What I thought capitalism was just fine Ad, us doomsayers who were saying structurally it was weak as piss were dismissed by you and yours.
It takes almost total collapse, pain and suffering for middle NZ – for any of you to take notice. Well take notice- this is what it like all the time for the weakest in this society.
Capitalism is a failed project. Time to grow up and change the economy.
I'm not aware of any country that has practised free market capitalism. I know plenty that have practised market economics, and as a result we have seen millions lifted out of poverty, and the standard if living for most westerners rise to well above anything ever experienced in history.
You said capitalism. That is in itself a straw man, because in it's pure form no country practices it, least of all NZ. So your comment " Time to grow up and change the economy" is meaningless.
Is it just me, or does Raveen Jaduram, the CEO of Watercare, come across as curiously detached about the current water problems in Auckland, and acting like he is simply observing an incomprehensible slow moving train wreck that is quite beyond his control? His public utterances thus far display no sense or urgency or agency on his part and a sort of fatalistic shoulder shrugging abdication of responsibility.
The guy should be jumping up and down, but instead he just seems to be meandering along as an useless CEO of a monopoly utility…
The architects of the Auckland region's local body restructuring made sure his particular empire was well-insulated, figuring it would be the first on the block. He has no connection with citizens, only with customers of a monopoly.
I think they devised a formula sometime ago for CEO and senior staff both in the private and public sectors. The higher the salary, the more insulated and out of touch and less accountable you are allowed to be.
The reality is droughts we are not adapting to the need to use less water.
Droughts are becoming more common yet everyone is looking to the govts to solve the problem.
Farmers have had to face this problem for nearly 30 years but are largely farming for what was happening 30 years ago.Some farmers have buried 3 to 4 yrs of silage to mitigate climate change,changing feed crops not over stocking.
City dwellers need to change habits as well cars can stay dirty.Houses don't need water blasting, gardens need to be drought resistant.Washing Machines water efficient ,Showers shorter and more efficient.
Blaming everything on watercare is not going to solve the longterm problem.
There does not need to be any long term problem about Auckland water. At present Auckland takes 1% of the Waikato flow. Even if that increased to 5% (which would be twice Auckland’s normal daily usage) it would be literally unnoticeable in terms of the river.
The current problem is entirely due to a lack of forward planning to take account of droughts. Water are has operated on the basis that the pipeline installed 20 years ago would be enough. In the meantime the population has virtually doubled.
So the current problem is due to lack of future proofing using a readily available water source at our back door.
At 150 million litres/day taken by Watercare, that's 1.7 cubic metres per second. Out of an annual mean flow of 330ish cubic metres/second at Tuakau. So about 0.5%.
Current Waikato river mean flows are way above historical averages since the 1980s when the headwaters of rivers that used to flow into the Rangitikei, Whanganui, Whangaehu etc got diverted into the Tongariro power scheme. That increased the mean annual flow of the Waikato by about 29 cubic metres/second.
He's clearly cognisant of the ubiquitous sense of entitlement that has long characterised Auckland citizenry. They've always felt entitled to use sprinklers regardless of droughts. First sign of getting real would be to eliminate car washes. Didn't happen last time the reservoirs were this low.
I recall when the headlines were blaring dire emergency, heading into Les Mills & seeing the showers running continuously even though nobody was using them. The dork was actually then current mayor of Ak, blathering on air about water conservation. Typical rightist Aucklander, I thought. Aucks never change.
You are missing the word "some" in several of your sentences. Including it appropriately would make your comment more accurate… but admittedly less dramatic.
Thank Jenny Shipley for corporatising essential council services.
Before a clerk of water services was paid a decent salary for doing the same job probably the equivalent of $150 ,000 to $200,000 in today's money perfectly adequate for a local govt job.
Corporatization was supposed to make these CCO's more efficient.
Reality is cost's have risen efficiency gains dubious and the service users left high and Dry.
The government needs to step in a fix Aucklands water woes . Sure it's a drought but its government policies that have flooded the city with migrants ,both kiwi and foreign!
Nah the absolute inaction over late summer when it was becoming apparent supplies were dropping fast.
Instead they put the house on a change of season bringing rain, realistically we should be looking to manage fresh water year round so drastic steps are less likely.
The reason for that seems obvious. There's the added expense of an interpreter on any overseas visit = probably more than one when visiting/grovelling the U.S
Looking on the bright side, we've dodged both those bullets. Simon wouldn't know what justice was if it came up & bit him on the arse, and he's never had a clue about foreign affairs either. Todd oughta give him race relations (to keep us entertained).
He did that in QT as well, and slowed down how he said a question (after repeating it), very "mansplain"-ish, he's gonna be fun to watch (in a cringe comedy kinda way).
Mr Todd will very soon receive his Muller knighthood. For he will have done what National and Hooton always does: namely
He will have offered the wealthy National Voters large reductions in tax payments.
Not even glancing over the thing we once called the Middle Class – but building the shameful poverty National has built up for decades, Courtesy of the savage NZ Landlords and the low wage Hounds.
Maybe Grant Robertson and Treasury will develop an equality in New Zealand's Fiscal arrangements.
After all is said and done – the duty of our Parliament is to build a Democracy. A thing Muller and his mates know nothing about. We are Not to build a bunch of weatlthy thieves such as present day Nationals.
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson told RNZ the new offering was a "very clear" admission that base benefit rates were not enough to live on.
…
The Greens had pushed for all benefits to be increased to the new Covid-19 level, she said, but had so far been unsuccessful in getting that over the line.
…
"Both New Zealand First and Labour need to come to the table on this."
In October 2017, the Green Party co-leader James Shaw signed an agreement with Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, agreeing to support the government on matters of confidence and supply.
In return, Labour made a number of commitments including one to "overhaul the welfare system".
Public grandstanding becomes inevitable when you are ineffective in intra-party negotiations, I suppose. You'd think that the co-leaders would be forthright and honest about that – but no. Typical politicians. Treat the public with contempt and they will do it right back to you. Inept.
Do tell us how the Greens could have been more effective in intra-party negotiations. I'd really like to know how you see that. Because I can't see how the Greens can negotiate better on welfare if Labour and NZF are against what they want. Please explain how they can.
Okay, let's assume Labour & NZF were indeed opposed to the Greens position: I would immediately flush out why. Not just have all the cards on the table, but for the voters to see them. I cannot accept that it is in our national interest to indulge the cover-up.
Then the onus would instantly be on Labour to justify their opposition. That has to be done in reference to the memo of understanding or whatever deal the Greens made after the 2017 election that got them into the troika situation.
We would then have a media frenzy examining the pros & cons of the Labour justification: it would hold up – or not. It could expose a cleavage within Labour, right? Neoliberals vs socialists. The latter supporting the Green position.
Using triangulation within the govt only gets the Greens so far. If they come out of a negotiation as losers they must use the public as third party in the triangle. Grandstanding doesn't achieve that – it merely comes across to the public as losers whimpering. Greens using the triangle as leverage to produce suitable outcomes is the missing bit. Jacinda will always compromise for the greater good. That's the desired outcome. They just need to engineer it!
The flaw in the above reasoning is whether the public mood will support the Greens. I have no rational basis for optimism on that point – just a hunch that the kiwi preference for a fair go for all will guide them to see that the Greens have got the issue right. I'm confident that suitable framing of the issue by the Greens will achieve that result. I suspect that whatever framing they used in the negotiation is root of the current problem…
I was sure I had explained that carefully! I see no evidence they have explained their negotiation failure. Nor that they are attempting to include the public in their process (participatory democracy). Just doing back-room deals (that fail) in non-smoke-filled rooms is merely traditional politics without the smoke. You can't cause a political paradigm shift by being so old-fashioned. Inclusion is the zeitgeist. That they don't get such a simple principle is depressing.
Add to that process failure the key principle; to win public support you must explain your political positioning on issues. What we got was her lobbying for beneficiaries plus her reminder of Labour's commitment. No explanation offered for the negotiation failure. Reluctance to inform the public of that sends the wrong signal. Not only would beneficiaries like to know who to blame, I bet media pros would too. She would rather National grabs the headlines? Any publicity is good became a political truism long ago. Did nobody tell her?
"to win public support you must explain your political positioning on issues."
MD just did that. She explained their political positioning on welfare, in response to Labour's.
If I have understood you correctly, your main point here is that the process of policy development isn't transparent? I would agree with that. I'm not sure to what extent the Greens can do something about that, although I agree that they should be saying something. There will be some expectation of confidentiality. Breaking that will harm relationships, so there is a balance between going against Labour and NZF and being able to work with them (eg in negotiations). I mean, what is she supposed to say? Hey NZ, Labour wouldn't have such a stupid policy if it weren't for NZF, who actively blocked our suggestions on how to so this payment in a way that was better for all NZers.
One thing that is clear is that lots of people, including those that comment on politics publicly, don't understand how parliament works. Or government. Or the Greens. I wonder if it would help if the Greens just started pointing this stuff out more generally.
People slam the Greens for not using leverage, but the Green kaupapa is relationship based, they don't do macho politics. I like the idea of bringing the public into the process, just not sure how that would work. I would probably agree with your strategy more if I was more confident in how NZers would respond. I'm not, and the evidence for that is the people voting Labour instead of Green who used to vote Green. They stopped voting Green after Turei's speech and with the rise of Ardern. They haven't gone back. Maybe they just don't care that much about welfare, or maybe they think that Labour is getting the settings right, despite three years of it being explained how they're not.
If I have understood you correctly, your main point here is that the process of policy development isn't transparent?
No. Internal party policy process isn't the problem. Political positioning is something that caucus decides, to maximise impact on voters. I was explaining why they got it wrong on this particular occasion.
The vital thing is not to appear in public as impotent losers. Nothing is more guaranteed to make voters lose confidence in the Greens than that. The only possible way to prevent the contagion effect of that perception snowballing in the public mind is via suitable framing – that's the x factor missing.
The best frame would be via explanation of the outcome: NZF wouldn't agree, Labour wouldn't agree, both wouldn't agree. They not only failed to specify which reason produced the outcome, they seem not to have grasped the necessity of communicating an explanation to voters. Once again, clueless public relations. Do they not even use all those donations to hire somebody to explain this stuff – or did they hire someone useless??
Imagine you were hired to 'explain this stuff'. Could you provide an example of the way you would 'communicate an explanation to voters' without the 'missing x-factor'?
As quoted here, Marama apparently did communicate an explanation to voters without that essential framing. So the best answer to your query is to read hers. Keeping in mind the technical possibility that she did explain which of those three viable explanations caused the impasse, and that bit didn't get included in the quote.
I did read it and came to a different conclusion to you.
So, seeing as you have diagnosed the issue and determined their PR people are 'useless', I was asking you, in your wisdom, to furnish us with what you think the 'essential framing' should have been.
I wasn't talking about internal policy development, I was talking about the government's policy development, which is influenced by the in-closet negotiations that happen between Lab/NZF and Lab/Greens (don't know if there is a G/NZF thing or a L/NZF/G). It's clear from the rest of my explanation that I was referring back to what we were discussing.
Now you've brought in something new, that the Greens' PR is an issue, because if they oppose Labour on a policy that they didn't get wins on they appear to be losers and people won't like them. Which takes us back to the framing. You seem to be saying that the Greens should take confidential information from negotiation processes and make it public as a way of blaming Labour and NZF for the GP not getting gains. Have I got that right?
Even if this were a wise strategy (I've already pointed out the problem of breaking trust like that), the GP aren't in Cabinet and don't have access to what L/NZF discuss.
I do see value in someone explaining to the public how government works, and how this one in particular works.
As an aside, your argument would be much easier to follow if you could resist sticking the boot into the Greens each time. I can't be bothered trying to parse past that much more. Hmm, maybe there's a communication fail there on your part.
Okay, sorry, I didn't get that. You're right that govt policy formulation is the underlying process in the situation, of course. If confidentiality prevents them explaining that to the public, I would view it as a design flaw – I haven't seen any such clause and am curious if it derives from MMP constitutionally or is something invented by Labour. Do you know?
If Labour really are trying to prevent transparent governance happen, they ought to be held accountable. As regards pointing to mistakes by the Greens, my expectation is that consciousness will be raised about how politics is best done. Learning comes from experience, and when ingrained beliefs prevent that others must catalyse the elucidation necessary. So it's a helping motivation…
There was a report on TV3 news just now – Metiria has come out on the issue, I saw a tweet shown with a naughty word blanked out.
I did check online to see what the text of the Labour/Greens agreement says re confidentiality, and it became clear that they are unable to explain such negotiation failures to the public – so my criticism lacked a realistic basis, really. It is a substantial flaw in our democratic system to use a confidentiality agreement to prevent the public learning which party is discriminating against a significant minority group in the electorate!
A tweet from Turei? Not seeing anything from her two twitter accounts.
Yes, this is what I have been saying. The process is locked up, and the public are excluded, and this isn't the fault of the Greens. I doubt it is on Labour, more convention that has developed during MMP. The coalition partners (L/NZF) are bound by Cabinet rules. I couldn't remember what was in the agreements but the Greens would also be respectful of confidentiality because the relationships still need to be functional.
I would guess that NZF are a big factor, given they campaign in a way that is blind to the electorate.
This is why I'm saying that talking about the set up is important. We really have a poor form of democracy.
I thought that's what I saw but if you want to investigate it was from their political reporter (Jenna Lynch, if I remember that right) and they will probably have it on the Newshub site in print form some time this evening. Seemed contraversial, so I'd be surprised if it never shows…
Yeah, if you do write something, would be good to include the limitation imposed on the free speech of parliamentarians by the system. People do expect politicians to explain conflict between parties to both media and public (not just me being idiosyncratic). Using the agreement clause like a gag order isn't merely just a bad look. It blocks transparency, therefore is unprincipled. That said, they signed it, so must act in accord with it.
The Greens did have 'welfare overhaul' written into its confidence and supply agreement with Labour but other than a couple of minor tweaks not much progress has been made.
They need to do a lot more to convince voters that having the Green Party in Government is actually effecting change.
The writers also conclude it is the Greens fault apparently.
To blame the Greens in this situation is simply trolling-it is all about coalition government under MMP. The Greens would be more effective in these matters if they got 10% in September and NZF 4.9%
You might wise up a little if you read what Pete George cited below, huh? I'm not blaming the Greens, I'm pointing to the lack of leadership exemplified by the mishandling of the negotiation.
Now if it turns out that either Labour or NZF are refusing to honour that agreement, I will happily blame them. But the current info on the situation suggests the Greens have decided not to inform the media & public about that. Presuming you have heard of the principle of transparent governance, do you approve their apparent decision to act in contradiction??
I still think you are both (Weka and Dennis) missing the point that it doesn't matter how well the Greens negotiate, if NZF don't like it then its gets voted down and so doesn't happen.
So all the Greens are doing is getting the best outcome they can get within this straightjacket, and then spinning it as a good outcome because some Green elements have squeezed through. That is politics. It increases their profile and the public's perception of the party as achievers.
To attack them for "public grandstanding" and being "ineffective" is completely unfair, without basis and purposefully inflammatory i.e trolling. They are perfectly entitled to scream to the high heavens how they would really have liked the negotiations to have turned out.
To then point me to Pete George (of all people) to prove your case is simply rubbing salt in the wound, and says it all. (He ignores the reality described above in his post below.)
I say yet again in TS; the only way we will have a government that is in any way genuinely left of centre/progressive is to Party Vote Green. If the Greens don't get 5% we will probably have PM Muller.
All you are really achieving here is exhibiting failure to comprehend the relevance of the clauses Pete George quoted – even though Marama's reference to them was flagged by quote at the top of the thread!
Do you not understand that the agreement between Labour & the Greens operates just like a contract?? And that Marama is endeavouring to alert kiwis to Labour's failure to honour that contract?
That's the guts of the situation. It's how MMP operates!! All them red herrings of yours aren't going to change that fact.
no, I largely agree with you and disagree with Dennis. I just thought the point about the invisibility of how government policy is developed was worth looking at. It's daft to blame the Greens for that.
And yes, the only way we get a left wing govt is to vote Green. My personal view is that slagging off the Greens all the time just makes a L/NZF govt more likely.
Otoh, I'm trying really hard today to not write a post called Fuck You Labour, so I can understand the sentiment of feeling deeply disappointed in a political party.
I vote Green but I have plenty of sympathy for Labour and I organised a public meeting for David Parker in Wanaka for the 2017 election. I wouldn't do this again in September because of the fast track RMA reform he is supporting. The public scrutiny afforded by the RMA is an important check and balance.
I'm also highly dubious about the two-tier unemployment payment policy just announced. This should be extended to all unemployed over the same 12 weeks-this would give a cash boost to the economy and would be fair. I thought Jacinda was into fairness.
10. Overhaul the welfare system, ensure access to entitlements, remove excessive sanctions and review Working For Families so that everyone has a standard of living and income that enables them to live in dignity and participate in their communities, and lifts children and their families out of poverty
And maybe here:
Relationship to other agreements
Both parties to this agreement recognise that Labour will be working with other parties both in terms of coalitions and confidence and supply arrangements. Labour agrees that it will not enter into any other relationship agreement which is inconsistent with this agreement and the Green Party and Labour agree that they will each act in good faith to allow all such agreements to be complied with.
But since then Greens have not got close to negotiating what they wanted despite this formal agreement.
It's too late to complain now, except for campaign purposes.
"Overhaul the welfare system" Putting Wellbeing at the heart of things matters. It drives all future actions, even in a 1 in 100 situation.
Perhaps the budget was going to do that, we will never know. I hear lots of fear and anger coupled with hope for change.
Many of us feel more secure with this Government, and trust their direction more than any we have experienced for a while.
They too are people who will not always "get it right"., But they have shown a capacity to accept and correct errors.
I think it is wrong to label them as part of regimens that have gone before, as they have tried to keep their promises, though often blocked by friends.
Jacinda Ardern is a rare being, and is recognised world wide for her advocacy and communication. We are fortunate to have someone of her calibre. She has kept her Ministers on track with few exceptions, and promoted high standards.
Decisions to be made in the near term will not be easy, but she will show kindness tenacity and skill.
Many aspects of our lives have been improved, and she has shown us the way. Help each other, support those in need, share more and base our lives around keeping our part of the world functioning.
Some will say that is simplistic, but in lock down we discovered we need essential services (and they should be paid for). We need food producers. We need shelter. We need education and good health, but most of all we need each other with all our faults a foibles.
We relearned what wants were, and looked askance at our collected debri. We learned most people want their friends and relatives to be well, and strangers are just folk we have not met yet, so we smile and wave when we see them, put teddies in windows for the children.
We learned that for some this will be more frightening than for others given their health or starting point in life.
The most important thing we learned was we can help others and ourselves. We can innovate create and share ideas thanks to technology. We need to believe we can make a difference, and then we will. IMO
It's absolutely pointless overhauling the welfare system/increasing benefits unless there is a corresponding overhaul of housing and rents. Much more urgent impetus on state housing – driven by the state, not property developers, is needed. This government also wimped out on CGT, so residential property speculation remains as an attractive "investment" option. Much of the benefit increases will just go into landlords' pockets. All the talk about poverty and wellbeing is just that – talk. A rent freeze for a couple of years would be a good place to start in the mean time.
I thought Winston made it fairly plain he blocked that. A coalition has to compromise even when it is painful. They have increased the house building and continue to do so, and have begun training apprentices again. It is not much over 2 and a half years!!. They may get a bigger mandate this time.
The vote buying welfare industry is changing quickly, the new two tier system proves all animals are equal but some are more equal than others, comrade.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Muller’s suggestion of a non-combative election where he talked about ‘’what was right for families, not what was wrong about the Government," is a very different kind of brand to the National Party of old.
All the while his colleagues repeated the word nice over and over again.
…
It's clear the battle for power has had a makeover, if politicians are now competing for who can be the nicest and kindest.
They are two quite simple words, but both will be used heavily to describe Ardern and Muller's brands as they face off in the election in September.
Problem there is that National have two "nice" senior MPs in Kaye and Adams who are both more experienced than Muller, had bigger roles in the previous government, have some crossover appeal to voters and are much better performers in the media.
So, er, why did they pick Muller? Presumably to look like the CEO with balls (sic) who "gets things done".If they really wanted "nice" they had better options.
Kaye and Adams standing dutifully either side of him while he outlined the shuffle yesterday just seemed to highlight the way National Party was overlooking their senior women MPs.
You've got it! It's the kiwi bloke strategy. It's the front row of a rugby scrum look. Muller is the hooker. He's out trying to hook votes. The other two are mere props.
As a hooker would he sell his soul for a vote? Too damned right.
I assume Adams definitely didn't, don't know if there was any discussion about the positions of Muller/Kaye ticket.
But we can be sure Collins and Kaye have future leadership ambitions after they lose (Adams might quit). They want to be leaders in government. Not opposition.
So it really just emphasises that National don't expect to win. Muller takes one for the team, then the real contenders will target 2023.
I suppose it depends on whether they wanted to be leader AND warranted it over Muller.
Just because Ardern is very good as a politician and rightly deserves top spot in Labour, this does not mean every other women MP currently in parliament should automatically deserve to be a leader of a party.
It is like the line of Goff, Shearer, Cunliffe and Little are wiped from peoples memories, just because Ardern is a very good leader now.
I'm just suggesting that on the (limited) evidence so far Muller doesn't come across as the best candidate for the job. If after Bill quit they'd picked Amy Adams (on merit) instead of Bridges they might not have been in this mess.
Maybe it was a too obvious a direct match try to Ardern though.
No idea.
TBF to Bridges, he did keep them in the running through a lot of crap, even if he did have the communication skills of the Swedish Chef in the muppets.
those photos of adams and kaye, standing and looking upwards in awe at their leader, remind me of many of trumps photo ops. what a man! we are in his aura!
Mr Muller has launched a petition aimed at pressuring the Government to overturn an Environment Court decision ordering the Bay of Plenty Regional Council to establish marine reserves on reefs around Motiti Island about 10 km off Tauranga Harbour.
Motiti Rohe Moana Trust advisor Te Atarangi Sayers says hapū have pushed for more than half a century to protect their fisheries.
The court’s decision was a major win for the hapū, and they don’t want to see their efforts to bring life back to the moana stymied by political posturing.
Its looking pretty clear where Todd Muller stands on Maori issues and for that matter the environment. They're at the bottom of his list of priorities – if they’re on the list at all. Plays well to the demographic he's looking to gather into the fold though.
So much for the "nice" Mr Muller who is honest and straightforward and is not interested in attacking opponents.
Yes. Basically, they could no longer avoid not signing up to something and Muller managed to water down James Shaw's bill to such a degree it ended up a very weak imitation of its former self. Muller then agreed to sign it.
That nice Mr Muller last night on Q&A did not come across as nice or competent. An awful interview with nil substance. The panel was more interesting. Lila Harre was very clear whereas the usual confidence of Thomas was subdued.
I was interested to note that the Nats have (had) a number of "Todds" in the line-up, so I wondered if it was short for some other name, but no it's not.
It is its own name, and it has its own meaning.
In English Baby Names the meaning of the name Todd is: Fox. Tod is a Scottish nickname meaning a clever or wily person.
If Mula (or should I say Maga?) tries to play the "kind" and "nice" game against Jacinda he will be playing on a steeply sloping pitch into a gale-force wind.
Will Faafoi grow a pair and do something about the landscape in RNZ now.
Hooton's played the system to line his pockets in a partisan way along with others for years. That’s without looking at his highly questionable personal morality.
Just get national MP’s on and be done with it, cheaper also.
Granny does as she always has but it's not taxpayer funded till COVID came along.
Taxpayers funded soapboxes for the shills needs to stop if RNZ is to be of service to the people of NZ….all people not just the acolytes of the neolib construct.
Agreed Tricle….Hooton is capable of sounding quite rational for 70% of the time but then he goes completely off the rails for the next 30%….definitely not who you would want as chief of staff.
I listened last night to muller on the Kathryn Ryan show from earlier that day.
i did comment on this website that his first speech was good. The interview with Kathryn not so much. She was tripping him up left right and centre. The main thrust of his position was we are better than them. 17 empty chairs at the cabinet table, their plan is not coherent. And he would really understand small business. He is endanger of sounding like a white male whose knows it all (but hasn’t done it yet) saying” move aside little lady. Three is an edge of arrogance here that I think Kiwis will switch off from. An actually he was boring. Apparently he was a bit of a train wreck on q and a last night, answering many questions by dropping in Amy Adams name. Oh and Simons not going anywhere
forgive me for quoting mike Hoskins but “happy days”
I agree JanM. I could hardly bear to watch Muller's interview on Q & A – I even felt a tiny bit of pity for him. The Breakfast show usually follows up on Q & A – I was waiting for some commentary this morning – but nothing…
"……. it was downright embarrassing" I agree, but then I have to check myself.
Do you really think Todd Muller ( or half his tribe for that matter ) give a shit what you 'feel'.
Same shit but a substantially different stink for the Bridges tribe. I imagine that little tribe is now considered very,, very inferior – so let's throw them a bone and a promise or there could conceivably an uprising in the future (going forward, in this space)
If 10 households default on their mortgages it is those households problem….if 10,000 default it is the banks problem….and consequently everyones problem.
Just thinking about how people cite experience in big business, such as fonterra in Miller’s case, as being a great asset to running a country. But business is run with the key focus of making a profit. This driver is not a key focus of running a country. Sure finance ministers endeavour to balance the books, but that is a means to an ends.
re miller’s embarrasing a and a interview, it occurs to me he has had very little experience of being interviewed. This could be a real disaster for the Nats. Meanwhile Amy who interviews we’ll surely must be wondering why she didn’t get the job in the first place. Meanwhile in the botany electorate Luxton is wanting Todd to fail. And do we really expect Simon not to sabotage when he’s back. Someone should make a soap out of this
" it occurs to me he has had very little experience of being interviewed."
That's why the superficial comparison with Ardern 2017 is false. Another late change, and it worked, so National could do it too – that's the line.
But Ardern must have given 100s of live interviews by then. Starting with TV's "Young Guns" in 2008, she was increasingly prominent in the media. It's a skill set that can only be learned through experience, and is unrelated to business meetings or whatever Muller brings to the job.
He was undone by something as simple as the time delay. It made him look hesitant and evasive. That might seem trivial but it is something you have to get used to and allow for. He needs to learn fast.
Agree re him not managing the time delay very well but I also think there was some evident frustration showing on his part that Tame wouldn’t just accept everything he said and move on to another subject. He looked a man more used to holding court rather than someone relishing the to-and-fro of debate. Doesn’t bode well for the campaign.
Also did he seem, how shall I say it, a little sweaty?
Unless he's proposing new policies, his job is simply to know his party's policies and promote them. Falling back on empty buzz words is feeble.
I honestly don't know which of the Bridges/Goldsmith economic policies are still in place, and which ones aren't. And I've heard him interviewed half a dozen times.
Business meetings too easily suffer from deference to authority, group-think, ideological controls that render some things 'unsayable', and participants afraid of losing their positions of prominence. Corporations are "private tyrranies" (Chomsky) and bringing the habits developed there into the public domain is not often a good idea.
There are sooooo many reasons why the todd change is no switch to Ardern.
Ardern was deputy leader. Muller was who-ller.
Ardern was visibly different to Little – not so much gender: energy, pace of delivery, enthusiasm. Muller doesn't seem to be particularly different to Bridges.
Ardern changed the game against the nats – "let's do this" literally within a few days. Muller… ?
The leadership change for Labour was amicable. This one – not so much.
Labour knew that leadership was a poisoned chalice – Ardern took one for the team. I doubt anyone else wanted it. National has multiple pretenders sharpening their blades.Some of them might even think they can turn things around in seven weeks, so Muller needs to watch his back until August at least.
"Just thinking about how people cite experience in big business, such as Fonterra in Miller’s case, as being a great asset to running a country."
Does working inside say Fonterra count as business experience? I would have thought that the hairdresser or mechanic running his own business or engineer running his workshop with 20 workers are businesses people with genuine experience with trial/error determination coping with losses etc etc. Lets not rate Fonterra/Zespry as qualifying MPs.
FPP: a recipe for gerrymandering, perverse undemocratic outcomes, and a two party system of rotating dictatorship. Kiwis chucked it because they were sick of getting Rogered and Ruthanasia'd by radicals
Looks to me like more than 400k voters have switched allegiance from National to Labour since February … a profound realignment … possibly (entering the realm of speculation here) predicated first & foremost upon the gratitude of older voters.
Don't rule out National crashing like 2002.
In some senses, a different context … but also some striking similarities:
Up against an unusually popular First Term Govt & PM, National's Oligarchs facilitated Bill English's toppling of Jenny Shipley in October 2001, 10 Months out from the 2002 Election.
The leadership spill had zero effect at first – no post-leadership bounce, with the Nats & broader Opposition forces flatlining over the next few months. Over the New Year, however, a clear Leftward swing of around 4 points from National to Labour emerged as softly-aligned Nats began to bail, followed by another 2 months of relative stability, then another small swing from Nat-to-Lab.
But most significantly from our 2020 point of view, Nat support very suddenly & very shockingly went into freefall over the final 3 weeks of the campaign … with almost all of this very late swing heading to conservative, centrist & Right parties … ACT surging, NZF & UF more than tripling their support (albeit with the help of the somewhat notorious 'Worm-Debate'). Nats plunged from 30% down to 21% over a remarkably short period of time, with ACT almost doubling from 4 to 7%, NZF from 3 to 10% & UF exploding from zilch to 7 in the blink of an eye.
With the re-election of the Clark Labour Govt seemingly inevitable, more astute (or, at least, pragmatic) National voters saw the writing on the wall … hence the Right vote significantly fragments as large numbers of 1999 Nats seek to provide a counterweight to any leftward thrust of the incoming Govt, in the process, if possible, keeping the Greens away from power. Meanwhile, true-believers on the Right follow their hearts & desert to ACT.
As a consequence, less than half of 1999 National supporters remain loyal, as the Party plunges to a historic low. Amongst a whole host of surprises, Labour wins the Party-Vote in all but 3 of National's Rural Heartland seats.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Muller's toppling of Bridges & the release of the latest Colmar Brunton have occurred 4 Months out from the Election. Here's a comparison with the same point in 2002:
Well-reasoned, plausible. If Muller isn't adept at fronting media situations, it becomes likely. I stopped watching Q+A when it got too boring, but if he was as inadequate as commentators here suggest, that could become the determining trend.
I reckon the election will hinge as much on competing recovery plans as on leadership charisma. If the Nats get theirs out in front of voters before the coalition govt gets theirs out, perception that they are sufficiently on the ball to govern will form. If the govt gets theirs out first, they'll win as long as serious flaws don't emerge…
I wonder which of 2002 or 2011 is the better comparison. Labour didn't roll Goff, but a first term government with a popular, bullet-proof PM in the backdrop of a natural disaster has some similarities.
More mistakes from TM…..it seems he may be a front only for the Nats…a new face that is somehow, they hope, more acceptable to the electorate. Good times.
Todd Conehead’s gem was sticking with Nat super at 67 policy. Sure some time out from implementation, but people close to 65 will still likely not be impressed. Cost Labour votes previously.
So National are saying the younger retirees are going to pay double with less job security.
Paying the debt down and no early retirement robots taking more jobs.
Universal super should become UBI funded by a much bigger Cullen Fund + compulsory Kiwisaver.Then people can choose when to retire ie a builder could retire at 60 less physically demanding jobs can retire later.The builder may want to become a trainer or work in a bunnings store part time..
The 4 day week needs to be seriously considered the 40 hr week is old hat.
Time to be more adaptable,like farmers could have a 3 1/2 day week doing 35 hrs in 3 and a half days which would make easy shift changes.
Chris T it's not Noah's Ark. A woman has the top job in Labour. It is generally agreed in Labour they need more women on the front bench. They have gender equality policies to promote this. They haven't got there yet, but they are working on it.
Goldsmith: "My great-great grandfather had European wives and Māori wives, and so I've got lots of relatives across Ngāti Porou – I don't claim to be Māori myself.''
He could've added: "I'm proud to be descendant of a bi-racial polygamist." Some of these people haven't got a clue how to grab a headline…
At a time when a lot of older people who got to quite like the lockdown for the slower pace and are saying they could go a shorter week, Todd Boofhead says National will raise the retirement age.
Fuck me, the man can not read a room let alone the country. Nats to try for 25%. Go Team.
Chris T…re labour’s lack of women in the cabinet front row. They acknowledge that and have policies in place to develop gender equality in labour. Even so the front bench aren’t devoid of women, one has the top job.
i look forward to the problems Toddy is going to have when his promoted his team as the more competent and he just dumped two Maoris and two out of the three labour ministers he’s said are non performers are Maori. Oh and did we mention the MAGA hat.
it is not a good look when you promote your team as more competent and then one of them makes the unbelievable mistake of stating one her colleagues is Maori when he isn’t. Of course the other interesting thing is goldsmith refuted this immediately. So much support in this caucus, although really it was the only thing he could do
The interesting thing though is how badly they fluffed the response and how little support they got to smooth the blunder over from the rest rest of the caucus.
I only just realised the thing that really pisses me off about "plan b" Thornley. Read somewhere that the dude specialises in economic impacts of health interventions, yet he provided zero – ZERO! – information. Just repeated basically that "cure might be worse than the disease" wank. Where was his data? If he studies this shit, where's his prediction of how many people would be killed by the economic flow-on of L4? QALYs? Estimated mortality?
I bet that if he even did it, it's locked in a draw because it didn't suit his bullshit.
Tova O'Brien, I've not liked her style but I just saw she antagonises the Nat supporters too, so I tip my (non MAGA) hat to Ms O'Brien, she must be doing something right (she's getting accused on the Twitter for making up the Goldsmith Māori gaff, like she said, "you can't make this shit up!").
The most exciting takeaway from the National Party in Parliament today was that Chris Bishop has cut off his mullet and that Paul Goldsmith is from Ngati Epsom.
6 new cases in Western Australia today, all from a Kuwaiti live sheep export ship that was cleared to berth by Federal Border Force agents in spite of them being advised that at least 3 crew had ‘elevated temperatures’.
"Speaking to Stuff, Wade-Brown said she was running to maximise the party vote." "Issues of equality, climate change, and rivers matter to people. We've got an opportunity to do a green reset to Covid-19," she said. Wade-Brown is not among the 24 candidates on the Green Party list, and is not expected to make a serious play to win the seat."
"She had been a supporter of John Hart, who ran for the Green Party in the last two elections and only offered to stand when she learnt he was not planning to run again." National haven't selected their candidate yet, and Ron Mark "pulled 19 per cent of the electorate vote in 2017, with more coming from National party voters than Labour voters."
"Wairarapa-based List MP Kieran McAnulty will be running for Labour for a third straight election." Third time lucky, I reckon! "Wade-Brown said she would consider formally endorsing McAnulty for the electorate vote. "We're going to have those conversations over the next couple of weeks. I think he's very widely respected within the local community," she said."
He picked out the best of what people had been through in their lockdown experience and he made it last.
He put a carbon tax on emissions to pay for a Universal Basic Income (UBI). He electrified trains, buses, anything that would take a current. He put Manapouri hydropower into the grid for free energy. He broke the cycle of people trying to get rich out of houses and making them ever more unaffordable. To achieve the unachievable he simply flooded the market with affordable houses and apartments built by a 21st century Ministry of Works.
…
By the end of his four-decade run, the nation could not believe its good fortune, even in a time of plague.
I see the labour party is paying the recent unemployed twice what the already unemployed are getting.Reminds me of the last labour government who didn't pay working for families to beneficiaries.Elected by the poor govern for the rich
It appears that those nations with governed states and provinces have struggled a bit more with this pandemic.
Squabble with our brother while Grandma dies.
I'm a Cuomo fan, I like anyone that sounds like Tony Soprano and isn't indicted. I love it when they call a bird a boid. In spite of his declaration to keep politics out of it Andrew couldn't resist a stab at Kentucky Governor Mitch McConnell. Mitch had suggested that New York declare bankruptcy. Andrew offered a contrary view, this guy picked up the ball and ran with Andy's view…
A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 15, 2024 thru Sat, December 21, 2024. Based on feedback we received, this week's roundup is the first one published soleley by category. We are still interested in ...
Well, I've been there, sitting in that same chairWhispering that same prayer half a million timesIt's a lie, though buried in disciplesOne page of the Bible isn't worth a lifeThere's nothing wrong with youIt's true, it's trueThere's something wrong with the villageWith the villageSomething wrong with the villageSongwriters: Andrew Jackson ...
ACT would like to dictate what universities can and can’t say. We knew it was coming. It was outlined in the coalition agreement and has become part of Seymour’s strategy of “emphasising public funding” to prevent people from opposing him and his views—something he also uses to try and de-platform ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Are we heading ...
So the Solstice has arrived – Summer in this part of the world, Winter for the Northern Hemisphere. And with it, the publication my new Norse dark-fantasy piece, As Our Power Lessens at Eternal Haunted Summer: https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/issues/winter-solstice-2024/as-our-power-lessens/ As previously noted, this one is very ‘wyrd’, and Northern Theory of Courage. ...
The Natural Choice: As a starter for ten percent of the Party Vote, “saving the planet” is a very respectable objective. Young voters, in particular, raised on the dire (if unheeded) warnings of climate scientists, and the irrefutable evidence of devastating weather events linked to global warming, vote Green. After ...
The Government cancelled 60% of Kāinga Ora’s new builds next year, even though the land for them was already bought, the consents were consented and there are builders unemployed all over the place. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political ...
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on UnsplashEvery morning I get up at 3am to go around the traps of news sites in Aotearoa and globally. I pick out the top ones from my point of view and have been putting them into my Dawn Chorus email, which goes out with a podcast. ...
Over on Kikorangi Newsroom's Marc Daalder has published his annual OIA stats. So I thought I'd do mine: 82 OIA requests sent in 2024 7 posts based on those requests 20 average working days to receive a response Ministry of Justice was my most-requested entity, ...
Welcome to the December 2024 Economic Bulletin. We have two monthly features in this edition. In the first, we discuss what the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update from Treasury and the Budget Policy Statement from the Minister of Finance tell us about the fiscal position and what to ...
The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi have submitted against the controversial Treaty Principles Bill, slamming the Bill as a breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and an attack on tino rangatiratanga and the collective rights of Tangata Whenua. “This Bill seeks to legislate for Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles that are ...
I don't knowHow to say what's got to be saidI don't know if it's black or whiteThere's others see it redI don't get the answers rightI'll leave that to youIs this love out of fashionOr is it the time of yearAre these words distraction?To the words you want to hearSongwriters: ...
Our economy has experienced its worst recession since 1991. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, December 20 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast above and the daily Pick ‘n’ Mix below ...
Twas the Friday before Christmas and all through the week we’ve been collecting stories for our final roundup of the year. As we start to wind down for the year we hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas and new year. If you’re travelling please be safe on ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the year’s news with: on climate. Her book of the year was Tim Winton’s cli-fi novel Juice and she also mentioned Mike Joy’s memoir The Fight for Fresh Water. ...
The Government can head off to the holidays, entitled to assure itself that it has done more or less what it said it would do. The campaign last year promised to “get New Zealand back on track.” When you look at the basic promises—to trim back Government expenditure, toughen up ...
Open access notables An intensification of surface Earth’s energy imbalance since the late 20th century, Li et al., Communications Earth & Environment:Tracking the energy balance of the Earth system is a key method for studying the contribution of human activities to climate change. However, accurately estimating the surface energy balance ...
Photo by Mauricio Fanfa on UnsplashKia oraCome and join us for our weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news with myself , plus regular guests and , ...
“Like you said, I’m an unreconstructed socialist. Everybody deserves to get something for Christmas.”“ONE OF THOSE had better be for me!” Hannah grinned, fascinated, as Laurie made his way, gingerly, to the bar, his arms full of gift-wrapped packages.“Of course!”, beamed Laurie. Depositing his armful on the bar-top and selecting ...
Data released by Statistics New Zealand today showed a significant slowdown in the economy over the past six months, with GDP falling by 1% in September, and 1.1% in June said CTU Economist Craig Renney. “The data shows that the size of the economy in GDP terms is now smaller ...
One last thing before I quitI never wanted any moreThan I could fit into my headI still remember every single word you saidAnd all the shit that somehow came along with itStill, there's one thing that comforts meSince I was always caged and now I'm freeSongwriters: David Grohl / Georg ...
Sparse offerings outside a Te Kauwhata church. Meanwhile, the Government is cutting spending in ways that make thousands of hungry children even hungrier, while also cutting funding for the charities that help them. It’s also doing that while winding back new building of affordable housing that would allow parents to ...
It is difficult to make sense of the Luxon Coalition Government’s economic management.This end-of-year review about the state of economic management – the state of the economy was last week – is not going to cover the National Party contribution. Frankly, like every other careful observer, I cannot make up ...
This morning I awoke to the lovely news that we are firmly back on track, that is if the scale was reversed.NZ ranks low in global economic comparisonsNew Zealand's economy has been ranked 33rd out of 37 in an international comparison of which have done best in 2024.Economies were ranked ...
Remember those silent movies where the heroine is tied to the railway tracks or going over the waterfall in a barrel? Finance Minister Nicola Willis seems intent on portraying herself as that damsel in distress. According to Willis, this country’s current economic problems have all been caused by the spending ...
Similar to the cuts and the austerity drive imposed by Ruth Richardson in the 1990’s, an era which to all intents and purposes we’ve largely fiddled around the edges with fixing in the time since – over, to be fair, several administrations – whilst trying our best it seems to ...
String-Pulling in the Dark: For the democratic process to be meaningful it must also be public. WITH TRUST AND CONFIDENCE in New Zealand’s politicians and journalists steadily declining, restoring those virtues poses a daunting challenge. Just how daunting is made clear by comparing the way politicians and journalists treated New Zealanders ...
Dear Nicola Willis, thank you for letting us know in so many words that the swingeing austerity hasn't worked.By in so many words I mean the bit where you said, Here is a sea of red ink in which we are drowning after twelve months of savage cost cutting and ...
The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral organisation committed to advancing open government. Countries which join are supposed to co-create regular action plans with civil society, committing to making verifiable improvements in transparency, accountability, participation, or technology and innovation for the above. And they're held to account through an Independent ...
Today I tuned into something strange: a press conference that didn’t make my stomach churn or the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Which was strange, because it was about the torture of children. It was the announcement by Erica Stanford — on her own, unusually ...
This is a must watch, and puts on brilliant and practical display the implications and mechanics of fast-track law corruption and weakness.CLICK HERE: LINK TO WATCH VIDEOOur news media as it is set up is simply not equipped to deal with the brazen disinformation and corruption under this right wing ...
NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi Acting Secretary Erin Polaczuk is welcoming the announcement from Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden that she is opening consultation on engineered stone and is calling on her to listen to the evidence and implement a total ban of the product. “We need ...
The Government has announced a 1.5% increase in the minimum wage from 1 April 2025, well below forecast inflation of 2.5%. Unions have reacted strongly and denounced it as a real terms cut. PSA and the CTU are opposing a new round of staff cuts at WorkSafe, which they say ...
The decision to unilaterally repudiate the contract for new Cook Strait ferries is beginning to look like one of the stupidest decisions a New Zealand government ever made. While cancelling the ferries and their associated port infrastructure may have made this year's books look good, it means higher costs later, ...
Hi there! I’ve been overseas recently, looking after a situation with a family member. So apologies if there any less than focused posts! Vanuatu has just had a significant 7.3 earthquake. Two MFAT staff are unaccounted for with local fatalities.It’s always sad to hear of such things happening.I think of ...
Today is a special member's morning, scheduled to make up for the government's theft of member's days throughout the year. First up was the first reading of Greg Fleming's Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill, which was passed unanimously. Currently the House is debating the third reading of ...
We're going backwardsIgnoring the realitiesGoing backwardsAre you counting all the casualties?We are not there yetWhere we need to beWe are still in debtTo our insanitiesSongwriter: Martin Gore Read more ...
Willis blamed Treasury for changing its productivity assumptions and Labour’s spending increases since Covid for the worsening Budget outlook. Photo: Getty ImagesMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, December 18 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast above ...
Today the Auckland Transport board meet for the last time this year. For those interested (and with time to spare), you can follow along via this MS Teams link from 10am. I’ve taken a quick look through the agenda items to see what I think the most interesting aspects are. ...
Hi,If you’re a New Zealander — you know who Mike King is. He is the face of New Zealand’s battle against mental health problems. He can be loud and brash. He raises, and is entrusted with, a lot of cash. Last year his “I Am Hope” charity reported a revenue ...
Probably about the only consolation available from yesterday’s unveiling of the Half-Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) is that it could have been worse. Though Finance Minister Nicola Willis has tightened the screws on future government spending, she has resisted the calls from hard-line academics, fiscal purists and fiscal hawks ...
The right have a stupid saying that is only occasionally true:When is democracy not democracy? When it hasn’t been voted on.While not true in regards to branches of government such as the judiciary, it’s a philosophy that probably should apply to recently-elected local government councillors. Nevertheless, this concept seemed to ...
Long story short: the Government’s austerity policy has driven the economy into a deeper and longer recession that means it will have to borrow $20 billion more over the next four years than it expected just six months ago. Treasury’s latest forecasts show the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s fiscal strategy of ...
Come and join myself and CTU Chief Economist for a pop-up ‘Hoon’ webinar on the Government’s Half Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) with paying subscribers to The Kākā for 30 minutes at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream to watch our chat. Don’t worry if ...
In 1998, in the wake of the Paremoremo Prison riot, the Department of Corrections established the "Behaviour Management Regime". Prisoners were locked in their cells for 22 or 23 hours a day, with no fresh air, no exercise, no social contact, no entertainment, and in some cases no clothes and ...
New data released by the Treasury shows that the economic policies of this Government have made things worse in the year since they took office, said NZCTU Economist Craig Renney. “Our fiscal indicators are all heading in the wrong direction – with higher levels of debt, a higher deficit, and ...
At the 2023 election, National basically ran on a platform of being better economic managers. So how'd that turn out for us? In just one year, they've fucked us for two full political terms: The government's books are set to remain deeply in the red for the near term ...
AUSTERITYText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMy spreadsheet insists This pain leads straight to glory (File not found) Read more ...
The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi are saying that the Government should do the right thing and deliver minimum wage increases that don’t see workers fall further behind, in response to today’s announcement that the minimum wage will only be increased by 1.5%, well short of forecast inflation. “With inflation forecast ...
Oh, I weptFor daysFilled my eyesWith silly tearsOh, yeaBut I don'tCare no moreI don't care ifMy eyes get soreSongwriters: Paul Rodgers / Paul Kossoff. Read more ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob HensonIn this aerial view, fingers of meltwater flow from the melting Isunnguata Sermia glacier descending from the Greenland Ice Sheet on July 11, 2024, near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. According to the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE), the ...
In August, I wrote an article about David Seymour1 with a video of his testimony, to warn that there were grave dangers to his Ministry of Regulation:David Seymour's Ministry of Slush Hides Far Greater RisksWhy Seymour's exorbitant waste of taxpayers' money could be the least of concernThe money for Seymour ...
Willis is expected to have to reveal the bitter fiscal fruits of her austerity strategy in the HYEFU later today. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/TheKakaMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, December 17 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast ...
On Friday the government announced it would double the number of toll roads in New Zealand as well as make a few other changes to how toll roads are used in the country. The real issue though is not that tolling is being used but the suggestion it will make ...
The Prime Minister yesterday engaged in what looked like a pre-emptive strike designed to counter what is likely to be a series of depressing economic statistics expected before the end of the week. He opened his weekly post-Cabinet press conference with a recitation of the Government’s achievements. “It certainly has ...
This whooping cough story from south Auckland is a good example of the coalition government’s approach to social need – spend money on urging people to get vaccinated but only after you’ve cut the funding to where they could get vaccinated. This has been the case all year with public ...
And if there is a GodI know he likes to rockHe likes his loud guitarsHis spiders from MarsAnd if there is a GodI know he's watching meHe likes what he seesBut there's trouble on the breezeSongwriter: William Patrick Corgan Read more ...
Here’s a quick round up of today’s political news:1. MORE FOOD BANKS, CHARITIES, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SHELTERS AND YOUTH SOCIAL SERVICES SET TO CLOSE OR SCALE BACK AROUND THE COUNTRY AS GOVT CUTS FUNDINGSome of Auckland's largest foodbanks are warning they may need to close or significantly reduce food parcels after ...
Iain Rennie, CNZMSecretary and Chief Executive to the TreasuryDear Secretary, Undue restrictions on restricted briefings This week, the Treasury barred representatives from four organisations, including the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi, from attending the restricted briefing for the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update. We had been ...
This is a guest post by Tim Adriaansen, a community, climate, and accessibility advocate.I won’t shut up about climate breakdown, and whenever possible I try to shift the focus of a climate conversation towards solutions. But you’ll almost never hear me give more than a passing nod to ...
A grassroots backlash has forced a backdown from Brown, but he is still eyeing up plenty of tolls for other new roads. And the pressure is on Willis to ramp up the Government’s austerity strategy. Photo: Getty ImagesMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
Hi all,I'm pretty overwhelmed by all your messages and emails today; thank you so very much.As much as my newsletter this morning was about money, and we all need to earn money, it was mostly about world domination if I'm honest. 😉I really hate what’s happening to our country, and ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 8, 2024 thru Sat, December 14, 2024. Listing by Category Like last week's summary this one contains the list of articles twice: based on categories and based on ...
I started writing this morning about Hobson’s Pledge, examining the claims they and their supporters make, basically ripping into them. But I kept getting notifications coming through, and not good ones.Each time I looked up, there was another un-subscription message, and I felt a bit sicker at the thought of ...
Once, long before there was Harry and Meghan and Dodi and all those episodes of The Crown, they came to spend some time with us, Charles and Diana. Was there anyone in the world more glamorous than the Princess of Wales?Dazzled as everyone was by their company, the leader of ...
The collective right have a problem.The entire foundation for their world view is antiscientific. Their preferred economic strategies have been disproven. Their whole neoliberal model faces accusations of corporate corruption and worsening inequality. Climate change not only definitely exists, its rapid progression demands an immediate and expensive response in order ...
Just ten days ago, South Korea's president attempted a self-coup, declaring martial law and attempting to have opposition MPs murdered or arrested in an effort to seize unconstrained power. The attempt was rapidly defeated by the national assembly voting it down and the people flooding the streets to defend democracy. ...
Hi,“What I love about New Zealanders is that sometimes you use these expressions that as Americans we have no idea what those things mean!"I am watching a 30-something year old American ramble on about how different New Zealanders are to Americans. It’s his podcast, and this man is doing a ...
What Chris Penk has granted holocaust-denier and equal-opportunity-bigot Candace Owens is not “freedom of speech”. It’s not even really freedom of movement, though that technically is the right she has been granted. What he has given her is permission to perform. Freedom of SpeechIn New Zealand, the right to freedom ...
All those tears on your cheeksJust like deja vu flow nowWhen grandmother speaksSo tell me a story (I'll tell you a story)Spell it out, I can't hear (What do you want to hear?)Why you wear black in the morning?Why there's smoke in the air? Songwriter: Greg Johnson.Mōrena all ☀️Something a ...
National has only been in power for a year, but everywhere you look, its choices are taking New Zealand a long way backwards. In no particular order, here are the National Government's Top 50 Greatest Misses of its first year in power. ...
The Government is quietly undertaking consultation on the dangerous Regulatory Standards Bill over the Christmas period to avoid too much attention. ...
The Government’s planned changes to the freedom of speech obligations of universities is little more than a front for stoking the political fires of disinformation and fear, placing teachers and students in the crosshairs. ...
The Ministry of Regulation’s report into Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Aotearoa raises serious concerns about the possibility of lowering qualification requirements, undermining quality and risking worse outcomes for tamariki, whānau, and kaiako. ...
A Bill to modernise the role of Justices of the Peace (JP), ensuring they remain active in their communities and connected with other JPs, has been put into the ballot. ...
Labour will continue to fight unsustainable and destructive projects that are able to leap-frog environment protection under National’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. ...
The Green Party has warned that a Green Government will revoke the consents of companies who override environmental protections as part of Fast-Track legislation being passed today. ...
The Green Party says the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update shows how the Government is failing to address the massive social and infrastructure deficits our country faces. ...
The Government’s latest move to reduce the earnings of migrant workers will not only hurt migrants but it will drive down the wages of Kiwi workers. ...
Te Pāti Māori has this morning issued a stern warning to Fast-Track applicants with interests in mining, pledging to hold them accountable through retrospective liability and to immediately revoke Fast-Track consents under a future Te Pāti Māori government. This warning comes ahead of today’s third reading of the Fast-Track Approvals ...
The Government’s announcement today of a 1.5 per cent increase to minimum wage is another blow for workers, with inflation projected to exceed the increase, meaning it’s a real terms pay reduction for many. ...
All the Government has achieved from its announcement today is to continue to push responsibility back on councils for its own lack of action to help bring down skyrocketing rates. ...
The Government has used its final post-Cabinet press conference of the year to punch down on local government without offering any credible solutions to the issues our councils are facing. ...
The Government has failed to keep its promise to ‘super charge’ the EV network, delivering just 292 chargers - less than half of the 670 chargers needed to meet its target. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Government to stop subsidising the largest user of the country’s gas supplies, Methanex, following a report highlighting the multi-national’s disproportionate influence on energy prices in Aotearoa. ...
The Green Party is appalled with the Government’s new child poverty targets that are based on a new ‘persistent poverty’ measure that could be met even with an increase in child poverty. ...
New independent analysis has revealed that the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) will reduce emissions by a measly 1 per cent by 2030, failing to set us up for the future and meeting upcoming targets. ...
The loss of 27 kaimahi at Whakaata Māori and the end of its daily news bulletin is a sad day for Māori media and another step backwards for Te Tiriti o Waitangi justice. ...
Yesterday the Government passed cruel legislation through first reading to establish a new beneficiary sanction regime that will ultimately mean more households cannot afford the basic essentials. ...
Today's passing of the Government's Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill–which allows landlords to end tenancies with no reason–ignores the voice of the people and leaves renters in limbo ahead of the festive season. ...
After wasting a year, Nicola Willis has delivered a worse deal for the Cook Strait ferries that will end up being more expensive and take longer to arrive. ...
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The Green Party is appalled at the Government introducing legislation that will make it easier to penalise workers fighting for better pay and conditions. ...
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The Government today announced the intended closure of the Apollo Hotel as Contracted Emergency Housing (CEH) in Rotorua, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. This follows a 30 per cent reduction in the number of households in CEH in Rotorua since National came into Government. “Our focus is on ending CEH in the Whakarewarewa area starting ...
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The Government is taking action to better manage synthetic refrigerants and reduce emissions caused by greenhouse gases found in heating and cooling products, Environment Minister Penny Simmonds says. “Regulations will be drafted to support a product stewardship scheme for synthetic refrigerants, Ms. Simmonds says. “Synthetic refrigerants are found in a ...
People travelling on State Highway 1 north of Hamilton will be relieved that remedial works and safety improvements on the Ngāruawāhia section of the Waikato Expressway were finished today, with all lanes now open to traffic, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“I would like to acknowledge the patience of road users ...
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister, Penny Simmonds, has announced a new appointment to the board of Education New Zealand (ENZ). Dr Erik Lithander has been appointed as a new member of the ENZ board for a three-year term until 30 January 2028. “I would like to welcome Dr Erik Lithander to the ...
The Government will have senior representatives at Waitangi Day events around the country, including at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, but next year Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has chosen to take part in celebrations elsewhere. “It has always been my intention to celebrate Waitangi Day around the country with different ...
Two more criminal gangs will be subject to the raft of laws passed by the Coalition Government that give Police more powers to disrupt gang activity, and the intimidation they impose in our communities, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. Following an Order passed by Cabinet, from 3 February 2025 the ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Justice Christian Whata as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Whata’s appointment as a Judge of the Court of Appeal will take effect on 1 August 2025 and fill a vacancy created by the retirement of Hon Justice David Goddard on ...
The latest economic figures highlight the importance of the steps the Government has taken to restore respect for taxpayers’ money and drive economic growth, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Data released today by Stats NZ shows Gross Domestic Product fell 1 per cent in the September quarter. “Treasury and most ...
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds and Associate Minister of Education David Seymour today announced legislation changes to strengthen freedom of speech obligations on universities. “Freedom of speech is fundamental to the concept of academic freedom and there is concern that universities seem to be taking a more risk-averse ...
Police Minister, Mark Mitchell, and Internal Affairs Minister, Brooke van Velden, today launched a further Public Safety Network cellular service that alongside last year’s Cellular Roaming roll-out, puts globally-leading cellular communications capability into the hands of our emergency responders. The Public Safety Network’s new Cellular Priority service means Police, Wellington ...
State Highway 1 through the Mangamuka Gorge has officially reopened today, providing a critical link for Northlanders and offering much-needed relief ahead of the busy summer period, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“The Mangamuka Gorge is a vital route for Northland, carrying around 1,300 vehicles per day and connecting the Far ...
The Government has welcomed decisions by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) and Ashburton District Council confirming funding to boost resilience in the Canterbury region, with construction on a second Ashburton Bridge expected to begin in 2026, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Delivering a second Ashburton Bridge to improve resilience and ...
The Government is backing the response into high pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Otago, Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard says. “Cabinet has approved new funding of $20 million to enable MPI to meet unbudgeted ongoing expenses associated with the H7N6 response including rigorous scientific testing of samples at the enhanced PC3 ...
Legislation that will repeal all advertising restrictions for broadcasters on Sundays and public holidays has passed through first reading in Parliament today, Media Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “As a growing share of audiences get their news and entertainment from streaming services, these restrictions have become increasingly redundant. New Zealand on ...
Today the House agreed to Brendan Horsley being appointed Inspector-General of Defence, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Mr Horsley’s experience will be invaluable in overseeing the establishment of the new office and its support networks. “He is currently Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, having held that role since June 2020. ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government has agreed to the final regulations for the levy on insurance contracts that will fund Fire and Emergency New Zealand from July 2026. “Earlier this year the Government agreed to a 2.2 percent increase to the rate of levy. Fire ...
The Government is delivering regulatory relief for New Zealand businesses through changes to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act. “The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill, which was introduced today, is the second Bill – the other being the Statutes Amendment Bill - that ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed further progress on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway Road of National Significance (RoNS), with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) Board approving funding for the detailed design of Stage 1, paving the way for main works construction to begin in late 2025.“The Government is moving at ...
The Government today released a request for information (RFI) to seeking interest in partnerships to plant trees on Crown-owned land with low farming and conservation value (excluding National Parks) Forestry Minister Todd McClay announced. “Planting trees on Crown-owned land will drive economic growth by creating more forestry jobs in our regions, providing more wood ...
Court timeliness, access to justice, and improving the quality of existing regulation are the focus of a series of law changes introduced to Parliament today by Associate Minister of Justice Nicole McKee. The three Bills in the Regulatory Systems (Justice) Amendment Bill package each improve a different part of the ...
A total of 41 appointments and reappointments have been made to the 12 community trusts around New Zealand that serve their regions, Associate Finance Minister Shane Jones says. “These trusts, and the communities they serve from the Far North to the deep south, will benefit from the rich experience, knowledge, ...
The Government has confirmed how it will provide redress to survivors who were tortured at the Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital Child and Adolescent Unit (the Lake Alice Unit). “The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care found that many of the 362 children who went through the Lake Alice Unit between 1972 and ...
It has been a busy, productive year in the House as the coalition Government works hard to get New Zealand back on track, Leader of the House Chris Bishop says. “This Government promised to rebuild the economy, restore law and order and reduce the cost of living. Our record this ...
“Accelerated silicosis is an emerging occupational disease caused by unsafe work such as engineered stone benchtops. I am running a standalone consultation on engineered stone to understand what the industry is currently doing to manage the risks, and whether further regulatory intervention is needed,” says Workplace Relations and Safety Minister ...
Mehemea he pai mō te tangata, mahia – if it’s good for the people, get on with it. Enhanced reporting on the public sector’s delivery of Treaty settlement commitments will help improve outcomes for Māori and all New Zealanders, Māori Crown Relations Minister Tama Potaka says. Compiled together for the ...
Mr Roger Holmes Miller and Ms Tarita Hutchinson have been appointed to the Charities Registration Board, Community and Voluntary Sector Minister Louise Upston says. “I would like to welcome the new members joining the Charities Registration Board. “The appointment of Ms Hutchinson and Mr Miller will strengthen the Board’s capacity ...
More building consent and code compliance applications are being processed within the statutory timeframe since the Government required councils to submit quarterly data, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “In the midst of a housing shortage we need to look at every step of the build process for efficiencies ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey is proud to announce the first three recipients of the Government’s $10 million Mental Health and Addiction Community Sector Innovation Fund which will enable more Kiwis faster access to mental health and addiction support. “This fund is part of the Government’s commitment to investing in ...
New Zealand is providing Vanuatu assistance following yesterday's devastating earthquake, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. "Vanuatu is a member of our Pacific family and we are supporting it in this time of acute need," Mr Peters says. "Our thoughts are with the people of Vanuatu, and we will be ...
The Government welcomes the Commerce Commission’s plan to reduce card fees for Kiwis by an estimated $260 million a year, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says.“The Government is relentlessly focused on reducing the cost of living, so Kiwis can keep more of their hard-earned income and live a ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour has welcomed the Early Childhood Education (ECE) regulatory review report, the first major report from the Ministry for Regulation. The report makes 15 recommendations to modernise and simplify regulations across ECE so services can get on with what they do best – providing safe, high-quality care ...
The Government‘s Offshore Renewable Energy Bill to create a new regulatory regime that will enable firms to construct offshore wind generation has passed its first reading in Parliament, Energy Minister Simeon Brown says.“New Zealand currently does not have a regulatory regime for offshore renewable energy as the previous government failed ...
Legislation to enable new water service delivery models that will drive critical investment in infrastructure has passed its first reading in Parliament, marking a significant step towards the delivery of Local Water Done Well, Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly say.“Councils and voters ...
New Zealand is one step closer to reaping the benefits of gene technology with the passing of the first reading of the Gene Technology Bill, Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins says. "This legislation will end New Zealand's near 30-year ban on gene technology outside the lab and is ...
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I just hope to God all this worker assistance provides just something to get us through this bleak, dark, miserable winter ahead.
So many I know in real pain.
The financial assistance is needed and appreciated by people I know.
But there is massive anxiety about what comes post September. There are not exactly a lot of jobs out there at the moment
What I thought capitalism was just fine Ad, us doomsayers who were saying structurally it was weak as piss were dismissed by you and yours.
It takes almost total collapse, pain and suffering for middle NZ – for any of you to take notice. Well take notice- this is what it like all the time for the weakest in this society.
Capitalism is a failed project. Time to grow up and change the economy.
I'm not aware of any country that has practised free market capitalism. I know plenty that have practised market economics, and as a result we have seen millions lifted out of poverty, and the standard if living for most westerners rise to well above anything ever experienced in history.
Silly little stawman, I did not say free market capitalism – so sorry for you.
You said capitalism. That is in itself a straw man, because in it's pure form no country practices it, least of all NZ. So your comment " Time to grow up and change the economy" is meaningless.
Typically thoughtless, pitless fatalism from the Adam.
Your mishmash ideology is nothing but a joyously sadistic apocalyptopia.
Is it just me, or does Raveen Jaduram, the CEO of Watercare, come across as curiously detached about the current water problems in Auckland, and acting like he is simply observing an incomprehensible slow moving train wreck that is quite beyond his control? His public utterances thus far display no sense or urgency or agency on his part and a sort of fatalistic shoulder shrugging abdication of responsibility.
The guy should be jumping up and down, but instead he just seems to be meandering along as an useless CEO of a monopoly utility…
The architects of the Auckland region's local body restructuring made sure his particular empire was well-insulated, figuring it would be the first on the block. He has no connection with citizens, only with customers of a monopoly.
I think they devised a formula sometime ago for CEO and senior staff both in the private and public sectors. The higher the salary, the more insulated and out of touch and less accountable you are allowed to be.
The reality is droughts we are not adapting to the need to use less water.
Droughts are becoming more common yet everyone is looking to the govts to solve the problem.
Farmers have had to face this problem for nearly 30 years but are largely farming for what was happening 30 years ago.Some farmers have buried 3 to 4 yrs of silage to mitigate climate change,changing feed crops not over stocking.
City dwellers need to change habits as well cars can stay dirty.Houses don't need water blasting, gardens need to be drought resistant.Washing Machines water efficient ,Showers shorter and more efficient.
Blaming everything on watercare is not going to solve the longterm problem.
There does not need to be any long term problem about Auckland water. At present Auckland takes 1% of the Waikato flow. Even if that increased to 5% (which would be twice Auckland’s normal daily usage) it would be literally unnoticeable in terms of the river.
The current problem is entirely due to a lack of forward planning to take account of droughts. Water are has operated on the basis that the pipeline installed 20 years ago would be enough. In the meantime the population has virtually doubled.
So the current problem is due to lack of future proofing using a readily available water source at our back door.
At 150 million litres/day taken by Watercare, that's 1.7 cubic metres per second. Out of an annual mean flow of 330ish cubic metres/second at Tuakau. So about 0.5%.
Current Waikato river mean flows are way above historical averages since the 1980s when the headwaters of rivers that used to flow into the Rangitikei, Whanganui, Whangaehu etc got diverted into the Tongariro power scheme. That increased the mean annual flow of the Waikato by about 29 cubic metres/second.
He's clearly cognisant of the ubiquitous sense of entitlement that has long characterised Auckland citizenry. They've always felt entitled to use sprinklers regardless of droughts. First sign of getting real would be to eliminate car washes. Didn't happen last time the reservoirs were this low.
I recall when the headlines were blaring dire emergency, heading into Les Mills & seeing the showers running continuously even though nobody was using them. The dork was actually then current mayor of Ak, blathering on air about water conservation. Typical rightist Aucklander, I thought. Aucks never change.
You are missing the word "some" in several of your sentences. Including it appropriately would make your comment more accurate… but admittedly less dramatic.
Some people overcompensate for a banal existence.
Well not like he really cares his 750k Salary keeps him well insulated from real world issues.
750 grand to make water run downhill! bloody outrageous.
He should be able to make it run uphill for that salary.
Thank Jenny Shipley for corporatising essential council services.
Before a clerk of water services was paid a decent salary for doing the same job probably the equivalent of $150 ,000 to $200,000 in today's money perfectly adequate for a local govt job.
Corporatization was supposed to make these CCO's more efficient.
Reality is cost's have risen efficiency gains dubious and the service users left high and Dry.
that's how it gets into the header tanks lol
The government needs to step in a fix Aucklands water woes . Sure it's a drought but its government policies that have flooded the city with migrants ,both kiwi and foreign!
Nah the absolute inaction over late summer when it was becoming apparent supplies were dropping fast.
Instead they put the house on a change of season bringing rain, realistically we should be looking to manage fresh water year round so drastic steps are less likely.
The Free market answer put the price up to drive down demand.
The poor can afford a Trickle while the wealthy can afford to drown their gardens and fill swimming pools
"It's understood he was offered justice but declined to take it, asking instead for foreign affairs." (Henry Cooke)
stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300020221/todd-mullers-cautious-reshuffle-reveals-deep-tensions-within-national-party
The reason for that seems obvious. There's the added expense of an interpreter on any overseas visit = probably more than one when visiting/grovelling the U.S
Looking on the bright side, we've dodged both those bullets. Simon wouldn't know what justice was if it came up & bit him on the arse, and he's never had a clue about foreign affairs either. Todd oughta give him race relations (to keep us entertained).
Race Relations Toddy should man up and take himself, his views on the subject are of national significance now.
Watch the kid gloves media handle him with going forward so as to not damage the brand after the mauling Soimons given it.
Jack Tame took the gloves off. He asked Toll Muddler what he would do. Deer in the headlights comes to mind.
Did a lot of impressive hand waving though. For a moment I thought he was using sign language to get his answers across.
He did that in QT as well, and slowed down how he said a question (after repeating it), very "mansplain"-ish, he's gonna be fun to watch (in a cringe comedy kinda way).
Speaking of the Wealthy …wastrels
Mr Todd will very soon receive his Muller knighthood. For he will have done what National and Hooton always does: namely
He will have offered the wealthy National Voters large reductions in tax payments.
Not even glancing over the thing we once called the Middle Class – but building the shameful poverty National has built up for decades, Courtesy of the savage NZ Landlords and the low wage Hounds.
Maybe Grant Robertson and Treasury will develop an equality in New Zealand's Fiscal arrangements.
After all is said and done – the duty of our Parliament is to build a Democracy. A thing Muller and his mates know nothing about. We are Not to build a bunch of weatlthy thieves such as present day Nationals.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/417512/green-party-won-t-give-up-pushing-for-benefits-increase
Public grandstanding becomes inevitable when you are ineffective in intra-party negotiations, I suppose. You'd think that the co-leaders would be forthright and honest about that – but no. Typical politicians. Treat the public with contempt and they will do it right back to you. Inept.
🙄
Do tell us how the Greens could have been more effective in intra-party negotiations. I'd really like to know how you see that. Because I can't see how the Greens can negotiate better on welfare if Labour and NZF are against what they want. Please explain how they can.
Okay, let's assume Labour & NZF were indeed opposed to the Greens position: I would immediately flush out why. Not just have all the cards on the table, but for the voters to see them. I cannot accept that it is in our national interest to indulge the cover-up.
Then the onus would instantly be on Labour to justify their opposition. That has to be done in reference to the memo of understanding or whatever deal the Greens made after the 2017 election that got them into the troika situation.
We would then have a media frenzy examining the pros & cons of the Labour justification: it would hold up – or not. It could expose a cleavage within Labour, right? Neoliberals vs socialists. The latter supporting the Green position.
Using triangulation within the govt only gets the Greens so far. If they come out of a negotiation as losers they must use the public as third party in the triangle. Grandstanding doesn't achieve that – it merely comes across to the public as losers whimpering. Greens using the triangle as leverage to produce suitable outcomes is the missing bit. Jacinda will always compromise for the greater good. That's the desired outcome. They just need to engineer it!
The flaw in the above reasoning is whether the public mood will support the Greens. I have no rational basis for optimism on that point – just a hunch that the kiwi preference for a fair go for all will guide them to see that the Greens have got the issue right. I'm confident that suitable framing of the issue by the Greens will achieve that result. I suspect that whatever framing they used in the negotiation is root of the current problem…
what's the difference between what you are suggesting and Davidson has just done?
I was sure I had explained that carefully! I see no evidence they have explained their negotiation failure. Nor that they are attempting to include the public in their process (participatory democracy). Just doing back-room deals (that fail) in non-smoke-filled rooms is merely traditional politics without the smoke. You can't cause a political paradigm shift by being so old-fashioned. Inclusion is the zeitgeist. That they don't get such a simple principle is depressing.
Add to that process failure the key principle; to win public support you must explain your political positioning on issues. What we got was her lobbying for beneficiaries plus her reminder of Labour's commitment. No explanation offered for the negotiation failure. Reluctance to inform the public of that sends the wrong signal. Not only would beneficiaries like to know who to blame, I bet media pros would too. She would rather National grabs the headlines? Any publicity is good became a political truism long ago. Did nobody tell her?
"to win public support you must explain your political positioning on issues."
MD just did that. She explained their political positioning on welfare, in response to Labour's.
If I have understood you correctly, your main point here is that the process of policy development isn't transparent? I would agree with that. I'm not sure to what extent the Greens can do something about that, although I agree that they should be saying something. There will be some expectation of confidentiality. Breaking that will harm relationships, so there is a balance between going against Labour and NZF and being able to work with them (eg in negotiations). I mean, what is she supposed to say? Hey NZ, Labour wouldn't have such a stupid policy if it weren't for NZF, who actively blocked our suggestions on how to so this payment in a way that was better for all NZers.
One thing that is clear is that lots of people, including those that comment on politics publicly, don't understand how parliament works. Or government. Or the Greens. I wonder if it would help if the Greens just started pointing this stuff out more generally.
People slam the Greens for not using leverage, but the Green kaupapa is relationship based, they don't do macho politics. I like the idea of bringing the public into the process, just not sure how that would work. I would probably agree with your strategy more if I was more confident in how NZers would respond. I'm not, and the evidence for that is the people voting Labour instead of Green who used to vote Green. They stopped voting Green after Turei's speech and with the rise of Ardern. They haven't gone back. Maybe they just don't care that much about welfare, or maybe they think that Labour is getting the settings right, despite three years of it being explained how they're not.
If I have understood you correctly, your main point here is that the process of policy development isn't transparent?
No. Internal party policy process isn't the problem. Political positioning is something that caucus decides, to maximise impact on voters. I was explaining why they got it wrong on this particular occasion.
The vital thing is not to appear in public as impotent losers. Nothing is more guaranteed to make voters lose confidence in the Greens than that. The only possible way to prevent the contagion effect of that perception snowballing in the public mind is via suitable framing – that's the x factor missing.
The best frame would be via explanation of the outcome: NZF wouldn't agree, Labour wouldn't agree, both wouldn't agree. They not only failed to specify which reason produced the outcome, they seem not to have grasped the necessity of communicating an explanation to voters. Once again, clueless public relations. Do they not even use all those donations to hire somebody to explain this stuff – or did they hire someone useless??
Imagine you were hired to 'explain this stuff'. Could you provide an example of the way you would 'communicate an explanation to voters' without the 'missing x-factor'?
As quoted here, Marama apparently did communicate an explanation to voters without that essential framing. So the best answer to your query is to read hers. Keeping in mind the technical possibility that she did explain which of those three viable explanations caused the impasse, and that bit didn't get included in the quote.
I did read it and came to a different conclusion to you.
So, seeing as you have diagnosed the issue and determined their PR people are 'useless', I was asking you, in your wisdom, to furnish us with what you think the 'essential framing' should have been.
Personally, I find a turgid bloviate expounding forth upon PR and messaging to be the height of guerilla satire.
I wasn't talking about internal policy development, I was talking about the government's policy development, which is influenced by the in-closet negotiations that happen between Lab/NZF and Lab/Greens (don't know if there is a G/NZF thing or a L/NZF/G). It's clear from the rest of my explanation that I was referring back to what we were discussing.
Now you've brought in something new, that the Greens' PR is an issue, because if they oppose Labour on a policy that they didn't get wins on they appear to be losers and people won't like them. Which takes us back to the framing. You seem to be saying that the Greens should take confidential information from negotiation processes and make it public as a way of blaming Labour and NZF for the GP not getting gains. Have I got that right?
Even if this were a wise strategy (I've already pointed out the problem of breaking trust like that), the GP aren't in Cabinet and don't have access to what L/NZF discuss.
I do see value in someone explaining to the public how government works, and how this one in particular works.
As an aside, your argument would be much easier to follow if you could resist sticking the boot into the Greens each time. I can't be bothered trying to parse past that much more. Hmm, maybe there's a communication fail there on your part.
Okay, sorry, I didn't get that. You're right that govt policy formulation is the underlying process in the situation, of course. If confidentiality prevents them explaining that to the public, I would view it as a design flaw – I haven't seen any such clause and am curious if it derives from MMP constitutionally or is something invented by Labour. Do you know?
If Labour really are trying to prevent transparent governance happen, they ought to be held accountable. As regards pointing to mistakes by the Greens, my expectation is that consciousness will be raised about how politics is best done. Learning comes from experience, and when ingrained beliefs prevent that others must catalyse the elucidation necessary. So it's a helping motivation…
There was a report on TV3 news just now – Metiria has come out on the issue, I saw a tweet shown with a naughty word blanked out.
I did check online to see what the text of the Labour/Greens agreement says re confidentiality, and it became clear that they are unable to explain such negotiation failures to the public – so my criticism lacked a realistic basis, really. It is a substantial flaw in our democratic system to use a confidentiality agreement to prevent the public learning which party is discriminating against a significant minority group in the electorate!
A tweet from Turei? Not seeing anything from her two twitter accounts.
Yes, this is what I have been saying. The process is locked up, and the public are excluded, and this isn't the fault of the Greens. I doubt it is on Labour, more convention that has developed during MMP. The coalition partners (L/NZF) are bound by Cabinet rules. I couldn't remember what was in the agreements but the Greens would also be respectful of confidentiality because the relationships still need to be functional.
I would guess that NZF are a big factor, given they campaign in a way that is blind to the electorate.
This is why I'm saying that talking about the set up is important. We really have a poor form of democracy.
I thought that's what I saw but if you want to investigate it was from their political reporter (Jenna Lynch, if I remember that right) and they will probably have it on the Newshub site in print form some time this evening. Seemed contraversial, so I'd be surprised if it never shows…
Yeah, if you do write something, would be good to include the limitation imposed on the free speech of parliamentarians by the system. People do expect politicians to explain conflict between parties to both media and public (not just me being idiosyncratic). Using the agreement clause like a gag order isn't merely just a bad look. It blocks transparency, therefore is unprincipled. That said, they signed it, so must act in accord with it.
ta, it's up now.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/05/former-green-party-leader-metiria-turei-puts-government-on-blast-over-new-payment-scheme.html
From the link:
The writers also conclude it is the Greens fault apparently.
Dennis is a troll Weka…haven't you realised yet?
To blame the Greens in this situation is simply trolling-it is all about coalition government under MMP. The Greens would be more effective in these matters if they got 10% in September and NZF 4.9%
You might wise up a little if you read what Pete George cited below, huh? I'm not blaming the Greens, I'm pointing to the lack of leadership exemplified by the mishandling of the negotiation.
Now if it turns out that either Labour or NZF are refusing to honour that agreement, I will happily blame them. But the current info on the situation suggests the Greens have decided not to inform the media & public about that. Presuming you have heard of the principle of transparent governance, do you approve their apparent decision to act in contradiction??
He's not a troll. He's got a beef for the Greens, but sifting past that he is pointing to something important here.
I still think you are both (Weka and Dennis) missing the point that it doesn't matter how well the Greens negotiate, if NZF don't like it then its gets voted down and so doesn't happen.
So all the Greens are doing is getting the best outcome they can get within this straightjacket, and then spinning it as a good outcome because some Green elements have squeezed through. That is politics. It increases their profile and the public's perception of the party as achievers.
To attack them for "public grandstanding" and being "ineffective" is completely unfair, without basis and purposefully inflammatory i.e trolling. They are perfectly entitled to scream to the high heavens how they would really have liked the negotiations to have turned out.
To then point me to Pete George (of all people) to prove your case is simply rubbing salt in the wound, and says it all. (He ignores the reality described above in his post below.)
I say yet again in TS; the only way we will have a government that is in any way genuinely left of centre/progressive is to Party Vote Green. If the Greens don't get 5% we will probably have PM Muller.
"If the Greens don't get 5% we will probably have PM Muller. "
Or PM Ardern with NZF as their coalition partner?
All you are really achieving here is exhibiting failure to comprehend the relevance of the clauses Pete George quoted – even though Marama's reference to them was flagged by quote at the top of the thread!
Do you not understand that the agreement between Labour & the Greens operates just like a contract?? And that Marama is endeavouring to alert kiwis to Labour's failure to honour that contract?
That's the guts of the situation. It's how MMP operates!! All them red herrings of yours aren't going to change that fact.
no, I largely agree with you and disagree with Dennis. I just thought the point about the invisibility of how government policy is developed was worth looking at. It's daft to blame the Greens for that.
And yes, the only way we get a left wing govt is to vote Green. My personal view is that slagging off the Greens all the time just makes a L/NZF govt more likely.
Otoh, I'm trying really hard today to not write a post called Fuck You Labour, so I can understand the sentiment of feeling deeply disappointed in a political party.
I agree with all of that Weka.
I vote Green but I have plenty of sympathy for Labour and I organised a public meeting for David Parker in Wanaka for the 2017 election. I wouldn't do this again in September because of the fast track RMA reform he is supporting. The public scrutiny afforded by the RMA is an important check and balance.
I'm also highly dubious about the two-tier unemployment payment policy just announced. This should be extended to all unemployed over the same 12 weeks-this would give a cash boost to the economy and would be fair. I thought Jacinda was into fairness.
Greens got the negotiating bit right on welfare at the start of the term. From Confidence and Supply Agreement between the New Zealand Labour Party and the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand:
And maybe here:
But since then Greens have not got close to negotiating what they wanted despite this formal agreement.
It's too late to complain now, except for campaign purposes.
"Overhaul the welfare system" Putting Wellbeing at the heart of things matters. It drives all future actions, even in a 1 in 100 situation.
Perhaps the budget was going to do that, we will never know. I hear lots of fear and anger coupled with hope for change.
Many of us feel more secure with this Government, and trust their direction more than any we have experienced for a while.
They too are people who will not always "get it right"., But they have shown a capacity to accept and correct errors.
I think it is wrong to label them as part of regimens that have gone before, as they have tried to keep their promises, though often blocked by friends.
Jacinda Ardern is a rare being, and is recognised world wide for her advocacy and communication. We are fortunate to have someone of her calibre. She has kept her Ministers on track with few exceptions, and promoted high standards.
Decisions to be made in the near term will not be easy, but she will show kindness tenacity and skill.
Many aspects of our lives have been improved, and she has shown us the way. Help each other, support those in need, share more and base our lives around keeping our part of the world functioning.
Some will say that is simplistic, but in lock down we discovered we need essential services (and they should be paid for). We need food producers. We need shelter. We need education and good health, but most of all we need each other with all our faults a foibles.
We relearned what wants were, and looked askance at our collected debri. We learned most people want their friends and relatives to be well, and strangers are just folk we have not met yet, so we smile and wave when we see them, put teddies in windows for the children.
We learned that for some this will be more frightening than for others given their health or starting point in life.
The most important thing we learned was we can help others and ourselves. We can innovate create and share ideas thanks to technology. We need to believe we can make a difference, and then we will. IMO
It's absolutely pointless overhauling the welfare system/increasing benefits unless there is a corresponding overhaul of housing and rents. Much more urgent impetus on state housing – driven by the state, not property developers, is needed. This government also wimped out on CGT, so residential property speculation remains as an attractive "investment" option. Much of the benefit increases will just go into landlords' pockets. All the talk about poverty and wellbeing is just that – talk. A rent freeze for a couple of years would be a good place to start in the mean time.
Lift benefit rates
Build an endless supply of state houses (that can be converted to rent to buy that gets transferred to private debt once enough equity is gained)
Relationship status shouldn't effect your benefit.
Create jobs
"This Government wimped out on CGT"
I thought Winston made it fairly plain he blocked that. A coalition has to compromise even when it is painful. They have increased the house building and continue to do so, and have begun training apprentices again. It is not much over 2 and a half years!!. They may get a bigger mandate this time.
The vote buying welfare industry is changing quickly, the new two tier system proves all animals are equal but some are more equal than others, comrade.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Burt this isnt the post for social welfare commentary.
Bill did one on that yesterday.
Normally unemployment numbers move up slowly this sort of economic shock hasn't happened since 1929.
Cheap political point scoring.
Muller being pushed as 'nice'? https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/better-business/121618232/its-a-brave-new-world-when-politicians-compete-to-be-the-nicest-and-kindest
Problem there is that National have two "nice" senior MPs in Kaye and Adams who are both more experienced than Muller, had bigger roles in the previous government, have some crossover appeal to voters and are much better performers in the media.
So, er, why did they pick Muller? Presumably to look like the CEO with balls (sic) who "gets things done". If they really wanted "nice" they had better options.
Kaye and Adams standing dutifully either side of him while he outlined the shuffle yesterday just seemed to highlight the way National Party was overlooking their senior women MPs.
You've got it! It's the kiwi bloke strategy. It's the front row of a rugby scrum look. Muller is the hooker. He's out trying to hook votes. The other two are mere props.
As a hooker would he sell his soul for a vote? Too damned right.
Eh?
National now has 3 women in the top 5 of their list and at last count Labour has 1
Fair enough.
But Labour's woman is obviously better than the men she outranks. So – merit.
Whereas National's man isn't obviously better than the 3 women he outranks. This is a problem.
Do you know if kaye or adams wanted the top job??
I assume Adams definitely didn't, don't know if there was any discussion about the positions of Muller/Kaye ticket.
But we can be sure Collins and Kaye have future leadership ambitions after they lose (Adams might quit). They want to be leaders in government. Not opposition.
So it really just emphasises that National don't expect to win. Muller takes one for the team, then the real contenders will target 2023.
I suppose it depends on whether they wanted to be leader AND warranted it over Muller.
Just because Ardern is very good as a politician and rightly deserves top spot in Labour, this does not mean every other women MP currently in parliament should automatically deserve to be a leader of a party.
It is like the line of Goff, Shearer, Cunliffe and Little are wiped from peoples memories, just because Ardern is a very good leader now.
Not automatically, of course not.
I'm just suggesting that on the (limited) evidence so far Muller doesn't come across as the best candidate for the job. If after Bill quit they'd picked Amy Adams (on merit) instead of Bridges they might not have been in this mess.
TBF I would have gone for Adams as well.
Maybe it was a too obvious a direct match try to Ardern though.
No idea.
TBF to Bridges, he did keep them in the running through a lot of crap, even if he did have the communication skills of the Swedish Chef in the muppets.
those photos of adams and kaye, standing and looking upwards in awe at their leader, remind me of many of trumps photo ops. what a man! we are in his aura!
I thought they looked like those posed promotional posters from Bolshevic USSR and the 3rd Reich.
Not so 'nice' if you are Māori interests in his local electorate upsetting the white folk. https://www.waateanews.com/waateanews/x_news/MjQ1ODM/Muller-seeking-to-undo-Motiti-win
Its looking pretty clear where Todd Muller stands on Maori issues and for that matter the environment. They're at the bottom of his list of priorities – if they’re on the list at all. Plays well to the demographic he's looking to gather into the fold though.
So much for the "nice" Mr Muller who is honest and straightforward and is not interested in attacking opponents.
Do you know why National signed up to the zero carbon bill Anne?
Yes. Basically, they could no longer avoid not signing up to something and Muller managed to water down James Shaw's bill to such a degree it ended up a very weak imitation of its former self. Muller then agreed to sign it.
But but but says Nicky Kaye we've got plenty of Maoris, theres..there's oh Paula and Paul Goldsmith and Shane Whatshis name..!
Paul G, a correction actually I'm not Maori.
Nicky K.. but but but..actually I'm not Maori either but I've got connections !.
Good luck Todd, you asked for it. plonker.
That nice Mr Muller last night on Q&A did not come across as nice or competent. An awful interview with nil substance. The panel was more interesting. Lila Harre was very clear whereas the usual confidence of Thomas was subdued.
Starts about 8 minutes in.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/q-and-a/live
I was interested to note that the Nats have (had) a number of "Todds" in the line-up, so I wondered if it was short for some other name, but no it's not.
It is its own name, and it has its own meaning.
Sort of fits really.
If Mula (or should I say Maga?) tries to play the "kind" and "nice" game against Jacinda he will be playing on a steeply sloping pitch into a gale-force wind.
Will Faafoi grow a pair and do something about the landscape in RNZ now.
Hooton's played the system to line his pockets in a partisan way along with others for years. That’s without looking at his highly questionable personal morality.
Just get national MP’s on and be done with it, cheaper also.
Granny does as she always has but it's not taxpayer funded till COVID came along.
Taxpayers funded soapboxes for the shills needs to stop if RNZ is to be of service to the people of NZ….all people not just the acolytes of the neolib construct.
No one listens to Hootons twisted logic
Agreed Tricle….Hooton is capable of sounding quite rational for 70% of the time but then he goes completely off the rails for the next 30%….definitely not who you would want as chief of staff.
"Will Faafoi grow a pair and do something about the landscape in RNZ now."
Somehow, I very much doubt it.
Like his counterpart I L-G, they're too "nice". You could get some idea with their "core competencies" with the latest INZ fuckup.
Sometimes I wonder whether JA quietly thinks to herself – FUCK guys! do I have to do everything myself?"
I'm hoping the likes of AlJazeera (even DW and France24), Amnesty International and a few others don't get hold of JA underlings' dithering
I listened last night to muller on the Kathryn Ryan show from earlier that day.
i did comment on this website that his first speech was good. The interview with Kathryn not so much. She was tripping him up left right and centre. The main thrust of his position was we are better than them. 17 empty chairs at the cabinet table, their plan is not coherent. And he would really understand small business. He is endanger of sounding like a white male whose knows it all (but hasn’t done it yet) saying” move aside little lady. Three is an edge of arrogance here that I think Kiwis will switch off from. An actually he was boring. Apparently he was a bit of a train wreck on q and a last night, answering many questions by dropping in Amy Adams name. Oh and Simons not going anywhere
forgive me for quoting mike Hoskins but “happy days”
Yes, I'm surprised nobody has said much about last night's Q & A interview – it was downright embarrassing!
I agree JanM. I could hardly bear to watch Muller's interview on Q & A – I even felt a tiny bit of pity for him. The Breakfast show usually follows up on Q & A – I was waiting for some commentary this morning – but nothing…
Yes Anker and Jan. Does Todd send shivers down your spine at the Todd prospects of overturning this Government?
"……. it was downright embarrassing" I agree, but then I have to check myself.
Do you really think Todd Muller ( or half his tribe for that matter ) give a shit what you 'feel'.
Same shit but a substantially different stink for the Bridges tribe. I imagine that little tribe is now considered very,, very inferior – so let's throw them a bone and a promise or there could conceivably an uprising in the future (going forward, in this space)
If 10 households default on their mortgages it is those households problem….if 10,000 default it is the banks problem….and consequently everyones problem.
Except the banks extract billions from NZ every year… I'm sure they can bare losing a billion or three to avoid those kinds of situations.
And you would be mistaken because the effect is not limited to those few billions but the system as a whole.
Just thinking about how people cite experience in big business, such as fonterra in Miller’s case, as being a great asset to running a country. But business is run with the key focus of making a profit. This driver is not a key focus of running a country. Sure finance ministers endeavour to balance the books, but that is a means to an ends.
re miller’s embarrasing a and a interview, it occurs to me he has had very little experience of being interviewed. This could be a real disaster for the Nats. Meanwhile Amy who interviews we’ll surely must be wondering why she didn’t get the job in the first place. Meanwhile in the botany electorate Luxton is wanting Todd to fail. And do we really expect Simon not to sabotage when he’s back. Someone should make a soap out of this
" it occurs to me he has had very little experience of being interviewed."
That's why the superficial comparison with Ardern 2017 is false. Another late change, and it worked, so National could do it too – that's the line.
But Ardern must have given 100s of live interviews by then. Starting with TV's "Young Guns" in 2008, she was increasingly prominent in the media. It's a skill set that can only be learned through experience, and is unrelated to business meetings or whatever Muller brings to the job.
He was undone by something as simple as the time delay. It made him look hesitant and evasive. That might seem trivial but it is something you have to get used to and allow for. He needs to learn fast.
Agree re him not managing the time delay very well but I also think there was some evident frustration showing on his part that Tame wouldn’t just accept everything he said and move on to another subject. He looked a man more used to holding court rather than someone relishing the to-and-fro of debate. Doesn’t bode well for the campaign.
Also did he seem, how shall I say it, a little sweaty?
He wasn't well prepared at all.
Unless he's proposing new policies, his job is simply to know his party's policies and promote them. Falling back on empty buzz words is feeble.
I honestly don't know which of the Bridges/Goldsmith economic policies are still in place, and which ones aren't. And I've heard him interviewed half a dozen times.
Business meetings too easily suffer from deference to authority, group-think, ideological controls that render some things 'unsayable', and participants afraid of losing their positions of prominence. Corporations are "private tyrranies" (Chomsky) and bringing the habits developed there into the public domain is not often a good idea.
There are sooooo many reasons why the todd change is no switch to Ardern.
Ardern was deputy leader. Muller was who-ller.
Ardern was visibly different to Little – not so much gender: energy, pace of delivery, enthusiasm. Muller doesn't seem to be particularly different to Bridges.
Ardern changed the game against the nats – "let's do this" literally within a few days. Muller… ?
The leadership change for Labour was amicable. This one – not so much.
Labour knew that leadership was a poisoned chalice – Ardern took one for the team. I doubt anyone else wanted it. National has multiple pretenders sharpening their blades.Some of them might even think they can turn things around in seven weeks, so Muller needs to watch his back until August at least.
God it's funny when it happens to them lol
"Just thinking about how people cite experience in big business, such as Fonterra in Miller’s case, as being a great asset to running a country."
Does working inside say Fonterra count as business experience? I would have thought that the hairdresser or mechanic running his own business or engineer running his workshop with 20 workers are businesses people with genuine experience with trial/error determination coping with losses etc etc. Lets not rate Fonterra/Zespry as qualifying MPs.
A "woodwork teacher" has generally had more hands on business experience, as most have been sole trader or small business tradespeople.
Some inherited the business and made it fail, however,
Pretty pale lineup.
Is Todd getting payback for all "….the Maori kids flogged his flash sandwiches ".
All the boys and girls came out to play …and messed up everywhere.
As far as I can see
First past the post is Clear Cut.
Free by 3 times, the current speculative mess. Less expensive; easily comprehended. Absolutely Normal.
Join the Political Party you value, Not with a crooked tree. and endless threats.
FPP: a recipe for gerrymandering, perverse undemocratic outcomes, and a two party system of rotating dictatorship. Kiwis chucked it because they were sick of getting Rogered and Ruthanasia'd by radicals
Looks to me like more than 400k voters have switched allegiance from National to Labour since February … a profound realignment … possibly (entering the realm of speculation here) predicated first & foremost upon the gratitude of older voters.
Don't rule out National crashing like 2002.
In some senses, a different context … but also some striking similarities:
Up against an unusually popular First Term Govt & PM, National's Oligarchs facilitated Bill English's toppling of Jenny Shipley in October 2001, 10 Months out from the 2002 Election.
The leadership spill had zero effect at first – no post-leadership bounce, with the Nats & broader Opposition forces flatlining over the next few months. Over the New Year, however, a clear Leftward swing of around 4 points from National to Labour emerged as softly-aligned Nats began to bail, followed by another 2 months of relative stability, then another small swing from Nat-to-Lab.
But most significantly from our 2020 point of view, Nat support very suddenly & very shockingly went into freefall over the final 3 weeks of the campaign … with almost all of this very late swing heading to conservative, centrist & Right parties … ACT surging, NZF & UF more than tripling their support (albeit with the help of the somewhat notorious 'Worm-Debate'). Nats plunged from 30% down to 21% over a remarkably short period of time, with ACT almost doubling from 4 to 7%, NZF from 3 to 10% & UF exploding from zilch to 7 in the blink of an eye.
With the re-election of the Clark Labour Govt seemingly inevitable, more astute (or, at least, pragmatic) National voters saw the writing on the wall … hence the Right vote significantly fragments as large numbers of 1999 Nats seek to provide a counterweight to any leftward thrust of the incoming Govt, in the process, if possible, keeping the Greens away from power. Meanwhile, true-believers on the Right follow their hearts & desert to ACT.
As a consequence, less than half of 1999 National supporters remain loyal, as the Party plunges to a historic low. Amongst a whole host of surprises, Labour wins the Party-Vote in all but 3 of National's Rural Heartland seats.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Muller's toppling of Bridges & the release of the latest Colmar Brunton have occurred 4 Months out from the Election. Here's a comparison with the same point in 2002:
…………. 2002 …………… 2020
Nat …….. 35% ……………. 29%
ACT ……. 4.0% ………….. 2.2%
N+A …….. 39.0% ……….. 31.2%
Well-reasoned, plausible. If Muller isn't adept at fronting media situations, it becomes likely. I stopped watching Q+A when it got too boring, but if he was as inadequate as commentators here suggest, that could become the determining trend.
I reckon the election will hinge as much on competing recovery plans as on leadership charisma. If the Nats get theirs out in front of voters before the coalition govt gets theirs out, perception that they are sufficiently on the ball to govern will form. If the govt gets theirs out first, they'll win as long as serious flaws don't emerge…
I wonder which of 2002 or 2011 is the better comparison. Labour didn't roll Goff, but a first term government with a popular, bullet-proof PM in the backdrop of a natural disaster has some similarities.
Latest National Unity news:
Outside caucus, Muller tells reporters Paul Goldsmith is Maori. Then Goldsmith says he isn't. Paula Bennett laughs. So it's all going to plan.
"National leader Todd Muller says his "Make America Great Again" hat is staying in its box in his new office, and he won't be unpacking it."
Is the cat dead or alive in the box?
More mistakes from TM…..it seems he may be a front only for the Nats…a new face that is somehow, they hope, more acceptable to the electorate. Good times.
Todd Conehead’s gem was sticking with Nat super at 67 policy. Sure some time out from implementation, but people close to 65 will still likely not be impressed. Cost Labour votes previously.
And sticking with the continuing Mining oil and gas he said last night.
So National are saying the younger retirees are going to pay double with less job security.
Paying the debt down and no early retirement robots taking more jobs.
Universal super should become UBI funded by a much bigger Cullen Fund + compulsory Kiwisaver.Then people can choose when to retire ie a builder could retire at 60 less physically demanding jobs can retire later.The builder may want to become a trainer or work in a bunnings store part time..
The 4 day week needs to be seriously considered the 40 hr week is old hat.
Time to be more adaptable,like farmers could have a 3 1/2 day week doing 35 hrs in 3 and a half days which would make easy shift changes.
Farm workers maybe, but farmers i.e owners, will still be working all the bloody hours under the sun.
I love that the conehead tag may stick rofl
Beldar!
https://imgur.com/gallery/qyrcw/comment/963640945
Whoa…heard that one coming.
edit: loud but weak
https://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake
Questions for Question Time today not yet up. A bit odd to be this late? What if…?
Has it already been said? Todd said outside caucus today that Goldsmith was Maori.
Goldsmith said, "No I'm not!"
I think the comment has been attributed to NK…..but still…another failed attempt at relevance.
Well they did forget to move the traditional vote of non-confidence in the Budget.
25 minutes to QT and no Questions up???
Labour's criticism towards the Nats is beginning to look a bit desperate now.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300020726/nikki-kaye-wrongly-describes-paul-goldsmith-as-mori-as-pressure-over-nationals-diversity-grows
The only desperate thing here is your poor attempt at deflection.
Up until a few days ago the top two were Maori.
Where are the women in the top 5 of Labour?
I see just one.
Does this mean Labour aren’t diverse enough?
It is a silly attack
The only silly think here is your inability to count to 5. If you are talking about Cabinet rankings then there is more than 1 party in Cabinet.
The people criticising in the article I posted are Labour.
And I even said "Labour's criticism towards the Nats"
Funniest four words of the year: "And obviously Paul Goldsmith."
REPORTER: Where are the Māori shadow cabinet members?
TODD MULLER: [slowly, in order to convey gravity as well as "niceness"] There's Paula Bennett of course. And there's Shane Reti.
NIKKI KAYE: And obviously Paul Goldsmith.
….Awkward pause….
EVERYBODY WHO HEARD THAT ON THE RADIO: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Chris T it's not Noah's Ark. A woman has the top job in Labour. It is generally agreed in Labour they need more women on the front bench. They have gender equality policies to promote this. They haven't got there yet, but they are working on it.
Haha nice try. Ngati Goldsmith. Tova just tweeted ‘you can’t make this shit up’
Goldsmith: "My great-great grandfather had European wives and Māori wives, and so I've got lots of relatives across Ngāti Porou – I don't claim to be Māori myself.''
He could've added: "I'm proud to be descendant of a bi-racial polygamist." Some of these people haven't got a clue how to grab a headline…
sounds like something Shane Jones would say…not sure he's a great role model
At a time when a lot of older people who got to quite like the lockdown for the slower pace and are saying they could go a shorter week, Todd Boofhead says National will raise the retirement age.
Fuck me, the man can not read a room let alone the country. Nats to try for 25%. Go Team.
Chris T…re labour’s lack of women in the cabinet front row. They acknowledge that and have policies in place to develop gender equality in labour. Even so the front bench aren’t devoid of women, one has the top job.
i look forward to the problems Toddy is going to have when his promoted his team as the more competent and he just dumped two Maoris and two out of the three labour ministers he’s said are non performers are Maori. Oh and did we mention the MAGA hat.
it is not a good look when you promote your team as more competent and then one of them makes the unbelievable mistake of stating one her colleagues is Maori when he isn’t. Of course the other interesting thing is goldsmith refuted this immediately. So much support in this caucus, although really it was the only thing he could do
Fair call
I just think it is a little throwing rocks in glass houses, using a criticism like that, given their own partys list.
The interesting thing though is how badly they fluffed the response and how little support they got to smooth the blunder over from the rest rest of the caucus.
True They aren't exactly covering themselves in glory and a sense of stability. Lol
I only just realised the thing that really pisses me off about "plan b" Thornley. Read somewhere that the dude specialises in economic impacts of health interventions, yet he provided zero – ZERO! – information. Just repeated basically that "cure might be worse than the disease" wank. Where was his data? If he studies this shit, where's his prediction of how many people would be killed by the economic flow-on of L4? QALYs? Estimated mortality?
I bet that if he even did it, it's locked in a draw because it didn't suit his bullshit.
Tova O'Brien, I've not liked her style but I just saw she antagonises the Nat supporters too, so I tip my (non MAGA) hat to Ms O'Brien, she must be doing something right (she's getting accused on the Twitter for making up the Goldsmith Māori gaff, like she said, "you can't make this shit up!").
Anderson Cooper flabbergasted by foolish person: "Wow, that's really ignorant."
She is a nice Girl.
Her name is Tovi. She is like Toddy who is also training for the public. But much much smaller.
Tova and Toddy – have a long way to go. They make stuff up a bit. To get by.
Toddy don't even know a Maori from a Goldsmith. Ultimately Tova will be way in front. Thats' my pick.
The most exciting takeaway from the National Party in Parliament today was that Chris Bishop has cut off his mullet and that Paul Goldsmith is from Ngati Epsom.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/121627591/going-hard-and-early-on-m-bovis-paid-dividends-pm
Looks like another success for the coalition government,
6 new cases in Western Australia today, all from a Kuwaiti live sheep export ship that was cleared to berth by Federal Border Force agents in spite of them being advised that at least 3 crew had ‘elevated temperatures’.
https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-crisis-al-kuwait-crew-stopped-from-disembarking-in-fremantle-port-as-four-crew-aboard-livestock-ship-test-positive-for-coronavirus-ng-b881558631z
"Former Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown has jumped back into the world of politics, running as the Green Party candidate in the Wairarapa electorate." https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/121626389/former-wellington-mayor-celia-wadebrown-running-for-green-party-in-wairarapa
"Speaking to Stuff, Wade-Brown said she was running to maximise the party vote." "Issues of equality, climate change, and rivers matter to people. We've got an opportunity to do a green reset to Covid-19," she said. Wade-Brown is not among the 24 candidates on the Green Party list, and is not expected to make a serious play to win the seat."
"She had been a supporter of John Hart, who ran for the Green Party in the last two elections and only offered to stand when she learnt he was not planning to run again." National haven't selected their candidate yet, and Ron Mark "pulled 19 per cent of the electorate vote in 2017, with more coming from National party voters than Labour voters."
"Wairarapa-based List MP Kieran McAnulty will be running for Labour for a third straight election." Third time lucky, I reckon! "Wade-Brown said she would consider formally endorsing McAnulty for the electorate vote. "We're going to have those conversations over the next couple of weeks. I think he's very widely respected within the local community," she said."
Remembering bold long-term finance minister Grant Robertson. https://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/story/obituary-of-grant-robertson-by-david-slack/
not sure what to make of that tbh.
Slack has a long history of satirical obituaries in his regular newspaper column before those were canned. This one seems wishful..
ah, I didn't know that. That gives a better context.
They used to be in a certain Auckland-centric magazine as well. https://www.metromag.co.nz/society/society-people/the-obituary-of-david-slack-died-2040
National MPs already leaking as new leadership team of Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye suffers disastrous first sitting day.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/05/national-mps-already-leaking-as-new-leadership-team-of-todd-muller-and-nikki-kaye-suffers-disastrous-first-sitting-day.amp.html
Drip. Drip.Drip. Gush!
I see the labour party is paying the recent unemployed twice what the already unemployed are getting.Reminds me of the last labour government who didn't pay working for families to beneficiaries.Elected by the poor govern for the rich
It appears that those nations with governed states and provinces have struggled a bit more with this pandemic.
Squabble with our brother while Grandma dies.
I'm a Cuomo fan, I like anyone that sounds like Tony Soprano and isn't indicted. I love it when they call a bird a boid. In spite of his declaration to keep politics out of it Andrew couldn't resist a stab at Kentucky Governor Mitch McConnell. Mitch had suggested that New York declare bankruptcy. Andrew offered a contrary view, this guy picked up the ball and ran with Andy's view…