We came back to mainstream and it was horrendous. Largely it’s a different environment working in the public sector.
It’s bureaucratic, the bureaucracy [is] amazing. The thing about partnership schools… it is one of the first times I have experienced what freedom felt like. You were given resources, you were told, ‘Here’s what you need to achieve, how you do that’s your business,’ and we overachieved. – Raewyn Tipene
Individual Maori make decisions every day about their own work and wellbeing. They’re perfectly capable people. Why do they need the patronisation of a government? Or aThere was nothing in Te Tiriti requiring that. Nothing requiring they be in government — even though many are, on their own merits. – Peter Cresswell
She’s conflating two people here. Individual Maori do have control over their own health. And always have, And did just as much before the creation of the separatist health organisation that has missed all its own agreed targets. (Waikato Tainui leader Parekawhi Maclean saying (very kindly): “its inability to put in place the necessary level of capability and capacity to progress its key functions had hampered performance.”)
What she means is that some Maori have control over other the health of other Maori. Why does shared ancestry make that necessary? How does that help an individual’s health outcomes?
I am hardly an advocate myself for a government health system of any kind. But a separatist system seems the worst of both worlds, particularly for individual Maori concerned with their own health, and forced into this system, for whom results have been less than stellar. Suggesting that prioritising kaupapa over medicine is perhaps not the best idea. – Peter Cresswell
She’s not calling for all New Zealanders to be equal as individuals — i.e., each of us enjoying equal individual rights and privileges under law per the third Treaty clause. What she’s after instead — what she and others in her elite strata have worked so hard for, to achieve that momentum — is for Māori as a collective to be made equal in political power to the government. With a Māori elite distributing the spoils.
That, to her and to many others, is what “partnership” truly means. Political power.
It’s a patronising collectivist vision that looks to government for power and largesse, and to individuals of every ancestry to be milch cows. It’s not one envisioned by either treaty.
One-hundred and eighty-three years ago, Te Tiriti emancipated Māori slaves, and put an end to the idea that the mass of men here had been born with saddles on their back, with a few rangatira booted and spurred to ride them. That was the effect of Te Tiriti: to free taurekareka. – Peter Cresswell
The people have spoken, and the people want the country back on track.
The people, as I read it, wanted less divisive policy and a focus on reducing crime and tackling the cost of living. – Tim Dower
Alcoholism is no joke. It is a debilitating disorder and one that can take a mammoth toll on professional and personal lives. Overcoming such an addiction takes hard work and a lot of support. It is simply unfathomable to think that Whanau will be able to do so while in such a high-pressure role and under such intense scrutiny. It is not a fair expectation.
If we learn from Allan’s experience, we should be setting aside all politics to help Whanau take the action that is best for her. That includes the politics of those who benefit from her remaining in office. – Ani O’Brien
The key component in Whanau’s case is the repeated evidence that her struggles with alcohol are affecting her ability to carry out her duties. The right thing for all involved to do is to support the mayor to resign and focus on her wellbeing. It is right not only for her, but also for Wellington. The city is a shambles and desperately needs a mayor and council who aren’t distracted by scandals and pulling out of meetings. – Ani O’Brien
“Smokefree Aotearoa 2025″ is an aspirational goal like “Road to Zero”, to eliminate road deaths by 2050, “Predator Free 2050″ and the idea of a Covid-free New Zealand. Aspirational goals are dangerous. Politicians abuse the power of the state in a vain attempt to achieve the impossible. – Richard Prebble
The Minister of Health, Shane Reti, is correct. Reversing Smokefree 2025 will not stop the steady decline in smoking rates. Smoking is reducing because it is uncool. Even smokers think smoking is dumb. Only the state can make smoking cool again by making it illegal, so smoking becomes an act of rebellion. – Richard Prebble
Last week, critics suddenly discovered the existence of tobacco taxes and claimed these taxes would pay for National’s tax cuts. But the $2 billion in tobacco tax revenue is already in the Budget. Successive governments have used tobacco taxes as a transfer from the poor to pay for policies like tax relief for Hollywood studios and the like.
The most effective way to reduce child poverty would be a reduction in the tax on cigarettes, so they are not cheap, but not ruinously expensive either. – Richard Prebble
Tobacco taxes are a prime reason for child poverty and homelessness.
Poverty kills. A study on WebMD states that as many people in the US die of poverty as they do from Alzheimer’s. As well as counting the lives saved by cigarette taxes, we should count the lives lost through increasing poverty. – Richard Prebble
Smoking is a leading cause of death. The major cost falls on the smoker. The fact that smokers are likely to suffer premature death is not a justification for reducing them and their children to poverty.
Then there are the unintended consequences of Smokefree New Zealand. Do the critics think dairies are ram-raided for candy? – Richard Prebble
Tobacco taxes have caused a rise in crime.
The Ministry of Health is alarmed at the explosion in vaping.
Smokers tell me it is easier to buy P than tobacco. The P epidemic has coincided with the prohibitive price of cigarettes. – Richard Prebble
It is ironic that Te Pāti Māori, which blames all ills on colonialism, is demanding the Government impose smoking policies on Māori – a form of 21st-century colonialism.
Surely there will be a future Waitangi Tribunal claim that by levying so much tax on tobacco, governments knowingly reduced many Māori to poverty. – Richard Prebble
Perhaps to some I am a walking contradiction—you know, a part-Māori boy, raised in a State house by a single parent on the benefit, now a proud National Party MP in a deeply rural farming electorate in the middle of the South Island—but there is no contradiction there. Members opposite do not own Māori. Members opposite do not own the poor. Members opposite do not own the workers. No party and no ideology has a right to claim ownership over anything or anyone.
We, on this side of the House, are a broad church: town and country, liberal and conservative, old and young, and professionals and workers. What unites us is our fundamental belief that it’s the individual family unit that knows what’s best for their family—not the State, not the Government, and not us. It’s not the State that saved my family; it was my mum. She took responsibility for our situation. When we fall on hard times, as we all will at some stage, it’s our neighbours and our community that should rally around in support. Only after that does the State become our safety net, as the neighbour of last resort.
Our system should be one which helps pick us up when we fall but which then gets out of the way when we’re back on our feet and lets us lives our lives. The job of Government must be to create a system which makes it as easy as possible for good people to make the right decisions. But, instead, we have a system which creates broken families and turns good people into lost souls. It’s not right, and it must change.
I truly believe that social investment is that change. When we see people as having agency and dignity in their own right, rather than just as numbers on a spreadsheet, we will have a just society. When we look at spending as an investment rather than a cost, we can focus on outcomes that benefit not only the health and wellbeing of the individual but also the back pocket of the taxpayer. That’s what social investment does. – James Meager
Good programmes should be enriched, and bad ones should be cast aside. We don’t need complicated audits and reporting mechanisms for community organisations to administer taxpayer-funded programmes. The Government has this information. It can do the work to measure those programmes against long-term individual outcomes in health and education, in reduced welfare-dependency and better housing, and in lower crime and lower drug and alcohol use. All we need is to be more reasonable, be more sensible, and be more savvy with the use of this data. – James Meager
This is why we are all here: to debate freely; to have an open, robust contest of ideas; to challenge one another in an environment where disputes are resolved by the showing of hands and not by the throwing of fists. We are here to represent the people who put us here. And some of us are here to disrupt and to challenge the status quo, and I get that—no, I really do. But in doing so, we must respect this institution; we must respect its traditions, and, importantly, we must respect those who have come before us and who have cleared the way for our many voices to be heard. We are here to fight for what we believe in, each and every one of us, without fear or favour, laying aside all personal interests. – James Meager
Unfortunately, the more involved a Government becomes in people’s business, and businesses, for that matter, the worse things seem to get. In life, I have seen how different Governments have impacted communities through business. I have seen years where small businesses have become untenable, mum and pop owners sell to corporates, corporates grow, employment relations break down, unions grow, and service diminishes, and at some point along the way, the wind changes and the sun comes out. Instead of playing political whack-a-mole, I strongly believe in Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand. The argument for limited Government is a strong one, which is one of the many reasons why I stand here on this side of the House. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but you can’t spend your way out of every problem, nor can you regulate your way out of it. All you get is debt and dependency. – Katie Nimon
New Zealand is under new management. We are here because people believe that we are the parties that can get things done; that’s why you elect parties on this side of the House. Just like there are laws of nature and there are laws of physics, there are laws of politics. Because if you want lower tax, you vote for us. If you want the Government books managed well, you vote for us. If you want to create more opportunities for everyone, you vote for us. New Zealanders get it, and New Zealanders want it, and that’s why they elected the parties in this coalition government. They know that we will get things done, and that those things will be the things that matter to them. New Zealanders want National, ACT, and New Zealand First to be the strong government that New Zealand needs. They want us to deliver, and I am telling you, we will. – Christopher Luxon
Now, on this side of the House, we all came to politics to make a positive change for the country that we love, that we are proud of, and that we see so much potential in. We are going to manage the economy well. Now that we’ve rescued it from Labour, we’ll nurse it back to health. We will ease the cost of living. In fact, we’ve already started. We will restore law and order. The coalition parties separately and together as a Government are absolutely committed to offenders facing real consequences for their crimes, and are committed to New Zealanders feeling safe in their homes and their businesses and in their communities. We are going to get public services working better, because when you care about people—and we care deeply about people—you don’t just wring your hands and look anguished and spout rhetoric. Looking anguished doesn’t take an hour off an emergency wait-list in an emergency department. You need to actually get stuck in, sort it out, and actually get things done to make the difference.
We are about attitudes on this side of the House, not platitudes. Our attitude to public money is to respect the people who actually earn it. We’re going to do that by letting the people who earn it keep more of it. That part of it that they hand over in tax, we will spend on helping New Zealanders get ahead, and on making this great country even better, with better education, more support for the stretched health workforce, better and faster roads, less red tape, more renewable energy, and more initiatives to increase New Zealand’s prosperity so that we can all get ahead. We’re about increasing incomes and outcomes. I have to say that I’ve had many impressive briefings already with very good senior public servants in the past few days. When they come in with their good ideas for actually achieving what the Government wants, I say to them, “That’s great, but how do we do it faster?” Because good execution matters, and that’s measured by results and it is measured by outcomes. – Christopher Luxon
And make no mistake, Labour earned its loss. It worked hard for it. Labour wasted time, they squandered public money, and they made this great country and its people miss out on opportunities. MPs on that side of the House put Labour ideology and dogma ahead of New Zealand’s interests and New Zealand punished them for it. Let it be a reminder to all of us in this House that we are actually here to represent the people and their needs—that’s what we’re here to do. – Christopher Luxon
So, I have to say, there is hope. There is a Government that appreciates that businesses provide jobs and opportunities for other New Zealanders. Business owners and managers understand that their greatest resource is their team. It is by working together that the team grows the business, and it creates better wages and more opportunities and more jobs. That’s the National way of looking at it—it’s the aspirational way. We say it takes a lot of courage to start a small business and to employ people, and those who do it well should be extremely proud of what they do. – Christopher Luxon
All this took place against a backdrop of wall-to-wall weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the election of a government that the priestly media caste doesn’t approve of. I can’t recall any new government being confronted with such intense, naked hostility from people whom the public expect to be fair, neutral and balanced. – Karl du Fresne
Note too the deafening media silence over incendiary statements from Maori politicians – among them, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s allegations of “systemic genocide” and “state-sponsored terrorism”, which bordered on unhinged, and Willie Jackson’s threats of “war” and civil unrest “five times worse” than the 1981 Springbok tour, which were tantamount to an incitement to violence.
These intemperate verbal eruptions pass unremarked by the media high priests, as did the circus at the swearing-in of MPs yesterday when the Maori Party wilfully made a mockery of parliamentary procedure. Those same Maori MPs would not take it well – and neither should they – if visitors to a marae refused to honour protocol and tradition. Why do they not show the same respect for the institution to which they have been elected? And why do media commentators appear united in their determination not to denounce the debasement of the House of Representatives that sits at the heart of New Zealand’s system of government?
All this follows six years during which the mainstream media gave a free pass to probably the most extremist government in New Zealand history. Time and again under Ardern, dodgy law changes went unreported and issues that reflected badly on the government were either treated as invisible or played down until exposure by online platforms made them impossible to ignore. Now journalists have suddenly and miraculously rediscovered the critical scrutiny mechanism that inexplicably lay dormant for two terms under Labour. – Karl du Fresne
Ultimately, it all comes down to democracy and respect for the will of the people. For six years New Zealand had a government the media approved of. Voters emphatically signalled on October 14 that they wanted a change, but the priestly media caste is tone-deaf to the public mood and can’t bring itself to accept the decision. The petulant media campaign of resistance against the coalition government is, above all, a massive gesture of contempt for the voters. Or should I say the deplorables? – Karl du Fresne
Our recent pitiful leadership on law and order is the product of 5 generations of nearly unbroken civil peace. We’ve been electing contemptible diversity displays. They’ve no understanding of the need for courage and unwavering determination, to sustain tolerant respect for the equal rights of all.
Watching the Greens defend thuggery here as well as rape and murder overseas is helping to bring the necessary changes. – Stephen Franks
With her 2019 recommendations Kiro was instrumental in creating the conditions for the number of beneficiaries to increase.
In March 2018, when she began her welfare investigation, there were 273,387 beneficiaries. Now there are 367,152. What sat at 9.3 percent of working-age New Zealanders has risen to 11.5 percent; most worryingly 168,276 children in benefit-dependent families grew to 216,648.
What a rich irony to hear the architect of such ill-advised reforms forced to describe their result, and advise their removal. One wonders if Ardern had considered this possibility when she appointed Cindy Kiro Governor General in 2021? It is doubtful. Foresight was never her strong point.
Dame Cindy Kiro will remain Governor General until 2026. But she has always been a friend and ally of left-wing governments. Perhaps she deserves kudos for professionally delivering a speech which must have personally rankled. At least she did it with dignity and grace. A lesson there-in for opposition MPs who have showed very little over the past two days. – Lindsay Mitchell
So even if you speak, or understand te reo, are the names “gifted” to govt departments by poets and reified reo speakers understandable? Or unintentionally confusing? Or perhaps the confusion is intentional, to help immunise them against criticism. (Hard to criticise, say, Te Konihana Tauhokohoko, if you have no idea who they are what they do.)
Anyway, here below, to help you out, in no particular order, is a rough literaltranslation of the names of some common departments and ministries (based first on the Māori-English dictionaries of Williams (1844), and then Ryan (1983), and then Google Translate for more recent neologisms like Kaipāho, Manatū, Haumaru, Konihana etc). Many seem more about poetry — sometimes good poetry — than they do about communicating well (“Memory Room” for archives sounds good, and who wouldn’t like the “Power of Distant Lightning”; whereas “Stranger Service” sounds like something that might be offered just off K Rd).
So, often, only those in the know would know… – Peter Creswell
How much of the overall $21 billion that goes on education gets soaked up by ideologues at the Ministry or wasted on endless reviews and rehashings of the system is a mystery.
But you get what you pay for in life and education is no exception.
Maybe this is another area like infrastructure, health, and immigration, where we need less political meddling and to-ing and fro-ing with each change of government, and more of a long term, locked in plan.
Just think what we could achieve in productivity, creativity and quality of life, if every kid had the chance those at our best schools do now. – Tim Dower
Almost every rich country preaches far more than it delivers. This is exemplified by the European Union, which has promised more than anyone else, yet — when forced by Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine to cut off gas imports — went looking in Africa for more oil, gas and coal. Meanwhile, almost every poor country understandably prioritizes prosperity, which means abundant, cheap and reliable energy — which still means fossil fuels.
Underpinning the climate summit farce is one big lie repeated over and over: that green energy is on the verge of replacing fossil fuels in every aspect of our lives. – Bjorn Lomborg
As the daughter of a solo mother on the DPB, I lived through the effects of benefit cuts of the 1990s. And I don’t think that miserly austerity works, but I equally detest wasteful Government spending and the blatant disrespect of taxpayers when money is spent carelessly. I believe that only a National Government with evidence-based, prudent spending and with a social investment approach can turn around the fortunes of our country and deliver the public services that we need. – Vanessa Weenink
It turned out there were a couple of values that were important to me that pulled me towards National. First: competitive enterprise and reward for achievement. As a business owner, I know the value of skin in the game and the risks taken for the benefit of a business and the people working for you. Without competition we have stagnation and limited innovation. The other thing is personal responsibility. This is about believing in the autonomy of individuals and their ability to do for themselves. Personal responsibility is not about victim blaming as some might believe; it is about empowerment. – Vanessa Weenink
I believe in less government, personal choice, and responsibility—a Government that sets up the right macro policy settings that enables success, and then gets out of the way. Of course, success means different things to different people.
Please don’t misunderstand me. For those that can’t fend for themselves, we absolutely need to provide the resources and supports to help them—assist them for as long as it takes. And we have a sacred duty to look after our most vulnerable and those that fall on hard times. But to those of us that can, we should; we must. What’s wrong is always available, but so is what’s right.
Ultimately, though, it still requires the individual to foster hope for a brighter future—a desire, even a mustard seed of faith, ambition, and desire for more or better—and they must be the ones that pursue it. They must push ahead. They must choose a different path. And I know some people don’t start at the start line, and I know some people aren’t born with the same opportunity. But if they have that desire, the coaches, the mentors, the community leaders, and the aunties and the uncles, the business community will emerge. If that person, regardless of their background, holds on to that hope within their soul, I do believe they can and will find a better way. A way forward. Because this is still a beautiful country with endless opportunity and support structures. To that end, with my ability, resources, and positions, I commit myself in service to helping those individuals rise. Because when one individual rises up and breaks through, it gives those around them permission and courage to do the same. – Ryan Hamilton
Good is good.
Concentrate on goodness.
Go for the good. Look for the good.
Notice the good and praise it.
Try being as good as you can.
A lot of good things are going on this time of year.
Be part of that.
Don’t be a victim of the dark side of human craziness that also gets loose at this time of year.
That’s not all that’s going on. – Robert Fulghum
I mean; what better way to contemplate environmental concerns than bringing 84,000 people into a city built on petro-dollars that cannot function without round-the-clock air conditioning and migrant workers? – Damien Grant
Shaw is not the co-leader of the Green Party because you cannot lead if others will not follow.
His party is no longer interested in environmental issues. They are engaged in performative theatre. Tearing down the only member of their party who is genuinely passionate about environmental issues over his failure to denounce Zionism, or whatever is the cultural touch-stone of the week, will generate the only thing his colleagues are passionate about: attention. – Damien Grant
The Green Party has become a vehicle for minor celebrities indulging in the pantomime of radicalism. It is no place for someone of Shaw’s integrity and mana; which is why they will destroy him. His continued existence is a hand-brake on their excess.– Damien Grant
The media, having not learned their lesson about being Labour Party apparatchiks, did their best to undo a Government that has barely started by banging on about ignoring Treasury advice over FPA’s, despite yesterday’s revelations about their beloved Labour Party making it a habit on things like uncosted infrastructure.
They also tried their best on Māori bonuses and went to town over smoking. The smoking had some merit given that was, to many, a surprise out of the coalition deal.
But the media, like a lot of the unions and lobby groups who have gnashed their teeth, seem to fail to grasp that a change of Government actually means things get done differently and the reason they are to be done differently is because we voted for it to be so. – Mike Hosking
In the heavily Māori ceremony of swearing in Tama Potaka spoke for National, reminding us that the stereotype of a white male grouping is not remotely realistic in 2023.
That was followed by Meager, who gave a wonderful reminder that too much of the Māori political story in this country is portrayed in a light of misery, deprivation and handouts, when in fact Meager is most probably closer to reality, being young, bright, determined and successful. – Mike Hosking
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