There is a limit to how much NZers are prepared to pay for cleaner water. – Chris Nixon
Just like KiwiBuild, Auckland Light Rail, the Capital Gains Tax and effective climate change policies, this Government got bogged down in a welter of working groups, coalition disputes, bureaucratic infighting and stonewalling, and an inability at the top level of Cabinet to direct the organs of Government to carry out its will. Weak and overwhelmed ministers accepted ‘Yes Minister’ for an answer and were not able to stop the initial energy and direction from dribbling away into the sands of endless consultation, trials and ways for officials to avoid taking risks or challenging the status quo. Bernard Hickey
If Minister Faafoi thinks paying one hundred million dollars to keep Auckland out of level four for the past three weeks is a risk, then the other risk he’s just taken has just cost us way more. I have no idea why people are treating Sam the way they did and why Minister Faafoi seemed to dismiss Sam today as being sort of petulant. Minister Faafoi and those ministers, if they can’t respond fast and quickly enough they need to step aside. – Ian Taylor
Economic reform is all about the rules that businesses play under and it’s a bit like rugby. Make the rules too tight or confusing and the game collapses into a bunch of whistle and stop-start time-wasting. Loosen them up, the game flows, points can be scored and jobs created. Steven Joyce
Did I need pills? No, I needed love, I needed aroha. I needed someone to provide the environment where I could be the best possible version of myself. – Tricia Walsh
And how powerful, once seen, is the knowledge of genuine commitment and love in smothering out the petty grievances and the misunderstandings! Love indeed covers a multitude of sins. – John Anderson
. . . one of the greatest predictors of how well we turn out as people, and how society turns out, is the presence of decent fathering. We need to end the silence on this. If we really care about our children, and our boys in particular, (the prison statistics alone tell us how serious their crisis is) we would own a simple truth whether convenient or not and start talking about the critical importance of fathering. John Anderson
When it came time to vote, I asked my grandfather, “Who should I vote for?” He said, “The National Party. They’ll back you.” And that’s been my experience. Shelley Pilkington
I know that the values of personal responsibility, hard work and reward for effort are not just political ideology; they actually work. But to achieve these things well, we also need strong families and caring communities – another key National Party value. We need to be surrounded by people who believe in us – like my grandad – who invest their time and attention to lift and encourage others to be everything they were meant to be; and to be supported by a government that gives people a hand up, not just a hand out. – Shelley Pilkington
The real lesson from this is, instead of saying this is an irritant that we’re going to deal with and bat out the way and life will go back to the way it used to be, we have to be a little more comfortable about taking a leaf out of the HIV book and saying that this is a new pathogen that’s going to change the environment within which we behave. That’s what life is – that’s evolution. – The real lesson from this is, instead of saying this is an irritant that we’re going to deal with and bat out the way and life will go back to the way it used to be, we have to be a little more comfortable about taking a leaf out of the HIV book and saying that this is a new pathogen that’s going to change the environment within which we behave. That’s what life is – that’s evolution. – David Nabarro
Our farmers are efficient, effective and see farming as a long term commitment to the land and their communities. If the Government wants us to become one big Pamu-type corporate entity that ticks every audit box, has a farm technician on every corner, and contributes bugger all to the social, economic and environmental GDP of the country, then they are going the right way about it.- Jane Smith
What I think is really important to understand is that we cannot simply borrow our way out of a recession, what we need to do is build our way out of it. – Judith Collins
Despite the Ministry of Health lifting the Lockdown rules in line with New Zealand’s risk level, the messaging to the public has led to an acceptance of rules for rules sake. We are living in a community where rules based on fear, not science, are considered enough and questioning the logic of these rules is seen as rebellion.
The result is marginalising those in the community who respect evidence-based decision making. This is the status quo, and I do not think it is kind. Nor does it align with the can-do and curious nature that New Zealanders are known for. – Emily Broadmore
Let’s put essential industries aside. We should be looking at what’s a safe industry. Can anyone explain to me why a diary is allowed to open but the local butchers next door can’t? And the answer is because someone has decided that one is essential and the other’s not. – Judith Collins
You generally don’t have successful top-level athletes complaining about their treatment. They tend to live by the Hamish Bond philosophy of “make sure you are the best, then your ability is never questioned”. They are the types of athletes normally content with the outcome of their goals, who walk away from sport on their own terms. Eric Murray
For myself, all that I hope is that when I next consult with someone towards the end of their life, is that I have neither hastened or prolonged death; that I can offer effective pain relief and care; that I can create a space for important shared moments and know that our healthcare system have adequately developed services for supporting people near death. One that supports all people equally, when they are most at need. – Dr Carmen Chan
People need to understand Kiwibuild is not an aberration. It is the norm in terms of delivery vs rhetoric. – David Farrar
But posing and posturing have become a mass phenomenon, the tattooing of our time. Of nothing is this more true than contemporary Woke morality. Whereas not long ago young people of the middle classes sought to express their sympathy for the lower and supposedly oppressed orders by imitating their tattoos and way of dress, imitation being the highest form of empathy available to egotists, they now express the same desire by making Wokeness the touchstone of their morality. They think they are rebelling when, of course, they are conforming. They do not realize that it is more difficult, and more courageous, to contradict a friend than to criticize a society. – Theodore Dalrymple
If anything has been institutionalized, it is not racism but guilt, though guilt of a peculiar, ersatz, dishonest kind. – Theodore Dalrymple
Nevertheless, posers and posturers prefer to concentrate on distant problems because they require nothing of them except the expression of the right opinions and sometimes a protest, demonstration, or even riot, which of course is a pleasure rather than a discipline, in the way that acting virtuously is a discipline. – Theodore Dalrymple
No honest person who takes the trouble to read it can see the novel as transphobic. But then honest people are hard to find in a culture war. – Nick Cohen
The poor seldom come out of a crisis better off. Imagine if in 1938, when Michael Joseph Savage increased his majority, instead of creating the welfare state he promised a new holiday. That’s where we are now. – Josie Pagani
It is always better for a government to do everything possible, even if useless, than to do nothing, even if the results are no worse. It follows from all these considerations that to impose a quarantine was politically all but inevitable because the object of government is not to save lives but to save itself. No doubt this is not as it should be, ideally speaking, but it is the way of the world. – Theodore Dalrymple
The tapestry of the past is composed of dark and light, but by looking at the light, and acknowledging it, instead of focusing only on the dark, we can see how the light has showed us the way to a more just, more compassionate present. The light can inspire and lead us out of the darkness of injustice or cruelty into the possibilities of a fairer kinder future. Valerie Davies
Under the government’s new projections, people will be poorer, opportunities will be more limited, communities will face increased pressure and home prices will continue climbing, unhampered by pandemic or recession. If you’re a millennial New Zealander and you haven’t purchased a home yet, this is as close as the government will come to telling you that part of the Kiwi dream is now dead and buried. – Justin Giovannetti
Kneecap farming exports by say 10% and expect unemployment to rise, tax revenues shrink and government debt to increase. – Wayne Mapp
You do not want to find yourself in the middle of next year, having just lost your job, relying on a bunch of people with a track record of dithering and not delivering,and wishing that you had voted National. – Judith Collins
When it comes to politics, people will always prefer policy-based evidence to the evidence-based policy. – Liam Hehir
Well, yeah I do understand where money comes from. It comes from hard work, and other people’s often. I will not manage myself to conform to a view of women that we all need to be soft and cuddly. – Judith Collins
It’s conviction politics. You stand for something. If you stand for something, and you can proudly articulate it, and stand by it, that’s a significantly easier position to take, and to hold. Much more than one which depends on what a pollster says, or a focus group. I’ve never focus grouped, personally. – Judith Collins
The world is in the midst of a cultural war known as The Great Awokening. Armies of young progressives, media personalities, journalists, bureaucrats, and academics have seized the moment to demand that the rest of society must have only one set of correct thoughts about race, gender, and sex. Should you express the opinion that all lives matter instead of Black Lives Matter or call someone a coloured person instead of a person of colour, you risk losing your livelihood or being visited by a mob intent on changing your mind by intimidation.- Gerry Bowler
If from a great height of authority you tell people that they are helpless, that is what they will become, especially when they derive some kind of self-destructive short-term benefit from being or acting helpless, such as the ability to continue to take drugs in the knowledge that it is not their fault. – Theodore Dalrymple
Farmers have enough on their plate with weather, interest rates, and international markets, they shouldn’t have to contend with a Government who doesn’t understand their sector and restricts their growth. New Zealand’s reputation as a producer of quality and sustainable agricultural products is well known around the world. When we form the next Government, our pledge is to ensure that our agricultural policy focuses on allowing farmers the opportunity to farm their way to better outcomes, rather than being regulated into oblivion. – Judith Collins
You don’t trade off freedom for security. In fact it isn’t a trade off. Less freedom makes you less secure. – David Farrar
But beyond that, what did the debate tell us? It told me Judith Collins has life experience and not just in law. When social problems came up she could refer to her childhood in a sub-standard house and her husband feeling he should leave school too young. She grew up on a farm. When Jacinda Ardern talks on these subjects she sounds like a policy paper. – John Roughan
In fact actually she’s good in a disaster – I’d go so far as to call her a disaster Prime Minister. – David Seymour
Mercy is a value that should be at the heart of any functioning and tolerant society. Mercy ultimately acknowledges that we are all imperfect and in doing so allows us the oxygen to breathe — to feel protected within a society, through our mutual fallibility. Without mercy a society loses its soul, and devours itself.
Mercy allows us the ability to engage openly in free-ranging conversation — an expansion of collective discovery toward a common good. If mercy is our guide we have a safety net of mutual consideration, and we can, to quote Oscar Wilde, “play gracefully with ideas.”
Yet mercy is not a given. It is a value we must nurture and aspire to. Tolerance allows the spirit of enquiry the confidence to roam freely, to make mistakes, to self-correct, to be bold, to dare to doubt and in the process to chance upon new and more advanced ideas. Without mercy society grows inflexible, fearful, vindictive and humourless. – Nick Cave
As far as I can see, cancel culture is mercy’s antithesis. Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption. It has become quite literally, bad religion run amuck. – Nick Cave
Posted by homepaddock 
Homepaddock 