Word of the day

Defalcation – deduction; misappropriation of funds by a person trusted with its charge; the taking or illegal use of money by someone who has responsibility for it; the act or an instance of embezzling; a failure to meet a promise or an expectation.

Sowell says

If crime is a product of poverty and discrimination as they say endlessly, why was there so much less of it when poverty and discrimination were much worse than today? If massive programs are the only hope to reduce violence in the ghetto, why was there so much less violence long…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) March 28, 2023

Rural round-up

GHG just the start for global farm targets – Neal Wallace:

Global greenhouse gas emission reduction targets could be just the first of several goals that producers and processors will have to meet in the coming years.

Rabobank managing board member Berry Marttin told the Farm2Fork forum in Sydney there is a global move to extend targets for water, biodiversity and social standards that consumers will expect producers to meet.

These are being driven by a global group called Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which so far has commitments from 4764 companies, of which 2431 have approved emission reduction targets.

In New Zealand, 29 companies have signed on, six of them rural. They are: Comvita, Fonterra, Silver Fern Farms, Synlait Milk, Timberline Australia and NZ and WoolWorks NZ. . . 

Soaring costs leave apple exporters unlikely to make profit :

For the second year in a row New Zealand apple growers are unlikely to make money from sales in their traditional export markets of Europe and the UK.

Soaring on-orchard costs, high freight charges because of distance to market, coupled with an unwillingness by key European countries to pay more money, is making exporting apples there financially unsustainable.

AgFirst horticulture consultant Ross Wilson said it has always been a challenge being at the bottom of the world, it costs a lot of money to get products shipped to the export destinations.

“That cost in itself does make us a high cost producer,” he said. . .

Feds: more time needed for the Land Use Inquiry to get it right :

With the resignation of Bill Bayfield and now the sacking of Stuart Nash there needs to be an urgent reset of the Ministerial inquiry into land use on the East Coast, Federated Farmers says.

“Forestry slash and other woody debris washed down in Cyclone Gabrielle caused major damage. Communities on the East Coast need to be given the respect they deserve after such a significant event,” Gisborne farmer and Feds Meat & Wool Chair Toby Williams says.

“Finding someone else to sit on the inquiry panel who has the level of experience and skills that Bill Bayfield brought to the table will be very difficult.”

The land use inquiry didn’t get underway until late February and its report is due April 30. Federated Farmers says this ridiculously short time frame needs to be extended so that the issues can be thoroughly considered and all relevant evidence can be collected and analysed. The panel then needs adequate time to consider the recommendations they will present back. . .

Hard to believe this was us a few days ago ! Now it's Winter in March.😀 pic.twitter.com/5swYkRNPal

— Shelley Dew-Hopkins (@shelleyDewHopki) March 29, 2023

The best and worst of humanity – Colin Miller :

The great pics and stories continue as, of course, does the huge cleanup!

I can recommend the video clip farm suppliers Te Pari produced. If you haven’t seen it, it should come up for you if you Google ‘Te Pari Cyclone Video’.

The very best in people has come to light through all this. Total strangers turning up with shovels and wheelbarrows, putting in untold hours of the toil, helping people they had never previously met. We had a group of skilled guys from our area head across to the Hawke’s Bay for several days to assist, mainly with shearing and fencing repairs, I believe.

Aside from all the hands-on stuff, donations, mostly anonymous, have poured in from all over this great country of ours. Even the key farm-staff members, the working dogs, have not been forgotten, with dog tucker included with the donated support! . .

Aotearoa’s top cheeses named in 20th year of NZ Champions of Cheese Awards :

The country’s top cheeses have been recognised with 162 receiving medals following the 20th year of judging for the NZ Champions of Cheese Awards.

Medals are almost equally split with; 57 Gold, 55 Silver and 48 Bronze being awarded following two days of intensive judging at Wintec Te Pūkenga, Rotokauri Campus in early March.

Master Judge, Jason Tarrant, presided over the panel of 30 judges who came from throughout New Zealand and Australia. Judges are a mix of cheesemakers, cheese retailers, food technologists and food writers who sniffed, tasted a range of New Zealand-made cheese across 20 categories including; ewe milk, washed rind, blue cheese, Dutch style, fresh Italian style, Greek-Cypriot style and cheddar. Judges were supported by a further 20 stewards.

Jason Tarrant congratulated all the NZ Champions of Cheese medal winners saying this year’s competition was hotly contested and every medal awarded was hard won after being assessed by the judges who worked in panels of three. . .

Rams out to the earlies today, 72 old girls that have never been assisted to a Romney, and 190 of varying ages, but that won't do another year after this, to 2 Southdowns and a Poll Dorset.

Ewes are light, as is the grass, but things are trending in the right direction. pic.twitter.com/IWjJD2JHHs

— Ben Dooley 🧢 (@BenDooley8) March 28, 2023

Livestock farming mitigates climate change – Redazione :

New studies review emissions calculation and significantly reduce the environmental impacts of Italian farms.

Italian livestock farming contributes to combating global warming and mitigating climate change. This, in summary, is the result of an Italian researchers’ team who recalculated our country’s livestock sector emissions using a new metric proposed by a group of physicists of the Oxford atmosphere and published in Nature.

“The introduction of these new metrics due to the work of the English physicists is destined to change the frame of the debate on the sustainability of the livestock system,” said Giuseppe Pulina, president of Carni Sostenibili. For the first time, the Oxford study considered the difference in action on global warming between short-lived climate pollutants such as methane and long-lived climate pollutants such as carbon dioxide.

 THE NEW METRICS TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE PERMANENCE OF GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE

 The researchers have observed that if a greenhouse gas remains in the atmosphere for a short time, its effect on global warming is zero. If emissions remain constant every year, they are negative (the atmosphere cools down) if they decrease. This is because reducing its concentration also reduces its contribution to the greenhouse effect. But it is highly heating if emissions increase because this type of gas has a much more greenhouse effect than CO2. The new metrics, therefore, take into account this difference and, in particular, for how long a gas remains in the atmosphere, a substantial difference if we consider that methane after 50 years has practically disappeared, while carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for over a thousand years. . . 

Quotes of the day

A one-day submission process on legislation granting incredibly broad powers to the Minister over an extended period is repugnant. It is offensive to New Zealand’s constitutional traditions unless one wishes to wind the clock back to the reign of King Henry VIII. – Eric Crampton

We would urge that the legislation be withdrawn, and that whoever suggested this process revisits the basics of civics with regard to due parliamentary process and open and transparent government. – Eric Crampton

Further, we believe this to be a shameful episode in the history of New Zealand’s parliamentary democracy.
1.10 We do not request an opportunity to provide an oral submission; the process is a disgrace. – Eric Crampton

I miss the grown-ups.

I’m desperate for some grown-ups, or just someone informed and engaged to be running this country, instead of the malaise and fly by night experience we’re currently having.

Like many of you, yesterday I despaired as I listened to Chris Hipkins on the Mike Hosking Breakfast. It was cringe worthy. He literally could not answer a single question, was so ill informed, offered nothing by way of answers on anything, it was depressing.  – Kate Hawkesby

He admitted he doesn’t watch the news. I mean I get it, I wouldn’t either if I didn’t have to.. it’s tedious, but that’s my job – I have to.

Which begs the question, why isn’t it his job too? Why is the Prime Minister of our country not wanting to be informed? How does he not know what’s going on inside his own government?  – Kate Hawkesby

But what’s increasingly common from politicians these days, as the bar has gotten lower and lower, is they say ‘it’s complex’ or they don’t have the stats right in front of them right now, or they need to look into that, or they’ll have to come back to you. 

Fewer and fewer of them have any answers or information at their fingertips, fewer and fewer of them know anything about their portfolios, fewer and fewer of them have watched the news, read the paper, gotten across news stories at all.

And if you get to the very bottom of that lowered bar you get Marama Davidson, who just makes it up on the hoof and says what she likes, bugger the facts or the accuracy.  – Kate Hawkesby

Maybe I’m old school in expecting politicians to be interested and informed, maybe the reason the polls are so wacky at the moment reflects the mood and malaise of not just the politicians but the public too. Maybe none of us care anymore? Maybe we’re all just sleepwalking around the place oblivious and unbothered?

I don’t know what it is, but it feels like we’re sinking into an abyss of low bars, and low expectations, and I just hope for the sake of this country, that we all snap out of it, at least by October. – Kate Hawkesby

Chris Hipkins, who must be by now regretting ever agreeing to step into the job in place of the hapless Jacinda Ardern in that gerrymandered deal late last year, claims that although the information on Nash was known by the Prime Minister’s office, because of an official information process, somehow the Prime Minister or those close to her were never told.

Really?

A cabinet minister breaking rules, rules that Chris Hipkins very clearly stated was a reason and a reason all on its own for a sacking, was known by the office of Jacinda Ardern and no one who knew thought that telling someone else in that office was a good idea?

Why would they not do that? Are they thick?

Are they thick beyond words?

Or are they so Machiavellian that they owned it all by themselves and thought if they said nothing and the Prime Minister remained untouched and unscathed, they could save her? –Mike Hosking

What we know for a fact is that Nash’s activities with donors via email;

1) Breached cabinet rules,

2) Was known by the office of the Prime Minister and,

3) Cost him his job, because the breach all by itself is a sackable offence.

If it was sackable this week, why wasn’t it sackable then?

You’ll note the theme of this. There seem many questions but very few answers.

Dare I raise the issue of the most honest, open and transparent Government at this stage?

Or is the hole so deep they’ve dug for themselves that it’s become such a farce that it’s not even worth the reminder? – Mike Hosking

There is not a dairy on that road that hasn’t been at the barrel of a gun or the tipping point of a knife in the last three months. There will only be one dairy left on that road very shortly … they’ve all shut down.

Aggravated crime is up in our location despite what people say, and it’s quite in your face. – Tama Potaka 

Look at the median Māori income, it’s significantly lower than the average general income. The cost of living is really jamming the lives of Māori, iwi, whānau, and it’s really hurting and making life difficult.

Maybe 25 percent of Māori own their own homes, that’s a shocking statistic, plus you’ve got rental challenges and people in social housing – it’s really tough out there. – Tama Potaka 

We’ve been very firm and clear about what we believe in, but you’ll find if you listen to debates in the House, there’s an absolute fever within the Labour Government to drive co-governance arrangements through lots of different things, and we’ve had to respond to that. – Tama Potaka 

A question — if the only people allowed to play trans characters are trans folk, then are we also suggesting the only people trans folk can play are trans characters? Surely that will limit your career as an actor? Isn’t the point of an actor to be able play anyone outside your own world? – Guy Pearce *

* This was a tweet which has now been deleted with the following explanation:

I posted a tweet yesterday that I shouldn’t have, which to prevent upsetting anyone else I have now deleted. A fuller apology and explanation of the point I was raising is attached xx Guy pic.twitter.com/bu1vLQcPFm

— Guy Pearce (@TheGuyPearce) March 28, 2023

Ooh look over there!

The government would like our attention to shift from its very bad week to an announcement of an announcement about the fast-tracking of a second harbour crossing in Auckland.

If we judge them by the lack of progress on so many of their announcements of other grand plans we can be confident that whichever option is chosen will be on a slow track.

Meanwhile, in spite of their efforts to distract us, those who care about high standards have not been mollified by the explanation without apology from Marama Davidson.

While the attempted diversion by bridge or tunnel was going on, questions around Stuart Nash’s misdeeds got even more serious:

Labour MP Stuart Nash appears to have improperly withheld the June 2020 email that forced prime minister Chris Hipkins to sack him as a minister for “inexcusable” behaviour, lending support to accusations by National Party leader Christopher Luxon of a “cover-up” and highlighting systemic issues with the Official Information Act. . . 

On June 8, 2021, Newsroom made a request to Nash’s office under the Official Information Act for “All written correspondence and details of the nature and substance of any other communication since the start of 2020” between Nash and 19 of his political donors. Included on the list of donors was Troy Bowker. Given that the June 2020 email to Bowker concerned discussions Nash was having in his capacity as a minister, it appears that the June 2020 email fell within the scope of Newsroom’s request.

In August 2021, however, Nash’s office responded, “I hold nothing that is within the scope of your request as the Act relates only to information provided to me as minister. I must therefore refuse your request under section 18(e) of the Official Information Act as the information does not exist or cannot be found.”

Failing to disclose documents within the scope of a valid request without justification is a breach of the Official Information Act. Nash has been approached for comment.

Both Nash’s office and the office of then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern were aware of the existence of the June 2020 email at the time Nash’s office responded to Newsroom’s OIA request. On Tuesday afternoon, Hipkins told reporters that Nash’s office had notified staff in Ardern’s office that the June 2020 email existed and that they were excluding it from their response to a 2021 OIA request. Whether that was Newsroom’s request is not clear, but the timing indicates that it was.

On Thursday afternoon, the Prime Minister’s Office released a statement attributing the withholding of information to staff oversight. 

“Two staff members in the Prime Minister’s Office, deputy Chief of Staff Holly Donald and a senior advisor were aware of the original OIA. Only the senior advisor was aware of a subsequent complaint to the Ombudsman. 

“It was not escalated to the former Prime Minister or the former Chief of Staff at any point.”

Both staff had reportedly apologised for their error of judgment in “not recognising the significance of the email and escalating it at the time”. . . .

If senior staff did not understand that the PM and Chief of Staff needed to know about this it’s a very poor reflection on them and their judgement. It also raises a question of how many other times this happened because of their ignorance.

An alternative to that is that the staff did understand who needed to know and deliberately didn’t move it upstairs to protect the minister and the government.

Neither of those are good and there is another alternative: that The PM and CoS did know and the staff are being sacrificed.

Any of the three add evidence to the assertion that the government’s claims of openness and transparency are words without matching action.

They all show a disdain for democracy, as does what the New Zealand Initiative describes as a farce of a parliamentary process:

The New Zealand Initiative has damned the consultation process for the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill. It urges that the Bill be amended to force rigorous [MB1] post-enactment scrutiny, with the legislation repealed by 30 September if that scrutiny does not take place.

The Government and Administration Committee sent an email at 9:00 pm on Tuesday 28 March, calling for submissions by 5:00 pm the following day, Wednesday 29 March. This move has left submitters with less than 24 hours to respond, a timeframe that Executive Director Dr Oliver Hartwich has described as “outrageous.”

Hartwich further emphasised that the bill is not a “harmless run-of-the-mill bill” but a powerful tool that could effectively suspend primary legislation and grant broad powers to the Minister over an extended period. He expressed disappointment in the lack of democratic etiquette demonstrated by the government, particularly in light of the entrenchment fiasco last year.

The Initiative’s Chief Economist, Dr Eric Crampton, echoed Hartwich’s sentiments, stating that the legislation had received no prior scrutiny and that the current process provided no opportunity for appropriate deliberation. Crampton criticised the select committee process as an insult to those invited to submit and to parliamentary democracy.

In its 2018 report, “Recipe for Disaster: Building Policy on Shaky Ground”, the Initiative recommended that off-the-shelf legislation be prepared well before any disaster, with appropriate scrutiny and consideration.

The government cannot undo its failure to adequately prepare for emergency situations. But it can require immediate post-implementation review of the legislation, with a more rigorous and appropriate Select Committee process to amend it. In its one-page submission, this is what the Initiative recommends.

The Initiative views this episode as a shameful moment in New Zealand’s parliamentary democracy.

The Taxpayer’s Union says this ministerial power grab must be stopped:

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union condemns the Government’s decision to allow only one day for written submissions on the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill.

The proposed legislation would allow a minister to exempt, modify, or extend provisions of almost any piece of legislation without any form of democratic scrutiny.

Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Callum Purves says:

“This bill would give ministers extensive powers, some lasting until 2028, that would allow them to take action in a range of areas with no democratic parliamentary scrutiny.

“Not only is this ministerial power grab an extremely disproportionate response to the situation, but the government is trying to rush the legislation through with submitters only having a single day to make their views known.

“This truncated process, and the attitude towards democracy shown by some of our lawmakers, is dangerous. Lawmaking at this pace inevitably means mistakes will be made with potentially serious consequences.

“We have already seen emergency powers being abused by ministers wasting billions of taxpayer dollars with the COVID-19 slush fund, this time they are reaching for even more power.

“This legislation would set a dangerous precedent for future governments to seize the opportunity of an emergency to make a ministerial power grab.

“This bill and its token consultation make a mockery of the parliamentary process.”

The government hasn’t learned from the mistake it made last year in its attempt to undermine democracy by entrenching provisions of its Three Five Waters legislation.

Democracy and the part proper parliamentary process plays in it are a necessary part of good governance and essential for the maintenance of trust in the government.

It’s very convenient for the government that this has gone almost unnoticed while attention is focused on its other messes.

It’s attempt to further divert attention from the messes with its announcement of an announcement of a bridge or tunnel that will go nowhere fast adds confirms its lie of openness and transparency and shows yet more disdain for democracy.

Thatcher thinks

Freedom of choice is the essence of a free society, and that includes the right to choose how you spend your earnings. Every time the Government takes a bigger slice of your pay-packet, it is taking a bigger slice of your freedom. pic.twitter.com/UK4okNRj3t

— Margaret Thatcher (@MrsMThatcher) March 27, 2023

Quotes of the day

The sub-set of Woke-Fascism that is Transgender-Fascism may have overplayed its iron fist.

Woke-Fascists, including terrorist groups Only Black Lives Matter and PROFA, are the modern-day version of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Hitler’s Brownshirts and Mao’s Red Guards.

In New Zealand they have mostly managed to camouflage their putrid pedigree under the Orwellian guise of Jackboot Jacinda’s “kindness.”

Now, the whole world has seen through the facade … and the whole world is talking about it. – Lindsay Perigo

The country that has been able proudly to boast that it was the first to give women the vote is now known to be the first country outside of Islam in which women are shut down just for being women.

A Woke-Fascist cabinet minister underscored this cosmic atrocity by proclaiming that violence is committed only by “cis white men.”– Lindsay Perigo

New Zealand’s Woke-Fascists are as murderously evil as Woke-Fascists elsewhere.

Now, all the world knows it: – Lindsay Perigo

Marama is the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence and says she wants us to have these “hard and uncomfortable conversations” (which is reminiscent of what Metiria Turei fatefully wanted when she publicly confessed to ripping off the benefit system.)

But back to Marama. Forget for a moment the offence intended and taken, is her revised statement true?

If Police, Corrections or Oranga Tamariki stats are put up as evidence, the court would find in her favour. More men are in prison for family violence convictions than women; police arrest more men than women for family violence and more men commit physical abuse against children than women (though not “overwhelmingly”. If other forms of abuse are considered women outdo men. Take for instance a quote from MSD gang research which revealed, “The alleged perpetrator of abuse or neglect of gang member’s children was more often recorded as the child’s mother than the gang member father.”) – Lindsay Mitchell

Women were the greater perpetrators of physical partner violence which included choking, hitting, shoving, throwing objects, threatening with a knife, kicking, biting, shaking, etc.  – Lindsay Mitchell

Then again, with ministers like Marama Davidson it’s unlikely to be used to further our understanding of the real world. The last four days have shown that her negative view of men is fixed and she won’t be searching for any evidence to the contrary.

Excitable dogma may be an asset in an activist but not in a minister. She should go. – Lindsay Mitchell

As crime looks to be a hot election issue this year I worry about two things, well more than two things, but let’s start with these two. 

One – the lack of arrests being made and two – the top-down obsession from the police hierarchy with supporting offenders, not victims.   – Kate Hawkesby

The other thing I worry about is the obsession with the offenders, their backgrounds, and their families.

The new Police Minister said at the weekend that she promises ‘wrap-around support for families of youth offenders’. And as lovely as that sounds, it’s not really the first priority the community is looking at for a new Police minister. Certainly not during a time of the increased crime. – Kate Hawkesby

The balance has tilted so wildly in favour of those creating the havoc and doing the crimes, that if you’re the victim of it, as these people were the other night in Auckland’s CBD, they rightly say, why even bother reporting it? – Kate Hawkesby

Biased labelling

Have you noticed the media’s propensity to label people and groups in a way that shows negative bias?

People speaking up for women’s right to their own spaces and fairness in sport aren’t feminists or women’s rights activists, they’re anti-trans or transphobic.

The Taxpayers’ Union is often prefaced with the label right wing which is not only showing bias, it’s wrong. Advocating for prudent use of public funds and highlighting extravagant spending is not partisan and is in the interests of all of us, wherever we sit on the political spectrum.

The Maxim Institute is often labelled, correctly but unnecessarily, conservative.

There are other examples of pejorative or just unnecessary labelling for people and groups such as wealthy, on the right but I don’t think I’ve ever come across labels prefacing those at the other end of the spectrum.

For example, do you ever come across Greenpeace, or any other individual or group with similar political views, labelled far left or left wing?

Where groups and individuals fit on the political spectrum is often a matter of opinion and whether that opinion is correct or not, it is rarely appropriate to use labels denoting that in news reports and it is definitely wrong to use labels only to show bias towards those on the right and leave those on the left unlabelled.

Word of the day

Ug –  to fear, feel horror; shudder with horror; to feel dread, loathing or disgust; to contemplate someone with loathing or disgust.

Thatcher thinks

Those who use this country's great tradition of freedom of speech should not seek to deny that same freedom to others, especially to those who, like Mr Powell, spent their war years in distinguished service in the Forces. pic.twitter.com/g3b1PRkAwk

— Margaret Thatcher (@MrsMThatcher) March 27, 2023

Rural round-up

East Coast farm collapses after carbon group takes over – Aaron Smale :

The Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme incentivises the planting of pine forest. But a company looking to cash in on the scheme has left a farm on the East Coast prone to significant erosion within months of taking over. Aaron Smale reports. 

Satellite images of a former sheep station on the East Coast show a stark difference from surrounding properties after it was sprayed with the intention of planting pine forest to cash in on the government’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

The company that bought the farm for $13 million last year is partly owned by Māori Carbon Collective. The company is among a group of companies started under the umbrella company the Māori Carbon Foundation which was launched last year by Sir Mark Solomon, Hone Harawira, Michelle Boag, Murray McCully, Jevan Goulter and Maru Nihoniho. The directors are Sir Mark, Harawira and Nihoniho and one shareholder is listed, John Muru Walters. 

The Māori Carbon Foundation said at the time of its launch that its aim was to plant on 150,000ha as an initial target, which would see 150 million trees planted. The company covers the cost of planting, maintaining and insuring the forest and landowners would receive an even share of profits after seven years when the start-up cost is covered. The intention was to trade the carbon credits generated by the trees. . . 

Greenwashing and the forestry industry in NZ – Dame Anne Salmond

The inquiry into forestry slash destruction in Tairāwhiti, and review of the Emissions Trading Scheme, should prioritise the state of the planet not the balance sheets of global corporations, writes Dame Anne Salmond.

Over the past few weeks, New Zealanders have been exposed to shocking images of local landscapes ravaged by forestry sediment and slash during Cyclone Gabrielle, from Tairāwhiti to Hawke’s Bay.

They’ve heard heart-breaking stories about the suffering and harm inflicted on individuals, families and communities by surges of mud and logs from pine plantations, putting lives at risk, taking out roads and bridges, fences, crops and animals, farm buildings and family homes, choking streams and rivers, and smothering paddocks, vineyards, orchards and beaches.

At the same time, investigative journalists have begun to explore the story of how this has been allowed to happen, in the face of scientific reports over the past 20 years predicting this kind of damage, and the successful prosecutions of forestry companies which include scathing court judgments about their practices. . . 

To say it's brisk out there today would be an understatement. pic.twitter.com/3dutOZaIf9

— Blocka 🧢 (@blairdrysdale77) March 27, 2023

Lifting red tape Burdon for cyclone hit farms – Simon Edwards :

For cyclone-hit farmers and growers putting in massive hours to get their land and production back into some sort of working order, the last thing they need is to be tied up in the usual resource consent costs and delays. Every dollar is needed to pay for materials, machinery and labour.

That was Federated Farmers’ motivation to write to Environment Minister David Parker earlier this month to ask for suspension of some of that consent red tape, in the same manner as the very successful emergency legislation enacted after the Kaikoura/Hurunui earthquakes.

The Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Act went through the House and select committee in little over two days mid-March. Andrew said the Federation didn’t get everything it sought, “but we persuaded MPs on some important changes and the door is open to further practical measures via a second Bill”. 

The emergency legislation means farmers in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, and Hawke’s Bay regions; and the districts of Tararua, Masterton, Carterton, and South Wairarapa can get on with tasks such as correcting waterways, removing silt, clearing debris and creating the conditions for restored access and animal welfare as a permitted activity. Unfortunately – at this stage – Feds’ argument that cyclone-hit farms in Manawatu-Rangitikei should also qualify fell on deaf ears. . . 

Tractor sales: a warning sign for rural recession – Andrew Bevin :

Economists consider sales of tractors and other machinery an economic bellwether, so a big fall is a worrying indicator.

Dropping tractor sales indicate regional economies could be in for a rough ride, as farmers tighten their belt.

Sales of tractors and farm machinery have fallen off significantly from 2022 highs, according to the Tractor and Machinery Association.

Since the start of 2023, the number of tractors sold was down by a quarter, with notable drops in the horticulture, dairying and lifestyle markets. . . 

TOP 8 CRITICAL RISKS ON FARMS
Working around vehicles (includes farm bikes)
Entanglement in machinery
Electrocution (e.g. overhead wires, power tools)
Hazardous Substances
Handling livestock
Fall from heights
Drowning (e.g. effluent pond, waterways etc)
Entering confined spaces pic.twitter.com/s7Iw7FpcWh

— Safe n Boots (@NeateGraham) March 27, 2023

Southland dairy farmer crowned Otago Southland FMG Young Farmer of the Year :

A Southland dairy farmer has been crowned the Otago Southland FMG Young Farmer of the Year and will compete in the Grand Final in Timaru in July.

Hugh Jackson, 24, was announced as the winner of the Otago Southland FMG Young Farmer of the Year on Saturday evening, after spending the day competing in a range of activities at the Strath Taieri A&P Showgrounds.

The Thornbury Young Farmers member was over the moon to get the win with a 60-point lead. This Regional Final was his fourth attempt at securing a spot at the Grand Final.

“I’ve had a few goes and quickly realised that taking out the win isn’t a given. You have to put in the work, so I’m stoked that my prep this year really paid off.” . . 

Changes to Pāmu governance roles :

Pāmu is excited to announce two new appointments to governance roles at the organisation. Libby Tosswill will join Pāmu as an associate director and observer on its board. The state-owned enterprise has also appointed Jillian Laing to the board of Spring Sheep Milk Co, a public-private partnership company jointly owned by Pāmu and SLC Group.

Pāmu CEO Mark Leslie says Jillian brings expertise in marketing and sales, a global lens and connections, and commerciality in the demand generation space.

“Jillian is an international food marketer. She has been the CEO of a tech start-up and had extensive experience in global sales and marketing while she was at Fonterra. Now in her role with the World Macadamia Organisation, she is across consumer trends and customer insights globally. Jillian brings a new perspective, and we are excited to welcome her into the fold,” he says.

Libby has a Bachelor of Commerce from Otago and a financial markets background in New Zealand as well as internationally. She is heavily involved in local community governance and is currently Chair of the Porangahau Catchment Group – Taurekaitai Ki Te Paerahi, Trustee of Connect Youth and Community Trust, and an elected Trustee of the Central Hawke’s Bay Consumers Power Trust. . . 

 

Quotes of the day

For a brief moment last year, it looked as if the Ministry of Education was finally going to embrace methods of teaching literacy and numeracy supported by scientific evidence. They published a new literacy and numeracy strategy that made reference to structured teaching methods.

Structured literacy works because it takes account of the nature of human memory and attention, and its limitations. The Ministry has spent more than two decades ignoring mounting evidence in its favour.
To be sure, the new strategy was hardly a full-throated endorsement of structured teaching, nor an especially well-articulated one. Still, I was heartened by their stated intention to develop a Common Practice Model (CPM) incorporating a structured approach to teaching these key skills. As its name implies, a CPM is a guide to teaching methods to be followed by every teacher in the country. –  Michael Johnston :

The trouble is, the rest of the document constitutes a doubling down on the same failed, and sometimes ludicrous, methods the Ministry has championed for years. Under those methods, a generation of young New Zealanders has been badly let down. A third of our fifteen-year-olds cannot read at a basic adult standard. Two thirds cannot write at a similar standard and nearly half lack basic numeracy skills. –  Michael Johnston :

There isn’t the space here to describe all the ways in which these ‘pedagogies’ will harm, rather than foster, sound learning. I will confine myself to one highlight – that of ‘critical maths’.

The CPM asserts that “Ākonga [students] are encouraged to interrogate dominant discourses and assumptions, including that maths is benign, neutral, and culture-free”.

All this before they even know what mathematics is.

There is little enough time as it is during the school years for young people to develop basic mathematical proficiency. I would like to suggest to the Ministry that loading this kind of nonsense on top of that task guarantees further educational failure.

But, once again, the Ministry has shown that it simply isn’t listening. –  Michael Johnston

This is what it must have been like when women were marched to the stake. Yesterday in Auckland the British women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker found herself surrounded by a deranged, heaving mob. She had tomato soup and placards thrown in her face. She was doused with water. Huge men screamed insults and expletives in her face. The shoving of the crowd became so intense that Parker feared for her life. ‘I genuinely thought that if I fell to the floor I would never get up again’, she said. ‘My children would lose their mother and my husband would lose his wife.’

It was a truly chilling spectacle. The mobs’ faces were twisted into masks of feral hatred. They ranted in frenzy as the diminutive Parker, her bottle-blonde hair stained orange from the soup that had been dumped on her, desperately tried to make her way to the safety of a police car. It was a ritualistic shaming of a witch, a violent purging of a heretic.

Next time you’re reading a history book and find yourself wondering how Salem came to be consumed by such swirling hysteria, watch the clips of Posie’s persecution in New Zealand. This is how it happens. This is how the fear of witches can overrule reason and unleash the darkest, most punitive passions of the mob.

And what is Parker’s crime? What did this witch do? She said, ‘A woman is an adult human female’. That’s it. – Brendan O’Neill

She thinks a man never becomes a woman, no matter how many hormones he takes or surgeries he undergoes. She thinks if you were born male, you will die male, and in the time in between you have no right whatsoever to enter any women-only space.

This is heresy. Dissenting from the gospel of gender ideology is to the 21st century what dissenting from the actual gospels was to the 15th. And so Parker must be punished. It was a modern-day stoning, so mercifully they only threw soup and water and planks of cardboard at the blasphemer. – Brendan O’Neill

She knows these gatherings of women who merely want to give voice to their profane belief that sex can never be changed will draw out crowds of intolerant trans activists and their allies. She knows the ‘Be Kind’ mob will do everything in its power to stop women from speaking. And she knows it will all brilliantly illustrate her core belief: that trans activism is misogyny in disguise, misogyny in drag, if you like, and that it has devoted itself to silencing women who believe in biology.

Australia and New Zealand played their parts brilliantly in Parker’s clever scheme. From Melbourne to Canberra, Hobart to Auckland, huge crowds of the right-on turned up to drown out the voices of the pesky women who dare to call men ‘men’. ‘Let women speak’, Parker says. ‘No’, says the mob. She incites them to confess their misogyny and intolerance in full public view. And they do. 

Auckland was the worst. At Albert park in the centre of the city yesterday, the mob could not hide its vengeful loathing of the uppity women who disagree with its ideologies. Parker is a new kind of witch, one who willingly submits herself to a witch-trial, so that the rest of us might see just how dogmatic and unforgiving the new witch-hunters are.  – Brendan O’Neill

The events in Auckland should be a wake-up call for liberals everywhere. We glimpsed the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks in the velvet glove of ‘Be Kind’. The misogynistic streak in trans extremism is undeniable now. Watch enraged men kicking down metal barriers so that they might get closer to the witch Posie and tell me this isn’t sexism masquerading as radicalism. Witness the crowing of men who are delighted that the mob made the ‘coward TERF’ run away and tell me this isn’t chauvinism on steroids. Behold the use of megaphones and expletive-laden chants and physical menace to silence a woman and tell me this isn’t a sexist, censorious crusade against women’s freedom of speech.

That mob in Auckland did not emerge out of thin air. No, it was a brutish manifestation of a regressive idea that has been taking hold for some years. Namely, that it should be forbidden to dissent from gender ideology. That it is bigotry to state biological facts. That it ought to be a punishable offence – whether that punishment is being No Platformed or sacked or having objects thrown in your face – to say men are men and women are women.

To see where censorship ends up, just look at those grimacing agitators in Auckland, hatred spreading like a current through their number, as they fight with every fibre of their being to prevent the expression of a critical idea. Censorship begets bigotry. It begets violence itself. For the more we tell people that certain words will hurt them, the more we witlessly incite people to hurt those who dare to utter certain words.

That mob was drunk on sanctimony. This is what happens when we tell people their identity is the most important thing in the world and that anything that so much as grazes their self-esteem is an outrage that must be crushed. We nurture a generation of navel-gazing Torquemadas. Posie has exposed them, yet again, and for that she deserves our thanks. This time round, the witches might just win.  – Brendan O’Neill

Sport, so focused on winning and losing, on rules and competition, can bring a reductive clarity to the complexities of life. Perhaps that is why the judgement this week of the World Athletics Council was so momentous. Put simply, council president Sebastian Coe had to choose between conflicting “rights” and he decided that the right of those born women to compete fairly trumps the desire to be included in elite sport of those who have gone through male puberty but run or jump as women. “We felt,” he said, “that having transgender athletes competing at elite level would actually compromise the integrity of female competition.”

It can seem that there is no more sensitive an issue than trans rights. But sport, with that same reductive clarity, is not so concerned with sensitivities. It is concerned with the irrefutable reality of the stopwatch and winner’s podium. And they starkly reveal the distortions that testosterone and its consequences for muscle, stature, strength and speed wreak on the track and field. Indeed, so stark and inescapable is the judgement of Lord Coe and his organisation that it de-barbs what elsewhere remains one of society’s thorniest issues. All it took was leadership to act.  – Harry de Quetteville

 For the transgender rights fissure that opened up in sport echoes that in politics and society more widely. There, faced with increasing public concern, other leaders are increasingly being forced to choose as well. Equivocation is no longer enough. It was oddly fitting, for example, that Lord Coe’s decision in athletics came on the very same day that SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon left office – a titanic, once unassailable figure finally, if not exclusively, propelled into the political void by her support for the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. A leader of long standing who had always seemed so in touch with public sentiment found herself jettisoned, more tone-deaf than deft. – Harry de Quetteville

That decision did not come in isolation. In fact, it came hard on the heels of the devastating Cass Review which led to the closure of the controversial Tavistock clinic, where children found themselves referred for assessment for puberty-blocking drugs and life-changing surgery without adequate safeguards. And the decision at the end of last year by the charities regulator to launch a statutory inquiry into Mermaids, the transgender campaign group found to be offering harmful breast-binders to girls as young as 13 without their parents’ knowledge. And the announcement a month ago, in the same week that Sturgeon revealed she was stepping down, that the Sandyford clinic – known as “Scotland’s Tavistock” – would be closing its doors to new patients.

For activists on either side of the debate, each of these has represented an ideological battle. Together, however, their outcomes point in one direction. That’s why, in years to come, there is every reason to believe that historians will look back on this week as one in which the battle lines of the trans rights war were redrawn. – Harry de Quetteville

Just 19 per cent of those polled, for example, disagree with Lord Coe and think that transgender women should be allowed to compete in women-only sporting events. Fewer than half agree that “a trans man is a man and a trans woman is a woman”. On high streets, retailers are being forced to react too. Primark, for example, has had to repeal “gender-neutral” changing areas after female customers said they felt unsafe sharing changing areas with men. The Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith this week found its “all-gender” loos – in which a woman heading to a cubicle would need to walk past five urinals – lambasted for making women feel “incredibly uncomfortable”.

Meanwhile, a school on the Isle of Man was forced to suspend sex education lessons for 11-year-olds after it turned out they were being conducted by a drag queen who allegedly told pupils that there are 73 genders, and excluded one “upset” child who responded that “there are only two”. Children of the same age were also taught about sex-change operations and oral and anal sex. – Harry de Quetteville

Today, then, it seems that public opinion, the law, and politics are beginning to coalesce coherently around this issue; that viewpoints for so long kept soft by uncertainty and a desire for tolerance are beginning to firm. Minds are being made up. It was only a matter of time. For there was always going to come a moment when, from the safety of posterity, we would look back on the transgender rights activism of the past few years either as a righteous movement which opened society’s eyes to obvious injustice – or an astonishing aberration when, gripped by some delusion, we came en masse to view gender not as objective reality but as a subjective spectrum.

One day, we would have – like Lord Coe – to choose. Or more likely, through a series of decisions, legal, political and incremental, a path would emerge and society would proceed along it, leaving the other path untravelled. This week, it seems we are taking our first steps down one path and not the other.

If so, it signals a momentous potential juncture in a culture war that became a political war. Not an end to that conflict, as Britain’s wartime leader might have said, or even the beginning of the end, but an end of the beginning.

Such marshal language may seem inappropriate, but anyone following the transgender fight online can testify to how bitterly and viciously contested it has been.  – Harry de Quetteville

In the face of such an onslaught, it can seem that the events of the past months are not so much a victory as a course correction, after a period in which fear of being labelled discriminatory silenced many in positions of power and beyond. Now, though, it apparently turns out that the view that society cannot be ruled by social media’s cancel culture mob is widely held.

Certainly, those who have dared speak up now feel that momentum is on their side – “common sense at last” in the words of former runner Liz McColgan. The consequences of this week’s turn then, may be far-reaching. Logically, it means that never again are we likely to dish out puberty blockers to confused children, or carry out irreversible surgery to remove the breasts of young women in an environment that – as the Cass Review into the Tavistock Centre discovered – merely confirmed rather than challenged their desire to proceed with such life-altering measures.   –

Perhaps even more importantly, this may be a turning point that will cause us to consider the very nature of democracy, where defence and support of the minority by the majority is absolutely central. How far does society bend to accommodate the needs of the few? How extreme does that accommodation have to be, and how tiny the numbers of the minority, before society can rightly refuse to bend, or yield only a little?

It turns out that such questions have been plaguing us since the dawn of political philosophy.  – Harry de Quetteville

The 20th century’s appalling toll of racism, sectarianism, misogyny and homophobia have all accustomed us to the idea that moral justice is wedded to the defence of those fighting for improved rights. Now, uncomfortably, we may have to get used to the idea that in some cases, the majority can sometimes be right, with understanding and tolerance, to push back. – Harry de Quetteville

I wanted to interview one of the Green Party leaders this morning.

Both declined. James Shaw and Marama Davidson said no. They’ve been vocal for days on their own social channels, but they won’t be challenged or face questions from media who don’t agree with them. – Rachel Smalley

Remember this date – Saturday, 25th of March. It’s the day the Greens stepped up and publicly applauded the intimidation and silencing of women.  –

50 percent of our population is women. 50 percent of the voter base is women. And the Greens say our voice doesn’t matter. Worse, they applauded the men who raised fists, called women c-words, and backed the men who pushed through security fences to intimidate and mob Posie Parker.

Hate has no place in society, they say. Hate against who?

The Greens are the party that Chris Hipkins has no option but to go into coalition with. And if this is the devastation the Greens can inflict on our freedom of speech and on social cohesion when they are in essence outside of Government, imagine what they can do from within it? Labour’s tripping over itself at the moment trying to find its official position on what’s just happened to our society this weekend… but they are largely mumbling something about supporting trans rights and opposing hate.

And don’t we all? Don’t we all support trans and oppose hate? But how can politicians justify the hate that has been unleashed on women? I feel like I am living in some sort of parallel universe. How can it be that it’s okay to silence women about issues that affect them, and physically intimidate them into silence? – Rachel Smalley

Women, if they raise their hands to speak, they are silenced and abused. Since I wrote my editorial on Thursday, I have been called many things. A Nazi. A Terf. A supporter of hate. Anti-trans. A bigot. A bitch. And far worse.

I am none of those things. But I am a woman and I’ve been around these traps for a while. And I do believe that we should all be afforded a voice and an opportunity to speak to issues that impact the world that we live in. That impact our world. – Rachel Smalley

Four of the Greens’ senior women were utterly fervent in their opposition to women at the weekend, calling on the public to rise up against the Let Women Speak group, and then applauding the abuse and intimidation that rained down on them.

How on earth did the Greens become so anti-women? – Rachel Smalley

The Greens won’t accept that you can be pro-trans rights AND pro-women rights. You don’t have to pick a side, but the Greens did. And they opposed women’s rights. In 2023, they opposed women’s rights.

And for me… well, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Greens MP Golriz Ghahraman on the issue unfolding in Iran. She said New Zealand must stand up, and stop the misogyny and the hate and the violence that was raining down on the women of Iran. And then on Saturday, I watched her dog-whistle misogyny and violent behaviour against the women of New Zealand. In the moments before the protest, she posted a picture of herself smiling on Twitter holding a sign where she labelled women’s rights campaigners as Terfs and she wrote “Ready to the fight the Nazis!”

That’s me, Golriz. The same woman who stood with you and called for Iran’s women to be given a voice… that same woman is me. And now when I ask for women to be given a voice in a situation that significantly impacts women’s rights, you call me a Nazi and a Terf.  – Rachel Smalley

Marama reminded us that she is the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Minister. She reminded us of that as she walked away from a protest that used fear and intimidation to silence women. And she said it’s straight white men who are responsible for violence. White men inflict violence on the world. 

How does that sit with the Prime Minister? How does Chris Hipkins view that statement from a Minister in his Government? That’s a big question for him today. – Rachel Smalley

Four Green Party women. Four women at the coalface of silencing women. Four women who believe women cannot have a say in decisions that will impact their lives and their rights.

These are the same women who are behind the forced change in the way the Government now speaks about women in documentation. No woman has been consulted on this.

But I am no longer called a woman by the Government. Girls are called menstruator. Or a person who bleeds. Or a person with a womb. I’m called a chest-feeder or a baby carrier. I, like every New Zealand woman, have been told that I have to accept how this Government is choosing to refer to me in its correspondence. And if I don’t accept it, I am a bigot or transphobic.

What a mess.

Why should Labour and Chris Hipkins be worried about what played out at the weekend? Because the only way Labour can form a Government in October is with the support of the Greens. If Labour gets into power, they will bring the Greens with them. They will have to, to get the numbers. And they’ll have to work with Marama Davidson who shut down the voice of women, and said white men are behind all of the violence in the world. – Rachel Smalley

If this is the level of damage the Greens can inflict on society and on women’s rights when they’re officially in Government, imagine how much destruction they can do if they are entrenched fully within a Labour government?

For the first time in my life, I am fearful of a political party. I really am. I am fearful of how the Greens mobilised their MPs and their followers to shut down women. Marama Davidson is something of a lost cause now. How do we believe or trust in her as a politician? And James Shaw? As co-leader, you’ve lost control of your party. And your political credibility has taken a major hit.

I’ll say this one last time for all of the haters out there, and there are many.

Trans rights are human rights. I 100 percent agree. But I also believe women’s rights are human rights. And one should not come at the expense of another. – Rachel Smalley

I wasn’t surprised by the turnout. And I wasn’t surprised by the noise. I wasn’t even surprised that neither Kellie Jay Keen-Minshull nor any other woman was able to speak at an event billed as Let Women Speak (ironic much).

An unrelenting vomit of media misinformation aided by politician’s slurs the previous week had pretty much ensured that there would be a huge turnout of rainbow youth, Green’s supporters, empathetic women (their niceness weaponised against natal women in favour of men), woman-face drag queens and – Gotverdomme – even a cluster of Dutch dykes on bikes at Albert Park to greet the British women’s rights advocate.

So no, no surprises there.  – Yvonne Van Dongen

But what did surprise me was the complete lack of police presence. Call me naive but I thought one of the roles of the police was to enforce order and ensure people could exercise their right to freedom of speech. As the four of us walked up to Albert Park surrounded by young people and placards, we foolishly comforted ourselves with the knowledge that no matter what happened, we would be protected by those men and women in blue.  

Instead – nothing. I didn’t see a single officer the whole time I was there although a friend swears she saw two cops standing in the background, looking bemused. Sorry Julie but I don’t believe you. I suspect they were just two people wearing hi-vis vests and caps and you just want to make me feel better. But thanks anyway.  – Yvonne Van Dongen

Science says there are only two sexes, woman is adult human female, people can’t change sex and it is impossible to be born in the wrong body. Show me the third gamete. You can call her a woman’s right’s campaigner which is true but at its most fundamental she is staking a claim for sanity.

But sanity was a bit like the police. Missing in action. A call to 111 assured me they were there. Honestly sometimes I feel like I’m being forced to live in the world of alternative facts. Where the fook are they I shouted into the phone. – Yvonne Van Dongen

My photos show placards bearing such inspiring messages as “Suck My Dick” and “Get Off Our Land Cunt.” This, despite KJK being co-hosted by Mana Wāhine Kōrero, a group of Māori women who describe transactivism as the second colonization. By which they mean the way women’s language and spaces are being colonized by men who say they are women.  

In what now seems an ironic directive an Auckland council spokesperson was quoted as saying the organisers of the event had the responsibility to not incite violence. 

Frankly that goes for the media and politicians. By linking her inaccurately to neo-Nazis (neither the Australian nor the Australian Jewish Association believes that is true) and white supremacists, they fanned the flames of this intimidation and silencing. Guilt by inaccurate association is hardly an argument. Silencing free speech is a victory only for bullies and ultimately a blow for democracy. – Yvonne Van Dongen

There are grifters everywhere, on every loud and voluble side. Making a living by making themselves live clickbait.

This is all very exciting to the protagonists, I’m sure and to the newscasters who need them, because it fills up their news broadcasts and column inches with colourful but undemanding fare. Because it’s issues played out simply for live clickbait. Activism theatre. “Activists” observing an issue out there, and discovering how to make clickbait out of it.

There’s a certain genius to this kind of activism. To make an important stand and to discuss the issues in order to come to a reasonable and rational conclusion about them? No, not at all: in order to attract more followers. And more clicks.

So instead of discussing the issues, on Saturday we saw lots of people shouting and throwing fists, but nobody listening. Lots of heat, but no light. ‘Cos mostly what they were all shouting anyway, effectively, was not much more than just: “Click on Me!”

Cancel Culture meets Clickbait Culture. Everyone’s a Winner!

These people all need each other. They are part of a mutually reliant ecosystem. Without each of them shouting out their bumpersticker slogans, none of them would be making any kind of living at all. But without any of them, we might be able to have a decent chat about the issues they all say they stand for (or against). – Not PC

Men forcibly stopping women from speaking in public. Men chanting that women who dare disagree with them should shut up and kill themselves. Men punching women in the face. There’s a word for all this: misogyny. Unbridled, violent misogyny, at that. And yet this vile behaviour has been indulged in once again in recent days by those who think they are the foot soldiers in a new civil-rights movement, by those who besmirch the mantle of anti-fascism by claiming it for themselves, by those who somehow still manage to call themselves ‘progressives’.– Tom Slater

These women were demanding only the right to speak in public, about the erosion of their freedom of speech and sex-based rights at the behest of extreme gender ideology. And even that was not afforded to them. The protesters drowned them out. This wasn’t counter-speech – it was the heckler’s veto in action. Even that feels like a bit of a tame way to describe the tactics of this mob. Heckles are often funny. There’s nothing funny about calling women old enough to be your mother fascists and telling them to top themselves.-

Enough. We need to call this behaviour out for the violent misogyny that it is. We also need to call out the various cretins who have put a target on these women’s backs, from New Zealand TV station Newshub, which deployed absurd tactics to smear Keen as ‘far right’ ahead of the Auckland rally, to Australian senator Nick McKim, who called Keen and her supporters ‘cunts’ in Aussie rhyming slang, to our own woke bros like Owen Jones and Billy Bragg, who continue to say that gender-critical women, rather than the black-clad men threatening to beat them up, are the fascist-aligned side in this battle. Finally, not least given the fact that police are refusing to do their job, anyone who believes in freedom of speech and women’s rights really needs to stand in solidarity with these courageous women – physically, in public, at a gender-critical event near you.

They must be supported – and the reactionaries posing as progressives must be opposed. See you at Speakers’ Corner. – Tom Slater

One Minister down

Stuart Nash has been sacked for a fourth strike:

Stuart Nash has been sacked as a minister, after Stuff revealed he had emailed business figures, including donors, detailing private Cabinet discussions.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed the people Nash emailed were donors to his campaign, which he said was a serious breach of trust and expectations for ministers.

”His conduct is inexcusable,” Hipkins said. ”He is no longer a Cabinet minister and won’t be coming back.”

Nash, the minister for economic development, forestry and fisheries, was already on his “final warning” for breaches to the Cabinet Manual. 

He’s also been sent a very clear message to not stand again:

Hipkins said he had asked Nash, who is MP for Napier, to also consider his position as an MP generally.

“He is MP for Napier as of right now… Stuart will be reflecting on his position over the next little while,” Hipkins said.

That’s one Minister down and Marama Davidson will be thanking him for taking the spotlight off her.

That does not however, stop criticism of her racist and sexist diatribe on Saturday for which she refuses to apologise:

Marama Davidson is refusing to apologise publicly for saying it’s “white cis men who cause violence in the world”.

Appearing before journalists and in Parliament on Tuesday, the Greens co-leader and Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence repeatedly said she felt it appropriate to clarify her comments, but she didn’t apologise.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has said she apologised to him privately, but National’s Christopher Luxon wants a public apology “to the people that she caused offence to”. 

Davidson on Saturday was approached by an individual from the far-right conspiracy theorist website Counterspin for her opinion on behaviour at the Posie Parker protest. 

“Trans people are tired of being oppressed and discriminated,” Davidson said. “I am a prevention violence minister [sic]. I know who causes violence in the world, it is white cis men. That is white cis men who cause violence in the world.” . . 

She uses the excuse of being in shock after being hit by a motorcycle for her vitriol but there is nothing in her appearance in the video to back that up.

Hope for a speedy recovery so she can explain why she stated the following. pic.twitter.com/12xa4p2jbU

— Eerjk McRae (@EerjkMcRae) March 25, 2023

Just as being drunk might explain but not excuse bad behaviour, being in shock doesn’t excuse her words and behaviour which are a very clear example of conduct unbecoming for a Minister and for which she owes the many good men she erroneously labelled as perpetrators of violence a sincere apology.

Apropos the subject of unbecoming, it is fair to ask what standards of behaviour Chris Hipkins is willing to tolerate in his Ministers, whether or not they are in Cabinet.

Word of the day

Disconsolate  – very unhappy and unable to be comforted; dejected; without consolation or solace; hopelessly unhappy; inconsolable; sad beyond comfort.

Sowell says

The dirty little secret of liberal politics is that it is not about the poor or "social justice" but is about the political careers and moral exaltation of liberals themselves. The actual consequences of liberal policies on the poor or others seldom receives anything like the…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) March 22, 2023

Vote them out # 5

After four years of the fees-free policy, the inevitable has happened: students from wealthier backgrounds have been shown to benefit most:

The proportion of students from wealthier backgrounds taking up the Government’s fees-free tertiary education policy continues to grow, despite its aim to help those facing economic hardship.

Labour’s flagship policy to pay for the first year of tertiary education was introduced in 2018. It was to be expanded to cover the first three years, but this was suspended in 2020, largely due to the impact of Covid-19 and the need to reprioritise spending.

Its original intentions were to help people overcome economic barriers to higher education, while also growing the numbers of those enrolled.

The Government has defended the scheme but the National Party has labelled it “poorly thought through”, given it was failing to improve accessibility or equity for young people from lower-income households. . . 

This is another example of the government failing to target help to those most in need and another reason to vote them out.

Quotes of the day

Think back to this time last week. Had you ever heard of Posie Parker before?

No, me neither.

Yet here we are, a week later, and many of us now know too much about her.

Too much, because many of us don’t care about what she’s talking about. Not because we’re callous towards trans people or towards women wishing to defend their spaces, but because this isn’t much of a tension in New Zealand. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

So, this time last week, there was a very good chance Posie Parker would’ve come to the country, spoken to a small group of upset women and left. Most of us would’ve been none-the-wiser.

But then the critics piped up. The Green Party called for her ban.

They must’ve known the chances of a ban were incredibly slim. She is a British citizen. She doesn’t need permission to come here. Her travel is visa-free.

The Greens were surely performing for a crowd rather than expecting an actual ban. But they called for it anyway. And the media covered it. And the media amplified her message. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

And the media amplified her message.

And then other critics piled in. They publicly despaired Immigration NZ’s entirely expected decision not to ban Parker. And they accused her of pulling a Nazi OK symbol in her video challenging our PM. And the media covered it.

And then they promised to protest and launched a judicial review in court and attacked the Immigration Minister for not intervening when he could and – as expected – the media covered it. And in the end, all of Parker’s opponents made sure that she was in the news most of the week and that many of us knew exactly what she was saying about women’s rights and trans rights.

For a moment some of them stopped. They talked about whether they were making things worse. But they did it anyway.

They did more harm than good. They helped her spread her message. They played right into her hands. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

The Green Party, Auckland Pride, and RainbowYOUTH will probably tell themselves they’ve done the right thing by lending their solidarity to the trans community.

But there are other ways to express solidarity. A considered statement on a Facebook page. A tweet. An Instagram post. There are ways to say what needs to be said to the people who need to hear it without creating the exact kind of drama the media will rush to cover. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Again, these people are not stupid. They must know they just helped some Kiwis, who will like what they see, discover Posie Parker.

What an own goal. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

This weekend saw a showdown between two tribes of contemporary gender politics: those in favour of progressing transgender rights versus women wishing to defend their spaces. It’s a debate with huge passion, outrage and consequences. – Bryce Edwards

There was an element of pantomime on both sides over the last week. Posie Parker thrives on controversy. She might be complaining now about her treatment in New Zealand, but by holding her rally in a public place like Albert Park she was provoking opposition and stoking tensions, hoping to become something of a martyr.

She won. She made global news, fuelling publicity in the UK and US markets where she carries out her main fundraising. She will now be even better equipped to push her particularly toxic form of gender politics.

Likewise, those opposing Parker were rather opportunistic in arguing that she is a fascist and that her beliefs were such a danger to the public that she had to be banned from the country.

They must have known they were giving the previously-unknown visitor huge amounts of free publicity and therefore helping get her views out to a wider audience. – Bryce Edwards

The two parliamentary parties stoking the culture wars are Act and the Greens. Those parties will gain a much higher profile if cultural issues keep rising to the fore. The Greens will pick up middle class supporters whose main focus is on social justice issues, while Act might be able to pick up more anti-woke working class supporters in provincial New Zealand.

Squeezed in the middle are the major parties of Labour and National, who are desperate to stay out of it all, aware that middle New Zealand is less enamoured by such debates and concerns. – Bryce Edwards

There’s a whole new terminology that needs unpacking and defining in the new landscape of culture wars. We have been through versions associated with the “progressive” side of this debate such as political correctness, cancel culture, identity politics, and now “woke” politics. To what extent these terms are useful continues to be debated. Perhaps the better term for the milieu of more middle class progressive demands is “social justice politics”.

Much of it is associated with leftwing politics but, in reality, the left is divided over culture wars. The “cultural left” side tends to be connected with more elite, educated, and middle class activists. The more traditional, or working class orientated “old left”, is still focused on economic inequality and improving the lot of those economically disadvantaged as a whole, with a focus on universalism and civil rights. –

Saturday’s clash of cultures is a sign of where politics is heading in New Zealand – towards a fully-fledged culture war.  – Bryce Edwards

Democracy might also be harmed if the culture wars dominate this year’s election. An ugly fight over transgender politics, co-governance, or race relations would be one that alienates many voters, and reduces participation in politics. Some of the public will turn away in disgust, confusion, or fear about culture wars. The intolerance and outrage that often occurs in these debates can make ordinary voters feel unwelcome taking part in discussion and debate, or even in voting. – Bryce Edwards

The main problem in culture wars arise when there is no room for nuanced discussion, openness or a willingness to learn from others and opponents. Overall, there is a need for healthier debate and engagement in New Zealand politics. – Bryce Edwards

New Zealand is facing huge problems which require critical thinking and debate. We won’t be well served if such political debate and the upcoming election are highjacked by the hate and tribal opportunism we saw over the weekend. – Bryce Edwards

I believe in the freedom of speech and the need to have an open debate and consider everybody’s rights, and encourage good, strong, discourse.

I have also spent the best part of my life working in communication. Long enough to recognise that the route of all evil is when people feel they are not heard, or they are denied a voice.

If no one will listen to you, it fuels frustration and fear. If you’re talked at or drowned out, the effect is much the same. You become disenfranchised and disengaged.

I am pro-trans rights but I am also pro-women’s rights. I believe one shouldn’t come at the expense of the other, but I can’t say that easily. If I do, the abuse rolls in and I’m called a bigot and a transphobic and a Nazi. – Rachel Smalley

Last week, we saw some remarkable bias in mainstream media reporting. And when people like Kim Hill – the doyen of interviewing – spoke robustly to both sides of the debate, pro-Trans supporters immediately reported her to the Broadcasting Standards Authority for giving a voice to Posie Parker.

I don’t think we will see balanced reporting again this week. The mainstream media is, by default, quite young – too young to really understand how hard-fought women’s rights have been. They have been born and raised in a world that many of us fought hard to change in the years that have gone by. They’ve benefited from those changes, but they haven’t understood the struggle.  – Rachel Smalley

No female sports journalists will endure that today. Women have a voice. And unlike me, back in the 1990s, they know how to use it. It’s a different world. Thankfully.

But that’s also why events like what unfolded at the weekend really upset me. I feel like society is going backwards. Men yelling at women. Men intimidating women. But worst of all, women yelling abuse at other women – or sanctioning intimidating behaviour against them. It is my hope that across the mainstream media, you will find some very strong and brave analyses today that position this story right down the middle.

It is my hope that you get journalists calling this intimidating behaviour out, and reiterating that to enable the rights of the trans community, you also need to enable the voices of women because we are all different and we all have stories, and backstories, and some of us will be impacted by the elevation of the trans community, and we have a right to speak up about our concerns if women are losing our rights to feel safe and occupy women-only spaces.

I don’t know whether you will read, see and hear that today but in a well-functioning democracy, it’s what you should see from our media.

I feel a very lonely voice at the moment in the mainstream media.

New Zealand feels like it’s digressed decades in enabling women, and after what I witnessed at the weekend, and the crushing of women, I feel like I’m back in a sports newsroom in the 1990s. – Rachel Smalley

As a libertarian I believe people should do as they wish but never at the expense of others. – Sir Bob Jones

The folks over at Science-Based Medicine (SBM) have decided that the hill they’ll defend (if not die on) is that sex in humans is a continuous trait, though there might be modes at “male” and “female”. This of course flies in the face of biology, which argues that there are only two sexes in vertebrates: i.e., sex is binary). While there is a low percentage of people (and presumably animals) having “disorders of sex development”, these individuals are not “third sexes” or “new sexes”, but simply those in which the developmental system has gone awry, and they are either sterile or produce sperm or eggs (but not both in a functional way).

I believe the denial of the sex binary is motivated by ideology—to show people who don’t adhere to a “male” or “female” identity that that’s is okay because there are different sexes in nature, too. If you think about that argument, though, you’ll find that it’s not only fallacious but also pretty irrational. – Jerry Coyne

Once again in NZ we’re seeing our public discourse being taken over by the fringes, and no room left for anything in the middle. You’re with us or you’re against us.

I see both sides feeling threatened, but not a lot of empathy for each other. I see both sides talking past each other, and attributing sinister motives to the other side.

I also see a lot of common ground, common ground that isn’t being identified and agreed upon, and that isn’t being talked about in the media. Without common ground there really cannot be discussion – Paul  L

A resolution cannot be reached on this without discussion and debate. Simply codifying a right to self id, and therefore a right to access those spaces, without consulting those who feel unsafe is a problem. Simply classifying all trans women as men, and requiring them to use male bathrooms is also a problem. – Paul  L

What we saw over the last few days was a media and a public space that had no nuance, no discussion of the fact that there was a conflict of rights. We had (some) women’s rights campaigners focusing on the rights that women have to their own spaces without recognising that trans women also have a right to safety. We had (some) trans rights campaigners focusing on the rights that trans women have to safety without recognising that (some) women are very uncomfortable with people with penises in their spaces.

Unfortunately this is an area that it is hard to discuss without being labelled and without being abused. The extremists are shouting down the moderates, and there are extremists on both sides. – Paul  L

Our politicians similarly should have an obligation to articulate a position that illuminates rather than obscures. Even acknowledging that there is an underlying conflict of rights, and that the disagreement isn’t caused by one side or the other being unreasonable, would be a useful start. Better still would be finding the middle ground and advocating for it. However, politically speaking, it is much more beneficial to be unclear. Making a clear statement is unlikely to win you votes, but is quite likely to lead to one side or the other whipping up dissension and losing you votes. Only the Greens and Act can really afford to be clear – because they’re unlikely to drive any of their voters away.

If this is the way we’ll have debates in the future, then I fear we’ll become an increasingly divided society. I don’t understand what will bring us back together, what will help us to find common ground and common cause.

I fear that we’re further driving people away from traditional media, and they will in future get their information from non-traditional sources. Those sources can also be full of disinformation, and some people appear to have difficulty in telling the difference.  – Paul  L

Tolerating too little & too much

What’s happened to tolerance for other people’s views?

The angry, sometimes violent, opposition to Speak Up For Women on Saturday showed none of the tolerance many of those protesting seek from others.

There is far too much intolerance of different views and far too little willingness to engage in the calm and reasoned discussion and debate which can lead to better understanding of different opinions and sometimes even common ground.

While too many are tolerating too little, the government is tolerating too much.

Stuart Nash’s final warning after two strikes was converted to a final, final warning after a third strike was made public.

And Chris Hipkins showed far too much tolerance for Marama Davidson’s racist and intolerant diatribe on Saturday:

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson’s ‘white cis men’ comments at a rally on the weekend were not ‘appropriate’ but context was important.

On Saturday, Davidson, who is also Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, was hit by a motorcyclist at a trans rights rally in Auckland. The rally was a counter-protest to a speaking event by British anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull – also known as “Posie Parker”.

Shortly after the motorcycle incident, Davidson was confronted on camera and asked about Keen-Minshull being “violently assaulted”, after having tomato juice poured over her.

In her response, Davidson said: “I know what causes violence in this world and it’s white cis men. . . 

On Davidson’s comments, Hipkins said it was important to consider the context – she had been hit by a motorcycle and was being “harassed” by protesters.

Hipkins said it wasn’t the words he would use, however. . .

These aren’t the words a Minister should use either, especially when it shows racism, and ignorance of statistics in her own portfolio.

He accepted the clarification Davidson had issued. . .

In accepting her ‘clarification’ he’s also tolerating very poor ministerial behaviour and tolerating, as did the previous Prime Minister, too little performance by the Minister.

Barry Soper who says if Marama Davidson is anyone’s acceptable standard as a Minister. it’s questionable.

 

Word of the day

Tirrivee- an outburst of bad temper; a tantrum; a fit of passion; a noise or commotion.

Sowell says

When courts of law become courts of political correctness, those who suffer are not just those who lose particular cases. The whole society loses. Law exists for a reason—and that reason is not so that judges can indulge their own egos or flatter themselves that their…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) March 21, 2023