I’ve found the solution to the housing crisis, and it’s been here all along.
On the whole, the Monday announcement was more about making renting fairer. It was not groundbreaking.
For renters, it says things might be slightly better but still not great. For landlords, I presume there will be little impact.
Yet, Twyford’s paper still shook some property moguls.
They rolled out their talking heads to try to halt progress and scare tenants by threatening rent rises.
Those lobbyists told us a lot of strange things this week.
Landlord Peter Lewis said changes would make it harder for renters. He then listed a bunch of costs and suggested everything, the whole damned economy, could be worse off because of rules to make life slightly fairer for renters.
“Rates? Insurance? Building materials? Tradesmen’s hourly rates …” None of the scaremongers said anything nearly as idiotic as Andrew King, who heads a lovely-sounding group called the Property Investors’ Federation.
He says: “A lot of tenants ironically actually like the letting fee.”
He is wrong.
He is so wrong, he must know it. His wild statement makes me wonder, why are we playing along with such a broken industry?
At the suggestion of mild and positive change, people like King shriek in horror. These are people who hold huge power over normal people’s everyday lives. When they catch even a whiff of change meant to clean up their broken industry, they threaten to throw their toys.
They seem to think running an ethical business is impossible, which is (once again) wrong.
To Twyford, I ask: Why bother putting a plaster on a broken industry? Groups like Ngāti Whātua, the Salvation Army and Wellington’s Dwell Housing Trust have already started the renters’ revolution.
The Government should ensure renters have an option of living in safe, affordable and enjoyable homes. The pā model offers that and has the potential to give gluttonous investors a run for their money.
Under the normal tenancy rules this is not acceptable! I’m pretty sure the tenancy tribunal under existing rules would rule in the tenants favour for it to be remedied and probably give them a rent reduction for the inconvenience. The tenants would just have to give a 10 day letter to landlord. Also if they had called the council (even anonymously) they could have got some action as it is leaking into the neighbours property.
They stayed because they would struggle to find another rental due to having a dog and in the price range and probably needing parking if they are a tradie.
So all these Wellington ideas of intensification and more apartments are not going to help the majority of kiwi renters who live this type of lifestyle, just Singapore investors and foreign students …because apartments don’t suit kiwi families aka dogs and Utes and small kids running around in a backyard. (obviously not that one by the state of it!).
The old state houses would have been perfect… and it is a shame that whoever is making the decisions on housing seems to have zero idea of their market and what is required and leads by talking to the construction industry and self interested groups, about what is needed and keeps adding more people into Auckland’s struggling infrastructure and the wealthier ones are much better off than those who don’t have a lot and their needs are not being thought of at all.
because apartments don’t suit kiwi families aka dogs and Utes and small kids running around in a backyard.
Very few people actually live that lifestyle and there’s a question of it even being a good lifestyle.
Personally I’d prefer to see kids playing together in the park with the parents socialising together while watching over them. I believe it would help build a much better community.
And tradies shouldn’t be taking the work vehicle home. It should be staying at the work depot and they take public transport home.
The old state houses would have been perfect…
The old housing system that we can no longer afford was an ideological construct brought about by the idea that with cars we no longer needed the high density housing of previous centuries. Climate change has proven that we were wrong.
and it is a shame that whoever is making the decisions on housing seems to have zero idea of their market
I suspect that the market for apartments is growing while the demand for stand-alone housing is shrinking considering how many apartment buildings are being built around Auckland.
I’d be saying that’s a very nice illustrative example of why NZ needs a Registry of Landlords. Local bodies (councils) could administer and oversee such a register that should be searchable by (at least) registration number that all landlords would be required to attach to all adverts etc. And yes, applications to register should come with a fee to cover admin and management costs and registration should require periodic renewal.
Any non-registered person renting out a property would then be guilty of a criminal offense.
How long before long drawn out situations like that featured in the Campbell piece don’t happen any more?
That landlord loses their registration. They then break the law, and are up for a very hefty fine or jail time if they attempt to collect rent.
I’d say that the reason these tenants didn’t move out, was that they couldn’t get anywhere else, aka shortage of rental properties that suit them and they may have other issues like bad credit history which is fairly common in NZ with our low wage, low financial nous, precariat lifestyle championed by successive governments to make everyone “competitive” … so if they start putting together a registry of landlords (which is crazy when they don’t even have a regulatory body for rental agents) then low and behold they are putting more paperwork and reasons not to rent out your house…
This bad landlord that should have been sent a letter at the start of the tenancy, is he even a Kiwi landlord or a new migrant landlord who doesn’t care about the rules?
The tenants didn’t go to the tribunal because they did not seem that convinced they could get somewhere better and that house is still half the cost of that one room $1000 p/w emergency hotel… that the government feel is ok to put the beneficiaries in (which they technically have to pay back).
It’s a nit picking slope of issues, we have homelessness and huge demand for emergency housing directly caused by government policy of selling off state houses and evicting people, not doing anything about meth, and overloading the housing market with new residents, not cleaning up construction years ago, but pandering to them and allowing a profit driven housing market that is more expensive than most nations.
The woman quite clearly explained why she and her partner and children hadn’t simply moved out – none of the reasons contained in your comment btw. And as for your speculative xenophobic tosh…yeah, noted.
Currently in NZ, it is really bloody difficult to hold a landlord to account. A Registry would at the very least weed out the most unscrupulous landlords, with fear of loss of registration (with subsequent criminal proceedings for anyone tempted to rent “on the fly”) acting as a nice incentive for those closer to the floor of acceptability.
It’s not a “cure all” and doesn’t in any way dismiss or deny any of the 1001 other factors impacting on the rental environment.
Cool … zero problem with a register of ‘problem landlords’. It would be a good for the industry, and impose a minimum standards and professionalism. It’s a role MBIE could manage effectively and as long as it was open to challenge and accountability I’d welcome it.
Now can I have the same kind of register for problem tenants please?
I think the costs associated with a landlord registry would outweigh any benefit.
The best system is the one we’ve got. Works fine when used as it should be. Over 90% of cases heard by the Tenancy Tribunal are brought about by landlords.
Crook tenants vs crook landlords seems to run at about 20 to 1.
dawn Robbie is well aware of how best to get a result, She and Cameron took their landlord to the tribunal in 2016 and won.
Their property shares a water supply that services 2 properties. There is no separate check meter. The landlord was advised that he can’t charge them for water. He illegally charged them a letting fee. He was ordered to repay it. The landlord was ordered to immediately lodge the bond, if not, he award exemplary charges to the tenant of $1000.
The landlord was ordered to repay Dawn and her partner the $20.44 Tribunal fee to have their case heard.
The best approach is not another layer of bureaucracy, it is to use the existing system. Post the landlord a 14 day notice to comply (just like the ones he sends out) there’s a template on the MBIE tenancy website.
Like Dawn and Cameron’s 2016 hearing, Most Tribunal orders are public information.
I say let the Tribunal Adjudicators continue to rip strips off the very few exploitive landlords. Continue to hit them where it hurts, in their greedy pockets. Their public orders are a great way to keep tabs on dud landlords and tenants alike.
‘Problem’ landlords and tenants might wish to rehabilitate themselves off these proposed registers, so as to regain access to income and shelter (respectively.) Hopefully there would be equitable protocols for this.
Of course, the humbug landlords have the option of cashing out, and presumably the humbug tenants could access state housing and cars (the agony of choice), and maybe even assistance to address behavioural and mental health ‘problems’.
Or just replace ‘landlords’ with lords and ‘tenants’ with serfs (what’s a lord to do with ‘problem serfs’?) – where we’re heading (back to), for as long as it lasts.
@DM: “Crook tenants vs crook landlords seems to run at about 20 to 1” – that’s remarkable, especially if there’s a 1:1 ratio of serfs to lords.
Yeah the archaic language really doesn’t help. The resentment across the board is an obstacle to modernising the whole business.
It’s hard to guess what the actual numbers are. Certainly there are more tenants than landlords, probably in a ratio of about 5:1. (Wild arsed guess. It’s greater than 1:1 and probably less than 10:1)
From experience about 10% of tenants cause some form of problem, and I’d imagine a lower number applies to landlords as they have a substantial asset in the game, say 2%. That would work out at a bad tenant to landlord ratio of about 25:1 so given these very rough assumptions David Macs guess is not totally out of the ballpark.
However one bad landlord will likely affect around 5 tenants so this will even things out somewhat. Also the distribution of landlords to number of units is highly non-linear; most have only 1 or 2 units, with only a minority running more than 10. (This complicates any analysis quite a lot, although if I could be arsed wheeling out my rather rusty statistical analysis it would possible to put up a more accurate interpretation.)
Good tenents can find themselves ‘dehomed’ at short notice. Even good landlords sometimes need (cf. ‘want’) to sell, but knowing no-one has a choice doesn’t make a tenent’s situation any easier. Like the ‘poor’ manager who agonises over the decision of who to let go in a downturn, it’s the sacked who really do it hard.
NZ is a wealthy country (total wealth goes up and up – growth is good), so why this “resentment across the board”? Is the level of resentment unusually high in NZ (no idea; surprised it’s not higher tbh), and, if so, why?
Redistribution of wealth, reversing the trend that has the richest 10% of NZ households controlling half of NZ’s wealth (more than half now), while the poorest 40% of households ‘get by’ on 3%, might ameliorate that resentment.
As discussed on The Standard, and elsewhere, it’s simple maths to show the tremendous difference even a small % redistribution would make to those poorest 40% of households. But there will be no significant redistribution. The ‘business as usual’ trend will continue and deliver lords and serfs to ‘New’ Zealand.
Will the new lords/serfs society be more resilient in the face of economic and environmental pressures? We can only hope…
Dawn Robbie knows the procedure to go through, she has done it before and won. If she has provided her landlord with notices to comply she is in the box seat for $1000’s of exemplary charges. I think there is a good chance an adjudicator would demand that paid rent be returned to Dawn and her partner for the duration of the under-house swamp situation.
I find it odd that Dawn chose to ring the John Campbell Show. I wonder if she might like the idea of a state house, rent set at a third of their income.
As per the ratbag landlord list Bill suggests, the existing system works. A search of Dawn’s landlord ‘Mandeep Pala’ reveals a man with form. First of all trying to slither out from his responsibility by saying its a company ‘Southern Assets Limited’ that makes the decisions. The adjudicator saw through it and called ‘Humbug’.
About a year ago he was ordered to return all of the rent paid by a tenant for a home that was technically a garage: $9200 returned to the tenant along with the max exemplary damages: $1000. A bill for $10240 and here Mandeep is again, man deep in poo.
Strange Dawn hasn’t checked out his form and nailed him to the yard arm again.
I’d say if the tenant has won before at the tribunal then maybe she waited for 21 months and then went for max media attention so perhaps a chance at free rent for that entire time?
Why else wait 21 months with her children getting sick and not going to the tribunal first to get an order to remedy when she has already won before a tribunal and moved in knowing it has drainage issues?
Who knows the motivation, a match made in heaven for MSM and the tribunal will go to town on this extreme example, and now got the housing minister wading in (ha ha) , possibly he could have be a bit more cautious before he went out there telling everyone how common a situation it was.
I think we need a government that rewards good landlords and tenants alike. Makes it harder for exploiters on both sides.
Gear the Govt paid housing supplement to favourable outcomes for both parties, It doesn’t need to be adversarial. Gear the govt supp towards tenants needs. eg: A 2 year lease at a fixed rent with a 10% rise in the govt paid component will ultimately save money all round. Starting with kids not swapping schools every 6 months.
Red logic tenants have to provide references. That is the protection for landlords.
Besides which landlords are landlords out of choice. One of the risks of buying property to rent out is that you may encounter bad tenants. If you don’t like that as a possibility invest your money elsewhere.
Whereas everyone needs a roof over their heads, not a lifestyle option.
I did rent out my house when I left Auckland and thought I might return so didn’t want to risk not being able to get back into the market. I believe I was a good landlord and my home was better insulated for my tenants than when I lived there. Fair enough, they were paying me a reasonable amount to stay there. When I finally sold it realtor told more I could have been charging $100 more a week, and was surprised when I told him that didn’t bother me as I was getting a fair rent
The suggestion, taken from pre-existing legislation elsewhere, isn’t for a register of “problem landlords”, but for a registration process to apply to landlords.
Meaning, that if you are on the register, it’s a good thing.
If you aren’t, and have no pending application, and are trying to rent residential property (whether directly or through an agent) then you’re breaking criminal law.
As for problem tenants, don’t landlords these days almost insist on a dossier of past references? And what with social media the way it is, and already routinely “checked out” by employers, I’m pretty damned sure a landlord could get a good sense of who or what a person is on the sly.
Nah some landlords just ask you to meet them at the house, park around the corner then when you turn up ring you on your cellphone to say the flat is gone.
That’s not everyone. Just if you’re Maori or Pacifica.
They said the didn’t move out because they had a dog, he was a roofer and they couldn’t just keep moving around. But the question is, they could have written a letter asking for it to be rectified in 10 days, and gone to the tribunal why didn’t they?
They were in there for a long period of time without doing anything about it and then went to the media rather than tribunal or council or send a letter to the landlord? Why is that?
There is ample protection for them under the law.
We get this type of story every time the construction industry or right wingers won’t labour’s polls to go down..
Many homeowners actually have their entire houses fall down due to bad construction and then they become renters while paying for repairs and a mortgage, for example but don’t see the politicians doing much about that or giving them compensation instead just giving more hand outs to construction and happy with the appalling jobs councils are doing and of course the click bait, bad landlord story to divert attention away from major issues going on.
We’d be better off with a register of tradies AND the unqualified people they employ like a LOG on site work, because it’s often not the registered tradies doing the work, and somehow registered tradies who sign it off, just get away with bad workmanship from unqualified people. Then the council aka the rate payers paying for bad work that the council employees have often approved because developers and tradies can just set up new companies and avoid responsibility.
One hopes the Government will ensure councils have the oversight in place to deal with the increase in construction of new homes.
The last thing Labour needs in the run up to the next election is reports of thousands of newly built kiwibuild and state homes requiring major repairs due to shoddy workmanship.
You say, councils could administer and oversee such a register. Yet, councils are money hungry beasts, hence would soon seek to turn that into a lucrative new revenue stream (above and beyond administration costs) for themselves.
And of course, landlords would look to pass on any new costs incurred.
Therefore, a better option (if we were to go down that track) would be a national register overseen by central government with admin costs funded from the fines they dish out. Avoiding stinging landlords who comply while avoiding costs being passed on.
I’d be saying that’s a very nice illustrative example of why NZ needs a Registry of Landlords. Local bodies (councils) could administer and oversee such a register that should be searchable by (at least) registration number that all landlords would be required to attach to all adverts etc. And yes, applications to register should come with a fee to cover admin and management costs and registration should require periodic renewal.
And tenants can leave feedback the same way that users can leave feedback on Trade-me.
Any non-registered person renting out a property would then be guilty of a criminal offense.
/agreed
Combined with a decent ownership registry that allows people to find out who owns what.
The council can’t even read it’s own resource consent rules, for gods sake half of Auckland (and it’s spreading to other cities) is under remedial work as it is, often signed off by council. The last person anybody would want to see, is the council administering rentals. They can’t even handle the basics.
How many more landlord bodies are there going to be, a WOF, the tenancy tribunal and a log of landlords?
Deary me, I wonder why there is a rental shortage… with these wonderful ideas floating around to “stem’ the shortage based on getting rid of all the bad landlords and properties. Wonderful, now they are gone, is the state going to provide the thousands of cheap, safe, warm rentals, that will be needed tomorrow?
must rank up there like Kiwibuild where you evict the tenants for years to rebuild their rental while selling off the rest of the land and therefore having no capacity for future state house builds when you are actively trying to grow the low wage economy as fast as possible, subsidise construction and deregulate it while tuning a blind eye to all the unskilled unqualified people working on the jobs, and keeping foreign speculation going to keep prices high so banks like you.
Then believe the free market fairy will provide private accomodation for all the growing low wage families and beneficiaries who have bad credit ratings out of the kindness of their hearts, while the state gives the multimillionaires in construction and banks more help.
Sounds like something out of Yes Minister savenz
‘Where did you get that preposterous idea. Civil servant Sir Humphrey
‘Oh I just thought of it. PM Jim Jacker.
That was about not giving awards to civil servants unless they had earned them. With a litany of lulus that you have set out, it seems time to start the 2nd Labours of Hercules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules
The council professionals in housing would fit one of the Labours, just before or after cleaning the Augean stables which actually, housed the single greatest number of cattle in the country and had never been cleaned. (This could be expanded to modern feedlots.)
How about the government and council stops demolishing cheaper homes for roads and Housing corporation houses for re-devleoperment for a start and stop allowing more and more people to settle here to compete on low wages or for housing.
Homes slated for demolition to be used as emergency housing
Sounds good. Let’s keep at it for change at all levels but particularly
the simple practical, with space at the doorstep for big plastic tubs growing vegs and flowers, and covered clothes lines, and waist high fences to allocate an area that is for the tenant to enjoy and look after. Little things that mean a lot.
And for the homeless and recovering and recent prisoners; concrete shelters, with cream painted walls, and concrete floors with drainage in one corner so that they can be easily cleaned. Practical, safe, warm and a basic level of comfort, identity and sanitation, and overview to keep reasonable standards.
The irony is that Labour fucked up 2 elections by pandering to identity housing groups and hypocritical or unpractical housing positions.
Now they got in, effectively with Kiwibuild they are screwing the renters and helping the home owners while throwing previous elections by loudly campaigning for renters while forgetting 60% of voters are homeowners.
To be as unpopular as possible once elected they are emotionally screaming “lift your game or get out” to landlords most of whom the home owners identify with and forgetting the government is one of the worst offenders of evicting people.
The last person anybody would want to see, is the council administering rentals.
Who said anything about them administering rentals (Although I believe that they did a good job of that when they had council flats). Keeping a registry of landlords would probably come down to the central government rather than councils as a landlord could own a house anywhere in the country and many would be offshore owners.
How many more landlord bodies are there going to be, a WOF, the tenancy tribunal and a log of landlords?
Just one.
Deary me, I wonder why there is a rental shortage… with these wonderful ideas floating around to “stem’ the shortage based on getting rid of all the bad landlords and properties.
So, you think keeping bad landlords that cost individuals and the state huge amounts of money and cause grief for individuals should be kept around because they provide housing?
Have you noticed the housing crisis that is allowing these scum to get super-profits?
Wonderful, now they are gone, is the state going to provide the thousands of cheap, safe, warm rentals, that will be needed tomorrow?
The problem is that they aren’t. Housing should be a right and the government should be ensuring that everyone has a good place to live.
Soper considers Trump’s contribution as being decisive and gives him credit. Clearly in recent months the situation was evolving every which way and who knows, the latest steps might have nothing to do with Trump’s tweeting. No matter, Trump’s a hero.
If someone in the New Zealand Parliament had tweeted something about another country would Soper have turned out a column criticising it as an intrusion into the politics of another country?
Ed : The judge of everything –
Did you listen to the trainee doctor discussing the problems of getting the necessary training in his specialty – orthopaedics?
Good point he made was that if you are on in weekend you get crash victims, emergencies.l But that is only part of the work and is rather different than seeing the daily patients booked in for electives, chosen surgery for their problem.
I thought he was cogent and any animosity I had about this ‘breakaway union’ went away after hearing him.
It is refreshing to see a government Minister standing up to foreign owned banks and not grovelling to them.
Now the Government should put their money where their mouth is and close down their account with Westpac.
Shane Jones slams ‘Aussie-owned’ banks for shutting branches in provincial NZ.
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has taken aim at this country’s Australian-owned banks for shutting branches in provincial town, suggesting they should be obligated to adequately service rural areas.
“The Aussie-owned banks are incredibly profitable. Their level of profitability never seems to decline although the breadth of their services is in decline,” he told Stuff.
Over the past two years, almost 50 Westpac, BNZ and ANZ branches have closed, which was evidence of a retreat from the regions, according to the bank workers’ union.
Jones said this country’s banks, which are predominantly Australian-owned, needed to take their responsibility to rural customers more seriously.
…….National Party Wairarapa MP Alastair Scott said the closures reflected the commercial reality of modern banking, and if there were enough people using local branches the banks would keep them open.
But Jones also took issue with that way of thinking.
“You will never hear the National Party complain about corporate New Zealand because they are a political extension of corporate New Zealand.”
No chance ,Westpacs David McClean was a lead speaker at the business confidence meeting,and down played pessimism.
It would be very ungracious to strip them of their Govt business.
I’m not fond of using the reductio ad absurdum but you do know what happens to countries that have closed virtually all borders, don’t you? Does Albania ring a bell, or even North-Korea?
Let’s try and bring some nuance into the debate. Comments that lack any nuance either get ignored here or attract an equally simplistic or absurd reflexive response. It doesn’t get us anywhere except to further polarise and antagonise people; not much progressive about that, is there?
Privatisation has caused major increases in poverty and trashed the economy but the rich are doing well so it’s allowed to stand. The will of the people is ignored.
Mitterand was unusual in having been a right-wing political activist when young, then ending up a socialist president. If you examine his trajectory, little evidence of any socialist conviction becomes apparent. Easy to see his bombing of the Rainbow warrior as a global signal that the imperial left will never merge with the Green movement. His imperialism seems more authentic than his leftism.
I recall his switch back to the right making the headlines when his leftist economic policy failed dramatically. This pragmatism achieved his record-breaking durability as president. However, underlying that was a lifetime of copying Stalin: using a medial line between left & right, with the leverage of the political center as a position of strength to operate from, switching tactical alignments when necessary. Winston Peters has spent a quarter-century trying to teach his fellow kiwis how effective this praxis is.
However, I disagree with you that education doesn’t hurt; it hurts a lot and once you know things you cannot unknow them. Hence the saying “ignorance is bliss”.
How do you think Électricité de France, Gaz de France, Air France etc were created. They were state creations in the late 40s.
There was a history behind Frances actions., which included
“With a wide-reaching 1982 nationalization law, the government took over the major industrial groups CGE, Péchiney, Rhône-Poulenc, Saint Gobain, and Thomson; defense manufacturers Dassault-Bréguet and Matra; steel giants Usinor and Sacilor; computer companies Bull and ITT-France; and the pharmaceutical lab Roussel-UCLAF; along with the country’s thirty-six biggest banks—all at a cost of fifty-eight billion francs to the taxpayer.
The state ownership allowed better managed transitions for some
declining industries
‘Faced first with cheaper coal imports in the 1960s, and then opting in the 1970s to develop nuclear power, the government put in place a decades-long plan to wind down Charbonnages de France’s coal mining and power generation activities. The company gradually shrank its work force by relying exclusively on retirements and transfers to other public companies. From its peak in 1946, when Charbonnages employed 350,000 miners, to 2004 when the last coal mine in France shuttered its shafts, the company didn’t lay off a single worker.”
All good examples of a moderate, evolutionary policy, implemented incrementally over a period of decades. No doubt underlying that brief description above, there was much complexity and compromise needed to make it all work. In places it was probably messy and imperfect.
And at the same time largely successful French private entities, Peugeot and Schneider Electric come to mind as examples, continued to operate and thrive. The French didn’t make the radical mistake of going all neo-liberal and privatising everything not nailed down, nor neo-marxist extreme of nationalising the same. They steered a pragmatic path down the middle and came through their post-WW2 crisis reasonably well.
All good examples of a moderate, evolutionary policy, implemented incrementally over a period of decades.
A decades long plan across multiple industries that only the government can do – as long as it doesn’t have any RWNJs come in and fuck things up. Private companies, no matter how big they are, don’t seem able to maintain plans that last for decades. They only seem to operate for short term profit.
Yes … that aligns nicely with the view that state enterprise is best for managing long-term multigenerational risks, while private enterprise scales better for the short-term. Both have a complementary place.
It’s a question neatly captured by Arnold Nordmeyer’s rhetorical question “do we want the state running corner dairies?”.
‘They steered a pragmatic path down the middle and came through their post-WW2 crisis reasonably well.’
They certainly didn’t forget their humiliation by Germany quickly or their colonisation mindset.
Africa,Vietnam and the Rainbow Warrior attest to..that.
Exploitation by privatising water in Africa was all done in the best possible taste..no doubt.
‘French multinationals—Saur, Suez and Vivendi—have been the main companies involved in the water business in Africa but in the last few years Portugual’s Aguas de Portugal and the British company Biwater have entered the scene. Currently, Vivendi is involved in Burkina Faso, Gabon and Niger; Suez in South Africa; and Biwater in the Republic of Congo. The PSIRU report reveals that privatisations are planned in Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, amongst others.
Despite IMF pressure, the privatisation of water in Africa has proceeded with difficulty in the last few years. In the PSIRU report a number of cases are given where negotiations over contracts or existing contracts between multinationals and governments broke down. Revelations from Vivendi staff at a Kampala conference indicate the problem. They explained that private firms would invest only if there are “guarantees securing the flow of payments by the municipalities or governments” and/or “sufficient and assured revenues from the users of the service.”
Having worked in the water industry for almost a decade I’m very aware of the issues around the public/private split. The core problem is that water supply is fundamental human need and cannot be permitted to fail. This makes it a very politically sensitive industry.
In general fully privatised water provision is a bad idea. Equally there are no examples of totally public provision either. (Even the most staunchly public utility is still utterly dependent on a myriad of private sector suppliers and contractors to operate effectively.)
In very simple terms, the optimum arrangement seems to be where a public body owns the asset (aquifers, plants, pipes and pumping stations, etc) while some form of commercial entity operates and maintains them. Managed intelligently you retain local control of the asset, it’s maintenance, investment and pricing … while accessing the efficiencies of scale from large vendors who bring real expertise and best practise global standards to the table,
A sure, risk free bet required to invest’…’They explained that private firms would invest only if there are “guarantees securing the flow of payments by the municipalities or governments” and/or “sufficient and assured revenues from the users of the service.”
Please put some effort into it if you want to convince people.
Just providing a link to the banking environment in the US in the 1820s does not constitute an argument. By clicking on that link TS readers should understand and come to the conclusion that it can and has to be done? And by “it” you presumably mean waging war on the Ozzie banks and kicking them out of NZ (nationalising?)?
Politics is contest of ideas that requires effort and persuasion (which means appealing to both reason as well as emotion).
Somebody once said that war is the continuation of politics by other means but you seem to want to skip the peaceful approach and go straight for the last resort?
For the record, I do think that the power and influence of the global corporate banking industry needs to be curbed especially in domestic affairs. Whether you agree with that and how we’d go about it are the issues to be addressed.
A considerable amount of work has been done on this in recent decades by many who have reframed the historical binary in an attempt to learn from history. When the ridiculous extremes of nationalisation & privatisation are eliminated from contention, the middle way becomes the path to progress.
This tertiary stakeholder design has also been trialled historically, so we ought to be learning from the successes & failures that have been analysed. If community banks are chartered on a local stakeholder design, they can services businesses in a bioregion context, to build both local & regional resilience. As long as everyone is able to participate in both design & governance to some extent, that crowd-sourcing ought to be able to generate perceptions of the common interests of all being catered for.
However critical mass has yet to be attained: complacency of the majority ensures that dependency on the capitalists will persist until the tipping point of sufficient desperation is reached. The visible desperate seem to prefer living under bridges to collective organising for a better future.
On the nail Dennis!. This is where the left must focus it’s energy in order to be effective. Radicals only discredit us. The majority of people, with real justification, will regard them with deep suspicion, and all moderate left wingers if we fail dissociate ourselves from them.
Hi Dennis, I really appreciate your engaging and considerate comments & replies here on TS.
As long as everyone is able to participate in both design & governance to some extent, that crowd-sourcing ought to be able to generate perceptions of the common interests of all being catered for. [my bold]
What do you mean with “perceptions”? Surely, you mean “realities”?
Regarding the “complacency of the majority”, do you think this is wilful or possibly caused by lack of or poor education, lack of or poor journalism, lack of public intellectuals, or some other reasons altogether? Any conscious change starts (or ends) with awareness …
Well, that’s good to know. 🙂 Both perceptions & realities are required for success, it’s just that whereas the latter is essential to structure the emerging new social reality, perceptions must shift so that participants become conscious of that emergence.
That’s because participants are more influential when they are actors rather than passive folk unconsciously going along with the new flow.
To your point about awareness: that perception of shift induces awareness. Complacency is primarily caused by culture, but I agree the factors you suggest all contribute. So the key to mass transformation is not just for individuals to operate as catalysts & lead by example, but for some of them to achieve gnosis around how to exercise even more leverage via organising – and then co-create groups for that purpose.
Totally agree. Ed’s narrow totalitarian thinking has been proven a catastrophe everywhere it has ever been implemented, but this doesn’t cause him the slightest moment’s concern.
Indeed economic catastrophe and social breakdown would appear to be quite welcomed by these revolutionary types; although they’d never actually say so out loud. And then there is the false assumption that it would never affect them because they’ve got the right ideology and everyone else will do the suffering.
I’m not fond of using the reductio ad absurdum but you do know what happens to countries that have closed virtually all borders, don’t you?
What’s banning foreign ownership got to do with closing the borders?
Let’s try and bring some nuance into the debate. Comments that lack any nuance either get ignored here or attract an equally simplistic or absurd reflexive response.
And yet your own comment lacks nuance and also includes a false dichotomy and a false equivalence.
Basically, it seems that you’re talking out your arse to scare people.
What’s banning foreign ownership got to do with closing the borders?
Odd question. A foreigner comes in, it doesn’t have to be literally, buys or invests into something here and thus owns or part-owns it and the ownership crosses the border, legally and economically.
And yet your own comment lacks nuance and also includes a false dichotomy and a false equivalence.
Depends on how you read it but in any case you’re not helping much either in engaging in a constructive discussion, sadly.
Basically, it seems that you’re talking out your arse to scare people.
I do indeed talk out of my arse an awful lot and I’m trying to lift my game to talking from my guts & belly (gut instinct) to talking from my mouth but it is lifelong process; care to be more specific? How and why would I want “to scare people” and about what? Are we still talking about Ozzie banks or have you moved to a completely different topic without issuing a memo?
I must say that your comment is a good example of a reflexive response that neither helps to build bridges nor to generate (an) understanding; it is an attempt to pull & put down without a sign of empathy or respect and no option for reconciliation or a way forward (or out …). Your absolutisms lack nuance [you like this oxymoron?].
No. It’s a perfectly valid question from your assertion that anybody even suggested closing the borders.
A foreigner comes in, it doesn’t have to be literally, buys or invests into something here and thus owns or part-owns it and the ownership crosses the border, legally and economically.
No, that would be delusional BS. But, then, the entire economic theory is delusional BS.
Banning foreign ownership still allows trade in actual products and that’s all that trade should be.
How and why would I want “to scare people” and about what?
RW aristos bringing their fine sentiments into play to control the rabble’s practical ideas of what the country needs bring amusement.
Blazer No chance ,Westpacs David McClean was a lead speaker at the business confidence meeting,and down played pessimism.
It would be very ungracious to strip them of their Govt business.
Like being ungracious (ungrateful) to Westpac for saying some positive things about present financial situation (not getting stuck into Labour because they can). Pragmatically, it illustrates a reason to stay with Westpac while they see it to their business advantage not to play anti-politics while they have so much to gain from their government contract.
(This old man should keep on giving the dog a bone.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxfiFOHtwUA&vl=en
.National Party Wairarapa MP Alastair Scott said the closures reflected the commercial reality of modern banking, and if there were enough people using local branches the banks would keep them open,
“The commercial reality of modern banking” that National Party MPs celebrate is to make huge profits from land sales to the world, creating a huge bubble that, following the history of other bubbles, has created large profit expectations and dragged investment away from other business sectors needed for our economy, and like an inflated balloon not tied off will result in a large farting noise as it travels madly pinging off solid surfaces in an unco-ordinated way and end up torn, flat and wrecked.
Exactly why ‘deplatforming’ is such a terrible idea. It’s all well and good when it’s done to people you don’t like, but then you have zero defence when it’s done to people your opponents don’t like.
This is so fucking blindly obvious I feel embarrassed for typing it out.
“Women ‘not developed’ to be CEOs, activist Lauren Southern says https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/victoria-police-charge-lauren-southern/news-story/9986324084f649beaa9cc568e51523e0
Jul 20, 2018 … A Canadian alt-right activist currently touring Australia has said women are not psychologically developed to hold leadership positions and …”
Forgive me if I’m wrong re “Human Rights Law” but comments like that surely goes against New Zealand’s rights for equality. Bit of a stunt aimed for reaction or her genuine Neanderthal opinions, you choose.
Making the statement of the stupid theory was the stunt. I provided a specific example with proof of a link, can you do the same and provide an example of someone on the left who think “all” men are violent and we live in one vast “rape culture” To equate with Southern that will have to be someone who people at the Standard have heard of and supported. Otherwise there is no comparison.
Thanks for that, nowhere in that article does she accuse ALL men of being violent and her reference to the Rape Culture mentions “SOME schools” and she “thinks” there is a rape culture and “How can we stop it”. Southerns comments as copied from Google this side of the PayWall as stated were (Jul 20, 2018 … A Canadian alt-right activist currently touring Australia has said women are not psychologically developed to hold leadership positions and …”) Women ARE NOT. If you think these are “Two sides of the same…” then I’m not going to try and change your mind but politely agree to disagree.
I recall that The Australian article well and there were plenty of other Australian media reports on it, including this one from 9 News which reports it halfway down – along with plenty else of Southern’s “views”. You are more polite that I am in agreeing to disagree with his Two Sides of the same.
Jones does sound as if he is going to do something. And we need to think about the options.
But some good research internationally indicates expensive dams may not give the lengthy service to justify and while there is no control over the dangerous reliance on milk that is skewing our national accounts and the mad water export scheme, we don’t dare to allow the keen men to run off with our goodies.
Jack sold off the family cow, but they still had water left to drink and grow the beans with. We are living in ultra fairyland and I don’t trust these smart guys. There are two sorts – the ones who load up the dosh and sell out, and the ones that remain in place cutting a deep trough unable to see over the sides.
Inciting in your view yes. But if you want to make that case legally, you have to accept they may well want to mount a defense.
In my opinion what we are seeing with S&M is what happens when the right play ‘white identity’ politics back at the left. We think it’s pretty ugly. Guess what … the right think our forms of it are ugly too. And have done so for decades.
I’ll agree with a bit of that – except the Right are using words they don’t understand. So they’re using them in a slightly warped way, like a chatbot.
Like Chris T comparing comments about biological determination of aptitudes with comments about rape culture – the two have nothing in common, but Chris T doesn’t seem to understand that. From his perspective, they look alike. But they are not.
Yes that’s a good point, there isn’t necessarily a direct equivalence. But I think the underlying ‘power/oppression game’ narrative exploits the identical dynamics.
It’s cargo-cult “identity politics”, though. They claim victimhood on behalf of the oppressors: the “It’s ok to be white” tshirt for example.
Who the fuck said it wasn’t? Especially compared to the experiences of people who seemed to be followed around stores a lot more often than white people?
That’s what really pisses me off about it – it’s the bullies claiming that they’re bullied because someone said that “bullying is bad”.
Last night I commented on the Chelsea Manning post. wondering whether Manning had been issued a visa for Australia, in light of the National party (led by Woodhouse but supported by Bridges according to Newshub *) calling for Immigration to refuse her a visa to NZ in view of her criminal convictions. At that point the Australian press were reporting on the situation here re these calls to refuse a visa, but little seemed to be known as to the Australian position. https://thestandard.org.nz/let-chelsea-manning-speak/#comment-1519028
Sure enough, overnight it all blew up in the Australian media with many reports similar to the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) report above.
One thing re the SMH report: It reports that Manning was denied a visa to enter Canada in Sept last year (2017) BUT it does not mention that Canada subsequently issued her a very limited time visa to enter Canada for one speaking engagement in May this year.
This was reported by the Guardian yesterday and also by RNZ National on Morning Report this morning (an earlier article at 5.54am does not give the details of the limitations on the visa but they were detailed half way down in the later mention linked to below).
So there is precedent for a country similar to Australia and NZ to grant a one off limited visa for the same type of event Manning is scheduled to give here in NZ (ie she will only be here for 2 days for one event in Auckland on Sat 8 Sept and one in Wellington on Sun 9 Sept before scheduled for one in Brisbane on 11 Sept. Her earlier planned speeches are in Sydney this Sunday, 2 Sept and then Melbourne Friday 7 Sept before the two days 8/9 Sept in NZ.
* Newhub item on Bridges/National saying Manning should not be let into NZ.
What’s this business of convicted criminals not being able to travel.
There are tons of people who should be convicted getting around freely.
Having caught a few of them, when they are let out or off, they should not be automatically be refused visas.
There are some egregious offences that people should have to prove they have renounced but a blanket ban is crazy. Every day I listen to stories about state-sponsored killing, bombing from east and west and gunshots from USA where half of them should be convicted criminals according to the news.
“What’s this business of convicted criminals not being able to travel.” and “… but a blanket ban is crazy.”
Do you really not know that many countries, including Canada, Australia, NZ, UK, USA etc, have immigration restrictions (which they decide for themselves) on who they will let into their country. This includes in particular if that person has any convictions over a specified level – for example, whether they were for crimes that can incur a sentence of two years in prison . In many cases, these restrictions apply regardless of whether the person has served their sentence.
These restrictions may also apply across the board, or they may vary according to the period of time the person wants to enter the country, and the purpose of their stay (Eg holiday, work , transit to another country, to live permanently).
Such restrictions are the norm not the exception – and have been around for many years, centuries.
Some countries, including NZ but not all, have “Clean Slate” laws whereby convictions under a specified level of seriousness and/or sentence period may be wiped from the records after a specified period of time (eg 7 years) where the person has had no further convictions (a clean slate) over that period. The US is less generous in such matters and even if someone is clean slated in NZ, they may still have to disclose their clean slated conviction(s) when applying for entry to the US.
Sure, there are people running around freely who should be convicted – but if they have not been convicted by due process through a court of law then they are free to do so.
I note that all the countries referred to are English speaking and part of the myopic 5 eyes, that mini Hydra-head.
Just because ‘they’ say something and pass it into law doesn’t mean it is right and fair. So I say WTF – in a global world why are there developing so many controls at the borders in the 21st century? Is it to protect their borders? Is it to limit people wanting to utilise the country’s resources for free or at a net cost to us? That applies to us and why it might be considered that NZ should agree to border controls with Australia (except that they would step up the cleansing of Australia and also refuse re-entry to NZ visiting family here.)
Is it to prevent people who might reveal another way of thinking about things. S&M can get in, they don’t reveal anything new and just expound on personal prejudices that we hold to us tight, and claim to be our right. But Chelsea Manning revealed something new and displayed government subterfuge, that goes to what would be the heart of government, if it had one that is.
No, grey, such restrictions are much wider that just English speaking countries. In fact, it would probably be hard to find any country that just lets everyone and their dog into their country.
As I said, such restrictions are very old – definitely not a 21st century phenomenon. In fact, much more recent are moves to reduce border controls generally (but not necessarily for people with convictions) – such as between NZ and Australia under the 1963 Trans Tasman Travel Arrangement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Tasman_Travel_Arrangement
The current problems with Australia re NZers is in fact them re-tightening their border control despite this agreement.
S & M got visas, but very restricted short term business ones, because they have no convictions. Manning was convicted and sentenced to 35 years and her conviction was not pardoned by Obama and therefore stands, but her sentence was reduced to seven years by Obama. So for immigration purposes, she still has convictions.
Absolutely agree, Gabby, but that is the law. I really hope CM gets let in to both NZ and Australia under the special exemptions available to both governments. Would love to go to hear her at the Wellington one, but have no money to do so. Loved the interview with Kim Hill.
“There are tons of people who should be convicted getting around freely.”
This is very true. With some of them enjoying the privileges of owning expensive holiday homes in the UK, Hawaii and elsewhere, flaunting their knighthoods in the process …
My te reo Maori is pre-kindergarten, sorry. Anyway, I saw you have been sparring with certain people here in the last day or so with four letter names. Was looking close there last night with one who is known for making sparring partners disappear – was looking like the steam was rising fast, but whew …
Old veutoviper saying: Beware men with four letter names, two of which are the same. LOL.
LOL. See the a one is self-projecting full time in his comments to you and mc f. Sad angry little man with chips so big on his shoulders it is a wonder he can stand up. I interacted for quite some time but then just gave up due to the abuse.
When the party of Lincoln is too racist for Faux news.
Just hours after a big win to become the GOP nominee for Florida governor, Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis went on Fox News Wednesday morning to say the last thing Floridians should do is “monkey this up” by electing his African-American progressive opponent, Andrew Gillum.
[…]
Later in the hour, the Fox News anchor read the DeSantis camp statement and felt the need to address his remarks, saying “We do not condone this language and wanted to make our viewers aware that he has since clarified his statement.”
They served in the Army, Border Patrol and as police. They have legitimate U.S. birth certificates. But Trump’s government is denying their passport applications and telling them they aren’t U.S. citizens.
A Washington Post report out today tells of the “growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question,” under the Trump administration’s racist policies.
I can’t access the WaPO because of my adblocker but the Herald has run the article, and this stood out.
The denials are happening at a time when Trump has been lobbying for stricter federal voter identification rules, which would presumably affect the same people who are now being denied passports – almost all of them Hispanic, living in a heavily Democratic sliver of Texas.
And they just might vote in the up-coming mid terms – and you know which way they will vote!
The US has no right to call itself a democracy.
They hold the elections on a tuesday.
The day is a working day.
They restrict the number of polling booths to the affluent areas
And in many states they demand id such as driver license or passport.
And that doesn’t even cover the extensive gerrymandering of districts!
North Carolina has been charged with redrawing the districts because of the deceitful gerrymandering – just weeks before the election!
I think if Ron De Santis really wanted to go with an obviously racist hit straight after the primary, he should have said on live TV "I don't think Floridians want to elect a dude who looks like Obama and is aping Bernie Sanders."— Liz Mair (@LizMair) August 29, 2018
UPDATE: Rep. Ron DeSantis has quit the Facebook group that trafficked in racist and offensive slurs, following American Ledger’s reporting on Wednesday. – 8:54 PM
Ron DeSantis, the Trump-endorsed congressman who won Tuesday’s GOP primary for Florida governor, is an administrator on an active Facebook group where conservatives share racist, conspiratorial and incendiary posts about a litany of targets, including black Americans and South Africans, the “deep state,” survivors of February’s massacre at a Florida high school, immigrants, Muslims and, in recent days, John McCain.
I have also been looking into something I was told this week – that one of the “big players” draws massive amounts of water from the deepest of the aquifers and sends it to China, Hong Kong and Singapore. I thought I was pretty much up with all the ins and outs of this dam but that is the first I have heard of this particular angle. Does anyone know any more about this? Apparently the bore used to belong to the TDC but because it is on this person’s land it now belongs to him.
“Per the Naval Historical Center: The English borrowed the word “sergeant” from the French in about the Thirteenth Century. They spelled it several different ways and pronounced it both as SARgent and SERgeant. The latter was closer to the French pronunciation.”
My maternal grandad enlisted age 16 to die in the trenches WWI but survived, then a motorbike courier stationed at Dublin Castle during the Irish Rebellion riding that new technology. Eventually, promoted up from corporal, since his surname was Sergeant he became Sergeant Sergeant.
Interesting, eh? To Marty, Anne & In Vino & anyone else interested, doesn’t it just remind us how boys automatically learned how to be heroes so young, and as often as not then died as cannon fodder? In defense of empire…
Yes Dennis… or to survive, come back blighted by shellshock, etc, and visit their suffering upon their wives and children… Actually, I think that the bible says that the sins of the father will be visited upon the sons for seven generations. But I gather that in those days, 7 was a rather symbolic number.
We had a lad in NZ Scots who’s surname was Hooper and being a Cav SQN had the rank of Trooper Hooper. The poor sod got hammered from Depot to SQN until I think he discharged or transferred to another Corp.
I looked up Blue Spring and Blue Lake but haven’t had time to go through all those listed – lots have been removed from the company register as well.
This could be a completely wrong direction but I have always thought that there seemed to be something or someone much bigger behind this extraordinary push for the dam. The scale of it made no sense at all.
Prickles
I see that this was a Nelson company and Rachel Reese the Mayor was there cheering it on. Selling water, big deal. Lord Ernest Rutherford came from a little place out in the rurals, near here, and really made a breakthrough. Now we mine water as our highest achievement and the erstwhile Prime Minister comes and says a few words.
Reminds me of Balham Gateway to the South tourist spoof from Peter Sellers.
I love the tradesman in toothbrushholesmanship. He was visited by some grand notable who said a few words to him. He didn’t understand any of them.
Sock it to them Shane. I find Shane Jones refreshing, strong language and all.
He is like the rugby player that picks up the ball and runs wuith it, and i think he will get it down into touch. So kia kaha Shane. The water may be sludgy, but keeping stirring and bringing in some oxygen and sunlight and we might get some policy that is usable and healthy for the country.
PRES. NIXON: The most difficult decision that I have made since being President was on December the eighteenth last year.
[Slight caesura, then massive applause]
PRES. NIXON: And there were many occasions in that ten day period after the decision was made when I wondered whether the country really supported it. But I can tell you this: after having met each one of our honored guests this evening, after having talked to them, I think that all of us would like to join in a round of applause for the brave men who took those B-52s in and did the job!
[Massive standing ovation, whistling and stomping]
Who is more scurrilous—the shrill fanatics who organized it, or Change.org for allowing this farrago of lies?
This petition by the desperate and discredited Blairite rump is preceded by the following warning:
We have received flags from our users that the facts in this petition may be contested. You should consider researching this issue before signing or sharing.
Another disgraceful display by another loutish shill for Israel
In this farcical clip, Michael Walker, a journalist with Novara News is pitted against “writer Benedict Spence”, a pro-Israel fanatic. As usual, the Israeli apologist has nothing to offer, so he starts interrupting and talking over Michael Walker.
It starts talking over Walker at the 3:56 mark. Instead of addressing the lout, the host pretends that they are BOTH acting rudely, and says: “Okay guys, if you both speak at once then nobody can hear what you’re saying. Just finish your point, please, Michael and then we’ll bring in Ben….”
Barrister Gary Judd KC’s complaint to the Regulatory Review Committee has sparked a fierce debate about the place of tikanga Māori – or Māori customs, values and spiritual beliefs – in the law.Judd opposes the New Zealand Council of Legal Education’s plans to make teaching tikanga compulsory in the legal curriculum.AUT ...
Alwyn Poole writes – In New Zealand we have approximately 460 high schools. The gaps between the schools that produce the best results for students and those at the other end of the spectrum are enormous.In terms of the data for their leavers, the top 30 schools have ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be ...
Brian Eastonwrites – The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am ...
The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open. ...
On Thursday 17 May, the Mayoral Proposal for Auckland’s Long Term Plan 2024-2034 was passed by Auckland Council, 20 to 1. It is set to be formally adopted by the Governing Body at its June 27th meeting. The entire process took 8 hours, with the vast majority of that time ...
Pakanga o muaTukua, ka ngaroPuritia taku ringaNgaro ana te ara ki pae rauThere's a battle aheadMany battles are lostBut you'll never see the end of the roadWhile you're travelling with meLate yesterday morning I headed to Wynyard Quarter to see Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick give their pre-budget State of ...
Maybe the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister expected the worst, so they mounted a stout defence of the Budget tax cuts to their party faithful at a party conference over the weekend. In turn, they were greeted with applause, which, though it may have been less than wildly enthusiastic, ...
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 12, 2024 thru Sat, May 18, 2024. Story of the week “The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and ...
TL;DR: Here’s six links that stood out to me in the last day in Aotearoa’s political economy to 6:06am on Sunday, May 19:Aotearoa-NZ is the seventh worst in the OECD’s homelessness rankings, just behind the United States and just ahead of Australia. BlackRock thinks rate hikes actually worsen inflation because ...
Halfway up a historic tower in York, we are neither up nor down. At the top you will have views of a city steeped in antiquity, made and remade by Romans, Normans, Vikings, Tescos. Below, you will find a retired minister happy to tell you all about this most astonishing ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does breathing contribute to CO2 ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people ...
No one knows what it's likeTo be the bad manTo be the sad manBehind blue eyesNo one knows what it's likeTo be hatedTo be fatedTo telling only liesHave you ever wondered what life must be like for Mike Hosking? Seeing things in black and white through blue tinted specs? In ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two week’s editions.Share More Than A FeildingBike bling, London Read more ...
Hi,I think we all made it through another week — congratulations. I’ve been digesting the new Arab Strap record, which is astonishing. In other news, I’m going to be doing a Webworm popup in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday July 13. I’ll bring a bunch of merch, and some other ...
The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
David Farrar writes – Newstalk ZB report: The man responsible for a horror hit and run in central Wellington last year was on a suspended licence and was so drunk he later asked police, “Did I kill someone?” Jason Tuitama injured two women when he ran a red ...
Muriel Newman writes – Former US President Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.” The fight for ...
Why Courts should have said Waitangi Tribunal could not summons Karen Chhour Gary Judd writes – In the High Court, Justice Isacs declined to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal to compel Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, to appear before it to be ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation. Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament ...
An average of 166 New Zealand citizens left the country every day during the March quarter, up 54% from a year ago.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy and housing market is sinking into a longer recession through the winter after a slump in business and consumer confidence in ...
The government has made it abundantly clear they’re addicted to the smell of new asphalt. On Tuesday they introduced a new term to the country’s roading lexicon, the Roads of Regional Significance (RoRS), a little brother for the Roads of National (Party) Significance (RoNS). Driving ahead with Roads of Regional ...
School is outAnd I walk the empty hallwaysI walk aloneAlone as alwaysThere's so many lucky penniesLying on the floorBut where the hell are all the lucky peopleI can't see them any moreYesterday morning, I’d just sent out my newsletter on Tama Potaka, and I was struggling to make the coffee. ...
Hi,I wanted to check in and ask how you’re doing.This is perhaps a selfish act, of attempting to find others feeling a similar way to me — that is to say, a little hopeless at the moment.Misery loves company, that sort of deal.Some context.I wish I could say I got ...
I have hitherto been fairly quiet on the new season of Rings of Power, on the basis that the underwhelming first season did not exactly build excitement – and the rumours were fairly daft. The only real thing of substance to come out has been that they have re-cast Adar ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
“The thing is,” Chris Luxon says, leaning forward to make his point, “this has always been my thing.”“This goes all the way back to the first multinational I worked for. I was saying exactly the same thing back then. The name of our business needs to be more clear; people ...
Buzz from the Beehive It’s been a momentous few days for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for her. And today she has announced the Government is putting children first by introducing to ...
In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – According to the respected Pew Research Centre, “In seven of eight [European] countries surveyed, the most trusted news outlet asked about is the public news organization in each country”. For example, “in Sweden, an overwhelming majority (90%) say they trust the public broadcaster SVT”. ...
David Farrar writes – Kata MacNamara reports: Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides. It has long been clear that Blakely, a ...
Chris Trotter writes – Are you a Brahmin or a Merchant? Or, are you merely one of those whose lives are profoundly influenced by the decisions of Brahmins and Merchants? Those are the questions that are currently shaping the politics of New Zealand and the entire West. ...
RNZ reports – It’s supposed to be a haven of healing and spiritual awakening but residents of the Kawai Purapura community say they’ve been hurt and deceived. It’s the successor to the former Centrepoint commune, and has been on the bush block opposite Albany shopping centre since 2008. It ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. Usually we have a video chat to go with this wrap, but were unable to do one this week. We’ll be back next week.Several reports ...
The Transport Minister has set a hard 'fiscal envelope' of $6.54 billion for transport capital spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick used this year's State of the Planet to call on the Government to prioritise people and planet as the delivery of the Budget approaches. A full transcript of their speeches can be found below. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have used their State of the Planet speeches to challenge the Government to prioritise people and planet over profit as the delivery of the Budget approaches. ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
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 ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
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 ...
A New Zealander studying at the University of New Caledonia says students have been taught to use fire extinguishers as firefighters are unlikely to come help if there is an emergency. It comes as days of unrest followed a controversial proposed constitutional amendment which would allow more French residents of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Getty Images There have been so many submissions on the government’s proposed Fast-track Approvals Bill – 27,000 written, with 2,900 wanting to appear before the select committee in person – that a ballot ...
The LIVE Recording of A View from Afar podcast will begin today at 12:45pm May 20, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, 8:30pm (USEST). Today, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will examine: The United States and how the world is engaging with it geopolitically.Specifically, we will ...
After falling victim to a scam over the phone, Russell Brown spent the day with One NZ’s cyber defence and fraud prevention teams to see the work they do to stop millions of scam attempts every year.The only windows in the Cyber Defence Centre at One NZ’s Auckland headquarters ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marika Sosnowski, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne Ever since armed conflict has existed, ceasefires have been thought of as a bridge between war and peace. Consequently, their success has been measured by their ability to stop violence between warring parties ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Shand, Research Fellow, Obstetrician, University of Sydney Backgroundy/Shutterstock Oral retinoids are a type of medicine used to treat severe acne. They’re sold under the brand name Roaccutane, among others. While oral retinoids are very effective, they can have harmful effects ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Renwick, Professor of Agricultural Economics, Lincoln University, New Zealand This month the federal government announced a plan to ban live sheep exports, set to come into effect from May 1 2028. The announcement coincided with the release of a highly ...
Another technical answer: ‘no one really knows.’ It smells like hot fat and fish. You hug the warm bundle of newspaper, translucent with grease, swaddling it like a newborn babe. Behind the counter is a small child doing her homework, and the grumpiest Chinese lady in the world. Above you, ...
New Zealanders are being called on to give Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones “the finger” in a cheeky new campaign that aims to dramatically boost marine protection in Aotearoa. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Rawlence, Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago Auckland Island merganser. Artistic reconstruction by J. G. Keulemans from Bullers Birds of New Zealand (1888)Bullers Birds of New Zealand, Author provided Ask a bird lover if they have heard of ...
Leaders from three of the biggest political parties addressed party faithful over the weekend, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A weekend ...
Kia ora, welcome to Windbag, The Spinoff’s new Wellington issues column, written by me, Joel MacManus. In this first edition, I take a closer look at the first half of Tory Whanau’s term as mayor. If you want to understand Wellington’s local political landscape, you need to start in 2013 ...
A taonga going under the hammer at an Auckland auction house tonight is expected to fetch thousands. But concerns have been raised about its unclear provenance – and about the law that’s meant to protect it. Eda Tang reports. When Tamatea* received the huia feather they bought from a licensed ...
One issue that all the leaders of the coalition Government have agreed on is the expansion of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. Established in 2007, the scheme allows workers from participating Pacific countries to come to New Zealand to take up roles on a short-term basis. For the government, it’s ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Monday 20 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
The last person anyone expected to see at last week’s Ockham national book awards was Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. He was made to feel as welcome as a plague. He was mocked, and challenged. But good on him for coming. His presence gave the awards an edge, a tension, which ...
Sir Geoffrey Palmer, author of the seminal book Unbridled Power challenging Muldoon-era decision-making,says the Fast-Track Approvals Bill is a bigger threat to constitutional government The post A fast track to environmental degradation appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Uncertainty is an overwhelming theme for two seabed mining projects aiming to use the Government’s controversial fast-track regime The post Seabed miners: What we know and what we don’t appeared first on Newsroom. ...
It’s the 38th birthday present Jo Aleh never expected to receive. Last Monday, Aleh and her sailing partner, Molly Meech, flew home to Auckland from Marseille, where they’d been training for their Paris Olympics campaign in the 49erFX. Within a couple of hours of touching down, they were out on ...
“It might feel like the country is slogging it up the hill at the moment,” Finance Minister Nicola Willis tells party faithful in Palmerston North on Sunday, “But we’re gonna get to the top of the hill, and it’s downhill on the other side. And the reason it’s downhill is ...
NC La Première television reports on the clearing of barricades after a week of protests and rioting in the capital Nouméa. Video: NC 1ère TVBy Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk With New Caledonia about to enter its second week of deadly riots, French authorities have mounted ...
Asia Pacific Report Pacific civil society and solidarity groups today stepped up their pressure on the French government, accusing it of a “heavy-handed” crackdown on indigenous Kanak protest in New Caledonia, comparing it to Indonesian security forces crushing West Papuan dissent. A state of emergency was declared last week, at ...
On May 18, the Taiwanese community in Christchurch came together for the "Health for All, Taiwan Can Help" march, urging the World Health Organization (WHO) to grant Taiwan participation. ...
The instability comes as the party tries to refresh its brand after six years of being part of a right-wing, pro-imperialist government with both the Labour Party and, from 2017-2020, the far-right NZ First Party. ...
Based on the latest Treasury forecasts, New Zealand Government debt will tick above $90,000 per household for the first time ever at 10pm today, Sunday 19 May 2024. The Taxpayers’ Union is calling it “$90k Debt Day”. Commenting on this, Taxpayers’ ...
Arawata Shane Arawata Shane had wandered long In the wild tangled hills of the West Coast. He came to a stop on the mighty range And looked down at the wide river flats. He breathed in the clean air, And he took in the shadows playing across The face of ...
SPECIAL REPORT:Islands Business in Suva Today is the 24th anniversary of renegade and failed businessman George Speight’s coup in 2000 Fiji. The elected coalition government headed by Mahendra Chaudhry, the first and only Indo-Fijian prime minister of Fiji, was held hostage at gunpoint for 56 days in the country’s ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist and Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific digital journalist Police have used tear gas and stun grenades on rioters at an airport near Nouméa as the chaos in New Caledonia stretched into its sixth day. Five people, including two police officers, have died and hundreds of ...
Asia Pacific ReportThe global human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called on France to not “misuse” a crackdown in the ongoing unrest in the non-self-governing French Pacific territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in the wake of a controversial vote by the French Parliament to adopt a bill changing the territory’s ...
A major provider of school lunches fears the government's new $3 limit for most students will see them eating more pre-packaged and processed food. ...
The star of Dark City: The Cleaner takes us through his life in TV, including the VHS revolution and the John Campbell impression that started it all. Best known for his comedic roles, Cohen Holloway says he struggled at times to maintain the stone cold facade of serial killer on ...
David Hill remembers an old friend, who you’ve probably never heard of. My friend Doug never travelled; he had little interest in the world beyond his own tiny rural town. I’ve rarely known anyone who radiated such contentment. Doug (I’ll call him that) died in March. You won’t know him. ...
Some of the earliest photos of life in Aotearoa are on display at Auckland Museum right now – but the identities of some of the people in them are a mystery.What was it like to be one of the first people in New Zealand to have their photo taken? ...
Since its founding almost a decade ago, Featherston Booktown has grown into one of the country’s most interesting and idiosyncratic literary events. Erin Banks reports from the audience. “Come in, have you had lunch? I’m about to make a cheese toastie.” Mary Biggs, operations manager of Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival, ...
After 33 years abroad, Loveni Enari recently returned to Aotearoa and Samoa in what a friend joked was an “existential crisis”. He learnt and re-learnt so much about his family, friends and both countries. Almost as an afterthought, he got a Samoan tatau. This is his story. (Accompanying it are ...
Nearly 30 years ago, two people told me they’d killed a woman they knew. I thought the truth would come out, that others would tell it. In the end, I had to. The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Fact: in 1995, Angela Blackmoore ...
Editor Madeleine Chapman looks back at the week and shines a light on some increasingly rare longform journalism. Mōrena and welcome to The Weekend where there will sadly be no aurora to see. After a busy week last week of short, sharp pieces, this week we swung the other way, ...
ANALYSIS:By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a revered Kanak visionary, was inspirational to indigenous Pacific political activists across Oceania, just like Tongan anthropologist and writer Epeli Hao’ofa was to cultural advocates. Tragically, he was assassinated in 1989 by an opponent within the independence movement during ...
Forget thin is in, apparently now bigger is better … or is it? After over a decade of body positivity, girls, teens and women are even more confused about what body positivity actually is. The movement began with women confronting unrealistic expectations of how their bodies should look. But sub-strands ...
Grace always sat at the bar at the back of The Cambridge, where she could watch who came in. A huge mirror ran the length of the pub, so you could sometimes watch people without them knowing. The mirror made the place seem a lot bigger than it really was. ...
MONDAY Sheriff Mark Mitchell rose at dawn. He had a long day’s ride ahead of him. He was headed for Waikeria. Waikeria! Even the name itself stirred his blood, and set root in his imagination. There was nothing and no one in Waikeria. But he would bend it to his ...
The first phase of the inquest into the death of Gore toddler Lachlan Jones finished this week, turning up plenty of revelations and few answers. But through all the confusion, heartbreak and antipathy on display, the simple fact at the heart of this case remains: if little Lachie’s body had ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Benjamin, Professor in Art History, University of Sydney “She’s no oil painting”. Those were the unkind words of a colleague commenting on the subject of Vincent Namatjira’s acrylic painting, Gina. Every one of the prominent Australians and cultural heroes in Namatjira’s ...
Government plans to require local councils hold a referendum on whether to have Māori wards breaches the Treaty of Waitangi, a Waitangi Tribunal report has found. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney This year the National Rugby League (NRL) opened its season in Las Vegas. It was an audacious move by the league’s ambitious head honcho Peter V’Landys to showcase the game in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Strong, Associate Professor, Music Industry, RMIT University Leading music organisations have praised the federal budget for its investment in the live music sector. The budget includes A$8.6 million for a program called Revive Live: to provide essential support to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marnee Shay, Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, The University of Queensland The 2024 federal budget contains A$110 million for Indigenous education. This includes funding for various different organisations to represent and help Indigenous people as well as scholarships in a bid to ...
Air New Zealand has confirmed Nouméa’s Tontouta International airport in New Caledonia is closed until Tuesday. The airline earlier told RNZ it would update customers as soon as it could. Earlier today, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report government officials had been working on an “hourly basis” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Linley, PhD Candidate in Ecology, Charles Sturt University Grant Linley Australia’s unprecedented Black Summer bushfires in 2019–20 created ideal conditions for misinformation to spread, from the insidious to the absurd. It was within this context that a bizarre story ...
Excerpts from a thought provoking article
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/106628206/ive-found-the-solution-to-the-housing-crisis-and-its-been-here-all-along
No doubt King, Lewis and the other pimps for this unethical industry defend this.
Under the normal tenancy rules this is not acceptable! I’m pretty sure the tenancy tribunal under existing rules would rule in the tenants favour for it to be remedied and probably give them a rent reduction for the inconvenience. The tenants would just have to give a 10 day letter to landlord. Also if they had called the council (even anonymously) they could have got some action as it is leaking into the neighbours property.
They stayed because they would struggle to find another rental due to having a dog and in the price range and probably needing parking if they are a tradie.
So all these Wellington ideas of intensification and more apartments are not going to help the majority of kiwi renters who live this type of lifestyle, just Singapore investors and foreign students …because apartments don’t suit kiwi families aka dogs and Utes and small kids running around in a backyard. (obviously not that one by the state of it!).
The old state houses would have been perfect… and it is a shame that whoever is making the decisions on housing seems to have zero idea of their market and what is required and leads by talking to the construction industry and self interested groups, about what is needed and keeps adding more people into Auckland’s struggling infrastructure and the wealthier ones are much better off than those who don’t have a lot and their needs are not being thought of at all.
Very few people actually live that lifestyle and there’s a question of it even being a good lifestyle.
Personally I’d prefer to see kids playing together in the park with the parents socialising together while watching over them. I believe it would help build a much better community.
And tradies shouldn’t be taking the work vehicle home. It should be staying at the work depot and they take public transport home.
The old housing system that we can no longer afford was an ideological construct brought about by the idea that with cars we no longer needed the high density housing of previous centuries. Climate change has proven that we were wrong.
I suspect that the market for apartments is growing while the demand for stand-alone housing is shrinking considering how many apartment buildings are being built around Auckland.
I’d be saying that’s a very nice illustrative example of why NZ needs a Registry of Landlords. Local bodies (councils) could administer and oversee such a register that should be searchable by (at least) registration number that all landlords would be required to attach to all adverts etc. And yes, applications to register should come with a fee to cover admin and management costs and registration should require periodic renewal.
Any non-registered person renting out a property would then be guilty of a criminal offense.
How long before long drawn out situations like that featured in the Campbell piece don’t happen any more?
That landlord loses their registration. They then break the law, and are up for a very hefty fine or jail time if they attempt to collect rent.
I’d say that the reason these tenants didn’t move out, was that they couldn’t get anywhere else, aka shortage of rental properties that suit them and they may have other issues like bad credit history which is fairly common in NZ with our low wage, low financial nous, precariat lifestyle championed by successive governments to make everyone “competitive” … so if they start putting together a registry of landlords (which is crazy when they don’t even have a regulatory body for rental agents) then low and behold they are putting more paperwork and reasons not to rent out your house…
This bad landlord that should have been sent a letter at the start of the tenancy, is he even a Kiwi landlord or a new migrant landlord who doesn’t care about the rules?
The tenants didn’t go to the tribunal because they did not seem that convinced they could get somewhere better and that house is still half the cost of that one room $1000 p/w emergency hotel… that the government feel is ok to put the beneficiaries in (which they technically have to pay back).
It’s a nit picking slope of issues, we have homelessness and huge demand for emergency housing directly caused by government policy of selling off state houses and evicting people, not doing anything about meth, and overloading the housing market with new residents, not cleaning up construction years ago, but pandering to them and allowing a profit driven housing market that is more expensive than most nations.
Did you not watch the video link?
The woman quite clearly explained why she and her partner and children hadn’t simply moved out – none of the reasons contained in your comment btw. And as for your speculative xenophobic tosh…yeah, noted.
Currently in NZ, it is really bloody difficult to hold a landlord to account. A Registry would at the very least weed out the most unscrupulous landlords, with fear of loss of registration (with subsequent criminal proceedings for anyone tempted to rent “on the fly”) acting as a nice incentive for those closer to the floor of acceptability.
It’s not a “cure all” and doesn’t in any way dismiss or deny any of the 1001 other factors impacting on the rental environment.
Cool … zero problem with a register of ‘problem landlords’. It would be a good for the industry, and impose a minimum standards and professionalism. It’s a role MBIE could manage effectively and as long as it was open to challenge and accountability I’d welcome it.
Now can I have the same kind of register for problem tenants please?
I think the costs associated with a landlord registry would outweigh any benefit.
The best system is the one we’ve got. Works fine when used as it should be. Over 90% of cases heard by the Tenancy Tribunal are brought about by landlords.
Crook tenants vs crook landlords seems to run at about 20 to 1.
dawn Robbie is well aware of how best to get a result, She and Cameron took their landlord to the tribunal in 2016 and won.
Their property shares a water supply that services 2 properties. There is no separate check meter. The landlord was advised that he can’t charge them for water. He illegally charged them a letting fee. He was ordered to repay it. The landlord was ordered to immediately lodge the bond, if not, he award exemplary charges to the tenant of $1000.
The landlord was ordered to repay Dawn and her partner the $20.44 Tribunal fee to have their case heard.
The best approach is not another layer of bureaucracy, it is to use the existing system. Post the landlord a 14 day notice to comply (just like the ones he sends out) there’s a template on the MBIE tenancy website.
Like Dawn and Cameron’s 2016 hearing, Most Tribunal orders are public information.
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/TTV2/101648931.pdf
I say let the Tribunal Adjudicators continue to rip strips off the very few exploitive landlords. Continue to hit them where it hurts, in their greedy pockets. Their public orders are a great way to keep tabs on dud landlords and tenants alike.
‘Problem’ landlords and tenants might wish to rehabilitate themselves off these proposed registers, so as to regain access to income and shelter (respectively.) Hopefully there would be equitable protocols for this.
Of course, the humbug landlords have the option of cashing out, and presumably the humbug tenants could access state housing and cars (the agony of choice), and maybe even assistance to address behavioural and mental health ‘problems’.
Or just replace ‘landlords’ with lords and ‘tenants’ with serfs (what’s a lord to do with ‘problem serfs’?) – where we’re heading (back to), for as long as it lasts.
@DM: “Crook tenants vs crook landlords seems to run at about 20 to 1” – that’s remarkable, especially if there’s a 1:1 ratio of serfs to lords.
Yeah the archaic language really doesn’t help. The resentment across the board is an obstacle to modernising the whole business.
It’s hard to guess what the actual numbers are. Certainly there are more tenants than landlords, probably in a ratio of about 5:1. (Wild arsed guess. It’s greater than 1:1 and probably less than 10:1)
From experience about 10% of tenants cause some form of problem, and I’d imagine a lower number applies to landlords as they have a substantial asset in the game, say 2%. That would work out at a bad tenant to landlord ratio of about 25:1 so given these very rough assumptions David Macs guess is not totally out of the ballpark.
However one bad landlord will likely affect around 5 tenants so this will even things out somewhat. Also the distribution of landlords to number of units is highly non-linear; most have only 1 or 2 units, with only a minority running more than 10. (This complicates any analysis quite a lot, although if I could be arsed wheeling out my rather rusty statistical analysis it would possible to put up a more accurate interpretation.)
Good tenents can find themselves ‘dehomed’ at short notice. Even good landlords sometimes need (cf. ‘want’) to sell, but knowing no-one has a choice doesn’t make a tenent’s situation any easier. Like the ‘poor’ manager who agonises over the decision of who to let go in a downturn, it’s the sacked who really do it hard.
NZ is a wealthy country (total wealth goes up and up – growth is good), so why this “resentment across the board”? Is the level of resentment unusually high in NZ (no idea; surprised it’s not higher tbh), and, if so, why?
Redistribution of wealth, reversing the trend that has the richest 10% of NZ households controlling half of NZ’s wealth (more than half now), while the poorest 40% of households ‘get by’ on 3%, might ameliorate that resentment.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/307458/10-percent-richest-kiwis-own-60-percent-of-nz%27s-wealth
As discussed on The Standard, and elsewhere, it’s simple maths to show the tremendous difference even a small % redistribution would make to those poorest 40% of households. But there will be no significant redistribution. The ‘business as usual’ trend will continue and deliver lords and serfs to ‘New’ Zealand.
Will the new lords/serfs society be more resilient in the face of economic and environmental pressures? We can only hope…
Dawn Robbie knows the procedure to go through, she has done it before and won. If she has provided her landlord with notices to comply she is in the box seat for $1000’s of exemplary charges. I think there is a good chance an adjudicator would demand that paid rent be returned to Dawn and her partner for the duration of the under-house swamp situation.
I find it odd that Dawn chose to ring the John Campbell Show. I wonder if she might like the idea of a state house, rent set at a third of their income.
As per the ratbag landlord list Bill suggests, the existing system works. A search of Dawn’s landlord ‘Mandeep Pala’ reveals a man with form. First of all trying to slither out from his responsibility by saying its a company ‘Southern Assets Limited’ that makes the decisions. The adjudicator saw through it and called ‘Humbug’.
About a year ago he was ordered to return all of the rent paid by a tenant for a home that was technically a garage: $9200 returned to the tenant along with the max exemplary damages: $1000. A bill for $10240 and here Mandeep is again, man deep in poo.
Strange Dawn hasn’t checked out his form and nailed him to the yard arm again.
Mandeep’s other tribunal dealing.
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/TTV2/122681833.pdf
I’d say if the tenant has won before at the tribunal then maybe she waited for 21 months and then went for max media attention so perhaps a chance at free rent for that entire time?
Why else wait 21 months with her children getting sick and not going to the tribunal first to get an order to remedy when she has already won before a tribunal and moved in knowing it has drainage issues?
Who knows the motivation, a match made in heaven for MSM and the tribunal will go to town on this extreme example, and now got the housing minister wading in (ha ha) , possibly he could have be a bit more cautious before he went out there telling everyone how common a situation it was.
Really???
Yes, finding a rental is getting tougher.
I think we need a government that rewards good landlords and tenants alike. Makes it harder for exploiters on both sides.
Gear the Govt paid housing supplement to favourable outcomes for both parties, It doesn’t need to be adversarial. Gear the govt supp towards tenants needs. eg: A 2 year lease at a fixed rent with a 10% rise in the govt paid component will ultimately save money all round. Starting with kids not swapping schools every 6 months.
Red logic tenants have to provide references. That is the protection for landlords.
Besides which landlords are landlords out of choice. One of the risks of buying property to rent out is that you may encounter bad tenants. If you don’t like that as a possibility invest your money elsewhere.
Whereas everyone needs a roof over their heads, not a lifestyle option.
I did rent out my house when I left Auckland and thought I might return so didn’t want to risk not being able to get back into the market. I believe I was a good landlord and my home was better insulated for my tenants than when I lived there. Fair enough, they were paying me a reasonable amount to stay there. When I finally sold it realtor told more I could have been charging $100 more a week, and was surprised when I told him that didn’t bother me as I was getting a fair rent
The suggestion, taken from pre-existing legislation elsewhere, isn’t for a register of “problem landlords”, but for a registration process to apply to landlords.
Meaning, that if you are on the register, it’s a good thing.
If you aren’t, and have no pending application, and are trying to rent residential property (whether directly or through an agent) then you’re breaking criminal law.
As for problem tenants, don’t landlords these days almost insist on a dossier of past references? And what with social media the way it is, and already routinely “checked out” by employers, I’m pretty damned sure a landlord could get a good sense of who or what a person is on the sly.
Nah some landlords just ask you to meet them at the house, park around the corner then when you turn up ring you on your cellphone to say the flat is gone.
That’s not everyone. Just if you’re Maori or Pacifica.
They said the didn’t move out because they had a dog, he was a roofer and they couldn’t just keep moving around. But the question is, they could have written a letter asking for it to be rectified in 10 days, and gone to the tribunal why didn’t they?
They were in there for a long period of time without doing anything about it and then went to the media rather than tribunal or council or send a letter to the landlord? Why is that?
There is ample protection for them under the law.
We get this type of story every time the construction industry or right wingers won’t labour’s polls to go down..
Many homeowners actually have their entire houses fall down due to bad construction and then they become renters while paying for repairs and a mortgage, for example but don’t see the politicians doing much about that or giving them compensation instead just giving more hand outs to construction and happy with the appalling jobs councils are doing and of course the click bait, bad landlord story to divert attention away from major issues going on.
The underlying issue is to do with bad construction and some sort of illegal set up of their drainage…
We’d be better off with a register of tradies AND the unqualified people they employ like a LOG on site work, because it’s often not the registered tradies doing the work, and somehow registered tradies who sign it off, just get away with bad workmanship from unqualified people. Then the council aka the rate payers paying for bad work that the council employees have often approved because developers and tradies can just set up new companies and avoid responsibility.
One hopes the Government will ensure councils have the oversight in place to deal with the increase in construction of new homes.
The last thing Labour needs in the run up to the next election is reports of thousands of newly built kiwibuild and state homes requiring major repairs due to shoddy workmanship.
You say, any non-registered person renting out a property would then be guilty of a criminal offense.
Therefore, under your proposal if a landlord loses their registration, tenants will be forced out.
Even if rent is suspended, technically it will still be a tenanted rental.
You say, councils could administer and oversee such a register. Yet, councils are money hungry beasts, hence would soon seek to turn that into a lucrative new revenue stream (above and beyond administration costs) for themselves.
And of course, landlords would look to pass on any new costs incurred.
Therefore, a better option (if we were to go down that track) would be a national register overseen by central government with admin costs funded from the fines they dish out. Avoiding stinging landlords who comply while avoiding costs being passed on.
And tenants can leave feedback the same way that users can leave feedback on Trade-me.
/agreed
Combined with a decent ownership registry that allows people to find out who owns what.
The council can’t even read it’s own resource consent rules, for gods sake half of Auckland (and it’s spreading to other cities) is under remedial work as it is, often signed off by council. The last person anybody would want to see, is the council administering rentals. They can’t even handle the basics.
How many more landlord bodies are there going to be, a WOF, the tenancy tribunal and a log of landlords?
Deary me, I wonder why there is a rental shortage… with these wonderful ideas floating around to “stem’ the shortage based on getting rid of all the bad landlords and properties. Wonderful, now they are gone, is the state going to provide the thousands of cheap, safe, warm rentals, that will be needed tomorrow?
must rank up there like Kiwibuild where you evict the tenants for years to rebuild their rental while selling off the rest of the land and therefore having no capacity for future state house builds when you are actively trying to grow the low wage economy as fast as possible, subsidise construction and deregulate it while tuning a blind eye to all the unskilled unqualified people working on the jobs, and keeping foreign speculation going to keep prices high so banks like you.
Then believe the free market fairy will provide private accomodation for all the growing low wage families and beneficiaries who have bad credit ratings out of the kindness of their hearts, while the state gives the multimillionaires in construction and banks more help.
Sounds like something out of Yes Minister savenz
‘Where did you get that preposterous idea. Civil servant Sir Humphrey
‘Oh I just thought of it. PM Jim Jacker.
That was about not giving awards to civil servants unless they had earned them. With a litany of lulus that you have set out, it seems time to start the 2nd Labours of Hercules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules
The council professionals in housing would fit one of the Labours, just before or after cleaning the Augean stables which actually, housed the single greatest number of cattle in the country and had never been cleaned. (This could be expanded to modern feedlots.)
How about the government and council stops demolishing cheaper homes for roads and Housing corporation houses for re-devleoperment for a start and stop allowing more and more people to settle here to compete on low wages or for housing.
Homes slated for demolition to be used as emergency housing
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018651008/homes-slated-for-demolition-to-be-used-as-emergency-housing
Someone needs to ask the housing minister “how much security of tenure you get in a house marked for demolition or an emergency hotel”?
Sounds good. Let’s keep at it for change at all levels but particularly
the simple practical, with space at the doorstep for big plastic tubs growing vegs and flowers, and covered clothes lines, and waist high fences to allocate an area that is for the tenant to enjoy and look after. Little things that mean a lot.
And for the homeless and recovering and recent prisoners; concrete shelters, with cream painted walls, and concrete floors with drainage in one corner so that they can be easily cleaned. Practical, safe, warm and a basic level of comfort, identity and sanitation, and overview to keep reasonable standards.
The irony is that Labour fucked up 2 elections by pandering to identity housing groups and hypocritical or unpractical housing positions.
Now they got in, effectively with Kiwibuild they are screwing the renters and helping the home owners while throwing previous elections by loudly campaigning for renters while forgetting 60% of voters are homeowners.
To be as unpopular as possible once elected they are emotionally screaming “lift your game or get out” to landlords most of whom the home owners identify with and forgetting the government is one of the worst offenders of evicting people.
Whose their strategist, Basile Fawlty?
Who said anything about them administering rentals (Although I believe that they did a good job of that when they had council flats). Keeping a registry of landlords would probably come down to the central government rather than councils as a landlord could own a house anywhere in the country and many would be offshore owners.
Just one.
So, you think keeping bad landlords that cost individuals and the state huge amounts of money and cause grief for individuals should be kept around because they provide housing?
Have you noticed the housing crisis that is allowing these scum to get super-profits?
The problem is that they aren’t. Housing should be a right and the government should be ensuring that everyone has a good place to live.
rentals ?
A journalism student finds rentals exist?
Well he seem to have found click bait headlines as well
Does Barry Soper support the white theft of African land?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12116038
Soper considers Trump’s contribution as being decisive and gives him credit. Clearly in recent months the situation was evolving every which way and who knows, the latest steps might have nothing to do with Trump’s tweeting. No matter, Trump’s a hero.
If someone in the New Zealand Parliament had tweeted something about another country would Soper have turned out a column criticising it as an intrusion into the politics of another country?
Interestingly the stat’s for murdered farmers in RSA is at it’s lowest in twenty years.
What about murdered farm workers ?
Soper conveniently forgets to mention that land reforms were part of the agreement that ended apartheid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_Two_of_the_Constitution_of_South_Africa#Property
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/03/this-land-is-our-land/
Thanks for cleaning up that Sope scum Ed. Appreciated.
Nice pun
Specialty Trainees of New Zealand, or SToNZ.
Smells very fishy.
They seem to be as similar to a union as the Taxpayers Union.
Wonder who is behind this group?
Jordan Williams?
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/365240/junior-doctors-warn-new-hospital-rosters-wreck-training-bad-for-patients
I listened to the doctor representing this new Union on RNZ this morning and he made a lot of sense.
Wonder if we will see nurses form a new Union?
No links to Taxpayers “union”. STONZ is a genuine union, affiliated to the Council of Trade Unions.
No links to ACTing up?
Tee hee! No, I’m an actor.
Ed : The judge of everything –
Did you listen to the trainee doctor discussing the problems of getting the necessary training in his specialty – orthopaedics?
Good point he made was that if you are on in weekend you get crash victims, emergencies.l But that is only part of the work and is rather different than seeing the daily patients booked in for electives, chosen surgery for their problem.
I thought he was cogent and any animosity I had about this ‘breakaway union’ went away after hearing him.
It is refreshing to see a government Minister standing up to foreign owned banks and not grovelling to them.
Now the Government should put their money where their mouth is and close down their account with Westpac.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/106593175/shane-jones-slams-aussieowned-banks-for-shutting-branches-in-provincial-nz
No chance ,Westpacs David McClean was a lead speaker at the business confidence meeting,and down played pessimism.
It would be very ungracious to strip them of their Govt business.
Keep $6 billion the country.
Close down foreign banks operating here.
I’m not fond of using the reductio ad absurdum but you do know what happens to countries that have closed virtually all borders, don’t you? Does Albania ring a bell, or even North-Korea?
Let’s try and bring some nuance into the debate. Comments that lack any nuance either get ignored here or attract an equally simplistic or absurd reflexive response. It doesn’t get us anywhere except to further polarise and antagonise people; not much progressive about that, is there?
It has been done before.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/24d.asp
In 1982 French President Francois Mitterand tried to nationalize all the banks in France.
It was a fucking moronic idea pushed by the Communist faction within his government, with weak reasoning.
These and the other nationalisations early in the first term helped contribute to a French economic recession.
It was a total disaster.
The communists were pushed out nice and fast, and Mitterand went on to be France’s longest-serving President.
Privatisation hasn’t been a raging success either – but it still went ahead.
Privatisation has caused major increases in poverty and trashed the economy but the rich are doing well so it’s allowed to stand. The will of the people is ignored.
Mitterand was unusual in having been a right-wing political activist when young, then ending up a socialist president. If you examine his trajectory, little evidence of any socialist conviction becomes apparent. Easy to see his bombing of the Rainbow warrior as a global signal that the imperial left will never merge with the Green movement. His imperialism seems more authentic than his leftism.
I recall his switch back to the right making the headlines when his leftist economic policy failed dramatically. This pragmatism achieved his record-breaking durability as president. However, underlying that was a lifetime of copying Stalin: using a medial line between left & right, with the leverage of the political center as a position of strength to operate from, switching tactical alignments when necessary. Winston Peters has spent a quarter-century trying to teach his fellow kiwis how effective this praxis is.
Dennis Frank
Interesting.
Watch to see how modern private banking works.
You want us to watch a Full Movie? And after that? Another one?
Sorry, I pass.
Scared of becoming educated?
Try it in small pieces. It won’t hurt – really.
http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/banking-101-video-course/
Yeah, that’s much more like it, thank you!
However, I disagree with you that education doesn’t hurt; it hurts a lot and once you know things you cannot unknow them. Hence the saying “ignorance is bliss”.
It is not really necessary to nationalize the banks; it is only necessary to stop them creating money out of nothing.
Either or, beggars can’t be chooses.
How do you think Électricité de France, Gaz de France, Air France etc were created. They were state creations in the late 40s.
There was a history behind Frances actions., which included
“With a wide-reaching 1982 nationalization law, the government took over the major industrial groups CGE, Péchiney, Rhône-Poulenc, Saint Gobain, and Thomson; defense manufacturers Dassault-Bréguet and Matra; steel giants Usinor and Sacilor; computer companies Bull and ITT-France; and the pharmaceutical lab Roussel-UCLAF; along with the country’s thirty-six biggest banks—all at a cost of fifty-eight billion francs to the taxpayer.
The state ownership allowed better managed transitions for some
declining industries
‘Faced first with cheaper coal imports in the 1960s, and then opting in the 1970s to develop nuclear power, the government put in place a decades-long plan to wind down Charbonnages de France’s coal mining and power generation activities. The company gradually shrank its work force by relying exclusively on retirements and transfers to other public companies. From its peak in 1946, when Charbonnages employed 350,000 miners, to 2004 when the last coal mine in France shuttered its shafts, the company didn’t lay off a single worker.”
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/lessons-from-the-nationalization-nation-state-owned-enterprises-in-france
All good examples of a moderate, evolutionary policy, implemented incrementally over a period of decades. No doubt underlying that brief description above, there was much complexity and compromise needed to make it all work. In places it was probably messy and imperfect.
And at the same time largely successful French private entities, Peugeot and Schneider Electric come to mind as examples, continued to operate and thrive. The French didn’t make the radical mistake of going all neo-liberal and privatising everything not nailed down, nor neo-marxist extreme of nationalising the same. They steered a pragmatic path down the middle and came through their post-WW2 crisis reasonably well.
A decades long plan across multiple industries that only the government can do – as long as it doesn’t have any RWNJs come in and fuck things up. Private companies, no matter how big they are, don’t seem able to maintain plans that last for decades. They only seem to operate for short term profit.
Yes … that aligns nicely with the view that state enterprise is best for managing long-term multigenerational risks, while private enterprise scales better for the short-term. Both have a complementary place.
It’s a question neatly captured by Arnold Nordmeyer’s rhetorical question “do we want the state running corner dairies?”.
‘They steered a pragmatic path down the middle and came through their post-WW2 crisis reasonably well.’
They certainly didn’t forget their humiliation by Germany quickly or their colonisation mindset.
Africa,Vietnam and the Rainbow Warrior attest to..that.
Exploitation by privatising water in Africa was all done in the best possible taste..no doubt.
‘French multinationals—Saur, Suez and Vivendi—have been the main companies involved in the water business in Africa but in the last few years Portugual’s Aguas de Portugal and the British company Biwater have entered the scene. Currently, Vivendi is involved in Burkina Faso, Gabon and Niger; Suez in South Africa; and Biwater in the Republic of Congo. The PSIRU report reveals that privatisations are planned in Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, amongst others.
Despite IMF pressure, the privatisation of water in Africa has proceeded with difficulty in the last few years. In the PSIRU report a number of cases are given where negotiations over contracts or existing contracts between multinationals and governments broke down. Revelations from Vivendi staff at a Kampala conference indicate the problem. They explained that private firms would invest only if there are “guarantees securing the flow of payments by the municipalities or governments” and/or “sufficient and assured revenues from the users of the service.”
Having worked in the water industry for almost a decade I’m very aware of the issues around the public/private split. The core problem is that water supply is fundamental human need and cannot be permitted to fail. This makes it a very politically sensitive industry.
In general fully privatised water provision is a bad idea. Equally there are no examples of totally public provision either. (Even the most staunchly public utility is still utterly dependent on a myriad of private sector suppliers and contractors to operate effectively.)
In very simple terms, the optimum arrangement seems to be where a public body owns the asset (aquifers, plants, pipes and pumping stations, etc) while some form of commercial entity operates and maintains them. Managed intelligently you retain local control of the asset, it’s maintenance, investment and pricing … while accessing the efficiencies of scale from large vendors who bring real expertise and best practise global standards to the table,
A sure, risk free bet required to invest’…’They explained that private firms would invest only if there are “guarantees securing the flow of payments by the municipalities or governments” and/or “sufficient and assured revenues from the users of the service.”
Please put some effort into it if you want to convince people.
Just providing a link to the banking environment in the US in the 1820s does not constitute an argument. By clicking on that link TS readers should understand and come to the conclusion that it can and has to be done? And by “it” you presumably mean waging war on the Ozzie banks and kicking them out of NZ (nationalising?)?
Politics is contest of ideas that requires effort and persuasion (which means appealing to both reason as well as emotion).
Somebody once said that war is the continuation of politics by other means but you seem to want to skip the peaceful approach and go straight for the last resort?
For the record, I do think that the power and influence of the global corporate banking industry needs to be curbed especially in domestic affairs. Whether you agree with that and how we’d go about it are the issues to be addressed.
A considerable amount of work has been done on this in recent decades by many who have reframed the historical binary in an attempt to learn from history. When the ridiculous extremes of nationalisation & privatisation are eliminated from contention, the middle way becomes the path to progress.
This tertiary stakeholder design has also been trialled historically, so we ought to be learning from the successes & failures that have been analysed. If community banks are chartered on a local stakeholder design, they can services businesses in a bioregion context, to build both local & regional resilience. As long as everyone is able to participate in both design & governance to some extent, that crowd-sourcing ought to be able to generate perceptions of the common interests of all being catered for.
However critical mass has yet to be attained: complacency of the majority ensures that dependency on the capitalists will persist until the tipping point of sufficient desperation is reached. The visible desperate seem to prefer living under bridges to collective organising for a better future.
On the nail Dennis!. This is where the left must focus it’s energy in order to be effective. Radicals only discredit us. The majority of people, with real justification, will regard them with deep suspicion, and all moderate left wingers if we fail dissociate ourselves from them.
Hi Dennis, I really appreciate your engaging and considerate comments & replies here on TS.
What do you mean with “perceptions”? Surely, you mean “realities”?
Regarding the “complacency of the majority”, do you think this is wilful or possibly caused by lack of or poor education, lack of or poor journalism, lack of public intellectuals, or some other reasons altogether? Any conscious change starts (or ends) with awareness …
Well, that’s good to know. 🙂 Both perceptions & realities are required for success, it’s just that whereas the latter is essential to structure the emerging new social reality, perceptions must shift so that participants become conscious of that emergence.
That’s because participants are more influential when they are actors rather than passive folk unconsciously going along with the new flow.
To your point about awareness: that perception of shift induces awareness. Complacency is primarily caused by culture, but I agree the factors you suggest all contribute. So the key to mass transformation is not just for individuals to operate as catalysts & lead by example, but for some of them to achieve gnosis around how to exercise even more leverage via organising – and then co-create groups for that purpose.
Totally agree. Ed’s narrow totalitarian thinking has been proven a catastrophe everywhere it has ever been implemented, but this doesn’t cause him the slightest moment’s concern.
Indeed economic catastrophe and social breakdown would appear to be quite welcomed by these revolutionary types; although they’d never actually say so out loud. And then there is the false assumption that it would never affect them because they’ve got the right ideology and everyone else will do the suffering.
I suspect Ed is all key board and no action
An ex banker !
His obsession with the french banks and ignored the other industrial groups bought under state control shows that
What’s banning foreign ownership got to do with closing the borders?
And yet your own comment lacks nuance and also includes a false dichotomy and a false equivalence.
Basically, it seems that you’re talking out your arse to scare people.
Odd question. A foreigner comes in, it doesn’t have to be literally, buys or invests into something here and thus owns or part-owns it and the ownership crosses the border, legally and economically.
Depends on how you read it but in any case you’re not helping much either in engaging in a constructive discussion, sadly.
I do indeed talk out of my arse an awful lot and I’m trying to lift my game to talking from my guts & belly (gut instinct) to talking from my mouth but it is lifelong process; care to be more specific? How and why would I want “to scare people” and about what? Are we still talking about Ozzie banks or have you moved to a completely different topic without issuing a memo?
I must say that your comment is a good example of a reflexive response that neither helps to build bridges nor to generate (an) understanding; it is an attempt to pull & put down without a sign of empathy or respect and no option for reconciliation or a way forward (or out …). Your absolutisms lack nuance [you like this oxymoron?].
No. It’s a perfectly valid question from your assertion that anybody even suggested closing the borders.
No, that would be delusional BS. But, then, the entire economic theory is delusional BS.
Banning foreign ownership still allows trade in actual products and that’s all that trade should be.
To keep the status quo that is making NZ poorer.
RW aristos bringing their fine sentiments into play to control the rabble’s practical ideas of what the country needs bring amusement.
Blazer
No chance ,Westpacs David McClean was a lead speaker at the business confidence meeting,and down played pessimism.
It would be very ungracious to strip them of their Govt business.
Like being ungracious (ungrateful) to Westpac for saying some positive things about present financial situation (not getting stuck into Labour because they can). Pragmatically, it illustrates a reason to stay with Westpac while they see it to their business advantage not to play anti-politics while they have so much to gain from their government contract.
(This old man should keep on giving the dog a bone.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxfiFOHtwUA&vl=en
.National Party Wairarapa MP Alastair Scott said the closures reflected the commercial reality of modern banking, and if there were enough people using local branches the banks would keep them open,
“The commercial reality of modern banking” that National Party MPs celebrate is to make huge profits from land sales to the world, creating a huge bubble that, following the history of other bubbles, has created large profit expectations and dragged investment away from other business sectors needed for our economy, and like an inflated balloon not tied off will result in a large farting noise as it travels madly pinging off solid surfaces in an unco-ordinated way and end up torn, flat and wrecked.
Looks like Manning might be blocked from entering Aussie
If she can’t go there would imagine she won’t come here
https://www.smh.com.au/national/chelsea-manning-threatened-with-visa-denial-ahead-of-australian-tour-20180829-p500l2.html
Exactly why ‘deplatforming’ is such a terrible idea. It’s all well and good when it’s done to people you don’t like, but then you have zero defence when it’s done to people your opponents don’t like.
This is so fucking blindly obvious I feel embarrassed for typing it out.
Are you so stupid not to know that Southern stunts are an offence under our Human rights law.
Which stunts?
“Women ‘not developed’ to be CEOs, activist Lauren Southern says https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/victoria-police-charge-lauren-southern/news-story/9986324084f649beaa9cc568e51523e0
Jul 20, 2018 … A Canadian alt-right activist currently touring Australia has said women are not psychologically developed to hold leadership positions and …”
Forgive me if I’m wrong re “Human Rights Law” but comments like that surely goes against New Zealand’s rights for equality. Bit of a stunt aimed for reaction or her genuine Neanderthal opinions, you choose.
Nope. It’s just a stupid argument, and one that’s pretty easily refuted I would imagine.
If you want a law against stupidity, then let us know why you think any of us would be immune to prosecution.
No
As RedLogix says, it is just a stupid theory
To me it’s a bit like some on the left who think all men are violent and we live in one vast “rape culture”
Two sides to the same stupid
Making the statement of the stupid theory was the stunt. I provided a specific example with proof of a link, can you do the same and provide an example of someone on the left who think “all” men are violent and we live in one vast “rape culture” To equate with Southern that will have to be someone who people at the Standard have heard of and supported. Otherwise there is no comparison.
Your link is behind a pay wall, so who knows what it is
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11817696
Thanks for that, nowhere in that article does she accuse ALL men of being violent and her reference to the Rape Culture mentions “SOME schools” and she “thinks” there is a rape culture and “How can we stop it”. Southerns comments as copied from Google this side of the PayWall as stated were (Jul 20, 2018 … A Canadian alt-right activist currently touring Australia has said women are not psychologically developed to hold leadership positions and …”) Women ARE NOT. If you think these are “Two sides of the same…” then I’m not going to try and change your mind but politely agree to disagree.
I recall that The Australian article well and there were plenty of other Australian media reports on it, including this one from 9 News which reports it halfway down – along with plenty else of Southern’s “views”. You are more polite that I am in agreeing to disagree with his Two Sides of the same.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/2018/07/19/17/00/lauren-southern-australia-tour-meets-a-current-affair
+ 1 yep. Well put.
Jones does sound as if he is going to do something. And we need to think about the options.
But some good research internationally indicates expensive dams may not give the lengthy service to justify and while there is no control over the dangerous reliance on milk that is skewing our national accounts and the mad water export scheme, we don’t dare to allow the keen men to run off with our goodies.
Jack sold off the family cow, but they still had water left to drink and grow the beans with. We are living in ultra fairyland and I don’t trust these smart guys. There are two sorts – the ones who load up the dosh and sell out, and the ones that remain in place cutting a deep trough unable to see over the sides.
In what way? Share your well hidden secret.
Not proven. Their actions may be an offence in your opinion, but that’s not the same as testing that proposition in front of a Court.
Nor does it mean that it’s a good idea to deal to every contention with resort to a law that’s capable of very broad interpretation.
Human Rights Act 1993
Inciting racial/ethnic disharmony , with intent.
It might be a bar legally , but if you are renting out a venue it could be enough to say ‘not under my roof’
Inciting in your view yes. But if you want to make that case legally, you have to accept they may well want to mount a defense.
In my opinion what we are seeing with S&M is what happens when the right play ‘white identity’ politics back at the left. We think it’s pretty ugly. Guess what … the right think our forms of it are ugly too. And have done so for decades.
I’ll agree with a bit of that – except the Right are using words they don’t understand. So they’re using them in a slightly warped way, like a chatbot.
Like Chris T comparing comments about biological determination of aptitudes with comments about rape culture – the two have nothing in common, but Chris T doesn’t seem to understand that. From his perspective, they look alike. But they are not.
Yes that’s a good point, there isn’t necessarily a direct equivalence. But I think the underlying ‘power/oppression game’ narrative exploits the identical dynamics.
It’s cargo-cult “identity politics”, though. They claim victimhood on behalf of the oppressors: the “It’s ok to be white” tshirt for example.
Who the fuck said it wasn’t? Especially compared to the experiences of people who seemed to be followed around stores a lot more often than white people?
That’s what really pisses me off about it – it’s the bullies claiming that they’re bullied because someone said that “bullying is bad”.
Last night I commented on the Chelsea Manning post. wondering whether Manning had been issued a visa for Australia, in light of the National party (led by Woodhouse but supported by Bridges according to Newshub *) calling for Immigration to refuse her a visa to NZ in view of her criminal convictions. At that point the Australian press were reporting on the situation here re these calls to refuse a visa, but little seemed to be known as to the Australian position. https://thestandard.org.nz/let-chelsea-manning-speak/#comment-1519028
Sure enough, overnight it all blew up in the Australian media with many reports similar to the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) report above.
One thing re the SMH report: It reports that Manning was denied a visa to enter Canada in Sept last year (2017) BUT it does not mention that Canada subsequently issued her a very limited time visa to enter Canada for one speaking engagement in May this year.
This was reported by the Guardian yesterday and also by RNZ National on Morning Report this morning (an earlier article at 5.54am does not give the details of the limitations on the visa but they were detailed half way down in the later mention linked to below).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/29/ban-felon-chelsea-manning-from-new-zealand-urge-opposition-mps
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018660318/australia-considers-banning-chelsea-manning-from-entry
So there is precedent for a country similar to Australia and NZ to grant a one off limited visa for the same type of event Manning is scheduled to give here in NZ (ie she will only be here for 2 days for one event in Auckland on Sat 8 Sept and one in Wellington on Sun 9 Sept before scheduled for one in Brisbane on 11 Sept. Her earlier planned speeches are in Sydney this Sunday, 2 Sept and then Melbourne Friday 7 Sept before the two days 8/9 Sept in NZ.
* Newhub item on Bridges/National saying Manning should not be let into NZ.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/08/national-party-says-chelsea-manning-should-not-be-allowed-in-new-zealand.html
What’s this business of convicted criminals not being able to travel.
There are tons of people who should be convicted getting around freely.
Having caught a few of them, when they are let out or off, they should not be automatically be refused visas.
There are some egregious offences that people should have to prove they have renounced but a blanket ban is crazy. Every day I listen to stories about state-sponsored killing, bombing from east and west and gunshots from USA where half of them should be convicted criminals according to the news.
“What’s this business of convicted criminals not being able to travel.” and “… but a blanket ban is crazy.”
Do you really not know that many countries, including Canada, Australia, NZ, UK, USA etc, have immigration restrictions (which they decide for themselves) on who they will let into their country. This includes in particular if that person has any convictions over a specified level – for example, whether they were for crimes that can incur a sentence of two years in prison . In many cases, these restrictions apply regardless of whether the person has served their sentence.
These restrictions may also apply across the board, or they may vary according to the period of time the person wants to enter the country, and the purpose of their stay (Eg holiday, work , transit to another country, to live permanently).
Such restrictions are the norm not the exception – and have been around for many years, centuries.
Some countries, including NZ but not all, have “Clean Slate” laws whereby convictions under a specified level of seriousness and/or sentence period may be wiped from the records after a specified period of time (eg 7 years) where the person has had no further convictions (a clean slate) over that period. The US is less generous in such matters and even if someone is clean slated in NZ, they may still have to disclose their clean slated conviction(s) when applying for entry to the US.
Sure, there are people running around freely who should be convicted – but if they have not been convicted by due process through a court of law then they are free to do so.
I note that all the countries referred to are English speaking and part of the myopic 5 eyes, that mini Hydra-head.
Just because ‘they’ say something and pass it into law doesn’t mean it is right and fair. So I say WTF – in a global world why are there developing so many controls at the borders in the 21st century? Is it to protect their borders? Is it to limit people wanting to utilise the country’s resources for free or at a net cost to us? That applies to us and why it might be considered that NZ should agree to border controls with Australia (except that they would step up the cleansing of Australia and also refuse re-entry to NZ visiting family here.)
Is it to prevent people who might reveal another way of thinking about things. S&M can get in, they don’t reveal anything new and just expound on personal prejudices that we hold to us tight, and claim to be our right. But Chelsea Manning revealed something new and displayed government subterfuge, that goes to what would be the heart of government, if it had one that is.
No, grey, such restrictions are much wider that just English speaking countries. In fact, it would probably be hard to find any country that just lets everyone and their dog into their country.
As I said, such restrictions are very old – definitely not a 21st century phenomenon. In fact, much more recent are moves to reduce border controls generally (but not necessarily for people with convictions) – such as between NZ and Australia under the 1963 Trans Tasman Travel Arrangement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Tasman_Travel_Arrangement
The current problems with Australia re NZers is in fact them re-tightening their border control despite this agreement.
S & M got visas, but very restricted short term business ones, because they have no convictions. Manning was convicted and sentenced to 35 years and her conviction was not pardoned by Obama and therefore stands, but her sentence was reduced to seven years by Obama. So for immigration purposes, she still has convictions.
Not very likely to reoffend though.
Absolutely agree, Gabby, but that is the law. I really hope CM gets let in to both NZ and Australia under the special exemptions available to both governments. Would love to go to hear her at the Wellington one, but have no money to do so. Loved the interview with Kim Hill.
greywarshark (5.2.1)
“There are tons of people who should be convicted getting around freely.”
This is very true. With some of them enjoying the privileges of owning expensive holiday homes in the UK, Hawaii and elsewhere, flaunting their knighthoods in the process …
Thanks veutoviper
You’re welcome, hoa – or should that be tai?
My te reo Maori is pre-kindergarten, sorry. Anyway, I saw you have been sparring with certain people here in the last day or so with four letter names. Was looking close there last night with one who is known for making sparring partners disappear – was looking like the steam was rising fast, but whew …
Old veutoviper saying: Beware men with four letter names, two of which are the same. LOL.
Yes good advice lol just got to take it 😊
LOL. See the a one is self-projecting full time in his comments to you and mc f. Sad angry little man with chips so big on his shoulders it is a wonder he can stand up. I interacted for quite some time but then just gave up due to the abuse.
Lol
Kia ora e hoa is good – bit like gidday mate – i think we are aligned in much of our thinking – that’s cool with me ☺
perfect
The Cannazis weren’t refused visas were they?
Totally different situation on the immigration/visa front. They did not have criminal convictions.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12116075
I think this woman should have used the MT defence.
When the party of Lincoln is too racist for Faux news.
Just hours after a big win to become the GOP nominee for Florida governor, Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis went on Fox News Wednesday morning to say the last thing Floridians should do is “monkey this up” by electing his African-American progressive opponent, Andrew Gillum.
[…]
Later in the hour, the Fox News anchor read the DeSantis camp statement and felt the need to address his remarks, saying “We do not condone this language and wanted to make our viewers aware that he has since clarified his statement.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/desantis-floridians-monkey-electing-african-american-democrat-governor/story?id=57476957
Ugly politics
First they came for the undocumented workers…
They served in the Army, Border Patrol and as police. They have legitimate U.S. birth certificates. But Trump’s government is denying their passport applications and telling them they aren’t U.S. citizens.
A Washington Post report out today tells of the “growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question,” under the Trump administration’s racist policies.
https://boingboing.net/2018/08/29/trumps-government-denying-pa.html
Yep divide and conquer and test the limit of what they can get away with, and keep pushing against it. Dirty rightie tricks are really dirty.
I can’t access the WaPO because of my adblocker but the Herald has run the article, and this stood out.
The denials are happening at a time when Trump has been lobbying for stricter federal voter identification rules, which would presumably affect the same people who are now being denied passports – almost all of them Hispanic, living in a heavily Democratic sliver of Texas.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12116233
And they just might vote in the up-coming mid terms – and you know which way they will vote!
The US has no right to call itself a democracy.
They hold the elections on a tuesday.
The day is a working day.
They restrict the number of polling booths to the affluent areas
And in many states they demand id such as driver license or passport.
And that doesn’t even cover the extensive gerrymandering of districts!
North Carolina has been charged with redrawing the districts because of the deceitful gerrymandering – just weeks before the election!
I know the tag for those two comments on USA macro –
You couldn’t make this shit up
Republican comms strategist decided to help out.
There goes the it was out of character defence.
UPDATE: Rep. Ron DeSantis has quit the Facebook group that trafficked in racist and offensive slurs, following American Ledger’s reporting on Wednesday. – 8:54 PM
Ron DeSantis, the Trump-endorsed congressman who won Tuesday’s GOP primary for Florida governor, is an administrator on an active Facebook group where conservatives share racist, conspiratorial and incendiary posts about a litany of targets, including black Americans and South Africans, the “deep state,” survivors of February’s massacre at a Florida high school, immigrants, Muslims and, in recent days, John McCain.
https://american-ledger.com/accountability/desantis-moderates-hate-filled-facebook-group-that-attacks-african-americans-parkland-survivors-and-muslims/
It’s not over yet – dam proponents are still pursuing their dream.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018660346/waimea-dam-proponents-look-for-alternative-funding
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/106662879/mayor-richard-kempthorne-to-stay-in-wash-up-of-waimea-dam-decision
I have also been looking into something I was told this week – that one of the “big players” draws massive amounts of water from the deepest of the aquifers and sends it to China, Hong Kong and Singapore. I thought I was pretty much up with all the ins and outs of this dam but that is the first I have heard of this particular angle. Does anyone know any more about this? Apparently the bore used to belong to the TDC but because it is on this person’s land it now belongs to him.
Cinny – What do yu know? Marty mars?
I’m sergeant schultzing it
Interestingly I did find this
“Per the Naval Historical Center: The English borrowed the word “sergeant” from the French in about the Thirteenth Century. They spelled it several different ways and pronounced it both as SARgent and SERgeant. The latter was closer to the French pronunciation.”
My maternal grandad enlisted age 16 to die in the trenches WWI but survived, then a motorbike courier stationed at Dublin Castle during the Irish Rebellion riding that new technology. Eventually, promoted up from corporal, since his surname was Sergeant he became Sergeant Sergeant.
Cool Dennis. My paternal grandfather enlisted to ww1 at age 16 too.
And mine too – lied about age. Battle of Somme did him no good at all. Wish I knew how he would have been without all that..
So did my father. Doctored his birth certificate. As a result we never did manage to work out how old he really was…
Interesting, eh? To Marty, Anne & In Vino & anyone else interested, doesn’t it just remind us how boys automatically learned how to be heroes so young, and as often as not then died as cannon fodder? In defense of empire…
Yes Dennis… or to survive, come back blighted by shellshock, etc, and visit their suffering upon their wives and children… Actually, I think that the bible says that the sins of the father will be visited upon the sons for seven generations. But I gather that in those days, 7 was a rather symbolic number.
We had a lad in NZ Scots who’s surname was Hooper and being a Cav SQN had the rank of Trooper Hooper. The poor sod got hammered from Depot to SQN until I think he discharged or transferred to another Corp.
Well goodness me. Look what I have found. Fancy John Key being involved.
https://www.estel.nz/press
and this is interesting too
https://app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/6254889
https://app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/service/services/documents/69C05EE7740E2E6C8A48533AD04F3437/CertIncorporation_6254744_30August2018.pdf
I looked up Blue Spring and Blue Lake but haven’t had time to go through all those listed – lots have been removed from the company register as well.
This could be a completely wrong direction but I have always thought that there seemed to be something or someone much bigger behind this extraordinary push for the dam. The scale of it made no sense at all.
Prickles
I see that this was a Nelson company and Rachel Reese the Mayor was there cheering it on. Selling water, big deal. Lord Ernest Rutherford came from a little place out in the rurals, near here, and really made a breakthrough. Now we mine water as our highest achievement and the erstwhile Prime Minister comes and says a few words.
Reminds me of Balham Gateway to the South tourist spoof from Peter Sellers.
I love the tradesman in toothbrushholesmanship. He was visited by some grand notable who said a few words to him. He didn’t understand any of them.
Thanks for that Greywarshark Maybe the worker was related to Richard Kempthorne? He doesn’t understand much that is said to him either.
Sock it to them Shane. I find Shane Jones refreshing, strong language and all.
He is like the rugby player that picks up the ball and runs wuith it, and i think he will get it down into touch. So kia kaha Shane. The water may be sludgy, but keeping stirring and bringing in some oxygen and sunlight and we might get some policy that is usable and healthy for the country.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018660331/prime-minister-s-business-advisory-chief-a-celebrity-jones
Aus banks take ‘skinflint’ approach to NZ – Shane Jones
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/365265/aus-banks-take-skinflint-approach-to-nz-shane-jones This will give you audio on RNZ site.
More on banks and how they are serving us – Kiwibank
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/business/359536/fury-over-closures-of-kiwibank-nz-post-in-dunedin 13 June 18
NZ Post looking for suitable shop agents – Kiwibank? May have found alternative?
https://i.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/106649371/alas-smith-and-jones-hit-out-at-council-decision-to-end-waimea-dam-plan
You forgot him ripping into the councillors who voted no to the dam . 😁
Another chance missed like ruataniwha.
I’m sure the ratepayers rue bitterly the missed opportunity to shout orchardists a shiny new irrigation scheme.
Yeah the only problem with shane Jones is shane jones. He is literally a turkey. Watch him and tell me it ain’t so.
I’ve been saying it for years (if your really bored you can check) . Just couldn’t let the chance to stir go by
I thought it was a good shot, with humour. Nice one.
Well we’ll have his measure by Christmas.
and Gabby
Don’t hold his special interest in pornography against him. Everyone to his own.
He’s a fatuous dick greysie.
Shane Jones is a beaut guy to go fishing with, deliver a speech at your daughter’s wedding or lick an edge onto the chain of your Husqvarna.
Government minister with a billion in his purse? ….Uh oh.
David Mac
Sounds like Key!
Shane might go far.
McCain was a “war hero”? Really?
The White House, May 1973…
PRES. NIXON: The most difficult decision that I have made since being President was on December the eighteenth last year.
[Slight caesura, then massive applause]
PRES. NIXON: And there were many occasions in that ten day period after the decision was made when I wondered whether the country really supported it. But I can tell you this: after having met each one of our honored guests this evening, after having talked to them, I think that all of us would like to join in a round of applause for the brave men who took those B-52s in and did the job!
[Massive standing ovation, whistling and stomping]
ad nauseam…
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2018/08/27/heres-what-i-think-of-when-i-hear-about-war-hero-john-mccain/
Who is more scurrilous—the shrill fanatics who organized it, or Change.org for allowing this farrago of lies?
This petition by the desperate and discredited Blairite rump is preceded by the following warning:
https://www.change.org/p/the-parliamentary-labour-party-jeremy-corbyn-is-an-antisemite-and-must-go
Another disgraceful display by another loutish shill for Israel
In this farcical clip, Michael Walker, a journalist with Novara News is pitted against “writer Benedict Spence”, a pro-Israel fanatic. As usual, the Israeli apologist has nothing to offer, so he starts interrupting and talking over Michael Walker.
It starts talking over Walker at the 3:56 mark. Instead of addressing the lout, the host pretends that they are BOTH acting rudely, and says: “Okay guys, if you both speak at once then nobody can hear what you’re saying. Just finish your point, please, Michael and then we’ll bring in Ben….”