As I’ve often written, Labour governments have commendably shaped modern New Zealand for the better, notwithstanding some inevitable blunders and excesses. But I have absolutely no doubt the current one, with the perspective of time, will be recorded as the most incompetent and socially and economically destructive in our history.
They leave a legacy of massive needless debt, a badly damaged economy with thousands of small businesses destroyed, a history of slap-dash financial irresponsibility and ironically, of an unknown but reportedly sizeable number of preventable deaths with the ceasure of life-saving operations following the closure of surgical activity for a lengthy period in 2021. But perhaps their greatest crime is their disgraceful attempt to abolish the most basic underlying principle of democracy, namely one vote per adult and not the 2% of the population who can claim 50% or more of Maori ethnicity receiving half of the management function of public institutions based on ethnicity. This they described as co-government which they endeavoured to justify on a totally bogus interpretation of the Treaty. – Sir Bob Jones
Those seeking to make hate speech illegal are relying, increasingly, on the concept of “stochastic terrorism” to justify their plans for extensive political censorship. Stochastic, in this context, is best explained as the problem of identifying precisely which one of the ten thousand antisemitic readers of an incendiary online posting is going to borrow his brother’s rifle and walk into the nearest synagogue.
The promoters of hate speech laws argue that it is enough to know that those contributing to the creation of a climate of hatred and prejudice will, eventually, succeed in provoking a deadly political reaction. Although it is virtually impossible for the authorities to identify exactly which one of these ten thousand potential terrorists will pick up a gun, the statistical certainly remains that someday, someone will.
Better, therefore, to legally prohibit extremists from building-up the sort of highly-charged political atmosphere that can only be earthed by a bolt of terrorist lightning. No antisemitic literature, no antisemitic movies, no antisemitic blogs and – Hey Presto! – no antisemitism!
Quite apart from the immense cultural wounds such an approach would inflict – no Merchant of Venice – it is far from certain that such extensive censorship would be effective. – Chris Trotter
The hate speech legislation packed off to the Law Commission by Prime Minister Hipkins proposed to limit the extended protection of our human rights legislation to religious communities alone. This offered considerably less protection for “vulnerable groups” than had been promised in earlier recommendations, and yet, even when limited to religious belief, the potential for conflict remains high. The Bible and the Koran both contain passages that are, at least on their face, antisemitic. Should both holy books join Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice in the sin-bin? – Chris Trotter
Truth is a hard goddess to like – and even more difficult to serve – but among all the other gods she stands alone for keeping her promise to humanity. “I cannot shield you from the pain that comes with me,” she told us, “but I am your only sure protection against those who would have you believe that happiness is ignorant, and that lies can set you free.” –
So we’ve not learned much from lockdowns have we? We still go crazy, we still panic, and supermarkets still can’t seem to plan ahead for that.- Kate Hawkesby
Any doubts that the cost of living’s worst effects were starting to bite, and bite hard were confirmed this week when a group of health professionals urged the Government to expand its free lunch scheme to more schools.
Health Coalition Aotearoa, a group of more than 55 health academics and 65 medical organisations, said more children than ever needed the scheme, attributing the reason to soaring food prices and the recent Auckland floods. – Janet Wilson
You may well ask how can half the country’s school-aged children need the state to provide them with food?
Implicit in that question is a judgement that researchers say is the problem that renders poverty invisible.
Yet while material hardship rates have decreased since the Global Financial Crisis, poverty for single-parent families remains above comparable countries in Europe and food insecurity is now beginning to become an issue in two-parent working families. – Janet Wilson
With food inflation at 10.1% for the year ended last October, its fastest rate in 14 years, food insecurity is silently rippling into Kiwi homes forcing parents to miss meals, so their children have enough to eat. – Janet Wilson
With Stats NZ revealing that fruit and vegetables had increased by 17%, meat, poultry, and fish by 10% and grocery items by 9.7%, food insecurity is less about poor personal choices and more about the struggle to access nutritious food that’s stratospherically expensive.
So how can New Zealand be a land of plenty that produces enough food to feed 35 million people a year, yet one in five Kiwi kids experience food insecurity and have poor access to good food? –
The researchers contend that rather than attributing hunger to individual decision-making these narratives hide the more pressing realities of inadequate incomes, insecure work, high rents, and lack of access to suitable land for growing food.
As the number of food insecure families grow, simplistic narratives about individual responsibility and poor choices need to be replaced with more equal access to good, nutritional food.
Food in schools programmes, while well-intentioned, in effect masks the wider issue of why the food insecure can’t get access to good food. – Janet Wilson
So was it really a bonfire when incoming Prime Minister Chris Hipkins put a match to several of the Ardern government’s policies?
Certainly his supporters (and some within the media commentariat) hailed the move as being bold, although the ACT party argued that far from setting a bonfire of his own policies, “he has burned a little undergrowth and left a few weeds smouldering for the future”.
Critics were not slow to point out that Hipkins had done nothing to rectify those “achievements” in his own portfolio of falling standards of education and rising truancy in primary schools, not to mention the disaster of the polytechnics merger.
Even now with his avowed focus on “bread-and-butter” issues, the decision to raise the minimum wage rate by the largest aggregate amount since 1997 could push many of its beneficiaries into a higher tax bracket, in effect recycling much of it back to the government’s own coffers. – Point of Order
Who cares if a huge deficit is bequeathed to the next administration? Every previous outgoing Labour government has done so. – Point of Order
The trouble for the Hipkins team is that the Ardern government has wasted so many millions on projects like the proposed merger of TVNZ and Radio NZ, now off the table, that extra funds have to be found to keep those outfits functioning. – Point of Order
With extreme events likely to become more common, we all have to think about the tradeoffs we might have to make to future-proof our homes and our cities and towns.
It’s lucky for us, however, that we have our other superpowers, like knowing when to look out for others, and being a helping hand for anyone who needs it. .
We’ll need to draw on that over the coming days.
Kia Kaha. – Tracy Watkins
We understand that people are doing it really tough but the tough political decisions had to be made.
Here’s the question: What do you do for teachers? What do you do for police? What do you do for defence? Are you going to do it for everyone, Michael?
This… [is] the inflationary price/wage spiral that we’re going to get into that the Federal Reserve in America, that the Reserve Bank here is worried about. This Government isn’t worried about it but everybody knows it’s where we’re going to end up. – Erica Stanford
I’ve been reading about Three Waters over the weekend.
It’s a mess. We knew it was a mess but the headline grabbing aspect of the mess is around co-governance and how unpalatable that is to most of us.
Willie Jackson said as much last week. The argument has been lost, David Seymour and Christopher Luxon have successfully driven the discussion to a point where the Government doesn’t stand a chance. – Mike Hosking
ut here’s your next big hurdle, and it’s what I think most of us haven’t understood, who is liable? You know, for the bill.
We haven’t understood because the question hasn’t been answered until now. But also, I suspect even if it had most of us haven’t wandered into the weeds of this thing and got our head around it.
Some of the local bodies have, hence they’ve never liked it. – Mike Hosking
The answer around liability is another crime in a series of crimes.
It’ll cost, by Government estimates, up to $180 billion. To borrow that you need some sort of assurance. And this is the rub – the Government wants to stick it on the ratepayer.
The Government covers none of it. Think about that.
The four water bodies simply tell lenders if it all goes wrong, we will use a property rating mechanism – in other words, you and me.
So the council have had their assets taken off them but the public are on the hook for the debt. And you wonder why councils don’t want a bar of it. – Mike Hosking
What fool unilaterally has their investment and assets removed from them, handed over to a new body, partially or not, we are yet to see, run by Māori and then the debt liability is handed back to you. On top of the fact that the pricing of the project you have no control over.
And then you, as the council, are charged with collecting the money from the punter at a price agreed to with the water authority that may or may not suit you.
Have you ever seen a more bewildering one-sided cock up of an idea?
This alone is every reason you need to get rid of the Government. They’re insane. – Mike Hosking
Homepaddock 