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I went for a job as a social worker, the first thing they asked was did I have a police record.
I said “fuck off, I burned the lot when Sting became such a pretentious twat”.
“”If you want to see the back of Neville Key (and so do I) then you have to play the game much more intelligently than you have done so far….We do have one common goal, we both want to see this man out of office”"
People like Big Bruv are why the Act party is dwindling around 1% support. For an Act supporter to be wishing for another Labour government is beyond me.
I hope there are people on here that know your real identity Bruv and you are given the cold shoulder. You are an embarassment to those of us on the centre right.
1 Year on,
We Remember those Whom Ran From It, And those Whom Have fallen,
The Ones We Loved And Cherrished, 1 Year on we Remember those Brave Souls Who fought it
1 Year on we’ve Rebuilt, 1 Year on We’ve Changed, 1 Year on, Victoria’s Worst Natural Disaster.
TimG, did you remember the Greenies whose fuckwittery caused it?
[on the Victoria fires]
Indeed, Adolph.
Both those that write, and those that enforce, laws which remove any legal right of landowners to part-clear their own land in the hope of safeguarding themselves against fire SHOULD be done for manslaughter, if not premeditated murder.
I remember someone here provided a link recently to an Aussie chap who basically totally cleared his land of vegetation (in Victoria I think), and was subsequently fined 100k (I think). Shortly afterwards a fire swept throught the area, and he was the ONLY one of his neighbours that had his house left (and all his family survived, too).
These Greenists/Socialists are the TRUE enemy of right minded, freedom loving people – and (to channel Billy T James), “They’re EVERYWHERE”.
Labour Radio this morning struggled in its attempt to ameliorate Hone Harawira’s contempt for white New Zealanders.
Radio NZ’s Labour Radio in its Insight programme by Richard Pamatatau (on Chairman Laidlaw’s Sunday morning show) went hunting for white NZ racism as a response to Pakeha reaction to Hone Hawira’s “white motherfucker” emails.
It found mainly risible stuff like a Samoan lady who as a child in West Auckland didn’t like a shopkeeper speaking English slowly to her when her mother standing beside her could not speak English. A Dutch woman who after more than 40 years in the country didn’t like being asked where she was from because of her accent. (Actually a civil question to someone with a North European accent if you want to head off a friend who, unaware hearers might be German, is prone to sound off about her visit to Auschwitz.) An ethnic Polynesian who was angry because he reckoned Polynesians dominated rugby teams but, with one exception, there was only one Polynesian coach or rugby union executive.
Pamatatau couldn’t resist the easy interviewee, Ranginui Walker, who predictably dredged up Don Brash’s Orewa speech. Walker asserted “one law for all” is code for “Pakeha power and domination”. Another interpretation is that Walker’s view is a rejection of equality before the law.
One speaker, I assume Camille Nakhid, a sociology lecturer at AUT, originally from the West Indies, seemed to suggest that any Pakeha resistance to spelling of place names, such as adding an “h” to Wanganui or a macron in Hawea, was entirely due to Pakeha insecurity about their identity. The corollary of this if that you disagree with a Maori activist on whatever, you are insecure. Emotional, unintellectual bullshit, of course.
To provide a semblance of balance, Pamatatau trotted out only the Prime Minister, John Key. The PM didn’t do a bad job, even defending Don Brash mildly. Key was moderate and conciliatory, but his drawing on the calling of Yugoslav migrants as “Dallies” was off the mark. When they arrived early last century, they were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and were often officially described as Austrians. The gum-digging migrants came mainly from Dalmatia, which they would have preferred to have acknowledged. “Dally” is an inoffensive contraction from Dalmatia as “Sally” is from Salvation Army or “Aussie” is from Australia. Some later arrivals would have been Yugoslavs, or now Croats, but that was because of changing politics and borders in their homeland, not because of NZ prejudice.
Over all, the depiction of the Pamatatau programme, though it clearly not its aim, is just how low level is prejudice in NZ. Compare NZ prejudice with the often cruel treatment of Tibetans and Uighurs by China or discrimination against ethnic Indians in Fiji. I would argue NZ prejudice is also less that the general parallel in most Caribbean countries between political influence and shades of skin colour, with the palest at the top.
“One speaker, I assume Camille Nakhid, a sociology lecturer at AUT, originally from the West Indies, seemed to suggest that any Pakeha resistance to spelling of place names, such as adding an “h” to Wanganui”
Well if you had a stupid name like Nakhid I could see why you would want a bloody H added to all names.
I still prefer calling them Wackertain and Wangermatter and of course Wangernooie.
Redbaiter [February 7th, 2010 at 9:37 am from yesterday's GD],
“He understood that.”
Oh, and just to warm our hearts on Sunday morning, we have such a fine fine father son homily. What an absolutley splendid chap you are Father George. No doubt about that.
I KNEW I’d heard that ‘story’ somewhere before; John 3:16.
Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Thanks, Pete; I feel uplifted.
[Red, your 9:34 am comment had me rolling on the floor.
And yes, Pete, I WAS laughing at your expense (Father forgive me, for I have sinned)]
Anyone know what Neville’s doing today (apart from trying to clean all the brown stuff of his nose after yesterdays sickening activities)?Anyone know what Neville’s doing today (apart from trying to clean all the brown stuff of his nose after yesterdays sickening activities)?
He should be more concerned with the “brown stuff” that keeps coming out of his mouth.
Don’t pick on Hone too much guys after all Mory are slow learners. Its just taken this long for them to start regarding us as we have regarded them for generations. Our mistake is that we are giving them our hard earned cash and creating nonsense jobs for them in the government and academia to make them feel good. Best we just cut all that nonsense out now.
What was that Neville? Whats on your bit of paper? We don’t give a shit Neville.
Kris K – I am thinking about the same thing, but I have a feeling, well hope it is a correct feeling that John Key is going to let these Moree activists etc hang themselves… Hone will hang himself and perhaps its part of the National plan….. I am certain the further these activists etc go, the more they will hang themselves and the more moree’s will think they are a pathetic bunch of individuals….
This country is very quickly heading down a dark and nasty road in which we shouldnt wish to head….. Go the Moree activists….. Have you ever heard the saying “Look back, but dont stare” ?
… but I have a feeling, well hope it is a correct feeling that John Key is going to let these Moree activists etc hang themselv …
One can only live in hope.
But I fear that the ‘enablers’ will get involved and stuff up any chance of TRUE justice being done in this regard.
Remember, it’s only the white, middle class who are racists – Hone will just continue to play the downtrodden and robbed Maori ‘card’.
[And, of course, I can say these things "cuz I gut sum Mouldi blud" ]
If you cant beat them join them Kris there must be a vacancy somewhere in NZ academia for “Mory Professor of Christianty in Relation to Ethnic Perceptions” salary at least $300,000pa. You would be a shoo in my son.
That title does have a certain ring to it: “Mory Professor of Christianty in Relation to Ethnic Perceptions”
Will you be wanting copyright on it?
If I secure that 300k salary, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement – Thanks bro’ (or is that ‘cuz’?).
I’m not surprised that right wing commentators (as they describe themselves – I think the term is pretty well meaningless these days) have failed to pick up on the wins the NZEI is stacking up in its battle with the government.
The first crack in the National facade was Tolley being stripped of tertiary education. Now Key has appointed a “Panel of Experts” charged with alerting the government to deleterious effects of the current plan. And Tolley announced this morning that she was cuddling up to the government’s own NZCER (New Zealand Council of Education Research).
What happened to three strikes and you’re out?
Now the significance of each of the “wins” I have identified is:
1. Tolley is on notice not to piss off a whole sector of voters, many of whom now actually vote for the government.
2. Surely the panel of experts is admission that the whole process is fatally flawed – this should have occurred at the beginning of the process, not when it is being prepared for implementation.
3. The NZCER is not a supporter of the standards as proposed by National. This is their position paper on the topic.
I’m afraid that if the government is a big fish, the NZEI is fast hauling it in!
I don’t know who is worse: the leadership of the socialist teacher’s union or Tolley, the out-of-her-depth Education minister?
Unfortunately, in either case the students will pay the price through a below par education.
Whafe, no, sorry to disappoint you, but I have always worked in manufacturing. My interest has been piqued by the arrival of a daughter (and I’m not to far of pension age!) so naturally I want the best education for her, without hiving her off into a private school. That’s what I pay my taxes for.
I see that ERO’s 10% has now morphed into 50%. Well done.
Tell me, have you read the ERO report? I have and I can tell you that ERO does not recommend National’s standards to improve the situation.
Manaolo, why don’t you get the facts. Here is the truth: we rank about 4th-6th in the OECD for the various subjects they test on, yet we rank 22nd in the PPP (purchasing power parity) adjusted spend per student.
It seems to me our teachers deserve a round of applause.
I cast my memory back to my schooling, which was a good few years ago, and I can quickly as am sure most can distinguish which classes I did well in and which I didnt, and the reason for it was shit teachers… Not saying I was a perfect angel, but the most part it was the teachers I had…
If what is being proposed can help work out the not good teachers and then subsequently help our future generation be better educated, I say go for it. It has to be better than what is being churned out of school at present….
Manolo, again, if you go to the OECD reports you will see that our “tail’ compares favourably internationally, numerically, but that the gap is wider between the achievers and the non-achievers. The main cause, as pinpointed by the OECD researchers, is our relatively unwealthy (to coin a word) status and resultant high rates of child poverty.
Teachers cannot overcome this degree of social dysfunction. And we should not blame them for it. Of course there are shit teachers, but that is not meant to be the point of standards. It’s the principals who should be targeted for that, as it is their job to identify them and train them or move them on.
Luc, no idea. Just posted it for you to complain about because you justify most things that are bullshit.
Dr Don Brash
Former Governor of the Reserve Bank and Leader of the New Zealand National Party from 2003 to 2006. He is chairman of the 2025 Taskforce.
NZCPR Guest Forum
Reaction to the report of the 2025 Taskforce
Opinion piece by Dr Don Brash
7 February 2010
Late last November, the 2025 Taskforce issued its first report. As readers may recall, the Taskforce was set up by Government as a result of the coalition deal between the National and ACT Parties after the 2008 election. That deal involved the Government committing itself to adopt policies to raise living standards in New Zealand to equal those in Australia by 2025 and – perhaps more significantly given the tendency for many governments to make grandiose promises which they have little intention of delivering on – to establish an advisory group both to make recommendations about how best to achieve that goal and to report annually on progress towards it. I chair that Taskforce, with David Caygill (who needs no introduction), Jeremy Moon (CEO of Icebreaker), Judith Sloan (of the Australian Productivity Commission) and Bryce Wilkinson (a Wellington economist) making up the other members.
Reaction to that first report has been mixed.
On the positive side, the dailies in all four main cities were very positive. And every business lobby group was enthusiastic. There has been widespread recognition, at least among those groups, that to raise our living standards to those of Australia by 2025 will require that growth in per capita incomes will need to double as compared with our past record – and that there isn’t the slightest chance of achieving that increase in our growth rate under “business as usual” policies.
But there was also plenty of negative commentary, some of it of the throw-away variety (as when left-wing commentator Matt McCarten named me the runner-up (to Hone Harawira) for his F*** You Award in the Herald on Sunday).
Among the more lengthy negative commentaries was one by Garth George in the New Zealand Herald. He claimed that the “biggest absurdity” in the report was the proposition that New Zealand could and should catch up with Australia . He argued that “there is just no comparison between the two countries”, with Australia having five times our population, 32 times our land area, and huge resources of minerals. Well, those were factual statements about Australia , but they ignored some important facts which he would have been aware of had he read the report.
First, there is no correlation between living standards and population – if there were, India would be super-rich and Singapore would be poor.
Second, there is no correlation between living standards and land area – if there were, Russia would be super-rich and Finland would be poor.
Third, there is no correlation between living standards and mineral wealth – if there were, the Congo would be super-rich and Japan would be poor.
In any event, a recent World Bank study showed that, in per capita terms, New Zealand has more natural resources (not all of them mineral resources) than almost any other country in the world.
Garth George accused the Taskforce of recommending a whole range of things which we did not recommend. For example, he accused us of recommending a flat personal income tax, and noted that if such a tax were established a whole range of low income people would have to pay more tax. But whatever the merits of a flat tax, the Taskforce did not recommend such a tax. What we did say was that, if core government spending were cut to the same fraction of GDP that it was in both 2004 and 2005 (29%), the top personal rate, the company tax rate, and the trust tax rate could comfortably be aligned at 20%. Under such a tax structure, all those earning above $14,000 a year would pay less income tax, while nobody would pay more income tax.
Nobody seriously argues that government was vastly too small in New Zealand in 2004 and 2005 (the end of the Labour Government’s second term in office), so why the ridiculous reaction when the Taskforce suggests reducing government spending to that level?
Mr George also suggested that we recommended abolishing subsidised doctor visits, and implied that we are advocating an American approach to healthcare. This is again utter nonsense. We suggested targeting subsidies for doctor’s visits at those who need them, either because they have low incomes or have chronic health problems.
He suggested that we favoured removing subsidies for early childhood education. Again, not true. What we said was that those subsidies – which have trebled in cost from $400 million a year to $1.2 billion a year over the last five years – should be focused on those who need them.
In many ways more disappointing than Garth George’s ignorant ranting was the reaction of one of New Zealand ’s best economic journalists, Brian Fallow. His article in the New Zealand Herald on 10 December dismissing the report of the 2025 Taskforce as “1980s thinking”, under the headline “Old prescription unlikely to fix new ills”, missed the boat completely and demonstrated that he was in some respects out of touch with mainstream professional opinion.
In his article, he cited at length the work of the economic geographer Philip McCann. McCann has argued that since the 1980s the world has changed profoundly – China has abandoned communism, India has abandoned autarky and the Soviet empire has collapsed. McCann accepts that over the past century transport costs have fallen by some 95%, while telecommunication costs have fallen by that much in just three decades. This has provided a huge advantage to “the geographical dispersion of activities which are not particularly knowledge-intensive and do not add a lot of value”. By contrast, what McCann calls “spatial transaction costs” have, he argues, become more important for knowledge-intensive high value-added activities because of the premium attached to face-to-face contact.
He argues that the increased importance of “spatial transaction costs” means that economic growth and globalisation over the past 20 years have favoured large urban centres in almost every country (large and small). But he goes on to argue that an implication of this is that, within the Australasian region, Sydney and possibly Melbourne are growing in wealth and size at the expense of the periphery – which in this case, he asserts, includes New Zealand . The further implication is that at this stage in the development of the world economy there are factors which drive us inevitably to have incomes lower than those in Australia .
Professor McCann is a serious researcher, and deserves to be heard respectfully. It is probably true that large urban centres attract a disproportionate share of a country’s innovation and entrepreneurship.
But one implication of his argument is that small countries, and especially those which are distant from world markets, are inevitably doomed to grow more slowly than larger more densely populated countries – and that simply does not seem to be borne out by the facts. Over the last 20 years during which Professor McCann claims the world has changed, small countries tended to perform a bit better than large countries – even New Zealand has grown slightly faster than the OECD average over that period.
Compared with large countries like France, Italy and Japan – all countries with large conurbations – New Zealand has also done better, increasing from 82% of the simple average of the incomes of those three countries in 1989 to 87% in 2007.
Moreover, if geography were really an important part of the story, no one would have predicted Australia ’s impressive performance relative to the rest of the developed world in the last couple of decades.
Professor McCann and Brian Fallow also suggested that in the brave new world after 1989 capital is likely to be flowing out of New Zealand to places like Australia . In fact, of course, it is well-established that capital is flowing into New Zealand , especially from Australia . Thus, we have one of the largest current account deficits around – and, by definition, one might expect us to be running surpluses if capital were leaving New Zealand for ever better opportunities abroad.
The report of the 2025 Taskforce acknowledged that smallness and distance may indeed be impediments to our growth. But let’s suppose for the moment that our size and location have become a much more important barrier to the development of knowledge-intensive industries in the “periphery” than they were prior to 1989. Do we have to wait until the global economy changes, until, as Brian Fallow suggests, we get the benefit of our “combination of ample rainfall, temperate climate and skilled farmers” as the world’s population climbs and more and more people move into income brackets which enable them to afford the foods of affluence?
Or are there things we can do to actively lift our living standards? The 2025 Taskforce is in no doubt about the answer to that question. Distance is what it is. Our population is what it is. But we don’t need to have a company tax rate which is now well above the average of other OECD countries. We don’t need to discourage people who have dependent children with effective marginal tax rates of well over 50%. We don’t need to hobble our businesses with needless red-tape. We don’t need to inflate the cost of housing by tightly constraining the supply of residential land. Our government doesn’t need to squander capital in low-yielding but politically-popular projects. And we don’t need a size of government that is materially larger than that in Australia .
Yes, Australia and other developed countries also do some of these dopey things. But the Government has set a goal not just of holding our position on the OECD ladder – a position which has us well below the average of other developed countries – but of catching up with Australia by 2025. We won’t do that with policies which are merely as good as the average of other developed countries; we will only do that with much better policies. If distance is a significant impediment to our growth, that simply means that our policies have to be of absolutely top quality. Right now, they are not, and in recent years they have gone backwards in several important areas even as other countries have continued to reform. This slippage is totally omitted from Brian Fallow’s account.
Do we need 1980s thinking? Of course, where it is still relevant; absolutely not where it isn’t.
Part of my own frustration about the reaction to the 2025 report is that much of it was based on the view that this was all Don Brash’s work, that none of the other members of the Taskforce had anything to do with it. Of course, that was not the case. I obviously played a role in the report, and I hope a constructive one. But the recommendations in the report were unanimously supported by the five members of the Taskforce – including by David Caygill, who was not only for a time the Finance Minister of the Labour Government of the eighties but also the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under Helen Clark in the nineties.
The Government’s reaction to the report could at best be described as lukewarm. Perhaps this is because, as Jane Clifton wrote in commenting on the report in the Listener of 12 December, “we’re all a bit spoilt. Successive governments have heaped benefits upon us – subsidised childcare and medicine, student loans, fam ily tax credits, income top-ups, pension guarantees and night classes, all underpinned by a provident welfare system. Despite mounting evidence that we can no longer afford these things, we simply won’t part with them. We will see off any government that tries to take them off us.”
Well, that’s as may be. The good news is that the Government remains committed to having us reach Australian living standards by 2025. The 2025 Taskforce makes no claim to infallibility, though its recommendations are entirely consistent with those made by successive OECD reports on New Zealand . The one thing which is absolutely clear is that neither present policies, nor a few minor tinkerings here and there, will get us to the goal the Government has adopted.
An interesting and well argued response to Taskforce criticisms by Brash. I’m not sure why the obsession with “catching up with Australia”, surely we should be want we want to be and let comparisons take care of themselves, but otherwise this makes a lot of sense.
I presume that behind the politicking National will have given the Taskforce report due consideration. We should find out more tomorrow, and if that doesn’t measure up there will be time for the government to keep getting the message.
Punching a woman police officer repeatedly in the face would seem to warrrant a little more than community supervision.
There is something wrong with the judiciary when they state “you age alone precludes me from jailing you”.
He turned 18 this Wednesday so he is an adult and before wednesday qualified for borstal.
why he couldn’t have had 3 months jail serving 1 month and 2 held in bond for 2 yrs providing he was not up before the court in that time for any offence I don’t know.
I am now collecting sentence anomolies like the queenstown burglars given community service because the judge ( a female) thought they had failed by getting too hot and taking off their masks for the camera, so no jail time.
Chris Finlayson has a problem with the law being brought into disrepute by this sort of sentencing.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:22 am
I went for a job as a social worker, the first thing they asked was did I have a police record.
I said “fuck off, I burned the lot when Sting became such a pretentious twat”.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:25 am
And in a similar vein
Why couldn’t the 9/11 truthers cross the road?
Because that’s what the government would WANT them to do
February 7th, 2010 at 11:27 am
This is a comment from Big Bruv on the Standard:
“”If you want to see the back of Neville Key (and so do I) then you have to play the game much more intelligently than you have done so far….We do have one common goal, we both want to see this man out of office”"
People like Big Bruv are why the Act party is dwindling around 1% support. For an Act supporter to be wishing for another Labour government is beyond me.
I hope there are people on here that know your real identity Bruv and you are given the cold shoulder. You are an embarassment to those of us on the centre right.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:31 am
This lady from my village, Matahau in Tonga can sing like Kiri Te Kanawa.
Ave Maria
She is a pop/rock singer (and a bass guitar player), but she can also sing opera stuff.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Has Whale named the prominent Palmerston North kiddy porn watcher yet? Interesting names…….
February 7th, 2010 at 11:35 am
more evidence of global warming ………pfft
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10624599
February 7th, 2010 at 11:36 am
“You are an embarassment to those of us on the centre right.”
Indeed Rachael, this bruv thing is a sick bad joke.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:37 am
What a callous affair.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10624658
The sad thing is Key’s PR facade extends to the right just as much as it does to the left. It really seems to be a case of say or do whatever is needed to gain and hold power.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:39 am
My take on Matt McCarten on Education reform: http://monkeyswithtypewriter.blogspot.com/2010/02/mccarten-on-education.html
is ‘diddums’ . .. .
With thanx – Lee – MWT
February 7th, 2010 at 11:52 am
Brilliant: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lZYT2toayzE/S23laRSnkeI/AAAAAAAADYQ/VPMPIQFP9Gc/s1600-h/ATT00001.jpg
Hat Tip: Crusader Rabbit
February 7th, 2010 at 11:56 am
I never read anything written by ma-ma-ma-ma-Mat ma-ma-ma-ma-McCarten.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:58 am
1 Year on,
We Remember those Whom Ran From It, And those Whom Have fallen,
The Ones We Loved And Cherrished, 1 Year on we Remember those Brave Souls Who fought it
1 Year on we’ve Rebuilt, 1 Year on We’ve Changed, 1 Year on, Victoria’s Worst Natural Disaster.
1 Year on, We Remember….. 7/2/09 Black Saturday
February 7th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
TimG, did you remember the Greenies whose fuckwittery caused it?
February 7th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Adolf Fiinkensein 12:33 pm,
Indeed, Adolph.
Both those that write, and those that enforce, laws which remove any legal right of landowners to part-clear their own land in the hope of safeguarding themselves against fire SHOULD be done for manslaughter, if not premeditated murder.
I remember someone here provided a link recently to an Aussie chap who basically totally cleared his land of vegetation (in Victoria I think), and was subsequently fined 100k (I think). Shortly afterwards a fire swept throught the area, and he was the ONLY one of his neighbours that had his house left (and all his family survived, too).
These Greenists/Socialists are the TRUE enemy of right minded, freedom loving people – and (to channel Billy T James), “They’re EVERYWHERE”.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
We’ve never forgotten them Adolph.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Good debate on Waitangi Treaty on TV1 Marae.
Stephen Franks was superb in his argument.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Manolo 11:52 am.
Of only!
(Excellent)
February 7th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Labour Radio this morning struggled in its attempt to ameliorate Hone Harawira’s contempt for white New Zealanders.
Radio NZ’s Labour Radio in its Insight programme by Richard Pamatatau (on Chairman Laidlaw’s Sunday morning show) went hunting for white NZ racism as a response to Pakeha reaction to Hone Hawira’s “white motherfucker” emails.
It found mainly risible stuff like a Samoan lady who as a child in West Auckland didn’t like a shopkeeper speaking English slowly to her when her mother standing beside her could not speak English. A Dutch woman who after more than 40 years in the country didn’t like being asked where she was from because of her accent. (Actually a civil question to someone with a North European accent if you want to head off a friend who, unaware hearers might be German, is prone to sound off about her visit to Auschwitz.) An ethnic Polynesian who was angry because he reckoned Polynesians dominated rugby teams but, with one exception, there was only one Polynesian coach or rugby union executive.
Pamatatau couldn’t resist the easy interviewee, Ranginui Walker, who predictably dredged up Don Brash’s Orewa speech. Walker asserted “one law for all” is code for “Pakeha power and domination”. Another interpretation is that Walker’s view is a rejection of equality before the law.
One speaker, I assume Camille Nakhid, a sociology lecturer at AUT, originally from the West Indies, seemed to suggest that any Pakeha resistance to spelling of place names, such as adding an “h” to Wanganui or a macron in Hawea, was entirely due to Pakeha insecurity about their identity. The corollary of this if that you disagree with a Maori activist on whatever, you are insecure. Emotional, unintellectual bullshit, of course.
To provide a semblance of balance, Pamatatau trotted out only the Prime Minister, John Key. The PM didn’t do a bad job, even defending Don Brash mildly. Key was moderate and conciliatory, but his drawing on the calling of Yugoslav migrants as “Dallies” was off the mark. When they arrived early last century, they were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and were often officially described as Austrians. The gum-digging migrants came mainly from Dalmatia, which they would have preferred to have acknowledged. “Dally” is an inoffensive contraction from Dalmatia as “Sally” is from Salvation Army or “Aussie” is from Australia. Some later arrivals would have been Yugoslavs, or now Croats, but that was because of changing politics and borders in their homeland, not because of NZ prejudice.
Over all, the depiction of the Pamatatau programme, though it clearly not its aim, is just how low level is prejudice in NZ. Compare NZ prejudice with the often cruel treatment of Tibetans and Uighurs by China or discrimination against ethnic Indians in Fiji. I would argue NZ prejudice is also less that the general parallel in most Caribbean countries between political influence and shades of skin colour, with the palest at the top.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
“One speaker, I assume Camille Nakhid, a sociology lecturer at AUT, originally from the West Indies, seemed to suggest that any Pakeha resistance to spelling of place names, such as adding an “h” to Wanganui”
Well if you had a stupid name like Nakhid I could see why you would want a bloody H added to all names.
I still prefer calling them Wackertain and Wangermatter and of course Wangernooie.
February 7th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Redbaiter [February 7th, 2010 at 9:37 am from yesterday's GD],
I KNEW I’d heard that ‘story’ somewhere before; John 3:16.
Thanks, Pete; I feel uplifted.
[Red, your 9:34 am comment had me rolling on the floor.
And yes, Pete, I WAS laughing at your expense (Father forgive me, for I have sinned)]
February 7th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Anyone know what Neville’s doing today (apart from trying to clean all the brown stuff of his nose after yesterdays sickening activities)?
February 7th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Jack5 1:49 pm,
Indeed, I heard it too, Jack.
What a load of left wing, apologist crap.
Pass me a bucket, I think I’m going to be sick!
February 7th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Johnboy 2:07 pm,
He should be more concerned with the “brown stuff” that keeps coming out of his mouth.
February 7th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Don’t pick on Hone too much guys after all Mory are slow learners. Its just taken this long for them to start regarding us as we have regarded them for generations. Our mistake is that we are giving them our hard earned cash and creating nonsense jobs for them in the government and academia to make them feel good. Best we just cut all that nonsense out now.
What was that Neville? Whats on your bit of paper? We don’t give a shit Neville.
February 7th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Swiftman @1156
I don’t like McCartns politics. I’ll tell you he”s got balls doing the job he does in public and overcoming the stammer.
I reckon that’s one of modern society’s big faults , no manners.
February 7th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Kris K – I am thinking about the same thing, but I have a feeling, well hope it is a correct feeling that John Key is going to let these Moree activists etc hang themselves… Hone will hang himself and perhaps its part of the National plan….. I am certain the further these activists etc go, the more they will hang themselves and the more moree’s will think they are a pathetic bunch of individuals….
This country is very quickly heading down a dark and nasty road in which we shouldnt wish to head….. Go the Moree activists….. Have you ever heard the saying “Look back, but dont stare” ?
February 7th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Whafe 2:43 pm,
One can only live in hope.
But I fear that the ‘enablers’ will get involved and stuff up any chance of TRUE justice being done in this regard.
Remember, it’s only the white, middle class who are racists – Hone will just continue to play the downtrodden and robbed Maori ‘card’.
[And, of course, I can say these things "cuz I gut sum Mouldi blud"
]
February 7th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
If you cant beat them join them Kris there must be a vacancy somewhere in NZ academia for “Mory Professor of Christianty in Relation to Ethnic Perceptions” salary at least $300,000pa. You would be a shoo in my son.
February 7th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Johnboy 3:16 pm,
That title does have a certain ring to it:
“Mory Professor of Christianty in Relation to Ethnic Perceptions”
Will you be wanting copyright on it?
If I secure that 300k salary, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement – Thanks bro’ (or is that ‘cuz’?).
February 7th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Oh, and Johnboy, did you notice anything strange about your comment at 3:16 pm?
“Johnboy 3:16 pm”
There’s a message in there somewhere.
February 7th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Weird Kris, really weird.
Well am I a great HR man or what? I can pick an up and comer at 300 paces.
Told you you would be a shoo in for that job.
February 7th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
I’m not surprised that right wing commentators (as they describe themselves – I think the term is pretty well meaningless these days) have failed to pick up on the wins the NZEI is stacking up in its battle with the government.
The first crack in the National facade was Tolley being stripped of tertiary education. Now Key has appointed a “Panel of Experts” charged with alerting the government to deleterious effects of the current plan. And Tolley announced this morning that she was cuddling up to the government’s own NZCER (New Zealand Council of Education Research).
What happened to three strikes and you’re out?
Now the significance of each of the “wins” I have identified is:
1. Tolley is on notice not to piss off a whole sector of voters, many of whom now actually vote for the government.
2. Surely the panel of experts is admission that the whole process is fatally flawed – this should have occurred at the beginning of the process, not when it is being prepared for implementation.
3. The NZCER is not a supporter of the standards as proposed by National. This is their position paper on the topic.
I’m afraid that if the government is a big fish, the NZEI is fast hauling it in!
February 7th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Luc, one would be led to believe you are a teacher?
Are you one of the 50 odd % whom are scared shitless that they will not be able to hide for much longer?
February 7th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
I don’t know who is worse: the leadership of the socialist teacher’s union or Tolley, the out-of-her-depth Education minister?
Unfortunately, in either case the students will pay the price through a below par education.
February 7th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Whafe, no, sorry to disappoint you, but I have always worked in manufacturing. My interest has been piqued by the arrival of a daughter (and I’m not to far of pension age!) so naturally I want the best education for her, without hiving her off into a private school. That’s what I pay my taxes for.
I see that ERO’s 10% has now morphed into 50%. Well done.
Tell me, have you read the ERO report? I have and I can tell you that ERO does not recommend National’s standards to improve the situation.
Manaolo, why don’t you get the facts. Here is the truth: we rank about 4th-6th in the OECD for the various subjects they test on, yet we rank 22nd in the PPP (purchasing power parity) adjusted spend per student.
It seems to me our teachers deserve a round of applause.
February 7th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Luc, my bad on presuming…..
I cast my memory back to my schooling, which was a good few years ago, and I can quickly as am sure most can distinguish which classes I did well in and which I didnt, and the reason for it was shit teachers… Not saying I was a perfect angel, but the most part it was the teachers I had…
If what is being proposed can help work out the not good teachers and then subsequently help our future generation be better educated, I say go for it. It has to be better than what is being churned out of school at present….
February 7th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Manolo, again, if you go to the OECD reports you will see that our “tail’ compares favourably internationally, numerically, but that the gap is wider between the achievers and the non-achievers. The main cause, as pinpointed by the OECD researchers, is our relatively unwealthy (to coin a word) status and resultant high rates of child poverty.
Teachers cannot overcome this degree of social dysfunction. And we should not blame them for it. Of course there are shit teachers, but that is not meant to be the point of standards. It’s the principals who should be targeted for that, as it is their job to identify them and train them or move them on.
February 7th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Distrurbing News about censorship of the internet.
http://www.nzcpr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=948&p=28273#p28273
February 7th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Stronger economy brings end to bank quarantee
* Samantha Maiden, Online Political Editor
* From: The Australian
* February 07, 2010 1:10PM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/stronger-economy-brings-end-to-bank-quarantee/story-e6frg6n6-1225827535896
February 7th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Viking2 @ 7.52
Omigod
You believe that shit Jones preaches?
February 8th, 2010 at 6:42 am
Luc, no idea. Just posted it for you to complain about because you justify most things that are bullshit.
Dr Don Brash
Former Governor of the Reserve Bank and Leader of the New Zealand National Party from 2003 to 2006. He is chairman of the 2025 Taskforce.
NZCPR Guest Forum
Reaction to the report of the 2025 Taskforce
Opinion piece by Dr Don Brash
7 February 2010
Late last November, the 2025 Taskforce issued its first report. As readers may recall, the Taskforce was set up by Government as a result of the coalition deal between the National and ACT Parties after the 2008 election. That deal involved the Government committing itself to adopt policies to raise living standards in New Zealand to equal those in Australia by 2025 and – perhaps more significantly given the tendency for many governments to make grandiose promises which they have little intention of delivering on – to establish an advisory group both to make recommendations about how best to achieve that goal and to report annually on progress towards it. I chair that Taskforce, with David Caygill (who needs no introduction), Jeremy Moon (CEO of Icebreaker), Judith Sloan (of the Australian Productivity Commission) and Bryce Wilkinson (a Wellington economist) making up the other members.
Reaction to that first report has been mixed.
On the positive side, the dailies in all four main cities were very positive. And every business lobby group was enthusiastic. There has been widespread recognition, at least among those groups, that to raise our living standards to those of Australia by 2025 will require that growth in per capita incomes will need to double as compared with our past record – and that there isn’t the slightest chance of achieving that increase in our growth rate under “business as usual” policies.
But there was also plenty of negative commentary, some of it of the throw-away variety (as when left-wing commentator Matt McCarten named me the runner-up (to Hone Harawira) for his F*** You Award in the Herald on Sunday).
Among the more lengthy negative commentaries was one by Garth George in the New Zealand Herald. He claimed that the “biggest absurdity” in the report was the proposition that New Zealand could and should catch up with Australia . He argued that “there is just no comparison between the two countries”, with Australia having five times our population, 32 times our land area, and huge resources of minerals. Well, those were factual statements about Australia , but they ignored some important facts which he would have been aware of had he read the report.
First, there is no correlation between living standards and population – if there were, India would be super-rich and Singapore would be poor.
Second, there is no correlation between living standards and land area – if there were, Russia would be super-rich and Finland would be poor.
Third, there is no correlation between living standards and mineral wealth – if there were, the Congo would be super-rich and Japan would be poor.
In any event, a recent World Bank study showed that, in per capita terms, New Zealand has more natural resources (not all of them mineral resources) than almost any other country in the world.
Garth George accused the Taskforce of recommending a whole range of things which we did not recommend. For example, he accused us of recommending a flat personal income tax, and noted that if such a tax were established a whole range of low income people would have to pay more tax. But whatever the merits of a flat tax, the Taskforce did not recommend such a tax. What we did say was that, if core government spending were cut to the same fraction of GDP that it was in both 2004 and 2005 (29%), the top personal rate, the company tax rate, and the trust tax rate could comfortably be aligned at 20%. Under such a tax structure, all those earning above $14,000 a year would pay less income tax, while nobody would pay more income tax.
Nobody seriously argues that government was vastly too small in New Zealand in 2004 and 2005 (the end of the Labour Government’s second term in office), so why the ridiculous reaction when the Taskforce suggests reducing government spending to that level?
Mr George also suggested that we recommended abolishing subsidised doctor visits, and implied that we are advocating an American approach to healthcare. This is again utter nonsense. We suggested targeting subsidies for doctor’s visits at those who need them, either because they have low incomes or have chronic health problems.
He suggested that we favoured removing subsidies for early childhood education. Again, not true. What we said was that those subsidies – which have trebled in cost from $400 million a year to $1.2 billion a year over the last five years – should be focused on those who need them.
In many ways more disappointing than Garth George’s ignorant ranting was the reaction of one of New Zealand ’s best economic journalists, Brian Fallow. His article in the New Zealand Herald on 10 December dismissing the report of the 2025 Taskforce as “1980s thinking”, under the headline “Old prescription unlikely to fix new ills”, missed the boat completely and demonstrated that he was in some respects out of touch with mainstream professional opinion.
In his article, he cited at length the work of the economic geographer Philip McCann. McCann has argued that since the 1980s the world has changed profoundly – China has abandoned communism, India has abandoned autarky and the Soviet empire has collapsed. McCann accepts that over the past century transport costs have fallen by some 95%, while telecommunication costs have fallen by that much in just three decades. This has provided a huge advantage to “the geographical dispersion of activities which are not particularly knowledge-intensive and do not add a lot of value”. By contrast, what McCann calls “spatial transaction costs” have, he argues, become more important for knowledge-intensive high value-added activities because of the premium attached to face-to-face contact.
He argues that the increased importance of “spatial transaction costs” means that economic growth and globalisation over the past 20 years have favoured large urban centres in almost every country (large and small). But he goes on to argue that an implication of this is that, within the Australasian region, Sydney and possibly Melbourne are growing in wealth and size at the expense of the periphery – which in this case, he asserts, includes New Zealand . The further implication is that at this stage in the development of the world economy there are factors which drive us inevitably to have incomes lower than those in Australia .
Professor McCann is a serious researcher, and deserves to be heard respectfully. It is probably true that large urban centres attract a disproportionate share of a country’s innovation and entrepreneurship.
But one implication of his argument is that small countries, and especially those which are distant from world markets, are inevitably doomed to grow more slowly than larger more densely populated countries – and that simply does not seem to be borne out by the facts. Over the last 20 years during which Professor McCann claims the world has changed, small countries tended to perform a bit better than large countries – even New Zealand has grown slightly faster than the OECD average over that period.
Compared with large countries like France, Italy and Japan – all countries with large conurbations – New Zealand has also done better, increasing from 82% of the simple average of the incomes of those three countries in 1989 to 87% in 2007.
Moreover, if geography were really an important part of the story, no one would have predicted Australia ’s impressive performance relative to the rest of the developed world in the last couple of decades.
Professor McCann and Brian Fallow also suggested that in the brave new world after 1989 capital is likely to be flowing out of New Zealand to places like Australia . In fact, of course, it is well-established that capital is flowing into New Zealand , especially from Australia . Thus, we have one of the largest current account deficits around – and, by definition, one might expect us to be running surpluses if capital were leaving New Zealand for ever better opportunities abroad.
The report of the 2025 Taskforce acknowledged that smallness and distance may indeed be impediments to our growth. But let’s suppose for the moment that our size and location have become a much more important barrier to the development of knowledge-intensive industries in the “periphery” than they were prior to 1989. Do we have to wait until the global economy changes, until, as Brian Fallow suggests, we get the benefit of our “combination of ample rainfall, temperate climate and skilled farmers” as the world’s population climbs and more and more people move into income brackets which enable them to afford the foods of affluence?
Or are there things we can do to actively lift our living standards? The 2025 Taskforce is in no doubt about the answer to that question. Distance is what it is. Our population is what it is. But we don’t need to have a company tax rate which is now well above the average of other OECD countries. We don’t need to discourage people who have dependent children with effective marginal tax rates of well over 50%. We don’t need to hobble our businesses with needless red-tape. We don’t need to inflate the cost of housing by tightly constraining the supply of residential land. Our government doesn’t need to squander capital in low-yielding but politically-popular projects. And we don’t need a size of government that is materially larger than that in Australia .
Yes, Australia and other developed countries also do some of these dopey things. But the Government has set a goal not just of holding our position on the OECD ladder – a position which has us well below the average of other developed countries – but of catching up with Australia by 2025. We won’t do that with policies which are merely as good as the average of other developed countries; we will only do that with much better policies. If distance is a significant impediment to our growth, that simply means that our policies have to be of absolutely top quality. Right now, they are not, and in recent years they have gone backwards in several important areas even as other countries have continued to reform. This slippage is totally omitted from Brian Fallow’s account.
Do we need 1980s thinking? Of course, where it is still relevant; absolutely not where it isn’t.
Part of my own frustration about the reaction to the 2025 report is that much of it was based on the view that this was all Don Brash’s work, that none of the other members of the Taskforce had anything to do with it. Of course, that was not the case. I obviously played a role in the report, and I hope a constructive one. But the recommendations in the report were unanimously supported by the five members of the Taskforce – including by David Caygill, who was not only for a time the Finance Minister of the Labour Government of the eighties but also the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under Helen Clark in the nineties.
The Government’s reaction to the report could at best be described as lukewarm. Perhaps this is because, as Jane Clifton wrote in commenting on the report in the Listener of 12 December, “we’re all a bit spoilt. Successive governments have heaped benefits upon us – subsidised childcare and medicine, student loans, fam ily tax credits, income top-ups, pension guarantees and night classes, all underpinned by a provident welfare system. Despite mounting evidence that we can no longer afford these things, we simply won’t part with them. We will see off any government that tries to take them off us.”
Well, that’s as may be. The good news is that the Government remains committed to having us reach Australian living standards by 2025. The 2025 Taskforce makes no claim to infallibility, though its recommendations are entirely consistent with those made by successive OECD reports on New Zealand . The one thing which is absolutely clear is that neither present policies, nor a few minor tinkerings here and there, will get us to the goal the Government has adopted.
Don Brash
Chairman of the 2025 Taskforce
February 8th, 2010 at 7:29 am
An interesting and well argued response to Taskforce criticisms by Brash. I’m not sure why the obsession with “catching up with Australia”, surely we should be want we want to be and let comparisons take care of themselves, but otherwise this makes a lot of sense.
I presume that behind the politicking National will have given the Taskforce report due consideration. We should find out more tomorrow, and if that doesn’t measure up there will be time for the government to keep getting the message.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:07 am
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/3301632/Angry-youth-pleads-guilty-to-12-charges
Is this just a phase or a serious assault waiting to happen.
Punching a woman police officer repeatedly in the face would seem to warrrant a little more than community supervision.
There is something wrong with the judiciary when they state “you age alone precludes me from jailing you”.
He turned 18 this Wednesday so he is an adult and before wednesday qualified for borstal.
why he couldn’t have had 3 months jail serving 1 month and 2 held in bond for 2 yrs providing he was not up before the court in that time for any offence I don’t know.
I am now collecting sentence anomolies like the queenstown burglars given community service because the judge ( a female) thought they had failed by getting too hot and taking off their masks for the camera, so no jail time.
Chris Finlayson has a problem with the law being brought into disrepute by this sort of sentencing.