The Canadian team is said to have played a key role in the negotiations that led to the adoption of the rulebook that will govern how the Paris Accord will cut emissions and curb global warming. “Our team worked hard throughout the negotiations to find common ground between developed and developing countries,” said Catherine McKenna (Minister of the Environment and Climate Change)…..
……Canada’s behaviour at COP conferences is not the problem. We behave as a good climate leader should. We play that role quite well.
The Canadian government has just announced a new handout of $1.6 billion to the Alberta oilsands despite already purchasing the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion earlier in 2018.
In November, Canada posted the G20’s highest per capita GHG emissions
In Ottawa the Doug Ford government dismantled the province’s successful carbon cap-and-trade program, cancelled 758 renewable energy contracts, and stopped construction of the White Pines wind farm as it neared completion.
But the harshest attacks were reserved for campaigners on the front lines of the Trans Mountain fight.
Former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge casually and chillingly suggested that “people will die” on the protest lines at Burnaby Mountain, asserting that killing off a few “extremists” might be the price Canada would have to pay to get the Trans Mountain expansion built.
*sigh* turned on the radio and remembered that RNZ like to use January to save money by pretending that nothing is happening and we all love hearing their back catalogue of shit music from anodyne presenters.
Ouch. The RNZ director of music is a personal friend. Is there something in particular you’d like me to pass on? What in particular do you feel is “shit” about the music presented?
I am a big fan of music 101.
Although I realise it is a team that puts the show together, Alex Behan was an ideal presenter for the format. Inclusive, humble, amiable.
I will miss his vibe.
As for matinee idol, as others have said more eloquently down thread, great for a while, but can become too much of a good thing.
The one thing wrong about Matinee Idle is Simon Morris. Not only is everything that comes out of his mouth complete and utter drivel, his voice is one that should never be allowed on radio. The show was great when it began a number of years ago because Phil O’Brien did it on his own.
Agreed Ad, Matinee Idle is great fun and how radio should be used. Endless carping on about how unfair life is to some and regurgitated non-news may maintain the dreary angst of the Woe Is Us Tragics but January is time for some fun.
There are eleven other months for the The World Is Fucked depressives to get their fix.
agree +1000 Sanctuary…..why oh why should RNZ foist this rubbish on us…the BBC keeps broadcasting as usual and the news never stops..tsunamis….stock market plunges….Trump…always Trump
RNZ basically only operate for 47 weeks of the year.
Taking Xmas week plus a month off might be great for saving a few pingers and and as well I guess it suits the disconnected life style of the Wellington political/media elites. They live in a world where all the pollies and the journos bugger off to a flash bach for a month. Meanwhile, truck drivers, hair dressers, shop owners, retail workers and all the rest get the stats and the bit in between if they are lucky.
Public radio not serving the public for 5 weeks every year while the skeleton staff left to keep the place running indulge in the pernicious fantasy that Kiwis all live in an upper-middle class white collar utopia of a month of beach life at the bach simply makes me think they are disconnected from reality.
Sure, shut down for two weeks. But five? That’s taking the piss. By the time Morning Report starts up again 90% of the population has been back at work for at least two weeks.
I agree that RNZ was highjacked by the larte set for their interest not our and has become now a meaning less copy of BBC broadcasting.
We in Gisborne.HB have no real interested RNZ reporter anywhere here now to meet the public on climate change transport or environmental issues,
So RNZ needs to be scrapped; – and Government needs to produce a fresh “voice of the people” TV channel, as ‘channel 7’ was before ‘Johnny key’ closed it down.
“In 2008 the Government announced that the broadcaster was to become “more public-service” like. TVNZ responded by launching two commercial free channels; TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7. By 2011 Prime Minister John Key announced the closure of these channels.”
Well let’s hope (as I mentioned the other day on another thread that @VV thought was brutal), the board and CEO of RNZ’s new charge to be relevant and become good media citizen’s in the digital age, DON’T preoccupy themselves with demographics and The Market The Market share.
If they are to remain, or at least pretend interest as a Public Service broadcaster, it’ll be less about demographics and The Market The Market as it’s drivers, and more about Genre and Diversity.
Concentration on Demographics – especially when focused on age, assumes the yoof of today has no interest in classical music or jazz, and the geriatric has no interest in rap or whatever passes as rythm and blues these days.
They shouldn’t even be trying to compete with the commercial alternatives – they’re perfectly capable of self flagellation beating each other to death all on their own.
OwT
It seems to me that radionz are trying to compete with commercial radio’s listings, wanting to be in the top. That is not why we have public broadcasting. While it is important to stay in the public eye, PB doesn’t need to crawl to every new whim but just stay current, being aware of what interests people, and what is coming forward in the arts and literature and critique etc. And be thinking and choosing presentation of what a well and widely informed person would want, or need, to know and understand the wider issues.
Now we have video killing the radio star; pictures that don’t tell 1,000 words because the images are so easy to slant. I refer ito it still as Radionz because that honestly states its purpose and importance. Television, videos etc are adjuncts. Reading the article is the base from which viewing the images reinforces and illustrates the subject, points, line on which the news is written; it backgrounds and shows faces, detail.
Encouraging people listening to radio, to communicate and present a range of views and anecdotes relating to the item is good. Not good is to then choose some dinosaur example of negative or fairy godmotherish or religious fundamentalist comment to read out; which happens too often. This being aired on the wider broadcasting medium just reinforces those who are uninformed and living in their own bubble of certainties and limited learning.
The Standard is good because people can be informed of links giving a wider comparative news outlets. Regular commenters may be reliable for one particular view and be trusted to give reasoned comment from that bent and be interested in justifying it when questioned. I often put up Radionz links to matters that raise new points or examples and that could pass by unnoticed that day. Radionzthey are pretty good but have to watched for a tendency to gloss over the pressing problems to concentrate on the views and wants of the chattering classes.
Indeed @ grey….. there’s nothing in that comment I disagree with.
Don’t really have time to reply properly now, but I’m both worried and hopeful about the future of PSB in this country.
There are things RNZ management are doing that lead me to believe they’re a little too concerned with “the Market The Market’ and demographics on the one hand, while on the other Chris F-F-F-Faa-F-F-FFoi is genuinely considering various options (but bearing in mind he’s only ever experienced a life, and broadcasting experience in a neo-liberal environment). Plus of course he’s got all that fiscal responsibility shit going on around him.
And somewhere back in the never-never I made another comment on PSB – several actually. One on the fact that the Coalaition for Better Broadcasting, (or whatever they call themsleves these days) isn’t actually being ambitious enough (perhaps because the shit about we’re a nation of only 4.5 mill and can’t afford stuff, and more).
Another, on the fact that we effectively have a model that isn’t too unlike all that funder-provider shit that went with health care provision in the Ruthenasia era.
Another that we have a rather huge bureaucracy with some rather large salaries that sap a lot of that money the 4.5 million supposedly can’t afford, and its all glued together -primarily due to self interest and preservation
We have:
RNZ ………. CEO and Board
TVNZ ditto
NZoA dittto
Kordia ditto
TMP ditto
MTS ditto
…….oh, and then there’s that Freeview thing
Shit……….sorry, beginning to rave, but hopefully you might be getting to understand where I’m coming from – but basically
we CAN afford 2, and probably 3 radio networks, and at least 2 TV networks that include children (Oh!!! won’t you PLEASE PLEASE think of the children)
AND we have a shitload of sources where content can come.
OwT
I love your brimming-over interest in our PBS.
Keep at it won’t you.
And PLEASE think of the childrens’ tv. It’s awful watching the c r a p with coloured morals (the colours referring to purple and hot pink rather than various shades of gold or dark skin as opposed to deadfish white or spotty pink).
I think of children’s TV quite often. I think of its potential for education as well as its entertainment value.
I also think of things like public service broadcasting’s responsibilities towards the arts and sport, and the amount of corporate welfare that goes into propping up commercial operators that have competed themselves almost to death, and now expect (as of some sort of right) to more handouts.
I think of the way public assets have been used to give commercial interests preferential treatment over time (such as transmission facilities that were once an inherent part in providing all that Reithian educate, inform and entertain stuff).
I think of the supposed efficiencies promised by all the tinkering and interference that’s gone on over decades.
There’s a lot to it all, but what worries me most is that if we ever do get to a PSB Nirvana, it will need to be protected from further political interference and viewed in the same way we see the independence of the Judiciary as being important ( if we’re ever going to be a fully functioning democracy).
But right now, (to use the neo-lib’s own language), we have a pretty inefficient system of delivering PSB and it’s overburdened with quite a few ticket clippers
“… I mentioned the other day on another thread that @VV thought was brutal…”
I have my worried face on now, OWT, as I am having a ‘senior moment’ as I cannot recall this exchange. Grateful for some clues as to when (approx) this was, and any other (gentle) clues to help my memory. LOL
mmmm – maybe it was the greywarshark I had a response from.
But…..stuff is underway at RNZ (as you’ll no doubt be aware of) – and its not necessarily for the better, but more about shuffling a few chairs about.
From Guyon to Mora/Chapman to an Alex Behan being dumped.
Yep I was thinking of this and confused you with @ Greywarshark;
Knew a person who worked at Chapman Tripp and was expected to work excessive hours well over the 40 hours a week of salary that they were paid for. The labour inspectorate should be investigating a lot more of this practise as this person actually worked over 100 hours in one week at one point and everyone was telling them, leave the firm!! They also got paid a salary lower than the person was worth, even without considering the extra hours! So no surprises that a firm like that with their own staff is keen to ‘help’ migrant labour.
Would be interesting to find out with the amount of qualifications the women had, what the salary was, $100k, $80k, surely not lower than that with masters in International Studies from IPU in Palmerston North?? and supermarket experience to boot!!! Lucky then, that Burger King can qualify and so can every other food business as importing in food is now being touted as international trade by lawyers!!!
Don’t forget many of these law firms are also sexually harassing their staff…
Bear in mind international fees are $19,000 per year, and around $15,000 per year for accomodation plus other fees so you are up for $35k+per year, not sure what their ‘international’ ranking is for a masters, but I’m not sure they are in the top 100 universities even Auckland university these days is struggling to stay on international rankings lists for education…. but here in NZ we just don’t worry about quality, as long as the fees are paid!
IPU doesn’t exactly have an international reputation like Harvard, but I guess you can then get a job in a food import business and residency on the basis of it so money well spent especially when NZ law firms are so supportive of the process!
Knew a person who worked at Chapman Tripp and was expected to work excessive hours well over the 40 hours a week of salary that they were paid for. The labour inspectorate should be investigating a lot more of this practise as this person actually worked over 100 hours in one week at one point and everyone was telling them, leave the firm!!
This is why we had penal rates and need to bring them back. If there’s enough work for two people then two people need to be employed. And 100 hour weeks is enough for three people to be employed.
Would be interesting to find out with the amount of qualifications the women had, what the salary was, $100k, $80k, surely not lower than that with masters in International Studies from IPU in Palmerston North?
I’m seeing a restaurant and bakery that serves NZ. Probably doesn’t need the degree at all.
So, the degree would be just another back door for immigrant labour. For her and her husband.
A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.
Reading between the lines, I doubt the world is ready for these particular selfies.
Concord Management, the Russian company charged by Mueller for funding internet trolling, is asking the judge to force prosecutors to let the company's employees see "sensitive" discovery, in a filing that's a little TMI pic.twitter.com/8e7n6ANsQM— Tierney Sneed (@Tierney_Megan) December 20, 2018
Also, apparently, among the millions of pages of records Mueller's has collected on Russian election interference is a "nude selfie." pic.twitter.com/E8eh3i0jxV— Brad Heath (@bradheath) December 27, 2018
a previous Concord filing suggested that there were multiple "personal selfie naked photographs" https://t.co/jTZ7tKYiO8— Tierney Sneed (@Tierney_Megan) December 27, 2018
Caught red handed in scamming the American people.
LinkedIn founder admits to funding a Democrat Cyber Security entity to the tune of $100,000. It created Russian Bots. IE it created fake Russian internet entities supporting Republican candidates with comments to make those Republican candidates look bad.
Trump did it. LOL.
Meanwhile the MSNBC ran of story of boarder guards destroying water stashes left by illegal immigration cartels, or good Samaritans? Then did there Hate Trump opinion panel fake news rubbish. The video is from 2011, slightly Obama era.
I looked up this Dunning-Kruger effect – it applies a lot on the blog. A certain number of people think ‘I can Write my Ideas, and being mine, I Consider Them Awfully Good’. (And that will always be true, as ‘awfully’ has a number of meanings, some of them contradictory!)
catalogofbias.org
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.
Dunning–Kruger effect – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
“The flyby technically began on Christmas. Unlike Pluto, whose orbit has been precisely charted for a long time, MU69 was only discovered 4 years ago and its trajectory is not perfectly known. Because of this, the team has to rely on direct observation of the body, which for now still appears as little more than a pixel in its telescope, to understand its location relative to New Horizons.
Until this weekend, the team is using the probe’s telescope to get a handle on the uncertainty of MU69’s location. Although it will be too late to tweak the spacecraft’s trajectory, the team will be able to rework the script of its high-resolution camera so that it can be certain of imaging MU69. This final update will then be relayed to New Horizons on 30 December.
I love it for what it is. Imo purity. A purity of vision and skill.
Also if we can do this we CAN make the changes as a species that we need to do
Funnily enough Imo space and everything external to earth actually helps us connect to earth, to nature. This is why we have fucked up imo – we have tried to forget that we are nature and nature is us as it is for all life – animate and inanimate.
Blessings of the festive season to you and your loved ones.
lso if we can do this we CAN make the changes as a species that we need to do
We can but there’s our ‘leaders’ preventing us.
This is why we have fucked up imo – we have tried to forget that we are nature and nature is us as it is for all life – animate and inanimate.
IMO, we’ve spent so much of our time fighting nature just to live that we’ve forgotten that we’re part of it. It’s in living memory that one in four children were dying before they were five.
We’re well beyond those times now but now we need to journey back to living with nature rather than fighting her.
Labour is sickeningly astonishingly very slow at giving us the “long promised “non commercial channel with more investigative journalism context” as ‘TVNZ 7 was when they began that one in 2008 and Johnny Key closed it down in 2011?
Quote from Wikipedia;
“In 2008 the Government announced that the broadcaster was to become “more public-service” like. TVNZ responded by launching two commercial free channels; TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7. By 2011 Prime Minister John Key announced the closure of these channels.”
Conducted by the National Māori Authority, a survey found the top three concerns for Māori included financial insecurity, homelessness and the state of New Zealand’s rivers and lakes.
Next on the list was the number of Māori children in state care, the number of Māori in prison and the rising suicide rates.
I am leaving the IEA as of 1 Jan 2019. I will miss it. But I won't miss the endless "who funds you?" tweets. They reveal a profound misunderstanding of the kind of people who work at think tanks and what motivates them. And always irrelevant to the issue at hand. So stupid.— Jamie Whyte (@_JamieWhyte) December 27, 2018
I am leaving the IEA as of 1 Jan 2019. I will miss it. But I won't miss the endless "who funds you?" tweets. They reveal a profound misunderstanding of the kind of people who work at think tanks and what motivates them. And always irrelevant to the issue at hand. So stupid.
This is a very fine NZ cricket team. The Sri Lankan team by contrast is one of their weaker line ups – not surprising when they’ve lost so many fine players over the last few years.
I tau toko/ support these people words the fossil fuel industry pushed plastic and are still pushing it on us why did we switch from glass milk bottles to plastic because of money being used to influnce our reality making us believe that plastic was better than glass laws need to be passed to make manufactures make enviromently safe packging
Stemming plastic production should be focus, says researcher
Recycling will not be enough to dig the world out of the dangerous mountain of plastic it is drowning in, a leading plastic pollution researcher says.
Massey University’s Dr Trisia Farrelly is part of an expert group advising the United Nations.
Globally as little as 5 percent of plastic was ever recycled, meaning recycling would never address the problem, she said.
Instead an effort must be made to turn off the tap on the amount of plastic being produced.
“The plastics industry is driven by the fossil fuel industry and if they have their way, these figures are going to grow exponentially. In fact there is predicted to be a 33 percent increase in fossil fuel based plastic production in the next five years. So it’s not slowing down, it’s increasing.”
Dr Farrelly said a legally binding global treaty was needed to force producers to stop the supply of plastic. Ka kite ano links below.
I can not even leave my house for 5 minutes with out the sandflys breaking into my house to try and intimadate Eco Maori. The big picture is that the policeforce of all the countrys of Papatuanuku are corrupt if these muppets had anything except lies well they would have locked me up but know they have nothing .Some one makes a excuse that they cannot interfare when they know the state is breaking my human rights right under there noses
New GCSB bill allows spying on Kiwis
A new bill which gives New Zealand’s security and intelligence agencies more power to spy on Kiwis is likely to be introduced this week.
Prime Minister John Key said the expansion of powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was for good reason.
“If you wanted to allow GCSB to spy against a New Zealander, at the moment they can’t do that,” Key said on Breakfast link below ka kite ano . P.S thanks for the mana sandflys
We are the Guardian of all the creatures on Papatuanuku we need to use all the tools we have to protect the precious wildlife from extinction. This story about the northern white rhino is sad and a catastrophe on a world scale all the creatures going extint in 2018
‘We held a memorial service’: the keeper of the last male northern white rhino
The head keeper at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya remembers Sudan We really cried, all the keepers. We held a memorial service for him, which helped. He was a great ambassador for all rhinos, not just his own kind.
I’m still working hard to ensure the two remaining northern white rhinos are content and in good condition for the rest of their lives. They continue to help raise awareness of rhino conservation. If there was no poaching, there would still be good wild populations of northern white rhinos. We are trying to tell everyone that rhino horn does not possess any medicinal value.
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This may not be the end of Sudan’s story. Semen was collected from him, and from other captive males, before they died. Scientists now plan to harvest eggs from our two remaining females, create more than one embryo and implant them in surrogate female southern white rhinos. In Berlin, scientists have managed to create an embryo using northern white rhino semen and southern white rhino eggs. Using IVF to try to save rhinos has never been done before. I keep my fingers crossed. I still hope we can save these magnificent creatures. links below ka kite ano P.S I smell some thing its a puppet.
This is like a story from a film. A businessman masquerading as a farmer, called Randy Constant! has been selling ordinary grains as organic for a nice mark-up for all concerned. Anyone who bought from him didn’t have the necessary wry sense of humour one needs to survive along with a smart brain these days.l
Constant, of Chillicothe, Missouri, and three others have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Constant, who owned an Iowa grain brokerage, acknowledged that he sold $142 million worth of corn, soybeans and wheat over a 7½-year period that wasn’t organic despite his representations.
So he grew stuff, bought off others to add to his, put it through his grain broker business, and the greedy shit clipped tickets all the way on this fraudulent scheme.l Bet they don’t have the guts to go through with it; the fairground hucksters who run things over in the good ole USA.
This sort of rip-off is what you get when you have an amoral and wilfully neglectful regulation scheme for quality in anything , which is what we have under the enforced neo-liberal free market scheme. Coupled with poor regulations and lax policing of them, is the belief in the ‘free fairy’ which is that in the free market things are so much better than if government is fully involved, and that you can trust business. People made gullible by anti-government propaganda. 👿
Kia ora Te kaea tepuia marae is getting swomped with people in need of food and housing ka pai Dennis.
It must be hard living in Tamikimakau
That is a good deed Jacinda giving aid to Indonesia to help with there recovery from the tsunami .
That’s a good sign that our government is making the correct moves with spending on boxing day up more than 10% that shows me that some business leaders are putting a negative spin on Aotearoa economy
It’s cool Te tangata whenua are celebrating the spring equinox I was researching that yesterday.
I alcohol is a big for our younger maori tane they have to learn that drink driving is not cool.ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub One has to show respect for te awa and tangaroa and be careful it is to easy to drown .
Some people do dumb stuff blowing up a shop to get insurance in Britain.
That elephantseal in Whakatane is a awsome sight they are huge creatures and one has to be very carefull around them good to see the wild creatures around Aotearoa are doing ok but we must do more to protect them.
Its good to see the south island council looking after our guest freedoom campers with showers wifi and a loo dump.
Brixit has put a lot of unneeded presure on busness and people in Britain .
Thats sad that the Bushman center is closing.
That show how a big surge in elitricty can make a strange glow that was freaky.
Kate instant family is a cool movie its all about the family. I see Aquaman has broken movie release sales records in Aotearoa biggest sales Ka pai I seen Tofiga from Laughing Samoans interview Jason Momoa so funny .
Ka kite ano
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A guest repost by Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) staff attorney Augusta Wilson. Fundraising is not the objective of this article but readers may wish to know that CSLDF is currently conducting a summer fundraiser to support defense of research scientists and research integrity from anti-science interference by politicians and industrial interests. The COVID-19 pandemic ...
Helloy… My name is Todd Muller and I am the leader of the National Party of New Zealand. Many people come up to me on the street and ask me who I am. I’m often walking through Tauranga, or in a mall in suburban Auckland, or maybe even a farmers’ ...
The US state of Mississippi has finally voted to remove the Confederate emblem from its state flag. Good. Its appalling that it was put there in the first place, but even more appalling that it took so long to remove it. Its basicly as if a German Länder still had ...
No one could have predicted when David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill was passed by Parliament last November that the referendum required to bring the legislation into force would be held against the backdrop of a deadly global pandemic. Since then, the mounting tally of casualties around the world ...
Paul GoldsmithYou can often tell just how effective a progressive policy proposal will be by how much the right wing criticise it. The more socially beneficial, the more vitriolic and unhinged they seem to become.That was the case when the Green Party announced their Poverty Action Plan yesterday. The response ...
Back at the beginning of April, when we had much else on our minds, I wrote this post urging some caution in interpreting the results of the latest Horizon poll, conducted in February, on voting intentions in this year's cannabis referendum, which was paid for by Helius Therapeutics.I wrote that ...
Over the weekend the Greens made their first election policy announcement, and promised transformational change: a more progressive tax system, with new rates applying to incomes of $100,000 and $150,000; a new wealth tax on net wealth over $1 million; and a guaranteed minimum income to eliminate poverty. Its bold, ...
Story of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Global Warming Is Melting Our Sense of Time Satellite image of smoke from active fires burning near the ...
. . Plague town? There are two things right now in Aotearoa New Zealand that are guaranteed to piss people off. Firstly, it’s National playing silly-bugger politics with the covid-19 pandemic. This cost Simon Bridges his job as National’s Leader. Lately, Michael Woodhouse has been playing fast and loose with ...
Tertiary fees in New Zealand versus Australia: Fees Are Important, but not as Important as Financing In Australia, the Education Minister Dan Tehan has proposed an overhaul of the existing higher education funding system to offer 39,000 additional study places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030. The proposal has been ...
The latest opinion poll forecasts a landslide win by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party, but when taken alongside other polling, it illustrates New Zealand politics remains volatile and the contest is still very open. According to the Colmar Brunton poll published by TVNZ last night, Labour would easily romp back ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, June 21 through Sat, June 27, 2020Editor's ChoiceFacebook creates fact-checking exemption for climate deniers Facebook is "aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation,” said Robert Brulle, an ...
The images and reports delivered to us by the world’s media leave us in no doubt that the rest of the world is still in the grip of a coronavirus pandemic that shows no signs of slackening, but is actually uncontrolled and picking up pace in many countries; and even ...
Minister of Health - David ClarkIf you follow politics at all in New Zealand, David Clark is likely a name you’re a bit familiar with. The current Minister of Health is perhaps the most disliked Member of Parliament at the moment, which amongst very stiff competition is really saying something. ...
SUNDAY JUNE 28Beat the Chasers (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). Judging by the tweets, which is probably a bad idea, over lockdown, all of New Zealand found itself in front of The Chase every night at 5pm. It is a brilliant fomat: hardly anyone wins any money ...
SATURDAY JUNE 27Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art (Sky Arts, Sky 017, 8.00pm). There was graffiti before Banksy, but perhaps his pungent political messages hit home a bit harder. Anyways, a doco about his influence on street art featuring a bunch of cool people.SUNDAY JUNE 28Beat the Chasers (TVNZ 1, ...
We have been assailed by Fox News-style headlines, lurid stories of “a breach!”. An almost nuclear level disaster on the horizon scream, “Fiasco!” here, “Hero to Zero!” there… Oh quick, panic everyone!This has fueled an unbelievably stupid environment of panic among some, and spurred useless, counterproductive political ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters A massive dust storm formed over the Sahara Desert last week and invaded the Caribbean over the June 20-21 weekend, bringing dangerous levels of air pollution and low visibility to the islands. The dust is accompanied by a large amount ...
Will the Covid Crisis lead to a dramatic redirection for New Zealand and the World? A hinge in history occurs where the past and present are connected but they point in different directions. Big hinges are rare but crucial in the development of humankind. Not in Narrow Seas identifies six. ...
RNZ reports that Refining NZ is considering shutting down Marsden Point and effectively turning itself into a fuel distribution service. The problem they're immediately trying to address is that running a refinery is expensive, and it is cheaper just to import processed fuel. But there's a longer-term problem too: climate ...
We all know that the COVID-19 virus is a terrible infectious disease that has already caused untold misery and numerous deaths around the world. Nearly half a million people have already died, and those are just the cases we know about.But how bad could things actually get exactly?Today, the NZ ...
This essay by Alex Hochuli examines the global phenomena of BLM protests . He is a freelance writer and research consultant based in São Paulo, Brazil. He is the co-host of the global politics podcast, Aufhebunga Bunga, and co-author of the forthcoming Politics at the End of the End of History (Zero ...
Are You Still Here? Just like his colleague, Phil Twyford – of KiwiBuild fame – David Clark juts out his chin and shamelessly apportions blame to everybody but himself. Even worse, he has turned viciously on Ashley Bloomfield, the nearest approximation to a competent, decent, humble and accountable public servant ...
. . 20 June The bad news: Aotearoa New Zealand has two new cases of covid-19. The good news: the two cases were picked up at an Auckland quarantine facility. The terrifying news: had the story of the two women leaving quarantine without testing not broken four days ...
Willing Victims: What would all those Americans in MAGA hats be left with if they abandoned Trump? Just the sick feeling of having been cheated. Just the knowledge that the man in the White House is nothing more than a shape-shifting New York grifter; and that they have always been ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Like an earthquake rumbling down the San Andreas Fault, Jeff Gibbs’ and Michael Moore’s controversial film “Planet of the Humans” tore a rift through the environmental movement, a rift its leaders would not yearn for in an election year. After activists have spent ...
There have been a number of articles written about the voting in the final statges of the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, during which National MPs voted alongside the Green Party to force a change that would prevent the removal of sentenced prisoners from the Electoral Roll. You can ...
Last night should have been a cause for muted celebration in Parliament. The Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Bill’s final passage through the House partially erases a stain on New Zealand’s democratic system. It’s a drum I’ve been beatingfor thepast decade, but denying all sentenced prisoners the right to vote is a ...
Jordan WilliamsIt’s pretty obvious to all and sundry that the Taxpayers Union, run by Jordan Williams, isn’t really a union at all. Instead it’s a small lobby group for privileged white folk, namely the old fools behind the scenes of the corrupt and largely defunct Act Party.With an incorrectly attributed ...
Last year, I highlighted a secrecy problem with the government's Infrastructure Funding and Financing Bill. The Bill would establish a new class of public entity, "special purpose vehicles", to hide debt from local government balance sheets fund infrastructure such as roads and sewers in "high-growth" councils. The SPVs would collect ...
Both the leader of the opposition Todd Muller and University of Auckland Professor Des Gorman have gone on the record as saying they suspect Covid-19 is spreading in the community in New Zealand once again. Let me explain why I don’t agree with them. As best I can tell there ...
By Geoffrey Miller A former MP and Associate Minister of Defence says that New Zealand’s Covid-19 border and quarantine issues illustrate why a new dedicated national security agency is needed. Heather Roy, a former deputy leader of the Act Party who held the associate defence portfolio from 2008-10, told the ...
Annual fishing report It's been about a year since we swapped out the Research News deckhand. It seems longer— particularly the past 4 months— and not because of this particular work. Over the course of the year somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,500 articles have been caught in our net, ...
This article on Feminist Current by Meghan Murphy looks at the Karen/Becky meme and argues it has officially gone too far The male centered progressive left has successfully made woman-hating trendy. Today, yet another “Karen” video went viral online. This time, it seems a woman flipped off a male driver, ...
Over the past few weeks, there's been a lot of attention on the question of why American police are so violent, and so often murder people. There are a pile of reasons for this, including the racist roots of their entire policing system, but part of the answer seems to ...
Last year, the government promised that it would strengthen whistleblower protections. Today, they finally released the bill. There's one major change: "[a] discloser is entitled to protection for a protected disclosure made to an appropriate authority at any time" - an "appropriate authority" being public sector heads, officers of Parliament, ...
Andrew Lorrey, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research; Ben Noll, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, and Lauren Vargo, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Brewster Glacier in New Zealand’s Southern Alps lost 13 million cubic metres of ice between March 2016 and March 2019 – ...
This week we moved into the second half of 2020 - and our Government delivered another week of big changes and major progress for New Zealanders. Read below for a wrap of the key things moments from the week - from extending paid parental leave, to making major investments in ...
The Green Party has opposed the COVID-19 Recovery Fast-track Consenting Bill which shortcuts normal consenting processes under the Resource Management Act (RMA), reduces public participation and narrows environmental considerations. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Regional Economic Development A regional freight hub for the lower North Island will be built just northeast of Palmerston North, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The Government is investing $40 million through the Provincial Growth Fund to designate and buy land and design ...
Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson is calling for the introduction of a Guaranteed Minimum Income to lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty and prevent more families entering into further debt with the Ministry of Social Development. ...
There has been renewed focus on New Zealand First acting as a handbrake on the Government after our decision to not support Auckland light rail. We are a handbrake for bad ideas, that istrue, but our track record since 2017 has seen New Zealand First constructively also serve as an ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP New Zealand First’s Fair Residency for Superannuation Bill passed its First Reading in Parliament today. The Bill makes a significant change to NZ Super by raising the minimum residency requirement from 10 to 20 years, after age 20. “Currently, a migrant of ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order A New Zealand First member’s bill in the name of Darroch Ball introducing a six-month minimum prison sentence for assaults on first responders has passed its second reading in Parliament. The new offence of "injuring a first responder or corrections officer with ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Deputy Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First welcomes the launch of the new Criminal Cases Review Commission, gifted with the name from Waikato-Tainui - Te Kāhui Tātari Ture, announced in Hamilton today by Justice Minister Andrew Little. “New Zealand First has long believed in and ...
The Green Party is celebrating over $800m in new funding for green projects, which will get people into jobs while solving New Zealand’s long-term challenges. ...
Mark Patterson MP, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is appalled that Meridian seems to have been unnecessarily spilling water from its dams to drive up its profits."While New Zealanders have been coming together in some of our darkest hours, we don’t expect power gentailers to waste water and ...
We wrapped up the first half of 2020 with a busy month, taking additional steps to support New Zealanders as we continue with our economic recovery. We rolled out targeted packages to support key industries like tourism and construction, helped create jobs in the environmental and agriculture sectors, and set ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Infrastructure Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has welcomed the appointment of Maurice Davis and his deep infrastructure and construction experience to the board of the Infrastructure Commission. Mr Davis (Ngāti Maniapoto), is the seventh and final appointment to the board led by former Reserve Bank Governor ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand’s click bait journalism is taking a turn for the worse, with yet another example of sensationalist, wilful-misrepresentation of the facts. “New Zealand First has worked constructively with its Coalition partner on hundreds of pieces of legislation and policy, and ...
The Green Party is today unveiling its Poverty Action Plan, which includes a Guaranteed Minimum Income to ensure people have enough to live with dignity. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Rotorua Museum redevelopment and Whakarewarewa and Tokorangi Forest projects will be accelerated thanks to a $2.09 million Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) boost, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher ...
This week, we rolled out the next steps of our recovery plan, with new infrastructure investment, extra support for tourism operators, and a new programme to get Kiwis into agriculture careers. The global economic consequences of COVID-19 will continue to be a challenge, but we have a detailed plan to ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its final reading in Parliament today fulfilling a coalition agreement commitment. “This is an important step in saving the lives of New Zealanders and delivers a key coalition commitment ...
Whakatāne has been given a $2.5 million boost to speed up previously funded projects and create more than 450 jobs in the next decade. Of those, the equivalent of 160 full-time jobs could be delivered in the next six weeks. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is in town to make ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $2.5 million to accelerate three infrastructure projects in Whakatāne, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “This package is about ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones is throwing his weight behind a bid by the Auckland Council to fast-track the more than doubling of the city's water allowance from the Waikato River. And he's coming out strongly against anyone who plans on getting in the way of this campaign. "It is my ...
The Green Party is thrilled to see changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that mean consents for large projects can be declined if they will have significant climate change implications that are inconsistent with the Zero Carbon Act and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Paris Agreement obligations. ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence The Royal New Zealand Navy’s new ship, Aotearoa, set sail for New Zealand on 10 June from the Republic of Korea, and is due to arrive in Auckland tomorrow, announced Minister of Defence Ron Mark. “Aotearoa is the Royal New Zealand Navy’s new fleet ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters has today welcomed the Racing Industry Bill passing its third reading, creating the legislative framework for revitalising the racing industry while limiting the need for future government intervention. “For too long our domestic racing industry has ...
The Green Party has today put forward an amendment to the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill to ensure all people in prisons can vote in general elections. ...
The Green Party welcomes the decision to not proceed with Public Public Investment (PPI) delivery of Auckland’s light rail project and to instead run the process through the public service. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First List MP Hon Ron Mark welcomes the announcement of Provincial Growth Funding investment of $1.4 million to help secure the Wairarapa’s water supply. The funding boost will allow the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), and ...
New Zealand First list MP Mark Patterson has been selected to represent the party in the newly formed Taieri electorate at the upcoming election. Mr Patterson, his wife Jude and two daughters farm sheep and beef at Lawrence and Waitahuna. He previously stood in the Clutha-Southland electorate however boundary changes ...
Hon Shane Jones, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises A new ‘super depot’ to be built for NZ Post in Wellington will create around 350 jobs during construction, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises Shane Jones says. Shane Jones today attended a ground-breaking and blessing ceremony for the parcel-processing depot ...
Our strong economic management prior to COVID-19 - with surpluses, low debt and near-record-low unemployment - put us in a good position to weather the impact of the virus and start to rebuild our economy much earlier than many other countries.Now we're putting our plan to recover and rebuild ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Spokesperson for Law and Order Recently released Police fleeing driver statistics have shown yet another increase in incidents with another record-high in the latest quarter. “This new quarterly record-high is the latest in a string of record-high numbers since 2014. The data shows incidents ...
New Zealand First MP Fletcher Tabuteau is pleased to be confirmed today as the party’s candidate for the Rotorua electorate. Speaking at the Rotorua AGM for New Zealand First, Mr Tabuteau said this is an election that is incredibly important for the people of Rotorua. “The founding principles of New ...
The Human Rights Commission’s PRISM report on the issues impacting people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) provides an excellent programme of work for future governments to follow, say the Greens. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the trans-Tasman bubble had not been jeopardised after aborder botch-upresulted in New Zealand having two active cases of COVID-19. On Friday, Mr Peters told RNZ's Morning Report he had heard from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison that borders for trans-Tasman travel would open by ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said today he was pleased the army was now running the quarantine and isolation process - up until now it has been the Ministry of Health. Peters told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking that the army knew how to introduce and follow protocols and instil discipline. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First MP and Minister for Defence and Veteran’s Affairs Ron Mark has confirmed his bid for the Wairarapa seat.“The Coalition Government has done a lot of good work throughout the Wairarapa, but many constituents have told ...
New Zealand First is pleased to release the names of its next tranche of candidates for the 2020 election. We’re proud to announce these hardworking New Zealanders that have put their hand up to fight for a commonsense and resilient future.Jamie Arbuckle – Kaikoura Mark Arneil – Christchurch Central Jackie ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence A massive joint effort between New Zealand Government agencies, employers, and the Vanuatu Government is underway to repatriate over 1000 Vanuatu nationals stranded in New Zealand, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Regional Economic Development Reprioritised funding of $40 million from the Provincial Growth Fund will support up to 1000 regional apprenticeships, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones said today. The Regional Apprenticeship Initiative is part of the wider Apprenticeship Boost announced by Education Minister Chris Hipkins ...
The Green Party welcomes the ACC’s announcement to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 but emphasises the need to go further, and faster to truly meet the climate change challenge. ...
Farmers are rejoicing after Labour agreed to an amendment pushed by New Zealand First in the firearms bill that will allow the use of restricted guns for pest control. Concessions on gun control mean farmers will be able to apply for a licence to use restricted firearms for pest control. ...
A new programme, which sets a firm course for the Building and Construction sector to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has been announced by the Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa. “A significant amount of New Zealand’s carbon emissions come from the building and construction sector. If we’re serious ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing more than $7.5 million in Northland ventures to combat the economic impact of the COVID-19 virus, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones have announced. The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment is going to the Northern Adventure Experience and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris Hipkins today announced significant funding for Auckland’s Northcote College as part of the first wave of a new nationwide school redevelopment programme to upgrade schools over the next 10 years. The $48.5 million project brings the total investment in Northcote College to ...
The Government has opened an urgent response fund to support schools and early learning services to get children and young people back on track after the Covid-19 lockdown. “While we are seeing improvements in attendance under Alert Level 1 Ministry of Education data shows that attendance rates in our schools ...
The law to boost the economic recovery from the impact of COVID-19 by speeding up resource consenting on selected projects has passed its second and third readings in the House today. “Accelerating nationwide projects and activities by government, iwi and the private sector will help deliver faster economic recovery and ...
Five port-related projects in Whanganui will receive a $26.75 million Provincial Growth Fund investment to support local economic recovery and create new opportunities for growth, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This is a significant investment that will support the redevelopment of the Whanganui Port, a project governed ...
Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery will receive an investment of up to $12 million administered by the Provincial Growth Fund to support its redevelopment, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The project is included in a $3 billion infrastructure pipeline announced by Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Shane Jones yesterday. ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing nearly $2.5 million into three Te Ara Mahi programmes to support Manawatū-Whanganui jobseekers and employees to quickly train and upskill, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Up to 154 local people will be supported into employment within the first year by these ...
This morning I have formally tendered my resignation as Minister of Health, which was accepted by the Prime Minister. Serving as Minister of Health has been an absolute privilege – particularly through these extraordinary last few months. It’s no secret that Health is a challenging portfolio. I have given ...
Scholarships for 57 early-career agricultural emissions scientists from 20 developing countries is another example of New Zealand’s international leadership in primary sector sustainability, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. Mr O’Connor, announcing the scholarships today, says hundreds of applications were received for this fourth round of the CLIFF-GRADS programme (Climate, Food ...
A project to help rejuvenate the Horowhenua town of Foxton will receive a Provincial Growth Fund investment of $3.86 million, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This funding for the Foxton Regeneration project will be used to make the well-known holiday town even more attractive for visitors and ...
Moa bones and other sub-fossil remains of extinct species are set to have improved protection with proposals to prevent the trade in extinct species announced the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage today. “We have lost too many of our native species, but these lost species, such as moa, remain an ...
The Government’s free and healthy school lunches programme moves south for the first time creating jobs for around 30 people in Otago and Southland. “Eighteen schools with 3000 students are joining the programme – 11 have already begun serving lunches, and seven are preparing to start during Term 3. This is ...
Thousands of Kiwi jobs and investment in New Zealand productions will be protected through a screen sector support package announced today by Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford and Minister for Broadcasting Kris Faafoi. The package also includes investment in broadcasting ...
The Government has established a new $10 million fund for the domestic events sector to help save jobs and protect incomes as it recovers from the impacts of COVID-19, Minister of Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. This funding from Budget 2020 follows talks with the event sector designed to ...
The Government has taken another step in its commitment to making sure New Zealanders get a fairer deal at the petrol pump with the introduction of legislation to improve competition in the retail fuel market, says Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods. “The fuel market study that this Government ordered ...
New Zealand has joined a global initiative that aims to enable all countries to access a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters announced today. The COVAX Facility was recently launched by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The Alliance includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank ...
From today new legislation takes effect to both restore the right to legal representation at the start of a Care of Children (CoCA) dispute in the Family Court, and allow parties to those proceedings to access legal aid where eligible. During a visit to the Family Court in Auckland today, ...
Home-based early childhood education (ECE) subsidised by the government will transition to a fully qualified workforce by 2025 to ensure better and more consistent quality, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. “Quality early learning helps provide children with a strong foundation for their future,” Chris Hipkins said. From 1 January ...
The new Criminal Cases Review Commission | Te Kāhui Tātari Ture (CCRC) has started work and can now independently investigate claimed miscarriages of justice. “Even though we have appeal rights and safeguards against unsafe convictions, from time to time our justice system does get things wrong. The design of the ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha, tēnā koutou Ki a koutou Te Āti Awa, Taranaki Whānui, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, ngā mana whenua o te rohe nei, tēnā koutou Ko Te Whare Wānanga o Aotearoa ki ngā take o te Ao (NZIIA), Ko te Rōpū Tohu Tono ...
The Government’s increase to paid parental leave kicks in today with another 4 weeks taking New Zealand up to a full 6 months (26 weeks, up from 22 weeks) leave for new parents, and the maximum weekly payment will increase by $20pw, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. ...
A new package of infrastructure investments will help kick-start the post-COVID rebuild by creating more than 20,000 jobs and unlocking more than $5 billion of projects up and down New Zealand. Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones today outlined how the $3 billion infrastructure fund in the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today expressed the New Zealand Government’s deep disappointment at the passage by China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee of a national security law for Hong Kong. “New Zealand has consistently emphasised its serious concern about the imposition of this legislation on Hong Kong without inclusive ...
More jobs and more family time with newborns are the centrepiece of a suite of Government initiatives coming into effect today. July 1 is a milestone day for the Government as a host of key policies take effect, demonstrating the critical areas where progress has been made. “The Coalition Government ...
Environment Minister David Parker has today “called in” Auckland’s application to the Waikato Regional Council to take an extra 200 million litres of water a day from the lower reaches of the Waikato River for Auckland drinking water and other municipal uses. The call-in means the application has been referred ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker announced today that New Zealand’s hosting of APEC in 2021 will go ahead using virtual digital platforms. Mr Peters said the global disruption caused by COVID-19, including resultant border restrictions, had been the major factor in the ...
The start of construction on a new link road between Matakana Road and State Highway 1 will create jobs and support the significant population growth expected in the Warkworth area, Transport Minister Phil Twyford and Mayor Phil Goff announced today. Transport Minister Phil Twyford said construction of the Matakana Link ...
The Government is prioritising its latest investment in PPE for frontline health workers, including staff at managed isolation and quarantine facilities, Health Minister David Clark says. “With no community transmission of COVID-19 our response now has a firm focus on keeping our border safe and secure. “We must ensure that ...
The Parihaka Papakāinga Trust in Taranaki will receive up to $14 million for a new visitor centre and other improvements at the historic settlement that will boost the local economy and provide much-needed jobs, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little have ...
Protections for workers who are employees of one employer but working under the direction of another business or organisation have come into force, closing a gap in legislation that made the personal grievance process inaccessible for some workers, says Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway. “This Government is working hard to ...
A range of improvements are already underway to address issues identified in the rapid review of the Managed Isolation and Quarantine system released today, Housing Minister Megan Woods said. The review was commissioned just over a week ago to identify and understand current and emerging risks to ensure the end-to-end ...
The important brown kiwi habitat around Whakatāne will receive added protection through an Iwi-led predator free project announced by Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage and Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau. “The Government is investing nearly $5 million into Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa’s environmental projects with $2.5 ...
An extra 4,000 tonnes of offcuts and scraps of untreated wood per year will soon be able to be recycled into useful products such as horticultural and garden mulch, playground safety surfacing and animal bedding as a result of a $660,000 investment from the Waste Minimisation Fund, Associate Environment Minister ...
The Governor-General has referred Scott Watson’s convictions for murder back to the Court of Appeal, Justice Minister Andrew Little announced today. Mr Watson was convicted in 1999 of the murders of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope. His appeal to the Court of Appeal in 2000 was unsuccessful, as was his ...
A new five-year funding agreement for the Reserve Bank will mean it can boost its work to protect New Zealanders’ finances, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. “New Zealand has a strong and stable financial system. Financial stability is an area that we are not prepared to cut corners for, particularly ...
A law change has been introduced to make it easier for forgotten funds in institutional accounts to be returned more easily to their rightful owners. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash has introduced an amendment to the Unclaimed Money Act 1971. It will update the rules controlling forgotten sums of money held ...
The Government is delivering on election commitments and a key recommendation of He Ara Oranga: Report of the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction with the establishment of a permanent independent Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, Health Minister Dr David Clark says. Legislation enabling the establishment of the fully ...
A Bill to replace New Zealand’s Privacy Act passed its third reading in Parliament today, Justice Minister Andrew Little has announced. “The protections in the Privacy Bill are vitally important. The key purpose of the reforms is to promote and protect people’s privacy and give them confidence that their personal ...
Extra support is being provided to tourism businesses operating on public conservation land announced Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis and Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage today. The Government is providing $25m worth of support to tourism operators impacted by COVID-19, with a decision to waive most Department of Conservation tourism related concession ...
*Watch the full video in the player below*In the first 48 hours of life, blood from newborn New Zealand babies is taken and tested. Most parents will never hear back. For others, it’s life-changing, and life-saving. Frank Film investigates. Performed 48 hours after birth, it’s a medical procedure ...
Latest from the Beehive Shane Jones, the Minister of Munificence, in a joint statement with fellow Northlander and Deputy PM Winston Peters, wrapped up a week of handout investment announcements with news of more millions for the people of his patch in the Far North. This time it was a ...
By Rebecca Kuku in Port Moresby A passionate plea by men, women and children has echoed around the Papua New Guinean capital of Port Moresby – that it is time to turn the corner on addressing gender-based violence in the country. Gatherings, a peaceful march and a vigil were staged ...
Former Race Relations Commissioner Gregory Fortuin has called out National MP Hamish Walker for his racist comments towards people of colour. This follows Walker's press release objecting to people from Pakistan, India and Korea potentially being quarantined ...
Khruangbin have established their live reputation with spacious instrumentals, but the band’s third album, Mordechai, features prominent vocals and disco-funk jams. Andrew Drever interviews the Texas-based trio upon its release.While the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage in the US, the situation has actually been a blessing in disguise for Khruangbin ...
The State Services Minister says the government will do everything it can to track down who is responsible for a massive privacy breach relating to New Zealand's active Covid cases, and is not ruling out pursuing criminal charges. ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
With the collapse of Bauer NZ resulting in Australian magazines flooding our shelves, Wendyl Nissen looks back at her battle to get homegrown content given the star billing it deserved.Thanks to some hard-fought battles 30 years ago, New Zealand women have been enjoying their own version of Woman’s Day and ...
Extending the franchise to prisoners is the latest in a series of contentious electoral reforms enacted by this government, but history suggests the ‘convention’ for consensual election reform is more imagined than real.The Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act, passed last week and corrected this week, extends the franchise ...
Since publication of Newsroom’s extensive investigation into serious issues at Oranga Tamariki, our inbox has been flooded with stories from more current and former employees. In less than 48 hours after Newsroom’s in-depth inquiry into the children's ministry was published we received a high volume of correspondence from current and former ...
“She’d come into town on the bus. The photographer, so her mother had told her, was famous”: a short story by Wellington writer Elspeth Sandys. It was to be a present for her father who was dying. A photograph of her in her first ball gown. When she reached for ...
Those who can’t afford to travel will “attend” the terror sentencing via video link, the Immigration Minister says. David Williams reports The Immigration Minister is demanding officials give urgent help to overseas victims of the Christchurch terror attack and their families. Yesterday, High Court Justice Cameron Mander announced the terrorist, ...
Controversy over Wellington's Shelly Bay has ensnared iwi, the council and politicians for years. Investigative journalist Nicky Hager uses official documents to lay out the roles of money, power and wheels-within-wheels on this most contentious of developments. Any time I am asked whether we have corruption in New Zealand, I ...
Is the answer to saving New Zealand's professional sports teams creating super-franchises? The Extra Time podcast asks sports leaders. Professional sport is slowly emerging from the grip of the pandemic but its financial future is far from certain. Covid-19 highlighted a weakness in the structure of professional sport in New ...
Before Covid-19, it’d take a long flight and half a grand to see Hamilton in the flesh. Now, the biggest musical of the past two decades is available to watch on Disney+. Sam Brooks takes stock of this extraordinary move. Right now, Broadway is a sleeping dragon. New York theatres ...
Sacked cabinet minister Clare Curran speaks for the first time about the brutal end to her political career – and what she calls the toxicity and bullying that marked her years in parliament. By Donna Chisholm.Of all the humiliations – often self-inflicted – that Clare Curran endured during her 12-year ...
On 03 July Children’s Commissioner was given additional responsibility by the Minister of Justice which extended its role as the independent monitor of the conditions and treatment of children and young people in secure detention centres. The Children’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, ARC Future Fellow, UNSW The term “heatwave” is no stranger to Australians. Defined as when conditions are excessively hot for at least three days in a row, these extreme temperature events have always punctuated our climate. With many of us ...
Pacific Media Watch A senior Indonesian government official and a New Zealand journalism professor have clashed over differing perspectives on access for journalists and media to the West Papua region. Speaking on a webinar organised by the Jubi newspaper in Jayapura, Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director of the European affairs ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Mintzes, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney To beat the coronavirus pandemic, countries need to collaborate. We need the best possible science to develop vaccines and drugs, and to test, track and contain the virus. If we’ve learned anything ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Post-doctoral researcher in Palaeobiology , University of New England Let’s turn back the hands of time. Before extinction knocked dinosaurs off their pillar, before the “Great Dying” extinction wiped out 95% of all organisms – we had the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Williams, Researcher at the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine (VELiM), University of Sydney Last week, outgoing chief medical officer Brendan Murphy announced all returned travellers would be tested for COVID-19 before and after quarantine. Some were surprised ...
A new package to help foreign nationals stuck in New Zealand due to Covid-19 is inadequate and needs to be supplemented with the emergency benefit, say Community Law Centres O Aotearoa (CLCA) and the Human Rights Commission (HRC). The assistance ...
With Shortland Street’s 7,000th episode screening tonight, Tara Ward salutes the soap for keeping calm and carrying on through level three lockdown. It’s been one heck of a week on Shortland Street. Leanne lost her winning $8 million Lotto ticket, Louis slipped over in a pile of vomit, and Desi tried ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Clift, Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne In recent days, the prime ministers of the UK and Australia each declared they are working toward providing safe haven visas for Hong Kong residents. In the US, lawmakers passed a bill ...
How two multi-millionaires, two pandemic futurists, Air NZ’s former boss, a dairy executive on a break, a retired anaesthetist (and a few others) nearly saved NZ. ...
A commitment from Labour to protect productive farmland from blanket afforestation if re-elected is a step in the right direction, Federated Farmers Meat & Wool Chairperson William Beetham says. "We’re really pleased there is now ...
Tomorrow, 4 July, will see protests in at least nine centres around New Zealand against Israeli plans to steal more Palestinian land (Details are at the end of this media release) “Virtually the entire international community is standing together ...
Pacific Media Watch Australia’s ABC has revealed the Australian Federal Police (AFP) recommendation regarding the Afghan Files investigative journalism report is for the Commonwealth DPP to consider charging journalist Dan Oakes for his role in the leak. The revelation has prompted a renewed call by the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom ...
While we’re growing in confidence that we are in the enviable position of basically eliminating Covid-19, our trading nation at the bottom of the world is also in the unenviable position of locking off our economy to the world. “No is not an answer ...
Netflix’s new adaptations of The Baby-Sitters Club makes long-time fan Tara Ward fall in love with the series all over again. When I was 12 years old, my class had to write a letter to a famous person. Some of my classmates wrote to an All Black, Tom Cruise or ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is questioning the scale and value of the Government’s $230m screen industry recovery package. Union spokesperson Jordan Williams says: “The official justification for this ‘recovery package’ is the impact of COVID-19 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Former Ambassador and Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland Chinese activity in Papua New Guinea was not the only factor behind Australia’s Pacific “Step-Up”. As a former high commissioner to PNG, I know it ...
Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk A Papuan church leader and advocate for social justice has penned an open letter to the Indonesian government calling for justice and an end to racism to enable a genuine self-determination process for the Melanesian region. “The problem of Papua has become increasingly complex and severe ...
Latest from the Beehive – Nine press releases (when we checked this morning) had flowed from the Beehive since we last reported. Eight of them brayed about the money Ministers have been spending and (as they prefer to put it) investing. The sole exception came from Environment Minister David ...
CEAC pre-election review of National Party ‘climate change policy’, is lacking in substance without any clear policy, that will leave voters with no idea of what National Party plans for saving our climate, and glancing at their ‘Transport plans’, ...
Film crews can get exemptions to enter New Zealand, so why not the families and supporters of terror victims, David Williams asks. OPINION: If the public needs a sign last year’s terrorist attack has slipped off the Government’s radar, this is it. A sentencing date has been set for the ...
A new poem by Michaela Keeble.Only the ocean only the oceanturns me overlike this only the oceanturns meon like this only the oceangives warning: what will changeand when so it doesn’t comeacrosslike violence white capsdrift inon the rising tide i feel likeopening my legs i don’t wantto do anything elsetoday i don’t wantto goto work i want to lie downwith ...
As the Covid-19 pandemic rages round the world, New Zealanders are re-discovering food production is the fundamental engine of the economy. And farming is not a sunset industry. Instead of being rubbished by lobby groups for so-called “dirty dairying”, the country’s core export industry has the chance to transform itself ...
The world-famous best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, $34)This is the one that kicks off with the essay about the Tongan ...
The New Zealand Down syndrome community is urging the Government to ignore the recommendations in the recent Health and Disability Sector Review. “New Zealand has made terrific progress to enhance the quality of life for people with Down syndrome and other disabilities ...
The Covid Plan B group says New Zealand can minimise the economic consequences of Covid-19 if it opens its borders following the rest of the world. The group, which has critiqued the Government's lockdown response since March, has today added its ...
Auckland will soon be receiving an additional 75 million litres of water per day from the Waikato River as an interim measure to help ease the worst water shortage in 25 years. A Ngāti Whātua historian says this sharing of resources between Tāmaki Makaurau and Waikato goes back a very ...
Athletes from the Papua New Guinea’s national team joined the peaceful “cry for justice” march in the nation’s capital of Port Moresby. Video: EMTV NewsBy EMTV News Many wore black yesterday in rallies against gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea in a day chosen to remember the young mother ...
The government will remain "cautious" when it comes to the border as despite calls for a pragmatic strategy for reopening, new Health Minister Chris Hipkins says. ...
A new report measuring New Zealanders’ financial wellbeing highlights how key sectors of our population are feeling stressed over money, and how Covid-19 has made that worse.Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can help. After all, it’s what puts food on the table, a roof over our heads, and ...
The Tahr Foundation is asking the Conservation Authority to represent all New Zealanders and their recreational pursuits in National Parks, including the tens of thousands of hunters who flock to them every year. The Foundation’s plea is in response to ...
Councils can now borrow money equivalent to 300% of annual revenue, and the Public Service Association says this will allow them to maintain operational expenditure, invest in important community services and proceed with long-overdue infrastructure ...
Dunedin's mayor says conversations about managed isolation and quarantine can be held in a mature fashion without "getting into an unhelpful conversation about where our citizens might be returning from". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Webb, PhD candidate in Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology What does the Sun’s core look like? Sophie, aged 8, Perth What does the Sun’s core look like? This is a fantastic question Sophie, and one we will need ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Spencer Zifcak, Allan Myers Chair of Law/Professor of Law, Australian Catholic University After a lengthy delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, the legal case that constitutes the most significant threat to freedom of expression in this country will soon play out in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Williamson, Professor of Microbiology, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity A cornerstone of containing the COVID-19 pandemic is widespread testing to identify cases and prevent new outbreaks emerging. This strategy is known as “test, trace and isolate”. The standard ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Research Fellow (Food Policy and Law), George Institute for Global Health As you read this, health officials are busy finalising the government’s review of the health star rating system on packaged foods. One of the issues the review is looking ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Briggs, Research Principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney As the global renewables transition accelerates, the future for coal regions has become a big worry. This raises an important question: can renewables create the right jobs in the right ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Barnes, Research Associate, Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology Sydney The government’s recently proposed restructure of university fees would see students pay 113% more for many humanities subjects. The package is not a case of “humanities vs STEM (science, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Guest, Professor of Economics and National Senior Teaching Fellow, Griffith University The Australian government is planning to spend A$190 billion to support the economy in response to COVID-19, according to the latest Parliamentary Budget Office estimate. The total impact of COVID-19 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW For all the things we don’t know about COVID-19 one thing is certain: our economic recovery will depend on boosting productivity. Everyone from the Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe to Prime Minister Scott Morrison ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosslyn Almond, Literature Lecturer, Australian Catholic University The Baby-Sitters Club, the popular series by Ann M. Martin, defined my childhood. I collected the books until I was 11. I played it in the school yard (I was Dawn because I had long ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History at the University of Canterbury, University of Canterbury The family of pioneering New Zealand suffragist Kate Sheppard kept an important secret – one that possibly explains a lot about her life, her beliefs and her motivation. The ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. Clark out and Bridges back in, Chinese embassy warns NZ politicians to not speak out on Hong Kong, and terrible new revelations about Oranga Tamariki culture.It has been a day of reshuffling at parliament, with both major parties making significant moves. We’ll start with ...
InterCity is the first company to get government money to help land and maritime transport firms hit by the drop in tourist numbers due to Covid-19. ...
The country’s second-largest early learning business has backed down on an illegal staff contract following a public backlash, Laura Walters reports Evolve Education has decided to do away with a proposed contract that would have cut its teachers’ hours in half. Evolve Education, a publicly listed company which owns 128 ...
The Greens’ tax and welfare package released last weekend is a bold statement designed more to keep the Greens’ party vote above 5 percent, than to ever be implemented. But will it backfire on them? asks Peter Dunne. Without the luxury or likelihood of an electorate seat the Greens ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias.NON-FICTION 1 Vegful by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55) Gutsful. 2 The Book of Overthinking by Gwendoline Smith (Allen & Unwin, $24.99) 3 Know Your Place by Golriz Ghahraman ...
Open Mike 28/12/2018 
Dave Heatley Zero community transmission. Just a handful of active cases, all in quarantine. New Zealand is in an attractive situation, at least compared to much of the world. The situation could be robust and enduring – or it might be fragile, just one border incursion away from a “second ...4 hours ago
Is the consequence of the Simpson Report proposals for restructuring the health system poorer accountability to people? When in doubt, centralise‘ has been a persistent theme in New Zealand public policy throughout our history. The current government is no exception. Here are some examples. - The regional polytechs have been ...18 hours ago
I wrote earlier in the week about the Scientology front organisations Drug Free World and Drug Free Ambassadors and their quite prominent role in anti-cannabis reform "coalition" assembled by Family First and a newloca branch of the American prohibitionist organisation SAM.It turns out Family First aren't the only ones helping ...23 hours ago
Three years ago the ABC used leaked information to expose war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan. Since then the chief of Australia's special forces has admitted that his troops committed war crimes. But guess who the Australian government is prosecuting? Police have referred allegations against an ABC journalist relating ...1 day ago
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When the Christchurch murderer pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder and a number of other violent assault charges a few months ago, he effectively closed the door on what the public will know about the lead up to and commission of the event. His plea means that no evidence ...4 days ago
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There really is not much about Paula Bennett concerning her career trajectory, the policies she promoted, and most importantly, the socio-economic effect this had upon New Zealand (and particularly the most vulnerable in this, our oft-cited “egalitarian” society of this country) that can be said now that hasn’t already been ...5 days ago
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This week we moved into the second half of 2020 - and our Government delivered another week of big changes and major progress for New Zealanders. Read below for a wrap of the key things moments from the week - from extending paid parental leave, to making major investments in ...19 hours ago
The Green Party has opposed the COVID-19 Recovery Fast-track Consenting Bill which shortcuts normal consenting processes under the Resource Management Act (RMA), reduces public participation and narrows environmental considerations. ...2 days ago
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*Watch the full video in the player below* In the first 48 hours of life, blood from newborn New Zealand babies is taken and tested. Most parents will never hear back. For others, it’s life-changing, and life-saving. Frank Film investigates. Performed 48 hours after birth, it’s a medical procedure ...37 mins ago
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By Rebecca Kuku in Port Moresby A passionate plea by men, women and children has echoed around the Papua New Guinean capital of Port Moresby – that it is time to turn the corner on addressing gender-based violence in the country. Gatherings, a peaceful march and a vigil were staged ...2 hours ago
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Film crews can get exemptions to enter New Zealand, so why not the families and supporters of terror victims, David Williams asks. OPINION: If the public needs a sign last year’s terrorist attack has slipped off the Government’s radar, this is it. A sentencing date has been set for the ...1 day ago
As the Covid-19 pandemic rages round the world, New Zealanders are re-discovering food production is the fundamental engine of the economy. And farming is not a sunset industry. Instead of being rubbished by lobby groups for so-called “dirty dairying”, the country’s core export industry has the chance to transform itself ...1 day ago
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The Greens’ tax and welfare package released last weekend is a bold statement designed more to keep the Greens’ party vote above 5 percent, than to ever be implemented. But will it backfire on them? asks Peter Dunne. Without the luxury or likelihood of an electorate seat the Greens ...1 day ago
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‘
Canada’s climate policy rotting corpse puts on a clean shirt and a nice tie to attend COP 24
The Canadian government has just announced a new handout of $1.6 billion to the Alberta oilsands despite already purchasing the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion earlier in 2018.
In November, Canada posted the G20’s highest per capita GHG emissions
In Ottawa the Doug Ford government dismantled the province’s successful carbon cap-and-trade program, cancelled 758 renewable energy contracts, and stopped construction of the White Pines wind farm as it neared completion.
But the harshest attacks were reserved for campaigners on the front lines of the Trans Mountain fight.
Former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge casually and chillingly suggested that “people will die” on the protest lines at Burnaby Mountain, asserting that killing off a few “extremists” might be the price Canada would have to pay to get the Trans Mountain expansion built.
*sigh* turned on the radio and remembered that RNZ like to use January to save money by pretending that nothing is happening and we all love hearing their back catalogue of shit music from anodyne presenters.
Ouch. The RNZ director of music is a personal friend. Is there something in particular you’d like me to pass on? What in particular do you feel is “shit” about the music presented?
Print more t shirts you idiots
‘Scuse me for butting in here riffer.
I am a big fan of music 101.
Although I realise it is a team that puts the show together, Alex Behan was an ideal presenter for the format. Inclusive, humble, amiable.
I will miss his vibe.
As for matinee idol, as others have said more eloquently down thread, great for a while, but can become too much of a good thing.
The one thing wrong about Matinee Idle is Simon Morris. Not only is everything that comes out of his mouth complete and utter drivel, his voice is one that should never be allowed on radio. The show was great when it began a number of years ago because Phil O’Brien did it on his own.
I find it a relief, the presenters quirky, and the music both avoids pop hits and is stupid enough to laugh at.
We don’t need no education.
Agreed Ad, Matinee Idle is great fun and how radio should be used. Endless carping on about how unfair life is to some and regurgitated non-news may maintain the dreary angst of the Woe Is Us Tragics but January is time for some fun.
There are eleven other months for the The World Is Fucked depressives to get their fix.
AD
+1
It’s only occasionally. There is no intention of having it each week. A very well done thing – even the drivel is okay.
agree +1000 Sanctuary…..why oh why should RNZ foist this rubbish on us…the BBC keeps broadcasting as usual and the news never stops..tsunamis….stock market plunges….Trump…always Trump
RNZ basically only operate for 47 weeks of the year.
Taking Xmas week plus a month off might be great for saving a few pingers and and as well I guess it suits the disconnected life style of the Wellington political/media elites. They live in a world where all the pollies and the journos bugger off to a flash bach for a month. Meanwhile, truck drivers, hair dressers, shop owners, retail workers and all the rest get the stats and the bit in between if they are lucky.
Public radio not serving the public for 5 weeks every year while the skeleton staff left to keep the place running indulge in the pernicious fantasy that Kiwis all live in an upper-middle class white collar utopia of a month of beach life at the bach simply makes me think they are disconnected from reality.
Sure, shut down for two weeks. But five? That’s taking the piss. By the time Morning Report starts up again 90% of the population has been back at work for at least two weeks.
100% sancuary.
I agree that RNZ was highjacked by the larte set for their interest not our and has become now a meaning less copy of BBC broadcasting.
We in Gisborne.HB have no real interested RNZ reporter anywhere here now to meet the public on climate change transport or environmental issues,
So RNZ needs to be scrapped; – and Government needs to produce a fresh “voice of the people” TV channel, as ‘channel 7’ was before ‘Johnny key’ closed it down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVNZ
“In 2008 the Government announced that the broadcaster was to become “more public-service” like. TVNZ responded by launching two commercial free channels; TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7. By 2011 Prime Minister John Key announced the closure of these channels.”
Perhaps you’re not worth the bother.
/
Anusha Bradley
Senior journalist Hawke’s Bay / Gisborne Reporter – anusha.bradley@radionz.co.nz
Napier City, New Zealand
radionz.co.nz
Well let’s hope (as I mentioned the other day on another thread that @VV thought was brutal), the board and CEO of RNZ’s new charge to be relevant and become good media citizen’s in the digital age, DON’T preoccupy themselves with demographics and The Market The Market share.
If they are to remain, or at least pretend interest as a Public Service broadcaster, it’ll be less about demographics and The Market The Market as it’s drivers, and more about Genre and Diversity.
Concentration on Demographics – especially when focused on age, assumes the yoof of today has no interest in classical music or jazz, and the geriatric has no interest in rap or whatever passes as rythm and blues these days.
They shouldn’t even be trying to compete with the commercial alternatives – they’re perfectly capable of self flagellation beating each other to death all on their own.
OwT
It seems to me that radionz are trying to compete with commercial radio’s listings, wanting to be in the top. That is not why we have public broadcasting. While it is important to stay in the public eye, PB doesn’t need to crawl to every new whim but just stay current, being aware of what interests people, and what is coming forward in the arts and literature and critique etc. And be thinking and choosing presentation of what a well and widely informed person would want, or need, to know and understand the wider issues.
Now we have video killing the radio star; pictures that don’t tell 1,000 words because the images are so easy to slant. I refer ito it still as Radionz because that honestly states its purpose and importance. Television, videos etc are adjuncts. Reading the article is the base from which viewing the images reinforces and illustrates the subject, points, line on which the news is written; it backgrounds and shows faces, detail.
Encouraging people listening to radio, to communicate and present a range of views and anecdotes relating to the item is good. Not good is to then choose some dinosaur example of negative or fairy godmotherish or religious fundamentalist comment to read out; which happens too often. This being aired on the wider broadcasting medium just reinforces those who are uninformed and living in their own bubble of certainties and limited learning.
The Standard is good because people can be informed of links giving a wider comparative news outlets. Regular commenters may be reliable for one particular view and be trusted to give reasoned comment from that bent and be interested in justifying it when questioned. I often put up Radionz links to matters that raise new points or examples and that could pass by unnoticed that day. Radionzthey are pretty good but have to watched for a tendency to gloss over the pressing problems to concentrate on the views and wants of the chattering classes.
Indeed @ grey….. there’s nothing in that comment I disagree with.
Don’t really have time to reply properly now, but I’m both worried and hopeful about the future of PSB in this country.
There are things RNZ management are doing that lead me to believe they’re a little too concerned with “the Market The Market’ and demographics on the one hand, while on the other Chris F-F-F-Faa-F-F-FFoi is genuinely considering various options (but bearing in mind he’s only ever experienced a life, and broadcasting experience in a neo-liberal environment). Plus of course he’s got all that fiscal responsibility shit going on around him.
And somewhere back in the never-never I made another comment on PSB – several actually. One on the fact that the Coalaition for Better Broadcasting, (or whatever they call themsleves these days) isn’t actually being ambitious enough (perhaps because the shit about we’re a nation of only 4.5 mill and can’t afford stuff, and more).
Another, on the fact that we effectively have a model that isn’t too unlike all that funder-provider shit that went with health care provision in the Ruthenasia era.
Another that we have a rather huge bureaucracy with some rather large salaries that sap a lot of that money the 4.5 million supposedly can’t afford, and its all glued together -primarily due to self interest and preservation
We have:
RNZ ………. CEO and Board
TVNZ ditto
NZoA dittto
Kordia ditto
TMP ditto
MTS ditto
…….oh, and then there’s that Freeview thing
Shit……….sorry, beginning to rave, but hopefully you might be getting to understand where I’m coming from – but basically
we CAN afford 2, and probably 3 radio networks, and at least 2 TV networks that include children (Oh!!! won’t you PLEASE PLEASE think of the children)
AND we have a shitload of sources where content can come.
Anyway……duties call
OwT
I love your brimming-over interest in our PBS.
Keep at it won’t you.
And PLEASE think of the childrens’ tv. It’s awful watching the c r a p with coloured morals (the colours referring to purple and hot pink rather than various shades of gold or dark skin as opposed to deadfish white or spotty pink).
I think of children’s TV quite often. I think of its potential for education as well as its entertainment value.
I also think of things like public service broadcasting’s responsibilities towards the arts and sport, and the amount of corporate welfare that goes into propping up commercial operators that have competed themselves almost to death, and now expect (as of some sort of right) to more handouts.
I think of the way public assets have been used to give commercial interests preferential treatment over time (such as transmission facilities that were once an inherent part in providing all that Reithian educate, inform and entertain stuff).
I think of the supposed efficiencies promised by all the tinkering and interference that’s gone on over decades.
There’s a lot to it all, but what worries me most is that if we ever do get to a PSB Nirvana, it will need to be protected from further political interference and viewed in the same way we see the independence of the Judiciary as being important ( if we’re ever going to be a fully functioning democracy).
But right now, (to use the neo-lib’s own language), we have a pretty inefficient system of delivering PSB and it’s overburdened with quite a few ticket clippers
….a nation of 5 million now
actually
“… I mentioned the other day on another thread that @VV thought was brutal…”
I have my worried face on now, OWT, as I am having a ‘senior moment’ as I cannot recall this exchange. Grateful for some clues as to when (approx) this was, and any other (gentle) clues to help my memory. LOL
mmmm – maybe it was the greywarshark I had a response from.
But…..stuff is underway at RNZ (as you’ll no doubt be aware of) – and its not necessarily for the better, but more about shuffling a few chairs about.
From Guyon to Mora/Chapman to an Alex Behan being dumped.
Yep I was thinking of this and confused you with @ Greywarshark;
Back l8r
Knew a person who worked at Chapman Tripp and was expected to work excessive hours well over the 40 hours a week of salary that they were paid for. The labour inspectorate should be investigating a lot more of this practise as this person actually worked over 100 hours in one week at one point and everyone was telling them, leave the firm!! They also got paid a salary lower than the person was worth, even without considering the extra hours! So no surprises that a firm like that with their own staff is keen to ‘help’ migrant labour.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/379077/christmas-joy-for-woman-previously-denied-visa-to-stay-in-nz
Would be interesting to find out with the amount of qualifications the women had, what the salary was, $100k, $80k, surely not lower than that with masters in International Studies from IPU in Palmerston North?? and supermarket experience to boot!!! Lucky then, that Burger King can qualify and so can every other food business as importing in food is now being touted as international trade by lawyers!!!
Don’t forget many of these law firms are also sexually harassing their staff…
One in five NZ lawyers sexually harassed, Law Society survey finds
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12061142
About IPU
http://www.ipu.ac.nz
Bear in mind international fees are $19,000 per year, and around $15,000 per year for accomodation plus other fees so you are up for $35k+per year, not sure what their ‘international’ ranking is for a masters, but I’m not sure they are in the top 100 universities even Auckland university these days is struggling to stay on international rankings lists for education…. but here in NZ we just don’t worry about quality, as long as the fees are paid!
http://www.ipu.ac.nz/tuition-accommodation-fees.html
IPU doesn’t exactly have an international reputation like Harvard, but I guess you can then get a job in a food import business and residency on the basis of it so money well spent especially when NZ law firms are so supportive of the process!
Cheap for an entire family to get residency, super and healthcare, for the rest of their lives.
Which is why our education scam, works so well.
It is certainly not for the quality of education. Which has been dumbed down, so foreign students always pass.
Many of these courses are, frankly, crap. Relying in the carrot of residence to gain students.
/agreed
Need a serious review into this and to put a stop to an obviously corrupt practice.
I passed university history attending one lecture and then reading a book. Not proud but it was that easy. The science subjects required hard work.
This is why we had penal rates and need to bring them back. If there’s enough work for two people then two people need to be employed. And 100 hour weeks is enough for three people to be employed.
I’m seeing a restaurant and bakery that serves NZ. Probably doesn’t need the degree at all.
So, the degree would be just another back door for immigrant labour. For her and her husband.
A job where you end up working more hours than you are paid for?
Shocking stuff…..Quick some one call the human rights commission!
I think a royal commission of enquirey is required here HRC just won’t cut it
That’s called slavery Chris.
Glad to see you announce that you’re clearly in favour of it.
“There was no collusion…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DatXfA3UMAAuYK2.jpg
A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/investigations/article219016820.html
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/re-examining-the-dossier-after-a-year-of-indictments-guilty-pleas-1407774787776
Reading between the lines, I doubt the world is ready for these particular selfies.
Coming soon for the space tragics, New Horizons’Ultima Thule flyby at sparrow fart, January 2nd NZDT.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
https://twitter.com/hashtag/UltimaThule
Tweets by NewHorizons2015
Oh my, the poor Dems.
Caught red handed in scamming the American people.
LinkedIn founder admits to funding a Democrat Cyber Security entity to the tune of $100,000. It created Russian Bots. IE it created fake Russian internet entities supporting Republican candidates with comments to make those Republican candidates look bad.
Trump did it. LOL.
Meanwhile the MSNBC ran of story of boarder guards destroying water stashes left by illegal immigration cartels, or good Samaritans? Then did there Hate Trump opinion panel fake news rubbish. The video is from 2011, slightly Obama era.
Fake News, more soon.
You really are a walking example of Dunning-Krueger.
I looked up this Dunning-Kruger effect – it applies a lot on the blog. A certain number of people think ‘I can Write my Ideas, and being mine, I Consider Them Awfully Good’. (And that will always be true, as ‘awfully’ has a number of meanings, some of them contradictory!)
catalogofbias.org
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.
Dunning–Kruger effect – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
I made a mistake. Was meant to be No 6. Was expecting a similar response.
I think everybody suffers from that disorder, Dunning-Krueger occasionally.
Thanks Joe90. I didn’t know about this flyby.
Great bonus for the mission.
Awesome
“The flyby technically began on Christmas. Unlike Pluto, whose orbit has been precisely charted for a long time, MU69 was only discovered 4 years ago and its trajectory is not perfectly known. Because of this, the team has to rely on direct observation of the body, which for now still appears as little more than a pixel in its telescope, to understand its location relative to New Horizons.
Until this weekend, the team is using the probe’s telescope to get a handle on the uncertainty of MU69’s location. Although it will be too late to tweak the spacecraft’s trajectory, the team will be able to rework the script of its high-resolution camera so that it can be certain of imaging MU69. This final update will then be relayed to New Horizons on 30 December.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/nasa-spacecraft-readies-new-years-rendezvous-primordial-object-far-beyond-pluto
I particularly like that we didn’t know it was there when the probe was launched.
Can’t help but think there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.
Thanks to you – and marty mars – for the links. Really excited about this !!!!!
I love it for what it is. Imo purity. A purity of vision and skill.
Also if we can do this we CAN make the changes as a species that we need to do
Funnily enough Imo space and everything external to earth actually helps us connect to earth, to nature. This is why we have fucked up imo – we have tried to forget that we are nature and nature is us as it is for all life – animate and inanimate.
Blessings of the festive season to you and your loved ones.
We can but there’s our ‘leaders’ preventing us.
IMO, we’ve spent so much of our time fighting nature just to live that we’ve forgotten that we’re part of it. It’s in living memory that one in four children were dying before they were five.
We’re well beyond those times now but now we need to journey back to living with nature rather than fighting her.
yes all true this is.
Labour is sickeningly astonishingly very slow at giving us the “long promised “non commercial channel with more investigative journalism context” as ‘TVNZ 7 was when they began that one in 2008 and Johnny Key closed it down in 2011?
Quote from Wikipedia;
“In 2008 the Government announced that the broadcaster was to become “more public-service” like. TVNZ responded by launching two commercial free channels; TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7. By 2011 Prime Minister John Key announced the closure of these channels.”
Time to act Jacinda. “Lets do this” !!!!!
Broadcast TV is dead.
But streaming TV isn’t.
Yes I also have have these concerns.
https://www.maoritelevision.com/news/national/top-five-concerns-among-maori-2018
Jamie incest Whyte doesn’t do honesty.
Just another empty vassal.
We know exactly the type of people who fund such ‘think’ tanks – people who desire power and control over others.
OMG the cricket.
Best we’ve been in decades.
The Hadlee-Crowe era wasn’t as good as this.
This is a very fine NZ cricket team. The Sri Lankan team by contrast is one of their weaker line ups – not surprising when they’ve lost so many fine players over the last few years.
I tau toko/ support these people words the fossil fuel industry pushed plastic and are still pushing it on us why did we switch from glass milk bottles to plastic because of money being used to influnce our reality making us believe that plastic was better than glass laws need to be passed to make manufactures make enviromently safe packging
Stemming plastic production should be focus, says researcher
Recycling will not be enough to dig the world out of the dangerous mountain of plastic it is drowning in, a leading plastic pollution researcher says.
Massey University’s Dr Trisia Farrelly is part of an expert group advising the United Nations.
Globally as little as 5 percent of plastic was ever recycled, meaning recycling would never address the problem, she said.
Instead an effort must be made to turn off the tap on the amount of plastic being produced.
“The plastics industry is driven by the fossil fuel industry and if they have their way, these figures are going to grow exponentially. In fact there is predicted to be a 33 percent increase in fossil fuel based plastic production in the next five years. So it’s not slowing down, it’s increasing.”
Dr Farrelly said a legally binding global treaty was needed to force producers to stop the supply of plastic. Ka kite ano links below.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/379167/stemming-plastic-production-should-be-focus-says-researcher
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
I can not even leave my house for 5 minutes with out the sandflys breaking into my house to try and intimadate Eco Maori. The big picture is that the policeforce of all the countrys of Papatuanuku are corrupt if these muppets had anything except lies well they would have locked me up but know they have nothing .Some one makes a excuse that they cannot interfare when they know the state is breaking my human rights right under there noses
New GCSB bill allows spying on Kiwis
A new bill which gives New Zealand’s security and intelligence agencies more power to spy on Kiwis is likely to be introduced this week.
Prime Minister John Key said the expansion of powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was for good reason.
“If you wanted to allow GCSB to spy against a New Zealander, at the moment they can’t do that,” Key said on Breakfast link below ka kite ano . P.S thanks for the mana sandflys
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/83160725/new-gcsb-bill-allows-spying-on-kiwis
Hope you had a good Christmas eco Maori. We can only guess why the ‘sandflys’ are stressing you out. Thanks for the links.
We are the Guardian of all the creatures on Papatuanuku we need to use all the tools we have to protect the precious wildlife from extinction. This story about the northern white rhino is sad and a catastrophe on a world scale all the creatures going extint in 2018
‘We held a memorial service’: the keeper of the last male northern white rhino
The head keeper at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya remembers Sudan We really cried, all the keepers. We held a memorial service for him, which helped. He was a great ambassador for all rhinos, not just his own kind.
I’m still working hard to ensure the two remaining northern white rhinos are content and in good condition for the rest of their lives. They continue to help raise awareness of rhino conservation. If there was no poaching, there would still be good wild populations of northern white rhinos. We are trying to tell everyone that rhino horn does not possess any medicinal value.
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This may not be the end of Sudan’s story. Semen was collected from him, and from other captive males, before they died. Scientists now plan to harvest eggs from our two remaining females, create more than one embryo and implant them in surrogate female southern white rhinos. In Berlin, scientists have managed to create an embryo using northern white rhino semen and southern white rhino eggs. Using IVF to try to save rhinos has never been done before. I keep my fingers crossed. I still hope we can save these magnificent creatures. links below ka kite ano P.S I smell some thing its a puppet.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/24/people-of-2018-head-keeper-last-male-northern-white-rhino-dies
This is like a story from a film. A businessman masquerading as a farmer, called Randy Constant! has been selling ordinary grains as organic for a nice mark-up for all concerned. Anyone who bought from him didn’t have the necessary wry sense of humour one needs to survive along with a smart brain these days.l
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2018/12/26/organic-grain-fraud-scheme-u-s-says-thousands-were-victims/2418272002/
Constant, of Chillicothe, Missouri, and three others have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Constant, who owned an Iowa grain brokerage, acknowledged that he sold $142 million worth of corn, soybeans and wheat over a 7½-year period that wasn’t organic despite his representations.
So he grew stuff, bought off others to add to his, put it through his grain broker business, and the greedy shit clipped tickets all the way on this fraudulent scheme.l Bet they don’t have the guts to go through with it; the fairground hucksters who run things over in the good ole USA.
This sort of rip-off is what you get when you have an amoral and wilfully neglectful regulation scheme for quality in anything , which is what we have under the enforced neo-liberal free market scheme. Coupled with poor regulations and lax policing of them, is the belief in the ‘free fairy’ which is that in the free market things are so much better than if government is fully involved, and that you can trust business. People made gullible by anti-government propaganda. 👿
Kia ora Te kaea tepuia marae is getting swomped with people in need of food and housing ka pai Dennis.
It must be hard living in Tamikimakau
That is a good deed Jacinda giving aid to Indonesia to help with there recovery from the tsunami .
That’s a good sign that our government is making the correct moves with spending on boxing day up more than 10% that shows me that some business leaders are putting a negative spin on Aotearoa economy
It’s cool Te tangata whenua are celebrating the spring equinox I was researching that yesterday.
I alcohol is a big for our younger maori tane they have to learn that drink driving is not cool.ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub One has to show respect for te awa and tangaroa and be careful it is to easy to drown .
Some people do dumb stuff blowing up a shop to get insurance in Britain.
That elephantseal in Whakatane is a awsome sight they are huge creatures and one has to be very carefull around them good to see the wild creatures around Aotearoa are doing ok but we must do more to protect them.
Its good to see the south island council looking after our guest freedoom campers with showers wifi and a loo dump.
Brixit has put a lot of unneeded presure on busness and people in Britain .
Thats sad that the Bushman center is closing.
That show how a big surge in elitricty can make a strange glow that was freaky.
Kate instant family is a cool movie its all about the family. I see Aquaman has broken movie release sales records in Aotearoa biggest sales Ka pai I seen Tofiga from Laughing Samoans interview Jason Momoa so funny .
Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute