Yeah, I love how all the right wing journalists keep trying to advise the Green Party that if only they were more like National they would be able to be a minor part of government and then maybe they could get the occasional environmental policy enacted. Nothing too green of course, nothing that would stop Nats’ mates continuing to wreck the environment. The Herald editorial has a similar flavour to O’Sullivan’s piece. Unbelievably patronising with absolutely no understanding of how the Green Party operates.
The problem with rightwingers is they can’t comprehend the concept of having principals and sticking to them. For them it seems power is all that counts.
That’s political class bilge if ever there was. Nixon “went to China” in order to drive a further wedge between the USSR and China. Don’t forget that at the time he went to China, Nixon was supervising the destruction of Indo-China.
As well as that, his backdoor emissary to the Chinese was Yahya Khan, the bloodsoaked leader of Pakistan. Because of Khan’s sterling work, the United
States refrained from speaking out against Pakistan’s murderous war on East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh.
The idea that the Democrats would somehow have lacked the credentials or political weight to undertake certain actions is as nonsensical as the notion that Obama is a great reformer who is held back by those ornery Republicans.
These long queues we are seeing for people trying to find a place to rent are only going to get bigger and bigger. So the political story will grow too.
Surely this should have an asset-sales scale campaign from a party or parties? Labour and Greens are so close on this.
Another day another Auckland housing story it really is hard to care when most of the problem seems self made buy people flocking there and others indebting them selves to the eye balls.
This Catton girl has been SO naughty……..stroppy little poppy she is. But, as you say, best we all back off a bit. Just wait and see what a good and grateful girl she CAN be I’m sure.
Ekshilly, Je suis just a little bit unsettled what with this freedom of speech thing and its patent gratuitousness (clutching pearls to beat Maggie Smith)………”I mean this is ALL about the prime minister for goodness sake and while she didn’t use the words “traitorous hua”……..well, it’s a slippery slope and there ARE limits !”
Mr Key, FAR more proficient with fiction than she ever was simply does not deserve this sort of thing !
the Herald’s rich money-grubbing right wing owners would not approve of Catton’s comments so it is hardly surprising the Herald has not engaged with the issue raised by Catton, namely rich money-grubbing right wing people.
Kim Hill’s guest says destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan were “mistakes.”
Maziar Bahari needs to divest himself of his smug “friends.”
Radio NZ National, Saturday 31 January 2015
At 8:30 this morning Kim Hill interviewed Iranian Canadian journalist and film-maker Maziar Bahari, the author of Then They Came For Me, a memoir about his imprisonment, beating and interrogation in Iran for over 100 days in 2009. The memoir was the inspiration for Rosewater, a feature film directed by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. In 2013, Bahari launched the Persian/English website Iranwire.com, which focuses on current affairs, culture and politics. He is also involved in Journalism for Change, a platform devoted to citizen journalism, and in the worldwide campaigns Education is Not a Crime and Journalism is Not a Crime. He is visiting New Zealand this week as part of a global campaign leading up to Education is Not a Crime Day on 27 February. His documentary film To Light a Candle – about the denial of education to Bahá’ís in Iran – will also have its New Zealand premiere while he is here. http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
Sounds great, right? Well, Maziar Bahari turned out to be an interesting speaker, and obviously a nice fellow. Unfortunately, though, his judgement and/or integrity is less clear, as I pointed out in the following email to Kim Hill….
Maziar Bahari’s carefully tailored words
Dear Kim,
Maziar Bahari described the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as “mistakes”, not crimes. He also spoke about journalists who are locked up “in Saudi Arabia, Russia and China”—carefully not mentioning the United States or Great Britain.
Perhaps he needs to reassess his relationship with Jon Stewart, who a few weeks ago unctuously referred to the United States and its allies as “Team Civilization”.
Here you go, phillip—American “liberal” hypocrisy at its most ignorant and galling.
Note that the intro. to this clip claims that Stewart “opened his normally comedic Daily Show Wednesday night with somber words of support for the victims in the assault on Charlie Hebdo….
Even if he was referring just to the “international cadre of journalists”, describing that collection of sycophants, propagandists and war-mongers as Team Civilization would make even less sense than if he had meant the Western world in general.
It’s as absurd and insulting to our intelligence as the regular sight of Pentagon stooges talking about the victims of some bombing as “the bad guys”.
Jon Stewart, who a few weeks ago unctuously referred to the United States and its allies as “Team Civilization”.
He did. His style was intimate, warm, compassionate. If he had had the strength of character and the intelligence to simply condemn the killings, and express support for the dead cartoonists and the policemen, that would have been a decent, serious statement.
But he didn’t simply do that. Instead, he went on to talk of “Team Civilization”, as though the West is enlightened and democratic and civilized, as opposed to the frightening savages out of Africa and the Middle East.
For argument’s sake, let’s concede your point that he was talking specifically about the “international cadre of journalists”: if he was, that would be even more of an indefensible thing to say. The corporate media—from the BBC to Fox News to their parrots at TVNZ—are crucial components of the propaganda system. If Stewart is stupid and depraved enough to be confused about that, you should not be so gallant as to try to spin his stupidity and depravity into something else.
Seventy years ago, the likes of Stewart were condemning, with an eye to those in power, the killers of another racist journalist, Julius Streicher.
I’d have thought the bigger point was his declaration to the effect that it was not our business to make sense of it because there was no sense to it. That’s a very fucked approach to what was a very easily understood event.
Very well said, Bill. Here’s Norman Finkelstein addressing this ridiculous idea that atrocities are mystical and beyond analysis….
I took it as a wider team than “America and its allies”.
It looked to me like a comedian was reflecting upon people who will kill other people because of comedy, and referring to folks who do not shoot other people over comedy as “team civilization”.
well yes, I am – only because I don’t know. If you want to abuse people because they ask an honest question then that points to some serious character flaws.
How about this:
I apologise for asking you a polite question about a topic I don’t know much about, but one on which you claim to be an expert. I even googled what appears to be an impartial source and helpfully posted that link in order to facilitate a mature dialog with you. Turns out in fact you are an arrogant fuckwit.
Sami al-Hajj was an innocent Al Jazeera cameraman that the US Government detained for years at Guantanmo Bay with no charges laid.
The US tends to more target whistleblowers (Thomas Drake, Bill Binney, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriaku) and journalist-type individuals (Julian Assange) for harassment, charges and imprisonment.
Having said that if you look at the map and identify those nations which the USA explicitly supports with funding and arms:
Bahrain 6
Egypt 12
Israel and Occupied Territories 4 (Israel also killed several journalists last year)
Saudi Arabia 4
In the USA if you drift out too far from the editorial line you simply get your ass fired and become unemployable as opposed to imprisoned (eg Nasr, Clancy).
technically he’s been sentenced for 3 charges – accessory after the fact to a crime and helping the perpertrators evade prosecution, obstructing justice, and threatening to kill an FBI agent. He’s just pleaded guilty to those.
The US justice system has gone down the road of negotiating plea bargains form their targets, which means that the cases and evidence never see a jury or a judge.
Essentially they say to the target – you plead guilty to this and this, and we’ll put you away for three or four years. Or we’ll go after you with these other charges, and you will go away for 30 or 35 years.
Sorry, nadis, I shouldn’t have jumped at you like that. I (wrongly) assumed that you were playing the Te Reo Putake game of stonewalling and asserting that black is white and up is down.
I appreciate you are genuine in trying to find out more about this, but the “Committee to Protect Journalists” is about as reliable as Fox News—which is one of its “corporate media donors” along with the Associated Press, CNBC, and CNN. The CPJ has close ties to extreme right wing Cuban “exile” terrorist groups in Miami and New York.
Like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the CPJ is a suspect and deeply compromised organisation.
Fuck me, what a load of shit. The CPJ is highly respected, has a long and proud record of campaigning for journalists and indeed, saving the lives of many who have been imprisoned. Y’know, real journalists, not the imaginery ones in your head, Moz.
Have a read and feel ashamed at your dismal effort at slandering them:
Funding
According to the organization’s 2011 Annual Report, financial supporters include individuals, corporations, and foundations. The report does not include details on the largest financial supporters. Corporate media donors include the Associated Press, CNBC, CNN and Fox News.
“Highly respected”, indeed. Not highly respected by real journalists and people who bother to read more than the Grauniad and the Daily Mail, but “highly respected” by certain “corporate media donors”.
They are staunchly independant, [sic] do good work and save lives.
They are funded by a retinue of establishment pillars, including Fox News and extreme right wing Cubans. Their “surveys” are selective and partisan, just like you would expect from a “Committee” funded by Fox News and extreme right wing Cubans.
But please, go ahead and call the CPJ “independant”. It’s your (paper thin) credibility that’s on the line when you back such partisan sources.
You … not so much.
Okay, sling off at me if you want. After that, have a listen to Jeremy Scahill, who is definitely NOT the kind of American journalist who endorses Fox News and extreme right wing Cuban terrorists…..
As you know perfectly well, they are pursuing Julian Assange and Edward Snowden with implacable ferocity; Assange is currently in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and Snowden has found refuge in Russia.
Yes, I guess you could quibble and claim that Snowden is not a credentialed journalist in the way that such outstanding practitioners of the craft as John Roughan and Fran O’Sullivan are credentialed, but the fact remains: if you speak the truth and reveal what the Government is trying to hide from its citizens in the United States, you can expect massive retaliation from the criminals you expose.
It’s not a quibble to point out that neither man is a journalist and neither man is locked up in the USA or the UK. If you have the names of journalists who are imprisoned up in those countries, please feel free to post them. If there are any then they need to have their cases publicised. Telling us their names would be a great start.
BZZZZT! Wrong answer. We were looking for journalists imprisoned in the US or UK, that’s journalists imprisoned in the US or UK. Next contestant please. For ten pounds, can you tell me what is wrong with Moz? I’ll repeat the question: what is wrong with Moz? You may confer with your teammates or phone a friend.
I appreciate the levity, Te Reo, but you haven’t done anything to answer the challenge: what about James Risen?
Just so you get on with that task, we’ll pretend for a moment that Assange, Snowden and Manning are not in asylum, exile or prison for their role in exposing momentous crimes.
BZZZZT! We were looking for journalists imprisoned in the US or UK. Contestant, you have answered James Risen who is … (checks notes) … not imprisoned in the US or UK. No points. Do any of the other contestants know the names of journalists imprisoned in the US or UK? Take your time …
Well actually I have, and it turns out he isn’t imprisoned nor is he in jail which tends to invalidate the main thrust of your rant. In fact in the story you linked there is this:
“Mr. Holder pledged not to send reporters to jail, which would normally be the consequence of refusing to testify in a case like Mr. Sterling’s. Then, he indicated that he would not force Mr. Risen to reveal his sources, but would instead force Mr. Risen only to reveal limited information that he had already acknowledged.”
So not only has not been in jail, isn’t currently in jail, the US Attorney General has ruled out putting him in jail.
Right – I see your point exactly.
I have mixed views on Snowden and Assange. The bulk of what they released should not have been. The evidence of crime (i.e., Chelsea Manning’s helicopter video) – no problem, but stuff which endangers people or hinders legitimate law enforcement I’m less supportive of.
And on this:
“if you speak the truth and reveal what the Government is trying to hide from its citizens in the United States, you can expect massive retaliation from the criminals you expose.”
Are you equally as strident about the worse behaviour of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran etc? Last time I checked the US government wasn’t sanctioning extra-judicial murder of domestic critics.
So despite your bold claim
“He also spoke about journalists who are locked up “in Saudi Arabia, Russia and China”—carefully not mentioning the United States or Great Britain.”
Are you equally as strident about the worse [sic] behaviour of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran etc? Last time I checked the US government wasn’t sanctioning extra-judicial murder of domestic critics.
With the odd exception, my government does not usually support the crimes of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, etc. It routinely does so for the crimes of the United States and the United Kingdom.
You speak confidently about Snowden and Assange exposing “stuff which endangers people or hinders legitimate law enforcement.” What evidence do you have that they did that? I’d be intrigued if you put it up on this site for us, because neither the U.S. nor U.K. government could manage to do so.
I am as opposed to state power being abused in Russia, China, Turkey and Iran as I am to it being abused in Australia and New Zealand. Are YOU?
Can you please focus on providing evidence for your earlier (mis)-assertions, otherwise people will continue to believe you are a flake. Just trying to help you out.
But, yes, you’re both right—journalists can usually speak out without fear in the United States. Thank the radicals and liberals who framed the Constitution for that.
However, constitutional and legal protections can only go so far—when governments bring their powers to bear on an individual truth-teller, they will tear down the protections if they can get away with it, including such troublesome notions as legal sanctuary and asylum. Some in the Cameron regime even suggested storming the Ecuadorian embassy to get their hooks on Assange.
I guess that’s as close as we’re going to get to you acknowledging your mistake, Moz. Some weasel words and a link to a court case last decade. Ah, well, the real takeaway from this discussion is that you don’t feel obliged to hold yourself up to the standards you demand of others. The Greeks probably had a word for that (though it may have been sold off to the troika by now).
ps. If you’d thought about it harder, you could have resorted to pedantry by mentioning all those Murdoch employees currently doing porridge in the UK. Of course, they’re not in jail for journalism, but for actual crimes.
I see, Te Reo, that you’ve garnered some (belated) support from one of our friends—one with a rather insalubrious record of credulity. He posted his intelligent comment at 3:46 p.m., more than four hours after everyone had gone home.
It’s almost as if this example of you making shit up in a froth-frenzy (and then wriggling around trying not to admit you fucked up) will remain as yet another permanent record of your loose relationship with reality.
Is it me, or is something seriously happening to NZ and are we well and truly stuffing up this once clean green country that Keys likes to promote but still allows dairying to pollute.
Normally when we have a hot dry weather you are deafened by the Cicada’s. This year the silence of the Cicada’s is deafening, Silence. Hardly a sound. The other thing I have noticed over the last few years, when I came to NZ over 45 year ago, the Myna’s used to line up at the side of the road to get the dead insects hit by cars, and jump out of the way ”just in time” before they were hit by a vehicle. The number of Myna’s doing that now, to me seems to have decreased.
In my non expert opinion, these two things, along with the Kauri die back and the devastation of the Cabbage tree by a virus concerns me that all is not well with the environment of NZ.
Yeah, I noticed that there are a lot less cicadas than usual. Cicadas and summer go hand in hand for me. I love them, always have. When summer kicks off I always listen out for the first cicada.
Cicada’s have a long in ground life cycle (5-7 years) and years where there are lower numbers can be traced back to adverse weather events during breeding. They also forecast ‘mast’ years by the same logic. I think from memory there was one in the Hutt Valley 4 or so years ago where literally thousands could be seen on a single lamppost.
Regarding the cabbage tree virus it is actually a long existing disease called Phytoplasma that proliferated with the arrival of a new vector in this case passion vine hoppers the same has happened with Phormium.
Kauri dieback is more interesting I cant help but suspect that the particular phytophera strain has long existed but has been inadvertently spread or subtle climate changes have allowed it to proliferate. Phytophera exists in all soils and is usually kept in check by other naturally occurring organisms like trichoderma.
Perhaps we are loving our kauri to death. I looked at available bookings to view the great kauri in Northalnd I think it was Tane Mahuta himself, but it was booked up for months. It is said that the numbers of people going through the kauri are probably transporting this nasty whatsit around. I looked at an old book the other day and there was one of the old super giant kauris in it and two people standing at the base were dwarfed and I don’t know how many people it would have taken to stretch arms round the trunk.
We have probably reached the stage where we have to limit visitors and make times for NZs to visit. It would be nice to get a chance. There are limits to viewing Tiritiri Matenga Island – it’s special and same with kauri. And keep pigs off – they are said to be another problem, and then they would draw hunters and their dogs after them.
There is an extensive board walk and board platform to view Tane Mahuta from – built in recent years – designed to protect the forest floor around the old giant.
What I think should be of more concern is that huge logging trucks trundle up and down the road beside that forest – I would think that causes much more damage reverberating from roadside thru to the forest – than people on a board walk.
Instead, an army of swarming frustrating flies has invaded New Zealand.
P.S :
I have made four fly traps using empty plastic coke bottles as shown in the link below. The fly attractants I have used/experimented include liver, honey, fish and , fermenting yeast.
While some flies have been attracted and get caught, I am still not satisfied as there are heaps of flies still flying about. I have read that different types of flies are attracted to different types of bait!
Question : Do any of you know which may be the best fly attractant to the contemporary flies we have?
Here is the info for a very simple home made fly trap! You are welcome!
Instead of taking the all-out nuclear option and viciously killing flies, have you ever thought of just trying to reason with them ? You know, being a decent human being by making an effort to appeal to their moral sensibilities ? Next time you see a couple of flies flying around like out-of-control boy-racers, just try telling them (preferably in an authentic Yorkshire accent) ‘Come on, luds, there’s no need for all this, there was never any need for it. Let’s just let bygones be bygones.” And if that doesn’t do the job then just corner one of them and have a quiet word along the lines of: “If this sort of behaviour continues, young man, then I’m going to have to have a serious talk with your father”. Works a treat every time. Flies are people too, remember.
Hm, that may be my last resort….Simple sweet talking sound bites to these filthy-free-market neoliberal buggers hovering around with such utterly gutterly misappropriating maddening minds.
I won’t be surprised if the crooks come with embedded mobile and GPS these days!
Your better with a pair of frogs in a terrarium, and using a butterfly net to catch the flies. Great light excise and quite addictive seeing how many you can scoop. Give us a laugh seeing (all arms & legs) & hearing them crashing about the foliage nailing their prey. You know when really content, as Mrs & Mr Froggy sing with delight. Amazes me how they can eat so many as the next morning very few are left.
There is bugger all flies aroung mine this year and being a farm house that’s a surprise. We’ve had a 30ish swallows living with us so i wonder if that’s the cause.
Normally when we have a hot dry weather you are deafened by the Cicada’s. This year the silence of the Cicada’s is deafening,
Cicadas (species specific ) have long life cycles and have evolved over time to select periods determinable with prime numbers to constrain predation ie they tend to outlive their predators.
Usually at this time of year we are feeding our yellow bearded dragon lizard them, he goes crazy chasing them around his terrarium, something’s up their absence if strange. In the interim plenty of crickets from our back section. Out place is a zoo, all good makes a happy home.
Would you say that the water quality is of very great concern? I personally feel that there is being more and more taken from the qualifier and wonder why the Farmers and associated industry do not (want to?) realize that their water will one day be saline because of it. At the same time, water quality is being compromised at all levels with the excuse that it is OK to have a “certain amount” of pollutants go into streams and lakes. It already affects the health of people due to high nitrate concentration in the water table – our drinking water.
I think this is connected to all living things and beings.
I have to say, the Greek fight against the German led Troika is stirring all my romantic Byronic philhellenism!!!
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and Rome,
And get knocked on his head for his labors.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you’ll get knighted.
If a deal isn’t struck then Greece as a whole and the poorer parts particular will get economically smashed as Greece has a massive budget shortfall. Someone will blink first – Greece or the EU?
With EUR exit off the table I can’t see what options Greece has. They can’t fund current expenditure by themselves let alone service their debt. I’m assuming Tsipras has a plan, but so far with the cancelling of asset sales, re-hiring and raising pensions/salaries he has cocked his nose at the Germans who are paying his bills, while at the same time building a level of expectation within Greece that will be very difficult to wind back if necessary. Maybe he is just going nuclear and saying “we are going to default, so get your check book out”. If so, I think that is a miscalculation – I think the Germans would let Greece default and leave the Euro. It would actually make it stronger as it removes an outlier from an appropriate policy perspective.
What has been disappointing from a Syriza policy perspective is any talk about cracking down on corruption, tax evasion and the cosy corrupt monopolies that enrich the top end of Greece. If they addressed some of those issues the discussions with Germany would be lot easier plus Greece would have a ton more fiscal revenue.
This is how a police state protects “secrets”:
Jeffrey Sterling, the CIA and up to 80 years on circumstantial evidence
Sterling’s conviction should chill anyone who believes in investigative reporting in a free society
by MARCY WHEELER, Salon, 29 January 2015
The participants in the economy of shared tips and intelligence in Washington D.C., breathed a collective sigh of relief when, on January 12, the government announced it would not force James Risen to testify in the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. “Press freedom was safe! Our trade in leaks is safe!” observers seemed to conclude, and they returned to their squalid celebration of an oppressive Saudi monarch.
That celebration about information sharing is likely premature. Because, along the way to the conviction of Sterling this week on all nine counts – including seven counts under the Espionage Act — something far more banal yet every bit as dear to D.C.’s economy of secrets may have been criminalized: unclassified tips.
To understand why that’s true, you need to know a bit about how the Department of Justice larded on charges against Sterling to get to what represents a potential 80-year maximum sentence (though he’s unlikely to get that). Sterling was accused — and ultimately convicted — of leaking two related things: First, information about the Merlin operation to deal flawed nuclear blueprints to Iran, as well as the involvement of a Russian engineer referred to as Merlin in the trial. In addition to that, the government charged Sterling separately for leaking a document (one which the FBI never found, in anyone’s possession): a letter Merlin included along with the nuclear blueprints he wrapped in a newspaper and left in the mailbox of Iran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. So the government convicted Sterling of leaking two things: information about the operation, and a letter that was used in the operation.
Then, having distinguished the operation from the letter, DOJ started multiplying. They charged Sterling for leaking the operation to Risen, then charged him for causing Risen to attempt to write a 2003 New York Times article about it, then charged him for causing Risen to publish a book chapter about it: one leak, three counts of espionage.
Then they charged Sterling for improperly retaining the letter (again, FBI never found it, not in CIA’s possession, not in Sterling’s possession, and Merlin purportedly destroyed his version before anyone could find it in his possession). Then DOJ charged Sterling for leaking the letter to Risen, then charged him for causing Risen to attempt to write a 2003 New York Times article including it, then charged him for causing Risen to publish a book chapter including verbatim excerpts from it (apparently Risen is a better investigator than the FBI, because he found a copy): one letter, four more counts under the Espionage Act. ….
I agree with Morrissey.
On top of the various examples he has presented, there is also the simple fact that the west has other powerful ways of controlling journalists.
You only get a job or get promoted if you say the right things.
Look at the Eleanor Catton affair to see the state of the media here and the role in suppressing dissent.
I recommend everyone watches Shadows of Liberty.
The story of Gary Webb shows what happens when a US journalist questions the system.
Sobering. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1543807/
The roots of one of our leafy tenants had cracked the pipe and, while the plumber chap was seeking out the best fitting replacement part, I sawed another chunk of exposed root away. “Sorry, mate,” I said as I patted the tree.
There’s more and more research suggesting that plants have a kind of sentience beyond what we normally consider. Nature is intelligent and it behooves us to behave as if that were true, for our own sakes as much as for nature’s.
“And saying sorry is also healthy”
That one seem especially important all things considered.
You, or at least the person who cut the tree root, is a brute.
That wasn’t the English word “mate” but the Maori word with the same spelling.
He was saying sorry because he had killed the poor tree. Very healthy indeed!
There’s probably another pun there on the word mate to do with what marty was talking about, mea culpa mea mate, to mangle it completely, but I’ve been online too long to come up with something better.
You,
or at least
the person who cut
the tree root,
is a brute.
That wasn’t the
English word
“mate”
but the Maori
word with the
same spelling.
He was saying sorry
because he had killed
the poor tree.
Very healthy
indeed!
as an aside maybe phils prose should be read as poetry 🙂
Talk to water too!
The following links say there is scientific evidence to show that water undergoes structural (not chemical) changes constantly depending upon different factors. Good happy thoughts or bad thoughts affect the structure of water doing good or harm to you. Take a look!
In the thread about Syriza’s victory I picked out this sentence from one of the articles, “To start from priorities and then define the method.” I think it is very important that parties on the left do just that if they want to be taken seriously. Andrew Little seems to get this, since he has listed four priorities he intends to discuss over his coming speeches, and I hope he does not waver from it.
If we look at how, say, the Capital Gains tax was presented last election, the order ran the other way – it was put forward as a method for curbing house-price inflation and addressing inequality. But people were expected to trust that the stated objectives would follow from the method. And this is my point – when you declare an aim you are making a commitment, and people can assume that you will adapt your method accordingly. When you declare a method, insisting that some desired objective will result from it, you are effectively asking for unwarranted trust, since your commitment stops at the method. For this reason, the method-before-aim order comes across as more of a pitch than a promise.
That’s very good. So with the CGT, it should be presented later as a solution to some other aim? eg we’re going to do x, y, z (eg build more houses), and here is how we pay for it.
Yes, if you put the intended result first, it can be assumed you will adjust your method if the one you have in mind doesn’t work. For example, let’s say, “We are going to build more houses and we will pay for it with a capital gains tax.” However, house sales slow down and we are not getting enough from the CGT, so we are obliged to look for another way of paying for the houses. Whereas if we say, “A CGT will result in more houses being built” and this doesn’t happen, we are committing ourselves only to the CGT but not the houses – if things don’t result as we said they would, well too bad. I think people sniff out the difference intuitively without the need to analyse the arguments.
The thing is, National do not have to meet any such standards – their commitment is to their cronies and their pitch is to the public. And National voters know that the pitch is merely to placate waverers and ward off criticism. Labour does not have, and cannot have, that luxury. They did have something like it in the eighties, when aspiring young men of the city gravitated their way, but then they had not yet lost the trust of working class and National had not won over the aspiring young men. Now, they have no choice but to say what they mean and mean what they say. Convincingly.
… their commitment is to their cronies and their pitch is to the public
Which of course is exactly what Labour has been doing in recent years. That is, trying to be National lite and adopt their type of strategy. Cunliffe tried to shift the paradigm but he didn’t have enough time or support to do it. Now Labour has a new leader who understands that for Labour to succeed it must be the other way around – a commitment to ordinary NZers and a pitch to potential cronies. He started down that road this week just gone.
I agree. I voted for Andrew, and I am glad I did. I like the fact that he has four priorities he intends to discuss in the next little while – the SME one being his state-of-the nation speech. You know where you are with someone who can clearly articulate their priorities.
If Labour starts back on CGT again, it is a vote killer. Most people in Auckland know what the problem is, immigration and high cost of materials and commercialisation of housing and low wages that are not keeping up with inflation. There are so many other ways to solve or relive the housing in Auckland. For example in the old days, you could have a granny flat on your property or rent out a basement or whatever to help with the rent/mortgage etc or to house other members of the family like your elderly parents etc. Not only did it help to provide additional income for lower income people it also allowed a cheaper nicer place for affordable accommodation in better areas for renters.
Now, no way. Has to be an apartment to be affordable which has Body corp fees, no pets normally, and not so good for children. To get through a legal granny flat there is a huge amount of red tape to get one in a domestic house.
(BTW Nothing to do with RMA and the National RMA reforms are to make unaffordable housing and to polluters to wreck the environment!) You can bet no one has suggested Granny flats in the unitary plan – that because in NZ, democracy is a business, full of lobbyists – they actually don’t want real people who want housing to have a say, just barristers of people who have land and want to develop it (which will not be for affordable housing but for unaffordable housing to make a profit) or politicians who don’t really know much about housing.
Currently to create a granny flat/minor unit on dwelling in Auckland, you need to pay approx $10,000 straight to council for 2nd unit, approx $12,000 for separate water meter, god knows for separate power etc etc. Quite frankly that is why you have no affordable housing. Because of the above to create an affordable unit that is council compliant would be about $40,000 before you actually do the work. AT say $300 a week for rent it would take about 3 years before you paid back the council and the utility connections alone. But in most parts of Auckland you are not allowed to have a granny flat anyway. If the council allowed Granny flats cheaply then you could make about 20% more housing in Auckland for the cost of conversion of a 2nd kitchen.
Utilising existing housing stock would be the easiest way in the short term to create more housing in rental shortage areas.
What is wrong with this country is that people only have 1 idea and then they just keep bringing it up to solve a problem that is different to the solution. It is simpleton politics.
65% of Kiwis or something like that own property, it is their key asset and they do not want to lose it by some politician in Wellington trying to solve a housing problem in Auckland, that will not be solved by CGT but instead impact them on their retirement of their biggest asset, all while the top 1% are paying practically no tax. If anything should be learn’t by Greece, don’t target middle class to pay the taxes of the mistakes of the super rich. They see red, (and don’t vote for it).
If you wanna kill housing price rises (and none of the top 5% with a big property portfolio does), you tamp down bank lending, and you put a big fuck off stamp duty on every residential property transaction a person undertakes over 1 transaction every 3 years.
Also we cannot have 1/3 of NZ’s population living in 0.3% of NZ’s land area.
I’m totally for stamp duty if there is a tax on property, to make sure even the super rich and immigrants pay it too. Not only would it be an immediate way to get taxes, you could target for the poor. i.e. under $250k no stamp duty. First home owners, no stamp duty, etc. But should be very low like 1/2 percent or something like that. That way when you buy your 10 million dollar mansion in Auckland, hey presto, $50,000 in revenue for NZ taxpayer and all collected by title transfer and no way to get out of it by clever accounting.
When you look at growing inequality – whereas it predicted that 1% of the world is going to own 99% of world’s assets, it is pretty clear that governments need to target the 1% owning all the assets. If you look at John Key, owns 50 million in assets but nobody really knows cos it’s in various trusts etc – that is who should be paying more tax and targeted.
Going on about the ‘greedy’ investors, ‘greedy baby boomers’ greedy landlords etc latest scapegoat, is missing the point. Why are some people owning 50 million in assets and gaining more and more every year? If that super rich group, paid more tax then maybe we could afford more for everybody else.
In Italy they actually targeted people driving about in Porsches and expensive cars, guess what, found a lot of them could not account for their cars, and many claimed subsidies and on the lowest tax bracket.
Labour and Greens need to stop whipping the PAYE middle class for tax and actually look at fair ways to target consumption such a stamp duty. Personally I would prefer someone (often coming into the country) to have to pay a small tax to purchase an expensive house. Even if stamp duty was on houses over 3 million – again it is stopping super expensive houses being speculated on and farm sales etc
Soon, in Auckland in places in the inner city they are going to reach that level with the constant speculation (often on the family home so not affected by any CGT if that came in) and that is actually locking out families that used to live in those areas.
There are many flexible and varied ideas which can be used. I generally agree that taxation via PAYE and GST is over used and taxation on capital/land/speculation/financial transactions under used.
Although to make a statement, I would introduce one more much higher PAYE threshold set at 10x the minimum wage = over $280,000 pa.
The total value of houses sales in NZ in 2014 was 40 billion. Assuming you get a 0.5% stamp duty on every one of those you’ll raise 200 million. Exclude all houses under 400,000 and you’ll raise 120 million.
120 million is equivalent to about 240 houses at the NZ median house price. Thats a rough idea of the demand impact of a stamp duty (studies into Tobin tax indicate the reduction in turnover is roughly equivalent to the tax raised. A heroic assumption but gives an idea)
Too inflexible and prone to failure in my view. Might be used as a short term emergency measure. Controlling down house prices over the longer term will require a range of powerful measures.
Price controls, subsidies, extra taxes etc may all work in the short term but eventually distort completely the market they are applied to. Imagine what would happen if the government mandated a maximum price of 29 cents per kilogram for bananas? Eventually two things would happen – supermarkets would sell no bananas, and there would be black market where you actually ended up paying higher prices.
The best way to reduce the Auckland housing shortage is by incentivising people to act in their best interests. Build a fast rail from Auckland to Whangarei and Auckland to Hamilton. Any new Govt sector jobs have to go outside Auckland. Make it easier to build new houses in Auckland. Encourage high density housing initiatives. Bring in Singapore style traffic congestion charging.
Little bit hard to sell a house on the black market.
I’m all for
“”The best way to reduce the Auckland housing shortage is by incentivising people to act in their best interests. Build a fast rail from Auckland to Whangarei and Auckland to Hamilton. Any new Govt sector jobs have to go outside Auckland. Make it easier to build new houses in Auckland. Encourage high density housing initiatives. Bring in Singapore style traffic congestion charging.”
And would add if we as a nation invested in small town nz in stead of letting them fade away less people would drift to the big smoke.
Well actually no its not hard. There would be plenty of ways to avoid the price cap – paying too much for chattels, settling in 6 months time but renting at a premium in the mean time, losing at high stakes poker etc. Why would a person sell their property for less than waht someone is prepared to pay? Don’t underestimate peoples capacity to innovate. I hesitate to call anything around economic behaviour a law, but the closest you get is individuals acting in their own best interest. It’s been that way for millions of years of evolution.
One of my children is thinking about buying a first home – unless something amazing pops up, I don’t think there is any harm in waiting. Economic cycles and all that – anyone with grey hair can think of plenty of times in the past where we have had similar fears about asset prices. And guess what, eventually they revert.
Fast fact: 80% of residential property development in Singapore is done by the public sector. That’s how important the Singaporean government views stable housing supply and pricing.
The Singaporean public sector develops everything from cheap social housing to million dollar luxury appartments.
I suspect that Singapore modelled its system off the NZ of the 1950s and 60s.
I’ve lived in Singapore – it’s a resource constrained (land + everything else) country and the deal the population has done with the govt is that they will give up a certain amount of civil rights in exchange for certainty around things like housing and minimum standard of living.
Not sure NZ’ers would embrace 1 or 2 room HDB housing.
Understood. It’s not exactly the Kiwi dream. Yet in the peculiar Auckland environment I think the market has shown that ‘cheap’ 2 bedroom 80m2 apartments will sell like hot cakes to young people and first home buyers.
Currently we have speculators making a killing in Auckland – tax ’em as well. The Nats really need to do something more in Auckland than make fancy (but useless) speeches.
I think the framing of the question is important. Essentially that survey asked: “Are you in favour of other people paying capital gains tax?” I’m surprised 100% weren’t in favour of that.
Speculators should be getting taxed under existing rules. If you buy an asset – any asset – for a trading or speculative purpose – any gains are taxed at your personal tax rate. The rules are in existence. All that needs to change is the threshold that is applied to assessment. At the moment it is something like 6 property transactions in a 2 year period. That could easily be lowered to capture more.
Just read this off a Facebook group that I belong to:
“….I heard a rumour this morning, and would like to know if theres any truth to it,if there is, then its an outrage.
Ok, the rumour is…. that all those 3 bedrooms that people are being kicked out of,and extra bedrooms added are not for larger families at all.They are ‘social housing’ in the broadest sense of the word,meaning they are to be ‘shared; in the same manner as a boarding house,anyone single without dependants is to be put in this ‘shared social housing’ the small ablution block style houses reserved for those with dependants.
If theres anyone on here thats matey with a local MP, could they please get that MP to check and see if this is correct,as my old neighbour was offered a place in one and was told this was the arrangement for adults with no dependants nowadays by her tenancy manager…..”
No, Marty, you’re wrong. I conceded—admittedly after a bit of squabbling—their point that not a lot of journalists are actually in jail in the United States—pointing out that this happy state of affairs is entirely due to the radicals and liberals who wrote the Constitution, and to generations of activists who have fought for the right to speak freely in America.
I also pointed out, with a few examples, that the United States regime has been, and is, a grave threat to journalists all over the world.
Thank you for your concern my friend – you would have had more luck quoting figures for people of colour wrongly imprisoned or maybe indigenous people wrongly and unjustly imprisoned, even today – maybe some of them were journalists too.
Interesting link on your web site there about the “American Dream” – or lack of it any more.
The stats there are very similar to ones I’ve seen here in NZ… one that really caught my eye about child poverty:
“#15 Right now, more than one out of every five children in the United States is on food stamps”
Great stuff, but too obvious for the current “administration” here I suspect.
I can tell. Pull your pants up. If one of your doomsdays does occur, I suppose your last words will be an orgasmic “I told you so” that, sadly for you, nobody else will hear.
In the meantime, how’s the NZ ebola epidemic going? Aren’t we all due to have it by now?
There is an anti Greece pro capitalist article in the Kiwi blog. I put the above link there and made the following comment.
“I hope our stupid, lying neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, narrow, myopic and money-hungry pro wealthy, pro corporate, capitalist National/ACT government changes its agenda and stops all its shallow, pro rich and anti people, anti nation policies such as for example, the sale of state houses immediately. The uncontrolled, mega rich corporate driven capitalist free market agenda is a fraud on the ordinary people, the less privileged, the ‘under class’ and the poor”
No-one will take you seriously because you are obviously hiding your lack of knowledge behind over the top jargon which is so exaggerated it is meaningless.
You sound like an exaggerated version of Wolfie Smith.
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Opinion: New Health NZ commissioner Lester Levy is authorised to assume operational leadership – chief executive Margie Apa is effectively relegated to his operational deputy The post All-powerful Levy is feudal baron of a $28b fiefdom appeared first on Newsroom. ...
bloody hell..!..is this the end-times..?
..rightwinger roughan has come out swinging..
..for beneficiaries..(!)
(i know..!..i know..!..colour me surprised too..!..)
ed:..well..!..knock me over with a feather..!..rightwinger roughan has come out in support of the ‘pariahs’..beneficiaries..
“..Boston and Chapple make a good case for increasing benefits by the rate of average wage rises.
It is strange that Labour did not make this change 10 or more years ago when it had budget surpluses –
– National should do now.
Ideally it would backdate the increases as far as surpluses might permit –
– giving benefits quite a boost in the next few years.
Pensions have long enjoyed increases pegged to wages –
– and it is not fair to treat superannuitants so much more generously than other state dependants –
– particularly children..”
(cont..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2015/ed-well-knock-me-over-with-a-feather-rightwinger-roughan-has-come-out-in-support-of-the-pariahs-beneficiaries/
and the other rightwinger o’sullivan..
..has come out with a plea for turei to also stand down..(!)
..o’sullivan thinks turei is too left..
..(and that she sometimes says nasty-things about key..)
..i won’t link to it..
..because it is a pile of steaming-horse-shit..
Yeah, I love how all the right wing journalists keep trying to advise the Green Party that if only they were more like National they would be able to be a minor part of government and then maybe they could get the occasional environmental policy enacted. Nothing too green of course, nothing that would stop Nats’ mates continuing to wreck the environment. The Herald editorial has a similar flavour to O’Sullivan’s piece. Unbelievably patronising with absolutely no understanding of how the Green Party operates.
The problem with rightwingers is they can’t comprehend the concept of having principals and sticking to them. For them it seems power is all that counts.
Getting into bed with National totally worked for Act and the Maori Party, NOT! The Greens not so stupid…
I guess only Nixon could go to China….
….only Nixon could go to China
That’s political class bilge if ever there was. Nixon “went to China” in order to drive a further wedge between the USSR and China. Don’t forget that at the time he went to China, Nixon was supervising the destruction of Indo-China.
As well as that, his backdoor emissary to the Chinese was Yahya Khan, the bloodsoaked leader of Pakistan. Because of Khan’s sterling work, the United
States refrained from speaking out against Pakistan’s murderous war on East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh.
The idea that the Democrats would somehow have lacked the credentials or political weight to undertake certain actions is as nonsensical as the notion that Obama is a great reformer who is held back by those ornery Republicans.
I guess only Nixon could go to China….
there are echoes of that..
No it’s not as they were, and still are, keeping to the neo-liberal BS that benefits should be low so as to keep wages low.
And yet what National will do is give tax cuts to the rich.
These long queues we are seeing for people trying to find a place to rent are only going to get bigger and bigger. So the political story will grow too.
Surely this should have an asset-sales scale campaign from a party or parties? Labour and Greens are so close on this.
Another day another Auckland housing story it really is hard to care when most of the problem seems self made buy people flocking there and others indebting them selves to the eye balls.
Politics is made by people working crowds.
Make it a Chch story then.
i agree…everyone who has not lived for at least 20 years in Auckland should move…somewhere else.
simple as that. If they can’t find jobs – pffft who cares. if they are elsewhere the govenrment and its water boys has got no more problems.
You can’t fit 1/3 of the population of NZ in 0.3% of the land area without the whole thing being a shit fight.
Unless you were going in on a income of $150k minimum you would be mad to move there.
@col you can if people stop with the mansions and the lawns
Sure, it can be done with affordable apartment buildings, subways and public transport, like any modern city of the world.
How right you are Granny Herald !
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11394465
This Catton girl has been SO naughty……..stroppy little poppy she is. But, as you say, best we all back off a bit. Just wait and see what a good and grateful girl she CAN be I’m sure.
Ekshilly, Je suis just a little bit unsettled what with this freedom of speech thing and its patent gratuitousness (clutching pearls to beat Maggie Smith)………”I mean this is ALL about the prime minister for goodness sake and while she didn’t use the words “traitorous hua”……..well, it’s a slippery slope and there ARE limits !”
Mr Key, FAR more proficient with fiction than she ever was simply does not deserve this sort of thing !
Pathetic Herald surprise surprise ……..
the Herald’s rich money-grubbing right wing owners would not approve of Catton’s comments so it is hardly surprising the Herald has not engaged with the issue raised by Catton, namely rich money-grubbing right wing people.
The Herald is conflicted all to hell
yes, Mr.Key, “50’s Shady n Grey”
Kim Hill’s guest says destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan were “mistakes.”
Maziar Bahari needs to divest himself of his smug “friends.”
Radio NZ National, Saturday 31 January 2015
At 8:30 this morning Kim Hill interviewed Iranian Canadian journalist and film-maker Maziar Bahari, the author of Then They Came For Me, a memoir about his imprisonment, beating and interrogation in Iran for over 100 days in 2009. The memoir was the inspiration for Rosewater, a feature film directed by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. In 2013, Bahari launched the Persian/English website Iranwire.com, which focuses on current affairs, culture and politics. He is also involved in Journalism for Change, a platform devoted to citizen journalism, and in the worldwide campaigns Education is Not a Crime and Journalism is Not a Crime. He is visiting New Zealand this week as part of a global campaign leading up to Education is Not a Crime Day on 27 February. His documentary film To Light a Candle – about the denial of education to Bahá’ís in Iran – will also have its New Zealand premiere while he is here.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
Sounds great, right? Well, Maziar Bahari turned out to be an interesting speaker, and obviously a nice fellow. Unfortunately, though, his judgement and/or integrity is less clear, as I pointed out in the following email to Kim Hill….
Maziar Bahari’s carefully tailored words
Dear Kim,
Maziar Bahari described the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as “mistakes”, not crimes. He also spoke about journalists who are locked up “in Saudi Arabia, Russia and China”—carefully not mentioning the United States or Great Britain.
Perhaps he needs to reassess his relationship with Jon Stewart, who a few weeks ago unctuously referred to the United States and its allies as “Team Civilization”.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
“..unctuously..”..?
..or an exercise in irony..?
..(and is that your ‘reading’..?..)
..’cos going on stewarts’ past-form..
..i wd plump for the latter.
He was absolutely sincere about it. It was a teary-eyed homily after the Charlie Hebdo killings.
He did and said nothing similar after Israel targeted and killed journalists in Gaza last July.
yeah..?..u sure..?
..it has echoes of sth park..
..how about giving us the link..?
..so we can judge for ourselves..
Here you go, phillip—American “liberal” hypocrisy at its most ignorant and galling.
Note that the intro. to this clip claims that Stewart “opened his normally comedic Daily Show Wednesday night with somber words of support for the victims in the assault on Charlie Hebdo….
http://adage.com/article/media/jon-stewart-paris-attacks-team-civilization/296502/
morrissy..
..is stewart not referring to the international cadre of journalists..
..as ‘team civilisation’..?
..not america and its’ allies as ‘team civilisation’..
..as u claim..?
Even if he was referring just to the “international cadre of journalists”, describing that collection of sycophants, propagandists and war-mongers as Team Civilization would make even less sense than if he had meant the Western world in general.
It’s as absurd and insulting to our intelligence as the regular sight of Pentagon stooges talking about the victims of some bombing as “the bad guys”.
morrissey..you stated that stewart said that america and their allies were ‘team civilisation’..
..that is completely and utterly untrue..
..and i am astounded you made such a ‘reading’ from what stewart said..
.and shouldn’t you apologise to the readers here for misleading them/mis-representing stewart..?
..and why the fuck am i having to factcheck u all the time..?
,,why are u so fucken sloppy with yr facts..?
,.how do u think it can help yr credibility in any way to do that..?
“..It is absurd and insulting to our intelligence..”
He said it. Watch the video. What should I apologise for, exactly?
“.. Jon Stewart, who a few weeks ago unctuously referred to the United States and its allies as “Team Civilization”..”
Jon Stewart, who a few weeks ago unctuously referred to the United States and its allies as “Team Civilization”.
He did. His style was intimate, warm, compassionate. If he had had the strength of character and the intelligence to simply condemn the killings, and express support for the dead cartoonists and the policemen, that would have been a decent, serious statement.
But he didn’t simply do that. Instead, he went on to talk of “Team Civilization”, as though the West is enlightened and democratic and civilized, as opposed to the frightening savages out of Africa and the Middle East.
For argument’s sake, let’s concede your point that he was talking specifically about the “international cadre of journalists”: if he was, that would be even more of an indefensible thing to say. The corporate media—from the BBC to Fox News to their parrots at TVNZ—are crucial components of the propaganda system. If Stewart is stupid and depraved enough to be confused about that, you should not be so gallant as to try to spin his stupidity and depravity into something else.
Seventy years ago, the likes of Stewart were condemning, with an eye to those in power, the killers of another racist journalist, Julius Streicher.
I’d have thought the bigger point was his declaration to the effect that it was not our business to make sense of it because there was no sense to it.
That’s a very fucked approach to what was a very easily understood event.
I’d have thought the bigger point was his declaration to the effect that it was not our business to make sense of it because there was no sense to it. That’s a very fucked approach to what was a very easily understood event.
Very well said, Bill. Here’s Norman Finkelstein addressing this ridiculous idea that atrocities are mystical and beyond analysis….
I took it as a wider team than “America and its allies”.
It looked to me like a comedian was reflecting upon people who will kill other people because of comedy, and referring to folks who do not shoot other people over comedy as “team civilization”.
Just a thought.
Who are the journalists imprisoned in the USA and UK?
https://www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2014.php
Jesus H. Christ, are you SERIOUS?
well yes, I am – only because I don’t know. If you want to abuse people because they ask an honest question then that points to some serious character flaws.
How about this:
I apologise for asking you a polite question about a topic I don’t know much about, but one on which you claim to be an expert. I even googled what appears to be an impartial source and helpfully posted that link in order to facilitate a mature dialog with you. Turns out in fact you are an arrogant fuckwit.
Sami al-Hajj was an innocent Al Jazeera cameraman that the US Government detained for years at Guantanmo Bay with no charges laid.
The US tends to more target whistleblowers (Thomas Drake, Bill Binney, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriaku) and journalist-type individuals (Julian Assange) for harassment, charges and imprisonment.
Having said that if you look at the map and identify those nations which the USA explicitly supports with funding and arms:
Bahrain 6
Egypt 12
Israel and Occupied Territories 4 (Israel also killed several journalists last year)
Saudi Arabia 4
In the USA if you drift out too far from the editorial line you simply get your ass fired and become unemployable as opposed to imprisoned (eg Nasr, Clancy).
also just been reading about barrett brown – good summary here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/01/30/the-controversial-punishment-of-barrett-brown-a-deep-dive/
technically he’s been sentenced for 3 charges – accessory after the fact to a crime and helping the perpertrators evade prosecution, obstructing justice, and threatening to kill an FBI agent. He’s just pleaded guilty to those.
Another source of journalist tracking:
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-barometer-journalists-imprisoned.html?annee=2015
The US justice system has gone down the road of negotiating plea bargains form their targets, which means that the cases and evidence never see a jury or a judge.
Essentially they say to the target – you plead guilty to this and this, and we’ll put you away for three or four years. Or we’ll go after you with these other charges, and you will go away for 30 or 35 years.
Sorry, nadis, I shouldn’t have jumped at you like that. I (wrongly) assumed that you were playing the Te Reo Putake game of stonewalling and asserting that black is white and up is down.
I appreciate you are genuine in trying to find out more about this, but the “Committee to Protect Journalists” is about as reliable as Fox News—which is one of its “corporate media donors” along with the Associated Press, CNBC, and CNN. The CPJ has close ties to extreme right wing Cuban “exile” terrorist groups in Miami and New York.
Like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the CPJ is a suspect and deeply compromised organisation.
Fuck me, what a load of shit. The CPJ is highly respected, has a long and proud record of campaigning for journalists and indeed, saving the lives of many who have been imprisoned. Y’know, real journalists, not the imaginery ones in your head, Moz.
Have a read and feel ashamed at your dismal effort at slandering them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_Protect_Journalists
From your (sadly for you) very useful link….
Funding
According to the organization’s 2011 Annual Report, financial supporters include individuals, corporations, and foundations. The report does not include details on the largest financial supporters. Corporate media donors include the Associated Press, CNBC, CNN and Fox News.
“Highly respected”, indeed. Not highly respected by real journalists and people who bother to read more than the Grauniad and the Daily Mail, but “highly respected” by certain “corporate media donors”.
So fucken what. They are staunchly independant, do good work and save lives. You … not so much.
So fucken what.
Excellent! A first rate response to being exposed. Possibly the funniest and most bewildered “So what” since Garth George was similarly confronted by Jon Stephenson……
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1012/S00457/journalists-clash-on-media7-over-war-reporting.htm
They are staunchly independant, [sic] do good work and save lives.
They are funded by a retinue of establishment pillars, including Fox News and extreme right wing Cubans. Their “surveys” are selective and partisan, just like you would expect from a “Committee” funded by Fox News and extreme right wing Cubans.
But please, go ahead and call the CPJ “independant”. It’s your (paper thin) credibility that’s on the line when you back such partisan sources.
You … not so much.
Okay, sling off at me if you want. After that, have a listen to Jeremy Scahill, who is definitely NOT the kind of American journalist who endorses Fox News and extreme right wing Cuban terrorists…..
🙄
Cheers, nadis. I was wondering the same thing myself.
As you know perfectly well, they are pursuing Julian Assange and Edward Snowden with implacable ferocity; Assange is currently in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and Snowden has found refuge in Russia.
Yes, I guess you could quibble and claim that Snowden is not a credentialed journalist in the way that such outstanding practitioners of the craft as John Roughan and Fran O’Sullivan are credentialed, but the fact remains: if you speak the truth and reveal what the Government is trying to hide from its citizens in the United States, you can expect massive retaliation from the criminals you expose.
Have you ever heard of James Risen? Thought not……
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/us/james-risen-in-tense-testimony-refuses-to-offer-clues-on-sources.html?_r=0
It’s not a quibble to point out that neither man is a journalist and neither man is locked up in the USA or the UK. If you have the names of journalists who are imprisoned up in those countries, please feel free to post them. If there are any then they need to have their cases publicised. Telling us their names would be a great start.
It’s not a quibble, it’s a lie. But obviously your mind is made up.
If Assange is not a journalist, then neither is James Risen. I note that you did not even bother to mention Risen’s case.
Of course, this is the “non-journalism” that compels the U.S. government and its legion of unpaid hounds to bay after Assange….
BZZZZT! Wrong answer. We were looking for journalists imprisoned in the US or UK, that’s journalists imprisoned in the US or UK. Next contestant please. For ten pounds, can you tell me what is wrong with Moz? I’ll repeat the question: what is wrong with Moz? You may confer with your teammates or phone a friend.
I appreciate the levity, Te Reo, but you haven’t done anything to answer the challenge: what about James Risen?
Just so you get on with that task, we’ll pretend for a moment that Assange, Snowden and Manning are not in asylum, exile or prison for their role in exposing momentous crimes.
BZZZZT! We were looking for journalists imprisoned in the US or UK. Contestant, you have answered James Risen who is … (checks notes) … not imprisoned in the US or UK. No points. Do any of the other contestants know the names of journalists imprisoned in the US or UK? Take your time …
What’s your point? The US doesn’t officially torture people within its own borders either. It subcontracts it overseas.
Well actually I have, and it turns out he isn’t imprisoned nor is he in jail which tends to invalidate the main thrust of your rant. In fact in the story you linked there is this:
“Mr. Holder pledged not to send reporters to jail, which would normally be the consequence of refusing to testify in a case like Mr. Sterling’s. Then, he indicated that he would not force Mr. Risen to reveal his sources, but would instead force Mr. Risen only to reveal limited information that he had already acknowledged.”
So not only has not been in jail, isn’t currently in jail, the US Attorney General has ruled out putting him in jail.
Right – I see your point exactly.
I have mixed views on Snowden and Assange. The bulk of what they released should not have been. The evidence of crime (i.e., Chelsea Manning’s helicopter video) – no problem, but stuff which endangers people or hinders legitimate law enforcement I’m less supportive of.
And on this:
“if you speak the truth and reveal what the Government is trying to hide from its citizens in the United States, you can expect massive retaliation from the criminals you expose.”
Are you equally as strident about the worse behaviour of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran etc? Last time I checked the US government wasn’t sanctioning extra-judicial murder of domestic critics.
So despite your bold claim
“He also spoke about journalists who are locked up “in Saudi Arabia, Russia and China”—carefully not mentioning the United States or Great Britain.”
you cant come up with a single example?
Are you equally as strident about the worse [sic] behaviour of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran etc? Last time I checked the US government wasn’t sanctioning extra-judicial murder of domestic critics.
With the odd exception, my government does not usually support the crimes of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, etc. It routinely does so for the crimes of the United States and the United Kingdom.
You speak confidently about Snowden and Assange exposing “stuff which endangers people or hinders legitimate law enforcement.” What evidence do you have that they did that? I’d be intrigued if you put it up on this site for us, because neither the U.S. nor U.K. government could manage to do so.
I am as opposed to state power being abused in Russia, China, Turkey and Iran as I am to it being abused in Australia and New Zealand. Are YOU?
Yes.
Can you please focus on providing evidence for your earlier (mis)-assertions, otherwise people will continue to believe you are a flake. Just trying to help you out.
Just trying to help you out.
That remark was a bit snide and unfunny. Hmmmm….
Okay! Stop the play-acting, Te Reo! Your “nadis” persona is as irritating as it is dopey.
I can assure I am not TRP. Are you are going to back up your earlier (mis)-assertions or not?
I knew that. I was trying to annoy Te Reo.
Riiiight. Well spotted, Moz, two different people asking the same simple question* must be evidence of either a conspiracy or a Vulcan mind meld.
*and that question was ‘which journalists are imprisoned in the US and UK ‘ as you claimed. Answer came there none.
Here’s one. Don’t be put off by the fact he looks like Moss from The IT Crowd….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Wolf_(journalist)
But, yes, you’re both right—journalists can usually speak out without fear in the United States. Thank the radicals and liberals who framed the Constitution for that.
However, constitutional and legal protections can only go so far—when governments bring their powers to bear on an individual truth-teller, they will tear down the protections if they can get away with it, including such troublesome notions as legal sanctuary and asylum. Some in the Cameron regime even suggested storming the Ecuadorian embassy to get their hooks on Assange.
I guess that’s as close as we’re going to get to you acknowledging your mistake, Moz. Some weasel words and a link to a court case last decade. Ah, well, the real takeaway from this discussion is that you don’t feel obliged to hold yourself up to the standards you demand of others. The Greeks probably had a word for that (though it may have been sold off to the troika by now).
ps. If you’d thought about it harder, you could have resorted to pedantry by mentioning all those Murdoch employees currently doing porridge in the UK. Of course, they’re not in jail for journalism, but for actual crimes.
lol
I see, Te Reo, that you’ve garnered some (belated) support from one of our friends—one with a rather insalubrious record of credulity. He posted his intelligent comment at 3:46 p.m., more than four hours after everyone had gone home.
Better late than never, I suppose.
Or is it?
asynchronous communication is a bitch, ain’t it?
It’s almost as if this example of you making shit up in a froth-frenzy (and then wriggling around trying not to admit you fucked up) will remain as yet another permanent record of your loose relationship with reality.
Is it me, or is something seriously happening to NZ and are we well and truly stuffing up this once clean green country that Keys likes to promote but still allows dairying to pollute.
Normally when we have a hot dry weather you are deafened by the Cicada’s. This year the silence of the Cicada’s is deafening, Silence. Hardly a sound. The other thing I have noticed over the last few years, when I came to NZ over 45 year ago, the Myna’s used to line up at the side of the road to get the dead insects hit by cars, and jump out of the way ”just in time” before they were hit by a vehicle. The number of Myna’s doing that now, to me seems to have decreased.
In my non expert opinion, these two things, along with the Kauri die back and the devastation of the Cabbage tree by a virus concerns me that all is not well with the environment of NZ.
Yeah, I noticed that there are a lot less cicadas than usual. Cicadas and summer go hand in hand for me. I love them, always have. When summer kicks off I always listen out for the first cicada.
Cicada’s have a long in ground life cycle (5-7 years) and years where there are lower numbers can be traced back to adverse weather events during breeding. They also forecast ‘mast’ years by the same logic. I think from memory there was one in the Hutt Valley 4 or so years ago where literally thousands could be seen on a single lamppost.
Regarding the cabbage tree virus it is actually a long existing disease called Phytoplasma that proliferated with the arrival of a new vector in this case passion vine hoppers the same has happened with Phormium.
Kauri dieback is more interesting I cant help but suspect that the particular phytophera strain has long existed but has been inadvertently spread or subtle climate changes have allowed it to proliferate. Phytophera exists in all soils and is usually kept in check by other naturally occurring organisms like trichoderma.
natural cycles can be adversely affected by humans messing with the ecologies, either local, or global (CC).
Perhaps we are loving our kauri to death. I looked at available bookings to view the great kauri in Northalnd I think it was Tane Mahuta himself, but it was booked up for months. It is said that the numbers of people going through the kauri are probably transporting this nasty whatsit around. I looked at an old book the other day and there was one of the old super giant kauris in it and two people standing at the base were dwarfed and I don’t know how many people it would have taken to stretch arms round the trunk.
We have probably reached the stage where we have to limit visitors and make times for NZs to visit. It would be nice to get a chance. There are limits to viewing Tiritiri Matenga Island – it’s special and same with kauri. And keep pigs off – they are said to be another problem, and then they would draw hunters and their dogs after them.
There is an extensive board walk and board platform to view Tane Mahuta from – built in recent years – designed to protect the forest floor around the old giant.
What I think should be of more concern is that huge logging trucks trundle up and down the road beside that forest – I would think that causes much more damage reverberating from roadside thru to the forest – than people on a board walk.
I suspect the trees may have grown used to the ground shaking after all these millennia; it’s the temperatures that’ll they’ll struggle with.
The most likely explanation is that it’s a good year for the wasps.
Instead, an army of swarming frustrating flies has invaded New Zealand.
P.S :
I have made four fly traps using empty plastic coke bottles as shown in the link below. The fly attractants I have used/experimented include liver, honey, fish and , fermenting yeast.
While some flies have been attracted and get caught, I am still not satisfied as there are heaps of flies still flying about. I have read that different types of flies are attracted to different types of bait!
Question : Do any of you know which may be the best fly attractant to the contemporary flies we have?
Here is the info for a very simple home made fly trap! You are welcome!
http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/How_to_make_a_fly_trap/
“I have made four fly traps”
Instead of taking the all-out nuclear option and viciously killing flies, have you ever thought of just trying to reason with them ? You know, being a decent human being by making an effort to appeal to their moral sensibilities ? Next time you see a couple of flies flying around like out-of-control boy-racers, just try telling them (preferably in an authentic Yorkshire accent) ‘Come on, luds, there’s no need for all this, there was never any need for it. Let’s just let bygones be bygones.” And if that doesn’t do the job then just corner one of them and have a quiet word along the lines of: “If this sort of behaviour continues, young man, then I’m going to have to have a serious talk with your father”. Works a treat every time. Flies are people too, remember.
“…the contemporary flies we have”
I prefer to think of them as Post-Modernist.
Hm, that may be my last resort….Simple sweet talking sound bites to these filthy-free-market neoliberal buggers hovering around with such utterly gutterly misappropriating maddening minds.
I won’t be surprised if the crooks come with embedded mobile and GPS these days!
Fans – if you have them – are an effective deterrent to flies.
Your better with a pair of frogs in a terrarium, and using a butterfly net to catch the flies. Great light excise and quite addictive seeing how many you can scoop. Give us a laugh seeing (all arms & legs) & hearing them crashing about the foliage nailing their prey. You know when really content, as Mrs & Mr Froggy sing with delight. Amazes me how they can eat so many as the next morning very few are left.
There is bugger all flies aroung mine this year and being a farm house that’s a surprise. We’ve had a 30ish swallows living with us so i wonder if that’s the cause.
Swallows are very effective insect catchers, so I’d say yes.
Normally when we have a hot dry weather you are deafened by the Cicada’s. This year the silence of the Cicada’s is deafening,
Cicadas (species specific ) have long life cycles and have evolved over time to select periods determinable with prime numbers to constrain predation ie they tend to outlive their predators.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.ms.cicada10may10-story.html
@ poission
Hi can you tell me anything about raising nz preying mantis successfully. They are in decline around here.
Usually at this time of year we are feeding our yellow bearded dragon lizard them, he goes crazy chasing them around his terrarium, something’s up their absence if strange. In the interim plenty of crickets from our back section. Out place is a zoo, all good makes a happy home.
Would you say that the water quality is of very great concern? I personally feel that there is being more and more taken from the qualifier and wonder why the Farmers and associated industry do not (want to?) realize that their water will one day be saline because of it. At the same time, water quality is being compromised at all levels with the excuse that it is OK to have a “certain amount” of pollutants go into streams and lakes. It already affects the health of people due to high nitrate concentration in the water table – our drinking water.
I think this is connected to all living things and beings.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/30/eleanor-catton-blasts-critics-jingoistic-national-tantrum
Eleanor Catton won’t shut up.
So fuck you Key, Plunket, Farrar, Ede, Hooton.
This is a quite sobering read; the brief biographies of some of the many women who have died fighting ISIS in Kobani:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/30/kurdish-women-died-kobani-isis-syria
Indeed, Te Reo. Which makes you wonder why the United States and United Kingdom continue to fund and support ISIS in Syria.
[Sorry RY but best if this site does not link to that site – MS]
yesterday’s blog … seriously worth the time.
Oh dear, yet another “prominent New Zealander” gets name suppression and as always the PM knows nothing!
@DTB .. how do you make the link that way please ? Much improved on my effort, thank you.
How do I put links in the comments cleanly
Prime Mr Forgetful Minister John Key
Yeah right!
LOL !
thx @DTB
Looks like the home of democracy is serious about once again defending itself against a polyglot empire far more powerful than they….
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/30/greece-finance-minister-yanis-varoufakis-shun-officials-troika
I have to say, the Greek fight against the German led Troika is stirring all my romantic Byronic philhellenism!!!
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and Rome,
And get knocked on his head for his labors.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you’ll get knighted.
-Byron, 1820
But what comes next?
If a deal isn’t struck then Greece as a whole and the poorer parts particular will get economically smashed as Greece has a massive budget shortfall. Someone will blink first – Greece or the EU?
With EUR exit off the table I can’t see what options Greece has. They can’t fund current expenditure by themselves let alone service their debt. I’m assuming Tsipras has a plan, but so far with the cancelling of asset sales, re-hiring and raising pensions/salaries he has cocked his nose at the Germans who are paying his bills, while at the same time building a level of expectation within Greece that will be very difficult to wind back if necessary. Maybe he is just going nuclear and saying “we are going to default, so get your check book out”. If so, I think that is a miscalculation – I think the Germans would let Greece default and leave the Euro. It would actually make it stronger as it removes an outlier from an appropriate policy perspective.
What has been disappointing from a Syriza policy perspective is any talk about cracking down on corruption, tax evasion and the cosy corrupt monopolies that enrich the top end of Greece. If they addressed some of those issues the discussions with Germany would be lot easier plus Greece would have a ton more fiscal revenue.
2 words: military coup.
Taiparas needs to watch out for the generals.
In EU circles, the hushed whispers about military junta perhaps being the best option to carry out austerity measures will start up…
All through Greek austerity, the Greek military have still somehow been receiving new billion dollar toys
“2 words: military coup.”
Funny that, I can feel a Pinochet type Chile thing coming on.
The EU wont give Greece up yet. Though they will probably kick off with a ‘hearts and minds’ propaganda campaign.
This is the outline plan that Varoufakis, Holland and Galbraith have put together over the last couple of years.
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/euro-crisis/modest-proposal/
@ nadis -Well analyzed, glad that someone sees the bigger picture.
@ Sanctuary
Like
Guess which of these two women was called a “fiery
human rights crusader” by the New York Times
https://twitter.com/KeaneBhatt/status/561045999284916224
This is how a police state protects “secrets”:
Jeffrey Sterling, the CIA and up to 80 years on circumstantial evidence
Sterling’s conviction should chill anyone who believes in investigative reporting in a free society
by MARCY WHEELER, Salon, 29 January 2015
The participants in the economy of shared tips and intelligence in Washington D.C., breathed a collective sigh of relief when, on January 12, the government announced it would not force James Risen to testify in the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. “Press freedom was safe! Our trade in leaks is safe!” observers seemed to conclude, and they returned to their squalid celebration of an oppressive Saudi monarch.
That celebration about information sharing is likely premature. Because, along the way to the conviction of Sterling this week on all nine counts – including seven counts under the Espionage Act — something far more banal yet every bit as dear to D.C.’s economy of secrets may have been criminalized: unclassified tips.
To understand why that’s true, you need to know a bit about how the Department of Justice larded on charges against Sterling to get to what represents a potential 80-year maximum sentence (though he’s unlikely to get that). Sterling was accused — and ultimately convicted — of leaking two related things: First, information about the Merlin operation to deal flawed nuclear blueprints to Iran, as well as the involvement of a Russian engineer referred to as Merlin in the trial. In addition to that, the government charged Sterling separately for leaking a document (one which the FBI never found, in anyone’s possession): a letter Merlin included along with the nuclear blueprints he wrapped in a newspaper and left in the mailbox of Iran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. So the government convicted Sterling of leaking two things: information about the operation, and a letter that was used in the operation.
Then, having distinguished the operation from the letter, DOJ started multiplying. They charged Sterling for leaking the operation to Risen, then charged him for causing Risen to attempt to write a 2003 New York Times article about it, then charged him for causing Risen to publish a book chapter about it: one leak, three counts of espionage.
Then they charged Sterling for improperly retaining the letter (again, FBI never found it, not in CIA’s possession, not in Sterling’s possession, and Merlin purportedly destroyed his version before anyone could find it in his possession). Then DOJ charged Sterling for leaking the letter to Risen, then charged him for causing Risen to attempt to write a 2003 New York Times article including it, then charged him for causing Risen to publish a book chapter including verbatim excerpts from it (apparently Risen is a better investigator than the FBI, because he found a copy): one letter, four more counts under the Espionage Act. ….
Read more….
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/28/this_is_how_a_police_state_protects_secrets_jeffrey_sterling_the_cia_and_up_to_80_years_on_circumstantial_evidence/
“Department of Justice.”
Sort of like the “Ministry for Truth.”
And the Ministry of “Defence”.
Homework assignment for “nadis” and Te Reo Putake
Research the following topics and then argue how the United States is not a dire threat to journalists:
1.) Giuliana Sgrena
2.) Al Jazeera office, Baghdad, April 8, 2003
3.) Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, April 8, 2003
4.) Abu Dhabi strikes, April 8, 2003
Nice goalposts, Moz. Did you shift them all by yourself?
Shouldn’t you be doing your homework?
I agree with Morrissey.
On top of the various examples he has presented, there is also the simple fact that the west has other powerful ways of controlling journalists.
You only get a job or get promoted if you say the right things.
Look at the Eleanor Catton affair to see the state of the media here and the role in suppressing dissent.
I recommend everyone watches Shadows of Liberty.
The story of Gary Webb shows what happens when a US journalist questions the system.
Sobering.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1543807/
This is lovely
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11394630
Talking to trees and other plants is healthy imo. And saying sorry is also healthy. And calling a tree ‘mate’ is very healthy.
There’s more and more research suggesting that plants have a kind of sentience beyond what we normally consider. Nature is intelligent and it behooves us to behave as if that were true, for our own sakes as much as for nature’s.
“And saying sorry is also healthy”
That one seem especially important all things considered.
You’d get more sense out of a tree root than you would out of people like this….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEkPoZSBXh0
or this….
You, or at least the person who cut the tree root, is a brute.
That wasn’t the English word “mate” but the Maori word with the same spelling.
He was saying sorry because he had killed the poor tree. Very healthy indeed!
very funny al – the tree didn’t die.
Cutting some roots won’t kill a tree (depending on the tree, how big it is, how many roots are cut etc).
Hey, I had just say down after a long, lazy, mildly alcoholic brunch.
Let me have an (albeit possibly a weak one) attempt at a joke.
Sorry. A 😉 always makes things clearer.
There’s probably another pun there on the word mate to do with what marty was talking about, mea culpa mea mate, to mangle it completely, but I’ve been online too long to come up with something better.
It would make a nice poem 🙂
You,
or at least
the person who cut
the tree root,
is a brute.
That wasn’t the
English word
“mate”
but the Maori
word with the
same spelling.
He was saying sorry
because he had killed
the poor tree.
Very healthy
indeed!
as an aside maybe phils prose should be read as poetry 🙂
If we could actually read it 😛
Nice poem, I agree.
Talk to water too!
The following links say there is scientific evidence to show that water undergoes structural (not chemical) changes constantly depending upon different factors. Good happy thoughts or bad thoughts affect the structure of water doing good or harm to you. Take a look!
Structured Water : How music/words/thoughts affect structure of water[8 minutes]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwaNfNcurvQ
Water effects :Sadhguru at IIT Madras (Part V) [9 minutes]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C1p4HUHlfE
Water has memory: Very interesting doco [1 hour 25 min]
Good luck to the Queensland Labour Party today.
If the LNP get another term, Queenslanders can kiss their power grid goodbye, among other things.
If anyone needs some light relief – here is something very funny
Richard Dawkins Reads Hate Mail From “Fans”
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/richard-dawkins-reads-hate-mail-fans
Hilarious…
Could do the same with whale oil views on lefties….
In the thread about Syriza’s victory I picked out this sentence from one of the articles, “To start from priorities and then define the method.” I think it is very important that parties on the left do just that if they want to be taken seriously. Andrew Little seems to get this, since he has listed four priorities he intends to discuss over his coming speeches, and I hope he does not waver from it.
If we look at how, say, the Capital Gains tax was presented last election, the order ran the other way – it was put forward as a method for curbing house-price inflation and addressing inequality. But people were expected to trust that the stated objectives would follow from the method. And this is my point – when you declare an aim you are making a commitment, and people can assume that you will adapt your method accordingly. When you declare a method, insisting that some desired objective will result from it, you are effectively asking for unwarranted trust, since your commitment stops at the method. For this reason, the method-before-aim order comes across as more of a pitch than a promise.
That’s very good. So with the CGT, it should be presented later as a solution to some other aim? eg we’re going to do x, y, z (eg build more houses), and here is how we pay for it.
Yes, if you put the intended result first, it can be assumed you will adjust your method if the one you have in mind doesn’t work. For example, let’s say, “We are going to build more houses and we will pay for it with a capital gains tax.” However, house sales slow down and we are not getting enough from the CGT, so we are obliged to look for another way of paying for the houses. Whereas if we say, “A CGT will result in more houses being built” and this doesn’t happen, we are committing ourselves only to the CGT but not the houses – if things don’t result as we said they would, well too bad. I think people sniff out the difference intuitively without the need to analyse the arguments.
Quite right Olwyn, but it’s like you are having to teach Labour, the oldest political party in the country, the bloody ABC’s.
The thing is, National do not have to meet any such standards – their commitment is to their cronies and their pitch is to the public. And National voters know that the pitch is merely to placate waverers and ward off criticism. Labour does not have, and cannot have, that luxury. They did have something like it in the eighties, when aspiring young men of the city gravitated their way, but then they had not yet lost the trust of working class and National had not won over the aspiring young men. Now, they have no choice but to say what they mean and mean what they say. Convincingly.
… their commitment is to their cronies and their pitch is to the public
Which of course is exactly what Labour has been doing in recent years. That is, trying to be National lite and adopt their type of strategy. Cunliffe tried to shift the paradigm but he didn’t have enough time or support to do it. Now Labour has a new leader who understands that for Labour to succeed it must be the other way around – a commitment to ordinary NZers and a pitch to potential cronies. He started down that road this week just gone.
I agree. I voted for Andrew, and I am glad I did. I like the fact that he has four priorities he intends to discuss in the next little while – the SME one being his state-of-the nation speech. You know where you are with someone who can clearly articulate their priorities.
If Labour starts back on CGT again, it is a vote killer. Most people in Auckland know what the problem is, immigration and high cost of materials and commercialisation of housing and low wages that are not keeping up with inflation. There are so many other ways to solve or relive the housing in Auckland. For example in the old days, you could have a granny flat on your property or rent out a basement or whatever to help with the rent/mortgage etc or to house other members of the family like your elderly parents etc. Not only did it help to provide additional income for lower income people it also allowed a cheaper nicer place for affordable accommodation in better areas for renters.
Now, no way. Has to be an apartment to be affordable which has Body corp fees, no pets normally, and not so good for children. To get through a legal granny flat there is a huge amount of red tape to get one in a domestic house.
(BTW Nothing to do with RMA and the National RMA reforms are to make unaffordable housing and to polluters to wreck the environment!) You can bet no one has suggested Granny flats in the unitary plan – that because in NZ, democracy is a business, full of lobbyists – they actually don’t want real people who want housing to have a say, just barristers of people who have land and want to develop it (which will not be for affordable housing but for unaffordable housing to make a profit) or politicians who don’t really know much about housing.
Currently to create a granny flat/minor unit on dwelling in Auckland, you need to pay approx $10,000 straight to council for 2nd unit, approx $12,000 for separate water meter, god knows for separate power etc etc. Quite frankly that is why you have no affordable housing. Because of the above to create an affordable unit that is council compliant would be about $40,000 before you actually do the work. AT say $300 a week for rent it would take about 3 years before you paid back the council and the utility connections alone. But in most parts of Auckland you are not allowed to have a granny flat anyway. If the council allowed Granny flats cheaply then you could make about 20% more housing in Auckland for the cost of conversion of a 2nd kitchen.
Utilising existing housing stock would be the easiest way in the short term to create more housing in rental shortage areas.
What is wrong with this country is that people only have 1 idea and then they just keep bringing it up to solve a problem that is different to the solution. It is simpleton politics.
65% of Kiwis or something like that own property, it is their key asset and they do not want to lose it by some politician in Wellington trying to solve a housing problem in Auckland, that will not be solved by CGT but instead impact them on their retirement of their biggest asset, all while the top 1% are paying practically no tax. If anything should be learn’t by Greece, don’t target middle class to pay the taxes of the mistakes of the super rich. They see red, (and don’t vote for it).
If you wanna kill housing price rises (and none of the top 5% with a big property portfolio does), you tamp down bank lending, and you put a big fuck off stamp duty on every residential property transaction a person undertakes over 1 transaction every 3 years.
Also we cannot have 1/3 of NZ’s population living in 0.3% of NZ’s land area.
I’m totally for stamp duty if there is a tax on property, to make sure even the super rich and immigrants pay it too. Not only would it be an immediate way to get taxes, you could target for the poor. i.e. under $250k no stamp duty. First home owners, no stamp duty, etc. But should be very low like 1/2 percent or something like that. That way when you buy your 10 million dollar mansion in Auckland, hey presto, $50,000 in revenue for NZ taxpayer and all collected by title transfer and no way to get out of it by clever accounting.
Good arguments; just remember that real estate agents take 3% to 4% of the sale price, sometimes for doing sweet FA.
When you look at growing inequality – whereas it predicted that 1% of the world is going to own 99% of world’s assets, it is pretty clear that governments need to target the 1% owning all the assets. If you look at John Key, owns 50 million in assets but nobody really knows cos it’s in various trusts etc – that is who should be paying more tax and targeted.
Going on about the ‘greedy’ investors, ‘greedy baby boomers’ greedy landlords etc latest scapegoat, is missing the point. Why are some people owning 50 million in assets and gaining more and more every year? If that super rich group, paid more tax then maybe we could afford more for everybody else.
In Italy they actually targeted people driving about in Porsches and expensive cars, guess what, found a lot of them could not account for their cars, and many claimed subsidies and on the lowest tax bracket.
Labour and Greens need to stop whipping the PAYE middle class for tax and actually look at fair ways to target consumption such a stamp duty. Personally I would prefer someone (often coming into the country) to have to pay a small tax to purchase an expensive house. Even if stamp duty was on houses over 3 million – again it is stopping super expensive houses being speculated on and farm sales etc
Soon, in Auckland in places in the inner city they are going to reach that level with the constant speculation (often on the family home so not affected by any CGT if that came in) and that is actually locking out families that used to live in those areas.
There are many flexible and varied ideas which can be used. I generally agree that taxation via PAYE and GST is over used and taxation on capital/land/speculation/financial transactions under used.
Although to make a statement, I would introduce one more much higher PAYE threshold set at 10x the minimum wage = over $280,000 pa.
The numbers aren’t great from a stamp duty.
The total value of houses sales in NZ in 2014 was 40 billion. Assuming you get a 0.5% stamp duty on every one of those you’ll raise 200 million. Exclude all houses under 400,000 and you’ll raise 120 million.
120 million is equivalent to about 240 houses at the NZ median house price. Thats a rough idea of the demand impact of a stamp duty (studies into Tobin tax indicate the reduction in turnover is roughly equivalent to the tax raised. A heroic assumption but gives an idea)
What if a government passed into law that house values could only rise at inflation
Too inflexible and prone to failure in my view. Might be used as a short term emergency measure. Controlling down house prices over the longer term will require a range of powerful measures.
Had a feeling it would be full of fish hooks but if we were ever to move to a steady state economy rampant house booms would need sorting.
Price controls, subsidies, extra taxes etc may all work in the short term but eventually distort completely the market they are applied to. Imagine what would happen if the government mandated a maximum price of 29 cents per kilogram for bananas? Eventually two things would happen – supermarkets would sell no bananas, and there would be black market where you actually ended up paying higher prices.
The best way to reduce the Auckland housing shortage is by incentivising people to act in their best interests. Build a fast rail from Auckland to Whangarei and Auckland to Hamilton. Any new Govt sector jobs have to go outside Auckland. Make it easier to build new houses in Auckland. Encourage high density housing initiatives. Bring in Singapore style traffic congestion charging.
Little bit hard to sell a house on the black market.
I’m all for
“”The best way to reduce the Auckland housing shortage is by incentivising people to act in their best interests. Build a fast rail from Auckland to Whangarei and Auckland to Hamilton. Any new Govt sector jobs have to go outside Auckland. Make it easier to build new houses in Auckland. Encourage high density housing initiatives. Bring in Singapore style traffic congestion charging.”
And would add if we as a nation invested in small town nz in stead of letting them fade away less people would drift to the big smoke.
Well actually no its not hard. There would be plenty of ways to avoid the price cap – paying too much for chattels, settling in 6 months time but renting at a premium in the mean time, losing at high stakes poker etc. Why would a person sell their property for less than waht someone is prepared to pay? Don’t underestimate peoples capacity to innovate. I hesitate to call anything around economic behaviour a law, but the closest you get is individuals acting in their own best interest. It’s been that way for millions of years of evolution.
One of my children is thinking about buying a first home – unless something amazing pops up, I don’t think there is any harm in waiting. Economic cycles and all that – anyone with grey hair can think of plenty of times in the past where we have had similar fears about asset prices. And guess what, eventually they revert.
Singapore already owns part of Auckland city shares, so why not. Just remember, what goes up must come down. Its a matter of time.
Fast fact: 80% of residential property development in Singapore is done by the public sector. That’s how important the Singaporean government views stable housing supply and pricing.
The Singaporean public sector develops everything from cheap social housing to million dollar luxury appartments.
I suspect that Singapore modelled its system off the NZ of the 1950s and 60s.
I’ve lived in Singapore – it’s a resource constrained (land + everything else) country and the deal the population has done with the govt is that they will give up a certain amount of civil rights in exchange for certainty around things like housing and minimum standard of living.
Not sure NZ’ers would embrace 1 or 2 room HDB housing.
Understood. It’s not exactly the Kiwi dream. Yet in the peculiar Auckland environment I think the market has shown that ‘cheap’ 2 bedroom 80m2 apartments will sell like hot cakes to young people and first home buyers.
Cripes I basically agree with all you’ve written here.
Majority in favour of CGT historically – as long as it is not on family home – which was exactly what Labour was proposing prior to the election:
“Vote Compass asked tens of thousands of people whether landlords should pay more tax on the sale of their rental properties. Nearly half either agreed or strongly agreed, while a third weren’t happy” http://tvnz.co.nz/vote-2014-news/compass-support-capital-gains-tax-6063134
Currently we have speculators making a killing in Auckland – tax ’em as well. The Nats really need to do something more in Auckland than make fancy (but useless) speeches.
I think the framing of the question is important. Essentially that survey asked: “Are you in favour of other people paying capital gains tax?” I’m surprised 100% weren’t in favour of that.
Speculators should be getting taxed under existing rules. If you buy an asset – any asset – for a trading or speculative purpose – any gains are taxed at your personal tax rate. The rules are in existence. All that needs to change is the threshold that is applied to assessment. At the moment it is something like 6 property transactions in a 2 year period. That could easily be lowered to capture more.
Politicians get houses, we get bullshit:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/10809/
Just read this off a Facebook group that I belong to:
“….I heard a rumour this morning, and would like to know if theres any truth to it,if there is, then its an outrage.
Ok, the rumour is…. that all those 3 bedrooms that people are being kicked out of,and extra bedrooms added are not for larger families at all.They are ‘social housing’ in the broadest sense of the word,meaning they are to be ‘shared; in the same manner as a boarding house,anyone single without dependants is to be put in this ‘shared social housing’ the small ablution block style houses reserved for those with dependants.
If theres anyone on here thats matey with a local MP, could they please get that MP to check and see if this is correct,as my old neighbour was offered a place in one and was told this was the arrangement for adults with no dependants nowadays by her tenancy manager…..”
Are you meaning state houses?
Yes.
Thanks for raising this. It does sound like something they would do, but it also could be getting stretched by rumour.
I have raised an OIA to see if this does exist. I have also suggested the person who posted this go to the media to get this investigated.
What a lovely shiny new set of punishments for “difficult” “clients” that enables. Whoopee!
How to say: “I give up, I got nothing”
with a witty little graphic
So how DOES one concede that one has been shown up, out-pointed, exposed as a fraud, a scoundrel and a liar?
A useful convention occasionally employed on this site is to type a colon (:) then the word roll then another colon (:)
: roll :
Remove the gaps and you will end up with this pleasing little image: 🙄
which says so eloquently: “I concede, and I skulk back to my corner in disgrace.”
vide….
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-31012015/#comment-960330
I dunno about that M – they gave you quite a few chances to answer the question or provide the evidence but alas twas for nought.
No, Marty, you’re wrong. I conceded—admittedly after a bit of squabbling—their point that not a lot of journalists are actually in jail in the United States—pointing out that this happy state of affairs is entirely due to the radicals and liberals who wrote the Constitution, and to generations of activists who have fought for the right to speak freely in America.
I also pointed out, with a few examples, that the United States regime has been, and is, a grave threat to journalists all over the world.
Perhaps you need to read a little more thoroughly and widely on this topic. Here’s a good place to start….
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/journalism-under-attack-and-not-just-ferguson
Thank you for your concern my friend – you would have had more luck quoting figures for people of colour wrongly imprisoned or maybe indigenous people wrongly and unjustly imprisoned, even today – maybe some of them were journalists too.
NZ ranked 7th highest cost of living
Ahead of high income countries like France, UK, Luxembourg, Finland.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-30/visualizing-cost-living-around-world
Interesting link on your web site there about the “American Dream” – or lack of it any more.
The stats there are very similar to ones I’ve seen here in NZ… one that really caught my eye about child poverty:
“#15 Right now, more than one out of every five children in the United States is on food stamps”
Great stuff, but too obvious for the current “administration” here I suspect.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-30/death-american-dream-22-numbers
Graphene Could Double Electricity Generated From Solar .
Early days yet, but a promising development for solar.
15 years to deploy 25,000 Benmore dams worth of generation mate. I’ll be waiting in anticipation.
I can tell. Pull your pants up. If one of your doomsdays does occur, I suppose your last words will be an orgasmic “I told you so” that, sadly for you, nobody else will hear.
In the meantime, how’s the NZ ebola epidemic going? Aren’t we all due to have it by now?
Greece sacks heads of privatisation agency immediately:
The reasons are here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/30/greece-politics-privatisation-idUSA8N0UD01M20150130
There is an anti Greece pro capitalist article in the Kiwi blog. I put the above link there and made the following comment.
“I hope our stupid, lying neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, narrow, myopic and money-hungry pro wealthy, pro corporate, capitalist National/ACT government changes its agenda and stops all its shallow, pro rich and anti people, anti nation policies such as for example, the sale of state houses immediately. The uncontrolled, mega rich corporate driven capitalist free market agenda is a fraud on the ordinary people, the less privileged, the ‘under class’ and the poor”
What do you think?
No-one will take you seriously because you are obviously hiding your lack of knowledge behind over the top jargon which is so exaggerated it is meaningless.
You sound like an exaggerated version of Wolfie Smith.
What ‘knowledge’ do you think I am hiding and lacking?
I made a succinct comment to encapsulate everything that I abhor about the RW and our present destructive government.
I had never heard of Wolfie Smith. Will watch some episodes on You Tube to see if he is good or bad!
Thanks for your response.
Myopic means short sighted. Make a list of the other words you don’t understand, and we can explain them to you.