Quotes of the week

A protest banner does not the truth make. –  Josie Vidal

Straterra submits that this bill is not about mining or the environment, it’s about mining and the environment,” Vidal says.

It is frustrating that some submitters and commentators are trying to make a case that mining projects do not deserve to be on the fast-track. There are no grounds whatsoever to discriminate mining from other development projects. In fact, some of those other projects are heavily reliant on mined minerals.

All projects should be included on their merits and the bill allows for this. – Josie Vidal

It is nonsense to talk about all the money leaving the country. What does cause investment and people to leave the country is when there are no jobs, poor policy settings, and a weak economy – Josie Vidal

The tension between journalists seeking accountability and a bureaucracy that prefer not to be scrutinised is not new.

But it is increasingly hard to get the public service to answer questions or give information, and message control practices are doing real harm to the public interest. – Andrea Vance

 No matter what people may say; no matter how superficially sincere their genuflections to the “crisis” of Climate Change; when the lights go out, all they really want is for them to come back on again. Crises far away, and crises in the future, cannot compete with crises at home – right here, right now. – Chris Trotter

Having the vast majority of us exposed to another language, especially an official language, may help the language live, breathe and expand. 

But what also happened is Māori terms, names, and phrases got tossed about with mad abandon and muddied the waters of comprehension. 

The media have, broadly speaking in a fit of wokeism, embarrassed themselves and in part further damaged their already damaged reputations by embracing the activity with an alacrity that has been humiliating. 

Tokenism is not language, but tokenism is what you get in news bulletins; a peppering of Māori with the English that leads to nothing more than a trendy nod to a fad.  – Mike Hosking

So on one hand, it’s great, but on the other hand, it’s frustrating. So whilst farmers have a richly rewarding life, it’s under huge pressure from financial stability, increasing regulatory demands and mounting social criticism.

There is a need for stronger support to help farmers manage these pressures within farming and to strengthen farmers’ reputation beyond the farm gate. – Emily Walker

What I thought was quite alarming was a quarter of people were experiencing problems with their physical and mental health and also a third are not confident about their farming future. – Emily Walker

The men are definitely in the business getting it done, getting the business ahead … The women are more involved with filing the paperwork, looking at the compliance, they start to worry about what they’re seeing. – Myfanwy Alexander

That is the sad, narrow-minded worldview that underpins some of the opposition to ACT’s work. The idea that there’s a “right kind” of Maori. That children with any Maori ancestry should be defined by that whakapapa, put into that box, lest they grow up to be like me.

My four children are Maori. They are also Pakeha. And through my husband’s side, they are Cambodian. But above all, they are individual people, with unique experiences and their own perspectives on the world.

I find it offensive, and frankly racist, that anyone would put one aspect of their identity on a pedestal, above all the rest. – Karen Chhour

The adjectives “extreme” and “far” have lost their significance in politics when they are applied to everything and anyone the centre-Left consensus doesn’t like.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) June 11, 2024

“It is crucial that any regulation to reduce on-farm methane emissions is workable and has buy-in from the farmers who will need to comply with and report on it. Emissions pricing, as has been previously proposed, is one potential approach. But if farmers do not have access to effective and affordable tools to reduce their emissions and have no other choice than to reduce stock numbers then that has real impacts for rural communities around New Zealand, and the country as a whole. Carbon sequestration is one potential avenue to offset methane emissions, but there is an ongoing challenge here around the data and cost-effective ways to measure and monitor that sequestration. – Dr Robyn Dynes

It’s super important that people have trust that their data is being kept safe and being used for the purposes for which it’s collected. That’s especially true of census information.

Equally I think it’s important that the public have trust in the electoral system and the Electoral Commission and its integrity.

We’ve seen the dreadful consequences in the US … when that trust is eroded. – Andrea Vance

Like the rest of the business sector, farmers are feeling the pinch. They are feeling punch drunk after three years of an unbridled Labour/Greens Government.

But over the past two days the music has come back into their ears, even if it’s still pretty low volume. The news yesterday from the Beehive that they won’t be paying the ETS tax from next year will come as a great relief, although a number of cockies admit they haven’t got their heads around it yet.

Those who have, firmly believe that marginal farms that have been in families for several generations would have gone to the wall. They argue – why does New Zealand need to be the first in the world to set a price for taxing farmers on their emissions?

And farmers in this country are some of the most carbon efficient food producers in the world.

Why bite the hand that feeds us, feeding more than this country but leading our exports by a country mile? – Barry Soper

Farmers generally borrow to invest in their properties, it’s called productivity. And yet whilst they toil seven days a week to keep their heads above water, they are being caned.

Those talked to say their bankers are always telling them they’ve got their backs. But the farmers say that’s where their target is, and with good reason.

They are encouraged to increase their overdrafts rather than securing a new loan, say, for a piece of machinery. The overdraft rate is around 12 to 14 percent! Even a farm loan of 9 to 10 percent outstrips what we would be expected to pay for a house mortgage in town.

Farmers, whether you like them or not, are the backbone of this export hungry country and they should be treated as treasures not as tyrants.

As one farmer said: “We love what we do, we love the country, get out of our way and let us get on with it.”

And thankfully that, it seems, is what the current crop of politicians are finally doing. – Barry Soper

Labour’s energy policy is a mess. Their proposal to ban new oil and gas licences was tried in New Zealand. They struggled to keep the lights on and have now had to reverse it. Climate policy can’t come at the cost of our energy security or it will fail. – Claire Coutinho

The New Zealand experience is a salutary lesson in why it’s so important to devise a better approach to energy policy. – Russell Borthwick

Back in 2018, at the time of the ban, there were 20 international and five local companies engaged in exploration and production in New Zealand.

Since then, exploration has fallen dramatically. We only have nine remaining investors, seven international and two local. The rest have left. – John Carnegie

New Zealand’s ban was a politically motivated decision which ignored data on oil and gas demand, the advantages of domestic production and a realistic pace of decarbonisation.

The Labour Party should see what is happening in front of their eyes in another island nation which has already implemented a poorly reasoned policy – and think again. – Robin Allan

There is a danger that we all get into a bubble of clear-sighted, righteous agreement and if only other people had sufficient political will and shared our views, we’d be well on our way to the promised land. –  Simon Upton

If you stop listening you’re halfway down the road to the sort of polarised society we see in the United States today,” Upton said. “We have to resist allowing the environment to become a lightning rod for our economic and social failures. The environment isn’t a problem – we are.– Simon Upton

Our health and safety culture can be summed up by the sea of orange road cones that have taken over the country. From Santa parades to property development, you can’t get a lot done without having to set up a barricade of cones.

“While they may improve health and safety in some places, in other situations their prevalence just doesn’t make any sense.

“Businesses and community organisations spend a huge amount of money trying to keep people safe, but it’s worthwhile asking: are the rules and expectations proportionate to the actual risks, and when should common sense prevail?

“Lawyers and company directors should not have to be kept up late at night anguishing over what ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’ means.  – Brooke van Velden

New Zealanders expect and deserve to have their family members return home safe and healthy at the end of each and every workday. Where we have to follow rules to keep ourselves or others safe, those rules should be clear, sensible and proportionate to the risk.

The actions businesses and workers need to take to protect health and safety should be appropriate and meaningful, rather than just another tick-box exercise. – Brooke van Velden

We’re concerned at the growing number of cases where there seems to be less consideration and fundamental thinking about risk management. The focus of some regulators appears to be dominated on compliance with a particular system rather than how effective and appropriate it may be at managing the risk to health and safety.  –  Dom Kalasih

The current health and safety framework is not working as well as it should be. We know that because there are still far too many New Zealanders being hurt at work and our rates of harm are far higher than other comparable countries.  

“Instead of a system focused on ticking boxes, we need to create a health and safety framework that supports the creation of an environment that keeps workers safe.  – Brett O’Riley

It is not a complicated conflict. Ukraine wants to remain a democratic country where its 40 million people determine their own future. Russia wishes to conquer it and turn it into a puppet state, or even use it as the start of reforming the former Soviet Union. It’s probably the most morally unambiguous conflict since World War II.

So what happens is vitally important to 40 million Ukrainians who are fighting for their nation’s survival as an independent democratic country, but it is also important to the world and New Zealand. As one of the smallest and least powerful countries in the world, we benefit the most from a rules based international order, as opposed to a might based international order. A defeat in Ukraine will not just encourage further Russian expansion in Europe, but will embolden other autocratic regimes. – David Farrar

In any case, New Zealand’s main target isn’t oil but natural gas. To the extent natural gas replaces New Zealand burning coal – imports of which soared under the Ardern-Hipkins regime – extracting and using gas lowers global warming.

If New Zealanders are squeamish even about gas, what possible environmental argument is there against us searching for and extracting whatever undiscovered deposits of copper, chromium, molybdenum, lithium, graphite, titanium, bauxite, iron, nickel and cobalt may lie beneath our land and sea? All are critical to support global moves to renewable energy.

For that matter, what possible climate arguments are there against looking for and mining any uranium or remaining gold deposits? What if we found diamonds? – Mathew Hooton

But if New Zealanders won’t vote for serious spending cuts or tax increases, study harder or accept Brash-style microeconomic reform, then there’s really nothing left except finding and extracting the wealth beneath us, putting the money into the Super Fund, and then tidying up after ourselves, by rehabilitating and reclaiming the land and seabed.

And, in case anyone thinks there’s another alternative, it’s not just a succession of debt-addicted Finance Ministers who need to get real. Tourism, film subsidies, gaming and whatever else Greenpeace and the Grey Lynn liberal establishment suggests instead can’t possibly compete with the value lying under our sea and land. – Mathew Hooton

Inclusivity just cuts the exclusion cake in a different direction. – Alice Smith