Mark Mitchell makes it up, make up for gang members to cover tattòos claiming they do it in Australia. No such thing .Breaking news Mark Mitchell has appointed Suzanna Paul to implement new policy.
A middle class media prepared the way for a middle class government, the online diversity is also from the middle class.
It may be a consequence of the diminishment of centres of resistance to neo-liberalism, the global market crushing of the nation-state economy, ending the capability of government to implement state planning, then the ECA (and worker migration) to diminish the place and role of unions (industry awards) and the funding criteria (per student) model to universities combined with debt to turn them into meal ticket factories (producing people to serve the global market capitalist machine).
Once we were proud to be the best colony, a better English farm and town society. Now our home ownership levels are lower than the UK and still declining. We are now becoming a class society, where half no longer aspire to own their home, and in days past such could not vote and thus their opinion counted for naught.
It's a society conforming to its tax regime, the most unequal in taxing wealth in the entire OECD (35/36 have a CGT and 24/36 have an estate tax).
If ever New Zealand needed a wakeup call to the vulnerability of its road and rail networks, Cyclone Gabrielle provided it. With Gisborne and the East Coast cut off, government agencies turned to 'the blue highway' as a lifeline.
The Government provided a $500,000 grant and $2.25 million underwrite to Eastland Port to charter the cargo ship Rangitata for three months, to bring in vital supplies – and ship out what little produce the region was still able to salvage from its devastated farms and forests.
But with the withdrawal of Maersk shipping line, delays to Aotearoa Shipping Alliance's barge, and now Move Logistics’ cancellation of plans to build and launch a new ship for coastal routes, even that blue highway is under renewed threat.
Earlier this month, Maritime Union national secretary Craig Harrison had hailed the investment in coastal shipping as one of the Labour Government’s key achievements. This morning, the union is expressing concern that the modest growth does not stall. "NZ desperately needs to develop coastal shipping capacity for our regional supply chain," it says. "The incoming Government needs to continue this support."
But the red & blue teams are meant to fight each other, right? To maintain the democracy sham. Whereas the country needs to regenerate infrastructure, and to create effective systems everyone needs to use developmental strategic thinking. To get from polarisation to consensus, one must transcend the status quo. Transcendent mainstreamers are rare, but who else is likely to sort the situation out??
Global warming resilience lite … raiding funds to afford tax cuts.
We could not get produce to the NI from the SI because of problems getting cargo across the Cook Strait – thus higher prices than should have occurred with floods etc. On top of the gib board monopoly consequences …
Another of Michael Wood's schemes that has crashed.
Was there anything he did that worked out well for the New Zealand populace? The only one that I can think of was that he has lost his seat in Parliament. Everything else was a total failure.
The failure is the incoming Governments' " short termism" Using the funds budgeted for other purposes will come back to bite them. Your nastiness is noted, and sadly it is not a surprise.
You mean that a party who has, currently, absolutely no say in what is going on is somehow responsible for the the stupidity of the soon to be former Government's actions?
Jeez [deleted]
[lprent: Since I can’t see anyone of that name in the conversation, I have to assume that you are trying to out or dox the person behind a handle. It is against our policy and we take a very dim view about anyone who who can be perceived as trying to do that. This is your warning. ]
You are possibly a bit young to remember the TV series A Week of It that appeared on New Zealand TV from 1977 to 1979. It featured, among others, McPhail and Gadsby.
To quote from WikiPedia about the show.
"The show popularised the catchphrase "Jeez, Wayne", still heard in New Zealand used as a reaction to another person's comments or actions to indicate disbelief."
I suppose I am showing my advanced age in that I remember it and that you, a comparatively young fellow, don't. So, no. I wasn't intending to "Out somebody". It is only a fond memory of a very funny show.
Not that young. I would have been 16-20 depending on exactly what time of the year that it started and stopped. I remember it well.
Mid next year I can get superannuation.
The only noticeable effect of getting superannuation will be irritation. Most of it will be into the top tax bracket. Currently I am considering not taking it because the cost in my time to account and aggravation of actually filing returns to the IRD is probably more than any return.
At present I have a simple tax structure – PAYE + PIR + no claims of deductions for anything. I just ignore tax benefits for home office, charities, etc as being a waste of time to try to reduce taxation.
On the other hand, if I don't collect it, then the NAct government will only waste the savings on the undeserving affluent and excessively wealthy as unsustainable tax cuts or cross-subsidies thereby wasting all of my efforts since 1975 to pay into Muldoon's superannuation rort. Like the reduction in the bright-line or the low RUC rates for heavy trucks or the way that urban populations pay extra climate change taxes while our most polluting greenhouse gas industry (farming) doesn’t pay anything significiant – and expects us to pay for their tar sealed roads.
I may as well collect it, figure out how not to have to account for it in useless paperwork and just give it away to deserving causes.
The Appropriation (2022/23 Supplementary Estimates) Bill seeks appropriation by Parliament of changes to appropriations and new appropriations for the 2022/23 financial year that the Government agreed to between 22 April, when the 2022/23 Estimates were finalised, and 23 April, when the 2022/23 Supplementary Estimates were finalised. Spending against these appropriations has already been incurred under the authority of imprest supply, but unless this spending is appropriated by Parliament before the end of the 2022/23 financial year, it would become other unauthorised expenditure requiring validation by Parliament in the appropriation (confirmation and validation) bill.
Browse the actual changes if you like – but you wont as its just a sock puppet claim made by the Nats and Actors
Reasons for Change in Appropriation This appropriation increased by $65.403 million to $2,073.794 million for 2022/23 due to: • $41.244 million for the continued delivery of support to tāngata whaikaha Māori and disabled people and their families by addressing increases in volumes as well as inflationary pressures for disability support services • $11.894 million transfer within Vote Social Development for the new entity Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People • $10.613 million for the increase for the new (from 1 July 2022) support workers minimum wage rates included in the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Act 2022 • $1.354 million drawdown of funding for improving relativities for funded sector health workers, and • $756,000 for the Whaikaha Public Sector Pay Adjustment. The increased was offset by $458,000 transfer to Vote Health to provide for the Disability Support System reform
watching now. Interesting start from Glendening, who is arguing liberal values from a libertarian view and placing them in opposition to liberal values from what he calls a 'new left' pov.
It's worth pausing and understanding his liberal views are based in sovereignty of mind and body. Probably not the only irony we will hear.
I don't like his placing science as primary way of knowing (humans knew what male and female were before the advent of modern or older sciences. But he does say the science is based on material, observable reality, and goes on to state his central premise about the laws of logic,
… one type of physical object cannot simultaneously be another type of physical entity.
which leaves TRAs with a definitional, strategic and political predicament. Are TW literally women, in other words female? Or are TW gender non-conforming males with a strong desire to self identify as women?
I think we are thankfully moving past the assertion that TW are female, although I still see it a fair bit.
My sense is that most trans allies want to subsume biological sex under gender to the extent that it is mostly invisible (except for medicine blah blah), rather than thinking someone can literally change sex. Thus Trans Women Are Women (where woman is an identity rather than a material reality).
But that leaves the next predicament: why should trans women's rights trump women's rights?
Anyway, I digress. I agree Molly, that NZ could learn a lot from watching these debates on how to address the issue. TRAs don't want to do that because they know their project is one of social engineering and that their arguments won't hold up under scrutiny. Tbf, most of the new left ones do have good intentions, but tolerance for that is fast running out.
Glendening's next point: if reality is socially constructed, and one believes that language either supports the status quo or can overturn, and one believes that language has that power, then you cannot adopt a live and let live approach, language becomes a zero sum game.
I haven't heard that explanation before, and it makes sense of a lot of what is happening politically at this time, including around gender/sex, but beyond that. It's a huge shift from rationality to society operating from the position that reality is fluid. We're seeing that from Winston Peters as we speak.
then, the importance of knowing what words mean. If a politician talks about women only hospital wards (or female only), we have to know what they mean by that.
My view is that currently we don't. Again, this is the milieu that Peters has re-arisen in.
I'm very surprised you would be unaware of this as you appear well read on these topics generally. This idea that reality (or at least its power structures and hierarchies) is socially constructed (largely meaning its a product of language) is a common thread in the relation of these topics to post-modernism. Of course in fact this idea is just horse shit, its completely incoherent in practice.
For the most part I don't think society is shifting in its thinking of course. Just that most supporters are ignorant of the philosophical basis for the cause they are supporting, find (and have it constructed to be) easier otherwise just to go along with the nonsense than to be disagreeable and unkind.
Seems like a grey area to me. We got socially conditioned into the reality thing when young, and as a physics grad I saw the other side of that monoculture default (a flawed presumption generally held to be true).
Relativism is more to the point than postmodernism nowadays – the latter seeming somewhat dated, like a cultural wind that blew awhile then blew out.
True-believers abound, but less so nowadays due to escalating biodiversity within human groups. The commons will always be there, and even leftists will eventually notice that. Survival for many will hinge on finding common ground to group together on, yet complacency remains inertial in Aotearoa. Perhaps that is a commons we share with the USA (exemplified by Alfred E Neuman's "What, me worry?"). However that social archetype may no longer be influential down the generations. Younger yanks may be worried.
I agree re going along with nonsense, but that is usually a simulation rather than real, huh? Folks play that card if the game seems to call for it at the time…
I don't in fact have a great education background and there are some big gaps in my knowledge (eg economics). But I do understand the reality as a social construct bit. What was new was the understanding that if one does believe that reality is a social construct, and that language has immense power, then it becomes an imperative to control language by whatever means possible. Hadn't made that connection before but it's a good description of the ideological aspects of trans rights.
I'm not so sure we aren't shifting societally. While I think most people are still grounded in material reality, both the rise of conspiracy theory culture and politics, and trans rights activism, both speak to not insignificant movements who no longer work within a material reality frame.
In addition, we have the pressures of social media, cyberspace generally, and now AI. Those are fucking with human relationships with body and mind at the worst possible time, when we are freaking out about climate etc. The motivation to escape our bodies matching the avenues for doing so.
I do agree that many people are going along with the be kind side of TA without necessarily understanding the philosophical and ideological underpinnings.
Absolutely the language policing is a strong theme through the TRA movement and plenty of other ideologically similar movements. This probably also occurs because at inception the concept was more or less coming out of literary departments at universities. The idea was that you could validly interpret a text not with the authors intent in mind but with the readers interpretation at the center. I think this had a larger impact on volume of text analysis more so than the quality of course.
The concerning aspects are more how these supposedly academic movements are behaving. I don't really consider a subject whose basis is to enact political action over knowledge to be legitimate, but that is a central part of many such subjects that they operate around political action rather than knowledge. This is a big part of why they resemble cult like behaviours in many cases.
If you have looked into cults (like the scientology movement) you will see many similarities. As far as I can observe this is just about separating friends and acquaintances of the members into in and out groups. It doesn't seem to matter for scientology that the doctrine is obviously nonsense and the members do understand they are being expected to condition their behaviours to not challenge that obvious knowledge, or the cult tends to cut them off or punish them back into line.
Ultimately these kinds of movements and groups will never match the severe in/out group separation of a cult, but I do thing that having to repair damage caused by expecting members to comply with this nonsense (or face consequences) will be quite difficult when institutions are eventually needing to reform.
In addition, we have the pressures of social media, cyberspace generally, and now AI. Those are fucking with human relationships with body and mind at the worst possible time, when we are freaking out about climate etc. The motivation to escape our bodies matching the avenues for doing so.
I suspect that you are confusing effect with cause.
This is a process that has been in progress since the printing press was invented, thereby reducing the cost of transmission of ideas. The christian reformation and the doctrinaire religious wars in Europe being the classic exemplar. But the same schisms happened in most religious regions as printing became widespread.
It also started the secular intrusions of things like scientific thinking, basic economic theory, and theories about the process of government that roiled following centuries. Plus of course the development and spread of conspiracy theories, porn, and much wider revolutionary groups.
You can also see in history exactly the same calls for exactly the same reasons for restricting, licensing, taxing and controlling the process of printing. The words and phasing eerily echo the same calls to control the internet these days.
This too will pass. We just have the usual problem that our generations are kind of long. Most people learn most of what they can learn as a process before they hit 25-30. They spend the rest of their long lives worrying about what their kids and grand-kids are learning.
BTW: What you call "AI" is simple data mining and pulling inferences and correlations out of the data that get expressed as algorithms. It is just another technology like TV, radio, newspapers, printing, double ledger book-keeping, writing, agriculture, fire…. each of which caused massive disruptions in the old ways of doing things.
People have been doing analysis of data patterns since they started to get serious about accounting or started to collect data about people or systems.
Generally the generative AI is worse at figuring out those algorithms than the best of the intuitive humans to who can the same thing with less electricity. Ever watch a forensic accountant read transaction patterns? I can do it after I worked on accounting computer systems for a few years. It is just a learned skill.
The advertising industry thrived on those individuals with learned or intuitive skills, as did the publishing industry, as did the propaganda industry, the electronics industry, managers, the computer industry….. What generative AI is doing is providing similar but probably always inferior service at a cheaper cost.
It isn't any different from being able to get on the net to find out information about how to do things that I have been doing since the mid-1980s. I've taught university classes in how to search online data, how to distinguish significance from dross, and how to extract reproducible patterns as algorithms.
The world shifts and the over-30s spend their time saying that it is all going too fast while the under 30s parents have already partially adapted to the technologies that they grew up with, and are starting to worry about what their kids now know.
– this is what adults are able to do while holding opposing views:
Freda Wallace was appalling. I disagree with Peter Tatchell most of the time and some of his arguments are just pig ignorant and demonstrate he doesn't listen to women. But at least he can formulate an argument based on his beliefs and values. Wallace was there to throw shit at Sex Matters, LGBA and Joyce and seemed incapable of responding to points raised. This is classic TRA. Don't address the issues, instead make declarative statements about the way things are and that in this format aren't so easily rebutted.
Although as Joyce points out, the reason Wallace is there is because Stonewall, Mermaids and the Trans orgs won't front up. In large part because they can't make an argument beyond the ideology.
Joyce was a delight to watch, she's very good at what she does now, and has a first class mind, albeit tempered as the limits of her patience were tested in this panel.
What a real charmer Freda is! Mini skirt up around his upper thighs, admitted he is a fetishist, agressive, incoherant arguements and getting drunker as the debate goes on (so much so his debating partner told him to lay off the drink).
No Freda, I don't want you in my change room. Case closed.
My respect for Tatchell went up a bit at that point, but I would also guess it's the same paternalistic stuff that makes him ignore what women are saying about the issues.
Google has for awhile been informing those on You Tube, they do not allow people to view videos on You Tube if they have ad blocker, now it's 3 more videos and then blocked.
The social media conspiracy of ravens flock together, (first gathering information they can on-sell for either money, or government monopoly protection). Obey or it’s the murder of old crows.
X.com man started the charging on top of that game and now it is all on.
I'm completely blocked on mac Firefox now until I whitelist youtube. I'm watching YT on Safari or Brave now with no issues (thus far). Possibly because the ad blocks are built in rather than add ons like FF.
Bella is not the only celebrity to speak out on the devastating war — Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who served in her country’s defence forces as a combat trainer several years ago, called for onlookers not to “sit on the fence” as hundreds are killed.
Gal Gadot put up a social media post, since removed (she was told to be quiet), saying innocent civilian life – Israeli or Palestinian life is equal.
And darkness was upon the face of the deep. Upon the face of the abyss of the massacre in the south, darkness is taking hold of Israel. Now it is still a gathering of clouds, but it may turn to darkness: Israel is going mad. The left is “wising up,” the right is growing more extreme,and McCarthyism and fascism reign.
Wartime is always a time of silencing, uniformity of opinion, racism, incitement and hatred; absolute enlistment in service of propaganda, the end of tolerance and the persecution of anyone who dares step out of line. The atrocities perpetrated by Hamas in the south brought all of these manifestations to extreme levels, as if the atrocities justify the loss of all restraint.
Yeah. There must be twenty bald headed male comedians wearing blue suits to make up the national party.
The first week episode:
1. Compulsory make up on gangs
2. Winnie finally realises the terrorist didn't send him the manifesto cause he wasn't important enough
3. Luxon intends to move parliament to Auckland – starts with coalition negotiations
4. Ramraids stop since election – well at least from media headlines – as did all the logs on Gisborne beaches – signs from god …..
5. Shane Reti styopd rebuild of public hospital as it competes with his share-holding one
6. National announces it is rolling back all the nothings that Labour did in first 100 days
@ 20 secs there looks like someone in blackface. Ironically they seem to have a gang member vibe from the '80's- WW11 german helmet, insignia on sleeveless army surplus shirt.
You are right about the material for satire, TBF, from both sides of the house.
Sometimes you despair. You really do. Fresh off leading Labour to its ugliest election result since 1990,* Chris Hipkins has decided to misdiagnose matters, because the Government he led cannot possibly have been wrong about anything. *In 2011 and 2014, people were willing to save Labour’s electorate ...
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Jerry Coyne writes – This article from New Zealand’s Newsroom site was written by Julie Rowland, the deputy dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland as well as a geologist and the Director of the Ngā Ara Whetū | Centre for Climate, Biodiversity & Society. In other ...
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The big dairy co-op Fonterra had some Christmas cheer to offer its farmers this week, increasing its forecast farmgate milk price and earnings guidance for the year after what it calls a strong start to the year. The forecast midpoint for the 2023/24 season is up 25cs to $7.50 per ...
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Hi,Paying Webworm members such as yourself keep this thing running, so as 2023 draws to close, I wanted to do two things to say a giant, loud “THANKS”. Firstly — I’m giving away 10 Mister Organ blu-rays in New Zealand, and another 10 in America. More details down below.Secondly — ...
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Finance Minister Nicola Willis late yesterday stopped only slightly short of accusing her predecessor Grant Robertson of cooking the books. She complained that the Half Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU), due to be made public on December 20, would show “fiscal cliffs” that would amount to “billions of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The year was 2015. ‘Uptown Funk’ with Bruno Mars was at the top of the music charts. Jurassic World was the most popular new movie in theaters. And decades of futility in international climate negotiations was about to come to an end in ...
As a heads-up, I am not one of those people who stay awake at night thinking about weird Culture War nonsense. At least so far as the current Maori/Constitutional arrangements go. In fact, I actually consider it the least important issue facing the day to day lives of New ...
Strong Words: “We do not consent, we do not surrender, we do not cede, we do not submit; we, the indigenous, are rising. We do not buy into the colonial fictions this House is built upon. Te Pāti Māori pledges allegiance to our mokopuna, our whenua, and Te Tiriti o ...
Some days it feels like the only thing to say is: Seriously? No, really. Seriously?OneSomeone has used their health department access to share data about vaccinations and patients, and inform the world that New Zealanders have been dying in their hundreds of thousands from the evil vaccine. This of course is pure ...
Buzz from the Beehive After $21.8 million was spent on investigations, the plug has been pulled on the Lake Onslow pumped-hydro electricity scheme, The scheme – that technically could have solved New Zealand’s looming energy shortage, according to its champions – was a key part of the defeated Labour government’s ...
If those elected to the Māori Seats refuse to take them, then what possible reason could the country have for retaining them?Chris Trotter writes – Christmas is fast approaching, which, as it does every year, means gearing up for an abstruse general knowledge question. “Who was ...
The coalition party agreements are mainly about returning to 2017 when National lost power. They show commonalities but also some serious divergencies.Brian Easton writes – The two coalition agreements – one National and ACT, the other National and New Zealand First – are more than policy documents. ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – New Zealand’s international relations are under new management. And Winston Peters, the new foreign minister, is already setting a change agenda. As expected, this includes a more pro-US positioning when it comes to the Pacific – where Peters will be picking up where he ...
The most charitable explanation for National’s behaviour over the smokefree legislation is that they have dutifully fulfilled the wishes of the Big Tobacco lobby and then cast around – incompetently, as it turns out – for excuses that might sell this health policy U-turn to the public. The less charitable ...
As Deb Te Kawa writes in an op-ed, the new Government seems to have immediately bought itself fights with just about everyone. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Here’s my pick of the top 10 news and analysis links elsewhere as of 10 am on Monday December 4, including:Palau’s President ...
Let’s begin today by thinking about job interviews.During my career in Software Development I must have interviewed hundreds of people, hired at least a hundred, but few stick in the memory.I remember one guy who was so laid back he was practically horizontal, leaning back in his chair until his ...
New Zealand’s international relations are under new management. And Winston Peters, the new foreign minister, is already setting a change agenda. As expected, this includes a more pro-US positioning when it comes to the Pacific – where Peters will be picking up where he left off. Peters sought to align ...
Auckland’s city rail link is the most expensive rail project in the world per km, and the CRL boss has described the cost of infrastructure construction in Aotearoa as a crisis. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The 3.5 km City Rail Link (CRL) tunnel under Auckland’s CBD has cost ...
The first big test of the new Government’s approach to Treaty matters is likely to be seen in the return of the Resource Management Act. RMA Minister Chris Bishop has confirmed that he intends to introduce legislation to repeal Labour’s recently passed Natural and Built Environments Act and its ...
Time to revisit something I haven’t covered in a while: the D&D campaign, with Saqua the aquatic half-vampire. Last seen in July: https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2023/07/27/the-song-of-saqua-volume-ii/ The delay is understandable, once one realises that the interim saw our DM come down with a life-threatening medical situation. They have since survived to make ...
A chronological listing of news and opinion articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Nov 26, 2023 thru Dec 2, 2023. Story of the Week CO2 readings from Mauna Loa show failure to combat climate changeDaily atmospheric carbon dioxide data from Hawaiian volcano more ...
Affirmative Action was a key theme at this election, although I don’t recall anyone using those particular words during the campaign.They’re positive words, and the way the topic was talked about was anything but. It certainly wasn’t a campaign of saying that Affirmative Action was a good thing, but that, ...
It was at the end of the Foxton straights, at the end of 1978, at 100km/h, that someone tried to grab me from behind on my Yamaha.They seemed to be yanking my backpack. My first thought was outrage. My second was: but how? Where have they come from? And my ...
There’s no news to be gleaned from the government’s official website today – it contains nothing more than the message about the site being under maintenance. The time this maintenance job is taking and the costs being incurred have us musing on the government’s commitment to an assault on inflation. ...
Don’t you sometimes wish they’d just tell the truth? No matter how abhorrent or ugly, just straight up tell us the truth?C’mon guys, what you’re doing is bad enough anyway, pretending you’re not is only adding insult to injury.Instead of all this bollocks about the Smokefree changes being to do ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past week’s editions.Friday Under New Management Week in review, quiz style1. Which of these best describes Aotearoa?a. Progressive nation, proud of its egalitarian spirit and belief in a fair go b. Best little country on the planet c. ...
Like earlier this year, members from our team will be involved with next year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). The conference will take place on premise in Vienna as well as online from April 14 to 19, 2024. The session catalog has been available since November 1 ...
1. Which of these best describes Aotearoa?a. Progressive nation, proud of its egalitarian spirit and belief in a fair go b. Best little country on the planet c. Under New Management 2. Which of these best describes the 100 days of action announced this week by the new government?a. Petulantb. Simplistic and wrongheaded c. ...
Sorry to say, the government’s official website is still out of action. When Point of Order paid its daily visit, the message was the same as it has been for the past week: Site under maintenanceBeehive.govt.nz is currently under maintenance. We will be back shortly. Thank you for your ...
Labour’s immigration spokesperson Phil Twyford is calling on the Government to follow the example of Australia and help New Zealanders’ close family members stuck in Gaza to escape and take shelter here. ...
The Green Party is urging the Government to recognise its commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi so our tamariki and mokopuna can grow up in an Aotearoa where their language is celebrated, their health is prioritised, and their whenua is protected. ...
By scrapping Aotearoa’s world-leading smokefree laws, this government is sacrificing Māori lives to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. Not only is this plan revolting, but it doesn’t add up. Treasury has estimated that the reversal of smokefree laws to pay for tax cuts will cost our health system $5.25bn, ...
Figures showing National needs to find another $900 million for landlords highlights the mess this coalition Government is in less than a week into the job. ...
Community organisations, mana whenua and the Greens have written to the incoming Minister of Oceans and Fisheries to call for the progression without delay of the Hauraki Gulf/Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. ...
"On behalf of the Labour Party I would like to congratulate Christopher Luxon on his appointment as Prime Minister,” Labour Party Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
NZ First has gotten their wish to ‘take our country back’ to the 1800s with a policy program that will white-wash Aotearoa and erase tangata whenua rights. By disestablishing the Māori Health Authority this Government has condemned Māori to die seven years earlier than Pākehā. By removing Treaty obligations from ...
Te Pāti Māori have called for the resignation of the Ministry of Foreign and Trade chief executive Chris Seed following his decision to erase te reo Māori from government communications. While the country still waits for a new government to be formed, Mr Seed took it upon himself to undermine ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon joined Cyclone Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell and Transport and Local Government Minister Simeon Brown, to meet leaders of cyclone and flood-affected regions in the Hawke’s Bay. The visit reinforced the coalition Government’s commitment to support the region and better understand its ongoing requirements, Mr Mitchell says. ...
New Zealand has joined the UK and other partners in condemning malicious cyber activity conducted by the Russian Government, Minister Responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau Judith Collins says. The statement follows the UK’s attribution today of malicious cyber activity impacting its domestic democratic institutions and processes, as well ...
The Government has begun the process of disestablishing Te Pūkenga as part of its 100-day plan, Minister for Tertiary Education and Skills Penny Simmonds says. “I have started putting that plan into action and have met with the chair and chief Executive of Te Pūkenga to advise them of my ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will be leaving for Dubai today to attend COP28, the 28th annual UN climate summit, this week. Simon Watts says he will push for accelerated action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement, deliver New Zealand’s national statement and connect with partner countries, private sector leaders ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins yesterday announced New Zealand will host next year’s South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting (SPDMM). “Having just returned from this year’s meeting in Nouméa, I witnessed first-hand the value of meeting with my Pacific counterparts to discuss regional security and defence matters. I welcome the opportunity to ...
The Government is committed to lifting school achievement in the basics and that starts with removing distractions so young people can focus on their learning, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. The 2022 PISA results released this week found that Kiwi kids ranked 5th in the world for being distracted ...
Today I met with Police Commissioner Andrew Coster to set out my expectations, which he has agreed to, says Police Minister Mark Mitchell. Under section 16(1) of the Policing Act 2008, the Minister can expect the Police Commissioner to deliver on the Government’s direction and priorities, as now outlined in ...
New Zealand needs a strong and stable Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that is well placed for the future, after emission units failed to sell for the fourth and final auction of the year, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. At today’s auction, 15 million New Zealand units (NZUs) – each ...
With 2022 PISA results showing a decline in achievement, Education Minister Erica Stanford is confident that the Coalition Government’s 100-day plan for education will improve outcomes for Kiwi kids. The 2022 PISA results show a significant decline in the performance of 15-year-old students in maths compared to 2018 and confirms ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today departed for New Caledonia to attend the 8th annual South Pacific Defence Ministers’ meeting (SPDMM). “This meeting is an excellent opportunity to meet face-to-face with my Pacific counterparts to discuss regional security matters and to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the Pacific,” Judith Collins says. ...
Putting more money in the pockets of hard-working families is a priority of this Coalition Government, starting with an increase to Working for Families, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says. “We are starting our 100-day plan with a laser focus on bringing down the cost of living, because that is what ...
Most weeks, following Cabinet, the Prime Minister holds a press conference for members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. This page contains the transcripts from those press conferences, which are supplied by Hansard to the Office of the Prime Minister. It is important to note that the transcripts have not been edited ...
The Government has axed the $16 billion Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme championed by the previous government, Energy Minister Simeon Brown says. “This hugely wasteful project was pouring money down the drain at a time when we need to be reining in spending and focussing on rebuilding the economy and ...
New Zealand welcomes the further one-day extension of the pause in fighting, which will allow the delivery of more urgently-needed humanitarian aid into Gaza and the release of more hostages, Foreign Minister Winston Peters said. “The human cost of the conflict is horrific, and New Zealand wants to see the violence ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today expressed on behalf of the New Zealand Government his condolences to the family of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has passed away at the age of 100 at his home in Connecticut. “While opinions on his legacy are varied, Secretary Kissinger was ...
Every child deserves a world-leading education, and the Coalition Government is making that a priority as part of its 100-day plan. Education Minister Erica Stanford says that will start with banning cellphone use at school and ensuring all primary students spend one hour on reading, writing, and maths each day. ...
I would like to begin by echoing the Prime Minister’s thanks to the organisers of this Summit, Fran O’Sullivan and the Auckland Business Chamber. I want to also acknowledge the many leading exporters, sector representatives, diplomats, and other leaders we have joining us in the room. In particular, I would like ...
Good morning. Thank you, Rosemary, for your warm introduction, and to Fran and Simon for this opportunity to make some brief comments about New Zealand’s relationship with the United States. This is also a chance to acknowledge my colleague, Minister for Trade Todd McClay, Ambassador Tom Udall, Secretary of Foreign ...
Good morning, tēnā koutou and namaskar. Many thanks, Michael, for your warm welcome. I would like to acknowledge the work of the India New Zealand Business Council in facilitating today’s event and for the Council’s broader work in supporting a coordinated approach for lifting New Zealand-India relations. I want to also ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has laid out the Coalition Government’s plan for its first 100 days from today. “The last few years have been incredibly tough for so many New Zealanders. People have put their trust in National, ACT and NZ First to steer them towards a better, more prosperous ...
A significant milestone in ratifying the NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was reached last night, with 524 of the 705 member European Parliament voting in favour to approve the agreement. “I’m delighted to hear of the successful vote to approve the NZ-EU FTA in the European Parliament overnight. This is ...
A landmark Waitangi Tribunal report into injustices suffered by Ngāpuhi will strengthen the iwi's case as it looks to restart its stalled Treaty settlement negotiations, a hapū leader says. ...
In just 18 months, the Auckland-based YouTube channel has gone from working from home and out of cafes to a brand new multi-million dollar studio. Sam Brooks asks the trio how they pulled it off, and what they’re planning to do with it.On December 4, a video called “The ...
The Anika Moa Unleashed host unleashes her thoughts on After the Party, Paul Holmes, The Walking Dead, stalking celebrities and more. Anika Moa has a proud history of angering strangers online, whether it’s due to her tattoos, her love life, or something else entirely. When she sits down with The ...
Searching widely for ways to overcome deep opposition by fossil fuel nations to a phase-out of their products, the President of COP28 enlisted an ally while negotiators sought subtler language yesterday. “We have been asked by the UAE presidency to help find common language that will be acceptable ...
With a topic so universal, it’s almost always about something bigger. Consider the contents of your fridge. What kinds of fruits and vegetables are in your crisper drawer? How much did that block of cheese set you back? Where did you source most of this kai from? Are there ingredients ...
You can read the full story, plus see photographs from Craig McKenzie, in the November-December issue of New Zealand Geographic magazine, or on their website. The bittern’s eerie, booming call sounds like a lament, a tangi ringing across the marshes. Now, the birds themselves are in trouble. ...
Opinion: You may have been there, waiting your turn, wearing an ill-fitting hospital gown, surrounded by a flurry of staff, the smell of disinfectant in the air. If you’ve ever undergone surgery, you probably know the nervous, stress-laden pre-op feeling. What may come as a surprise is that ...
1. In the evening and in the night, I sit on the balcony and think of you. I can’t see the water but I know it’s there, soft and slow. We bathed in it that last day, you and I, when the dusk hung heavy as cloth of gold ...
Alex Casey unearths the origin story of an New Zealand icon – featuring a surprise cameo from an international comedy megastar. At first glance, the Facebook post from a Waipu cafe reads like any other heartfelt change in ownership announcement. “George and Amber have reflected on their involvement in our ...
This week on Their house, my garden, why my spinach plant has grown suspiciously tall, and how to deal with your own over-eager plants. Beginner gardeners would be forgiven for thinking a plant growing tall is reason to celebrate. We are, after all, the kind of species who mark door ...
Luxon drove the crumbling SH2 with a handful of MPs on Friday morning to reach the small town, gauge progress of its recovery, and learn what it needs from the new government. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bianca Baggiarini, Lecturer, Australian National University Last week, reports emerged that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are using an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Habsora (Hebrew for “The Gospel”) to select targets in the war on Hamas in Gaza. The system has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Johan Lidberg, Associate Professor, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University The most significant recommendation in the Senate inquiry report on the functionality of the Commonwealth FOI system is this: move the federal Freedom of Information (FOI) function from the Office ...
Analysis: The government was under attack on multiple fronts during a week of relentless criticism and then faced its first Question Time in Parliament, Peter Wilson writes. ...
Well, it’s 4.30pm on a Friday which feels as appropriate time as ever to say goodbye. The Spinoff’s live updates have come to an end, almost four years after they were first switched on. If you missed my explainer this morning of what’s going on, here it is. In short: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Di Winkler, Adjunct Associate Professor, La Trobe University Shutterstock A home – in the physical and emotional sense – is foundational to living an ordinary life with a feeling of inclusion. National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants with the highest ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Roberts, Conjoint Associate Professor in clinical pharmacology and toxicology, St Vincent’s Healthcare Clinical Campus, UNSW Sydney Veronika Kunitsyna/Shutterstock Red imported fire ants are a particularly nasty type of ant because they are aggressive, and inflict painful stings that may ...
Christopher Luxon says the new government is going to continue everything that the previous one put into place to help with the recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle. ...
Te Whatu Ora is continuing to investigate after a data breach that saw vaccine-related information shared online last week. The agency is liaising with the Privacy Commissioner and said it will make “any appropriate notifications” if individuals were impacted by the breach. “Alongside the work to identify the material allegedly ...
Live - Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been in Wairoa this morning to gauge progress of the town's recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle. Watch a media conference with him here. ...
Sam Brooks reviews a new immersive film experience at Auckland’s planetarium.Journalists get invited to review things all the time. Books, films, shows, exhibitions, all of it. I say yes to a lot of them and “no, sorry” to a bit more. Very rarely do I go, “Absolutely I need ...
Waka Kotahi has begun the process of re-adopting its former name, the New Zealand Transport Agency (or NZTA). It follows a directive from the new government that public agencies should have their primary name in English and not te reo. This came as part of the coalition deal between National ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Pavlovich, Senior lecturer in the School of Accounting and Commercial Law, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington The new coalition government has announced a suite of tax reforms, including reintroducing the ability for property investors to deduct the interest ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1The Bee Stingby Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton, $37) The runner-up for the 2023 Booker Prize ...
A new poem by Ōtepoti poet Jasmine O M Taylor. a retreat if you find a chance before they’ve all melted into the air find time to get on a glacier and find a cave in the glacier and go inside the cave inside the glacier it will speak to ...
Our award-winning podcast assesses the opening stanza of the Luxon-led government. After the long, serene political gap as coalition talks went on, politics has roared back with plenty of shouting and not so much rizz. Toby Manhire, Ben Thomas and Annabelle Lee-Mather assess the early exchanges, including Winston Peters’ ...
“The new government has a clear choice to make before Christmas. Do they live up to their stated intention of governing for all New Zealanders, or do they dash the hopes of tens of thousands of kiwi workers by unilaterally abolishing Fair Pay ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kimberley Reid, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Atmospheric Sciences, Monash University titoOnz, Shutterstock You’ve probably heard El Niño brings hot and dry weather to the eastern states, but what about the rest of Australia? Are we all in for a scorcher ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Currie, Professor of Nursing, Queensland University of Technology Shutterstock Heatwaves are a major public health hazard. Socially disadvantaged people are especially exposed to extreme heat and other impacts of climate change. Many people experiencing homelessness – more than 120,000 ...
The Free Speech Union has sent 14 Cabinet Ministers a comprehensive Briefing to the Incoming Government, outlining five key areas of policy that the Government must address in order to protect and expand Kiwis’ speech rights. We look forward to ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis says she has already met twice with KiwiRail bosses over a "major cost blowout" in the project to replace the Interislander ferries. ...
With the new government gaining international infamy for its climate policy, for rangatahi Māori like Kaeden Watts, attending climate conferences is more important than ever. Every year world leaders meet for the annual Conference of the Parties (Cop), the world’s most powerful climate crisis conference. Despite Cop being criticised for ...
Accidental Partridge is one of my favourite Twitter (I am never going to call it X) accounts, and given today is the last day of live updates I think it’s absolutely fair I include a video from it. If you don’t know why it’s called Accidental Partridge, go watch all ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the National Party to front up to consumers who will face 15% higher prices for some services from the likes of Uber, Airbnb and food delivery apps after their app tax U-turn rather than trying to erase all ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hunter Fujak, Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University While 2023 was a watershed year for Australian women’s sport due to the Matildas’ stirring run at the Women’s World Cup, netball is going through its worst period ever. Netball Australia and the ...
The prime minister is spending the day out of Wellington, touring parts of cyclone-damaged Hawke’s Bay and meeting with senior leaders in the community. Christopher Luxon began the day in Wairoa, where he met with mayor Craig Little. Later, he’ll head to Napier for a meeting with regional council members. ...
How will the new government look at our television? Duncan Greive reflects on this year’s awards ceremony. This is an excerpt from The Spinoff’s weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. The NZ TV Awards took place in downtown Auckland on Tuesday, which coincided with Te Pāti Māori’s National Māori ...
Responding to news that Wellington City Councillors have voted down a proposal to reduce business rates in the capital, Taxpayers’ Union Policy Adviser, James Ross, said: “When Mayor Tory Whanau comes out with a line like ‘I couldn’t in good ...
The new tertiary education minister says Te Pūkenga will be replaced with eight to 10 individual institutions, and hopes legislation will be in place within eight months. ...
Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission has today launched a short film calling for the public and government to champion and protect human rights ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Seventy-five years on, ...
The parliamentary motion passed today , a full two months after Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians began, says: "Express grave concern at the ongoing violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories, unequivocally condemn ...
To replace $700 million a year of revenues lost from a foreign buyers tax, the new coalition government is dumping the previous government’s smokefree 2025 goal. This relaxing of policies will keep more people smoking for longer, costing thousands of lives per year and at least $10 billion is extra ...
London has always been a hard place to live, but in 2023, it’s almost impossible. Charlotte Doyle, a New Zealander currently living in London, explores why we keep heading there. “You’re dreaming,” the letting agent tells me impatiently over the phone. “A one-bedroom for £1,500 per month is a needle ...
With The Project wrapping up last week (you can read Duncan Greive’s excellent reflections on that here), Warner Bros Discovery has announced broadcaster Ryan Bridge will host a brand new current affairs show for Three. The currently unnamed show will focus on live news and interviews and is a return ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew H. Holden, Lecturer, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland Dot-underwing moth (_Eudocima materna_) found in the researchers’ yard.Matthew Holden, CC BY-NC We are biodiversity researchers – an ecologist, a mathematician and a taxonomist – who were locked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Bennett, Disability Program Director, Grattan Institute The long-awaited NDIS review has looked far beyond the National Disability Insurance Scheme, taking a bird’s eye view of disability services in Australia. Critical to the future of the NDIS are services for people with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca J McLeod, Senior Research Fellow in Marine Ecology, University of Otago Climate change might not be high on its immediate agenda, but New Zealand’s new government does have one potentially significant and innovative policy. Recognising the marine environment’s ability to remove ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Happé, Graduate researcher in art history and material culture studies, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock As we get closer to Christmas, your family will probably have some kind of gathering. You will reunite with people who you might not ...
Te Whatu Ora IT worker Barry Young had a “relatively muted” digital presence prior to his arrest last week over a massive Covid data breach, Stuff reports. Young has since become something of a cause celebre among vacccine sceptics, appearing on online shows hosted by local conspiracy theorist Liz Gunn and ...
After an 11 year hiatus, legendary Aotearoa hip-hop group Home Brew are back today with their first new album in over a decade, Run it Back, and will continue that reunion at Laneway Festival in February. Breaking their indefinite hiatus, Run it Back comes off the back off the 2023 ...
There may be less than a fortnight left in the political year, but politicians seem determined to make the final days count, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Question time is ...
Labour's leader says O'Connor is "incredibly passionate" about the issue but party policy is that relevant international bodies will determine whether Israel's actions are lawful. ...
The Spinoff’s live updates editor reflects on three-and-a-half years in the role, and looks forward to what’s next. Today marks the final day of live updates on The Spinoff. It’s a big day for me given I have been editing the live updates since mid-2020, but it’s also a big ...
On a quiet morning before the first parliamentary question time of the new term, Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon took a moment to analyse and reflect on their election campaigns. When Chris Hipkins was sworn in as prime minister on January 21, 2023, he had a feeling of optimism and ...
Analysis: The United Nations’ COP28 climate negotiations have begun their final phase with only five days or so left to agree a wide range of measures designed to accelerate nations’ climate responses in coming years. While the draft text prepared by government officials over the past week has some ...
Liv McGoverne has just returned from an enjoyable season playing rugby in England, but playing there in a Black Ferns jersey, on the sport’s biggest stage, remains the ultimate goal. McGoverne, 26, played the 2022-23 campaign for Exeter Chiefs in the Premier 15s competition. Coached by former England half-back ...
FICTION 1 The Girl from London by Olivia Spooner (Hachette, $37.99) An ideal Xmas present for the commercial fiction reader who would relish a wartime story of a shipboard romance. 2 The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35) An ideal Xmas present for the ...
After most of a billion dollars and six years’ work, the Puhoi to Warkworth section of State Highway 1 has been warmly received by long-distance motorists no longer slowed down by small town traffic lights. Where once cars would back bumper to bumper on a Sunday evening, now the ...
The first regular sitting day of the new Parliament took place on Thursday and the country got a peek at what Question Time will look like over the next three years. The sitting started with a rare moment of cross-party unity, when the Government adopted Labour MP Phil Twyford’s ...
It could be the most consequential international climate change conference yet, but it’s being held in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s major oil producers and led by one of the country’s top oil bosses. Newsroom journalist Rod Oram is attending COP28 and joins The Detail from ...
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Opinion: Courts are halls of justice, but they are also well-financed institutional purchasers of goods and services, outsourcing much of their work to private consultants and contractors, including lawyers, advocates, psychologists, social workers, and drug counsellors who earn their living from court contracts. Though there is nothing inherently wrong ...
Phasing out fossil fuels is the subject of much negotiation at Cop28 this week. But the wording will be fiercely debated, and the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists looms large.This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof, brought to you by AMP. Sign up here. The government’s plans ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wesley Morgan, Research Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University Fiji was flooded by a severe cyclone in 2016.ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock The federal government has announced an extra A$150 million for climate finance – including $100 million for the Pacific to help protect its ...
Mark Mitchell makes it up, make up for gang members to cover tattòos claiming they do it in Australia. No such thing .Breaking news Mark Mitchell has appointed Suzanna Paul to implement new policy.
Well done Trickledown for your "scoop" of Suzanne Paul's new role as makeup consultant to the incoming government.
Is this to be the MO of the new government- make it up or cover it up, aka lies and deceit?
And they say we get the government we deserve!
A middle class media prepared the way for a middle class government, the online diversity is also from the middle class.
It may be a consequence of the diminishment of centres of resistance to neo-liberalism, the global market crushing of the nation-state economy, ending the capability of government to implement state planning, then the ECA (and worker migration) to diminish the place and role of unions (industry awards) and the funding criteria (per student) model to universities combined with debt to turn them into meal ticket factories (producing people to serve the global market capitalist machine).
Once we were proud to be the best colony, a better English farm and town society. Now our home ownership levels are lower than the UK and still declining. We are now becoming a class society, where half no longer aspire to own their home, and in days past such could not vote and thus their opinion counted for naught.
It's a society conforming to its tax regime, the most unequal in taxing wealth in the entire OECD (35/36 have a CGT and 24/36 have an estate tax).
It already feels like "The Great Postponement" where serious problems are parked to fester, while we try a re-run of the Key playbook.
Infrastructure crisis in Aotearoa: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/taxpayer-investment-in-salvaging-coastal-shipping-founders
But the red & blue teams are meant to fight each other, right? To maintain the democracy sham. Whereas the country needs to regenerate infrastructure, and to create effective systems everyone needs to use developmental strategic thinking. To get from polarisation to consensus, one must transcend the status quo. Transcendent mainstreamers are rare, but who else is likely to sort the situation out??
Global warming resilience lite … raiding funds to afford tax cuts.
We could not get produce to the NI from the SI because of problems getting cargo across the Cook Strait – thus higher prices than should have occurred with floods etc. On top of the gib board monopoly consequences …
Another of Michael Wood's schemes that has crashed.
Was there anything he did that worked out well for the New Zealand populace? The only one that I can think of was that he has lost his seat in Parliament. Everything else was a total failure.
Jeez you are a sad little man
Alwyn.
The failure is the incoming Governments' " short termism" Using the funds budgeted for other purposes will come back to bite them. Your nastiness is noted, and sadly it is not a surprise.
"The failure is the incoming Governments".
You mean that a party who has, currently, absolutely no say in what is going on is somehow responsible for the the stupidity of the soon to be former Government's actions?
Jeez [deleted]
[lprent: Since I can’t see anyone of that name in the conversation, I have to assume that you are trying to out or dox the person behind a handle. It is against our policy and we take a very dim view about anyone who who can be perceived as trying to do that. This is your warning. ]
See my moderator note
You are possibly a bit young to remember the TV series A Week of It that appeared on New Zealand TV from 1977 to 1979. It featured, among others, McPhail and Gadsby.
To quote from WikiPedia about the show.
"The show popularised the catchphrase "Jeez, Wayne", still heard in New Zealand used as a reaction to another person's comments or actions to indicate disbelief."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Week_of_It
I suppose I am showing my advanced age in that I remember it and that you, a comparatively young fellow, don't. So, no. I wasn't intending to "Out somebody". It is only a fond memory of a very funny show.
That explains it.
Not that young. I would have been 16-20 depending on exactly what time of the year that it started and stopped. I remember it well.
Mid next year I can get superannuation.
The only noticeable effect of getting superannuation will be irritation. Most of it will be into the top tax bracket. Currently I am considering not taking it because the cost in my time to account and aggravation of actually filing returns to the IRD is probably more than any return.
At present I have a simple tax structure – PAYE + PIR + no claims of deductions for anything. I just ignore tax benefits for home office, charities, etc as being a waste of time to try to reduce taxation.
On the other hand, if I don't collect it, then the NAct government will only waste the savings on the undeserving affluent and excessively wealthy as unsustainable tax cuts or cross-subsidies thereby wasting all of my efforts since 1975 to pay into Muldoon's superannuation rort. Like the reduction in the bright-line or the low RUC rates for heavy trucks or the way that urban populations pay extra climate change taxes while our most polluting greenhouse gas industry (farming) doesn’t pay anything significiant – and expects us to pay for their tar sealed roads.
I may as well collect it, figure out how not to have to account for it in useless paperwork and just give it away to deserving causes.
Every government re-prioritises budgeted spending
Some is under spend other times its over spend/more allocated
Its all done via Supplementary Estimates bill and is passed by Parliament
as Robertson said earlier this year
Browse the actual changes if you like – but you wont as its just a sock puppet claim made by the Nats and Actors
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/search?f%5B0%5D=issue_status%3A%21%282475%7C5527%29&f%5B1%5D=resource_type%3A2624
eg Social Welfare Supplementaries description
Reasons for Change in Appropriation This appropriation increased by $65.403 million to $2,073.794 million for 2022/23 due to: • $41.244 million for the continued delivery of support to tāngata whaikaha Māori and disabled people and their families by addressing increases in volumes as well as inflationary pressures for disability support services • $11.894 million transfer within Vote Social Development for the new entity Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People • $10.613 million for the increase for the new (from 1 July 2022) support workers minimum wage rates included in the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Act 2022 • $1.354 million drawdown of funding for improving relativities for funded sector health workers, and • $756,000 for the Whaikaha Public Sector Pay Adjustment. The increased was offset by $458,000 transfer to Vote Health to provide for the Disability Support System reform
Given the fallout from NZ celebrating the silencing of women continues – https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/posie-parker-assault-case-tomato-juice-protester-eli-rubashkyn-fails-in-bid-to-have-charges-dropped/5BT76CBC3RCM3CVTDYXGA6DLWI/
– this is what adults are able to do while holding opposing views:
One-hour discussion:
On the Panel:
https://youtu.be/Va3i-_Fbfpo?si=jNXzxPbZ9sPrjx7p
watching now. Interesting start from Glendening, who is arguing liberal values from a libertarian view and placing them in opposition to liberal values from what he calls a 'new left' pov.
It's worth pausing and understanding his liberal views are based in sovereignty of mind and body. Probably not the only irony we will hear.
I don't like his placing science as primary way of knowing (humans knew what male and female were before the advent of modern or older sciences. But he does say the science is based on material, observable reality, and goes on to state his central premise about the laws of logic,
which leaves TRAs with a definitional, strategic and political predicament. Are TW literally women, in other words female? Or are TW gender non-conforming males with a strong desire to self identify as women?
I think we are thankfully moving past the assertion that TW are female, although I still see it a fair bit.
My sense is that most trans allies want to subsume biological sex under gender to the extent that it is mostly invisible (except for medicine blah blah), rather than thinking someone can literally change sex. Thus Trans Women Are Women (where woman is an identity rather than a material reality).
But that leaves the next predicament: why should trans women's rights trump women's rights?
Anyway, I digress. I agree Molly, that NZ could learn a lot from watching these debates on how to address the issue. TRAs don't want to do that because they know their project is one of social engineering and that their arguments won't hold up under scrutiny. Tbf, most of the new left ones do have good intentions, but tolerance for that is fast running out.
Ending cut off abruptly. If I find a better link I'll post.
Glendening's next point: if reality is socially constructed, and one believes that language either supports the status quo or can overturn, and one believes that language has that power, then you cannot adopt a live and let live approach, language becomes a zero sum game.
I haven't heard that explanation before, and it makes sense of a lot of what is happening politically at this time, including around gender/sex, but beyond that. It's a huge shift from rationality to society operating from the position that reality is fluid. We're seeing that from Winston Peters as we speak.
then, the importance of knowing what words mean. If a politician talks about women only hospital wards (or female only), we have to know what they mean by that.
My view is that currently we don't. Again, this is the milieu that Peters has re-arisen in.
I'm very surprised you would be unaware of this as you appear well read on these topics generally. This idea that reality (or at least its power structures and hierarchies) is socially constructed (largely meaning its a product of language) is a common thread in the relation of these topics to post-modernism. Of course in fact this idea is just horse shit, its completely incoherent in practice.
For the most part I don't think society is shifting in its thinking of course. Just that most supporters are ignorant of the philosophical basis for the cause they are supporting, find (and have it constructed to be) easier otherwise just to go along with the nonsense than to be disagreeable and unkind.
Seems like a grey area to me. We got socially conditioned into the reality thing when young, and as a physics grad I saw the other side of that monoculture default (a flawed presumption generally held to be true).
Relativism is more to the point than postmodernism nowadays – the latter seeming somewhat dated, like a cultural wind that blew awhile then blew out.
True-believers abound, but less so nowadays due to escalating biodiversity within human groups. The commons will always be there, and even leftists will eventually notice that. Survival for many will hinge on finding common ground to group together on, yet complacency remains inertial in Aotearoa. Perhaps that is a commons we share with the USA (exemplified by Alfred E Neuman's "What, me worry?"). However that social archetype may no longer be influential down the generations. Younger yanks may be worried.
I agree re going along with nonsense, but that is usually a simulation rather than real, huh? Folks play that card if the game seems to call for it at the time…
I don't in fact have a great education background and there are some big gaps in my knowledge (eg economics). But I do understand the reality as a social construct bit. What was new was the understanding that if one does believe that reality is a social construct, and that language has immense power, then it becomes an imperative to control language by whatever means possible. Hadn't made that connection before but it's a good description of the ideological aspects of trans rights.
I'm not so sure we aren't shifting societally. While I think most people are still grounded in material reality, both the rise of conspiracy theory culture and politics, and trans rights activism, both speak to not insignificant movements who no longer work within a material reality frame.
In addition, we have the pressures of social media, cyberspace generally, and now AI. Those are fucking with human relationships with body and mind at the worst possible time, when we are freaking out about climate etc. The motivation to escape our bodies matching the avenues for doing so.
I do agree that many people are going along with the be kind side of TA without necessarily understanding the philosophical and ideological underpinnings.
Absolutely the language policing is a strong theme through the TRA movement and plenty of other ideologically similar movements. This probably also occurs because at inception the concept was more or less coming out of literary departments at universities. The idea was that you could validly interpret a text not with the authors intent in mind but with the readers interpretation at the center. I think this had a larger impact on volume of text analysis more so than the quality of course.
The concerning aspects are more how these supposedly academic movements are behaving. I don't really consider a subject whose basis is to enact political action over knowledge to be legitimate, but that is a central part of many such subjects that they operate around political action rather than knowledge. This is a big part of why they resemble cult like behaviours in many cases.
If you have looked into cults (like the scientology movement) you will see many similarities. As far as I can observe this is just about separating friends and acquaintances of the members into in and out groups. It doesn't seem to matter for scientology that the doctrine is obviously nonsense and the members do understand they are being expected to condition their behaviours to not challenge that obvious knowledge, or the cult tends to cut them off or punish them back into line.
Ultimately these kinds of movements and groups will never match the severe in/out group separation of a cult, but I do thing that having to repair damage caused by expecting members to comply with this nonsense (or face consequences) will be quite difficult when institutions are eventually needing to reform.
I suspect that you are confusing effect with cause.
This is a process that has been in progress since the printing press was invented, thereby reducing the cost of transmission of ideas. The christian reformation and the doctrinaire religious wars in Europe being the classic exemplar. But the same schisms happened in most religious regions as printing became widespread.
It also started the secular intrusions of things like scientific thinking, basic economic theory, and theories about the process of government that roiled following centuries. Plus of course the development and spread of conspiracy theories, porn, and much wider revolutionary groups.
You can also see in history exactly the same calls for exactly the same reasons for restricting, licensing, taxing and controlling the process of printing. The words and phasing eerily echo the same calls to control the internet these days.
This too will pass. We just have the usual problem that our generations are kind of long. Most people learn most of what they can learn as a process before they hit 25-30. They spend the rest of their long lives worrying about what their kids and grand-kids are learning.
BTW: What you call "AI" is simple data mining and pulling inferences and correlations out of the data that get expressed as algorithms. It is just another technology like TV, radio, newspapers, printing, double ledger book-keeping, writing, agriculture, fire…. each of which caused massive disruptions in the old ways of doing things.
People have been doing analysis of data patterns since they started to get serious about accounting or started to collect data about people or systems.
Generally the generative AI is worse at figuring out those algorithms than the best of the intuitive humans to who can the same thing with less electricity. Ever watch a forensic accountant read transaction patterns? I can do it after I worked on accounting computer systems for a few years. It is just a learned skill.
The advertising industry thrived on those individuals with learned or intuitive skills, as did the publishing industry, as did the propaganda industry, the electronics industry, managers, the computer industry….. What generative AI is doing is providing similar but probably always inferior service at a cheaper cost.
It isn't any different from being able to get on the net to find out information about how to do things that I have been doing since the mid-1980s. I've taught university classes in how to search online data, how to distinguish significance from dross, and how to extract reproducible patterns as algorithms.
The world shifts and the over-30s spend their time saying that it is all going too fast while the under 30s parents have already partially adapted to the technologies that they grew up with, and are starting to worry about what their kids now know.
Thanks Molly. Will take a look.
Thanks Molly that was worth while.
Way more light than heat,
Freda Wallace was appalling. I disagree with Peter Tatchell most of the time and some of his arguments are just pig ignorant and demonstrate he doesn't listen to women. But at least he can formulate an argument based on his beliefs and values. Wallace was there to throw shit at Sex Matters, LGBA and Joyce and seemed incapable of responding to points raised. This is classic TRA. Don't address the issues, instead make declarative statements about the way things are and that in this format aren't so easily rebutted.
Although as Joyce points out, the reason Wallace is there is because Stonewall, Mermaids and the Trans orgs won't front up. In large part because they can't make an argument beyond the ideology.
Joyce was a delight to watch, she's very good at what she does now, and has a first class mind, albeit tempered as the limits of her patience were tested in this panel.
I admit I'd only watched the fist 20 min or so when I posted. It was holding together pretty well, despite dissenting views. It did get messier.
Would have like to see the Q&A. IEA have said they'll post it, so keeping n eye out.
What a real charmer Freda is! Mini skirt up around his upper thighs, admitted he is a fetishist, agressive, incoherant arguements and getting drunker as the debate goes on (so much so his debating partner told him to lay off the drink).
No Freda, I don't want you in my change room. Case closed.
My respect for Tatchell went up a bit at that point, but I would also guess it's the same paternalistic stuff that makes him ignore what women are saying about the issues.
Google has for awhile been informing those on You Tube, they do not allow people to view videos on You Tube if they have ad blocker, now it's 3 more videos and then blocked.
The social media conspiracy of ravens flock together, (first gathering information they can on-sell for either money, or government monopoly protection). Obey or it’s the murder of old crows.
X.com man started the charging on top of that game and now it is all on.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2023/10/18/youtubes-new-ad-blocker-crackdown-what-you-need-to-know/?sh=27c58c974bfb
I'm completely blocked on mac Firefox now until I whitelist youtube. I'm watching YT on Safari or Brave now with no issues (thus far). Possibly because the ad blocks are built in rather than add ons like FF.
Mine Windows Mozilla Firefox, reborn via free month trial.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/supermodel-bella-hadid-breaks-silence-on-israel-palestine-conflict-calling-for-urgent-humanitarian-aid-in-gaza/6TXWNEKOPVAS3DYJLEVQHKJDBQ/
Gal Gadot put up a social media post, since removed (she was told to be quiet), saying innocent civilian life – Israeli or Palestinian life is equal.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-10-26/ty-article-opinion/.premium/and-darkness-was-upon-the-face-of-israel/0000018b-6813-d78a-a5eb-7c93d6fe0000
Must be time for a new three year run of A Week Of It – seems ripe for the plucking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT4MZ27Iwmk
they look so young!
Yeah. There must be twenty bald headed male comedians wearing blue suits to make up the national party.
The first week episode:
1. Compulsory make up on gangs
2. Winnie finally realises the terrorist didn't send him the manifesto cause he wasn't important enough
3. Luxon intends to move parliament to Auckland – starts with coalition negotiations
4. Ramraids stop since election – well at least from media headlines – as did all the logs on Gisborne beaches – signs from god …..
5. Shane Reti styopd rebuild of public hospital as it competes with his share-holding one
6. National announces it is rolling back all the nothings that Labour did in first 100 days
very good!
Seymour needs a skit too.
@ 20 secs there looks like someone in blackface. Ironically they seem to have a gang member vibe from the '80's- WW11 german helmet, insignia on sleeveless army surplus shirt.
You are right about the material for satire, TBF, from both sides of the house.