Linda Clark senses a certain sensationalism creeping into some political commentary – possibly stemming from the “entertainment-ification”, to coin a neologism, of politics.
“The commentators that really grate for me are not the Matthew Hootons or the Neale Joneses – the people who are ‘in the game’.
“The commentators – and I think they are political commentators, even though they would deny it vehemently – are the Mike Hoskings, the Kate Hawkesbys. The people who know very little about the subjects they talk about.
“They take no responsibility for the damage they do on the way through … and that’s much more damaging."
As I call it, Majick Radio…and similar neo infotainment. For morons. fark, cant stand it…: )
I remember when sir Key started his messin' with NZ TV. And Julie "Reality" Christie rolled out the mindlessness….for the mindless. (as well as some Flag waving : )
Where is OUR PBS !? RNZ has lost something somehow…not quite sure about them now. I mean having Michelle Boag on as talking head? Well I spose that was before the Leak… but Ben Thomas ?! (described as Hootens mini-me by "someone") lol
Anyway I get a laugh out of Steve Braunias : The secret diary of the Collins gang. "Special Agent Hooten"..lmao : ) Pay at the Herald..Free In ODT : )
Bomber Bradbury sums up the wretched Christie perfectly in these two sentences:
Julie Christie was cultural herpes who used TV to distract and dumb down a country. She is the McDonalds of entertainment and is nothing to celebrate or support.
However, as Bradbury wrote that, he must surely have felt a pang of guilt at his own role in a thankfully almost completely forgotten Christie-level program called Stake-Out, which consisted of secretly filming electricians, decorators and other working stiffs as they committed heinous Shane Jones-type transgressions, and then confronting them in the most high-handed and humiliating manner. It was the sleaziest, nastiest and most spurious local television program since Brian Edwards' lamentable attempt at a comeback in 2003….
I went to check out the Green School yesterday, 12 mins driving from home to get there. They explained that the scheduled tour was booked out – due to pandemic rules they could only cater for 20 – which was why the register button on their website didn't work last night!
New Plymouth mayor, Neil Holdom, says he wholeheartedly supports the establishment of Green School New Zealand in Taranaki. “New Zealand has a long history of innovation and leadership and what the world needs now are more environmental entrepreneurs tackling the problems brought on by a rapidly growing population, unable or unwilling to mitigate its impact on our planet."
“As a parent of three children, married to a teacher with a Masters in Education, specialising in working with gifted and talented children, as well as those with special needs, it is my view that our current model of education will need to evolve significantly to effectively prepare our young people for the future.” Holdom says the Green School model has the potential to blaze a new trail in New Zealand’s education sector.
“Our government has set some ambitious goals for New Zealand’s future. New Plymouth District Council has set some ambitious goals for our district’s future, and these goals will not be achieved by sticking to traditional attitudes and approaches. We need to support the Green School NZ team and help them transform their vision into reality in Taranaki, as a gift to our children.”
We know state education has failed to respond to climate change. That's why kids need a positive alternative. The adapt to survive ethos is evident:
After a decade of educating change makers in Bali, we bring with us a new model of education… Beyond mastering mathematics and literacy, our students will learn to think like entrepreneurs through student-guided, hands-on projects.
Connected deeply and richly to the natural environment, students will learn Maori cultural values intertwined into the spirit of the school, grounding us in the whenua, the land. Most importantly, Green School students cultivate a love of learning as a lifelong pursuit in and of itself. https://gsnz.openapply.com/
"the Green School model has the potential to blaze a new trail in New Zealand’s education sector. "
Why on earth would anyone support the blazing of a new trail?? How terrifying that thought is!! Leaving the well-worn path – no thank you!!! Stick to the track, Tootle!
For every child. The learnings from these front-runners will be taken and applied in every school in New Zealand (best case scenario). Who else will trial these systems and approaches? Enviroschools has been operating in New Zealand, with Government funding, for years and years; an injection of funds into an already-ahead-of-the-play enviro-school like this one gives the whole country a boost in the green direction.
"We know state education has failed to respond to climate change. That's why kids need a positive alternative. The adapt to survive ethos is evident:"
Now why would state education have failed so miserably? Surely not because it has been under-resourced and deliberately run down compared to private education since the neo-liberal privatisation push that started in the 1980s?
Why was the phasing out of state funding for private education ever written into the Green Party Education Policy if it was just a bit of old baggage that should be swept aside when a situation like this arose?
Do you not fear that the moment a school like this gets such a boon, the whole profit-gouging Charter School crowd will be queuing up asking for the same preferential treatment? Under a possible future National govt, would the Greens not look ridiculous arguing against privatisers' Charter schools after this episode?
If you so strongly believe in the innocence and beauty of such élitist schools, please be honest and openly advocate altering the Green Party Education Policy so that people can see what the Greens really stand for.
I am getting tired of the 'My Party, Right or Wrong' cant.
That is how the privatisers always work. Schools were offered special temptations to suck them into Bulk Funding of salaries in the '90s, and the cant at the time was always, "What possible harm can there be in this innocent, benign gesture? How could you be so dogmatic and blind as to oppose something that is good for education?"
The four ‘shovel ready’ Ministers ‘bought it’ because it met the criteria of the CRRF.
The funding for this individual construction project is not some ideological Education policy such as Bulk Funding or Charter Schools; that is false equivalence.
The scholarships are real enough (see my comment @ 2.1.1.2.2.1).
I can’t possibly comment on the other parts in your comment but I did try to find out more about the scholarships.
But we do have a scholarship program already. We're committed that 50% of the school as we grow will be key, first of all, and the scholarships will be available for local learners first.
Green School aims to allocate 20% of its places to scholarship students from Bali and other Indonesian islands. These scholarships enable some of Indonesia’s brightest, most creative, and engaged students the chance to receive a world-class education.
I tend to ignore almost everything else when I’m searching for specific info; ads don’t bother me the slightest. Dare I say it, I am pretty good at finding things.
The columns that look suspiciously like paid content especially vex me, for some reason. At best it's shite journalism asking patsy questions, but usually it's simply a publication masquerading as honest when it's simply spouting any old bullshit for cash.
There was zero information in that first link. There was shit that looked like information, but there were few actual specifics. Even the number of people on scholarships didn't say full ride scholarships (zero dollars, zero transaction fees) vs partial discounts on the massive fees.
The more I read about it, the more this "school" looks like it will churn out a bunch of trust fund kids who will spend their 20s instagramming their world tours before walking into C-level jobs in their family's business.
I do not see it churning out a cadre of environmental heroes.
I have not looked to school programme or pedagogy behind it because the precipitating issue has nothing to do with education as such.
I do not see it churning out a cadre of environmental heroes.
That’s a shame because we obviously need more heroes. How about a hybrid between Zorro and the Green Lantern? You might well be correct with your sceptical (cynical?) view. However, in the interim, it will create jobs and stimulate the local economy.
It's not the programme, it's the vibe that comes through from their marketing.
Saying that someone who rocks up in a ferrari shouldn't be judged on their environmental impact because they might have made a huge effort and ditched the private jet… yeah, whatevs.
Yup, the Ferraris are abundant among the Green School alumni. So predictable, so true, no need to check, of course. Facts do not matter, opinions rule. Yeah, I know this is most likely a cherry-picked selection of their ‘success stories’ and I’m as ‘convinced’ as you are that all the other alumni are smiling assassins without any empathy for the poor and disenfranchised.
… looks like it will churn out a bunch of trust fund kids who will spend their 20s instagramming their world tours before walking into C-level jobs in their family's business. (All the while congratulating themselves how environmental they are.)
My reaction to rummaging around on their site and the rest of the webz was pretty much the same.
"Nobody is saying that this particular project won't create jobs. Just that it's a profit-driven industry contrary to Green Party policy."
I'm under the impression that the jobs are building industry jobs, and one of the covid priorities was to stop building firms from going under. i.e. keep existing jobs.
I agree that the funding model of the GS and international students is an issue, but am not sure how it's too different from the tertiary education sectors large reliance on international student fees.
"Now the worry is that, of the "shovel ready" projects, this one was maybe closest to Green Party ideals. And that's not on the Greens, that's on NZ."
I understand that Shaw got quite a lot of gains in selection process, which was pleasantly surprising. I wish they would release the details on this. Not all the business details, but show case the green gains better. Might be a conflict between Shaw's Ministerial role and the GP though, or they just don't have time.
was it hipkins or robertson saying this was a project the Greens specifically were supporting?
Sounds like they divvied up the applications between the party and it was largely political horse trading. But it's on NZ as a whole that there wasn't e.g. a tidal generator and other renewables close enough to submit applications that the Greens could get behind.
And yeah, I'm not completely fine with the tertiary education sector marketing over merit philosophy, either. But then the entire fees thing pisses me off, and it's slowly turning into a perception of some students that they're paying for the degree, not the education.
Agreed that this is on NZ. We have the green edge that NZ wants, not what we need by any means.
The impression I have is that the four budget Ministers (GR, Jones, Shaw, don't know who the fourth was) worked through the process of shortlisting, and in that process Shaw worked on getting the projects more green generally. This surprised me, that there was this degree of influence, but it's hard to tell specifically.
Hipkins, when pressed, said it was something the Greens wanted, but I don't think that is true (the caucus wasn't involved in the decision afaik), it was Shaw and his team. So Hipkins was too removed to have a good informed opinion, and/or there was an advantage to Labour in presenting it this way. But his first response was to say it wasn't Ed money and journos should ask the relevant Ministers about it.
I haven't listened to what GR said. But afaik Labour signed off on it and were ok with it too. It met the main criteria (jobs) so I expect all the parties were pretty happy.
did you ask him if the 'families of the international students that get to live with their children in NZ get a permanent and or work permit to live in NZ courtesy of the 48.000 school fee?
did you ask him how many kiwi kids can get access to his school for courtesy of 24.000 fee?
And is that really worth the career of a Green polititan who put his own likes above that of the party, and it is really a green school when you import people – whole families from overseas to live here, you now, the all vaunted carbon foot print – or is that only something we should worry about when it is a public venture rather then a private one.
I believe that no one in this country would care one bit if this amount of money would have been spend equally on the poorest schools in NZ for the same type of curriculum, but alas it is getting spend on a 250 kids and their f amily who are mainly from overseas.
This schools should have never been in the shovel ready programm, if they can't pay builders atm or pay them with the fees they collect already then the best the should get is the wage subsidy, maybe a government loan – free of interest and repayable from a years after the loan was issues, see the exact same conditions other private businesses (not AIRNZ of course) have given.
For both the Government and the Greens, this was a dumb move. And i don't watch any of the guys that are so often spoken about here cause they have nothing to say of interest, but i see people every day, and this yesterday was a point of discussion. Tone: I can't stand this government giving money willy nilly to everyone and their dog. Try counter that with your 'its green". Good luck with that.
This was the most tone deaf decision this year. It wins the golden toilet seat.
In the meantime our kids sit in cold, damp, leaky, totally non green – can't give a fuck type building – schools and are told to wait a few more years for something better.
” We know state education has failed to respond to climate change. That’s why kids need a positive alternative.”
yeah, because like right now , we don’t give a shit and shovel money up the arses of people who will do everything to keep kids from poor people out. 24.000 a year is not affordable for 90% of people in this country. That is why the state fails in anything regarding climate change. Because it can’t be bothered doing something. And besides, if the private businesses such as this, that serve the very few, very rich and very conntected don’t get money where would people like our beige suits in parliament get jobs once they are done giving taxpayers money to private businesses.
It was money from the Covid Recovery fund for shovel-ready, applied-for, criteria-meeting construction projects that would boost local economies. Education is provided-for (or not) in another budget. Shaw has worked hard to boost those as well.
So State schools which have outstripped their capacity because of roll growth and are now way overcrowded, or old schools which are just crappy for clearly observed reasons, have to wait years for Ministry funded expansion and improvement plans. Yet a private school with wealthy feepaying parents scores 11 million odd. Dressing this up with green virtue signalling doesn't cut it. It's bullshit.
It would be better for you to ask Jacinda those questions, Sabine. James told us he was approving budget recommendations, so it was a coalition funding initiative. If the concept of `Labour led' seems valid to you, give that a try with her.
Yes he was announcing with his Ministerial hat on (as Associate Minister of Finance) as I understood it, not as his leader of the Green party hat.
Seems that this fundamental constitutional point has been overlooked in the rush to condemn. I guess he could have said ‘I won't announce’ but then that would probably go against yet another constitutional expectation that the time for 'fighting/concerns' is before the decision is made while you are part of the team (ie coalition) making the decision.
In view of all the hoo-ha have I missed something here? Are people not able to see the nuances and difference between MPs/parties and Ministers in Govt?
In view of all the hoo-ha have I missed something here?
Not obviously. He apologised to GP members, but I didn't hear a specific reason for the apology, so I presume Green sectarianism required a ritualised formality – sufficiently general and bland to appease those into purity at the expense of coalition consensus.
Are people not able to see the nuances and difference between MPs/parties and Ministers in Govt?
Some commentators here qualify for that description. Those that went straight into shock-horror mode in response to his announcement, plus those for whom partisan ideology is meant to defeat the common good.
I've appreciated your stance on the situation during the past couple of days, btw. I felt the need to refrain due to lack of explanation for the announcement (in msm) so, like Weka, I held off forming an opinion until James briefed us.
Understood and appreciated. My opinion crystallised over the last few days too; the communication was lacking although Chlöe Swarbrick did a very good job of responding to questions in her daily Facebook sessions. It should have been handled better and not left to me having to go on FB and watch long videos in search of the scant answers.
did you not go to the school to speak to the people there? that is why i asked you if you also asked these questions as i personally would have asked. 🙂
Cause that is why i asked you :). As for labour, well, its the lesser evil, i don't really expect anything from them. Talk to Jacinda, she is kinder gentler then Judith, but it seems as happy as to sponsor private business that serves no one but the very rich.
Ideology embeds. Problem is, the world changes around it. Ongoing relevance of the ideology then comes into question. In times of rapid change (such as now) folks often attach limpet-like to some rock of ideology amongst the turbulence. Those going with the flow cruise on by, looking askance at the weirdos as they drift past…
oh if you can afford 48.000 a year for schooling a kid and get a permanent residence permit it sure is sound.
It just makes no sense what so ever for the tax payers whose kids sit in cold, damp, over crowed schools with leaky roofs, shotty internet connection and not enough ipads for all kids, nor student aids and free school lunches. These are nice to have projects and thus are not getting anything.
NZ banks are appalling at investing in anything beyond housing loans. If they were doing their jobs then yes, we would not require any public subsidies like this.
James Shaw apology last night has left a gaping hole in The Green Party as far as their own political credibility, and more importantly their values and principles as an alternative left leaning party to support goes.
Shaw has on the one hand confirmed what we already knew about him..that he is a liberal free market green politician ( with all the numerous contradictions and unseemly contortions that involves ) but on the other hand he has shown us something new about himself…that he is a straight out gutless bullshitter ( “We were thinking about it in terms of building and constructions, not education") and worse than that it turns out Shaw is actually one of, and represents the interests of, the elitist greens that the working classes have always suspected that greens were being constantly drawn toward ideologically…probably one of the most self serving, narcissistic, political groups operating today….yuk, the Greens should have made Shaw step down…..not only is he an elitist prick, he is a stupid one, imagine doing this just before an election..what a fucking dummy.
Adrian-Slight over-reaction there perhaps? Shaw realised he had made a dumb mistake and has now owned up.
Shaw is the man who saved the Green Party at the last election and has been largely instrumental in keeping it relevant during this term of government.
Adrian-perhaps you would like to compare the policies of the Greens to the other parties in order to justify your manic attack on the Party, rather than justify the attack on this relatively minor issue? For instance what do you think of their Wealth Tax?
The media climbed all over this comparatively small mistake in order to try to push the Greens below 5%.
For some reason half the people on this site don't seem to feel the need or believe it appropriate that citizens hold the politicians that they say represent them to any kind of account.
Lets just make it clear here what James Shaw just did…he knowingly and under the name of the NZ Green Party funded a private elite school to the tune of 12 million dollars..in direct contradiction to the stated aims of that party…why?,..seriously if that isn't plainly obvious to you and you really think he made a mistake, well then you are just being willingly stupid and there is no need for us to continue this conversation.
Your personal dislike for James Shaw is making you vitriolic and unreasonable. James Shaw is highly regarded in Parliament across the spectrum of politicians.
interesting. So you want the Green Party out of parliament. How would that work in terms of your politics? We'd then either have a Labour only govt, or a Lab/NZF one, or a Nat one. Please explain how this is an improvement on what we have now?
No what I want is just one political party in NZ that isn't headed by a liberal, free market elitist bullshit artist… I know that it is regarded as extremely unreasonable and almost radical around here to demand highly held values and principles from our selected political representatives… you and others here obviously don't and that's your prerogative, but I do, and sure as hell am not going to shift from that position or apologize for demanding that high bar from people whom I vote for.
Calling for the Greens co-leader to step down 8 weeks before an election IS a call for them to be out of parliament (I don't think you are naive enough to believe that such a move wouldn't drop the GP vote).
Under James Shaw's leadership, The Greens have been somewhere other than in Opposition; that is, at the levers of power, where we wanted them to be since forever and achieving as much as any small support party could ever hope to achieve, but, let's call for his head! Off with it!
I must have. What I do remember though is his ability to increase the Wellington Central party vote by 10% over two elections. I naively thought he could do something similar at a national level. The sooner we find out what Chloe can do instead, the better imo.
I would have thought a Green Party supporter would not be into cult-style political leadership heroism but I guess for some the symbolism of a pixie princess riding a snow white unicorn has a too strong a pull to resist. Chlöe Swarbrick is a more natural communicator than Jacinda Ardern who tends to come across as patronising and too polished at times, in my opinion. Mind you, I haven’t watched any of Jacinda Ardern’s Facebook videos (I avoid videos like Covid) so I cannot really compare 🙂
Burning something down in the hope that something closer to the ideal form will magically appear does not have a good track record of success in politics, especially democracy.
The trouble with most regulations bonfires that have been proposed is that they have been proposed in the transparent desire that nothing will grow to replace the incinerated regulations.
You'd have more credibility with that framing if you could prove that state schools are teaching the same curriculum as the Green School, eh?
Kids need to upskill to survive now. As long as state educators ignore this imperative private educators will be seen by the public as providing the only intelligent option.
"that he is a straight out gutless bullshitter ( “We were thinking about it in terms of building and constructions, not education") "
Having listened to the 30 min explanation by Shaw in the GP zoom last night, and then the 45min Q and A from members and the co-leaders, I think you are flat out wrong here. His indepth explanation of how government actually works, in this instance the process of development of the fund, how applications were received and dealt with, which people were involved (the four budget Ministers) and weren't involved (GP caucus), the speed at which massive decisions were being made during the first months of the pandemic, and the factors that affected his decision making. All of that was nuanced and real. I learned a lot and my guess is that I already knew more about how government works than you do.
Your comment appears to be based on nothing other than a large amount of antipathy towards Shaw because he wears a suit, and a desire to beat the Green Party with your anti-neolib stick despite the Greens having the most progressive set of left wing policies in parliament. Your position here is mind boggling.
For those that want to pay attention to what is happening, the Green Party education policy remains the same, and Shaw is completely behind that. The GP's other policies remain the same too.
How can we have any faith in a leader who does the opposite of Party policy.? This own goal is just so stupid at this time that it beggars belief. A guaranteed vote loser like this is more serious than you believe. I find it so disheartening that he did this when everything is at stake. Trying to sweep it under the carpet by making out it is trivial doesn’t work. Something miraculous needs to happen for us to get to 5%.
People make mistakes. He didn't intentionally go against party policy, he just failed to take it into account when looking at a project through an entirely different lens while under a lot of pressure.
I have more faith in Shaw now, because he immediately admitted the mistake and is making amends.
Shaw says it's not true to say the Greens have abandoned their policy to not publicly fund private schools.
"Well that is our policy and this money doesn't go into the operations."
Asked if he was being cute, Shaw replied, "there's a balance of objectives we're trying to achieve here – remember that we are going through an unprecedented time with Covid-19''.
It's just a building, he says.
"In terms of the infrastructure spend, it is in many ways just another construction project.''
He's only become contrite under a barrage of justified criticism.
This has been reported as being $43m a year, according to a report prepared by Green School International and peer reviewed by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.
However, GSNZ has refused to release a copy of the report to Stuff.
“It has gone through all of the traditional and official checks and measures required by the government criteria for the shovel ready funding and GS (Green School) doesn’t feel it is our responsibility to justify this document.”
…our elitist green educators don't feel they have to.
Legitimate general issue there about accountability and transparency (especially given Shane Jones' involvement) – but do the other businesses which receive investment from that fund have to release their business case details to the public, if the govt agencies involved don't as part of that process?
Businesses keep information that could benefit their competition confidential for the obvious reason that it could benefit their competition. There's no reason the government should require them to make that info public just to satisfy your curiosity.
NZ is a representative democracy, ie we elect people to represent us and then leave them to do that until the next election. They shouldn't keep information confidential unnecessarily, but neither should they publish info that should be confidential.
I hope their flash laminated beams pull apart.
The roof falling on them would teach those kids not to go to a private school, huh?
Its government money…I am so over this 'commercially sensitive' and 'legally privileged and confidential' shit. If they can't declare all…bugger off and find your putea from another trough.
Don't worry about the children, they'll have plenty of warning. And they can always slum it at the state school down the road for free while the problem's sorted…oh, that's right…that school hasn't even got it's $400,000 yet to fix the leaks.
You're entitled that opinion, and the businesses are entitled to the opinion that if the government's making a special offer to help them fund commercial infrastructure development, then commercial considerations apply.
It is a construction project, for buildings, not funding a Charter School from the Education Budget. People who cannot tell the legalistic difference or who cannot cope with it should sue the Government.
The more I think about, the more I appreciate that this happened because it highlights so many issues and reasons why political discourse in NZ sucks big time and why we make no meaningful progress and, in fact, seem to be going backwards.
It happened because Shaw's desire to promote Green gains during a campaign outweighed the predictable downside in this case. Neither he nor his staff caught the implications and managed expectations. Ongoing strategic comms failures in that machinery since Labour hired away some of their key people.
Not a snowball's chance in hell! Since the funding already had coalition support before James agreed, pissed-off Greens can't see Labour or NZF as better options. So you think they will refuse to vote at all?
Human nature will prevail. Few folk persist in resentment at others in their tribe for long periods. Greens are even more inclined to tribal solidarity than others. Sometimes pragmatism must prevail over principle in politics. This is one such occasion. The disgruntled will gradually figure that out.
They will stick to their values and principles and punish the Green Party into the lush wilderness of purity and moral virtue where unicorns graze and pixies flatter around unencumbered by Covid. That will teach them to betray their loyal followers once and forever.
The trouble is you're trying to look at the situation through a lens of reason without political bloodlust.
The political and electoral environment we live in is one of emotion and insanity not reason. Funny thing is how some who dislike the Greens intensely and have no truck with them at all are now telling them what and how they should be doing things.
The decision was indefensible by Shaw and he apologised for that.
The project is defensible and worthy of funding, in my opinion. The $11.7 million would not have gone to a public school but to another shovel ready project or nowhere.
The project is defensible and worthy of funding, in my opinion. The $11.7 million would not have gone to a public school but to another shovel ready project or nowhere.
then maybe the issue is really that the Labour led government could not be bothered to add schools iwth leaky roofs and not enough classrooms to the shovel ready jobs. Cause it appears that there are quite a few schools that would like to be considered shovel ready, but they are told to wait for a better day or something.
Now that takes me back to my secondary school days in the early 1960's. The school was opened in 1955, just in time for the first of the new surge in post war children. But it leaked like a sieve. The DP announced at morning assembly to a great outburst of laughter,
"When you are walking down the corridors, please don't kick the bucket, they are there to catch the drips."
Leaky buildings have been with us for a very long time, schools are given funding for maintenance and other operational expenses as part of the Budget.
There are different pots of money for that. Unless they’re private schools they wouldn’t be eligible for CRRF AFAIK but that seems to lead into a political cul-de-sac because of the Green Party.
A further $23m will be used for rightsizing Spotswood College in Taranaki, and replacing poor condition classrooms. Design work will start from the middle of 2021.
You got any idea off the top of your head how deeply Medsafe look into the manufacturing side of things before they approve a vaccine or drug?
My general impression is that some former soviet countries might even be ahead of the west in general virology and stuff like phage treatments, so I find it plausible they could have developed an innovative safe and effective vacccine. Provided it's also manufactured up to standard.
My experience with stuff manufactured in Russia is the quality control is appalling, particularly given the stuff I was involved in would very likely get used in safety critical applications. Then there's the apparent low value put on health and safety in russia generally. So I'd be awfully wary of a vaccine produced in Russia, but probably more comfortable with a vaccine developed in Russia but produced somewhere else more reliable.
Review of manufacturing is a critical part of Medsafe's review and approval process it would be unlikely to be approved without an on site audit by an approved agency such as the EMEA, MHRA, FDA etc
“It appears the agreement signed up to by the former government was loose and failed to protect taxpayers’ money. It seems to have been rushed through without the necessary due diligence being carried out.”
He said Wellingtonians and taxpayers “deserve to know exactly what has happened”.
“We want to make sure future governments aren’t left in the same predicament our Government has been.”
Step aside from your focus of the green school, take a minute and look at a bigger picture, because there are larger issues than that. Don't lose sight of the forest for the tree's and all that, excuse the pun
First up this morning: She predicted our second wave, and she’s reviewing the global response. Former Prime Minister
Now if I want to vote for a pro-environment party it looks like I'm faced with the charming choice between wasting my vote on the sub-5% Greens or the barely over 1% TOP.
The Greens are giving money to a private school, they are the devil incarnate. The world is going to end.
Simple solution: Vote for Judith Collins to be Prime Minister and Gerry Brownlee the Deputy. She is our saviour, he is or saviour. Everything, (well almost everything) will be wonderful with the world.
StoatsSome on the political left are so well adapted to negotiating tight spaces they actually have whiskers on their tails to help them reverse out of tight burrows.
When asked to define what his second-term agenda would be, Trump replied:
“But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.”
. Chinese New Zealanders not part of Major Party Support Re-alignment
A strong majority of Chinese New Zealanders say they still prefer National to Labour, even though they're pretty happy with the government's Covid response.
.
Ethnic Chinese voters
Party-Vote Intention .. 2020 …. 2017
National ………………. 62% ….. 71.1% ….. Down 9.1 Points
ACT ………………………. 8.8% …… 2.0% ……. Up 6.8 Points
Labour …………………. 21% ….. 21.6% ……. Down 0.6 Points
NZF ……………………… .1.2% …… 2.4% ……. Down 1.2 Points
Green …………………… 0.8% ….. No Data
.
Preferred PM
Collins ….. 52.2 …… English … 58.5% … Down 6.3
Ardern …. 26.5 …. Ardern ….. 20.1% ….. Up 6.4
.
Satisfied : with the government's response to Covid-19 …. 74.7%
What it indicates is to me is they are playing 'follow our local leader' and have little understanding of how politics works in NZ or what the various parties actually stand for. It will be interesting to see how that changes over the next couple of decades as their off-spring become eligible to vote.
Simpler: we have predominantly approved only the most wealthy migrants from that part of the world, so they back the party which supports the wealthy. Not the same as the 'support the current govt' thinking some commentators believe must apply. And certainly not ignorance of our political landscape.
Forget the Lincoln Project nonsense – the best ad around is from the latest cool old guy, Ed Markey, It's from his Democratic party Senate primary against the Pelosi-endorsed Joe Kennedy III. Effectively Markey is saying, "We should elect Biden, then pressure the crap out of him to do then right thing. You need me to help apply that pressure."
And speaking of the Lincoln Project ads, here Sam Seder convincingly elaborates on their real purpose. The ads are not aimed at converting Trump Republicans to voting Biden. Instead, they are aimed at persuading the left that Trump is merely an exceptionally atrocious individual – and not a natural outcome of Republicanism, or ideologically consistent with Republicanism. The correct response to the Lincoln Project ads is therefore, "thanks but no thanks."
The correct response to the Lincoln Project ads is therefore, "thanks but no thanks."
No. It's really not. The best response is pointing out that CovidCamacho is merely the embodiment of everything the Repugs have been working towards for decades.
I appreciate that. Seder is not the only one to try to shed some light. Your reference further back was on the mark when you mentioned 'remaining shreds of sanity.' The whole thing is insane. (America) Even the insane bits have grown side strains of insanity, and so on, and so on …
The only normal is that nothing is 'normal', anything goes.
Just one part of the total economic response is the " Summary of the Initiatives in the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF) Foundational Package" that money has already been targeted for. The initiatives funded are extensive, swift and smart directing monies into areas not really given consideration before ( because of Covid19 impacts and a green influence).
The social well being investment is becoming more balanced imo and has begun to head into newer ways to distribute state spending. Non-profits also get a bite of the economic stimulus pie addressing issues at grassroots and have a future focus on sustainability and equality issues.
Along with the measures of Government response to Covid19 in February 2020 , Treasury have compiled this recent report on all post Budget monetary support across sectors including spending that is on top of the $50 billion CRRF package of which $ 14 billion remains.
National's quickly stitched together- old policy posing as new- is pitiful as their response in the wider context of issues facing people in even the near future.
The old neoliberalism is implicit in their released Business policy and Freshwater policy. Along with National resurrecting an " people can eat shit pie – social investment" approach to have social ills racially profiled then privatised, the overall picture signals the intent to bring back the abnormal normal.
Though, I'd be happy to see Judith take her own medicine, the 90 day trial and no lunches enacted on her, that would make her gone by lunchtime early October !
Or for choices on offer there's ACT spinning their new dogma to sell elitism as "The Final Solution".
Tim McCready 🇳🇿 (@Tim_McCready) Tweeted:
Got an unexpected laugh with this line from @HeatherRoyNZ! #nationnz
Thanks Sacha for that. Still having problems with reply buttons and working through mobile apps permissions , share buttons etc. Samsung did a 253 item update and has downed even logging into online websites.
I'm reminded of the American woman who attended a mass church rally a few months back. When asked by a reporter if she is concerned about the spread of the virus she said:
"I'm covered in Jesus' blood so I’m safe.
Selfish mad cow. Not concerned with anyone else but herself. Hope she caught it.
At level 2 regional travel will resume for Aucklanders. Apprehensive over the potential mobility of Covid19 across NZ next week given there's 25 new cases in last two days. Are alterations to crowd numbers a risk then in other regions, with risks like the first NZ wedding cluster ?
"Apprehensive over the potential mobility of Covid19 across NZ next week…"
Me too. Only way our Government wins on this is if the planned relaxation of restrictions doesn't result in current Covid ripples becoming waves – in the (IMHO likely) event of increased community transmission they will be castigated for easing up too soon.
Barclay, Ross, Bennett, Falloon, Walker, Boag, Woodhouse, Bridge(s), Muller, Collins, Brownlee, Mitchell, Nick Smith, etc. etc., and all right-footers.
Maybe the secret of political survival in NZ is to have no standards, no shame, and a raison d'être of self-enrichment- the secret of National's success (largest party in parliament no less).
Many NZers get a kick out of denigrating do-gooders. Where do the Green's get off, advocating for environmental and societal sustainability, when they make hypocritical mistakes like this time and time again – it's unconscionable.
Time to cut Marama, Shaw and co. down to size (< 5%), eh – definitely achievable.
Indeed, it is sad when a peaceful Green School in rural Taranaki is portrayed and treated as if it is the epicentre of Mordor and a fortress of evil capitalist parasites profiteering off the public purse.
It's remarkable to me that this one mistake could bring the Greens low (I really hope it doesn't) – FFS, tiny wee-brained lefties are now baying for Shaw's blood, and I'm sounding like Dennis Frank.
I can only hope that the standards some are holding the Greens to will be applied impartially to all other parties. This pandemic has many of us rattled and focussed on tomorrow's Covid numbers (cases and alert levels) at a time when Green party policies promoting long term sustainability and resilience are more crucial than ever, IMHO.
Rightly or wrongly, the Greens were on a pedestal, which carries a higher risk of tripping and causing injury. Some quarters [poll pun] have been trying to shoot the pixie princess off Cloud 9 and if/when that happens this Shaw shit show will be like a flea circus and pale in comparison.
Public resilience is wearing very thin, I agree. Just as well, the Election was postponed by only four weeks.
this is about the saddest indictment of these very rich people i can actually think of. Their kid did not do well in ordinary school NZ so instead of putting their considerable clout and money behind lobbying for better schools for all NZ kids, they went to Bali to study a 'green' school for the very rich kids like theirs. And then they came back and started building 'their own' schools for rich kids like theirs so that they don't have to go to the ordinary underfunded, crowded, leaky, cold, and standard schools of NZ, and our government gave them money for it.
Pathetic comes to mind, but i am sure that the kids of the Labour Party, NZFirst, the Green Party will be welcome at this school for a fee of course. And in order to pretend that they actually gave a shit about the country and the schools they gonna give a scholarship or three to one of the little poor urchins. How very very charitable of them.
Seriously i don't want to hear anything anymore about foreign students coming here for a few years of study. If we can open the borders for the kids of this school and their parents, then we can have the borders open of the fee paying kids of other people.
they could have done so much for the Schools of NZ , and instead its the parents of kids sitting in shitty schools for years on end that is going to finance their private little scheme.
btw, the owners of this schools are the HRV founders who sold for what i would guess many many millions their business and should thus be able to fund their own project.
Shame on Labour, NZFIRST and the Greens to allow this project to be funded by the public.
Green School New Zealand has a focus on sustainability, but it doesn't come cheap, with enrolment and tuition fees costing up to $40,000 for some overseas students.
now we can argue that they can't come here now, but if they get a residence permit the families can come here, be put up in a quarantine hotel for 2 weeks and bingo.
so yes, is it.
and i urge you to read the article below from a few years ago as to why the very rich owners of this school created this school in the first place, for their very rich son who was not doing well in NZ public school. And rather then change the schools of NZ for all kids they are now building one with public funds.
This project should never have been in the fund in the first place. Nothing good will come from it for the government from it. Nothing. What. So . Ever.
here read it yourself, and then ask yourself if this is what we want to fund.
They would have little chance of getting a place in the queue for non Kiwis (engineers, skilled workers will have priority), so they are will not be receiving foreigners/foreign students during the pandemic.
So your earlier foreign students dig was plain wrong.
And they invested millions setting up the school themselves (its already half built).
The fund is for business that creates on-going jobs (and in this case foreigners bring some of the revenues in) – economic growth. Which is why it qualified.
Whether I would have set up a $3B fund for such investment in pandemic impacted businesses when there were plenty of capital spending nned for HB's and schools is another matter.
The objection about money for the rich, also applies to the Americas Cup funding and subsidising film-making.
yes, they build a school for their son, and they should finish it, they have enough money, on which we can rest assured they paid as little in taxes as rich people as these get away with. But hey, money must be made and if we can get free money, even better. Just don't expect us to pay taxes or vote for Labour :).
And yes, they are actively trying to get rich people from overseas to send their kids there, they have it costed and are just now in a bit of a lurch cause there aren't enough rich people to pay for their'unschooling' green school.
And this fund does nothing to create jobs, as far as i am aware the only ones currently having work are the builders. At the very best they will be a trickle down – or rather a pissing down – on the locals that gett o be janitor, cook, cleaner, just like the locals in that fancy school in Bali. Who also are too poor to send their kids to this amazing school for primarily white people. 🙂
Nothing anyone here has said so far is anything else that any National or Act supporter here has said in defense of public money going to private enterprise. In fact all the Green supporters and their Labour allies currently sound like they are auditioning for Act.
It may have been intended and frankly i would not be surprised to hear again of this school and not in a good way,
And the very sad thing is that we have to vote for that. Cause its not as bad as Judith. Vote 2020 Labour /NZFirst/Green cause we are not as bad as National/Act.
Job advertisements for New Zealand's first Green School have finally gone online – and more than 400 applications have been received for the nine vacancies.
this is about the saddest indictment of these very rich people i can actually think of. Their kid did not do well in ordinary school NZ so instead of putting their considerable clout and money behind lobbying for better schools for all NZ kids, they went to Bali to study a 'green' school for the very rich kids like theirs. And then they came back and started building 'their own' schools for rich kids like theirs so that they don't have to go to the ordinary underfunded, crowded, leaky, cold, and standard schools of NZ, and our government gave them money for it.
You seem to be conflating things there. There will always be kids that do badly in mainstream schools. Nothing to do with the run down state of buildings thanks to National. It's about the core philosophy of state schools, what they think is important to teach, and how they teach it. The best lobbying in the world is unlikely to change that.
"Teachers were no longer hung up on his spelling, or whether his stories were shorter than the other kids', or whether he wrote on the lines. They cared about his ideas."
I have friends whose kids have been like this. Those kids did better in Steiner schools or being homeschooled. Low income households, before you go off on a rant about privilege.
I'm hoping that down the line schools like the Green School can be accommodated in the system that integrates private schools into the state system and thus influences the state system, or at least gives options for kids who need to be in alt education.
Our place is directly under the Green X23A flightpath into Auckland airport. Just now another Covid capsule quietly sneaked in delivering its masked occupants coughing and spluttering grim death.
11 community cases today and we are having to open up on Monday. This is an indication the country is going to have to live with it.
One of my Akl customers is going home tonight again. this is the second time she rode out lock down here in Rotorua. Ahh, to be wealthy in NZ, rules don't apply. In the meantime the poor sap in a bus with no face covering will get a 300 NZD fine.
Now this turns up – children can retain the virus (in the nose) for three weeks and so we have a perfect storm. Outbreaks through schools and into homes and then workplaces and then out of Auckland.
That would require an end to our elimination policy (permanent social distancing and masks in schools until there is a vaccine), or a resumed lockdown nationwide and delay of the election to November.
Given the likely cause, government policy on mask wearing will be cited and they will be blamed.
Children can carry coronavirus in their noses for up to three weeks, according to a study from South Korea.
Dr DeBiasi believes that while the "vast majority of infected children have mild or unrecognised disease," they may play an "important" role in enabling the spread of infection through communities.
The information about the three week carry duration should give the government pause about schools being open next week – or at least require mask use and social distancing.
One thing that i have observed here is people are using the app before coming in, they wait outside for the customers in the shop to leave first and quite a few wear masks. So at least here in Vegas people are trying to keep their community safe.
But i do expect the virus to travel from Sunday midnight on. No easy solutions here.
I thought that JLR took time out for quiet reflection. He must have spent the time looking in a mirror as he doesn't seem wiser after that remark about using the military. Actually JLR it is good that the forces can do some peacetime support work for their own country, they will feel good being able to help their own when needed.
And then who takes responsibility for the spread, the individual who overides risks to others and wants to leave Auckland for a wedding , or the Government?
Or the same evangelical group who have now admitted to carrying on hallelujah sessions together in secret?
And that's why all the residents of West and South Auckland have been advised to line up for a COVID test. If we all went to a testing site right now there would be insufficient testers / swabs etc. We are talking big numbers.
And that's why all the residents of West and South Auckland have been advised to line up for a COVID test. If we all presented at a testing site right now there would be insufficient testers / swabs etc. We are talking big numbers.
The spy sandflys could not touch Eco Maori so they setup my Tamariki an set the courts onto them the under underbelly Of New Zealand's is full of rotting people. They don't like Eco Maori showing the World their true colours hence the VENDETTA.
Michael Bassett writes – I’m not sure that it’s much comfort to anyone to know that the post-Covid surge in violent crimes, gang activity, ram raids, random shootings, thuggery and stabbings is occurring in other countries as well as New Zealand. These days, wagging school, out-of-control welfare and ...
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I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
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Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
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Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
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I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
Asia Pacific Report Barangay New Zealand’s Rene Molina has interviewed the country’s first Filipino Green MP Francisco Hernandez who was sworn into Parliament yesterday as the party’s latest member. This is the first interview with Hernandez who replaces former Green Party co-leader James Shaw after his retirement from politics to ...
An Australian Strategic Policy Institute report says Pillar Two could raise the industry to state of the art capability - or "crush" it "under the weight of the globe's biggest player". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marlene Longbottom, Associate Professor, Indigenous Education & Research Centre, James Cook University ShutterstockThis article contains information on deaths in custody and the violence experienced by First Nations people in encounters with the Australian carceral system. It also contains references to ...
“Instead of following along countries that are investing in death and better ways of killing people faster, we need to invest in life and in making Aotearoa a fair, just and equitable place where everyone has what they need for a dignified life.” ...
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI, TPM MP FOR TAI TOKERAU This Government will not waver in its mission to exterminate Māori. CHRISTOPHER LUXON Oh well look you know I don’t think that hard-working Kiwis want to hear language like that. It’s just really unhelpful rhetoric. My Government is genuinely committed to advancing outcomes ...
The body positivity movement started with women confronting the unrealistic expectations and unrepresentative portrayals of them in media and advertising. Men weren’t part of it … their bodies hadn’t been sexualised to the same extremes and they didn’t really need it. But now that’s changed. And in a warped sort ...
The New Zealand comedy legend takes us through her life in television, including the time she hugged Elton John and the unshakeable legacy of a girl named Lyn. In 1981, Ginette McDonald stood on the stage of Auckland’s St James Theatre and directly addressed Queen Elizabeth II. It was a ...
An essay by Lily Duval from the just-released anthology Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child adjacent.I was 22 when my friend Alice gave birth in the living room of our pokey Addington flat. She laboured in the blow-up pool for hours. Garish fish swam along the inflated ...
Ella Borrie on the best books about motherhood she’s come across so far. Over the past few years I’ve been drawn to books about motherhood. I’m fascinated by the joys and horrors of becoming a parent. The question of children also feels more pressing than it used to. It’s like ...
Out of gift ideas for mum? You can’t go wrong with a bottle of toilet cleaner and a new squeegee. Emily Writes is the writer and editor of Emily Writes Weekly. This week marks five years since I published a post on The Spinoff about Mother’s Day marketing titled ‘A ...
My husband is posted overseas for 12 months and I’m armed with an expensive, newfangled vibrator. Will I miss him? The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.A few days after my husband leaves, a new sex toy arrives at the front door. Nestled ...
Jaimie Baird’s new book Here Today Gone Tomorrow is a record of four decades of graffiti and street art in Wellington, told through more than 1,200 photographs. He spoke with Joel MacManus about what inspired the book. How did you first get interested in photographing street art? I remember ...
Editor Madeleine Chapman looks back at a busy week where food of all political leanings dominated. Sometimes you’re just going about your week thinking you’ve got a good handle on what might be coming as far as news topics and then someone (usually a politician) says something so ridiculous that ...
In a week of cold rain and frost, the climate in courtroom four upstairs at the Invercargill courthouse was simmering with restrained indignation. At times it felt like the famous Mexican standoff scene from Reservoir Dogs, or, as someone watching the proceedings described it, there was so much throwing of ...
A banner notification alerts me to the fact that I’ve received an Instagram message from @felicity.loves. She always comments on my posts. I shouldn’t have opened the message, but clicked on the notification before rationalising this. OMG! Are you in Wellys? X I debate not replying, but Instagram will inform ...
In Melbourne’s hardscrabble western suburbs where AFL – Aussie rules football – is a state religion, Callum Donaldson has been quietly grafting away, four months into an odyssey that he hopes will take him to another promised land: the NRL. It was a solid 2023 for the softly spoken 20-year-old ...
Pacific Media Watch Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House, reports 1News. She has been the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Tuesday’s budget will respond to the deepening public agitation over Australia’s housing shortages by pouring new money into crisis accommodation for women and children, social housing and infrastructure. A specially-convened national cabinet late Friday ticked ...
By Kaneta Naimatu in Suva Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert. Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press ...
Aldora Itunu is back in the Black Ferns squad after a three-year absence. The last of her 24 internationals was an underwhelming loss to France (7-29) in Castres to conclude the disastrous 2021 Northern Tour. The powerhouse prop won a Rugby World Cup in 2017 and thought she was done. ...
The fight to control major transport policy and projects in Auckland has burst into the open again, with councillors rejecting Mayor Wayne Brown’s latest attempt to steer things more under his influence. Councillors from the left and right broke ranks on the mayor’s bid to control Auckland Transport more directly ...
Exhausted by the general election campaign, horrified by the twilight zone of coalition negotiations, distracted by the silly season and waiting for the honeymoon to begin, Raw Politics has been in hibernation since October. From today, we’re back. Our weekly political video show and podcast returns for ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk Authorities in the small town of Boulouparis have commemorated Armistice Day on May 8 with a new memorial honouring New Zealand soldiers who were stationed in New Caledonia during World War II. The ceremony took place in the township on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views. In ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
350 Aotearoa is calling the Environment Select Committee’s decision to allow oral submissions from just 40% of individual, unique submitters who asked to speak to the committee ‘a disgraceful blight to democracy’. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne Dubai skylineAleksandarPasaric/Pexels Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England Girts Ragelis/ShutterstockRecent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with ...
Papua New Guinea experienced a significant earthquake on 24 March in East Sepik and there has also been recent flooding there and in surrounding provinces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland Maridav/Shutterstock You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles. Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your ...
The Environment Select Committee has just announced that 60 percent of individuals who asked to speak at the hearings will not be heard. This equates to almost 700 people who made individual submissions and more than 1000 more who made a form submission. ...
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is performing Swan Lake around the country. What kind of dream does the ballet sell?Before going to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Swan Lake, I had about as much familiarity with the plot of this ballet as could be expected from having ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Eamonn Tee. High Tide at Local Maxima It is only going to get worse. The streams will be narrow and fickle. The week will bend and buckle like a pot-bellied waist. You will make it to the weekend with one ...
The New Zealand entrepreneur behind beauty business Ethique is gearing up to launch a new eco-venture. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Our thirst for a tasty bevvy is insatiable, but it comes with a hefty plastic price for the planet: 580 billion ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38) A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from ...
By Kamna Kumar in Suva Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme. Under the theme “A Planet for ...
Tara Ward previews a new local TV series offering alternative visions of motherhood. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. A woman is clambering up the side of her two-story house, clinging desperately to a drainpipe. Nearby, her child is perched on the ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by the Department of Internal Affairs, and Minister Brooke Van Velden, to abandon proposals to further regulate online speech. ...
Its new building in Wellington will not be nearly big enough for all its records, and it has also run out of money to build its new storage facility in Levin. ...
BusinessNZ is congratulating the Minister of Climate Change for his work in achieving cross-party consensus for a way forward on climate adaptation. ...
Recent research reveals the repeal of smokefree measures is not only bad for our health, but also the economy. The Government has repealed various smokefree measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to ...
The club’s surprisingly good season is built on the desire to prove a random A-League YouTuber wrong… and a few other factors.“There’s no way that Wellington Phoenix play finals this year. I can’t see it happening at all.” Those are the words of Lachlan Raeside, an Australian football content ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology Apple TV+ As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is ...
The under-utilised course is a waste of space, and with a little political will, it could be turned into something better. For the duration of her stay in Wellington, my long-suffering cousin listened to me rant about golf courses. They’re bad for the environment: water intensive and pesticide heavy. They ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney shop_py/Shutterstock Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia. Hopefully, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University P.j.Hickox, Shutterstock Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs. Under the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”. Health spending grew in real terms by ...
New Zealand's largest electricity distributor is warning the country to hurry up with controls around charging electric vehicles or face unnecessary bills running into the billions. ...
New Zealanders have been asked to conserve energy this morning to combat a possible electricity shortfall, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A call to conserve power New Zealand is facing a possible electricity shortfall, with people up ...
Writer Rebecca K Reilly breaks down the national book awards. What are the Ockhams?The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are our annual national awards for books published for adults, and have existed in this form since 2016. There are four categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-fiction and Illustrated Non-fiction. There ...
Wellington City Council should keep its 34% ownership share in Wellington International Airport, argue Unions Wellington spokespeople Finn Cordwell and Ashok Jacob. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wellington City Council (WCC) is yet again proposing to dispose ...
New Zealand’s largest book publisher has undergone drastic changes this week, leaving its future role in local publishing uncertain. Two of the most recognisable local publishers in New Zealand are among those restructured out of Penguin Random House, it was announced this week. Head of publishing Claire Murdoch will leave ...
The Black Ferns Sevens appeared to be a mile behind Australia at the halfway point of the 2023-24 SVNS international circuit. Winless in three tournaments, a cup quarter-final exit in Perth was one of their worst results. To add insult to injury, talismanic skipper Sarah Hirini had been ruled out ...
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Political "Insight"?…well, there is this. :
Linda Clark senses a certain sensationalism creeping into some political commentary – possibly stemming from the “entertainment-ification”, to coin a neologism, of politics.
“The commentators that really grate for me are not the Matthew Hootons or the Neale Joneses – the people who are ‘in the game’.
“The commentators – and I think they are political commentators, even though they would deny it vehemently – are the Mike Hoskings, the Kate Hawkesbys. The people who know very little about the subjects they talk about.
“They take no responsibility for the damage they do on the way through … and that’s much more damaging."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018761232/insight-spin-and-political-commentary
As I call it, Majick Radio…and similar neo infotainment. For morons. fark, cant stand it…: )
I remember when sir Key started his messin' with NZ TV. And Julie "Reality" Christie rolled out the mindlessness….for the mindless. (as well as some Flag waving : )
Heres a (pretty) brutal, but apt take on it…
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/06/07/duncan-grieves-unbelievable-blog-supporting-julie-christie-highlights-every-criticism-ever-made-about-his-cash-for-copy-blog-the-spinoff/
Absolutely the Dumbing Down of NZ TV.
Where is OUR PBS !? RNZ has lost something somehow…not quite sure about them now. I mean having Michelle Boag on as talking head? Well I spose that was before the Leak… but Ben Thomas ?! (described as Hootens mini-me by "someone") lol
Anyway I get a laugh out of Steve Braunias : The secret diary of the Collins gang. "Special Agent Hooten"..lmao : ) Pay at the Herald..Free In ODT : )
Thanks for that PLA. What is annoying is the knowledge that those partisans who spit it out is accepted by some as true news. What can we do about it?
Bomber Bradbury sums up the wretched Christie perfectly in these two sentences:
However, as Bradbury wrote that, he must surely have felt a pang of guilt at his own role in a thankfully almost completely forgotten Christie-level program called Stake-Out, which consisted of secretly filming electricians, decorators and other working stiffs as they committed heinous Shane Jones-type transgressions, and then confronting them in the most high-handed and humiliating manner. It was the sleaziest, nastiest and most spurious local television program since Brian Edwards' lamentable attempt at a comeback in 2003….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/edwards-at-large-excruciatingly.html
lol…luckily my Mind/Sanity Protector must have been working for the Bomber's Bomb : )
He's always been a loose canon…: ) and The good Dr Edwards…similar. Ah well…
Satire…sweet satire is at least still around.
I went to check out the Green School yesterday, 12 mins driving from home to get there. They explained that the scheduled tour was booked out – due to pandemic rules they could only cater for 20 – which was why the register button on their website didn't work last night!
Had a chat with the CEO (Chris Edwards), who was doing welcomes, then left after a brief scan of the site & buildings. See that in this report from last summer: https://educationcentral.co.nz/green-school-is-coming-to-new-zealand/
We know state education has failed to respond to climate change. That's why kids need a positive alternative. The adapt to survive ethos is evident:
"the Green School model has the potential to blaze a new trail in New Zealand’s education sector. "
Why on earth would anyone support the blazing of a new trail?? How terrifying that thought is!! Leaving the well-worn path – no thank you!!! Stick to the track, Tootle!
https://youtu.be/ELfSThA6lPg
"the Green School model has the potential to blaze a new trail in New Zealand’s education sector. " …for the rich and wealthy.
For every child. The learnings from these front-runners will be taken and applied in every school in New Zealand (best case scenario). Who else will trial these systems and approaches? Enviroschools has been operating in New Zealand, with Government funding, for years and years; an injection of funds into an already-ahead-of-the-play enviro-school like this one gives the whole country a boost in the green direction.
From Dennis Frank comment 2:
"We know state education has failed to respond to climate change. That's why kids need a positive alternative. The adapt to survive ethos is evident:"
Now why would state education have failed so miserably? Surely not because it has been under-resourced and deliberately run down compared to private education since the neo-liberal privatisation push that started in the 1980s?
Why was the phasing out of state funding for private education ever written into the Green Party Education Policy if it was just a bit of old baggage that should be swept aside when a situation like this arose?
Do you not fear that the moment a school like this gets such a boon, the whole profit-gouging Charter School crowd will be queuing up asking for the same preferential treatment? Under a possible future National govt, would the Greens not look ridiculous arguing against privatisers' Charter schools after this episode?
If you so strongly believe in the innocence and beauty of such élitist schools, please be honest and openly advocate altering the Green Party Education Policy so that people can see what the Greens really stand for.
I am getting tired of the 'My Party, Right or Wrong' cant.
Learnings? What's wrong with good old normal lessons?
Learn is an active verb.
But could they unlearn and relearn ?
It depends on whether it is stored in your declarative or procedural memory on how easy it is to unlearn and relearn things.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/opinion/300094305/new-plymouth-mayor-explains-why-he-supported-private-schools-117m-government-funding
Don’t you hate it when things are not neatly B & W?
That is how the privatisers always work. Schools were offered special temptations to suck them into Bulk Funding of salaries in the '90s, and the cant at the time was always, "What possible harm can there be in this innocent, benign gesture? How could you be so dogmatic and blind as to oppose something that is good for education?"
Sorry, I don't buy it.
The four ‘shovel ready’ Ministers ‘bought it’ because it met the criteria of the CRRF.
The funding for this individual construction project is not some ideological Education policy such as Bulk Funding or Charter Schools; that is false equivalence.
The scholarships are real enough (see my comment @ 2.1.1.2.2.1).
lol
What percentage of students are/will be on full ride scholarships?
Nobody is saying that this particular project won't create jobs. Just that it's a profit-driven industry contrary to Green Party policy.
The mistake has been acknowledged, it still pisses me off but fair enough.
Now the worry is that, of the "shovel ready" projects, this one was maybe closest to Green Party ideals. And that's not on the Greens, that's on NZ.
I can’t possibly comment on the other parts in your comment but I did try to find out more about the scholarships.
https://www.euronews.com/living/2020/05/26/most-of-our-time-is-spent-outside-would-you-send-your-kids-to-a-green-school
https://www.greenschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Balinese-Scholarship-Program.pdf
https://infocus.wief.org/where-the-school-has-no-walls/
Not quite yet reached the target of 20%.
I also read that 11/55 students at the NZ Green School are not fee-paying because they are children of staff.
That first advert made my fists itch.
Maybe I'm just too cynical in me old age.
I tend to ignore almost everything else when I’m searching for specific info; ads don’t bother me the slightest. Dare I say it, I am pretty good at finding things.
The columns that look suspiciously like paid content especially vex me, for some reason. At best it's shite journalism asking patsy questions, but usually it's simply a publication masquerading as honest when it's simply spouting any old bullshit for cash.
There was zero information in that first link. There was shit that looked like information, but there were few actual specifics. Even the number of people on scholarships didn't say full ride scholarships (zero dollars, zero transaction fees) vs partial discounts on the massive fees.
The more I read about it, the more this "school" looks like it will churn out a bunch of trust fund kids who will spend their 20s instagramming their world tours before walking into C-level jobs in their family's business.
I do not see it churning out a cadre of environmental heroes.
I have not looked to school programme or pedagogy behind it because the precipitating issue has nothing to do with education as such.
That’s a shame because we obviously need more heroes. How about a hybrid between Zorro and the Green Lantern? You might well be correct with your sceptical (cynical?) view. However, in the interim, it will create jobs and stimulate the local economy.
It's not the programme, it's the vibe that comes through from their marketing.
Saying that someone who rocks up in a ferrari shouldn't be judged on their environmental impact because they might have made a huge effort and ditched the private jet… yeah, whatevs.
Yup, the Ferraris are abundant among the Green School alumni. So predictable, so true, no need to check, of course. Facts do not matter, opinions rule. Yeah, I know this is most likely a cherry-picked selection of their ‘success stories’ and I’m as ‘convinced’ as you are that all the other alumni are smiling assassins without any empathy for the poor and disenfranchised.
https://www.greenschool.org/bali/our-alumni/
… looks like it will churn out a bunch of trust fund kids who will spend their 20s instagramming their world tours before walking into C-level jobs in their family's business. (All the while congratulating themselves how environmental they are.)
My reaction to rummaging around on their site and the rest of the webz was pretty much the same.
"Nobody is saying that this particular project won't create jobs. Just that it's a profit-driven industry contrary to Green Party policy."
I'm under the impression that the jobs are building industry jobs, and one of the covid priorities was to stop building firms from going under. i.e. keep existing jobs.
I agree that the funding model of the GS and international students is an issue, but am not sure how it's too different from the tertiary education sectors large reliance on international student fees.
"Now the worry is that, of the "shovel ready" projects, this one was maybe closest to Green Party ideals. And that's not on the Greens, that's on NZ."
I understand that Shaw got quite a lot of gains in selection process, which was pleasantly surprising. I wish they would release the details on this. Not all the business details, but show case the green gains better. Might be a conflict between Shaw's Ministerial role and the GP though, or they just don't have time.
was it hipkins or robertson saying this was a project the Greens specifically were supporting?
Sounds like they divvied up the applications between the party and it was largely political horse trading. But it's on NZ as a whole that there wasn't e.g. a tidal generator and other renewables close enough to submit applications that the Greens could get behind.
And yeah, I'm not completely fine with the tertiary education sector marketing over merit philosophy, either. But then the entire fees thing pisses me off, and it's slowly turning into a perception of some students that they're paying for the degree, not the education.
Agreed that this is on NZ. We have the green edge that NZ wants, not what we need by any means.
The impression I have is that the four budget Ministers (GR, Jones, Shaw, don't know who the fourth was) worked through the process of shortlisting, and in that process Shaw worked on getting the projects more green generally. This surprised me, that there was this degree of influence, but it's hard to tell specifically.
Hipkins, when pressed, said it was something the Greens wanted, but I don't think that is true (the caucus wasn't involved in the decision afaik), it was Shaw and his team. So Hipkins was too removed to have a good informed opinion, and/or there was an advantage to Labour in presenting it this way. But his first response was to say it wasn't Ed money and journos should ask the relevant Ministers about it.
I haven't listened to what GR said. But afaik Labour signed off on it and were ok with it too. It met the main criteria (jobs) so I expect all the parties were pretty happy.
We get your point…
Aww that takes me back Robert. "Tootle" was my favourite book as a 4 year old! But Tootle was a little steam engine Robert – fossil fuelled on coal!
did you ask him if the 'families of the international students that get to live with their children in NZ get a permanent and or work permit to live in NZ courtesy of the 48.000 school fee?
did you ask him how many kiwi kids can get access to his school for courtesy of 24.000 fee?
And is that really worth the career of a Green polititan who put his own likes above that of the party, and it is really a green school when you import people – whole families from overseas to live here, you now, the all vaunted carbon foot print – or is that only something we should worry about when it is a public venture rather then a private one.
I believe that no one in this country would care one bit if this amount of money would have been spend equally on the poorest schools in NZ for the same type of curriculum, but alas it is getting spend on a 250 kids and their f amily who are mainly from overseas.
This schools should have never been in the shovel ready programm, if they can't pay builders atm or pay them with the fees they collect already then the best the should get is the wage subsidy, maybe a government loan – free of interest and repayable from a years after the loan was issues, see the exact same conditions other private businesses (not AIRNZ of course) have given.
For both the Government and the Greens, this was a dumb move. And i don't watch any of the guys that are so often spoken about here cause they have nothing to say of interest, but i see people every day, and this yesterday was a point of discussion. Tone: I can't stand this government giving money willy nilly to everyone and their dog. Try counter that with your 'its green". Good luck with that.
This was the most tone deaf decision this year. It wins the golden toilet seat.
In the meantime our kids sit in cold, damp, leaky, totally non green – can't give a fuck type building – schools and are told to wait a few more years for something better.
” We know state education has failed to respond to climate change. That’s why kids need a positive alternative.”
yeah, because like right now , we don’t give a shit and shovel money up the arses of people who will do everything to keep kids from poor people out. 24.000 a year is not affordable for 90% of people in this country. That is why the state fails in anything regarding climate change. Because it can’t be bothered doing something. And besides, if the private businesses such as this, that serve the very few, very rich and very conntected don’t get money where would people like our beige suits in parliament get jobs once they are done giving taxpayers money to private businesses.
It was money from the Covid Recovery fund for shovel-ready, applied-for, criteria-meeting construction projects that would boost local economies. Education is provided-for (or not) in another budget. Shaw has worked hard to boost those as well.
So State schools which have outstripped their capacity because of roll growth and are now way overcrowded, or old schools which are just crappy for clearly observed reasons, have to wait years for Ministry funded expansion and improvement plans. Yet a private school with wealthy feepaying parents scores 11 million odd. Dressing this up with green virtue signalling doesn't cut it. It's bullshit.
Labour set the rules whereby the money ($3B in a fund set up 1 April) was only available to business for projects impacted by the pandemic.
It's entirely separate from the PGF – that NZF got set up 3 years ago for provincial economic growth/community development spending.
As for the money spent on school buildings, a separate part of the education budget.
Integrated Schools are responsible for the upkeep of their buildings, as they own them.
It would be better for you to ask Jacinda those questions, Sabine. James told us he was approving budget recommendations, so it was a coalition funding initiative. If the concept of `Labour led' seems valid to you, give that a try with her.
Yes he was announcing with his Ministerial hat on (as Associate Minister of Finance) as I understood it, not as his leader of the Green party hat.
Seems that this fundamental constitutional point has been overlooked in the rush to condemn. I guess he could have said ‘I won't announce’ but then that would probably go against yet another constitutional expectation that the time for 'fighting/concerns' is before the decision is made while you are part of the team (ie coalition) making the decision.
In view of all the hoo-ha have I missed something here? Are people not able to see the nuances and difference between MPs/parties and Ministers in Govt?
In view of all the hoo-ha have I missed something here?
Not obviously. He apologised to GP members, but I didn't hear a specific reason for the apology, so I presume Green sectarianism required a ritualised formality – sufficiently general and bland to appease those into purity at the expense of coalition consensus.
Are people not able to see the nuances and difference between MPs/parties and Ministers in Govt?
Some commentators here qualify for that description. Those that went straight into shock-horror mode in response to his announcement, plus those for whom partisan ideology is meant to defeat the common good.
Well said.
I've appreciated your stance on the situation during the past couple of days, btw. I felt the need to refrain due to lack of explanation for the announcement (in msm) so, like Weka, I held off forming an opinion until James briefed us.
Understood and appreciated. My opinion crystallised over the last few days too; the communication was lacking although Chlöe Swarbrick did a very good job of responding to questions in her daily Facebook sessions. It should have been handled better and not left to me having to go on FB and watch long videos in search of the scant answers.
did you not go to the school to speak to the people there? that is why i asked you if you also asked these questions as i personally would have asked. 🙂
Cause that is why i asked you :). As for labour, well, its the lesser evil, i don't really expect anything from them. Talk to Jacinda, she is kinder gentler then Judith, but it seems as happy as to sponsor private business that serves no one but the very rich.
I'm beyond gutted with this. It's just a flash immigration hotel masquerading as a school.
Actually, it is a secure communication facility for Five Eyes and the 5G emissions will be high. \sarc
sorry no, it is a residence permit scam for the very wealthy and not much else.
And the government is funding it. But it has been 'green washed'.
O’kay
In other words, this Green School is a sound and valuable initiative …. but ideology.
Ideology embeds. Problem is, the world changes around it. Ongoing relevance of the ideology then comes into question. In times of rapid change (such as now) folks often attach limpet-like to some rock of ideology amongst the turbulence. Those going with the flow cruise on by, looking askance at the weirdos as they drift past…
oh if you can afford 48.000 a year for schooling a kid and get a permanent residence permit it sure is sound.
It just makes no sense what so ever for the tax payers whose kids sit in cold, damp, over crowed schools with leaky roofs, shotty internet connection and not enough ipads for all kids, nor student aids and free school lunches. These are nice to have projects and thus are not getting anything.
The owners will be able to pay for the work the government is doing in no time.
If it is a refundable loan and then they can write that loan of as a business expense, and they could have had that loan from a bank then too.
Their application was valid and sound and the process for selection was shared across parties.
I suspect one of the keys to becoming a millionaire is getting other folk to pay for your stuff.
that however is very very true.
These guys will be very busy voting National soon in order to not pay taxes. But hey, they are very rich so its understandable.
NZ banks are appalling at investing in anything beyond housing loans. If they were doing their jobs then yes, we would not require any public subsidies like this.
James Shaw apology last night has left a gaping hole in The Green Party as far as their own political credibility, and more importantly their values and principles as an alternative left leaning party to support goes.
Shaw has on the one hand confirmed what we already knew about him..that he is a liberal free market green politician ( with all the numerous contradictions and unseemly contortions that involves ) but on the other hand he has shown us something new about himself…that he is a straight out gutless bullshitter ( “We were thinking about it in terms of building and constructions, not education") and worse than that it turns out Shaw is actually one of, and represents the interests of, the elitist greens that the working classes have always suspected that greens were being constantly drawn toward ideologically…probably one of the most self serving, narcissistic, political groups operating today….yuk, the Greens should have made Shaw step down…..not only is he an elitist prick, he is a stupid one, imagine doing this just before an election..what a fucking dummy.
+1
Adrian-Slight over-reaction there perhaps? Shaw realised he had made a dumb mistake and has now owned up.
Shaw is the man who saved the Green Party at the last election and has been largely instrumental in keeping it relevant during this term of government.
Adrian-perhaps you would like to compare the policies of the Greens to the other parties in order to justify your manic attack on the Party, rather than justify the attack on this relatively minor issue? For instance what do you think of their Wealth Tax?
The media climbed all over this comparatively small mistake in order to try to push the Greens below 5%.
@ bearded git, Over reaction? not at all.
For some reason half the people on this site don't seem to feel the need or believe it appropriate that citizens hold the politicians that they say represent them to any kind of account.
Lets just make it clear here what James Shaw just did…he knowingly and under the name of the NZ Green Party funded a private elite school to the tune of 12 million dollars..in direct contradiction to the stated aims of that party…why?,..seriously if that isn't plainly obvious to you and you really think he made a mistake, well then you are just being willingly stupid and there is no need for us to continue this conversation.
I agree with the last 10 words….maybe you should read the thread on Micky's post today.
Your personal dislike for James Shaw is making you vitriolic and unreasonable. James Shaw is highly regarded in Parliament across the spectrum of politicians.
+100
+1000
" James Shaw is highly regarded in Parliament across the spectrum of politicians" that says it all, thanks.
interesting. So you want the Green Party out of parliament. How would that work in terms of your politics? We'd then either have a Labour only govt, or a Lab/NZF one, or a Nat one. Please explain how this is an improvement on what we have now?
Labour 44 National 39 Act 6 NZF 4 Greens 4.9 Wasted 2.1
Say hello to PM Crusher.
Never happen Nats 35 act 3 tops
No what I want is just one political party in NZ that isn't headed by a liberal, free market elitist bullshit artist… I know that it is regarded as extremely unreasonable and almost radical around here to demand highly held values and principles from our selected political representatives… you and others here obviously don't and that's your prerogative, but I do, and sure as hell am not going to shift from that position or apologize for demanding that high bar from people whom I vote for.
Calling for the Greens co-leader to step down 8 weeks before an election IS a call for them to be out of parliament (I don't think you are naive enough to believe that such a move wouldn't drop the GP vote).
5 years in the role…
Does he have a track record of raising the party vote?
Does he nail the limited TV appearances he gets?
Is he making massive cock ups?
Under James Shaw's leadership, The Greens have been somewhere other than in Opposition; that is, at the levers of power, where we wanted them to be since forever and achieving as much as any small support party could ever hope to achieve, but, let's call for his head! Off with it!
Did you miss the media stories after the last election reflecting how his dogged work was all that stood between them and dropping below 5%.
I must have. What I do remember though is his ability to increase the Wellington Central party vote by 10% over two elections. I naively thought he could do something similar at a national level. The sooner we find out what Chloe can do instead, the better imo.
I would have thought a Green Party supporter would not be into cult-style political leadership heroism but I guess for some the symbolism of a pixie princess riding a snow white unicorn has a too strong a pull to resist. Chlöe Swarbrick is a more natural communicator than Jacinda Ardern who tends to come across as patronising and too polished at times, in my opinion. Mind you, I haven’t watched any of Jacinda Ardern’s Facebook videos (I avoid videos like Covid) so I cannot really compare 🙂
"Does he have a track record of raising the party vote?"
Obviously yes. But it's not on *him. It's on the party.
There are two co-leaders for a start, and it's hugely disrespectful to Davidson to talk about the party as if it is led by one white man in a suit.
That might very well be, the issue here is tho that most of the time Marama seems to be invisible. Maybe it is time for her to raise her profile.
yes, maybe you should. Instead of spending all this time dissing the suit, put some time into talking about Davidson and what she is doing.
Burning something down in the hope that something closer to the ideal form will magically appear does not have a good track record of success in politics, especially democracy.
In politics, they tend to water rather than burn down. I reckon there should be more bonfires of regulations in politics 😉
The trouble with most regulations bonfires that have been proposed is that they have been proposed in the transparent desire that nothing will grow to replace the incinerated regulations.
You'd have more credibility with that framing if you could prove that state schools are teaching the same curriculum as the Green School, eh?
Kids need to upskill to survive now. As long as state educators ignore this imperative private educators will be seen by the public as providing the only intelligent option.
"that he is a straight out gutless bullshitter ( “We were thinking about it in terms of building and constructions, not education") "
Having listened to the 30 min explanation by Shaw in the GP zoom last night, and then the 45min Q and A from members and the co-leaders, I think you are flat out wrong here. His indepth explanation of how government actually works, in this instance the process of development of the fund, how applications were received and dealt with, which people were involved (the four budget Ministers) and weren't involved (GP caucus), the speed at which massive decisions were being made during the first months of the pandemic, and the factors that affected his decision making. All of that was nuanced and real. I learned a lot and my guess is that I already knew more about how government works than you do.
Your comment appears to be based on nothing other than a large amount of antipathy towards Shaw because he wears a suit, and a desire to beat the Green Party with your anti-neolib stick despite the Greens having the most progressive set of left wing policies in parliament. Your position here is mind boggling.
For those that want to pay attention to what is happening, the Green Party education policy remains the same, and Shaw is completely behind that. The GP's other policies remain the same too.
How can we have any faith in a leader who does the opposite of Party policy.? This own goal is just so stupid at this time that it beggars belief. A guaranteed vote loser like this is more serious than you believe. I find it so disheartening that he did this when everything is at stake. Trying to sweep it under the carpet by making out it is trivial doesn’t work. Something miraculous needs to happen for us to get to 5%.
People make mistakes. He didn't intentionally go against party policy, he just failed to take it into account when looking at a project through an entirely different lens while under a lot of pressure.
I have more faith in Shaw now, because he immediately admitted the mistake and is making amends.
…because he immediately admitted the mistake…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/122568117/new-zealands-first-private-green-school-gets-117-million-from-government-for-campus-expansion?rm=a
Shaw says it's not true to say the Greens have abandoned their policy to not publicly fund private schools.
"Well that is our policy and this money doesn't go into the operations."
Asked if he was being cute, Shaw replied, "there's a balance of objectives we're trying to achieve here – remember that we are going through an unprecedented time with Covid-19''.
It's just a building, he says.
"In terms of the infrastructure spend, it is in many ways just another construction project.''
He's only become contrite under a barrage of justified criticism.
And speaking of justifying shit…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/122568117/new-zealands-first-private-green-school-gets-117-million-from-government-for-campus-expansion?rm=a
Part of the argument for GSNZ being approved as a shovel ready project, was the economic benefits it would bring to the Taranaki economy.
This has been reported as being $43m a year, according to a report prepared by Green School International and peer reviewed by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.
However, GSNZ has refused to release a copy of the report to Stuff.
“It has gone through all of the traditional and official checks and measures required by the government criteria for the shovel ready funding and GS (Green School) doesn’t feel it is our responsibility to justify this document.”
…our elitist green educators don't feel they have to.
There's murk here.
Legitimate general issue there about accountability and transparency (especially given Shane Jones' involvement) – but do the other businesses which receive investment from that fund have to release their business case details to the public, if the govt agencies involved don't as part of that process?
..but do the other businesses which receive investment from that fund have to release their business case …
If they don't they damn well ought to.
I was just moving on from this whole saga until I read GSNZ's big 'Fuck you, taxpayer."
I hope their flash laminated beams pull apart.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-failure-mode-of-a-glulam-beam-under-destructive-bending-test_fig6_265034172
You are too kind.
If they don't they damn well ought to.
Businesses keep information that could benefit their competition confidential for the obvious reason that it could benefit their competition. There's no reason the government should require them to make that info public just to satisfy your curiosity.
NZ is a representative democracy, ie we elect people to represent us and then leave them to do that until the next election. They shouldn't keep information confidential unnecessarily, but neither should they publish info that should be confidential.
I hope their flash laminated beams pull apart.
The roof falling on them would teach those kids not to go to a private school, huh?
Its government money…I am so over this 'commercially sensitive' and 'legally privileged and confidential' shit. If they can't declare all…bugger off and find your putea from another trough.
Don't worry about the children, they'll have plenty of warning. And they can always slum it at the state school down the road for free while the problem's sorted…oh, that's right…that school hasn't even got it's $400,000 yet to fix the leaks.
You're entitled that opinion, and the businesses are entitled to the opinion that if the government's making a special offer to help them fund commercial infrastructure development, then commercial considerations apply.
It is a construction project, for buildings, not funding a Charter School from the Education Budget. People who cannot tell the legalistic difference or who cannot cope with it should sue the Government.
The more I think about, the more I appreciate that this happened because it highlights so many issues and reasons why political discourse in NZ sucks big time and why we make no meaningful progress and, in fact, seem to be going backwards.
It happened because Shaw's desire to promote Green gains during a campaign outweighed the predictable downside in this case. Neither he nor his staff caught the implications and managed expectations. Ongoing strategic comms failures in that machinery since Labour hired away some of their key people.
That too.
watching Clint Smith slag off Menendez on twitter was something to behold. NZ is such a small place at times.
Some days reading comment threads on TS or Twitter is anti-climactic.
guaranteed vote loser
Not a snowball's chance in hell! Since the funding already had coalition support before James agreed, pissed-off Greens can't see Labour or NZF as better options. So you think they will refuse to vote at all?
Human nature will prevail. Few folk persist in resentment at others in their tribe for long periods. Greens are even more inclined to tribal solidarity than others. Sometimes pragmatism must prevail over principle in politics. This is one such occasion. The disgruntled will gradually figure that out.
They will stick to their values and principles and punish the Green Party into the lush wilderness of purity and moral virtue where unicorns graze and pixies flatter around unencumbered by Covid. That will teach them to betray their loyal followers once and forever.
Indeed.. facepalm moment of the year for the Greens.
The trouble is you're trying to look at the situation through a lens of reason without political bloodlust.
The political and electoral environment we live in is one of emotion and insanity not reason. Funny thing is how some who dislike the Greens intensely and have no truck with them at all are now telling them what and how they should be doing things.
The decision was indefensible by Shaw and he apologised for that.
The project is defensible and worthy of funding, in my opinion. The $11.7 million would not have gone to a public school but to another shovel ready project or nowhere.
Your character assassination of Shaw is telling.
Exactly
Actually, the money is not just ‘sitting’ in a jar somewhere as it all has to be borrowed and paid back in future.
then maybe the issue is really that the Labour led government could not be bothered to add schools iwth leaky roofs and not enough classrooms to the shovel ready jobs. Cause it appears that there are quite a few schools that would like to be considered shovel ready, but they are told to wait for a better day or something.
Now that takes me back to my secondary school days in the early 1960's. The school was opened in 1955, just in time for the first of the new surge in post war children. But it leaked like a sieve. The DP announced at morning assembly to a great outburst of laughter,
"When you are walking down the corridors, please don't kick the bucket, they are there to catch the drips."
Leaky buildings have been with us for a very long time, schools are given funding for maintenance and other operational expenses as part of the Budget.
There are different pots of money for that. Unless they’re private schools they wouldn’t be eligible for CRRF AFAIK but that seems to lead into a political cul-de-sac because of the Green Party.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/122025481/government-allocates-126m-for-four-new-projects-in-national-school-rebuild-programme
Deep
didn't used to be able to do that without at least a .
have also only just noticed that the big gaps in comments have gone!!!
You mean the white space because of the non-breaking spaces?
yep.
Thanks to Lprent.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300094032/coronavirus-kiwis-push-kremlin-to-import-unproven-covid19-vaccine
Can these clowns import this vaccine without government approval?
If it completes trials successfully, they'll do pretty well out of it. Bit of a gamble though.
Are they Otago farmers?
A qualified maybe… medicines can be imported without medsafe and government approval and supplied under section 29 of the medicines act.
However you will struggle to find any medical professional in NZ who would vaccinate with a vaccine which had not be formally approved by Medsafe.
https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/Profs/riss/unapp.asp
https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/consumers/educational-material/WhereCanIFindInfoAboutVaccines.asp
You got any idea off the top of your head how deeply Medsafe look into the manufacturing side of things before they approve a vaccine or drug?
My general impression is that some former soviet countries might even be ahead of the west in general virology and stuff like phage treatments, so I find it plausible they could have developed an innovative safe and effective vacccine. Provided it's also manufactured up to standard.
My experience with stuff manufactured in Russia is the quality control is appalling, particularly given the stuff I was involved in would very likely get used in safety critical applications. Then there's the apparent low value put on health and safety in russia generally. So I'd be awfully wary of a vaccine produced in Russia, but probably more comfortable with a vaccine developed in Russia but produced somewhere else more reliable.
Review of manufacturing is a critical part of Medsafe's review and approval process it would be unlikely to be approved without an on site audit by an approved agency such as the EMEA, MHRA, FDA etc
It is not repayable as a loan but is a a taxpayers donation as a good idea like Partnership Schools.
More like the Transmission Gully PPP, which is a construction project just as the Green School is.
…like the Transmission Gully PPP …
And hasn't that gone well.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/122520140/transmission-gully-to-open-by-september-2021-after-lengthy-negotiations
“It appears the agreement signed up to by the former government was loose and failed to protect taxpayers’ money. It seems to have been rushed through without the necessary due diligence being carried out.”
He said Wellingtonians and taxpayers “deserve to know exactly what has happened”.
“We want to make sure future governments aren’t left in the same predicament our Government has been.”
The Green School is not a Partnership School as per Paul Murphy’s comment @ 6, it is a Private School.
The CRRF funding is for construction of buildings.
The CRRF funding is not a PPP.
Transmission Gully is a construction project and PPP that is not going well.
The only dots one can realistically connect here are the ones relating to construction.
Everything else is misleading false comparison or equivalence.
Step aside from your focus of the green school, take a minute and look at a bigger picture, because there are larger issues than that. Don't lose sight of the forest for the tree's and all that, excuse the pun
First up this morning: She predicted our second wave, and she’s reviewing the global response. Former Prime Minister
@HelenClarkNZ
on what’s next in the course of this pandemic #nationnz
https://www.threenow.co.nz/live-tv-guide/three
It's live now Morena whanau
You got to love the way the left can turn on itself.
The only winner here is Judith.
It's our Achilles' heel.
Yup. The monumental obduracy of the ideologically obsessed is on full display with this one.
If the Green Party really is full of such idiots then I'm honestly conflicted about voting for them again.
I'm not sure which term to use. Is it virtue signalling, or identity politics, or just plain stupidity to do it all so publicly.
Now if I want to vote for a pro-environment party it looks like I'm faced with the charming choice between wasting my vote on the sub-5% Greens or the barely over 1% TOP.
FFS.
Or you hold your nose, admit people are flawed and vote Green.
It's logical isn't it.
The Greens are giving money to a private school, they are the devil incarnate. The world is going to end.
Simple solution: Vote for Judith Collins to be Prime Minister and Gerry Brownlee the Deputy. She is our saviour, he is or saviour. Everything, (well almost everything) will be wonderful with the world.
https://twitter.com/wekatweets/status/1299469527550369793
From further down your link
StoatsSome on the political left are so well adapted to negotiating tight spaces they actually have whiskers on their tails to help them reverse out of tight burrows.😆
When asked to define what his second-term agenda would be, Trump replied:
Gotta go with that!
.
Chinese New Zealanders not part of Major Party Support Re-alignment
.
Ethnic Chinese voters
Party-Vote Intention .. 2020 …. 2017
National ………………. 62% ….. 71.1% ….. Down 9.1 Points
ACT ………………………. 8.8% …… 2.0% ……. Up 6.8 Points
Labour …………………. 21% ….. 21.6% ……. Down 0.6 Points
NZF ……………………… .1.2% …… 2.4% ……. Down 1.2 Points
Green …………………… 0.8% ….. No Data
.
Preferred PM
Collins ….. 52.2 …… English … 58.5% … Down 6.3
Ardern …. 26.5 …. Ardern ….. 20.1% ….. Up 6.4
.
Satisfied : with the government's response to Covid-19 …. 74.7%
.
Support for:
End of Life Choice Act ….. 83.9%
Cannabis Legalisation …. 17.7%
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/424544/poll-shows-large-majority-of-chinese-new-zealanders-still-favour-national-over-labour
(found additional info on previous poll from 2017 articles)
What it indicates is to me is they are playing 'follow our local leader' and have little understanding of how politics works in NZ or what the various parties actually stand for. It will be interesting to see how that changes over the next couple of decades as their off-spring become eligible to vote.
Simpler: we have predominantly approved only the most wealthy migrants from that part of the world, so they back the party which supports the wealthy. Not the same as the 'support the current govt' thinking some commentators believe must apply. And certainly not ignorance of our political landscape.
"End of Life Choice Act ….. 83.9%"
How the fuck does this mesh with 孝 ?
"the young are burdened and oppressed by the old;"
https://china-journal.org/2016/03/14/filial-piety-in-chinese-culture/
Forget the Lincoln Project nonsense – the best ad around is from the latest cool old guy, Ed Markey, It's from his Democratic party Senate primary against the Pelosi-endorsed Joe Kennedy III. Effectively Markey is saying, "We should elect Biden, then pressure the crap out of him to do then right thing. You need me to help apply that pressure."
And speaking of the Lincoln Project ads, here Sam Seder convincingly elaborates on their real purpose. The ads are not aimed at converting Trump Republicans to voting Biden. Instead, they are aimed at persuading the left that Trump is merely an exceptionally atrocious individual – and not a natural outcome of Republicanism, or ideologically consistent with Republicanism. The correct response to the Lincoln Project ads is therefore, "thanks but no thanks."
The correct response to the Lincoln Project ads is therefore, "thanks but no thanks."
No. It's really not. The best response is pointing out that CovidCamacho is merely the embodiment of everything the Repugs have been working towards for decades.
“is merely the embodiment of everything the Repugs have been working towards”
Which is pretty much what Seder said in that clip. I think I might hang on to my remaining shreds of sanity and shut up on this topic.
Either way, LP screws the repugs for this election, and it will take years to get rid of the ~adjacents and tinfoil brigade.
The LP exists because (to paraphrase the oompah loompah) they're out here and the covidians are in there.
The enemy of my enemy might not be my friend, but if they're not in a position to attack me any time soon I might slip them some assistance.
Maybe the best thing is for the Lincoln Project ads is therefore, "Thanks but no thanks, we know trump is the best for America and the world."
That's a very creative misreading of what I actually wrote and of the content of the links I provided. Oh well, never mind.
I appreciate that. Seder is not the only one to try to shed some light. Your reference further back was on the mark when you mentioned 'remaining shreds of sanity.' The whole thing is insane. (America) Even the insane bits have grown side strains of insanity, and so on, and so on …
The only normal is that nothing is 'normal', anything goes.
Great perspective on refocusing Cinny .@ 7.
COVID-19 economic response measures.
Just one part of the total economic response is the " Summary of the Initiatives in the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF) Foundational Package" that money has already been targeted for. The initiatives funded are extensive, swift and smart directing monies into areas not really given consideration before ( because of Covid19 impacts and a green influence).
The social well being investment is becoming more balanced imo and has begun to head into newer ways to distribute state spending. Non-profits also get a bite of the economic stimulus pie addressing issues at grassroots and have a future focus on sustainability and equality issues.
https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/summary-intiatives/summary-initiatives-crrf-budget2020
Along with the measures of Government response to Covid19 in February 2020 , Treasury have compiled this recent report on all post Budget monetary support across sectors including spending that is on top of the $50 billion CRRF package of which $ 14 billion remains.
https://treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/new-zealand-economy/covid-19-economic-response/measures
National's quickly stitched together- old policy posing as new- is pitiful as their response in the wider context of issues facing people in even the near future.
The old neoliberalism is implicit in their released Business policy and Freshwater policy. Along with National resurrecting an " people can eat shit pie – social investment" approach to have social ills racially profiled then privatised, the overall picture signals the intent to bring back the abnormal normal.
Though, I'd be happy to see Judith take her own medicine, the 90 day trial and no lunches enacted on her, that would make her gone by lunchtime early October !
Or for choices on offer there's ACT spinning their new dogma to sell elitism as "The Final Solution".
Tim McCready 🇳🇿 (@Tim_McCready) Tweeted:
Got an unexpected laugh with this line from @HeatherRoyNZ! #nationnz
https://t.co/C6Q6TBwuuz
Paddy, if you paste the full rather than shortened Tweet link here on a line of its own, it shows up automatically like this:
https://twitter.com/Tim_McCready/status/1294398390864769025
No-one knows what National's going to do beyond transport? What?
No-one even knows what National's going to with transport. Are their transport plans at their all piss and wind Northland double lane bridges level?
Maybe I should I contact Judith and ask her if she's better at bridges than Simon!
It will involve promising roads lol
Judith is performing the Dance of the Seven Veils.
So one veil covers a Kauri logging digger, another covers a 30km detour for private business, another veil covers jokes about prison sexual assault…
You’re focussing on the veils; you have to watch those eye-brows.
An example of a private business working with public sector funding and expertise for environmental outcomes: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/122595142/aerial-footage-shows-off-8km-private-ecocorridor-project
Thanks Sacha for that. Still having problems with reply buttons and working through mobile apps permissions , share buttons etc. Samsung did a 253 item update and has downed even logging into online websites.
Should all indoor gatherings outside of work environments be banned until further notice?
I should not be lost that the spread of the virus is largely due to Church gatherings. Those people need to find an inner God for the next few months.
Silent masked gatherings might be OK – it's the singing and animated chats that do the harm.
We're treating Monday as back to office but at Alert Level 2.5:
masks at all times in the office.
Everyone's taken the test.
I'm reminded of the American woman who attended a mass church rally a few months back. When asked by a reporter if she is concerned about the spread of the virus she said:
"I'm covered in Jesus' blood so I’m safe.
Selfish mad cow. Not concerned with anyone else but herself. Hope she caught it.
There are a lot of dead Preachers by now.
It must be God's will that covid spreads back through New Zealand
The Covid Chorus with apologies to Bob…” with God on our side “
At level 2 regional travel will resume for Aucklanders. Apprehensive over the potential mobility of Covid19 across NZ next week given there's 25 new cases in last two days. Are alterations to crowd numbers a risk then in other regions, with risks like the first NZ wedding cluster ?
Me too. Only way our Government wins on this is if the planned relaxation of restrictions doesn't result in current Covid ripples becoming waves – in the (IMHO likely) event of increased community transmission they will be castigated for easing up too soon.
Slow and steady wins the Covid 'race'…
Can already see the headlines DMK created from Judith's screeching parrot, " Aaark they f#ked up again! "
when the shoe fits, wear it.
Barclay, Ross, Bennett, Falloon, Walker, Boag, Woodhouse, Bridge(s), Muller, Collins, Brownlee, Mitchell, Nick Smith, etc. etc., and all right-footers.
Maybe the secret of political survival in NZ is to have no standards, no shame, and a raison d'être of self-enrichment- the secret of National's success (largest party in parliament no less).
Many NZers get a kick out of denigrating do-gooders. Where do the Green's get off, advocating for environmental and societal sustainability, when they make hypocritical mistakes like this time and time again – it's unconscionable.
Time to cut Marama, Shaw and co. down to size (< 5%), eh – definitely achievable.
https://www.change.org/p/james-shaw-reduce-the-green-school-funding
8200+ signatures in 1 day – so very sad. We get the Governments we deserve.
Indeed, it is sad when a peaceful Green School in rural Taranaki is portrayed and treated as if it is the epicentre of Mordor and a fortress of evil capitalist parasites profiteering off the public purse.
It's remarkable to me that this one mistake could bring the Greens low (I really hope it doesn't) – FFS, tiny wee-brained lefties are now baying for Shaw's blood, and I'm sounding like Dennis Frank.
I can only hope that the standards some are holding the Greens to will be applied impartially to all other parties. This pandemic has many of us rattled and focussed on tomorrow's Covid numbers (cases and alert levels) at a time when Green party policies promoting long term sustainability and resilience are more crucial than ever, IMHO.
Inequality, precarity and sustainable ecosystems as elements of urban resilience
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042098020904594
Rightly or wrongly, the Greens were on a pedestal, which carries a higher risk of tripping and causing injury. Some quarters [poll pun] have been trying to shoot the pixie princess off Cloud 9 and if/when that happens this Shaw shit show will be like a flea circus and pale in comparison.
Public resilience is wearing very thin, I agree. Just as well, the Election was postponed by only four weeks.
Well a shop that gets its premises built for it is at a bit of an advantage.
Well the owners of the very Green School NZ ™ are sure happy to not have to use any of their private money to build the very Green School NZ.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/asia/98140587/green-school-bali-where-there-are-no-walls-no-algebra-classes-and-no-limits
this is about the saddest indictment of these very rich people i can actually think of. Their kid did not do well in ordinary school NZ so instead of putting their considerable clout and money behind lobbying for better schools for all NZ kids, they went to Bali to study a 'green' school for the very rich kids like theirs. And then they came back and started building 'their own' schools for rich kids like theirs so that they don't have to go to the ordinary underfunded, crowded, leaky, cold, and standard schools of NZ, and our government gave them money for it.
Pathetic comes to mind, but i am sure that the kids of the Labour Party, NZFirst, the Green Party will be welcome at this school for a fee of course. And in order to pretend that they actually gave a shit about the country and the schools they gonna give a scholarship or three to one of the little poor urchins. How very very charitable of them.
Seriously i don't want to hear anything anymore about foreign students coming here for a few years of study. If we can open the borders for the kids of this school and their parents, then we can have the borders open of the fee paying kids of other people.
they could have done so much for the Schools of NZ , and instead its the parents of kids sitting in shitty schools for years on end that is going to finance their private little scheme.
btw, the owners of this schools are the HRV founders who sold for what i would guess many many millions their business and should thus be able to fund their own project.
Shame on Labour, NZFIRST and the Greens to allow this project to be funded by the public.
One little fact check – no one is coming in to the school from overseas – which is why they qualified as a business impacted by the pandemic.
And a second – this is money from a fund set up on 1 April to fund business projects impacted by the pandemic.
don't take it up with me, but rather with them
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/article.cfm?c_id=16&objectid=12309056#:~:text=A%20groundbreaking%20school%20that%20puts,%2440%2C000%20for%20some%20overseas%20students.
Green School New Zealand has a focus on sustainability, but it doesn't come cheap, with enrolment and tuition fees costing up to $40,000 for some overseas students.
now we can argue that they can't come here now, but if they get a residence permit the families can come here, be put up in a quarantine hotel for 2 weeks and bingo.
so yes, is it.
and i urge you to read the article below from a few years ago as to why the very rich owners of this school created this school in the first place, for their very rich son who was not doing well in NZ public school. And rather then change the schools of NZ for all kids they are now building one with public funds.
This project should never have been in the fund in the first place. Nothing good will come from it for the government from it. Nothing. What. So . Ever.
here read it yourself, and then ask yourself if this is what we want to fund.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/asia/98140587/green-school-bali-where-there-are-no-walls-no-algebra-classes-and-no-limits
They would have little chance of getting a place in the queue for non Kiwis (engineers, skilled workers will have priority), so they are will not be receiving foreigners/foreign students during the pandemic.
So your earlier foreign students dig was plain wrong.
And they invested millions setting up the school themselves (its already half built).
The fund is for business that creates on-going jobs (and in this case foreigners bring some of the revenues in) – economic growth. Which is why it qualified.
Whether I would have set up a $3B fund for such investment in pandemic impacted businesses when there were plenty of capital spending nned for HB's and schools is another matter.
The objection about money for the rich, also applies to the Americas Cup funding and subsidising film-making.
yes, they build a school for their son, and they should finish it, they have enough money, on which we can rest assured they paid as little in taxes as rich people as these get away with. But hey, money must be made and if we can get free money, even better. Just don't expect us to pay taxes or vote for Labour :).
And yes, they are actively trying to get rich people from overseas to send their kids there, they have it costed and are just now in a bit of a lurch cause there aren't enough rich people to pay for their'unschooling' green school.
And this fund does nothing to create jobs, as far as i am aware the only ones currently having work are the builders. At the very best they will be a trickle down – or rather a pissing down – on the locals that gett o be janitor, cook, cleaner, just like the locals in that fancy school in Bali. Who also are too poor to send their kids to this amazing school for primarily white people. 🙂
Nothing anyone here has said so far is anything else that any National or Act supporter here has said in defense of public money going to private enterprise. In fact all the Green supporters and their Labour allies currently sound like they are auditioning for Act.
It may have been intended and frankly i would not be surprised to hear again of this school and not in a good way,
And the very sad thing is that we have to vote for that. Cause its not as bad as Judith. Vote 2020 Labour /NZFirst/Green cause we are not as bad as National/Act.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/121938943/the-taranaki-parents-out-to-change-how-we-school-our-kids
https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/115162629/hundreds-of-applicants-seek-nine-teaching-jobs-at-countrys-first-green-school
They will eventually, otherwise there's very little point in building it.
You seem to be conflating things there. There will always be kids that do badly in mainstream schools. Nothing to do with the run down state of buildings thanks to National. It's about the core philosophy of state schools, what they think is important to teach, and how they teach it. The best lobbying in the world is unlikely to change that.
"Teachers were no longer hung up on his spelling, or whether his stories were shorter than the other kids', or whether he wrote on the lines. They cared about his ideas."
I have friends whose kids have been like this. Those kids did better in Steiner schools or being homeschooled. Low income households, before you go off on a rant about privilege.
I'm hoping that down the line schools like the Green School can be accommodated in the system that integrates private schools into the state system and thus influences the state system, or at least gives options for kids who need to be in alt education.
Our place is directly under the Green X23A flightpath into Auckland airport. Just now another Covid capsule quietly sneaked in delivering its masked occupants coughing and spluttering grim death.
11 community cases today and we are having to open up on Monday. This is an indication the country is going to have to live with it.
Masks on, people.
One of my Akl customers is going home tonight again. this is the second time she rode out lock down here in Rotorua. Ahh, to be wealthy in NZ, rules don't apply. In the meantime the poor sap in a bus with no face covering will get a 300 NZD fine.
First WHO warns that children can spread, yet there is no requirement to use masks in schools next week in Auckland.
World evidence that children do spread the virus has led WHO to recommend the use of masks in schools for children.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12360273
Now this turns up – children can retain the virus (in the nose) for three weeks and so we have a perfect storm. Outbreaks through schools and into homes and then workplaces and then out of Auckland.
That would require an end to our elimination policy (permanent social distancing and masks in schools until there is a vaccine), or a resumed lockdown nationwide and delay of the election to November.
Given the likely cause, government policy on mask wearing will be cited and they will be blamed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53946420.
The information about the three week carry duration should give the government pause about schools being open next week – or at least require mask use and social distancing.
One thing that i have observed here is people are using the app before coming in, they wait outside for the customers in the shop to leave first and quite a few wear masks. So at least here in Vegas people are trying to keep their community safe.
But i do expect the virus to travel from Sunday midnight on. No easy solutions here.
Jamie-Lee Ross explains his reasons for marching in Auckland:
""This is not the country I grew up in, where [the] military are on checkpoints in and out of Auckland.”"
Might not have been a pandemic back then, Mr Ross!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300094774/coronavirus-police-disappointed-but-no-punishment-for-500-protesters-breaching-lockdown
I thought that JLR took time out for quiet reflection. He must have spent the time looking in a mirror as he doesn't seem wiser after that remark about using the military. Actually JLR it is good that the forces can do some peacetime support work for their own country, they will feel good being able to help their own when needed.
Funny how soldiers stand to attention then march. Ross is marching to get attention.
And then who takes responsibility for the spread, the individual who overides risks to others and wants to leave Auckland for a wedding , or the Government?
Or the same evangelical group who have now admitted to carrying on hallelujah sessions together in secret?
And that's why all the residents of West and South Auckland have been advised to line up for a COVID test. If we all went to a testing site right now there would be insufficient testers / swabs etc. We are talking big numbers.
Respect.
https://twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/1298921068128763905
https://twitter.com/Fbeyeee/status/1298686648423714816
And that's why all the residents of West and South Auckland have been advised to line up for a COVID test. If we all presented at a testing site right now there would be insufficient testers / swabs etc. We are talking big numbers.
The spy sandflys could not touch Eco Maori so they setup my Tamariki an set the courts onto them the under underbelly Of New Zealand's is full of rotting people. They don't like Eco Maori showing the World their true colours hence the VENDETTA.
https://youtu.be/KSN7Nz4ECQM
https://youtu.be/Fp8E5TSl_V0