Open mike 28/04/2025
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6:00 am, April 28th, 2025 - 19 comments
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- Monday 12 May
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The Government’s plans to limit the powers and scope of the Waitangi Tribunal is a disgrace. ...4 days ago - Tribunal review an attack on Te Tiriti o Waitangi
The Government’s plans to limit the powers and scope of the Waitangi Tribunal is a disgrace. ...4 days ago
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The Green Party is appalled by the Government’s decision to severely underfund financial compensation for survivors of abuse in state care. ...4 days ago
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National has forced through a law change that will take money out of women’s pockets. ...6 days ago
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Te Pāti Māori stands in staunch and emotional opposition to the Government’s so-called Equal Pay Amendment Bill, calling it a calculated attack on working women and a cruel betrayal of the generations who have fought for pay equity in Aotearoa. “This bill doesn’t just undermine equal pay — it completely ...6 days ago
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In the last 12 months life has only got worse for Māori under Christopher Luxon’s Government. ...6 days ago
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There are more Pacific people unemployed as the rate increases to a staggering 10.8% under National. ...6 days ago
- Release: Unemployment remains high under National
Job losses remain stubbornly high under National, as their attack on jobs, wages, and women rages on. ...6 days ago
- Govt for the rich is failing the unemployed
The latest job market statistics show that unemployed people are being failed by a Government more focused on punishing the poor than creating jobs. ...6 days ago
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Te Pāti Māori is demanding urgent changes to the draft Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) framework, calling it a dangerous step backwards for Takatāpui, trans, and rainbow rangatahi. “This draft erases Takatāpui voices, ignores whānau diversity, and delays consent education. It’s not just inadequate, it’s unbelievably unsafe” said Te Pāti ...1 week ago
- RSE Draft Erases Rainbow and Takatāpui Youth
Te Pāti Māori is demanding urgent changes to the draft Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) framework, calling it a dangerous step backwards for Takatāpui, trans, and rainbow rangatahi. “This draft erases Takatāpui voices, ignores whānau diversity, and delays consent education. It’s not just inadequate, it’s unbelievably unsafe” said Te Pāti ...1 week ago
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Labour welcomes the Auditor-General’s inquiry into the Government’s school lunches programme. ...1 week ago
- Release: Women will keep being paid less under National
This Government is taking the women’s movement backwards, ensuring women will continue to be paid less into the future. ...1 week ago
- Govt takes workplace equity efforts backwards
The Green Party has called out the Government’s latest attack on workers with the announcement that it is halting all pay equity claims. ...1 week ago
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Erica Stanford has been misusing her personal email address to manage sensitive information relating to Budget and visa changes prior to their public release. ...1 week ago
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Today, Green Party MP Steve Abel has added a new Member’s Bill to the biscuit tin to ensure any product sold in New Zealand meets New Zealand’s animal welfare standards, even if it’s produced overseas. ...1 week ago
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Te Pāti Māori warns that the Government’s Treaty Clause Review represents the most severe erosion of iwi rights in modern legal history. “Luxon's Government is doing what the Treaty Principles Bill failed to do. They are removing every legal reference to Te Tiriti across health, housing, conservation, and child wellbeing ...1 week ago
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This May Day Labour is standing with workers to defend decent jobs and fair pay. ...2 weeks ago
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MSD Work and Income front-line staff are unable to cope with their part in the more intensive management of Job Seekers (and increased number), so a programme to prevent homelessness is no longer provided.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/559219/part-of-msd-programme-to-prevent-people-ending-up-in-emergency-housing-scrapped
This follows reducing access to emergency housing last year.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/524658/ministry-of-social-development-to-introduce-new-rules-for-cutting-emergency-housing-numbers
How to conjure up 500 new plods.
/
Police have launched a wide-ranging investigation of hundreds of police recruit applicants after learning some prospective cops who failed physical tests got approval to start police college anyway.
Police announced they would investigate by carrying out an audit after the Herald started asking questions about whether any exemptions or discretionary decisions had been made when considering applicants’ fitness levels
The Herald understands the decision to allow substandard recruits into police college by way of an exemption would have been made at the top level of police.
Police sources, the Police Association and the Labour Party believe rules have been modified because of pressure from the Government to get 500 extra police by November – a policy described as a “priority” by the coalition Government when it made the announcement in May last year.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/police-announce-audit-of-police-college-applicants-after-discovering-fitness-test-breaches/E3JPSZJJMJGEBOQXSBBGKBWBNU/
(https://archive.li/Oyj3h)
I'd rather have 500 new sworn officers who aren't made of steel: much excellent Police investigative work doesn't require running after people truncheon in hand.
Most police officers start work on the streets before moving up the ranks to investigative work. Not being fit enough makes the job more unsafe for everyone the officer comes across – short cuts get taken.
That being said, people can be trained to be more physically fit, it just takes time and energy away from time learning other stuff e.g. conflict resolution, proper procedure, etc. Hasn't police training time already been reduced?
They are also trying extra leniency in selection of future officers, however this seems like a step too far:
From ODT, 21/04/25 (https://archive.ph/Qkdq1)
I'm surprised that we have not made more of an effort to improve preparation, extend training.
20 weeks is risible.
Canada has 26, Oz does it over longer period mixed with periods of placement, observation on the job.
I'd do the same, but as long as up to a year (with the observer status including various non police but related area settings – hospital security/social workers/emergency response/charity groups working with those at risk/ … gym membership)
Compared to Europe, the English world training is a badge and uniform and evidence of reading a rule book/job desk file).
Some of the recruits need the extra observation period, as they lack life experience to identify paths, not just policing, in managing people.
GEEZ What could POSSIBLY go wrong!!!!!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/559253/government-reveals-new-scheme-to-accelerate-building-projects
+1,000
Like they have no memory at all
As someone with relatives financially obliterated by a leaky home built in the terms of the Bolger-Shipley governments, I have thoughts about that.
Continue lumbering ratepayers with the costs.
/
Auckland's leaky building disaster has cost ratepayers $600 million in claims and is partly why the council is taking longer to sign off on some new developments, a senior official says.
[…]
PwC has estimated New Zealand's leaky building crisis – that has affected tens of thousands of houses, units and apartments – could cost more than $20 billion.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/leaky-buildings-cost-auckland-ratepayers-600m/KYPU5O7EK5ZKERKV6AHDURXYK4/
Only way this could fly is the contractors having workmanship gaurantees by way of an insurance policy that covers the owner for any defects over a long peiod of time.
I've really come around to the idea of compulsary insurance against defects with the policy signed over to the home owner upon completion.
Dodgy outfits simply wont get coverage and will be out of business real quick.
The insurers would also make life alot tougher for those that wind up their businesses and start again. Theyll be very interested in who the directors and staff are.
They current inspection regime is insufficient and inefficient.
They have gone for the "trusted", rather than open-slather trust approach.
That might limit consequences.
The professionals now include plumbers and drain layers – as well as existing electricians and gas-fitters.
Otherwise, it is simpler residential designs, or otherwise where reputable building companies delivering large numbers of near-identical houses.
Jones and Seymour adopting serious man postures in opposing "co-governance" for the Waitakere area.
Except it is not and they quietly approved something more like co-governance in Taranaki recently.
I guess the shills for neo-liberalism and carbon-centric economic nationalism have to find a new way to reach the common man – given declining public services and economic stagnation.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/shane-jones-david-seymour-reject-waitakere-ranges-co-governance-plan/CTFBDTZ4OFGHREOUYU2BH4LWUQ/
That relationship with Maori abou tthe Waitakeres was borne of groundbreaking work between Te Warena Taua and Sir Bob Harvey when he was Mayor of Waitakere Council. Back in the late 1990s.
Te Kawerau A Maki have been standouts citizens who really have helped protect and restore the Waitakere Ranges in a lot of ways and should be treated for their work with great respect.
Back in the late 1970s and 1980s the Waitakeres were being carved up all over the show. The Ranges Heritage Act slowed that down, and gave time for big restorative partnerships like Ark in the Park to form and push back all the rodents and enable Kokako and other rare species to establish in there.
The partnerships including those with Maori are the reason the Waitakeres are in reasonable shape today, not degrading like most other Auckland-Northland forests.
It is a categorical mistake from Mayor Tory Whanau not to compensate businesses for reasonable losses of earnings due to major roadworks disruption.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360667734/shovels-hit-ground-golden-mile-no-grants-businesses
This was one of the key lessons learned from City Rail Link after Albert Street exploded onto the desks of the Mayor of Auckland and Minister of Transport. Eventually they set up a fund for it, but several years too late and the reputational damage had been done.
If we really want to continue to retrofit our cities for greater mode share, we simply have to take the local businesses with us. And yes if it takes an amendment to S60 of the Public Works Act, I want to see Parliament up for that.
I’m wary of setting a precedent for compensating businesses disrupted by public works.
Infrastructure upgrades inevitably affect everyone: Residents, commuters, businesses. But we don't compensate individuals for lost time or inconvenience.
Why should businesses be singled out for special protection?
Worse, blanket compensation creates moral hazard: it rewards private actors for public risk, discourages resilience, and invites rent-seeking. We already see critical projects being delayed, watered down, or cancelled altogether by a handful of loud business owners. Often the same ones who oppose social investment but are first in line for public subsidies when it suits them.
Ratepayers already fund infrastructure. They shouldn’t also underwrite private commercial risk. If disruption is such a threat, businesses should be insuring themselves. Just as they would for fire, theft, or natural disasters.
Beyond cost, there's a bigger risk:
If we normalize compensation, every future project; bus lane, a cycleway, a town centre upgrade; risks being bogged down by compensation claims and political bargaining.
The public ends up paying twice: first for the project itself, and again to buy off opposition to it.
Public works are a collective good. Disruption is part of the transition to better cities.
The solution isn’t paying people off. It’s smarter project management, better communication, and clear political leadership willing to hold the line.
If anything, assistance should be minimal, time-bound, independently verified — and a last resort, not the default.
Otherwise, we risk making necessary urban change even more financially and politically impossible.
Agree the precedent is really difficult, particularly with Public Works Act precedent that has very few successful claims for "injurious affection" solely to property value.
Compensation means you are shifting all those projects away from public incoherent pleading ie political, to a simple set of criteria mechanisms that are all about businesses having to open their books to a before-and-after impact evaluation ie non-political and just commercial.
Thankfully City Rail Link setting up their compensation fund has rehearsed a lot of the slippery slope arguments, and set out clear steps towards making a claim the the criteria for it.
Too many projects just run out of social license and take down whole Mayors and Councils. Light rail in Auckland would have been much easier. As would New Plymouth cycleways. As would many more. Public good arguments have just run out of steam; people are too brittle, street-level businesses are too brittle, and the rage-amplification really has changed how you plan and deliver major projects.
Imagine how many urban renewal projects you could accelerate if you could just shut the immediately affected retailers up from day 1. Just financially smooth out the bumps beforehand, and watch the Appeals fall away.
We already have a word for that: they're called bribes.