MPs from across the House, including National, ACT and the Greens say backbench Labour MPs – who make up the majority of members at most select committees – are actively blocking parliamentarians from accessing information from officials. They say this gatekeeping is undermining the job of the Opposition and obstructing democratic debate.
Opposition MPs say this has been an ongoing issue, since Labour won a majority at the 2020 election… National had recorded 19 instances so far.
Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick said she tried at every meeting of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, for six months, to get a briefing from Treasury and the Reserve Bank on how the two organisations forecast house prices.
She had the support of ACT and National’s Nicola Willis, but Labour successfully blocked the request as it has a majority. Swarbrick said it made no sense for MPs to be that concerned about discussions or releasing information.
Willis and Swarbrick teamed up to try to get the briefing, with the deputy National leader saying Labour’s committee members needed to act in the public interest: “There shouldn’t be anything to hide here.” Swarbrick said there had been agreement from the entire Opposition that Labour appeared to be getting in the way of the free flow of information.
Is this really something to get excited about? I mean, Labour acting like a bunch of control freaks is nothing new, right? Why would anyone seriously expect Labour to be democratic? The Louisa Wall saga reminded us how they operate – closed shop tactics are an integral part of their tradition. If Chloe is serious she'll have to persuade the other Greens that authenticity is paramount. Some of them would then realise that discriminating against women is undemocratic. Could be a cat-fight…
Eurocrat control freaks are being threatened by a dangerous radical who has successfully infiltrated their system:
The European Council – the body of EU leaders – is “from a democratic point of view, a monster” and “totally dysfunctional”, she says. The European Commission is “shamelessly protecting” autocratic governments, over enforcing the rule of law. And the European parliament, the veteran MEP thinks, “is not playing its role within European democracy”.
The European Peace Facility, which is funding weapons for Ukraine,she points out, is neither scrutinised by the European parliament, nor national legislatures. Instead, a group of member state officials meet behind closed doors to sign off its annual budget and accounts.In ‘t Veld supports EU funds to arm Ukraine, but thinks more transparency is needed: “So we are spending €1.5bn [£1.24bn] without democratic oversight on weapons and I think that’s a very good illustration of why we need a drastic and quick reform of the European Union.”
Such views don’t make her very popular, even in her own group of centrist MEPs. She recounts one colleague “really shouting at me” for “attacking” the commission. While in ‘t Veld supports the EU’s Ukraine policy, she doesn’t think MEPs should stop asking difficult questions: “Since when is parliamentary scrutiny considered to be an attack? I think it’s an attack on democracy if there is no parliamentary scrutiny.”
It is an argument she makes in a recent book, The Scent of Wild Animals, which calls for a radical overhaul of how the EU works.
When the commission was recently found guilty of maladministration by a European watchdog over text messages von der Leyen had exchanged with the chief executive of Pfizer at the height of the pandemic, while negotiating billion-euro vaccine deals, the European parliament did nothing. “Can you imagine any other leader of the government or the executive doing this and the national parliament being mum? I’m just totally shocked. I don’t know what to say,” said in t’ Veld. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/totally-dysfunctional-sophie-in-t-veld-on-the-eus-relationship-with-democracy
Her problem is being outnumbered by those who believe in normality. When it has always been normal to view the controllers as a privileged caste, it is unthinkable to enforce accountability on them for misbehaviour.
But she doesn’t see any government supporting the fundamental changes she advocates. “It matters what kind of European Union they are advocating: I see no move anywhere in the member states to go for a more supranational European Union, more democratic.”
In part, the debate is an old fault-line: should the EU be led by powerful Brussels-based federal institutions, or is it a club of member states, where national capitals take the big decisions, with the commission as a secretariat. Today’s EU is a mix of both, but the intergovernmental idea, championed by the former French president Charles de Gaulle decades ago, has been in the ascendancy for at least twenty years.
Research shows that the commission is less likely to take wayward member governments to court than in the past, highlighting the sway of national governments over Brussels. “The commission doesn’t want to piss off the member state governments,” contends in ‘t Veld. “And that is sort of the end of everything: you can pass as many laws as you like, but if they are not being enforced then there is no rule of law, because then everything becomes arbitrary.”
To counter this, she argues the commission needs to be more independent of national governments.
She's on the right track but needs support from others. It's a redesign problem, and when complex systems have to be reconfigured you get a big intellectual challenge to grapple with. Looking on the bright side, Brexit & Ukraine have signalled loud & clear that the old guard are deadwood.
Dennis, why don't you read the actual book and report back?
Otherwise it's just your usual bitching and moaning about bureaucrats when you really don't know what you're talking about.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks that elected-bureaucratic niceties are going to be observed when the EU has been under active attack since BREXIT, has dealt with stupendous refugee crises without any outside help, has just come through a 1-in-100 pandemic, Russia actively at war on the east, deep political shifts to authoritarianism in multiple states, the gas now cut off to two key eastern states, and its two key trade partners in US and China in deeper conflict year by year.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks that elected-bureaucratic niceties are going to be observed
Well I can't speak for anyone, but I'd hazard a guess that they would default to normalcy – as bureaucrats normally do! The prevalent syndrome being when in doubt, pretend that normalcy is the best way forward. I thought 30 years of climate-change denial amply proved that point.
I agree that a string of crises ought to provoke them into crisis management mode, at least, even if as an evasion strategy to avoid structural reform. No sign of that shift, right? Or if you have seen evidence of it, do let us know. So I believe the mind-set of the ruling Eurocrats is locked into defence of their citadel. They don't want a lifetime of empire-building to be wasted. That's why the woman is complaining – she just doesn't quite realise yet how inertial the opposition is.
"In her decision, Justice Jillian Mallon found New Zealanders' rights were infringed: "In some instances in a manner that was not demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Not that it will bother the nasty little authoritarians who haunt this site and blindly support the govt in every instance, but it should bother anyone interested in living in a free democratic society.
No, it doesn't mean the judges don't care about people dying, it means the government came up with a terrible way to prevent people dying.
Having a lottery system was the fairest way to let people in (with a separate route for emergencies).
It would have been impossible for MoH workers to read, *verify* and rank around 10,000-15,000 people's reasons every round. (Verification being important because, if the pandemic has shown us anything, it's that some people think the rules don't apply to them even when other people's lives are at stake.)
All that would have happened is that those with the most resources or most social capital would have been able to write the best sob story and get through the system the quickest. And that maybe in-line with how democracy works in practice but not how we'd like it to work in theory.
"those with the most resources or most social capital would have been able to write the best sob story".
That was how the media saw it, anyway.
Now, it's a game of "let's get picky" after the decisions that had to be made immediately, on best advice, (but no months of internal memos), and made conservatively (in the sense of conservation of life and health).
The best analogy on how they should be treated is that of recent after-match comments made on refereeing decisions, by losing captains, stroppy half-backs and sideline coaching parents.
Totally agree, and it would have become a debacle very quickly.
Since MIQ was handed to MBIE, this work likely would have followed it, and MBIE probably would have leaned heavily on the immigration model (for good or ill) because of the short time frames involved and need to get something up and running quickly. Imagine the joy of having a points system like the current Skilled Migrant Category for residence applications…
Great response. This government was true to their values and used a model which made sure that everyone was treated the same regardless of their abilities and resources.
Unfortunately Government and government departments are peopled by people. People have different perspectives and make different decisions than others even though factors and circumstances they have to deal with are the same.
What I think I've learned from the covid situation is that if different people were in charge, e.g. Chris Bishop and Michael Woodhouse, (with whomever as their PM) things would have have been dramatically better than what eventuated. Across the board, in all facets.
Mistakes would not have been made, no person would have been able to say "unfair" and every single person who wanted to come into the country would have been able to do so in very timely fashion.
We would have tired of the daily media festivals of delight about the rapturously happy they'd sought out.
The lawns at Parliament would not be needing refurbishment. As it is, hopefully they'll be in fine condition so that Liz Gunn, Charlotte Bellis and others don't muddy their shoes when they're there for the 'Accountability Gallows Gala' when those who weren't up to handling covid, and demonstrably set out on inhumane paths get their just desserts.
My perspective has changed as a fit man in his Seventies, who is in day 5 of covid isolation.
I am thankful that we were given time by concerted government action, based on scientific evidence and social responsibility, to be better protected by double vaccination and a booster shot.
My perspective as an older person is further affected by the prospect of the winter warmth payment starting in May, as my tomatoes and other plants begin to wilt in the colder nights. It is enhanced by the increase in superannuation. The government increasing the minimum wage has the flow-on effect of increasing the Super payment based as it is on the average wage.
My perspective as a parent and as an older citizen is rejoicing that my children and those of others had a chance also to be protected against Covid.
My perspective as a New Zealand citizen is grateful and appreciative of the government's actions regarding such issues as covid and social security payments. It's reassuring to know we have a government that cares, and acts; to know that we will not be brushed like crumbs from the tables of the callous rich.
Politicians should recognise this voice. It is the voice of our seniors, a major part of the voting body politic.
Well said Mac, and sorry to hear about the Curse of the Covid, is there anything you need? Id drop off a few Rose's if I thought you could taste it!. Good luck to you two.
100% Keep up rest between activities and fluids All the best.
Two friends aged 83 and 80 have recovered after a couple of weeks and said they were told if they had not had those three injections they might not have . All the best Mac1.
Thanks, Patricia. All good so far. Enough breathlessness to understand why the infection can proceed to hospitalisation. I'm a fit, hill walker- or was- but at 72 wary of the advancing age of body systems.My brain was always middle aged, a Swiss fellow Uni student once informed me as a teenager.. You're still remembered, Al!
Unless the judgement is appealed right up to the Supreme Court, Crown Law and Parliament are going to take little notice.
They will also not take notice of the rights tested by the vaccine mandate if the government refuses to have anything but an IPCC investigation into the Wellington Parliament occupation.
This government is doing an excellent job of suppressing debate about all kinds of BORA rights that were tested over the last 2 years. They are just doing a general tidy-up before Budget.
And unless the judgement is appealed, they are going to get away with it.
I think the court got this wrong-in fact it is in cloud cuckoo land. It should be appealed by the government.
The Court is wrong to think that it is practical or even possible to rank 10,000-15,000 people every few weeks as to who should enter the country first based on largely subjective criteria, and where the "entitled travelers" are likely to make things up in order to justify entry.
The "nasty little authoritarians" are actually those individuals who believe their right to travel supersedes someone else's right to freedom from a potentially deadly virus. They are simply claiming the authority to over-rule the rights of others. Rights are always limited and negotiated – anything that is unlimited and not negotiated is not a right, it is a claim of absolute power.
You gotta have a home. Anyone with a NZ passport should have been allowed to return to NZ and the government should have enabled this. They would obviously have to isolate on arrival and be tested. But it is just wrong to make people 'stateless'.
Jimmy, remember that there were a million Kiwis overseas who might have wanted to come home. The question then was how to test, isolate and accommodate up to 1 million people……..
That was the original model when the borders first closed, but enough people didn't fully comply with isolation that the government saw it as necessary to set up MIQ to manage future compliance. MIQ wasn't perfect by any stretch, especially early on, but it still managed isolation compliance better than self-isolation did.
I posted this link yestereve, but obviously not read by you Felix:
The exact orders the judge will make have yet to be decided. The parties have 14 days to agree on the words of a declaration, or the judge will decide it at a later date…
“We have long acknowledged the difficult trade-offs we’ve had to make in our Covid-19 response to save lives and the effects of those decisions on all New Zealanders, particularly those living abroad.”
The judge’s decision was being carefully considered, {Hipkins} said.
As someone with enough health issues to be eligible for the earliest vaccine rollouts, I am glad that this government was putting lives before convenience last year. Even if I wasn't, I'd hope I'd have sufficient empathy for the vulnerable people in Aotearoa to support these decisions.
But anyway, it's all still a bit up in the air at the moment. We'll hopefully see in a couple of weeks what specific orders and declarations have been decided upon – and whether these will be appealed.
No, it doesn't mean the judges don't care about people dying, it means the government came up with a terrible way to prevent people dying.
I am sure you are right (not).
I am more sure that in the history of the pandemic the response of the Government to keeping the population of NZ currently in NZ safe in the face of unprecedented danger of death will rightly be seen as the humane and people focussed response it was.
The court case of Grounded Kiwis and that one to do with the mandates will be seen as interesting footnotes.
I am sure that in the washup of the response that anything that could be an improvement will be taken from all manner of reviews and judgements, including this one.
We are lucky we had the Govt we did.
The alternative would hardly bear thinking about with the lack of focus on people and the overarching focus on business and big high flyer mates.
Good response Shanreagh and a necessary one. Thank-you.
When you consider this government had to make monumental decisions in the bat of an eyelid, then it is amazing there have not been many more 'teething troubles'. No-one anywhere had any real guidelines to follow since the last pandemic was over 100 years ago in another age.
I find it amusing and frustrating that critics of the government's and ministry's response to the pandemic use the 'benefit of hindsight' to undermine all the positive outcomes which is internationally recognised as one of the best set of Covid outcomes in the world.
Ms Charlotte Bellis, who I understand was party to this court case, lost all credibility in my eyes when she mischievously attempted to malign the Covid minister, Chris Hipkins by claiming he had smeared her and violated her privacy in one of his press statements. It was a blatant lie and all too obvious to anyone who took the trouble to read the statement in question. Imo, anyone who goes to such lengths at a time of a raging pandemic is never to be trusted at any time.
And well responded yourself, Anne. The days of the 'ready reckoners' should be numbered and social influencers should return to street corners and be restricted to the range of the unamplified human voice.
The naysayers should be well examined for their evidence and their motivations.
The media does have a role and I hope that an unfettered but fair media evolves in NZ again, based on journalism skills of research and enquiry, The 'Gotchas' should be directed at the issues and arguments, not at individuals.
Such a media is an important leg in the democratic giving us trust that those accountable are so held. But it ought not be a forum de minimis, a whinge-session, a daily show on a par with games, quizzes and comic presenters.
But why oh why were we subjected to a full-on scare hunt recently on TV on a subject of low importance affecting few-indeed, a topic so trivial that I can't remember what it was. Bloody covid brain!
And while we seem to be (hopefully) entering a period of post- Covidpanic reflection and are beginning to look at how governments reacted to the crisis…what was done and what should have/ could have been done differently…this paper has emerged from academia that discusses in some depth the The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy:Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns May Cause more Harm than Good
Before y'all do the usual kneejerk reaction and write this off as another anti-vax, conspiracy theory rabbit- hole generated pseudoscience crap piece you might want to bear in mind it received funding from the respectable Wellcome Trust.
The general thrust is that vaccine mandates …
…are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided. Such policies may lead to detrimental long-term impacts on uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines themselves as well as routine immunizations. Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing. Mandating vaccination is one of the most powerful interventions in public health and should be used sparingly and carefully to uphold ethical norms and trust in scientific institutions. We argue that current COVID-19 vaccine policies should be reevaluated in light of negative consequences that may outweigh benefits.
It is well worth downloading the pdf and reading the paper entire. Don't be put off by the thirty odd pages…much of that is references.
And our very own PM gets a mention… alongside Blair and Duterte.
I stumbled across this when Youtube suggested I might be interested in this 2 hour discussion amoung the authors that clearly demonstrates the researchers very real and founded concerns that the draconian population- wide mandates may very well have undermined, ( read destroyed) trust in Public Health agencies and governments well into the future.
I'm not sure where the voice of many of the vulnerable are in this. Those restrictions gave many the confidence to be able to shop, etc when needed.
I contrast this with friends in the US in areas where COVID was rampant who basically didn't leave their house for two years and have everything delivered and sanitised.
It seems some peoples freedoms i.e. to travel the world trumps those that actually have to live here and can't afford such luxuries. The risk of catching COVID for many would have been much worse than planned and organised lockdowns and a sense we were in this together.
"Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing."
I'm guessing that dying of Covid would affect heath and wellbeing even more.
To state the bleedin' obvious, the vaccine mandates were necessary to get 95% vaccinated. This has been borne out by the fact that around a million idiots in NZ who had the first two doses have refused to get the booster/third dose (necessary to protect against Omicron) because this was not part of the mandate.
Did you read the paper Bearded Git…watch the discussion?
Do you understand that there always have been quite specific populations who were early on identified as being most at risk of serious illness and death from Covid? For the overwhelming majority of the rest of us Covid was always going to be largely at the most a nasty cold.
And you do understand that 'forcing' an obviously non- sterilising 'vaccine' on those not at risk from the disease on the pretext that it will prevent infections was a monumental error?
Most folks have an aversion to being lied to. Noble or no.
Perhaps you can give us examples of sterilising vaccines, without scare quotes, and explain to us the point you would like to make.
Perhaps also you can give us examples of who was ‘forced’ in NZ to get the vaccine.
FYI, mandatory vaccination because of the nature of one’s job is not forcing vaccination. Your language is misleading, but you already know this.
Lastly, how many in NZ die of a ‘nasty cold’ [see what I did there?] each year? Perhaps the numbers are of a similar order as the number of Covid-related deaths? Or perhaps they are nowhere close to Covid-related death stats?
Perhaps you can give a robust estimate of how many Kiwis would have died from Covid and Covid-related complications in the last 2+ years without vaccination?
Most folks have an aversion to being misled by biased commenters.
Sterilizing immunity means that the immune system is able to stop a pathogen, including viruses, from replicating within your body.
This is manifestly not the case for any of the current COVID vaccines.
FYI, mandatory vaccination because of the nature of one’s job is not forcing vaccination.
It might not be quite the same as tying people down and using literal force to inject them, but workplace mandatory vaccination can certainly be described as a very substantial coercion all the same. Essentially you are forcing people to choose between being vaxxed against their will – or relative poverty. Not something I thought I would ever see the left advocating for frankly.
Thank you, but I asked for examples of sterilising vaccines. Alternatively, perhaps you can give examples of non-sterilising vaccines other than for Covid-19 and explain why this rendered them utterly useless.
No, there’s no force against their will and (almost?) nobody was vaccinated against Covid by force. I know a couple of people who chose to leave their profession because of mandatory vaccination in their employment sector. None of these are in poverty but their incomes have dropped, at least in the short term, which you could label “relative poverty”, I guess.
When my employer introduced mandatory vaccination I objected to the mandatory part. I have mentioned this before here on TS.
More than 2,500 teachers who have not been triple vaccinated will no longer legally be permitted to work in Victoria onwards from Thursday, April 28, Herald Sun reported.
Indeed, so why would anybody want to turn this into a non-sterilising red herring when it is just meaningless without any explanation? Other than to mislead? For example, are flu vaccines sterilising or non-sterilising? If we don’t know what a commenter is talking about we cannot know if they know what they’re talking about.
In NZ the Government dropped most vaccine mandates from 5 April onwards. However, the stress it caused in and to certain sectors will be felt for some time still.
No need to worry about me. There are many readers of this site, but I happen to be asking questions and not getting any useful and accurate answers. It’s almost as if some commenters here are all too happy raising confusion, doubts and discord but unwilling to provide genuine answers to specific questions, and rather divert & deflect. Are they masking their ignorance or their biased agenda?
Can you die from a common cold? FYI…this article from The Conversation precedes Covid (out in the world) by a few weeks. Identifies those groups most at risk of dying from a cold…which almost prophetically matches those most at risk of dying with or from Covid.
How many in NZ shuffle off their mortal coils with a push from a nasty cold? I bet that would be hard to ascertain as I lay odds that not many ending up with one of the forms of pneumonia that can follow a cold were being tested for a particular virus, per se. That might be different now.
RedLogix has (hopefully) filled in the gaps in your vaccine knowledge and explained what is meant by "sterilising".
Perhaps you can give a robust estimate of how many Kiwis would have died from Covid and Covid-related complications in the last 2+ years without vaccination?
No, I can't. I am surprised that our case numbers and associated deaths (prior to Omicron of course) are so low. Most of our cases here in NZ have been Delta or Omicron… for which the Pfizer product offers marginal protection from infection but may very well have prevented severe illness in some people.
As we can see from the latest data…Omicron seems not to care if you're jabbed or no. The rates of hospitalisation and death with or from Covid are almost at level pegging now between the unvaxxed and the double or triple jabbed. Omicron is ubiquitous. All of us are going to encounter it sooner or later. The absolute vast majority of us are going to survive it. Even us filthy unvaxxed. (Had it btw. Not at all pleasant, but now fully recovered… thanks for asking.)
Most folks have an aversion to being misled by biased commenters. You just might be a little too close to see clearly Incognito, but bias abounds in these pages. You slap that label on me because I do not fear censure from you lot for presenting research and opinions that do not fit the biases of most of the TS commentators.
As a matter of interest…did you even read the paper?
I'm sorry, but that is NOT a scientific paper. It is a pre-print, which means it hasn't been peer reviewed or published in any journal. Pre-prints can be interesting but must be taken with a sack full of salt until they go through this process.
Also the Abstract contained this: "While COVID-19 vaccines have had a profound impact on decreasing global morbidity and mortality burdens, we argue that current population-wide mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided."
What? Is it scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided to let lots of people die? This must require new definitions of all of these terms.
Awesome to get your input phill. You of course read the entire paper…and the references supplied that support their concerns?
You do understand that it is perfectly acceptable to discuss these issues?
If the Pfizer product prevented infection/transmission and reduced viral load in the infected there might have been and ethically and scientifically acceptable justification for the mandates.
Did you miss the bits where it is said that mandating the ‘vaccines’ for those not at risk from severe outcomes from Covid is problematic? Of course,they are not saying that those who are most at risk from Covid shouldn’t get the shots.
The article in in The Conversation is nice but hardly ‘prophetic’, as it based on science and not on some religious faith. It also doesn’t show anything on the actual number (stats) of people dying from or with the cold. So, until this question remains unanswered I can safely assume that very few people in NZ die each year from the common cold and many more have died from Covid-19, so far. Also, the number of hospitalizations of Kiwis due to the cold has not been substantiated. Of note, there’s no vaccine against the common cold.
So far, nobody has addressed my gaps in vaccine knowledge and explained in clear terms why and how sterilizing immunity is relevant and important in the context of Covid-19 and mandatory vaccination. So, most readers of TS are none the wiser. You brought it up, so why don’t you explain it? If it helps, use the flu vaccine as a comparison.
You seem not to understand that vaccination does indeed still have a protective effect on severe illness and death even with the Omicron variant although it may be less impressive than with earlier variants. You do state:
Most of our cases here in NZ have been Delta or Omicron… for which the Pfizer product offers marginal protection from infection but may very well have prevented severe illness in some people.
and in the next sentence:
As we can see from the latest data…Omicron seems not to care if you're jabbed or no. [sic]
Sounds a bit contradictory to me. In my view, it seems highly probable that vaccination has significantly helped reducing the number of Covid-related fatalities in NZ. Natural immunity is now adding to this layer of protection, which further weakens the justification for mandatory vaccination.
However, you’re correct that many if not most Kiwis are likely to be exposed to Omicron and/or future variants at some stage given the current set of public health measures and overall compliance. I guess Government has decided this is how we learn to live with it.
How you self-describe your vaccination status and attitude is entirely up to you and they’re your words, not mine (but thanks for trying).
I query anybody I spot here making dubious, ambiguous, or plainly misleading statements, particularly but not exclusively about Covid-19. I note that I have not moderated your comments in this OM, so perhaps this is your attempt at a pre-emptive strike? Your insinuation of “censure” suggests a strong bias and says a lot about you. For the record, I’m immune against your venom – it can sting and cause a nasty itch, but it doesn’t hurt and certainly doesn’t kill me – the beauty of natural immunity
Yes, I’ve read the paper, but I fail to see how this is relevant to this discussion thread. Perhaps I’m not close enough to see [it] clearly?
"Truth" and "Transparency" get an outing. Bringing back actual science…like naturally acquired immunity is not only a 'thing', but is most often better and longer lasting than 'vaccine' acquired immunity. "Vaccine", because what we have been offered with the mRNA products stretches that definition.
One author opines that if they had been properly called 'drugs', and the experimental nature of them acknowledged, and proper informed consent was sought from those in the most vulnerable-to -severe -Covid group who could have/should have been given priority access, and full advice given about potential serious side effects then the distrust subsequently generated by the products' failure to live up to the hype could have been avoided.
I'd recommend a watch of the clip…I have watched it twice now both before and after reading the paper. These are genuine public health academics and frontline workers quietly horrified at this massive public relations catastrophe.
In another discussion elsewhere about the pandemic response mistakes it was suggested that a good start to restoration of trust in Public Health institutions would be that those guilty of gross mishandling and misinformation should begin by offering us all a sincere apology for getting it so wrong.
In another discussion elsewhere about the pandemic response mistakes it was suggested that a good start to restoration of trust in Public Health institutions would be that those guilty of gross mishandling and misinformation should begin by offering us all a sincere apology for getting it so wrong.
So, 5% of the population are into pseudo science, rabbit holes, crackpot conspiracies and willful denial of the real facts. Yet you make a general claim there is "a lack of trust in Public Health institutions and misinformation".
I have just had a lengthy session of support (time-wise) and assistance from the Public Health institutions after a complex operation, and I cannot express strongly enough my admiration and respect for all involved in the midst of a devastating and stressful pandemic.
And yet the likes of you and your fellow bully-boy/girl 'five percenters' can do nothing but try to undermine and demean the achievements of so many courageous people (both in government roles and the Public Health Services) who have worked their butts off and saved a great many lives in the process.
95% of the population have NOT lost trust in the Public Health Service. Imo, its time the likes of you and your fellow travellers were officially hauled over the coals for your grossly inaccurate claims and misinformation.
There may well be "5% of the population are into pseudo science, rabbit holes, crackpot conspiracies and willful denial of the real facts", but there is an increasing cohort that are rapidly losing confidence in NZs health system if the experiences related to me are anything to go by….the young first time mother asked to leave 2 hours after giving birth is reminiscent of the health reforms of the nineties.
Did you read the paper Anne? Did you invest some time listening to the presentations and discussions?
Didn't think so.
There is a difference between the Health System (where you were privileged to experience such wonderful care) and Public Health about which this paper is writ.
Bugger up the public's trust in Public Health and you jeopardize the future health of all….into the future.
I suggest you source a copy of David Skeggs’ 2019 book on the parlous state of NZ Public health.
And what is this 5% of which you speak?
Hmm…have you checked out how many eligible Kiwis have said 'no thanks' to the booster? How about the parents who took their little ones along for their first Covid jab but have said 'no thanks' to them having the second?
I'll give you a clue…they amount to much more than 5%. And these are the folks who happily rolled up their sleeves for the first two.
On a personal note Anne…you seem to be one of the many around these parts who believe that because they had a positive engagement with the health system this is the experience of all. And if this is not the experience of all…perhaps it must be at least in part the fault of the dissatisfied patient?
No I did not. I stopped reading the stuff you link to a long time ago. Once in a blue moon there might be some semblance of reality attached to an article but not sufficient for me to waste my time wading through them.
I have my own formal professional science training experience which help me to sort the wheat from the chaff and I know codswallop when I see it.
Why on earth are you commenting about an academic paper you can't be bothered reading?
Did you check out how many Kiwis have rejected the booster and how many are not taking their littlies back for a second shot?
You can't deny the data from the Natrad site.
Why do you think there has been such a withdrawal from this wonderfully safe and effective Public Health program? Especially with the relentless 'If Covid doesn't kill you Long Covid will make you wish it had…' messaging dished up every day through MSM.
You are a prevaricator! That is, you distort and mislead.
You are calling me a liar? Be very precise when you detail the lies you claim I have have told.
(Hint: In days of old, in the Beforetimes, debate and even disagreement in the science arena was not only acceptable…it was encouraged…. as a pathway towards greater knowledge and a broader range of solutions.)
Otoh there's the Bardosh et al. manuscript that Rosemary is highlighting:
As we have attempted to show, it may very well be that the risks and harms of punitive public health strategies far outweigh the benefits.
Guess anything's possible – personally I reckon the overall benefits of NZ's public health COVID-19 elimination and mitigation strategies, punitive and otherwise, outweigh the risks and harms – time will tell.
Bardosh et al. [Table 3] contains a quote supposedly uttered by PM Ardern:
“If you are still unvaccinated, not only will you be more at risk of catching COVID-19, but many of the freedoms others enjoy will be out of reach….we have managed very high vaccination rates, generally, without the use of certificates but what has become clear to me is that they are not only a
tool to drive up vaccines; they are a tool for confidence. People who are vaccinated will want to know that they are around other vaccinated people…it is a tool for business”
The gullible and/or careless may be prepared to accept this quote as accurate, but the "Saint Jacinda" jibe in the source article's title is a bit of a giveaway – "Saint Jacinda backs a two-tier society". As for that article's author: "Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond." Oh dear!
New COVID-19 Protection Framework delivers greater freedoms for vaccinated New Zealanders [22 Oct. 2021]
“If you are still unvaccinated, not only will you be more at risk of catching COVID-19, but many of the freedoms others enjoy will be out of reach. No-one wants that to happen but we need to minimise the threat of the virus, which is now mainly spreading amongst unvaccinated people.”
"Academic paper"? Maybe, in time – let's wait for more peer review.
The truth is coming out. There have been just a few scientific papers offered to people on the Standard to ignore, but ultimately the truth itself can't be ignored.
If you want to see the results of trying to push the river, look at China.
But you don't need to look that far away, you can just look here at what a great Labour movement became.
Rosemary, your research does you credit. Nevertheless, the PM Ardern quote in the Bardosh et al. manuscript you linked to @5 is inaccurate (the two Youtube videos you posted above indicate that you know this), as is The Spectator gossip columnist's offering (Saint Jacinda, etc. etc.) that Bardosh et al. used as their source.
Don't know the personal stance/ideology of any of the authors vis-à-vis COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but the above inaccuracy is just one example from Table 3. Immediately above the Ardern 'quote', Michael Gunner (Northern Territories Chief Minister, Australia) has the following attributed to him.
Your personal vaccination status is not relevant. If you campaign against the mandate…If you say 'pro-persuasion', stuff it, shove it. You are anti-vax.
Bardosh et al. offer this link (to an ABC article) as their source, but that article doesn't contain the quoted words. Can't be bothered checking the other 'quotes' and 'references/sources'.
Imho it would be preferable (and a simple matter) to correct these errors before the opinion is published in a reputable journal, as it's this sort of sloppy 'science' that givs the impression of bias and so undermines public confidence.
Did you watch the press conference video? The entire Herald video? Read the speech notes found at NZ Doctor site? The quotes attributed Ardern are largely correct.
And as for Gunnar's greatest hits…here it is from the horse’s mouth. Spittleflecked.
Did you watch the press conference video? The entire Herald video? Read the speech notes found at NZ Doctor site?
Yes, watched the videos, not that there's any direct reference to these sources in Bardosh et al. In The Spectator gossip columnist's article that they cite, two statements made by Ardern are (incorrectly) mashed together – why? Stupidity? Laziness? Artistic license?
Seems we agree that the quotes presented in Table 3 of Bardosh et al. contain inaccuracies and are poorly referenced – don't know about you, but the question that springs to mind is 'Why?', given that I could find the correct quotes, and appropriate references, with a Google search.
Here's another example of a (sloppy) misquote from Table 3:
"…If they refuse to vaccinate, or continue to leave their home, the village leaders are empowered to arrest them…."
This is the correct passage (from the cited Health Policy Watch article):
If these individuals refuse to vaccinate, or continue to leave their home, the barangay captain, being a person of authority, is empowered now to arrest the recalcitrant persons, he added.
Recalcitrant eh?
As for "Spittleflecked", Gunner's not the only one – makes you think.
95% of the population have NOT lost trust in the Public Health Service…
Well said Anne – they're not perfect (only human), but your account typifies my experience of interacting with NZ public health staff. There's been no need to rebuild my trust in the services they provide, because I never lost it.
Feeling sad for those who've lost trust due to a bad experience (which could alter one's perspective), but rejecting consensus expert medical advice is not for me.
Its well over 95% still have trust. When a bunch of the protesters discovered they had Covid-19, they of course took themselves off to Wellington Hospital. I did hear about an ambulance being called to a death among assembled anti-vax group, which certainly could have been due to the assembled discouraging seeking medical attention until it was too late. But if the question is for a medical issue would you seek medical treatment from a NZ registered doctor more than 95% of people will say yes to that.
Its well over 95% still have trust. Is this fact, or your opinion?
When a bunch of the protesters discovered they had Covid-19, they of course took themselves off to Wellington Hospital Again…citation?
I did hear about an ambulance being called to a death among assembled anti-vax group, which certainly could have been due to the assembled discouraging seeking medical attention until it was too late.
So much to unpack here. Yes..an ambulance was called to one of the sites a few of the protestors fled to and a person had sadly passed.
“The deceased is suspected to have been Covid-19 positive at the time of death, but further test results are awaited and the cause and circumstances of death have yet to be determined,” he said.
I see no mention anywhere that the person had been discouraged from seeking help…perhaps you have a source for your supposition?
Rosemary, until the coroner releases a statement that the death involved an unsuspicious accident with a makeshift gallows device, I recon my suppositions about the groups behaviour and advice are more than reasonable.
"But if the question is for a medical issue would you seek medical treatment from a NZ registered doctor more than 95% of people will say yes to that."
But that does not equate to trust in the system, necessarily.
It does mean that between the option of what is offered as healthcare, and nothing, they may choose the offering.
The quality of healthcare in NZ needs improvement. Patient centred care is often not forthcoming. Unless the spending in healthcare is focused on improving patient service and outcomes, the government can put more in the budget and not improve the provision one whit.
In this video, Alfred McCoy points out that, at the start of the conflict, the European Court of Human Rights ordered that Russia desist from its attack on Ukraine. Of course, Russia simply ignored that order, seeing it as a toothless.
McCoy explains that the one of the concerns for the ECHR is the protection of civilian property and infrastructure. On that basis, McCoy suggests that the ECHR could make a judgement for damages to Ukraine.
The next step would be for the ECHR to order European nations reliant on Russian gas, to deduct a given percentage (say 20%) of payments to Russia and set that aside in a fund for reparations to Ukraine, to fund the restoration of infrastructure.
The ruling could also include a ratchet clause. So that the percentage of the reparations payment increases for each week the war continues.
The problem for Russia is that they have invested a huge amount in infrastructure for gas to Europe. Their choice would be to either cut off gas completely, and lose all revenue. Or to accept the reparations imposition. So, they probably would have little choice but to accept the imposition as Russia is so reliant on that gas income, and has very little way to generate that income from other sources due to the high infrastructure cost and time involved in doing so.
This proposed solution would also answer the concerns of nations such as Germany that have a high reliance on Russian gas.
I think a brilliant and creative solution that kills a lot of birds with one stone. Hopefully, his ideas get to the right people.
Sure they could do that. The winter is over in Europe now. So, not a problem for a year or so.
By that time Germany would have made some strategic decisions such as reactivating coal or nuclear power plants in case of such a move by Russia.
Russia is the one with the most to lose here. If they cut off gas supply, they lose a major source of income for them. They just can't afford to cut the gas supply off for any length of time.
Russia is the one with the most to lose here. If they cut off gas supply, they lose a major source of income for them. They just can't afford to cut the gas supply off for any length of time.
Russia, China agree 30-year gas deal via new pipeline, to settle in euros
The problem with China is that the limiting factor of gas supply to them is the pipe network that already exists. This could of course be increased by adding an additional pipe line. However this is going to take quite a long time to get set up.
The other factor that could be a larger problem for China very soon is that the American companies such as Haliburton that maintain the fuel infrastructure have pulled out of Russia due to the sanctions.
I understand that the pipeline that runs to China at the moment runs through fairly extreme conditions. Hence the likelihood of something going wrong with the system is fairly high. If something goes wrong with the system, it is going to be very problematic for Russia to get it fixed due to the unavailability of expertise due to the sanctions.
I know. I don't think Germany has huge amounts of options for renewables over there.
I have been there, and they have large fields of solar arrays, and I think I saw some wind as well. But I am not sure they have enough options to meet all their needs with renewables.
When I was there several years ago, they were making a big thing about closing their nuclear power plants down. But what wasn't said was that they were substituting that for power from France, which is produced by nuclear power (so I was told, anyway).
I think solar will become more and more prevalent, especially as power storage improves.
I read the other day that there are 900 (yes nine hundred) large scale solar projects in the pipeline in the UK and here in NZ a couple were announced last week.
….the west hasn't yet learnt threatening putin doesn't work,
Who's threatening who?
Russia threatens to launch strike on UK soil over weapons supplies to Ukraine
Putin's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the hits could be authorised against Nato member countries' military targets as supplies to Ukraine forces continue.
By Abigail O'Leary -Mirror News Reporter
11:07, 27 Apr 2022
"Do we understand correctly that for the sake of disrupting the logistics of military supplies, Russia can strike military targets on the territory of those Nato countries that supply arms to the Kyiv regime?"
"After all, this directly leads to deaths and bloodshed on Ukrainian territory. As far as I understand, Britain is one of those countries.” [Vladimir Putin's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova]
I see that Russia has refused to supply gas to Poland because Poland apparently doen't want to pay for it in rubles, so I suspect Russia is not all that dependent on the revenue.
Reminds me of an old joke about the many reverse gears an Italian tank has.
Europe and Italy will have to endure a little a hardship to ween themselves off Russian oil and gas at some point.
Well worth doing it now, if it can help stop the war, and save lives in Ukraine.
Eventually Europe and the world will have to endure more than a little hardship to totally ween ourselves off oil and gas, that is if we want to stop climate change, and save the planet.
Better Europe begin the transition now. Less hardship later.
Italy debt has blown out to 150% of gdp (2.6 trillion euros) A lot of the rich north was funding this from negative interest rates,these are now interest bearing so we see the issues with Spain,Portugal,Italy and Greece again,as will as the problematic new entrants.
On the other hand those countries vegetable oil production reserves will be big cash earners.
The former eastern bloc Eu countries like Hungary are still at risk,although not being in the euro group (with an independent central bank) just lifted interest rates getting ahead of the curve,whilst the ECB countries only have quantitative easing at present to restrain inflation.
What is it with these internet celebrities (in their own minds) filming themselves being arseholes in distant countries and posting it online? This isn't quite; filming corpses in Japan's "suicide forest" level bad, but still the cluelessness is astonishing:
A wellness guru and actor from Canada has made a tearful apology after a video of his naked haka on top of a sacred mountain in Bali fell foul of authorities on the Indonesian holiday island.
Jeffrey Craigen is to be deported following footage of his performance on Mount Batur, a volcano that is considered holy by many Balinese…
One complication for authorities is that airlines are refusing to carry him as he is not vaccinated against Covid-19…
“I didn't even know the words I was saying,” said Craigen. “I was just expressing what I was feeling and I sincerely apologise for any hurt that I gave any Māori people … I apologise to the Balinese people. I apologise to the Māori people. I am very sorry.”
The head of Bali’s immigration office Jamaruli Manihuruk told AFP that all visitors need to abide by local laws…
Woods announced the $1.4 billion package at a media conference in Auckland’s Mount Roskill, alongside Mt Roskill MP Michael Wood and Manurewa MP Arena Williams. Approximately 5400 homes would be built in Mt Roskill, with 4400 in Tāmaki, 3800 in Māngere, 1200 in Northcote and 1000 in Oranga…
Woods said infrastructure upgrades would "revitalise" the five suburbs through land decontamination work and better water infrastructure.Other upgrades would address flooding issues in Mt Roskill and improvements to walking and cycling infrastructure in Oranga.
Anyone know why this was declared now, rather than as part of the budget?
The answer was in the article you linked.
The money for the new infrastructure has come from the Government’s previously announced $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund (HAF).
and
The Government’s Housing Acceleration Fund was announced in March 2021 as part of a package of measures that had been intended to address the housing crisis.
Right, so the fund was pipelined a year ago and it has taken a year for the detailed implementation plan to get designed & survive internal scrutiny plus amendments, I presume. Fair enough. On that basis, looks like runs on the board for Labour – which is what they're in dire need of right now.
What do you expect from a minister of housing that didn't even know what percentage the OCR was when asked by Hosking.on air. And instead said she was more concerned with mortgage interest rates! Someone needs to let Megan Woods know, the OCR will determine the mortgage rates.
Depends if she's supposed to know that or not, eh? If H told her he'd checked her job description's ministerial responsibilities, and the govt web page specifying those had "must know OCR" on it, I'd be impressed. Never heard of him actually doing his homework for an interview. Thought he was just hot air.
I would of thought it was implied that she should know the OCR. She is the housing minister earning the big bucks, and even a pleb like me knew it was 1% at the time!
Its like having an electrician turn up, you sort of expect them to know what the different coloured wires are and which one is earth!
The OCR has a very limited influence on the mortgage rate compared to the other factors like availability of funds for the banks to lend, the competition between banks, the riskiness of lending, the current currency inflation rate, the current CPI inflation rates, and even the willingness of customers to take out loans of various kinds.
The only reason that some 'journalists' like Hosking talk about the OCR is because that is something simple enough for their limited minds and attention spans to concentrate on. Even then, Hosking is a mere parrot – he is repeating the tactic of recently used with effect in the current Aussie election. He doesn't even have the imagination or intelligence to invent his own ideas.
A housing minister gets more concerned with things like availability of housing, builds ongoing, costs of building supplies, legislation, and the ability of people to afford to get housing.
These are all topics that professional simpleton like Hosking is barely aware of – because he is more interested in whoever paid for him to spread 'his' opinion last.
"Actually someone should let you know that the OCR doesn't determine mortgage rates."
Well it is very coincidental then, that every time the OCR increases, the mortgage rates increase, and when the OCR reduces, they go down.
Yes the current OCR is 1.5% as it increased 0.5% the day after Megan didn't have a clue what it was. I wonder if she now knows it is 1.5% and the banks have subsequently increased their mortgage rates?
Both really, but the OCR has a more direct effect on floating.
"How does the OCR work in NZ?
The Official Cash Rate (OCR) is an interest rate set by the Reserve Bank. It influences all other interest rates and is, in effect, the wholesale price of borrowing or lending money in New Zealand. It allows the Reserve Bank to meet its primary goal of ensuring price stability for New Zealand."
Having an effect, direct or indirect, and having an influence is not what you stated @ 10.1.1.1, which is that “the OCR will determine the mortgage rates” [my italics]. Clearly, this is not correct and only vaguely close to being accurate in a very broad generalised manner. You should lose the sloppy wording and sharpen up your language unless you want to be perceived as an ignorant fool who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Given your response @ 10.1.1.1.2.1 to Lprent I think you just wanted to take a stab at Megan Woods and your comment suited your biased narrative by twisting truth and accuracy. Being a Hosking clone or wannabe is worse than being an ignorant fool.
You are dancing on the head of a pin. I used the word "determine" in comment 10.1.1.1 perhaps I should have used the word "effects" or "influences" but it's pretty obvious that the OCR increasing will push up mortgage rates accordingly. And yes as housing minister, I would have expected Megan Woods to know the rate and was surprised that Mitchell didn't know it either.
You’re sloppy and slanted. Mortgage interest rates go up & down independent of OCR and at different times and to different degrees depending on whether they’re floating or fixed and the term of fixing. Competition for market share between banks is another factor and there are other factors too, as Lprent already mentioned. You just choose to act like an ignorant fool and having another dig at Woods. I think this borders on trolling, so make of that what you will – I have my own view and more than happy to act on it too.
In 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. The primary victims of the Holodomor (literally "death inflicted by starvation") were rural farmers and villagers, who made up roughly 80 percent of Ukraine's population in the 1930s. .
So it was Ormiston Mall ram raided in the weekend, and I just heard on the radio last night there were break ins (or attempted) at Sylvia Park in Auckland and Chartwell Mall in Hamilton.
It's taken years to expose just a few of the extrajudicial killings carried out by Assad's murderous thugs. It's going to take many more years to expose the true horrors of Assad’s war, his prisons and the conduct of his Russian backers, find the criminals responsible and hold them accountable.
The rookie militiaman froze in horror as the scene unfolded: a blindfolded man was led by the elbow and told to run towards the giant hole that he did not know lay in front of him. Nor did he anticipate the thud of bullets into his flailing body as he tumbled on to a pile of dead men beneath him. One by one, more unsuspecting detainees followed; some were told they were running from a nearby sniper, others were mocked and abused in their last moments of life. Many seemed to believe their killers were somehow leading them to safety.
When the killing was done, at least 41 men lay dead in the mass grave in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon, a battlefront at the time in the conflict between the Syrian leader and insurrectionists lined up against him. Alongside piled heaps of dirt that would soon be used to finish the job, the killers poured fuel on the remains and ignited them, laughing as they literally covered up a war crime just several miles from Syria’s seat of power. The video was date-stamped 16 April 2013.
Thank you Joe for standing up for the people of Syria. Very few have had the courage to do so on this website at risk of being ganged up on and labeled a "head chopper" by commenters and authors, and told to self censor or be banned. On the grounds that our views are ‘irrelevant’.
I was in Syria in 2010. I spent most of my time helping the Palestinian refugees in the Latakia Palestinian refugee camp. I returned to NZ just before the mass protests against Assad broke out. The Palestinian refugees in the Latakia refugee camp were some of the very first to be murdered by the regime for joining the protests against Assad. Here in New Zealand I sat appalled as I witnessed live feeds of Syrian fighter jets war ships strafing and shelling the Palestinian refugeed camp from the air and sea. Speaking as one who knows, exposing the atrocities committed by the Assad regime against the Syrian people on this site puts you at risk of copping a ban.
Thanks again for standing up for the Syrian people.
[Sick and tired of you habitually posting mostly irrelevant comment upon comment on the bottom of threads that mention Syria in any way. I’m banning you for the weekend so I don’t have to keep an eye out, and I’ll ban you for a very long time if you ever pull this bullshit again.] – Bill
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A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
The Taxpayers’ Union says the Beehive need to lead by example, following reports of more than $50,000 spent upgrading video conferencing equipment and furniture in the Prime Minister’s office. Taxpayers’ Union Campaign Manager, Connor Molloy, ...
An objective list of the 50 most powerful people in New Zealand, as judged by the Spinoff Editorial Board. It’s power list season, baby, and we want in on the action. Sure, there’s the rich list and the powerful “c-suite” list and the young people with power (hmmm) but here, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney ShutterstockThis article contains information on deaths in custody and the names of deceased people, and describes ongoing colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. First Nations people in Australia ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Macquarie University Netflix Baby Reindeer’s phenomenal success has much to do with its writer and lead, Richard Gadd, who plays Donny in a tender semi-autobiographical account of sexual abuse, harassment and stalking. Gadd’s story has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle KarolinaGrabowska/Pexels If you didn’t have food allergies as a child, is it possible to develop them as an adult? The short answer is yes. But the reasons why are much ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Moon, Professor of History, Auckland University of Technology Ans Westra, self-portrait, c. 1963. National Library ref AWM-0705-F They try but invariably fail – those writers who believe they are capable of encapsulating in prose or verse the essence of ...
Stewart Sowman-Lund looks at the growing concern around the world in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. What’s all this? When Covid-19 arrived on our shores in early 2020, some argued we were too slow, or crucially, ill-prepared for a pandemic. So ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Franco Montalto, Professor of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and Director, Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Laboratory, Drexel University Water runs into a storm drain in a Los Angeles alley on Aug. 19, 2023, during Tropical Storm Hilary.Citizen of the Planet/Universal Images ...
The inquest into the death of Gore toddler Lachlan Jones has turned up a new witness who says he saw two teenagers and a small child in a high vis vest in the area where the boy’s body was found the day he died. Lachie’s body was discovered face up ...
Stories from the tenancy trenches, featuring spider infestations, cupboard rats and same-sex discrimination. Lucy’s brother was living in a damp 1930s building in Mt Eden where “he had to tie the cupboard doors closed so the rats didn’t get in”. Although he shared custody of his six-year-old son, his property ...
Simeon Brown, Chris Luxon, and Wayne Brown climbed into a hole and announced a plan to solve Auckland’s water woes. This is how it’ll work. New Zealand’s pipes are munted. They’re cracked and leaking, and struggling to handle all the extra poos excreted by our rising population. It’s a big, ...
I knew Taika Waititi quite well when he was a kid. His mother lived in a tall narrow house in Aro St, and my youngest sister had a similar house two doors along. They were both single mums, they each had a son aged seven. Taika and my nephew Stepan ...
Opinion: “As time passes, knowledge of the circumstances of the August 2016 outbreak will fade and its immediate impact will be lost.” This statement is from the 2017 report of the Official Inquiry into the Havelock North campylobacteriosis outbreak. The then National-led government established the inquiry after the outbreak left ...
Opinion: Nicholas Khoo looks at two key points in the high-stakes foreign policy pact debate – and asks if NZ can engage with as little drama as possible. The post Where to next for the Aukus ruckus? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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Opinion: ‘Reference-class forecasting’ is at the heart of improving pricing a project and identifying the expected timeframe but it doesn’t appear to be in use here The post ‘Think fast and act slowly’ is failing big projects appeared first on Newsroom. ...
What do a sombrero in Argentina and cognitive driving tests have in common? Don’t worry, we’re not setting up a bad joke. Hinengaro Clinic dementia clinician Gregory Winkelman has the answer on today’s episode of The Detail. “We ask a patient’s spouse or son or daughter: If you went to ...
Wellington long jumper Phoebe Edwards is back and she’s having fun again. Until this year, Edwards, a top athlete in her teens, had never competed as a senior athlete in New Zealand. In March, the 26-year-old won a national long jump title in a lifetime best of 6.28m after ...
After replacing a fifth of their caucus in just four months, the Greens’ opportunity to reset, reshuffle and refocus on the Government is quickly slipping away The post Persistent Green Party scandals delay caucus reset appeared first on Newsroom. ...
ANALYSIS:By Olli Hellmann, University of Waikato When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day today on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also to mark a defining event for national identity. The battle of Gallipoli against ...
By Robin Martin, RNZ News reporter A New Zealand local authority, Whanganui District Council, has passed a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, condemnation of all acts of violence and terror against civilians on both sides of the conflict and the immediate return of hostages. It comes as ...
Asia Pacific Report The Aotearoa chapter of the Women’s International league for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has appealed to the New Zealand government to call out Israel over the “cruel and barbaric use of force” in Gaza and demand a permanent ceasefire. The league’s open letter was sent to Prime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government will invest $566 million over a decade on data, maps and other tools to promote exploration and development in Australia’s resources industry. The project will fund “the first comprehensive map of what’s ...
Asia Pacific Report Following an open letter by Auckland University academics speaking out in support of their students’ right to protest against the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, a group of academics at Otago University have today also called on New Zealand academic institutions to “repair colonial violence” and end ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linda J. Graham, Professor and Director of the Centre for Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology Ryan Tauss/ Unsplash, CC BY Two male students have been expelled from a Melbourne private school for their involvement in a list ranking female students. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The Reserve Bank is now assuming Australians will see no interest rate cuts this year – and quite possibly none before the next federal election, due next May. That’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hayward, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, RMIT University The Victorian budget offered more of the same on Tuesday, with the only change being how the budget papers were packaged. The usual shrink wrap was gone, hinting at savings in the pages ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Coalition is demanding extensive amendments to the government’s legislation targeting non-citizens who refuse to co-operate with their removal. In a dissenting report to the senate inquiry into the legislation, the Coalition says it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanita Yadav, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University Brett Boardman/Belvoir The complex and grappling issue of violence against women takes centre stage in the soul-stirring solo dance drama Nayika: A Dancing Girl. During a dinner conversation ...
Disruption to patient care from a nationwide junior doctors strike is bordering on unsafe, a senior doctor claims, despite what health officials say. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Ground Picture/Shutterstock The anti-cancer drug abemaciclib (also known as Vernezio) has this month been added to the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to treat certain ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic McAfee, Postdoctoral researcher, marine ecology, University of Adelaide Robbie Porter, OzFish Unlimited Around Australia, hundreds of people are coming together to help a once-prized, but decimated and largely forgotten marine ecosystem. They’re busy restoring Australia’s native oyster and mussel reefs. ...
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Greens unite with National & ACT against Labour:
Is this really something to get excited about? I mean, Labour acting like a bunch of control freaks is nothing new, right? Why would anyone seriously expect Labour to be democratic? The Louisa Wall saga reminded us how they operate – closed shop tactics are an integral part of their tradition. If Chloe is serious she'll have to persuade the other Greens that authenticity is paramount. Some of them would then realise that discriminating against women is undemocratic. Could be a cat-fight…
Eurocrat control freaks are being threatened by a dangerous radical who has successfully infiltrated their system:
Her problem is being outnumbered by those who believe in normality. When it has always been normal to view the controllers as a privileged caste, it is unthinkable to enforce accountability on them for misbehaviour.
She's on the right track but needs support from others. It's a redesign problem, and when complex systems have to be reconfigured you get a big intellectual challenge to grapple with. Looking on the bright side, Brexit & Ukraine have signalled loud & clear that the old guard are deadwood.
Dennis, why don't you read the actual book and report back?
Otherwise it's just your usual bitching and moaning about bureaucrats when you really don't know what you're talking about.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks that elected-bureaucratic niceties are going to be observed when the EU has been under active attack since BREXIT, has dealt with stupendous refugee crises without any outside help, has just come through a 1-in-100 pandemic, Russia actively at war on the east, deep political shifts to authoritarianism in multiple states, the gas now cut off to two key eastern states, and its two key trade partners in US and China in deeper conflict year by year.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks that elected-bureaucratic niceties are going to be observed
Well I can't speak for anyone, but I'd hazard a guess that they would default to normalcy – as bureaucrats normally do! The prevalent syndrome being when in doubt, pretend that normalcy is the best way forward. I thought 30 years of climate-change denial amply proved that point.
I agree that a string of crises ought to provoke them into crisis management mode, at least, even if as an evasion strategy to avoid structural reform. No sign of that shift, right? Or if you have seen evidence of it, do let us know. So I believe the mind-set of the ruling Eurocrats is locked into defence of their citadel. They don't want a lifetime of empire-building to be wasted. That's why the woman is complaining – she just doesn't quite realise yet how inertial the opposition is.
'Inevitable that the system would operate unjustly': Grounded Kiwis fight against MIQ ends in High Court win – NZ Herald
"In her decision, Justice Jillian Mallon found New Zealanders' rights were infringed: "In some instances in a manner that was not demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Not that it will bother the nasty little authoritarians who haunt this site and blindly support the govt in every instance, but it should bother anyone interested in living in a free democratic society.
No, it doesn't mean the judges don't care about people dying, it means the government came up with a terrible way to prevent people dying.
The government needs to be better.
Having a lottery system was the fairest way to let people in (with a separate route for emergencies).
It would have been impossible for MoH workers to read, *verify* and rank around 10,000-15,000 people's reasons every round. (Verification being important because, if the pandemic has shown us anything, it's that some people think the rules don't apply to them even when other people's lives are at stake.)
All that would have happened is that those with the most resources or most social capital would have been able to write the best sob story and get through the system the quickest. And that maybe in-line with how democracy works in practice but not how we'd like it to work in theory.
"those with the most resources or most social capital would have been able to write the best sob story".
That was how the media saw it, anyway.
Now, it's a game of "let's get picky" after the decisions that had to be made immediately, on best advice, (but no months of internal memos), and made conservatively (in the sense of conservation of life and health).
The best analogy on how they should be treated is that of recent after-match comments made on refereeing decisions, by losing captains, stroppy half-backs and sideline coaching parents.
Totally agree, and it would have become a debacle very quickly.
Since MIQ was handed to MBIE, this work likely would have followed it, and MBIE probably would have leaned heavily on the immigration model (for good or ill) because of the short time frames involved and need to get something up and running quickly. Imagine the joy of having a points system like the current Skilled Migrant Category for residence applications…
+100
Great response. This government was true to their values and used a model which made sure that everyone was treated the same regardless of their abilities and resources.
Entitled people hate that.
Unfortunately Government and government departments are peopled by people. People have different perspectives and make different decisions than others even though factors and circumstances they have to deal with are the same.
What I think I've learned from the covid situation is that if different people were in charge, e.g. Chris Bishop and Michael Woodhouse, (with whomever as their PM) things would have have been dramatically better than what eventuated. Across the board, in all facets.
Mistakes would not have been made, no person would have been able to say "unfair" and every single person who wanted to come into the country would have been able to do so in very timely fashion.
We would have tired of the daily media festivals of delight about the rapturously happy they'd sought out.
The lawns at Parliament would not be needing refurbishment. As it is, hopefully they'll be in fine condition so that Liz Gunn, Charlotte Bellis and others don't muddy their shoes when they're there for the 'Accountability Gallows Gala' when those who weren't up to handling covid, and demonstrably set out on inhumane paths get their just desserts.
Is that it?
Different perspectives is right, Peter.
My perspective has changed as a fit man in his Seventies, who is in day 5 of covid isolation.
I am thankful that we were given time by concerted government action, based on scientific evidence and social responsibility, to be better protected by double vaccination and a booster shot.
My perspective as an older person is further affected by the prospect of the winter warmth payment starting in May, as my tomatoes and other plants begin to wilt in the colder nights. It is enhanced by the increase in superannuation. The government increasing the minimum wage has the flow-on effect of increasing the Super payment based as it is on the average wage.
My perspective as a parent and as an older citizen is rejoicing that my children and those of others had a chance also to be protected against Covid.
My perspective as a New Zealand citizen is grateful and appreciative of the government's actions regarding such issues as covid and social security payments. It's reassuring to know we have a government that cares, and acts; to know that we will not be brushed like crumbs from the tables of the callous rich.
Politicians should recognise this voice. It is the voice of our seniors, a major part of the voting body politic.
Well said Mac, and sorry to hear about the Curse of the Covid, is there anything you need? Id drop off a few Rose's if I thought you could taste it!. Good luck to you two.
Thanks, Adrian. At the moment it's a 4 Hoick Day, but Mrs Mac1 is now sprung upon the general population after her week in situ.
Well said Mac1. You speak well for us too.
100% Keep up rest between activities and fluids All the best.
Two friends aged 83 and 80 have recovered after a couple of weeks and said they were told if they had not had those three injections they might not have . All the best Mac1.
Thanks, Patricia. All good so far. Enough breathlessness to understand why the infection can proceed to hospitalisation. I'm a fit, hill walker- or was- but at 72 wary of the advancing age of body systems.My brain was always middle aged, a Swiss fellow Uni student once informed me as a teenager.. You're still remembered, Al!
Brilliant Peter.
The judge finds a lot more than that.
Unless the judgement is appealed right up to the Supreme Court, Crown Law and Parliament are going to take little notice.
They will also not take notice of the rights tested by the vaccine mandate if the government refuses to have anything but an IPCC investigation into the Wellington Parliament occupation.
This government is doing an excellent job of suppressing debate about all kinds of BORA rights that were tested over the last 2 years. They are just doing a general tidy-up before Budget.
And unless the judgement is appealed, they are going to get away with it.
Who do you think is going to appeal this? Surely it would have to be the Government who are the ones to be found at fault?
Why would there be anyone else who needs to appeal?
Correct Alwyn.
I think the court got this wrong-in fact it is in cloud cuckoo land. It should be appealed by the government.
The Court is wrong to think that it is practical or even possible to rank 10,000-15,000 people every few weeks as to who should enter the country first based on largely subjective criteria, and where the "entitled travelers" are likely to make things up in order to justify entry.
The "nasty little authoritarians" are actually those individuals who believe their right to travel supersedes someone else's right to freedom from a potentially deadly virus. They are simply claiming the authority to over-rule the rights of others. Rights are always limited and negotiated – anything that is unlimited and not negotiated is not a right, it is a claim of absolute power.
You gotta have a home. Anyone with a NZ passport should have been allowed to return to NZ and the government should have enabled this. They would obviously have to isolate on arrival and be tested. But it is just wrong to make people 'stateless'.
Jimmy, remember that there were a million Kiwis overseas who might have wanted to come home. The question then was how to test, isolate and accommodate up to 1 million people……..
That was the original model when the borders first closed, but enough people didn't fully comply with isolation that the government saw it as necessary to set up MIQ to manage future compliance. MIQ wasn't perfect by any stretch, especially early on, but it still managed isolation compliance better than self-isolation did.
I posted this link yestereve, but obviously not read by you Felix:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/127890187/grounded-kiwis-win-miq-was-a-lottery-when-better-options-were-available-judge-decides
As someone with enough health issues to be eligible for the earliest vaccine rollouts, I am glad that this government was putting lives before convenience last year. Even if I wasn't, I'd hope I'd have sufficient empathy for the vulnerable people in Aotearoa to support these decisions.
But anyway, it's all still a bit up in the air at the moment. We'll hopefully see in a couple of weeks what specific orders and declarations have been decided upon – and whether these will be appealed.
I am sure you are right (not).
I am more sure that in the history of the pandemic the response of the Government to keeping the population of NZ currently in NZ safe in the face of unprecedented danger of death will rightly be seen as the humane and people focussed response it was.
The court case of Grounded Kiwis and that one to do with the mandates will be seen as interesting footnotes.
I am sure that in the washup of the response that anything that could be an improvement will be taken from all manner of reviews and judgements, including this one.
We are lucky we had the Govt we did.
The alternative would hardly bear thinking about with the lack of focus on people and the overarching focus on business and big high flyer mates.
Good response Shanreagh and a necessary one. Thank-you.
When you consider this government had to make monumental decisions in the bat of an eyelid, then it is amazing there have not been many more 'teething troubles'. No-one anywhere had any real guidelines to follow since the last pandemic was over 100 years ago in another age.
I find it amusing and frustrating that critics of the government's and ministry's response to the pandemic use the 'benefit of hindsight' to undermine all the positive outcomes which is internationally recognised as one of the best set of Covid outcomes in the world.
Ms Charlotte Bellis, who I understand was party to this court case, lost all credibility in my eyes when she mischievously attempted to malign the Covid minister, Chris Hipkins by claiming he had smeared her and violated her privacy in one of his press statements. It was a blatant lie and all too obvious to anyone who took the trouble to read the statement in question. Imo, anyone who goes to such lengths at a time of a raging pandemic is never to be trusted at any time.
And well responded yourself, Anne. The days of the 'ready reckoners' should be numbered and social influencers should return to street corners and be restricted to the range of the unamplified human voice.
The naysayers should be well examined for their evidence and their motivations.
The media does have a role and I hope that an unfettered but fair media evolves in NZ again, based on journalism skills of research and enquiry, The 'Gotchas' should be directed at the issues and arguments, not at individuals.
Such a media is an important leg in the democratic giving us trust that those accountable are so held. But it ought not be a forum de minimis, a whinge-session, a daily show on a par with games, quizzes and comic presenters.
But why oh why were we subjected to a full-on scare hunt recently on TV on a subject of low importance affecting few-indeed, a topic so trivial that I can't remember what it was. Bloody covid brain!
And while we seem to be (hopefully) entering a period of post- Covidpanic reflection and are beginning to look at how governments reacted to the crisis…what was done and what should have/ could have been done differently…this paper has emerged from academia that discusses in some depth the The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy:Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns May Cause more Harm than Good
Before y'all do the usual kneejerk reaction and write this off as another anti-vax, conspiracy theory rabbit- hole generated pseudoscience crap piece you might want to bear in mind it received funding from the respectable Wellcome Trust.
The general thrust is that vaccine mandates …
…are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided. Such policies may lead to detrimental long-term impacts on uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines themselves as well as routine immunizations. Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing. Mandating vaccination is one of the most powerful interventions in public health and should be used sparingly and carefully to uphold ethical norms and trust in scientific institutions. We argue that current COVID-19 vaccine policies should be reevaluated in light of negative consequences that may outweigh benefits.
It is well worth downloading the pdf and reading the paper entire. Don't be put off by the thirty odd pages…much of that is references.
And our very own PM gets a mention… alongside Blair and Duterte.
I stumbled across this when Youtube suggested I might be interested in this 2 hour discussion amoung the authors that clearly demonstrates the researchers very real and founded concerns that the draconian population- wide mandates may very well have undermined, ( read destroyed) trust in Public Health agencies and governments well into the future.
I'm not sure where the voice of many of the vulnerable are in this. Those restrictions gave many the confidence to be able to shop, etc when needed.
I contrast this with friends in the US in areas where COVID was rampant who basically didn't leave their house for two years and have everything delivered and sanitised.
It seems some peoples freedoms i.e. to travel the world trumps those that actually have to live here and can't afford such luxuries. The risk of catching COVID for many would have been much worse than planned and organised lockdowns and a sense we were in this together.
The paper focuses on vaccine mandates.
The imposition of which destroyed the we were in this together vibe.
Thanks Rosemary. Have read this – a balanced appraisal. Lessons to be learned.
"Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing."
I'm guessing that dying of Covid would affect heath and wellbeing even more.
To state the bleedin' obvious, the vaccine mandates were necessary to get 95% vaccinated. This has been borne out by the fact that around a million idiots in NZ who had the first two doses have refused to get the booster/third dose (necessary to protect against Omicron) because this was not part of the mandate.
Did you read the paper Bearded Git…watch the discussion?
Do you understand that there always have been quite specific populations who were early on identified as being most at risk of serious illness and death from Covid? For the overwhelming majority of the rest of us Covid was always going to be largely at the most a nasty cold.
And you do understand that 'forcing' an obviously non- sterilising 'vaccine' on those not at risk from the disease on the pretext that it will prevent infections was a monumental error?
Most folks have an aversion to being lied to. Noble or no.
Perhaps you can give us examples of sterilising vaccines, without scare quotes, and explain to us the point you would like to make.
Perhaps also you can give us examples of who was ‘forced’ in NZ to get the vaccine.
FYI, mandatory vaccination because of the nature of one’s job is not forcing vaccination. Your language is misleading, but you already know this.
Lastly, how many in NZ die of a ‘nasty cold’ [see what I did there?] each year? Perhaps the numbers are of a similar order as the number of Covid-related deaths? Or perhaps they are nowhere close to Covid-related death stats?
Perhaps you can give a robust estimate of how many Kiwis would have died from Covid and Covid-related complications in the last 2+ years without vaccination?
Most folks have an aversion to being misled by biased commenters.
The term 'sterilising vaccine' is a well understood technical term:
This is manifestly not the case for any of the current COVID vaccines.
It might not be quite the same as tying people down and using literal force to inject them, but workplace mandatory vaccination can certainly be described as a very substantial coercion all the same. Essentially you are forcing people to choose between being vaxxed against their will – or relative poverty. Not something I thought I would ever see the left advocating for frankly.
Thank you, but I asked for examples of sterilising vaccines. Alternatively, perhaps you can give examples of non-sterilising vaccines other than for Covid-19 and explain why this rendered them utterly useless.
No, there’s no force against their will and (almost?) nobody was vaccinated against Covid by force. I know a couple of people who chose to leave their profession because of mandatory vaccination in their employment sector. None of these are in poverty but their incomes have dropped, at least in the short term, which you could label “relative poverty”, I guess.
When my employer introduced mandatory vaccination I objected to the mandatory part. I have mentioned this before here on TS.
Sterilising vs non-sterilising is not a binary black and white. Very few vaccines achieve 100% suppression of replication. Often this does not matter a great deal for many diseases.
But in the context of an air-born infection, and when most infected people will not be ill enough to be confined to bed – it matters a lot.
As for mandatory vax – well it's still going on.
This in a sector already highly stressed.
Indeed, so why would anybody want to turn this into a non-sterilising red herring when it is just meaningless without any explanation? Other than to mislead? For example, are flu vaccines sterilising or non-sterilising? If we don’t know what a commenter is talking about we cannot know if they know what they’re talking about.
In NZ the Government dropped most vaccine mandates from 5 April onwards. However, the stress it caused in and to certain sectors will be felt for some time still.
My second para points to the relevance in the context of COVID.
Pointing to is not explaining, so this is not helpful in the slightest.
I was trying not to insult your intelligence.
No need to worry about me. There are many readers of this site, but I happen to be asking questions and not getting any useful and accurate answers. It’s almost as if some commenters here are all too happy raising confusion, doubts and discord but unwilling to provide genuine answers to specific questions, and rather divert & deflect. Are they masking their ignorance or their biased agenda?
Can you die from a common cold? FYI…this article from The Conversation precedes Covid (out in the world) by a few weeks. Identifies those groups most at risk of dying from a cold…which almost prophetically matches those most at risk of dying with or from Covid.
How many in NZ shuffle off their mortal coils with a push from a nasty cold? I bet that would be hard to ascertain as I lay odds that not many ending up with one of the forms of pneumonia that can follow a cold were being tested for a particular virus, per se. That might be different now.
RedLogix has (hopefully) filled in the gaps in your vaccine knowledge and explained what is meant by "sterilising".
Perhaps you can give a robust estimate of how many Kiwis would have died from Covid and Covid-related complications in the last 2+ years without vaccination?
No, I can't. I am surprised that our case numbers and associated deaths (prior to Omicron of course) are so low. Most of our cases here in NZ have been Delta or Omicron… for which the Pfizer product offers marginal protection from infection but may very well have prevented severe illness in some people.
As we can see from the latest data…Omicron seems not to care if you're jabbed or no. The rates of hospitalisation and death with or from Covid are almost at level pegging now between the unvaxxed and the double or triple jabbed. Omicron is ubiquitous. All of us are going to encounter it sooner or later. The absolute vast majority of us are going to survive it. Even us filthy unvaxxed. (Had it btw. Not at all pleasant, but now fully recovered… thanks for asking.)
Most folks have an aversion to being misled by biased commenters. You just might be a little too close to see clearly Incognito, but bias abounds in these pages. You slap that label on me because I do not fear censure from you lot for presenting research and opinions that do not fit the biases of most of the TS commentators.
As a matter of interest…did you even read the paper?
I'm sorry, but that is NOT a scientific paper. It is a pre-print, which means it hasn't been peer reviewed or published in any journal. Pre-prints can be interesting but must be taken with a sack full of salt until they go through this process.
Also the Abstract contained this: "While COVID-19 vaccines have had a profound impact on decreasing global morbidity and mortality burdens, we argue that current population-wide mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided."
What? Is it scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided to let lots of people die? This must require new definitions of all of these terms.
Awesome to get your input phill. You of course read the entire paper…and the references supplied that support their concerns?
You do understand that it is perfectly acceptable to discuss these issues?
If the Pfizer product prevented infection/transmission and reduced viral load in the infected there might have been and ethically and scientifically acceptable justification for the mandates.
Did you miss the bits where it is said that mandating the ‘vaccines’ for those not at risk from severe outcomes from Covid is problematic? Of course,they are not saying that those who are most at risk from Covid shouldn’t get the shots.
You might want to read it again.
The article in in The Conversation is nice but hardly ‘prophetic’, as it based on science and not on some religious faith. It also doesn’t show anything on the actual number (stats) of people dying from or with the cold. So, until this question remains unanswered I can safely assume that very few people in NZ die each year from the common cold and many more have died from Covid-19, so far. Also, the number of hospitalizations of Kiwis due to the cold has not been substantiated. Of note, there’s no vaccine against the common cold.
So far, nobody has addressed my gaps in vaccine knowledge and explained in clear terms why and how sterilizing immunity is relevant and important in the context of Covid-19 and mandatory vaccination. So, most readers of TS are none the wiser. You brought it up, so why don’t you explain it? If it helps, use the flu vaccine as a comparison.
You seem not to understand that vaccination does indeed still have a protective effect on severe illness and death even with the Omicron variant although it may be less impressive than with earlier variants. You do state:
and in the next sentence:
Sounds a bit contradictory to me. In my view, it seems highly probable that vaccination has significantly helped reducing the number of Covid-related fatalities in NZ. Natural immunity is now adding to this layer of protection, which further weakens the justification for mandatory vaccination.
However, you’re correct that many if not most Kiwis are likely to be exposed to Omicron and/or future variants at some stage given the current set of public health measures and overall compliance. I guess Government has decided this is how we learn to live with it.
How you self-describe your vaccination status and attitude is entirely up to you and they’re your words, not mine (but thanks for trying).
I query anybody I spot here making dubious, ambiguous, or plainly misleading statements, particularly but not exclusively about Covid-19. I note that I have not moderated your comments in this OM, so perhaps this is your attempt at a pre-emptive strike? Your insinuation of “censure” suggests a strong bias and says a lot about you. For the record, I’m immune against your venom – it can sting and cause a nasty itch, but it doesn’t hurt and certainly doesn’t kill me – the beauty of natural immunity
Yes, I’ve read the paper, but I fail to see how this is relevant to this discussion thread. Perhaps I’m not close enough to see [it] clearly?
Thanks, Rosemary will have a look.
Did they offer up suggestions on rebuilding trust?
"Truth" and "Transparency" get an outing. Bringing back actual science…like naturally acquired immunity is not only a 'thing', but is most often better and longer lasting than 'vaccine' acquired immunity. "Vaccine", because what we have been offered with the mRNA products stretches that definition.
One author opines that if they had been properly called 'drugs', and the experimental nature of them acknowledged, and proper informed consent was sought from those in the most vulnerable-to -severe -Covid group who could have/should have been given priority access, and full advice given about potential serious side effects then the distrust subsequently generated by the products' failure to live up to the hype could have been avoided.
I'd recommend a watch of the clip…I have watched it twice now both before and after reading the paper. These are genuine public health academics and frontline workers quietly horrified at this massive public relations catastrophe.
In another discussion elsewhere about the pandemic response mistakes it was suggested that a good start to restoration of trust in Public Health institutions would be that those guilty of gross mishandling and misinformation should begin by offering us all a sincere apology for getting it so wrong.
Breath-holding not advised.
So, 5% of the population are into pseudo science, rabbit holes, crackpot conspiracies and willful denial of the real facts. Yet you make a general claim there is "a lack of trust in Public Health institutions and misinformation".
I have just had a lengthy session of support (time-wise) and assistance from the Public Health institutions after a complex operation, and I cannot express strongly enough my admiration and respect for all involved in the midst of a devastating and stressful pandemic.
And yet the likes of you and your fellow bully-boy/girl 'five percenters' can do nothing but try to undermine and demean the achievements of so many courageous people (both in government roles and the Public Health Services) who have worked their butts off and saved a great many lives in the process.
95% of the population have NOT lost trust in the Public Health Service. Imo, its time the likes of you and your fellow travellers were officially hauled over the coals for your grossly inaccurate claims and misinformation.
There may well be "5% of the population are into pseudo science, rabbit holes, crackpot conspiracies and willful denial of the real facts", but there is an increasing cohort that are rapidly losing confidence in NZs health system if the experiences related to me are anything to go by….the young first time mother asked to leave 2 hours after giving birth is reminiscent of the health reforms of the nineties.
Did you read the paper Anne? Did you invest some time listening to the presentations and discussions?
Didn't think so.
There is a difference between the Health System (where you were privileged to experience such wonderful care) and Public Health about which this paper is writ.
Bugger up the public's trust in Public Health and you jeopardize the future health of all….into the future.
I suggest you source a copy of David Skeggs’ 2019 book on the parlous state of NZ Public health.
And what is this 5% of which you speak?
Hmm…have you checked out how many eligible Kiwis have said 'no thanks' to the booster? How about the parents who took their little ones along for their first Covid jab but have said 'no thanks' to them having the second?
I'll give you a clue…they amount to much more than 5%. And these are the folks who happily rolled up their sleeves for the first two.
On a personal note Anne…you seem to be one of the many around these parts who believe that because they had a positive engagement with the health system this is the experience of all. And if this is not the experience of all…perhaps it must be at least in part the fault of the dissatisfied patient?
Did you read the paper Anne?
No I did not. I stopped reading the stuff you link to a long time ago. Once in a blue moon there might be some semblance of reality attached to an article but not sufficient for me to waste my time wading through them.
I have my own formal professional science training experience which help me to sort the wheat from the chaff and I know codswallop when I see it.
Why on earth are you commenting about an academic paper you can't be bothered reading?
Did you check out how many Kiwis have rejected the booster and how many are not taking their littlies back for a second shot?
You can't deny the data from the Natrad site.
Why do you think there has been such a withdrawal from this wonderfully safe and effective Public Health program? Especially with the relentless 'If Covid doesn't kill you Long Covid will make you wish it had…' messaging dished up every day through MSM.
As a scientist you must be wondering…
I am not a scientist and have never claimed as much.
"Why do you think there has been such a withdrawal from this wonderfully safe and effective Public Health program?"
You are a prevaricator! That is, you distort and mislead.
I am not a scientist and have never claimed as much.
I must be misreading this…
I have my own formal professional science training experience …
You are a prevaricator! That is, you distort and mislead.
You are calling me a liar? Be very precise when you detail the lies you claim I have have told.
(Hint: In days of old, in the Beforetimes, debate and even disagreement in the science arena was not only acceptable…it was encouraged…. as a pathway towards greater knowledge and a broader range of solutions.)
I am not a scientist and have never claimed as much.
Indeed you are. Indicates an ignorance of the entities that deal with any of the sciences and how they operate.
Otoh there's the Bardosh et al. manuscript that Rosemary is highlighting:
Guess anything's possible – personally I reckon the overall benefits of NZ's public health COVID-19 elimination and mitigation strategies, punitive and otherwise, outweigh the risks and harms – time will tell.
Bardosh et al. [Table 3] contains a quote supposedly uttered by PM Ardern:
The gullible and/or careless may be prepared to accept this quote as accurate, but the "Saint Jacinda" jibe in the source article's title is a bit of a giveaway – "Saint Jacinda backs a two-tier society". As for that article's author: "Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond." Oh dear!
"Academic paper"? Maybe, in time – let's wait for more peer review.
The truth is coming out. There have been just a few scientific papers offered to people on the Standard to ignore, but ultimately the truth itself can't be ignored.
If you want to see the results of trying to push the river, look at China.
But you don't need to look that far away, you can just look here at what a great Labour movement became.
The gullible and/or careless may be prepared to accept this quote as accurate,
Really? It is what it is.
https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/undoctored/prime-minister-jacinda-arderns-speech-notes-covid-19-protection-framework
Rosemary, your research does you credit. Nevertheless, the PM Ardern quote in the Bardosh et al. manuscript you linked to @5 is inaccurate (the two Youtube videos you posted above indicate that you know this), as is The Spectator gossip columnist's offering (Saint Jacinda, etc. etc.) that Bardosh et al. used as their source.
Don't know the personal stance/ideology of any of the authors vis-à-vis COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but the above inaccuracy is just one example from Table 3. Immediately above the Ardern 'quote', Michael Gunner (Northern Territories Chief Minister, Australia) has the following attributed to him.
Bardosh et al. offer this link (to an ABC article) as their source, but that article doesn't contain the quoted words. Can't be bothered checking the other 'quotes' and 'references/sources'.
Imho it would be preferable (and a simple matter) to correct these errors before the opinion is published in a reputable journal, as it's this sort of sloppy 'science' that givs the impression of bias and so undermines public confidence.
Did you watch the press conference video? The entire Herald video? Read the speech notes found at NZ Doctor site? The quotes attributed Ardern are largely correct.
And as for Gunnar's greatest hits…here it is from the horse’s mouth. Spittleflecked.
Yes, watched the videos, not that there's any direct reference to these sources in Bardosh et al. In The Spectator gossip columnist's article that they cite, two statements made by Ardern are (incorrectly) mashed together – why? Stupidity? Laziness? Artistic license?
Seems we agree that the quotes presented in Table 3 of Bardosh et al. contain inaccuracies and are poorly referenced – don't know about you, but the question that springs to mind is 'Why?', given that I could find the correct quotes, and appropriate references, with a Google search.
Here's another example of a (sloppy) misquote from Table 3:
This is the correct passage (from the cited Health Policy Watch article):
Recalcitrant eh?
As for "Spittleflecked", Gunner's not the only one – makes you think.
Well said Anne – they're not perfect (only human), but your account typifies my experience of interacting with NZ public health staff. There's been no need to rebuild my trust in the services they provide, because I never lost it.
Feeling sad for those who've lost trust due to a bad experience (which could alter one's perspective), but rejecting consensus expert medical advice is not for me.
Its well over 95% still have trust. When a bunch of the protesters discovered they had Covid-19, they of course took themselves off to Wellington Hospital. I did hear about an ambulance being called to a death among assembled anti-vax group, which certainly could have been due to the assembled discouraging seeking medical attention until it was too late. But if the question is for a medical issue would you seek medical treatment from a NZ registered doctor more than 95% of people will say yes to that.
Theres a world of difference between confidence and necessity
Its well over 95% still have trust. Is this fact, or your opinion?
When a bunch of the protesters discovered they had Covid-19, they of course took themselves off to Wellington Hospital Again…citation?
I did hear about an ambulance being called to a death among assembled anti-vax group, which certainly could have been due to the assembled discouraging seeking medical attention until it was too late.
So much to unpack here. Yes..an ambulance was called to one of the sites a few of the protestors fled to and a person had sadly passed.
“The deceased is suspected to have been Covid-19 positive at the time of death, but further test results are awaited and the cause and circumstances of death have yet to be determined,” he said.
I see no mention anywhere that the person had been discouraged from seeking help…perhaps you have a source for your supposition?
Rosemary, until the coroner releases a statement that the death involved an unsuspicious accident with a makeshift gallows device, I recon my suppositions about the groups behaviour and advice are more than reasonable.
"But if the question is for a medical issue would you seek medical treatment from a NZ registered doctor more than 95% of people will say yes to that."
But that does not equate to trust in the system, necessarily.
It does mean that between the option of what is offered as healthcare, and nothing, they may choose the offering.
The quality of healthcare in NZ needs improvement. Patient centred care is often not forthcoming. Unless the spending in healthcare is focused on improving patient service and outcomes, the government can put more in the budget and not improve the provision one whit.
Here is a brilliant solution for ending the Ukraine conflict.
In this video, Alfred McCoy points out that, at the start of the conflict, the European Court of Human Rights ordered that Russia desist from its attack on Ukraine. Of course, Russia simply ignored that order, seeing it as a toothless.
McCoy explains that the one of the concerns for the ECHR is the protection of civilian property and infrastructure. On that basis, McCoy suggests that the ECHR could make a judgement for damages to Ukraine.
The next step would be for the ECHR to order European nations reliant on Russian gas, to deduct a given percentage (say 20%) of payments to Russia and set that aside in a fund for reparations to Ukraine, to fund the restoration of infrastructure.
The ruling could also include a ratchet clause. So that the percentage of the reparations payment increases for each week the war continues.
The problem for Russia is that they have invested a huge amount in infrastructure for gas to Europe. Their choice would be to either cut off gas completely, and lose all revenue. Or to accept the reparations imposition. So, they probably would have little choice but to accept the imposition as Russia is so reliant on that gas income, and has very little way to generate that income from other sources due to the high infrastructure cost and time involved in doing so.
This proposed solution would also answer the concerns of nations such as Germany that have a high reliance on Russian gas.
I think a brilliant and creative solution that kills a lot of birds with one stone. Hopefully, his ideas get to the right people.
don't worry, the great USA said they can supply the gas….
yeah sure what a joke.
comrade putin can just turn the tap off for winter,
gee the germans wouldn't like that aye.
the west hasn't yet learnt threatening putin doesn't work,
he's holding all the cards.
Sure they could do that. The winter is over in Europe now. So, not a problem for a year or so.
By that time Germany would have made some strategic decisions such as reactivating coal or nuclear power plants in case of such a move by Russia.
Russia is the one with the most to lose here. If they cut off gas supply, they lose a major source of income for them. They just can't afford to cut the gas supply off for any length of time.
You are wrong about who is holding the cards.
Russia, China agree 30-year gas deal via new pipeline, to settle in euros
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-russia-china-agree-30-year-gas-deal-using-new-pipeline-source-2022-02-04/
EU says pay for Russian gas in euros to avoid breaching sanctions
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-says-gas-payments-may-be-possible-under-russian-roubles-proposal-without-2022-04-22/
Also:
Try 6 months. And "Industry"
The problem with China is that the limiting factor of gas supply to them is the pipe network that already exists. This could of course be increased by adding an additional pipe line. However this is going to take quite a long time to get set up.
The other factor that could be a larger problem for China very soon is that the American companies such as Haliburton that maintain the fuel infrastructure have pulled out of Russia due to the sanctions.
I understand that the pipeline that runs to China at the moment runs through fairly extreme conditions. Hence the likelihood of something going wrong with the system is fairly high. If something goes wrong with the system, it is going to be very problematic for Russia to get it fixed due to the unavailability of expertise due to the sanctions.
tsmith-nuclear power is far too expensive compared with renewables. (I just love saying this)
I know. I don't think Germany has huge amounts of options for renewables over there.
I have been there, and they have large fields of solar arrays, and I think I saw some wind as well. But I am not sure they have enough options to meet all their needs with renewables.
When I was there several years ago, they were making a big thing about closing their nuclear power plants down. But what wasn't said was that they were substituting that for power from France, which is produced by nuclear power (so I was told, anyway).
I think solar will become more and more prevalent, especially as power storage improves.
I read the other day that there are 900 (yes nine hundred) large scale solar projects in the pipeline in the UK and here in NZ a couple were announced last week.
At the moment 5.49pm NZ the UK is producing 0 gw of 13.4GW of installed capacity.
Germany 1.19mw of 56gw of installed capacity.
Just a snapshot….when people are willing to invest in 900 solar projects, putting their money where their mouth is, you know it makes sense.
It was nightime to dawn,in Europe hence the time stamp.
Who's threatening who?
The west isn't threatening Putin. They are doing. That is the big difference.
What is the world to do? Just cower and slink away every time some aggressive country threatens nukes? Where do you think that ends?
In the end we need to confront bullies with very clear messages about what is unacceptable behaviour.
I see that Russia has refused to supply gas to Poland because Poland apparently doen't want to pay for it in rubles, so I suspect Russia is not all that dependent on the revenue.
Poland and Bulgaria are chump change. Lets see if they will dare cut the gas to Germany.
Italians surrendered.
https://twitter.com/staunovo/status/1519384346041491456?cxt=HHwWgIC98eeA-JUqAAAA
Italians surrendered?
Really?
They should be ashamed of themselves.
Reminds me of an old joke about the many reverse gears an Italian tank has.
Europe and Italy will have to endure a little a hardship to ween themselves off Russian oil and gas at some point.
Well worth doing it now, if it can help stop the war, and save lives in Ukraine.
Eventually Europe and the world will have to endure more than a little hardship to totally ween ourselves off oil and gas, that is if we want to stop climate change, and save the planet.
Better Europe begin the transition now. Less hardship later.
I think another analogy for the Italian army is that they were good at marching backwards.
So, this doesn't surprise me.
The EU is not a united block…indeed the energy crisis may be the final straw.
Italy debt has blown out to 150% of gdp (2.6 trillion euros) A lot of the rich north was funding this from negative interest rates,these are now interest bearing so we see the issues with Spain,Portugal,Italy and Greece again,as will as the problematic new entrants.
On the other hand those countries vegetable oil production reserves will be big cash earners.
Italy and debt are permanent bedfellows, but the differing needs/sources for energy continue to create division…..it is not a happy union.
Algeria has warned Spain it will cut off its gas if it redirects it to Morocco (which it limited flows to over the Western Sahara arguments)
Everyone with a grudge is hanging out their dirty laundry for all to see.
So many grudges and interests…sounds like something the EU was designed to prevent….c'est la vie.
https://www.dw.com/en/warsaw-and-budapest-split-over-russian-energy-ties/a-61595947
The former eastern bloc Eu countries like Hungary are still at risk,although not being in the euro group (with an independent central bank) just lifted interest rates getting ahead of the curve,whilst the ECB countries only have quantitative easing at present to restrain inflation.
Spain says OLE to Algeria,
https://twitter.com/staunovo/status/1519593241427034114?cxt=HHwWhIC-5Y-A15YqAAAA
What is it with these internet celebrities (in their own minds) filming themselves being arseholes in distant countries and posting it online? This isn't quite; filming corpses in Japan's "suicide forest" level bad, but still the cluelessness is astonishing:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/128475510/bali-to-deport-actor-and-wellness-guru-for-naked-haka-on-top-of-sacred-mountain
Haere rā ki haere poka noa i roto ki he puia! Just expressing what I am feeling.
With this case I am encouraged to take Lotto to court, cause I haven't won a big lotto prize.
dv you would have a mighty class action there
Dojuya wanta join?
Big spender announces her pre-budget plan:
Anyone know why this was declared now, rather than as part of the budget?
The answer was in the article you linked.
and
Right, so the fund was pipelined a year ago and it has taken a year for the detailed implementation plan to get designed & survive internal scrutiny plus amendments, I presume. Fair enough. On that basis, looks like runs on the board for Labour – which is what they're in dire need of right now.
What do you expect from a minister of housing that didn't even know what percentage the OCR was when asked by Hosking.on air. And instead said she was more concerned with mortgage interest rates! Someone needs to let Megan Woods know, the OCR will determine the mortgage rates.
Depends if she's supposed to know that or not, eh? If H told her he'd checked her job description's ministerial responsibilities, and the govt web page specifying those had "must know OCR" on it, I'd be impressed. Never heard of him actually doing his homework for an interview. Thought he was just hot air.
I would of thought it was implied that she should know the OCR. She is the housing minister earning the big bucks, and even a pleb like me knew it was 1% at the time!
Its like having an electrician turn up, you sort of expect them to know what the different coloured wires are and which one is earth!
Actually someone should let you know that the OCR doesn't determine mortgage rates.
Hardly a surprise (even to someone as vague as you usually are) when you consider that the current OCR is about 1.5%, and that the best current floating mortgage interest rates are more than 3x that level.
The OCR has a very limited influence on the mortgage rate compared to the other factors like availability of funds for the banks to lend, the competition between banks, the riskiness of lending, the current currency inflation rate, the current CPI inflation rates, and even the willingness of customers to take out loans of various kinds.
The only reason that some 'journalists' like Hosking talk about the OCR is because that is something simple enough for their limited minds and attention spans to concentrate on. Even then, Hosking is a mere parrot – he is repeating the tactic of recently used with effect in the current Aussie election. He doesn't even have the imagination or intelligence to invent his own ideas.
A housing minister gets more concerned with things like availability of housing, builds ongoing, costs of building supplies, legislation, and the ability of people to afford to get housing.
These are all topics that professional simpleton like Hosking is barely aware of – because he is more interested in whoever paid for him to spread 'his' opinion last.
"Actually someone should let you know that the OCR doesn't determine mortgage rates."
Well it is very coincidental then, that every time the OCR increases, the mortgage rates increase, and when the OCR reduces, they go down.
Yes the current OCR is 1.5% as it increased 0.5% the day after Megan didn't have a clue what it was. I wonder if she now knows it is 1.5% and the banks have subsequently increased their mortgage rates?
Are you talking about fixed or floating mortgages?
Both really, but the OCR has a more direct effect on floating.
"How does the OCR work in NZ?
The Official Cash Rate (OCR) is an interest rate set by the Reserve Bank. It influences all other interest rates and is, in effect, the wholesale price of borrowing or lending money in New Zealand. It allows the Reserve Bank to meet its primary goal of ensuring price stability for New Zealand."
Having an effect, direct or indirect, and having an influence is not what you stated @ 10.1.1.1, which is that “the OCR will determine the mortgage rates” [my italics]. Clearly, this is not correct and only vaguely close to being accurate in a very broad generalised manner. You should lose the sloppy wording and sharpen up your language unless you want to be perceived as an ignorant fool who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Given your response @ 10.1.1.1.2.1 to Lprent I think you just wanted to take a stab at Megan Woods and your comment suited your biased narrative by twisting truth and accuracy. Being a Hosking clone or wannabe is worse than being an ignorant fool.
You are dancing on the head of a pin. I used the word "determine" in comment 10.1.1.1 perhaps I should have used the word "effects" or "influences" but it's pretty obvious that the OCR increasing will push up mortgage rates accordingly. And yes as housing minister, I would have expected Megan Woods to know the rate and was surprised that Mitchell didn't know it either.
You’re sloppy and slanted. Mortgage interest rates go up & down independent of OCR and at different times and to different degrees depending on whether they’re floating or fixed and the term of fixing. Competition for market share between banks is another factor and there are other factors too, as Lprent already mentioned. You just choose to act like an ignorant fool and having another dig at Woods. I think this borders on trolling, so make of that what you will – I have my own view and more than happy to act on it too.
Interesting doco on where meat comes from and the empires behind the industry.
https://youtu.be/NYfIXLkoB68
Barking end-times nonsense coming out of Moscow.
…will simply croak
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1519420947585015810
Stalin's heir living up to his forebear's ideals.
/
In 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. The primary victims of the Holodomor (literally "death inflicted by starvation") were rural farmers and villagers, who made up roughly 80 percent of Ukraine's population in the 1930s. .
https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1519400869577601026
The Third World
War, Special Military Operation."We'll have to conduct a Special Military Operation to demilitarise Nato."
It seems we will be not having a Third World war after all, only a Special Military Operation.
Phew! That's a relief.
Russia’s most famous journalists and “experts”, (ie. all those left not silenced or exiled) don't want to call war 'War'. Even if it's against Nato.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/2/do-not-call-ukraine-invasion-a-war-russia-tells-media-schools
So it was Ormiston Mall ram raided in the weekend, and I just heard on the radio last night there were break ins (or attempted) at Sylvia Park in Auckland and Chartwell Mall in Hamilton.
Which shopping mall will be hit tonight?
This really has got out of hand.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/sylvia-park-mall-targeted-by-robbers-in-latest-of-string-of-break-ins-across-auckland/4NLQGWQHY5JJCOFRZ623T35OYI/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/128482940/burglar-gang-youngest-7-caught-in-nighttime-toy-raid-at-shopping-centre
Epidemic in my burg. A game that doesn't make the news. Kids are putting their exploits up on tiktok and daring others to go one better.
The UK's Covid related deaths are running at a 7-day rolling average of 294. That is equivalent to 107,000 deaths a year.
All sorted then.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
"Learning to live with it…."
It's taken years to expose just a few of the extrajudicial killings carried out by Assad's murderous thugs. It's going to take many more years to expose the true horrors of Assad’s war, his prisons and the conduct of his Russian backers, find the criminals responsible and hold them accountable.
The rookie militiaman froze in horror as the scene unfolded: a blindfolded man was led by the elbow and told to run towards the giant hole that he did not know lay in front of him. Nor did he anticipate the thud of bullets into his flailing body as he tumbled on to a pile of dead men beneath him. One by one, more unsuspecting detainees followed; some were told they were running from a nearby sniper, others were mocked and abused in their last moments of life. Many seemed to believe their killers were somehow leading them to safety.
When the killing was done, at least 41 men lay dead in the mass grave in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon, a battlefront at the time in the conflict between the Syrian leader and insurrectionists lined up against him. Alongside piled heaps of dirt that would soon be used to finish the job, the killers poured fuel on the remains and ignited them, laughing as they literally covered up a war crime just several miles from Syria’s seat of power. The video was date-stamped 16 April 2013.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/massacre-in-tadamon-how-two-academics-hunted-down-a-syrian-war-criminal
Thank you Joe for standing up for the people of Syria. Very few have had the courage to do so on this website at risk of being ganged up on and labeled a "head chopper" by commenters and authors, and told to self censor or be banned. On the grounds that our views are ‘irrelevant’.
I was in Syria in 2010. I spent most of my time helping the Palestinian refugees in the Latakia Palestinian refugee camp. I returned to NZ just before the mass protests against Assad broke out. The Palestinian refugees in the Latakia refugee camp were some of the very first to be murdered by the regime for joining the protests against Assad. Here in New Zealand I sat appalled as I witnessed live feeds of Syrian fighter jets war ships strafing and shelling the Palestinian refugeed camp from the air and sea. Speaking as one who knows, exposing the atrocities committed by the Assad regime against the Syrian people on this site puts you at risk of copping a ban.
Thanks again for standing up for the Syrian people.
.https://thestandard.org.nz/heroes-2/#comment-1298465
[Take a week off.
You have dredged up this same shit from 2017 three times before and this is the 4th time. The most recent one was only 2 weeks ago (https://thestandard.org.nz/why-trust-in-the-media-is-declining/#comment-1882559) and you received a Mod note, which you’ve blatantly ignored.
Next time you dredge it up again and choose to re-litigate previous moderation you’ll receive a ban for a month without warning – Incognito]
Mod note