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March 28, 2025 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 28 March 2025

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General Debate

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Scott

Some good news from America. Congress is seriously considering cutting all funding of their state funded media, NPR and PBS. A DOGE subcommittee grilled the heads of these organisations recently. They found that NPR had 87 registered Democrats in its newsroom and zero registered republicans. Basically these organisations are Democrat aligned and exist to drive liberal narratives that are helpful to the party.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/03/doge-goes-after-npr-pbs.php

Marjorie Taylor Greene sums up:

Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene concluded in her closing statement: “After listening to what we’ve heard today, we will be calling for the complete and total defund and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Here’s how it works: in America every single day, private businesses operate on their own without government funding. We believe that you all can hate us on your own dime.”

Thinking about the NZ situation these developments are very relevant. TVNZ and Radio NZ are state funded. They are generally very supportive of leftist governance. They loved Jacinda and they are very critical of Luxon.

Every day they are critical of this govt. School lunches are criticised every day. We have the spectacle of state funded media bashing the govt for the quality of state funded lunches provided to school children who mainly don’t need them because their parents can provide.

Here’s the question. Why are we funding all of this? Any of it?
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March 28, 2025 8:06am
- Swifty
  
  An excellent post Scott.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:49am
- Simon
  
  Funding is cut because GAE has reached the peak and now on the other side
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:13am
- slightlyrighty
  
  Taken in totality, the US media is well balanced, but only due to biased organisations on both sides.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:19am
  - kowtow
    
    Isn’t .
    
    Even the WSJ has TDS .
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:03am
- RoboRob
  
  Its worse here. RNZ is (almost?) 100% government funded. At least in the US, NPR only get ~5% of its funding from the government.
  
  To me the great unanswered question is, ‘Why does NZ need government funded media? What service does this media fill that would otherwise be unavailable?’
  
  I understand in the past there were valid answers to the above. Now it seems the defence is more based on ‘we have always had this’.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:32am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    RR the lefties in Aus make the excuse that their AU $ 1 Billion a year state funded far left propaganda platform is needed to “balance” (cue scary music) The Murdoch Empire.
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:55pm
- Dudley Quaffquaff
  
  Commercial imperatives require minimising input costs and maximising sales. In journalism, maximum returns require copying from somewhere else, or at most fabricating for yourself, a lazy story, behind a titillating headline that will get the reader clicking. Hence the proliferation of “You won’t BELIEVE what happened when it started raining!” (click to find that somebody put up their umbrella) and “Number 17 on this list will make you GASP!” (click for a list interrupted by multiple adverts and number 17, like all the others, is nothing much) and “My mother-in-law ate my budgerigar, so I got my REVENGE by …” (click for a collection of inane, oft-repeated stories which may not even include anything about budgerigar consumption).
  
  Thing is, quality journalism costs, it takes time and effort from skilled people, and consumers just won’t pay for it. People say “I won’t subscribe to that” or “I’m not looking at anything that’s behind a paywall” as if they are nobly defending some heroic point of principle, but in fact they’re just being cheapskate hypocrites who want free stuff. In journalism, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for; and if you’re not even willing to pay peanuts, then you’re getting less than monkeyshit.
  
  Further, good journalism, like good governance, requires saying and doing things that some, even many, people will find uncomfortable. It’s not like selling a commodity where the best product is the one that is most liked by the most people. We’ve seen what happens when governments are led by what people want, ie more shiny short-term feelsies paid for by other people. That’s also what purely commercial journalism gers you.
  
  So no, this isn’t good news from the US. A real problem has undoubtedly been identified, but the proposed solution is thoughtless, unintelligent and destructive.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:43am
  - wsk12345
    
    You say people won’t pay yet writers on substack etc, YouTubers with a quality product manage to live off the income they receive. Alex Berenson, Triggernometry, DarkHorse, eupygpius and many others come to mind.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:12am
    - Dudley Quaffquaff
      
      Please give a recent, specific example of any of these telling you something that you personally found uncomfortable or confronting because it did not accord with your previous understanding or conviction?
      
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      March 28, 2025 11:34am
      - Dudley Quaffquaff
        
        Apparently not.
        
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        March 28, 2025 12:23pm
      - JimBobJoe
        
        Dudley – there are plenty of independents telling you things. By browsing them you get a balanced view. Plenty of substack and pods from the Left…
        
        The Media landscape has changed and the centralisation of news media dominated the twentieth century beginning in the 1920s/30s has ended. Everything is fragmenting as business models via ads to captive audiences is no long the dominate model.
        
        A stabilization and recentralization will occur in time, as a revenue system allowing cheap or free access is found.
        
        None of this or your arguments for quality costs money addresses why the NZ State needs to fully fund a radio network or own a commercial TV network.
        
        TVNZ should be sold. RNZ should either be sold or turned into an entity owned by a Trust which self funds via subscriptions, sponsorships and donations
        
        Taxpayers don’t need to pay for directly from taxes a propaganda radio network, or prop up via an implicit guarantee a commercial TV network
        
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        March 28, 2025 12:59pm
      - Dudley Quaffquaff
        
        JBJ, thank you, you are doing what the US Congress, or at least Marjorie Taylor Greene, should be doing and have utterly failed to do – that is, think carefully about the problem and what could be done to address it and what might be the pros and cons of the possible approaches.
        
        Chess games are won by thinking, not by shitting all over the board while screaming “So much winning!”.
        
        You assert that “a revenue system enabling cheap and easy access”, that doesn’t involve public funding, will emerge.
        
        Why would it? I mean, we’ve already got cheap and easy access to content. It’s so “cheap” it’s free, and it’s so “easy to access” that you have to try hard to avoid it.
        
        But it’s rubbish. Where are the drivers that will encourage improvements in quality, rigour in investigation and evidence checking, careful and thoughtful consideration of differing perspectives and scrupulous fairness in presenting them, in a strictly commercial environment? All these things add plenty to cost of production, but they don’t add anything, or certainly not enough, to the price that can be commanded.
        
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        March 28, 2025 2:20pm
      - wsk12345
        
        The guy Konstantin Kissin on Triggernometry is very pro Ukraine. He interviewed his father who was a Russian politician and is very pro Russia. I found it very interesting that they had a respectful discussion despite disagreeing on major things.
        
        There are lots of things they discuss that I find extremely interesting – I dont agree with all of it but it does provide a perspective that I can then look at alternatives to.
        
        I’m not sure why anyone would subscribe just to be told stuff they already know or believe??
        
        Ps as for your “gotcha” because I have a life and didnt reply immediately to your comment, grow up!
        
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        March 28, 2025 2:36pm
      - RoboRob
        
        The hill & Counter points both have youtube sites with left/right presenters. So yeah, there are plenty of places providing ‘uncomfortable’ views.
        
        note : I dont watch counter points any longer as the hillariously named ‘Crystal Ball’ essentially has the stage. Sager (from the right) was hardly putting up an argument. Turned out she owns most of the company, so shees the boss.
        
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        March 28, 2025 3:12pm
  - KH
    
    The Queenstown District council spends big with the Otago Daily Times (ODT). And it’s subsidiary “The Mountain Scene”
    The ODT and “The Scene” minimise reporting on sewage discharge by the council into the river.
    There is an outrageous story here, well reported by the local online news http://www.crux.org.nz
    The council will not advertise with Crux.
    Wonder why.
    So much for ODT integrity.
    
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    March 28, 2025 3:49pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    The problem is creators expecting to “get rich”.
    
    The internet is a great aggregator of information.
    
    Unfortunately most people simply don’t have the money to subscribe to everything they are interested in. Most median earners can pay for a few things a month like this. That’s it.
    
    So either creators of serious material get real about this and lower their charges (IE make a reasonable but not greedy living) or miss out on paying customers.
    
    Oh and hooking into the “surveillance economy” of selling using data and spamming users with the obnoxious and pervasive cancer known as advertising, will only get you so far until people switch off because it is so annoying and unethical.
    
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    March 28, 2025 7:10pm
- R
  
  We need a chairwoman Greene!
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:46am
- Allan
  
  Luxon is no Trump.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:57am
  - sungsamning
    
    He’d be classified as a RINO there.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:52am
    - kiwimike
      
      I think his ignoring co-governance makes him worse, as that is an active non active…
      
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      March 28, 2025 12:35pm
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      He’s a NINO here.
      
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      March 28, 2025 1:37pm
Grunter

My Submission to the COVID Inquiry is almost complete. Any comments welcome!

Summary:
1. Based on this Substack ‘The Covid Dossier’
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/the-covid-dossier-updated-a-record
Key date: Feb 4th 2020 – EUA and PREP Act – made by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, were registered. This set the ‘lockdown and wait for vaccine’ strategy into play. This was then followed globally. I can’t find any other source of this strategy, anywahere.

2. The New Zealand Government followed the consistent global response to COVID-19. The strategy could be summarised as “Lock down and wait for a vaccine.” In Ardern-speak, this was the ‘Elimination’ strategy. This strategy was not part of any previous pandemic plan set out by New Zealand or any other country. I have wondered, “Why was that? Where did this COVID-19 Response strategy come from?”

3. Until COVID, I was a trusting, law-abiding Kiwi citizen. I mistakenly followed all the COVID protocols – masks, social distancing, lockdowns, work-from-home, and scanning QR codes for 18 months. I even got three jabs, “trusting the science.” So, I like to think that I’m not some lonely conspiracy theorist sitting at home in my PJ’s smoking dope. No, I’m just a Joe-average Kiwi that has a curious brain that asked, “Why did most of the world follow this strategy and where did it come from?”

4. My personal conclusion is that I will never trust the New Zealand Government or the mainstream media again. Coercion, manipulation, outright lying, scare tactics, and hiding of key facts have destroyed all trust. It is clear to me that there was a mandated ‘playbook’ operating across most countries. New Zealand was obviously part of this.
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March 28, 2025 8:15am
- imalwaysright
  
  Good submission.
  Is it an actual enquiry if they don’t question, under oath, the main players?
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:08am
  - kowtow
    
    Good luck getting those Wuhan lab technicians onto the stand . Or their funders from the west .
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:04am
    - imalwaysright
      
      I was thinking of those closer to home. Adern , Hendy, Bloomfield , Luxon, Hipkins, Wiles, Robertson ,Baker , Betty, Coster, etc
      A rogues gallery who have all gone on to bigger and brighter things while the country continues its downward spiral.
      
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      March 28, 2025 11:48am
      - Mark Hanley
        
        The covid virus was merely a flu which killed the old and sick (which most flus do).
        
        The average age of death in the UK went down 3 months in the first (and worst) year of covid.
        
        The real killer was the way Pfizer and their government confidantes took advantage of the flu to fleece taxpayers of billions of dollars.
        
        Billions spent on unnecessary lockdowns
        
        Billions spent on “shovel ready” infrastructure projects which produced nothing.
        
        Billions spent on a jab which medsafe correctly concluded was neither safe nor effective, before the govt purchased. Ardern then went on tv saying… you guessed it… “the jab is safe and effective”.
        
        Billions spent on child poverty and mental health…. all the poverty and mental health measures got worse.
        
        So billions spent, public debt racheted up, for nothing.
        
        Come on Messrs Luxon, Seymour, and Peters…
        
        Who’s got our money?
        
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        March 28, 2025 2:33pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      Maybe a certain large totalitarian regime took advantage of the stupidity of rogue actors from a another large regime (their main adversary) to create disrupting global chaos?
      
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      March 28, 2025 7:19pm
- wsk12345
  
  I’ve half written mine too. I believed the shit for about a week then started questioning why they threw out the pandemic plan, why we were told that masks didn’t work, then they did. I took no vaccines – when I am told I have to do something that seems illogical (omicron being on the horizon) I resist and research. I lost my job despite it being complete WFH. I was treated like a pariah by people I thought were friends. I don’t see those people anymore, they are not my people. I was treated appallingly by my doctor, and labelled an anti vaxxer, a conspiracy theorist, asked sneeringly why I thought I was better than the actual scientists. I am an analyst, I knew it did not add up. I’m glad I did not comply along with most of my family. Like you I will never again trust the politicians or so called professionals who at best lacked critical thinking skills and at worst were complicit in trying to destroy us.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:33am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Ditto wsk,
    My trigger was finding out covid was in China since the previous October, yet we had 100,000’s of Chinese tourists over the summer and seemed to have no appreciable increase in influenza cases.
    Also, if it was actually as virulent as they said, we would all already have contracted it and achieved herd immunity .
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:54am
- R
  
  This playbook was the first trial of the One World Government project being promoted by WEF and UN
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:50am
- Ross Bayer
  
  Grunter, isnt it funny how those of us that have an open mind where able to see the scam-demic for what it was and also are able to see behind the lies and disinformation about Ukraine and the Green Goblin.
  Trump as well
  For me the MSM has been feeding us lies for the last 8 years on many issues and it all started with Russia-gate and yet so many have drunk the kool-aide.
  The question for me is how anyone could anyone possibly believe Joe Bribem and his veep where of sound mind, then there was the laptop issue, Scam-demic, Ukriane, Climate Change, those with TDS.
  What is it that leads people to believe what they are seeing and hearing in the lamestream media when the fact is that much of it is simply propaganda.
  Lied to about Covid but believing everything else from MSM????
  
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  March 28, 2025 1:41pm
sungsamning

https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/26/gen-z-is-the-most-conservative-generation-in-decades-because-theyre-a-victim-of-the-lefts-failures/
Gen Z Is The Most Conservative Generation In Decades Because They’re A Victim Of The Left’s Failures.
Following on the heels of Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials, Generation Z is comprised of individuals born between 1997 and 2012. For such individuals, the ascendancy of the left and the Democrat Party has dominated their lives. According to Gallup polling, in 1997 (the first year of Gen Z) 28 percent of Democrats described their views as liberal (as opposed to conservative or moderate); in 2023, 54 percent chose that description.
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March 28, 2025 8:16am
sungsamning

https://nypost.com/2025/03/26/us-news/trump-announces-25-tariffs-on-all-foreign-made-cars/
Trump announces 25% tariffs on all foreign-made cars.
President Trump announced a new 25% tariff on foreign-made cars Wednesday — impacting roughly half of all vehicles sold in America — arguing it would boost domestic manufacturing.
Trump, 78, announced the move in the Oval Office, saying that “this is gonna lead to the construction of a lot of plants” to build cars domestically.
“We’ll effectively be charging a 25% tariff, but if you build your car in the United States, there is no tariff,” he said.
White House staff secretary Will Scharf told Trump that the action was projected to raise $100 billion in annual revenue — though analysis has suggested it may also sharply reduce import volume. [The goal is to bring more car factories to the USA.]
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March 28, 2025 8:17am
- Tarquin North
  
  Oh noes we’ll never get rid of those Trekkas now!
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:39am
  - sungsamning
    
    I guess they’re classics now. Probably worth more than a new Land Cruiser -;)
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:54am
- Manu-Rau
  
  Actually, if car production in the US increases as a result of this move, revenue should increase in the US by at least the same amount as tariffs would have raised. Remember that everyone in the production chain (steelworkers, tyre makers, assembly workers, etc) will pay income tax, the production companies themselves will pay business tax, and there will be sales taxes on the vehicles themselves.
  
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  March 28, 2025 1:24pm
Frank the tank

Everyone else looking forward to Helen Clark wail and moan and have soundbites galore over the plan to upscale Eden Park. Eden Park was the best of 2 bad options. Benedict Collins was already frothing and foaming and working out how to smear the government for this decision.

What is the guess:
a). National promise to fund it as part of the 2026 election pledges
b). Labour go ‘all in’ on the pisspot downtown at the same time

Personally I would have re-done Mt Smart with retractable seating (convert from rectangular to oval); redeveloped number 2 into an indoor venue capable of holding panpacs swimming/gymnastics world champs etc and the supertop into a velodrome and associated buildings for high performance sport and athlete stays….
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March 28, 2025 8:18am
- pdm
  
  She has already started.
  
  I am sure I heard her name mentioned as having a whinge earlier this morning.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:54am
  - kowtow
    
    Te media actively ignored /cancelled plenty of mainstream scientists and medicos over the Wuflu , to suit the regime’s draconian agenda.
    
    There’s no good reason why they can’t ignore this has been.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:07am
  - PurplePen
    
    Must be awful to be a citizen in a position of no power and no-one listening to your concerns. Welcome to the rest of us and our dealings with local authorities.
    
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    March 28, 2025 12:53pm
  - Paulus
    
    Has Clark not got about six properties, so which of those will be affected ?
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:44pm
Chuck Bird

JERRY COYNE: Facial surgeons wanted in New Zealand, must be intimately familiar with all things Māori

https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2025/03/david-farrar-equality-of-suffrage-seen.html#more
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March 28, 2025 8:18am
- pdm
  
  Highlights all that is presently wrong with New Zealand.
  
  That is why I put Ardern and Hipkins as Top Candidates in the impaired Prime Minister list that Stuff covered this morning.
  https://nominister.wordpress.com/2025/03/28/jacinda-ardern-and-chris-hipkins-immediately-came-to-mind/
  
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  March 28, 2025 8:34am
  - David Garrett
    
    Pdm: did you notice how that piece was riddled with errors, including some of the PM’s names FFS? Editors of old must be turning in their graves
    
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    March 28, 2025 9:01am
    - pdm
      
      DG – I really only browsed it.
      
      I do know Karl du Fresne shudders almost every time he reads a Stuff or Herald article these days
      
      No standards or pride in their work.
      
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      March 28, 2025 9:10am
      - David Garrett
        
        pdm: It’s worse than that even…they can’t even be bothered turning on spell check…not that that is even needed any more, with Word identifying a mistake by a squiggly red underline.
        
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        March 28, 2025 9:36am
    - artemisia
      
      Well I always smile when I see pubic for public, or manger for manager.
      
      Surprisingly often.
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:03am
      - imalwaysright
        
        I would say that many of them would be very familiar with the pubic manger.
        
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        March 28, 2025 10:43am
      - David Garrett
        
        art: I look at Stuff only because it has marginally fewer mistakes than the Horrid. And I prefer its quiz.
        
        Other than that, it’s a quick scan. I am most annoyed that at times I fall for their click bait, which turns out to be a story from the US or some other country.
        
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        March 28, 2025 10:51am
      - kowtow
        
        Bought for brought , and now almost ubiquitous in broadcasting too.
        
        Not to mention how so many people in broadcasting shlur and have dropped the t for d .
        
        Ardern was a shocker ; communidy.
        Luxon’s not much beddah .
        
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        March 28, 2025 11:10am
  - Yvette
    
    pdm – Highlights all that is presently wrong with New Zealand
    
    Two consecutive Prime Ministers, each in turn holding supposedly the second highest office in the nation, have publicly expressed totally opposing views of the Treat of Waitangi, supposedly the Founding Document of the Nation, in that one believes Maori ceded sovereignty and the other that they didn’t (both involved in decisions, as is everyone, influenced by their own views), and, even based on 184 years of study of the Founding Document, no one can definitively state which Prime Minister is right – that is What Is Presently Wrong with New Zealand
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:05am
  - Ghost
    
    Here is the article for people who can’t be bothered with pdm’s clickbait attempt
    
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360629510/does-new-zealand-need-process-removing-impaired-prime-ministers
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:07am
    - Yabster
      
      you do love a good stuffed article huh Ghost- the irony of posting their clickbait obviously escapes you.
      
      Speaking of clickbait and rubbish- I am [mod abuse deleted, use correct names] new book ads pop up on KB -I have an ad blocker on my work laptop but may need to add one to my home laptop as well -as seeing that ad is too nauseating…
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:22am
      - Ghost
        
        Do keep yabster, i know you are a little slow. It actually the article pdm wants you to go to his blog, then click on to go to stuff to read. Would you like me to draw some pictures so you can understand that
        
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        March 28, 2025 10:29am
      - Yabster
        
        sure draw a picture- got your crayons?
        
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        March 28, 2025 11:52am
    - pdm
      
      Don’t you like people proffering opinions and promoting other blog options Ghostie?
      
      If DPF or the mods object I will stop but, I do note others do it as well.
      
      A facet of free speech.
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:37am
    - David Garrett
      
      Ghost: Fuck me, they have had hours to fix it, and they are still referring to Savage as “Joseph Savage”…no doubt the piece was written by some 23 year old with no knowledge of 20th century NZ history…unless it had some Maori angle.
      
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      March 28, 2025 2:02pm
      - Ghost
        
        They’ve got bigger worries than spelling. Herald was running a story that trade me are looking at buying stuff digital. I’d expect a few layoffs if they do
        
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        March 28, 2025 2:20pm
  - R
    
    You forgot Comrade Helen, she will be most displeased with you
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:55am
- Simon
  
  “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government;”
  
  lol, the proles have no power.
  
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  March 28, 2025 8:37am
- Yvette
  
  At school teach tamariki how to brush their teeth
  It has to be simpler than school lunches
  What could go wrong?
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:12am
  - peterwn
    
    The toothbrush and toothpaste contracts could go wrong.
    The need to provide bottled water in fluoridated areas and the need to provide non fluoridated toothpaste in non fluoridated areas. And the toothpaste manufacturer might accidentally put fluoride compound (eg sodium fluoride – chemically similar to salt) into a batch non fluoridated by mistake. Plenty of room for error and providing saturation news for RNZ.
    
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    March 28, 2025 9:56am
    - imalwaysright
      
      The sinks would be full of rotted teeth.
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:21am
  - cmm
    
    Brushing your teeth is colonial bullshit isn’t it?
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:04am
  - Yvette
    
    perhaps relevant:
    “Socratic irony” or “bugger me – they are actually doing it anyway” –
    
    The Niho Kura pilot, funded by Well Foundation in partnership with Waitematā DHB, will be based on this model and delivered initially in 18 Kura Kaupapa, Kōhanga Reo and other priority schools and early childhood centres in West Auckland. The programme will be developed in partnership with whānau, schools and the community focussing on innovative ways of delivering oral health information and an effective model of care. – no date
    https://wellfoundation.org.nz/projects/childsmile/
    
    survey –
    https://www.cph.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/ToothbrushingPilotArowhenuaSurveyInfographic.pdf
    
    equity in oral health outcomes for Māori.
    Our vision is of a sustainable Māori oral health provider sector and equitable publicly-funded services delivering whānau-centred preventative care leading to orally fit whānau and equity in oral health outcomes for Māori.
    https://www.maorioralhealth.org.nz
    
    The main danger perhaps with the activist tendency the position description displays –
    JERRY COYNE: Facial surgeons wanted in New Zealand, must be intimately familiar with all things Māori
    – is a rejection of such apparently dopey requirements that sees a baby spat out with the rinse water
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:20am
NeverMindTheBollocks

Shell Lane (The Terrace) bike rack report:

At 8.20am, null bikes today.

A cool, calm, damp, dark morning in the Capital, not ideal for cycling if I’m honest, but the bankers still want their loans repaid.
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March 28, 2025 8:21am
- peterwn
  
  Did yesterday’s solitary cyclist go back to catching the train today?
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:57am
  - Interested Party
    
    WFH //
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:14am
    - RoboRob
      
      Correct, it is a Friday after all.
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:36am
  - Paulus
    
    No, its Public Service Friday so they are not at work today !
    Monday will be dubious also.
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:48pm
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  At 10am there was one bike. It had a child seat on the back, with a long flag pole and flag jutting out across most of the footpath.
  
  Luckily, there were no other bikes, so no one was inconvenienced.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:57am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Chippy’s in town…
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:25pm
Swifty

Bob Geldof’s looks more like Chrissy Hynde every year:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/i-never-wanted-to-be-captain-africa-bob-geldof-returns-to-new-zealand/FX4YI6E4JNELPP2GOPAF6GJ2D4/

😄
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March 28, 2025 8:23am
- David Garrett
  
  Swifty: Indeed…but looking at the bigger picture, 40 years on little brown children are still starving to death in Ethiopia, and their mothers and grandmothers are the people who Live Aid saved.
  
  Until there is either voluntary or compulsory contraception in countries like Ethiopia nothing will change. No money for Save the Children or similar charities from me.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:40am
  - Raphael
    
    The really sad thing is that if the late and unlamented Mad Uncle Bob hadn’t destroyed Zimbabwe, it could have produced enough food so that Africa as a whole could feed itself.
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:09am
    - cmm
      
      Rinse and repeat with South Africa where each commercial farmer feeds over 3000 people. Those farmers are pulling out of farming and are not re-capitalising due to threats of having their farms confiscated, attacks on themselves and families and heavy insurance costs etc.
      
      While Rhodesia or South Africa could have single-handedly fed the whole of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1970s, there has been such a population explosion that it would probably require full output from both to do the job now. Unfortunately neither are anywhere near their full productivity any more and sub-Saharan Africa is now a net importer of food.
      
      Live Aid was keyed in to Ethiopia. In the 1980s Ethiopia could feed itself easily except for the impact of their civil war.
      
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      March 28, 2025 11:27am
  - NothingLeft
    
    Population in Africa inexorably expands to limits of food supply (during famines). If one country restricts population growth then they get swamped by immigrants.
    
    No intercessions by Foreign powers have had any significant effect on improving general state of governance or – except that western tech has increased carrying capacity of the land through better medicine, mechanization and agricultural practice etc. So when wars, famines or plagues break out they kill a lot more people.
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:12am
    - cmm
      
      Quite.
      Africa is a machine that converts calories into babies.
      
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      March 28, 2025 11:27am
  - In Vino Veritas
    
    Gave up giving money to those sorts of charities years ago. Not least because they are nearly all left leaning lobby groups masquerading as charities, but also because a fair chunk of the donations never make it to the intended recipients.
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:33am
  - cmm
    
    DG: You’re off by a generation mate.
    
    40 years ago? Then that would be grandmothers and great grandmothers.
    
    Median age for birth of first child in these areas is approx 18.5. ie. pregnant on their 18th birthday. That’s the median ie. 50% are younger than that.
    
    Many of the girls that were 10 years old in the 1980s will now be great grandmothers.
    
    A very large % of the aid does not get anywhere near helping people because it is taxed along the way many times:
    1) The CEOs of these charity organisations that get paid millions and fly first class.
    2) The “handling fee” by the charity collectors.
    3) The “paperwork fee”/bribes to the government workers, dock workers and the like.
    4) The “transit fee”/extortion by the warlords of areas that the aid vehicles travel through.
    
    But, hey, it makes western people feel good that they “did their bit”.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:17am
  - NoFax
    
    The number of children isn’t the issue, as famines happen due to political decisions. There has never been a famine in a democracy and that is not a coincidence. Even Bono now acknowledges that the only way to improve the situation in Africa and other developing countries is to allow for the free markets to thrive.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:48am
  - JimBobJoe
    
    Ethiopia population 1985 when Live Aid happened: 39.84 Million
    Ethiopia population now: circa 135 Million
    
    As of today Ethiopia is close to self sufficiency in wheat but still needs help to fee the entire population.
    
    So Sir Bob has created a power keg via massive population increase partly driven by foreign food aid, which given a decent adverse event like a civil war, would result in a massive famine…
    
    The road to potential hells are generally littered with good intentions and limp wristed Lefties screaming think of the children
    
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    March 28, 2025 1:12pm
  - Ra Henare
    
    Keep in mind that the poor in places like the Ethiopia you reference, have children to take care of them as they age. No social welfare there!
    
    It was endemic when the Khmer Rouge got ousted in Cambodia. Result large families from the survivors.
    
    As Cambodia develops economically(in leaps and bounds) family sizes are getting smaller.
    
    However, still no social welfare, but the family structure and the free market provides affordable solutions.
    
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    March 28, 2025 1:56pm
- Philview
  
  Times have changed per that debate recently that Live Aid was racist and represented White patriarchy over Black people. Ed Sheeran was really embarrassed he sang in a newer version and not understanding the racism. Poor old Ed.
  
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  March 28, 2025 1:27pm
bennerg

Regarding the Auckland Stadium issue, perhaps a novel way to deal with this is to offer a buy out to the adjacent neighbours, and built a series of hotels and apartments to surround the stadium, to house those who want to permanently or occasionally (as the case may be) to be close to the action. This would provide a buffer zone for those further away, from the lights and to some degree the sounds.

Large underground parking with tunnels feeding from the major highways, and also connecting to the train station would facilitate dealing with the traffic.

I’d suggest a vibrant stadium would the put a premium on house prices, to the delight of those still in the area, and improve the lifeblood to the area, allowing it to even compete with the Viaduct.
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March 28, 2025 8:23am
- Burtland
  
  privatise the profit socialize the losses?
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:36am
- Graeme Hall
  
  Rejig the city to build a multi-billion entertainment facility likely used 10-15 times a year? Cheaper to fly the patrons to LA.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:43am
  - bennerg
    
    Graeme, the whole idea is that there SHOULD be an every every week, not 10-15 per year.
    
    Then create a social buzz around the area so it is working every day.
    
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    March 28, 2025 1:44pm
    - Graeme Hall
      
      bennerg: Every stadium ever built had the same hyper-optimistic business plan beforehand. The problem is who of us have sufficient discretionary funds to buy expensive tickets to these events every week? Then again, how many people will fly/drive into the region every week – tens of thousands? Look at rugby, it is dying on its feet from lack of attendees as it keeps increasing the number of matches. Unfortunately the plan never eventuates and citizens get forced to finance the structures forever after. No-one is ever held accountable for the failures. Even sending one advocating politician into bankruptcy would be some consolation, but that will never happen.
      
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      March 28, 2025 2:46pm
- peterwn
  
  Eden Park has been around for over 100 years. It seems to me that the main complainers are those who did not do due diligence before buying their properties. Bob Jones specifically mentioned this sort of issue in one of his property books.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:50am
  - R
    
    Jackpot! Peterwn
    
    5 1
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    March 28, 2025 10:58am
  - JimBobJoe
    
    Having lived about 8 minutes walk South of Eden Park off Dominion Road, I can say that the noise and hubbub of an event is barely audible… and there is limited traffic issues
    
    Helen Clark is just a whinger!
    
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    March 28, 2025 1:15pm
- Paulus
  
  Helen’s price would not be enough, so she could no longer bitch about the Stadium !
  
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  March 28, 2025 2:50pm
Jethrod

Is this to give insight into the removal of full face tattoos?
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March 28, 2025 8:26am
Scooter

Regarding the recent verbal diarrhea from Tamatha Paul, I wonder if it is down to her loving the limelight during the Treaty Principals Bill submissions? Maybe she’s missing being the centre of attention on video and wants it to continue regardless of the damage it’s causing to The Gweens.
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March 28, 2025 8:26am
- muzled
  
  Makes you wonder how the hell she ever got to sit on the panel hearing those submissions does it not?
  
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  March 28, 2025 3:29pm
New Zealander

I managed to find a fascinating article about Tamatha Paul which shows how clueless she is.

Points of note:

– Her father was a criminal who wasn’t allowed into Australia.
– Says the formative experience of her life was working at KFC.
– Says she didn’t go to school very much.

David might be interested in some of the obvious exaggerations or outright lies in the article. She says her parents were met at the airport in Australia by police with “M5 assault rifles”.

https://e-tangata.co.nz/korero/tamatha-paul-show-up-and-be-counted/
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March 28, 2025 8:28am
- cmm
  
  Stand aside Cindy, you’re no longer the liar queen of the NZ parliament.
  
  31 1
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  March 28, 2025 9:33am
  - Paulus
    
    No, Dame Jacinda is now the new Liar Queen of Oxford University, to which she has been accepted.
    Does that men that she did not get a work permit into the USA ?
    Or does hubby have record ?
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:54pm
- Burtland
  
  RNZs political reporters turned the whole affair into an attack on Luxon this morning
  – RNZ has bald-man-bad syndrome
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:46am
- peterwn
  
  I thought it was well known that you do not get a 501 visa on arrival if yo had committed a crime with year or more imprisonment. He should have tried for an ordinary visa from the Oz consulate before buying his tickets.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:04am
- Scooter
  
  What does she mean when she says…
  
  “But my connection to te ao Māori was not a positive one. My mum did what she had to do to keep me and my siblings safe, as many single mums have to do in Aotearoa.”
  
  When I Google Te Ao Maori it says “the Maori world” so is she saying she didn’t have a positive connection to the Maori world and was not safe? Was her mother trying to keep her from the Maori side of the family and or protecting her from gangs etc.
  
  Sounds like she has a few issues.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:10am
  - cmm
    
    In her mind there would seem to be no dividing line between the gang world and Maori world.
    
    This explains her concerns with the “Just-Us System” which, presumably, is a view of the justice system that says Maori are unjustly targeted and that the goal of the whole system is to oppress Maori.
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:51am
  - PurplePen
    
    So she would advise to feel safe we keep police off the street then as well as the bad elements of te ao Maori.
    
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    March 28, 2025 1:02pm
- Eastlander
  
  Her family are criminals, her friends are likely criminals too and you can take a wild guess what she was up to when she wasn’t in school. Criminals are her constituency, that’s who she’s there to represent.
  
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  March 28, 2025 1:36pm
Simon

Trump Admin 1.0 & Trump Admin 2.0 its night and day. Trump Admin 2.0 is a pale imitation.
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March 28, 2025 8:33am
pb

Keith OO8 Starmer banning ninja swords and nerf guns?

Is this guy real. Talk about led by donkeys.
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March 28, 2025 8:34am
Prince

How hard can it be for the Govt to root out this nonsense ?
In the immortal words of the late Alex Wylie, and I paraphrase as I can’t recall the exact words…

Get in there, and do the fundamental things right.
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March 28, 2025 8:36am
- pdm
  
  Wasn’t Grizz’s classic in the Shield when Auckland were leading 25 nil in the match they took the shield at half time?
  
  Grizz allegedly walked into the Canterbury changing room at half time, held up a rugby ball and said something like this:
  
  “See this – it is a rugby ball – get hold of it, use it and don’t let them get it”
  
  Then he walked out.
  
  Final score Auckland 25 Canterbury 24 and Canterbury went close to scoring right on full time.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:03am
  - Yabster
    
    yep robbed- Kirwan illegally tapped the ball over the dead ball line- I was on the packed terrace that day -place was chokka.
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:26am
    - Quail
      
      BS
      
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      March 28, 2025 7:41pm
  - Prince
    
    Indeed. The ‘get in there…’ quote was from the intro to the Subaru (I think) rugby hour at 5pm on TVNZ. The quote was followed by a clip of Wayne Smith, scoring to take the Shield off Wgton and the commentary ‘…and away goes Wayne Smith, and a brilliant try to Wayne Smith…’, as Brian Cederwall fruitlessly trailed across in defence.
    Cederwall was on the field as replacement for Alan Hewson, who mysteriously had to be assisted off after a fracas with John Ashworth early in the match. No doubt Hewie sought Ashworth out for a scrap !
    A year later Wgton challenged for the Shield and was ahead, until Murray Pierce, having dominated the lineouts, smashed his jaw against Murray Davie’s fist. Fortunately the Canterbury line umpire saw it all and penalised Wgton.
    
    Not that I’m bitter of course. All just a prelude to the real horrors of 2001 and Steve Walsh.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:12am
    - JimBobJoe
      
      Well said Prince…. I remember the Davie punch and his reward being an All Black jersey!
      
      As for Steve Walsh Junior – that guy hated Wellington, and the Wellington crowd never let him forget his bias!
      
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      March 28, 2025 1:31pm
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      Previous year, Gerard Wilkinson, ditto.
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:35pm
cmm

Many laws are just there to gaslight the population. One of those is the NZBORA.

The NZBORA is just a friggin waste of space.

We here people saying that it protects people’s rights. Nope, a BORA, like any other law, only does what it says on the packet if it is enforced.

We have a BORA that says in section 12 we have a right to equal suffrage since 1990, yet the laws of the land have not been delivering equal suffrage since well before then and, 35 years since the NZBORA, they continue to fail in this area.

We have a BORA that says in section 10 we have a right to not be subject to medical experimentation, but that was ignored during Covid. As were sections 14 (Freedom of expression), 16 (Peaceful assembly), 17 (Freedom of association), 18 (Freedom of movement) and others.

Clearly its purpose is just to gaslight the population into believing that they have some rights and those rights are being looked after.
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March 28, 2025 8:38am
- imalwaysright
  
  Animals have more rights than people in NZ, and what’s more , they are enforced.
  
  Imagine if DOC and SPCA took over Oranga Tamariki and our vulnerable children enjoyed the same protection as an undersized paua…
  
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  March 28, 2025 8:55am
- wisteria
  
  Can we please get rid of the acronyms . This morning there was OPM and BORA.
  
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  March 28, 2025 8:57am
  - cmm
    
    Other people’s money.
    
    NZBORA is the NZ Bill Of Rights Act (Google will find it).
    
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    March 28, 2025 9:21am
- David Garrett
  
  Cmm: That’s a brilliant comment…and I don’t need to add “for a non lawyer”
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:03am
  - cmm
    
    DG: Thanks.
    
    While I am not a lawyer, my father (rot his bones) was, resulting in many legal discussions over the dining room table.
    
    This gave me some minor insights into the workings of the sausage machine of the legal system.
    
    I am a programmer. In many ways I see the legal system as a computer (albeit a rather wonky one) and the laws as the “programs” (bugs and all). Throw the law and some inputs (ie. a case) into the machine and crank the handle and these are the logical outcomes.
    
    Many of these Acts are just posturing and tub-thumping. They do not generate quality, actionable, laws.
    
    Given the relatively large number of lawyers (or people with legal training) in parliament, I think the quality of some of these laws we see is rather low.
    
    Perhaps only few of the lawyers in parliament are up to snuff. I don’t have sufficient knowledge to make a reasonable judgement.
    
    I have heard some refer to the BORA as a “constitution lite”, as if it should be the guiding principle for other law making. However it seem to lack teeth and is only pulled out of the cupboard when it suits someone’s interests to do so.
    
    Perhaps it is just a tick in the box for the UN luvvies:
    [X} Yes, New Zealand has a BORA.
    
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    March 28, 2025 9:20am
    - peterwn
      
      Geoff Palmer wanted to put much more teeth into BORA but public opinion was against it at the time, Also various groups eg unions, welfare advocacy groups etc wanted clauses inserted to address their pet corns. So the final version was what Geoff could get consensus for (presumably so it would not be ripped apart by a change of government – and he was successful with that) and then a National MP referred to it as ‘Bumper Sticker legislation.
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:12am
      - cmm
        
        Well it is bumper sticker legislation. And incredibly poorly constructed bumper stickers too.
        
        But then so is the new 3S legislation. So are the treaty (or more correctly treaties).
        
        There really is no point in legislation unless it is actually binding (ie. is both enforceable and enforced).
        
        One huge hole in the BORA would seem that there is no priority given to it over other legislation.
        
        So if one law says “there must be equality of suffrage” and another law says “Maori have different rights”, then which law wins?
        
        In the case of a classic constitution, the constitution wins. In NZ we don’t have a constitution and have a very informal set of documents (BORA and treaties (I use the plural because there are many interpretations)) which get run up the flagpole when it suits certain interests and are ignored at other times.
        
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        March 28, 2025 10:46am
      - Taieri
        
        In the case of a classic constitution, the constitution wins
        ———–
        
        That is because a constitution is a Basic Law from which every other law is derived. Therefore no law can contradict provisions of a constitution.
        
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        March 28, 2025 12:35pm
    - Quail
      
      Agreed with reservations!
      But how much worse are the ( enforced ) regulations of non legally trained Councils?
      Suggest Environmental plans and all that goes with them.
      
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      March 28, 2025 7:48pm
- RoboRob
  
  Its the same issue as the electoral laws. If you never enforce the laws they mean nothing.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:08am
  - NothingLeft
    
    unenforced laws are just suggestions.
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:16am
- cmm
  
  FFS, I cannot believe I wrote “here” instead of “hear”.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:42am
  - sirknz
    
    Their, they’re…
    
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    March 28, 2025 12:21pm
- Master Mariner
  
  Exactly,
  The BORA is to give everyone the illusion of morality and equality.
  No one ever expected it to be weaponised against there own population.
  Not worth the paper its written on.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:24am
- Mike
  
  You are quite mistaken about the purpose and use of the BORA.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:41am
  - cmm
    
    Please enlighten.
    
    I suspect though that you are just here to continue the gaslighting.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:30am
    - Mike
      
      Sure. Unlike the US constitution, the BORA is not supreme law, ie the courts cannot invalidate laws for being in conflict with it. It is more of a tool or a set of standards.
      Our parliament retains full sovereignty, although the attorney-general has a duty to report when bills may pose a conflict.
      Some people assume that the rights specified in the BORA are absolute. They are not, as they need to be considered against democratic norms.
      
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      March 28, 2025 11:55am
      - cmm
        
        So in other words they are just some sort of statement of feel-good aspiration. Pretty much what I said.
        
        What is the point of having such a document if it has no teeth? Clearly it is only to say “we have this document”.
        
        If it is just some sort of “mission statement” poster then it was a waste of time going through all the effort of making it into an Act.
        
        Such documents are gaslighting in that they tell people their rights are being secured when, in fact, they are not.
        
        You have not actually disagreed with anything I said, just added an extra layer of gaslighting.
        
        11 3
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        March 28, 2025 12:23pm
      - Mike
        
        I am disagreeing with you. New legislation is tested against the BORA and courts can rule that laws are inconsistent with it. I doubt you believe judges should have the power to disallow statutes becUse they find a conflict with the BORA. I couldn’t imagine many Kiwibloggers applauding a finding that the gang patch law breaches freedom of expression, for example.
        Also, it might be helpful for you to check what ‘gaslighting’ actually means.
        
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        March 28, 2025 12:56pm
Rusty

Auckland’s not going to get a new waterfront stadium.

Anyone surprised or even cares now?
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March 28, 2025 8:40am
- cmm
  
  Why would anyone want a waterfront stadium?
  Where do 50,000+ people park?
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:28am
  - Jethrod
    
    They have a world-class train system that might open before the new stadium.
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:11am
    - cmm
      
      That takes people where?
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:33am
      - Matt Long
        
        “takes people”? Trains are the BORA of transport.
        https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/556304/mass-signal-failure-halts-all-trains-in-wellington-during-morning-commute
        
        3 1
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        March 28, 2025 12:22pm
      - sirknz
        
        Mt Eden to Britomart and back again if the CRL gets finished.
        
        2 1
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        March 28, 2025 1:09pm
  - AitchW
    
    It works in Wellington and Dunedin and Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane. Good public transport links is the key.
    
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    March 28, 2025 4:36pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Come by boat?
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:37pm
- wsk12345
  
  At least someone realises the country is broke and go for the cheaper of the two. Though my choice would have been for neither.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:57am
- PurplePen
  
  Maurice Williamson made a good point this morning on The Platform. Here you have some of the most valuable, monetarily, real estate in NZ being that is the view from the land that makes it so, and you want to fill it with a building that is designed for everyone to look inwards. Pick another spot.
  
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  March 28, 2025 4:04pm
cmm

$1uff asks: does NZ need a process for removing impaired prime ministers?

Lots of pictures of past PMs, but none of Cindy.
I wonder whether the implication is that we need this now to be able to force Luxon out?

They draw parallels to the problems with Biden, but that is entirely broken.

They fail to raise the main difference. PMs are not elected to serve a period – as is the case with the president. PMs are selected by the MPs. The MPs can roll the PM any time they choose (as has happened many times in the past in many countries).

So we don’t need a process to remove PMs. We already have one that generally works.

$1uff. I really shouldn’t have expected better.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360629510/does-new-zealand-need-process-removing-impaired-prime-ministers
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March 28, 2025 8:48am
- kowtow
  
  That story is also in today’s print version of the Herald. Along with a bigly photo of Sleepy Joe.
  
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  March 28, 2025 8:56am
- David Garrett
  
  They have corrected some of the mistakes, but they are still calling Mickey Savage Joseph…you’d think the young lefties would at least get that one right
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:07am
- Mark Hanley
  
  – Inflation tamed
  – Growth restored
  – NZs biggest enduring issues addressed / mitigated (RMA, building costs, crime, social investment, public sector bloat, etc.)
  – Free trade agreement signed and another with the 3rd biggest economy imminent.
  – Long term infrastructure planning, financing, and management solved.
  – public sector education fixed and sensible privatization underway.
  – roads getting fixed and new road builds underway and imminent.
  
  He has to go!
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:16am
  - Burtland
    
    tickbox politics by the tickbox PM
    
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    March 28, 2025 9:51am
    - Mark Hanley
      
      Exactly Burt and thank goodness.
      
      The alternative is crosses and didn’t they work well over the previous 6 years…..
      – poor brown kids getting an education so they don’t have to join gangs to make money x
      – kids that attend school actually getting a worthwhile education x
      – intelligent covid response (all ardern had to do was follow nzs pandemic plan) x
      – reduce crime and gang membership x
      – manage public sector quality and productivity x
      – maintain democracy x
      – manage government finances wisely x
      
      Is there a maximum word limit to KB posts because i will surely test it if I keep going going
      
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      March 28, 2025 10:32am
      - David Garrett
        
        Mark: Sadly there is no word limit on comments…or guests posts, more’s the pity.
        
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        March 28, 2025 2:59pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        David… surely an ex ACT MP is an advocate for free speech.
        
        Even when that free speech points out constant false abuse of Luxon by ACT supporters helps no-one… especially ACT,
        
        and that history shows us ACTs free market policies will cause middle class (which includes most kb posters and readers) money to flow to the rich.
        
        That said, ACT plays an important role and Seymour is an impressive politician (i have voted act), but anyone who thinks ACT will cure NZs ills, hasn’t studied economics and history.
        
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        March 28, 2025 3:44pm
  - Yabster
    
    public sector and education fixed?- you are just taking the piss now Mark…
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:28am
    - Mark Hanley
      
      Yabster. The Luxon Government has rewritten the curriculum and rolled out the successful UK education model already.
      
      Charter schools are up and running again.
      
      Education reform within a year is an incredible feat given the stranglehold the teacher unions have held over previous governments.
      
      I didn’t say the public sector is fixed but there have been incremental positive changes and you will see more momentous positive changes this year!
      
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      March 28, 2025 11:00am
      - Yabster
        
        you didn’t say it was fixed? [Mod -debate the issues]
        
        – “public sector education fixed and sensible privatization underway”.
        
        4 2
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        March 28, 2025 11:22am
      - Mark Hanley
        
        Correct Yabster….. public sector education is not the public sector.
        
        And fixed does not discount the need for many improvements!
        
        E.g. Standarized school testing and reporting will be required to improve school productivity and results…..
        
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        March 28, 2025 11:36am
      - pdm
        
        National claiming Charter Schools????
        
        That is right out of the Ardern/Hipkins playbook.
        
        National accepted it as part of the ACT Coalition agreement – National would never have got round to Charter Schools.
        
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        March 28, 2025 12:02pm
      - Ghost
        
        Did he say national are claiming them? He said the luxon government has rolled out. Which is correct the luxon government includes national, act and nz first.
        
        Don’t try to twist what is said
        
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        March 28, 2025 12:15pm
    - septic skeptic
      
      I think maybe he meant public education f***Ed 🤔
      
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      March 28, 2025 1:11pm
- Gravelroad
  
  “I wonder whether the implication is that we need this now to be able to force Luxon out?”
  That was the first thing that occurred to me.
  A not-so-subtle beat up on Mr Luxon .
  A smart Alec sowing the seeds of discontent and thinking people will be too dumb to get the real agenda.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:27am
- peterwn
  
  “I wonder whether the implication is that we need this now to be able to force Luxon out?” My thought too when I saw the headline. I think USA is badly in need of this sort of thing to remove impaired Presidents (and I mean the current tenant of the White House). They do have – it is called impeachment.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:15am
  - Allan
    
    Do tell, in what way is the current President impaired?
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:09am
    - Mike
      
      Well, he claimed to have ‘passed’ a dementia screening test.
      “Person, man, woman, camera, TV”
      
      1 7
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      March 28, 2025 12:59pm
    - peterwn
      
      Bad and chronic case of megalomania. In his case there is no known cure apart from brain removal.
      
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      March 28, 2025 3:33pm
cmm

My policy has always been to hire the best person for the job no matter their skin colour, religion, what they have in their pants and what they do with it.

But sometimes you wonder…

Here they’re using a deaf teacher in a mainstream skill. It would seem unlikely that this impediment has no impact on his ability to teach. For example, he’s using sign language and text to speech tools in class.

I think it would likely have been better if he had accepted his limitations as a mainstream teacher and rather stayed with his previous role as a sign language tutor at the Deaf Education Centre. I would expect he would provide immense value doing that.

Sure, I fully appreciate that he wants to be a mainstream teacher. Great. But do his wants override the rights of his pupils to an able bodied teacher?

I am sure there are many people in wheelchairs that want to be firefighters. Should we let them?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360631955/first-deaf-teacher-mainstream-school-nz
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March 28, 2025 9:06am
- sirknz
  
  It would be interesting to benchmark his students results against their peers results at the end of the year, bu I suspect that these would be massaged to show no difference..
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:56am
- Raphael
  
  “Here they’re using a deaf teacher in a mainstream skill. It would seem unlikely that this impediment has no impact on his ability to teach. For example, he’s using sign language and text to speech tools in class.”
  A complete aside, I was at a Microsoft DevIntersection conference 2 years ago, and saw one of the other attendees there wearing what was pretty much a Google Glass, he was deaf and it was setup to do live transcription of audio around him.
  I thought that was a very cool use of the technology.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:15am
- peterwn
  
  There used to be a deaf Green MP. Parliament had to do various things to accommodate her situation. She only lasted one term.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:18am
  - Ghost
    
    Mojo lasted two terms
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:21am
    - cmm
      
      … and did what?
      
      6 4
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      March 28, 2025 12:16pm
      - NothingLeft
        
        wasted time, money and space, just like all the other Green MP’s
        
        7 1
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        March 28, 2025 2:28pm
      - Paulus
        
        Sweet FA !
        
        3 1
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        March 28, 2025 2:58pm
- Tauhei Notts
  
  If a Green M.P. telephoned me I would want that Green M.P. to use sign language.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:22am
  - PurplePen
    
    Took me a while .. but I just got that.
    
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    March 28, 2025 4:09pm
- cmm
  
  I would think he’s a very engaging teacher and is imparting some useful skills and knowledge. On that front he is likely way better than average.
  
  But that does not mean a person who is deaf and cannot communicate properly should be a teacher.
  
  If anything, it is an indictment on other teachers – that they are even shown up by a deaf guy who has to use text to speech software.
  
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  March 28, 2025 12:15pm
  - Ra Henare
    
    and how do pupils engage in debate with a deaf teacher???
    
    at least it might increase their grammar and spelling skills.
    
    Shame about the knowledge gained from an audio debate which moves at pace and uses inference, nuance and innuendo.
    
    This has all the hallmarks of a DEI problem.
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:10pm
    - greybeard
      
      Wait until they hire a blind teacher….
      Or these days , a white heterosexual male teacher……
      
      3 1
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      March 28, 2025 3:03pm
- Master Mariner
  
  Could not help thinking, I would not of been kicked out of class as much //
  Interesting side note about 20% of communication is
  verbal.
  I’am sure if he waved a cane around I would of understood fully.
  
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  March 28, 2025 12:28pm
Swifty

Wow, that’s a first, an RNZ article which hints at some of the negative consequences of welfarism.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/556428/benefit-struggle-i-ve-fallen-into-the-trap-of-being-100-percent-reliant-on-it

As Ghost asked last night, is this a disturbance in the force?
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March 28, 2025 9:11am
- artemisia
  
  Family member lived happily on welfare for nearly 3 decades, and then even more happily on super.
  
  Thing is, the clock reset several times so the long term stats did not look like they needed serious attention.
  
  Took up 2 jobs, under pressure from WINZ. Neither lasted more than a few weeks.
  
  Received 2 business set up loans, years apart, money spent mainly on office set up in their house and materials, no business income resulted. I think on benefit throughout as there was an overlap to cover until income started.
  
  Finally, more pressure, so off to uni for 2 years to finish a degree begun decades earlier. Student allowance and fees, plus benefit in the hols.
  
  Physically fit, decent brain, no work ethic. Thanks taxpayers.
  
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  March 28, 2025 9:54am
- cmm
  
  “I live comfortably within my means”. (well, on $850 a week of handouts…)
  “We can fix ourselves, give us the money…”
  “A careers expo in March was attended by more than 800 people”
  
  Let’s stop kidding ourselves there’s a solution here.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:09am
  - Jethrod
    
    It takes one hand to turn a tap off……
    
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    March 28, 2025 10:14am
  - Paulus
    
    Lots of freebees at Expos.
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:59pm
- peterwn
  
  That is exactly why the National Government expects those on the ‘Jobseeker’ benefit to actually do things to try and get a job. It may be futile in some cases but in other cases it will produce results. If those on the ‘Jobseeker’ benefit do not lift a finger to make themselves employable, they will never get a job. Yet they and their supporters scream like mad when the Government applies a bit of stick by partially witholding benefits. Seems Greens want to cultivate these people as potential Green voters.
  I am reminded of this German guy (a disgrace to his fellow country people) who lived on the West Coast in an area with few job opportunities (he would have been quite employable in Christchurch). When he had his benefit stopped he went to court claiming he was ’employed’ – writing letters to the Queen about NZ constitutional matters.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:28am
  - Eastlander
    
    Dad was briefly on the unemployment allowance back in 1968. Back then it wasn’t even enough to cover his rent, so it actually worked like a safety net in that while it would break your fall that was all it would do – you had to get up and walk away from it sharpish (to the army in his case). What we have now is more akin to a hammock.
    
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    March 28, 2025 1:31pm
- Philview
  
  I listened to Andy Mason’s podcast yesterday. He is a Kiwi who lives in the US but is currently here on holiday. He observed the benefits culture in NZ and said in the US people don’t have this to fall back on so creates a very different mindset around work and self-reliance. New Zealand used to have self reliance as a national characteristic but has been dimmed by socialism.
  
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  March 28, 2025 1:45pm
Dudley Quaffquaff

Thing is, Tamatha may well be telling the truth when she says that everybody she speaks to sees increased police visibility as an increased threat.

However, that is not because everybody sees increased police visibility as an increased threat. It is because she is speaking only to her own voters.

Here’s our question. In a representative democracy, what weight should an elected officer put on the opinions and wishes of the people who didn’t vote for her?
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March 28, 2025 10:17am
- pdm
  
  Agreed Dudley Q.
  
  Tori has come out is support it seems – then there are Chloe, Marama, the Mex and the rest of the Green Caucus.
  
  100% acceptance – easy.
  
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  March 28, 2025 10:44am
- Prince
  
  TV Series The Wire devoted a season to depicting a neighbourhood where the mayor agreed to legalising drug use in a particular heighbourhood (‘Hampsterdam’).
  It wasn’t pretty.
  Why not use Wgton in a similar experiment for a Green city;
  – No Police
  – Homeless are housed in hotels.
  -No cars in the city.
  – Banks and Supermarkets can only operate with a Green licence, providing money and food at no charge to those in need.
  
  The Police can be rehoused across the country.
  It’s what Wgton voters want anyway judged by recent results.
  Would be fascinating to see how that played out, for how long, and what excuses were offered if it failed.
  
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  March 28, 2025 11:23am
  - Blog-aholic
    
    Like that little inner city coven (CHAZ) that was created in Seattle…..the crime rate, drug use and outright anti-social acrimony was so bad that everyone with any sense of reality left.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:32am
  - Don Beckett
    
    That would mean an end to Wokington as we know it, and a plus for the country.
    
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    March 28, 2025 11:47am
  - Eastlander
    
    If you people would keep your liberal asshole kids at home Wellington’s green vote would diminish dramatically.
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:22pm
  - PurplePen
    
    Not just yet if you please. I haven’t yet moved out. Or, if you do, implement it in Wellington Central only.
    
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    March 28, 2025 4:13pm
- peterwn
  
  70 to 100+ years ago kids would not like an increased presence. Get offside with Mr Plod or get a clip over the ear from him meant a session in the woodshed when dad got home from work.
  
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  March 28, 2025 3:38pm
Bridgenag

Interesting post for critical thinkers. Warning: Lack of punctuation

“the cool kids table at davos has become a truly funny place as a tribe of self-anointed, self-credentialed, self-referential, and self-styled “elites” gather to discuss their eliteness and and why it’s time that the rest of us learned to start eating bugs. the whole of the pantomime at the WEF can get a bit rich.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/the-davos-devolution?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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March 28, 2025 11:02am
- cmm
  
  Did I just throw my eyeballs in a blender?
  
  If people really think they have something useful to say then they should take the effort to write it out in a coherent form that is easy for people to digest.
  
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  March 28, 2025 11:34am
Ghost

Seems to be more at play than just an attack on the Houthis. Iran next?

At the start of the week, multiple open-source intelligence accounts on X reported that U.S. stealth bombers were deployed to a strategic island in the Indian Ocean—often referred to as Washington’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier”—located between Africa and Indonesia, about 1,000 miles south of India.

Fast forward to Wednesday: new Planet Labs satellite imagery, posted on X by the Indo-Pacific Watch Center (IPWC), shows “3 (or possibly 7) B-2 bombers and 9 KC-135s” at the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia—strongly suggesting a force buildup aimed at projecting power in the region and keeping Tehran in check.

Article
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March 28, 2025 11:03am
- Allan
  
  On that topic, it appears an underling in the Waltz office swapped a phone number so that an authorised name was in the Signal chat but the number was for Goldberg.
  
  The underling had previoulsy been a lawyer with one of the main anti-Trump law firms.
  
  Espionage perhaps.
  
  Goldberg lied (again) and said they were war plans. The notifications he was getting were real-time updates.
  
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  March 28, 2025 11:14am
  - Northshoredoc
    
    Were Hillary and the reverse vampires involved?
    
    3 1
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    March 28, 2025 11:46am
  - kiwimike
    
    You have to be invited on and to accept signal, so the whole story is iffy.
    plus the Wong person who invited Goldberg is married to a deep dem operative ….
    more iffy.
    
    3 2
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    March 28, 2025 12:50pm
- cmm
  
  Many people decry the use of Signal for the purpose here.
  
  I would say that Signal is one of the most secure choices out there. Why? Because it is open source.
  
  Open source tools are great because they allow anyone to download the code and verify that there are no back doors.
  
  If you don’t trust the supplier/government/whatever then you can get together with a few programmers you trust and verify everything for yourself.
  
  You don’t need to download it from an untrusted source. You can build it yourself.
  
  Signal is end-to-end encrypted. That makes it completely immune to any sort of man-in-the-middle attack. It is all encrypted which means people listening in can’t make any sense of it.
  
  Not all messaging systems are end-to-end encrypted. Some are end-to-server encrypted (eg. facebook etc). This means that facebook (or whomever) can listen in at the server.
  
  End to end encryption removes that security hole. Going through a Chinese made router on a Russian network? So what. All they get is gobbledygook.
  
  Here’s the code if you want top check it yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal
  
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  March 28, 2025 11:44am
  - Tom Hunter
    
    Exactly. That’s why Signal was called “the gold standard of encrypted messaging” way back in 2017, together with references to that being the reason it was used by the staff of President Obama and Sec State Hillary Clinton.
    
    Who said this? Why none other than Jeffrey Goldberg’s magazine, The Atlantic.
    😂😂😂😂😂😂
    
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    March 28, 2025 1:10pm
  - Ghost
    
    NSA, and the pentagon all sent out warnings about vulnerabilities with signal
    
    https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/putin-is-giddy-nsa-knew-signal-was-vulnerable-to-russian-hackers-before-security-breach/ar-AA1BEsUa?ocid=BingNewsSerp
    
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    March 28, 2025 2:12pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      Oh bullshit. Someone made the mistake of adding the wrong person into a Signal group. Nothing to do with alleged Signal vulnerabilities. Signal is THE gold standard for secure and private messaging. Obviously if it’s installed on vulnerable big tech shit platforms (which are know to “share” sensitive data to fck knows what or who) it’s going to be more vulnerable. Don’t install Signal on shit leaky platforms. Don’t add unauthorised people! Simples.
      
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      March 28, 2025 7:27pm
      - Ghost
        
        Is anyone saying anything different than someone made a mistake, you seem to be reading far more into my post than is there.
        
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        March 28, 2025 8:10pm
kglm

Things you wont find in an Islamic society:
Rainbow street crossings
Gays for Palestine
Drag Queens reading stories to children in libraries
Gender reassignment surgery
Weird pronouns
72 genders
Public servants doing pagan chants before meetings
Shrines to pagan gods in the foyer of central banks
Mythology being accepted as science
Vacuous female Prime Ministers
State promotion of a pidgin hybrid language
Government owned broadcasters and agencies dissing the Government
Self-loathing of the majority culture
Ability to sing approved songs being a mandatory qualification for medical staff
Dangerous criminals being sentenced to home detention.
I am sure there are many more things to admire as well.
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March 28, 2025 11:32am
- Ghost
  
  What, you admire peole being killed for being gay? You admire controlled state media that has no freedom?
  
  What a stupid post
  
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  March 28, 2025 2:16pm
- Swifty
  
  I’d rather have all of that than Islamo-fascism.
  
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  March 28, 2025 2:39pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    Ghost he never said he admired gays being killed.
    
    Having said that he omitted all the bad stuff that DOES come with such a society. The list is long.
    
    1 1
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    March 28, 2025 8:05pm
    - Ghost
      
      He admires Islamic society. A society which openly kills gays. A society that does not believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the media. You’d have to truly be an idiot to admire anything about those murdering animals. I wonder if he realises how lucky he is to live in a country where he has the freedom to write such a stupidity
      
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      March 28, 2025 8:23pm
- septic skeptic
  
  You will find public servants banging their heads on the floor while facing Mecca. And the Koran trumps any science.
  
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  March 28, 2025 2:40pm
- Eastlander
  
  Gender reassignment surgery: Iran practically mandates this for homosexuals.
  
  Mythology accepted as science: let’s look at Pakistan, which managed to drive out Mohammed Abdus Salam, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, when Prime Minister Bhutto passed a constitutional amendment saying that Ahmadiyas were not really Muslims (Salam was an Ahmadiya himself). Zia ul Haq in 1987 organised an international Islamic science meeting, called the Scientific Miracles of the Qur’an conference. Topics included the chemical origins of evil spirits, whether mountains have roots, and Allah’s instructions on the battlefield. Pakistani nuclear scientist Bashiruddin Mahmood developed a plan to harness evil spirits to fuel power plants. The list goes on, and on.
  
  Islam is not the answer unless the question is ‘how can I make my country worse in every conceivable way?’.
  
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  March 28, 2025 6:41pm
cmm

Drip, drip, drip…

Oh dear. It seems the previous statements about the “private” police trips to China were, ummm, pork buns.

Of course these were officially sanctioned by both NZ and China.

Does anyone really believe that a a tour group, that the Chinese government was supposedly not aware of, would have access to all the things they accessed and get the discounts they got?

Of course the low price was only provided because the Chinese government thought it was worth having an opportunity to influence the cops.

Oh sure, a bunch of cops from a foreign country gets to walk around asking questions and the Chinese government didn’t give it the thumbs up?

C’mon cops. Just rip the Band Aid off. The public is losing confidence and being cute with the truth is not helping.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360628294/shocking-naivety-second-police-trip-china-revealed-emails-show-security-concerns
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March 28, 2025 12:08pm
Jack5

Safas, a critique of this, please …

CMM and some other regular posters have a South African background, and their views would be helpful about this 24-minute video on the South African background of Elon Musk’s family, and, to a much lesser extent, Peter Thiel.

It’s fairly drastic, in the Musk family case going back to alleged family links with Nazi Germany.

It centres on an interview with former Guardian reporter Chris McGreal.

This seems hot stuff, but may likely be “old hat” to CMM and other ex-South Africans.

The American video is from Democracy Now!

A Wikipedia article says Democracy Now! views as its aim to give activists and the citizenry a platform to debate people from “the Establishment.”

https://youtu.be/Ahv3IKzMdHA?si=oOs-FOYp5HuV2HBa
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March 28, 2025 12:19pm
- cmm
  
  Jack, I thought I’d listen to this to see what sense can be made of it.
  
  Just 2 minutes in and I could write a bloody essay.
  
  There seems to be some desire to conflate apartheid and Nazi Germany. Some of that is justified in that the Afrikaners that pushed for apartheid had often supported the Germans in both WW1 and WW2. Most of it is complete nonsense.
  
  The primary driver for the 1950 Group Areas Act was that this was seen as a pragmatic way to divvy up ethnic groups to stop civil warfare between them. One event that really kicked that off was the Durban riots with 142 people, mostly Indians killed by Zulus. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durban_riots).
  
  After that, it lead to other expansion of the Group Areas Act to split up population areas. It would be wrong to say that only black people were moved off their land/properties. For example, my grandparent’s farm became part of an Indian my grandmother had to move (my grandfather being dead by then). Ironically she moved into a seedier part of town that was classified “white” but still had a few non-whites (Indians and Coloureds) living there all through apartheid.
  
  Some of it is complete bullshit in saying that the 1913 Land Act deprived black people of land and that whites owned some 80% of the land. The primary goal of the Land Act was to stop further land trading between ethnic groups. The reason for this was mainly that Afrikaners were moving from towns etc trying to buy land from Africans – squeezing Africans into less area and causing tensions and hostilities. Like with Maori in NZ, African land is communal so if an African sold land to a white person the concept of ownership and right to sell was messy.
  
  The Land Act did mean that future trades of land would have to be brokered by the state.
  
  The 80% number is entirely broken because not all land is the same. Some of is is desert and was very sparsely inhabited (if inhabited at all). The best land in South Africa is in the North East (Kwa-Zulu Natal and Transkei) where the Zulu and Xhosa people lived. They lived there 400 years ago. They live there now. They lived there all the way through apartheid. While this might only be some 20% of the land area, it is the only 20% of the country where arable crops flourish with traditional methods (ie. no irrigation).
  
  That was just some of it – not even 2 minutes in – so I really can’t be bothered listening to the rest.
  
  I never have been a Musk fan and I consider him a charlatan, based purely on listening and reading of his technical exploits and claims. I do not consider him a technical genius as many others do. I have unfortunately met people like him before – those who make wild claims and overpromise – often labeling other people’s ideas as their won. But I digress, that was not the subject of the article).
  
  Although I am no Musk fan, I have no desire to brand him with fake bullshit either. Whether or not his grandfather was a Nazi I don’t know and I don’t care and I don’t think is relevant one way or another. My grandfathers killed Boers and Germans. That does not make me anti-boer or anti-German.
  
  That “Nazi Salute” Musk made was very poor judgement (in that it gave people obvious ammo to work with), but certainly was not a Nazi Salute. I am sure if he had really wanted to do a Nazi Salute he would have got the motions right.
  
  That he was born in apartheid-era South Africa? So what. So was I. So were many. That doesn’t make any of us racists or whatever. And the flip side is that nor does it make us not racist. Each of us should be judged by our own actions.
  
  All that said, there were some very sinister forces at play in South Africa including the Broederbond and such. Such bodies created an elite that were often above the law and manipulated the system to their own ends. Whether Musk’s family was part of anything like that
  I don’t know and, quite frankly, don’t care.
  
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  March 28, 2025 4:15pm
  - Jack5
    
    👍Thank you, CMM, for that background and analysis.
    
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    March 28, 2025 4:41pm
Grumpy Silver Top

Did news(!) about the inclusion of a senior journalist in a ‘Signal’ chatroom made up a group of Trump’s senior advisers discussing the planned attack on the Houthi bases in Yemen hit any NZ MSM? It seems to have passed NZ by, best source is the Atlantic, whose Editor in Chief was the included journalist and initially thought it was a hoax, until the bombings happened. Google Signal chat leak for more info.
Or have I missed a thread over the last few days?
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March 28, 2025 12:37pm
thirteenstars

Hot off the press, an in-depth interview with Elon Musk and senior members of the DOGE team:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7kQNwJ4H_w

Pretty high-powered bunch of men, not the pimple-faced youngsters running wild the media has been keen to portray.

“What do you mean, a mine? What’s a mine got to do with retiring?”

Would be hilarious if not so illustrative of how government is run all over the world.
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March 28, 2025 1:57pm
thirteenstars

US House DOGE Committee grills NPR CEO Katherine Maher about the bias that exists within that organisation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZjK7OdVi6U

There’s a game that can be played with such people: it’s called Stupid or Liar? Seems obvious Maher is both with a tendency toward the latter.
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March 28, 2025 2:25pm
- Matt Long
  
  In another twist, apparently Maher also Chairs the board that supervises Signal.
  This version of The Apprentice is leaving the old series for the weeds. I wonder if Mark Burnett is still on board?
  
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  March 28, 2025 6:27pm
David Garrett

Another dreadfully written Stuff story…

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360632395/law-firm-partner-guilty-misconduct-after-bad-behaviour-christmas-parties

No spelling mistakes that I picked up, but a whole paragraph missing near the end (I suppose that’s a change from repeating paras) which completely alters who said what in defence of this naughty lawyer. Another Russell McVeagh partner disgraces himself.
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March 28, 2025 3:06pm
- cmm
  
  “so affected by alcohol he has little or no memory to the specifics”
  
  which normally flies in tandem with:
  
  “completely out of character”
  
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  March 28, 2025 3:29pm
cmm

Three good looking (ish) DEI hires sitting in a coffee shop pointing at a laptop. Your choice of the dreadlock option or the clean-cut middle eastern option.

Is this really what people think website development looks like?

Reality is that it is far more likely to be 2 overweight white boys with three monitors on each of their desk, surrounded by cans of energy drink and pizza stains on their shirts.

Next they’ll believe that all doctors wear white lab coats.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/360584323/need-website-your-business-heres-how-get-started
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March 28, 2025 3:26pm
- graham
  
  Looks like at least two website devs read Kiwiblog 😂
  
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  March 28, 2025 5:16pm
Ghost

7.7 earthquake has hit Myanmar

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/556516/powerful-earthquake-strikes-myanmar-gfz-says
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March 28, 2025 8:22pm
- Ghost
  
  A few videos
  
  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/77-magnitude-earthquake-hits-central-myanmar-felt-across-south-east-asia/6ROJDSJMABH2VMH6YCERTXOO2E/
  
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  March 28, 2025 8:26pm

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