our society and in our system of education that so many children are choosing death? Those committing suicide are making the same choice as most shooters; they are just not taking others with them. That is why this is the first time we have a mass school shooting with the shooter taken alive.
Most of these shootings are a sick and twisted form of suicide by cop! So the question here is not do we ban guns, or mags, or do we put an armed guard in every door way?
No the questions are how have we changed so abruptly in the last 30 years to make so many children wish to kill themselves and others and what do we change in the system to reverse it?
Bluntly we are now running schools like prisons, and people kill each other and themselves in prisons every day. No one wants to admit this, cuz “all teachers are heroes” etc. But a simple look at the numbers will leave any honest person with no other conclusion
When schools become too large, they can not operate as an effective community and pupils and teachers fall through cracks.
The more people the more rules and regulations and less spontaneous creativity.
“the real question here”
There are always several ‘real’ questions, and we need to be capable of asking them all simultaneously.
Well said AB.
Teachers
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-27S6xkGr7QY/WpM189J4CkI/AAAAAAAA46o/wKx5EgfecD8lOhZQE1aR4Rd59qY4SWV1ACLcBGAs/s640/Screenshot%2B2018-02-24%2Bat%2B5.03.48%2BPM.png
Yeah Sabine. So true.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lesson/
Roger McGough had a take on this issue.
“‘Now let that be a lesson’ he said”
Here we are nearly five months into a Labour led government and Brian Edwards appears unable to acknowledge such on his http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz blog site.
Wonder if it is that he, like Her Majestie’s Opposition, still hasn’t quite come to terms with the election result?
Brian Edwards has lived too long in Herne Bay
British Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn proposing that the UK do a Very Soft Braxit by retaining full customs union with the EU:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/26/jeremy-corbyn-to-confirm-labour-wants-a-customs-union-with-eu
Excellent wedge politics, designed to shear off some Conservative MPs in the voting.
Unusually for I/S, there’s no link to accompany this story:
Can’t find the announcement – anyone?
sigh…
Stuff is running the line that lower alcohol limits for driving has been associated with more drivers dying drunk.
Except the other factor could be the decrease in real police expenditure on road policing in a similar timeframe.
Hmmm – didn’t Crushless champion the focus away from road policing? One of our more lethal ministers in recent history…
I predicted this. I looked at stats from countries like France and NSW in Oz that proponents of lowering the limit quoted, and easily saw that it was not lowering the limit that was effective. It was the increased number of checkpoints that were introduced soon after.
So what does National Govt in NZ do? Go for the look-good, cheap option of lowering the limit by just the stroke of a pen, act all smarmy as if some real good were being done, but then cut Police (and heaps of other important social) funding so that unlike all other civilised countries, we end up with fewer checkpoints.
So we now have a whole lot of people fined $200 for being above an unnecessarily low alcohol level, and, more tragically, more deaths from more people driving well above the old level because they are far less afraid of being caught. I drive a lot and have not been checked for over a year now.
National got its fake budget surplus by cutting funding for important things like this. There should be prison sentences for those responsible.
(Sad to say, they are ultimately the stupid people who voted National into power.)
Personally I agree with the lower level, but safety rules are pointless if you don’t enforce them.
But yeah – it’s an act of hubris to assume that people who vote for your opponents are idiots… and then you look at nats getting reelected after shit like this…
The limit should become a minimum
A.
All I can see from that story is that lowering the blood-alcohol limit from “low” to “even lower” is irrelevant to the issue of drunk drivers killing themselves and others. I don’t see anything counter-intuitive in that – the people in question were over the old limit as well as the new limit, so you wouldn’t expect any effect.
Well, irrelevant is a big call. But definitely not as significant as something else that was happening at the time.
Maybe not help[ed by, Cops wasting their time on people who have had one or two drinks, when, as the statistics tell us, most drink driving accidents are caused by people well over the limit.
I Say THE NZ Breakers Basketball team new Owners whom are Sports Stars and Sports people will be a winning team Andrew Saville from TVNZ 1 NEWS Ka pai Ka kite ano
MSM should not side with the darkside how do u know they are telling the truth
Ana to kai
Know I will Watch Sky or Channel 4 and take the viewers there
Know I will Watch Sky or Channel 4 and take the viewers there Ana to kai
You people think it OK to breach mine and my Whano privacy rights you start the attack on my Mana so I use my Mana to defend myself someones rating starts dropping and you throw all your toys out of your cot. I warned people that I support to stay loyal to ECO MAORI.
What do you expect me to do carry on supporting people who are benefiting from my support. I know that you will toss me a side just like a used toy if I lose my Mana you chose to believe the lies when it suit you you know the source has not been proven in a court of law and you still spread it like it is the truth .
At least I can say that I am loyal humble honest and respectfull. I’m proud of My Maori culture I’m proud to be a Kiwi I’m not going to let anyone walk over my Mana or pass water on my Mana.
I have used my Mana to benefit the poor people I have used it to lift Tangata whenua and brown tangatas Mana. MSM think it OK to publish all these bad stories about brown people but when you get a little taste of your own medicine out comes the tissues GROW UP your articles damage real people lives to hope I didn’t break your glass bubbles.
You people know exactly how the system work. Ana to kai