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May 17, 2025 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 17 May 2025

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General Debate

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Cassandra

Oliver Hartwich re the Green Party’s “budget”: “The Greens have presented us with a textbook case of utopian thinking. And not coincidentally, “utopia” literally means “a place that does not exist.”

“Good policy requires a realistic assessment of implementation challenges, behavioural responses and economic constraints. All are notably absent from the Green Budget. What we have instead is an ideological statement masquerading as fiscal planning.”

“It may sound appealing to the Greens’ supporters. But it cannot exist in reality.”

His critique demolishes almost everything in the Green lala-land wish list eg he asks where the dentists who’ll provide the free care for millions of patients will come from. What’s the plan for building all the houses? Why will jet owners pay $10,000 per passenger when they can go to Australia instead? The whole thing just shows that the Green Party does not have a clue about the real world.
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May 17, 2025 8:02am
- G152
  
  Does ‘jet owners’ include Air New Zealand???????????
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:52am
  - pdm
    
    G152 – I heard Private Jets but, the charge is for every passenger.
    
    So if Rory McIlroy flew in with half a dozen golfing mates on his jet (I think he has one) that would be $70grand before they got to a hotel or golf course. That is not including wives, girlfriends, caddies etc.
    
    Money probably does not matter for Private Jet owners but, it still looks like extortion to me.
    
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    May 17, 2025 9:37am
    - coge
      
      It would likely cost the taxpayers more to administer than it earned. Envy tax.
      
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      May 17, 2025 10:36am
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        Who would even put it in place? As far as the private jet owners have only got to get aviation permission, who is going to chase up this , these planes land all over the country, it is possible to have more than one private jet in Queenstown, Dunedin and Invercargill all at the same time, whose going to chase this up, and many of the film industry will be here in private jets
        
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        May 17, 2025 12:09pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    It’s not just jet owners, it’s 5 k in and out for everyone on that plane, if 10 people are on that plane it will cost 100 k by the time you leave
    
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    May 17, 2025 12:05pm
  - cmm
    
    They clearly said “private jets”.
    So private prop planes are not impacted.
    
    There are around 1000 private jet movements in NZ every year. If each pays $5000 that’s $5M which won’t move the needle.
    Even if it is per passenger and you make that 3 passengers per flight then that’s still only $15M. Woopdie do.
    
    But it does “feel right” to those driven by envy.
    
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    May 17, 2025 12:57pm
    - AitchW
      
      What about jet props?
      
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      May 17, 2025 4:22pm
    - sungsamning
      
      They can just identify as gliders, or prop planes. Or ‘electric planes’.
      
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      May 17, 2025 5:41pm
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      It’s 5 k per person in s as bd out of the country, no it’s not $5 mill
      
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      May 17, 2025 10:25pm
- Taieri
  
  The whole thing just shows that the Green Party does not have a clue about the real world
  ———-
  
  I suspect that their “budget” has been produced for one reason only – to give them enough votes to remain relevant in the future coalition negotiation. And votes it will get, promising freebies always does…
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:05am
  - mandk
    
    I think you are probably right.
    
    Their Budget plans would have done them no harm with their support base.
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:36am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Still only fringe lunatics will vote for that.
    
    I note Hipkins stated on Thursday (after looking embarrassed about it when asked what he thought about it on Wednesday) stated their taxes have merit, god give us strength
    
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    May 17, 2025 12:12pm
- JackRabbit
  
  This jet tax.
  
  I can’t recall the Greens marching with placards opposing WEF and the COP conferences, and all the jet travel there.
  
  I can’t recall Greens placing a blanket ban on Green party members using air travel. Greens have the highest use of air travel.
  
  Winston Peters Exposes Hypocritical Green Party
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWv0DWMNBiA
  
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  May 17, 2025 1:44pm
David Garrett

Good morning from the Kingdom…a nice cool morning up here, an hour ahead of you chaps
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May 17, 2025 8:06am
Yvette

Inappropriate cultural appropriation or, “Should Sharia Law be adopted for New Zealand’s Parliament?

Declaring Government and all its services to be secular, with a neutral equal response for all religions, could have a secondary impact – that while no Government agency could elevate Te Ao Māori (Māori religious-worldview) values and principles in particular, Aryan-like above others as it does now, ‘private’ entities – like architect services or chemists with Treaty-dominated Charters – could then be left playing silly buggers by themselves in front of critical staff and customers?

_____________
references –
• A Bureaucratic Blueprint: Woke Architecture Meets Soft Totalitarianism –
https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/zoran-rakovic-a-bureaucratic-blueprint-woke-architecture-meets-soft-totalitarianism
• Governance Charter, The Pharmacy Council of New Zealand –
https://pharmacycouncil.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Pharmacy-Council-Charter-Document-2023-Website-1.pdf
• Tikanga, the traditional customs and practices of Māori, is increasingly being recognized and incorporated into the New Zealand legal system –
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/assets/law/Documents/2021/our-research/Te-tai-haruru-journal/Vol5/Te%20Tai%20Haruru%20Journal%205%20(2017)%2025%20Coates.pdf
• A haka, a political standoff, and the role of tikanga in Parliament –
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/thedetail/557568/a-haka-a-political-standoff-and-the-role-of-tikanga-in-parliament.
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May 17, 2025 8:08am
artemisia

The Waitangi Tribunal has recommended the Crown immediately halt the advancement of the Regulatory Standards Bill to allow for meaningful consultation with Maori.

Perhaps ‘meaningful’ has been described in the full Waitangi Tribunal report. Presumably that description does not accept this from Mr Seymour as ‘meaningful’ – “The Tribunal complains there was a lack of consultation with Maori. But consultation on the proposed Bill was open for nearly two months, with 23,000 submissions from the public, including 114 on behalf of iwi/hapu. And everyone, including Maori, will have another chance to submit at select committee.”

So neither the Waitangi Tribunal or claimants have seen a (full) proposed Bill and don’t know what impact it might have on ‘changes to government law-making practice’.

Sounds like notification – or a threat – of lawfare coming right up.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/561265/waitangi-tribunal-recommends-immediate-halt-regulatory-standards-bill-for-meaningful-consultation-with-maori
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May 17, 2025 8:09am
- Cassandra
  
  R Prebble has written an article, paywalled in the Herald, advocating that the Waitangi Tribunal be disbanded. I agree totally.
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:16am
  - Chuck Bird
    
    I agree. Excellent article.
    
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    May 17, 2025 8:40am
  - sungsamning
    
    I think there’s an interview on The Platform too. Actually, here’s the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIGk-iG_fyM
    
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    May 17, 2025 8:51am
- sungsamning
  
  Could the Huddersfield Tribunal do the same so the crown can consult with Anglo Saxons? A corner office, blank check, and a Tesla would be nice too. //
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:49am
  - mandk
    
    Anglo Saxons be damned.
    
    The tangata whenua of Huddersfield were Celts.
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:43am
    - Jack5
      
      Celts didn’t settle in Britain until about 1000 BC.
      
      Before them were the “Beaker”-culture people, and before them Hunter-Gatherers.
      
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      May 17, 2025 4:45pm
    - sungsamning
      
      Good point. The Celts can have a go too.
      
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      May 17, 2025 5:45pm
- peterwn
  
  Meaningful negotiation would mean a hui on a marae and a big fat Koha to facilitate this.
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:59am
  - artemisia
    
    Just the one? Doubtful.
    
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    May 17, 2025 9:13am
  - backster
    
    Maybe it would mean Mr Luxon sitting outside behind a desk ,in the sun with a procession of maori chiefs in a queue with feather quills ready to make their mark in front of him.
    
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    May 17, 2025 9:47am
- imalwaysright
  
  Maori, in the genetic sense, have passed the point of no return, therefore the treaty is extinct.
  
  Of the two signatories one has been assimilated by the other.
  
  We are in the absurd position of being held hostage by a group whose racial identity is self defined by their selection of a minority of their ancestors and denouncing the rest.
  
  Its the reinvention of a race.
  Maybe they should call this one
  Maori Inc.
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:51am
  - oldfella
    
    iar: We could call this reinvented race ‘Maori Lite’.
    
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    May 17, 2025 11:00am
    - waikatosinger
      
      I’d rather just call them Kiwis.
      
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      May 17, 2025 1:58pm
      - pdm
        
        How about New Zealanders!!!
        
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        May 17, 2025 4:21pm
Cassandra

Hobby Horse: Dunedin MP Ingrid Leary said (re the opening of Hillside Workshop) that “The proof will be in the pudding” thereby revealing why she is a current Labour MP ie illiterate. The proof is not in the pudding, it’s in the eating ie in the result. You can have as much pudding as you like but until you eat it you haven’t any idea if it’s good or not.
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May 17, 2025 8:13am
- pdm
  
  Was Ingrid Leary actually at the Hillside Workshop event or did it clash with another Mongrel Mob meeting hat she had to give preference to?
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:01am
  - imalwaysright
    
    She was at the Hillside Railway Workshops, but was unaware she was at the Hillside Railway Workshops and left immediately upon being made aware of where she was….
    
    …she is currently somewhere else, but there is no guarantee that she is aware of where that actually is.
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:50am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Labour – never giving a stuff about the workers.
  
  Why would any working-class person in South Dunedin give their vote to Ingrid Leary?
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:28am
  - Taieri
    
    Why would any working-class person in South Dunedin give their vote to Ingrid Leary?
    ———-
    
    Because she’s Labour and for the vast majority of voters down there that’s all that’s needed.
    
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    May 17, 2025 9:56am
    - David Garrett
      
      Taieri: No different from Nat safe seats mate…they used to say the Nats could stand an old ewe in Selwyn or Clutha and it would get elected
      
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      May 17, 2025 11:17am
      - cmm
        
        As my rather course ex-neighbour would say:
        
        A ewe tupped by a ram with a blue raddle.
        
        Selwyn is slowly getting more challenging because it includes Rolleston and a lot more subdivisions in West Melton etc. Booming semi-urban areas.
        
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        May 17, 2025 1:04pm
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Excuse me Taieri, the Labour Party only won the Taieri electorate by just over a 1000 votes, they had a majority of more than 12000 the previous election. Act and NZF had a pretty good share of the vote, that seat could have easily flipped if people had stopped and thought about it a bit, Greens got a reasonable vote as well, this seat could go like Wellington seats with all parties splitting each others vote, sadly Labour only had one vote taking support away from them unlike Nats who had2 parties taking votes
      
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      May 17, 2025 12:23pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  The Wagon assembly at Hillside workshop ( and just a stones throw from my Waterloo hotel) are only assembling the same Chinese wagons, they are not even welded together they are only bolted together, this work could have been done privately but no, maintenance was already happening, but where?
  
  I note Peter’s there yesterday claiming victory, and I note he had no pics anywhere near the incipient Leary
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:18pm
All_on_Red

Oh dear
‘What no one’s talking to you about,” Mullin revealed, “is this same 747 (from Qatar) has been in negotiations for a year. The Biden administration is the one that started these conversations. It didn’t start under the Trump administration. Why? Because we need a backup for Air Force 1. Because right now, the president of the United States is flying around on a 40-year-old plane, and there is no backup for it. The backup we had, the airframe started having structural issues.”
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/05/16/heres-what-the-left-wont-tell-you-about-the-qatar-plane-deal-n4939849
Well, I hope all those TDS nutters going on about bribery feel stupid.
What is funny is how all of you know the media lie by omission but you still rush to judgement just to have a snark at Trump.
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May 17, 2025 8:14am
- Scott
  
  Victor Davis Hanson is a guy that deserves to be read by every centre right person. Here he comments on Trump’s first 100 days:
  
  http://jewishworldreview.com/0525/hanson051625.php
  
  He argues that Trump is waging a counter revolution against the anti democratic practices of the left:
  
  “The left maintains real political power not by grass-roots popularity, but rather by unelected institutional clout. The party of democracy uses anti-democratic means to achieve its ends of perpetual control.
  It wages lawfare through the weaponization of the state, local, and federal courts.
  It exercises executive power through cherry-picked federal district and circuit judges and their state and local counterparts.
  The permanent bureaucracies and huge federal workforce are mostly left-wing, unionized, and weaponized by a progressive apparat. Their supreme directive is to amalgamate legislative, judicial, and executive power into the hands of the unelected Anthony Faucis, Jim Comeys, and Lois Lerners of the world — and thus to override or ignore both popular plebiscites and the work of the elected Congress.
  Over 90 percent of the media — legacy, network, social, and state — are left-wing. Their mission is not objectivity but, admittedly, indoctrination.
  Academia is the font of the progressive project. ”
  
  The result is:
  
  ” Almost everything the vast majority of Americans and their elected representatives did not want — far-left higher education, a Pravda media, biological men destroying women’s sports, an open border, 30 million illegal aliens, massive debt, a weaponized legal system, and a politicized Pentagon — became the new culture of America.”
  
  Not much to argue with there. Just closing the border, keeping men out of women’s sports and cutting off federal funding for Harvard and their anti semitism is worth the price of a Trump presidency. No one else would have the courage to do the things Trump has done. No one.
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:45am
- Greenheart
  
  PJMedia a right wing propagandist site.
  How degrading that Trump has to accept a plane from a foreign government. What happened to MAGA.
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:47am
  - kowtow
    
    And just who built the friggin’ thing in the first place.
    
    BTW Much has been made by the TDS crowd of the F35’s “kill switches” , maga etc
    
    Yet that ‘plane couldn’t be built without all manner of “foreign” inputs .
    
    Including bits and pieces from Canada and Oz !
    
    https://simpleflying.com/how-many-international-parts-us-f-35-fighter-jet/
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:36am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Boeing can’t get the plane built, but can build 96 on spec for the ME
    
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    May 17, 2025 12:24pm
    - Ghost
      
      Completely different requirements. First the workers all need security clearance. Then you have to throw in the lockdown and the problem that caused for the supply chain. One of the suppliers going bankrupt. The work required to the plane, the lack of workforce to be able to do that work. The requirements and changes from the Air Force.
      
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      May 17, 2025 1:03pm
  - sungsamning
    
    It was offered to the USA last year, when Biden was still president. The administration accepted. Its only news now because of TDS. Not hard to work out really.
    
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    May 17, 2025 5:49pm
- MCōs
  
  Prior to Trump’s first presidency negotiations were underway with Boeing to replace Air Force 1. He wanted some changes and there was going to be two planes at a cost of $4bil. The first one was scheduled for completion in 2027
  The Qatar plane has a value of $0.4bil and would take beyond 2028 to modify.
  Air Force 1 is a call sign and applies to any plane the president is using.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:51am
  - Mike
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    I’ll bet the earlier ‘negotiations’ with Qatar weren’t for a free plane cast as a personal gift to the president (and his dodgy charity).
    
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    May 17, 2025 9:07am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      No, but they decided to offer it free, is it that hard to work out ffs
      
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      May 17, 2025 12:26pm
      - MCōs
        
        Comparing the free Qatar plane to a full spec Airforce 1 plane is like comparing a bat phone to an iPhone
        
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        May 17, 2025 1:49pm
- kowtow
  
  ‘The Biden administration is the one that started these conversations. ‘
  
  Ouch , I think that’s what Al [Mod – use correct names] would call an inconvenient truth.
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:32am
  - sungsamning
    
    Who needs the truth when there’s TDS to be had?
    
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    May 17, 2025 5:51pm
- Gulag1917
  
  Save money. Get a Gulfstream.
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:32am
- redeye
  
  This week Former FBI Director James Comey arranged some shells on the beach to form the words 86 47, took a picture and posted it on his Instagram account.
  For those unaware, 86 is a reasonably common term for terminate used in many gangster movies.
  He later deleted it and denied he knew what 86 meant, but has given no indication about what he thought it meant and why he posted it.
  That someone who was once the director of the world’s premier crime agency could opening call for the assasination of the sitting president is just beyond belief.
  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1de47kk31eo
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:08pm
  - Mike
    
    Even your link notes ’86’ is a US restaurant code for removal of a patron.
    
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    May 17, 2025 1:35pm
    - redeye
      
      In the 1930s.
      Grok
      
      The leap to “knock someone off” comes from the idea of “removing” or “getting rid of” something—or someone—permanently. By the mid-20th century, underworld and criminal slang adopted “86” to mean killing or eliminating a person, as an extension of its sense of “cancellation” or “termination.” For example, in noir fiction and crime dramas, you might hear a hitman told to “86” a target, implying a permanent end.
      
      What do you think he meant Mike?
      
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      May 17, 2025 2:18pm
  - Culture War Criminal
    
    I thought that “187” was the code for murder in US gangsta parlance.
    
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    May 17, 2025 1:57pm
Chuck Bird

This is very interesting. Happer is not what Luxon would call a denier. He uses the same data as the alarmists but says doubling CO2 will increase temperature by 0.75 C. He shows the calculation. I cannot follow it, but some here might.

Dr. William Happer on Carbon Dioxide and Warming

https://files.constantcontact.com/c9e43177001/559d83b0-5ea5-473b-b888-9bfddb806727.pdf
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May 17, 2025 8:17am
- sungsamning
  
  Oh, good. Now I can have a couple more golf days in winter. Bring it on!
  
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  May 17, 2025 8:53am
- judith8409121
  
  calm down everyone – co2 effect is logarithmic and the miniscule effect is not going to be noticed. The increase by humans is a tiny proportion of that and all the screaming and handwringing and ruining the systems of generation, transport, communications, or whatever is next in the great tyranny of celebrity causes will not change anything
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:37pm
  - NeonTeepee
    
    Plants sure seem to enjoy the extra CO2
    
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    May 17, 2025 3:08pm
    - AitchW
      
      Pretty sure deserts are greening as a result.
      
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      May 17, 2025 7:14pm
I remember when

A lot of scoffing and derision being aimed at the Greens’ budget.
Yet only a few, short years ago something similar was allowed.
Without the taxes.
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May 17, 2025 8:29am
Damocles11

The rise of ‘indigenous’ people who are whiter than many Europeans continues apace. They may have 0.5% indigenous ancestry but we must all play ‘The Emperors New Clothes’ act and go along with the pretence. There’s a fair dinkum Maori muttonbirder down south who looks to be your archetypical Celtic warrior. And this phenomenon is taking off in Australia as well.

https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2025/05/11/muttonbirding-its-a-part-of-who-we-are/

https://www.facebook.com/share/16bwzeHXfs/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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May 17, 2025 8:37am
- Culture War Criminal
  
  Maori (however defined) are a very small group, but they are organised along ethnic lines and push a collective agenda. Meanwhile, European New Zealanders are a very large group, but are not organised and, not only don’t they push a collective agenda, they don’t even see themselves as a collective.
  
  Maori talk about “us” in a particular sense, while European New Zealanders talk about “everyone” in a universal sense. And people still scratch their heads and wonder how a minority can have the upper hand over the majority.
  
  An organised minority will always beat a disorganised majority, every time.
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:51am
- Master Mariner
  
  It’s a world wide trend or at least the Western World.
  Enabled by the UN and other NGO sycophants.
  The bigger picture is a Divide and Conquer mentality.
  For some reason NZ takes these ideas to extremes.
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:59pm
sungsamning

https://time.com/7285418/trump-boeing-qatar-jet-deal/
Trump Brokers $96 Billion Boeing Deal in Qatar, Signaling a New Era of Aviation Diplomacy.
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday a $96 billion deal between Qatar Airways and Boeing, a symbol of the diplomatic maneuvering defining his presidency.

The agreement, signed in Doha during Trump’s Middle East tour, includes the purchase of 210 Boeing jets by the state-owned Qatari carrier.

Speaking in Qatar, Trump said the deal was for 160 airplanes and worth over $200 billion—though the White House later issued a fact sheet stating it was for up to 210 jets and worth $96 billion.
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May 17, 2025 8:47am
sungsamning

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/05/14/trump-shocks-the-world-again-n4939759
Trump Shocks the World — Again.
On Wednesday morning, during his trip to Saudi Arabia, Trump met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who from 2017 until January of this year, was known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani. Al-Sharaa was the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the “Syrian Liberation Group,” a Sunni jihad group that had been linked to al-Qaeda and was working to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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May 17, 2025 8:47am
- Culture War Criminal
  
  Ahmed al-Sharaa must be a good “terrorist,” unlike those groups who refuse to bow down to Israel and the US, the self-evidently bad terrorists who we should all repudiate.
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:34am
  - Don Beckett
    
    I suppose one could say that he is like Nelson Mandela – a terrorist in the early days, & a socialist politician after “all is forgiven”.
    
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    May 17, 2025 11:56am
    - Culture War Criminal
      
      You could argue that Mandela never stopped being a terrorist. After all, he sowed the seeds of the ANC running the country into the ground post-apartheid and the terrorisation of White land owners – in fact, perhaps that is why he is considered an icon, for his services against White people?
      
      But to the bigger point, “terrorist” is not an objective classification grounded in reality, it is an elastic and purely political category designed to serve political ends.
      
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      May 17, 2025 12:20pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Ex president
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:28pm
Maggy Wassilieff

NZ has a shocking teen suicide rate

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/561037/new-zealand-has-highest-child-suicide-rate-a-survey-of-wealthy-countries-shows

What this recent RNZ article omits to tell us is that the figures referred to in the UN Report cover the years 2018-2022

(Fig 3 https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/media/11111/file/UNICEF-Innocenti-Report-Card-19-Child-Wellbeing-Unpredictable-World-2025.pdf)

These were the years when the Government of “well-being” and the Queen of Kindness ruled over us.

Somehow their formula for care and kindness led to an increase in mental distress for our vulnerable youngsters.
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May 17, 2025 8:49am
- peterwn
  
  Not to mention other changes such as the virtually forced closures of Charter Schools meaning their ex pupils would have been stressed when returning to regular schools.
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:03am
  - Mike
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    You are aware of former charter school students committing suicide as a result of the stress of changing schools?
    
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    May 17, 2025 9:17am
- Mike
  
  I’m sure the teen suicide rate rises and fall in perfect correlation with the terms of governments you despise or support. Time for one of DPF’s red/blue graphs?
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:15am
- Pineapple Lumps
  
  Many areas of evil in our country that impact on mental well-being and they were put on steroids during the Covid queens rule.
  1. Virus fear mongering – the deadly plague is coming, it is going to kill you or your loved ones
  2. Social division – if you chose not to wear a mask, something that is bad for your health, then you are a bad person. If you chose not to take medical treatment you will be excluded from work and play and social occasions.
  3. Social separation – stay in your homes and don’t even talk to your neighbours.
  4. Education revolution – we are going to reinvent teaching. You will sit at home on a device and try and learn by reading and watching videos. The teacher will no longer be able to interact meaningfully with every member of the class and you will find it hard to ask questions or for them to see when you are struggling with an idea and need some more instruction.
  5. Gender fantasy cosplay – you are a bad person if you don’t play along with the confused, the attention seeking and or the mentally ill, who are so lost they no longer see that there are two sexes – men and women. You must call them by the pronouns that they insist on not the biological truth.
  6. Climate fear mongering – the end of the world is nigh, you will boil in your sleep. All products of oil and gas are evil. We must depopulate and put on sackcloth and cover ourselves in ashes. Meanwhile the high priests will become extraordinarily rich and fly around the world on massive gas guzzling jets.
  7. Racial division – white people are bad and all the problems that brown people have are because of white peoples. Places for White people, especially male heteronormal white people will be limited to well below their percentage of the population in all areas of life regardless of ability. Also, if you are a brown person you are a victim, you must be a charity case to succeed, you can’t possibly succeed otherwise.
  8. Spiritual poverty or false spirituality – our existence is either purely physical and we are meaningless or we worship all sorts of false gods – maori pantheism, Buddhism, Marxism, satanism.
  9. Silicon revolution – like the agricultural and Industrial Revolutions the silicon revolution that we are living through is a time of great change. Wealth is being consolidated into fewer hands on a global scale never before seen. The future is unknown and there are massive changes coming to the value each individual creates in society.
  
  It’s a hard world for our young people. I really admire the young people in my life who see through this compost heap and strive to be great human beings. While the playing field is tilted against them I believe the persecution and challenges they face is building a stronger, tougher person who will enjoy success.
  
  There is no doubt they face a rapidly changing and uncertain future. It is on us to leave them a strong economic position with which to deal with the uncertainty. It is for this reason that moving from NZ is happening – as Australia enjoys more wealth and less financial shackles than NZ. Unfortunately it seems that NZ is in a doom spiral that it can’t recover from.
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:29am
  - Jethrod
    
    10. Fear of the injection….. seeing night after night on TV ads for the injection.
    11. Fear of the test…… seeing that swab thrust up the nose on a nightly basis on MSM
    
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    May 17, 2025 9:53am
  - Debsta
    
    Comment of the day PL! The mental gymnastics required to process all these things and remain grounded and decent is overwhelming for most of us, but even more so for the young.
    
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    May 17, 2025 11:19am
  - Master Mariner
    
    I’ll add Two very important ones,
    
    The destruction of the family unit.
    And
    The indoctrination of the young ( Primary school onwards).
    
    Great comment PL.
    
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    May 17, 2025 1:05pm
- MCōs
  
  Here is a report from the Coroner’s Court showing trends in suicide rates across a number of age groups going back to 2008
  https://tewhatuora.shinyapps.io/suicide-web-tool/
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:31am
  - CJames
    
    The male rate is about three times that of females. What ever happened to equity?
    
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    May 17, 2025 1:53pm
- kowtow
  
  There’s also a quite and generally unremarked epidemic of adult male suicide .Often middle aged men who’ve lost their families in domestic spats .
  
  btw I looked at the coroner’s side bar and see under ethnicity , there’s Maori , pacific , asian and OTHER !
  
  So here we have it , has “partnership” reduced the majority in this country to the category ‘other”.
  
  Happy to be corrected .
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:50am
  - kowtow
    
    Doh
    
    ‘quiet’.Not quite.
    
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    May 17, 2025 11:35am
- pdm
  
  `the Queen of Kindness’
  
  You mean SHE who was going to stop ALL Teenage suicides.
  
  Chalk up another dismal failure!!!
  
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  May 17, 2025 11:35am
  - Master Mariner
    
    Along with the worlds first and revolutionary Well being Budget announced with great fanfare.
    How did that work out 🙄
    
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    May 17, 2025 3:15pm
- NothingLeft
  
  When wokester education system focused on far left political fashions rather than fundamentals completely fails to educate students leaving them with hopeless trajectory in life as illiterate, innumerate unemployables then it is understandable that lack of hope overwhelms many.
  
  Young men in particular, possessing no skills that society values have nothing to raise themselves up the status hierarchy that dominates most peoples aspirations and so are more likely to give up. Completely understandable, and perhaps not fixable. Failed young women have at least got their sexual marketplace value to trade on – they can just attach themselves to a more successful male. Failed young men seldom have that option.
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:00pm
rjay

I see Andrea Vance won political journalist of the year. The judges say
“Andrea has an unerring ability to land impactful, political scoops year after year that effect real change, often at the highest level as in her wide-ranging coverage of data misuse. This ability is closely matched by her understanding of audience – she is a compelling, must-read journalist for anyone interested in who is pulling the political levers in New Zealand, and why.”
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May 17, 2025 8:56am
- imalwaysright
  
  “…she is a compelling, must-read journalist for anyone interested in who is pulling the political levers in New Zealand, and why.”
  
  “….but she’s a crap gynecologist.”
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:11am
- Colville
  
  I will check anything of hers I see in the future just to see if comments are open on it.
  Any comment I make will never get published as it will be [Mod – deleted]
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:27am
- judith8409121
  
  yep – following in the footsteps of giving awards to nasty lefties by nasty lefty organisations – woman awards to men in skirts, economic awards to socialists who want to print money, political awards to tyrannical liars, best new zealander to a violent abusive man who dresses as a woman, science awards to women who pushed experimental injections to people who didn’t need it – including pregnant women and children – etc etc.
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:41pm
- Hugh Jarse
  
  And by that action, the c grade celebrities say “f**k you NZ taxpayers and subscription holders. We are more important than you but please keep your funding coming, we couldn’t make a living with out it.
  
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  May 17, 2025 4:31pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Who gives a stuff about their eyes?
……
Clearly not the folks who award Marsden Fund funding:

The good news is Professor Russell has identified some promising compounds for new treatments – but he cannot get funding to develop them in New Zealand.

HIs latest application for a research grant – made with Dr March de Ribot and other top researchers – has just been rejected by the Marsden Fund.

They were asking for $900,000 over three years.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/561287/10-000-new-zealanders-may-have-lost-vision-due-to-toxoplasmosis

Such a pity these researchers hadn’t offered to trial some brew of ground-up Tuatara poo and kawakawa extract.
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May 17, 2025 9:08am
Yvette

The haka performed in Parliament, had it not been during a vote but a moment later after the vote, would have been a celebration, not a protest.

Now that te Pati Maori have now made the infamous haka a matter of exercising their tikanga – that it is their raison d’être – how did they get it so wrong?
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May 17, 2025 9:25am
- Ghost
  
  What makes you think they got it wrong? I’d say there is a marketing genius behind every step the Māori party do. Getting kicked out got international coverage. It rallied the people behind them because of the oppression from the crown. Getting permission to do a haka would get them very little Māori party know how to perfectly play the media, their followers and those sitting on the fence.
  
  Btw, I saw someone say the haka was performed before act could vote, that’s not true, the last party to cast their vote was the Māori party.
  
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  May 17, 2025 9:46am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Btw, I saw someone say the haka was performed before act could vote, that’s not true, the last party to cast their vote was the Māori party.
    
    I think you are wrong..
    TPM had cast their vote, the haka prevented the Act Party from casting their vote.
    
    Judith Collins covers this point in her RNZ interview
    (from 7:07)
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/561026/unprecedented-punishment-on-te-pati-maori-mps-over-protest-haka-not-taken-lightly-judith-collins
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:02am
    - Ghost
      
      No, you can watch it and see from 1 hour 7 minutes
      
      https://videos.parliament.nz/on-demand?id=61818f1f-ef53-4f95-6650-08dd04c578a2&keyword=Treaty%20principals
      
      The voting is national, labour, greens, act, nz first, then Māori
      
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      May 17, 2025 10:14am
      - Local Miller
        
        The issue wasn’t that a party couldn’t vote but that the counting of the votes couldn’t take place and so the work of the house was disrupted. It also lead to the closing of the sitting before the votes were counted making matters worse. If they had done their Haka and sat down to let the count continue there probably wouldn’t have been the same consequences.
        
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        May 17, 2025 12:38pm
      - Ghost
        
        that isn’t what the person Commented the other day which I was commenting on and which Maggy disagreed with.
        
        BUT. Only today I understood they had voted and then when it was ACT’s turn to vote they interupted with that farce.
        
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        May 17, 2025 12:43pm
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        Yes, TPM is the smallest party and always votes last
        
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        May 17, 2025 12:48pm
  - Yvette
    
    Until now, I had relied on news reports, but prompted by Ghost, I have looked at the Parliamentary footage and note what was said supposedly by Maipi-Clarke just prior to the haka –
    
    E neke whakamua ana te poti pati – apparently meaning “The party vote is moving forward”
    or more contextually: “The party vote is progressing / advancing”
    – this line was spoken just before Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the Te Pāti Māori MP, performed a haka in Parliament, November 14, 2024 — an event that drew national attention and some controversy due to its political and cultural symbolism.
    
    “The cheery-picked explanation” …
    
    Prelude to Haka – The line serves as a karanga or call to action — a verbal cue setting the tone for the haka that followed. Haka are traditional expressions of unity, strength, and defiance, often performed at turning points or to assert identity.
    
    Symbol of Resistance: In the context of a ceremony structured around British-Westminster tradition, this phrase and the following haka may also be interpreted as a peaceful form of protest or assertion of sovereignty, particularly resonant for those advocating constitutional transformation and tino rangatiratanga (self-determination).
    
    “E neke whakamua ana te pōti pāti” is a statement of momentum and mana (authority). It reflects Te Pāti Māori’s claim that their political movement is not only present but advancing — culturally unapologetic, politically assertive, and committed to transformation. Its power lies in both its literal meaning and its symbolic use within a formal colonial setting.
    
    So was the statement and haka “tikanga” or not?
    Do I contradict my earlier comment :o)
    
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    May 17, 2025 11:24am
Ghost

Whoops.

Secret Service agents reportedly escorted former FBI Director James Comey to their Washington field office on Friday for an interview, after Donald Trump accused the ex-official of making an assassination threat in a social media post from the previous day.

Comey appeared for the interview voluntarily and is not in custody, law enforcement sources told CNN.

On Thursday, Comey posted then took down an image of seashells he saw on a beach spelling out “8647.”

Article

I actually think we will soon see another attempt on his life. I do wonder how a person who held the job James did would even joke about this.
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May 17, 2025 10:11am
- David Garrett
  
  Ghost: I also don’t think Trump will survive his second term. (Of course I hope I am wrong). His crazy stuff has got to bitterly wound some American gun nut.
  
  IIRC the last assassination attempt – or the last one we know about – was on Reagan, and he wasn’t doing any crazy stuff. Neither was Kennedy.
  
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  May 17, 2025 10:28am
  - Cassandra
    
    Going after the Mob which won you the presidency is pretty crazy, DG.
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:39am
    - Culture War Criminal
      
      Kennedy ran into issues because he opposed the Israeli nuclear program and wanted to compel the AZCPA to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
      
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      May 17, 2025 10:57am
    - David Garrett
      
      Cass: Yes you certainly have a valid point there.
      
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      May 17, 2025 11:20am
  - kowtow
    
    I’m old enough to recall how the left really hated Reagan ,and as to Kennedy and crazy . He secretly ramped up the Vietnam war , secretly invaded Cuba , brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation and that’s without going into all the conspiracy stuff around how the Mafia got him elected .
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:46am
    - Culture War Criminal
      
      “[Kennedy] secretly ramped up the Vietnam war, secretly invaded Cuba , brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation [i.e. asserted the Monroe Doctrine]”
      
      None of these would likely lead to political assassination, because they were all in line with Establishment orthodoxy.
      
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      May 17, 2025 11:09am
- Mike
  
  Hard to construe that as a threat of violence.
  
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  May 17, 2025 11:07am
- NothingLeft
  
  Comer is the guy that decided NOT to prosecute Clinton for her myriad documented offenses in breaking security laws on dealing classified information, keeping a personal email server that she sent top secret info to in her bathroom and then wiping it and destroying other incriminating evidence when subpoenaed.
  
  Seems he’s more than a little partisan, and perhaps that decision amongst many others should be reviewed in light of this.
  
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  May 17, 2025 11:49am
Mod88

I note Speaker Brownlee has instigated NZ’s very first “Filibuster” on Tuesday with the Debate on the Te Pati Maori punishment. Every MP can speak for 10 minutes but gets another go with every new Proposed Amendment. It is a sham designed so the guilty miscreants can be in the House for the Budget Debate. Speaker Brownlee has just surpassed Mallard as the worst Speaker our Parliament has ever had. Who pulls his strings I wonder.
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May 17, 2025 10:22am
- MCōs
  
  It’s not NZ’s first filibuster
  When the Auckland super city legislature was being debated in 2009 Labour introduced 850 amendments to drag the process out
  Previous to that in 2000 National also dragged out voting for the Employment Relations Bill
  I doubt that the speaker makes up the rules as they goes along in any of these instances
  
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  May 17, 2025 11:17am
  - pdm
    
    `I doubt that the speaker makes up the rules as they goes along in any of these instances’
    
    Seems odd though given the debate when Ferris was on the mat. A speech from each Party then Ferris’ right of reply and game over.
    
    Is it because the Party Leaders are involved?
    
    This could drag into Friday of next week and sabotage The Budget if the opposition are that way inclined.
    
    And they are a cantankerous unruly bunch.
    
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    May 17, 2025 11:44am
    - Ghost
      
      I expect an amendment will be put to the house that brings the punishment more in line with the clerks advice to the committee, it will be passed and life will go on.
      
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      May 17, 2025 12:12pm
      - pdm
        
        Hope not Ghost.
        
        Those penalties looked reasonable to me and former Speaker David Carter said they were on the lenient side.
        
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        May 17, 2025 4:39pm
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        Rubbish, parliament will vote, no one has the opportunity to lower the agreed committee punishment.
        
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        May 17, 2025 10:32pm
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Let the opposition sabotage the budget, level headed voters will point to Hipkins as leader of the opposition and will be sickened further
      
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      May 17, 2025 12:51pm
sirknz

Intellectual heavyweight and strident feminist Verity Johnson has weighed into the C word issue.

Just reading the headline, I can’t bring myself to find out which sentence she shoehorns her really bad simile into, she seems to think it is OK to use the word that shall not be permitted on this blog, on women.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360691799/verity-johnson-it-misogynistic-drop-c-bombs-nope-its-not-very-middle-class-though
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May 17, 2025 10:43am
- riffer
  
  Again showing why just reading the headline of an article results in you looking completely ignorant, because you have no idea what she actually said.
  
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  May 17, 2025 11:23am
  - Pineapple Lumps
    
    But then you read it and confirm it is just more lefty apologetics. Tenuous semantics about using a word as a verb rather than a noun makes a difference to its offensiveness. Used as a verb it is OK used as a noun it is offensive.
    
    Trust in legacy media last measured at 50%, 45%, 40%, 32%, 30%, 28% … where could it possibly bottom out before the lefty propaganda division realises they have destroyed their own livelihoods?
    
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    May 17, 2025 11:30am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  She would have been sickened if that word was pointed at Arden
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:52pm
- rouppe
  
  I don’t have any time for Verity, and that piece shows why.
  
  So obviously this week Brooke Van Velden dropped a C-bomb in Parliament.
  
  No mention of Andrea Vance at all. How’s that for denial.
  
  Well, she didn’t drop it, technically she was quoting it.
  
  Not technically, actually.
  
  She took the very valid, very serious problem of heightened misogynistic abuse towards women in public office. And linked it rather tenuously with Andrea Vance’s article on the weekend
  
  Tenuously? Seriously? That is some sort of derangement syndrome.
  
  And then she goes on dancing around saying “drive faster you c***” is different from saying “you’re such a c***”
  
  I actually agree with Verity that these days criticism of women is too easily labeled misogyny, and criticism of Maori is too easily labeled racism. Funny how criticism of men isn’t called misandry but I digress.
  
  Andrew Vance used that word deliberately, only because she was referring to BvV. Trying to wo-splain it just such a w***er thing to do.
  
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  May 17, 2025 1:15pm
Skippytony

Here we go…..

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/561157/transpower-warns-of-higher-blackout-risk-in-winter-2026

Trans power appear to be basically saying legacy generation is tapering faster than forecast and replacement (wind, solar etc) is not coming on stream fast enough.

Thanks very much Princess Cindy. Your personal, individual “captains call” actions are now proven to be irredeemably harmful to the taxpayers of New Zealand. Where is the apology? What is our redress?

We should start a co-op to fund adds “This blackout bought to you courtesy of Jacinda Ardern and the NZ Labour Party.”

And to all you folk that voted for this kind of regressive madness, thank you very much as well. How do I present you with the bill when I can’t charge my car and I have to throw a freezer full of food away? Sit shivering in the cold because I had to take my old log burner out and install a heat pump. Oh, and probably won’t even be able to take the bus to work as they’ve all been switched to electric as well, haven’t they?

So, National Party, where is your mitigation plan? What resources are you dedicating to addressing this highly predictable looming disaster?

Again, we are going backwards……
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May 17, 2025 11:20am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  They are trying to get more gas supply, contact has won the contract to buy up access gas from a certain business that should remain un-named for upsetting poor luvvies
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:55pm
Phronesis

The Hur tapes have just been released. This is the formal interview of Biden regarding his mishandling of classified documents. Hur declined to prosecute on the basis Biden was a confused old man. See for yourself. https://www.axios.com/2025/05/16/biden-hur-tape-special-counsel-audio
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May 17, 2025 11:40am
NothingLeft

Wealthy fleeing UK and the critical impact on their tax take – when one of top 0.1% tax payers leaves (and UK is currently seeing a huge exodus of wealthy) you need tax of 1300 new workers in average jobs to replace the tax lost:
https://youtu.be/XE-F2ERGL04?t=121
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May 17, 2025 11:43am
Pineapple Lumps

Have the standards on Kiwiblog been changed?

I refer to Mcos comment at 6pm yesterday on GD.

Sorry for not including the post here, my previous post on this went to moderation and seems to have disappeared.

[Mod – sometimes people who are not moderated can get a word through that they shouldn’t. When that happens you do not then repeat it, just let mods know]
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May 17, 2025 11:55am
- Jack5
  
  Cossie’s post was moderated to the blog’s standards.
  
  Kiwiblog’s civil these days compared with when DPF needed to run a ban “lock-up” for posters like Kea and an off-the-grid marijuana nut who at times accused other posters of being pedophiles.
  
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  May 17, 2025 12:22pm
- MCōs
  
  I repeated a word as used in parliament by Brooke van Velden that had been deemed ok by the Clerk of the House
  It was subsequently edited by a moderator
  Funny old world we live in
  
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  May 17, 2025 2:15pm
  - MCōs
    
    Things have changed in the last twenty years
    https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2005/04/front_bums.html
    And in more recent times
    https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2018/10/sage_calls_hunters_cunters.html
    
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    May 17, 2025 2:23pm
- Pineapple Lumps
  
  Jack5 and Mcos you are correct in saying it has been moderated but that didn’t happen until my question today. I had copied the unmoderated post when raising my question this morning.
  
  Thanks Mod for acknowledging it was missed and good to know DPF maintains this standard even when Stuff don’t.
  
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  May 17, 2025 3:16pm
NothingLeft

More indications of illegality in Trump Lawfare campaign:

AP reporting that House Judiciary Committee interviewed Jay Bratt, former top DOJ official and Jack Smith’s lead in classified docs case, on Wednesday. Bratt repeatedly invoked Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer questions.

Bratt helped initiate the docs investigation into Pres Trump and visited Mar a Lago on June 3, 2022. He overruled alleged objections by FBI, including Washington FBI field office chief Steven D’Antuono, to seek a warrant to raid Mar a Lago in August 2022.
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May 17, 2025 12:11pm
Tom Hunter

This has been coming for a long time…

Shares in Google parent Alphabet plunged more than eight per cent overnight Wednesday after Apple executive Eddy Cue testified in federal court that Google’s search traffic on Apple devices declined last month for the first time in over two decades.

Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, told the Washington antitrust trial that Google was losing ground to AI alternatives like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

His revelation that this decline “has never happened in 22 years” sent shockwaves through Wall Street, wiping more than $265 billion (AUD) from Google’s market capitalisation in a single trading session.

Google has been desperately trying to push into AI but sabotaged by their own culture – the same culture that’s been pissing people off as they use the search engine, Google’s Gemini AI was done in by DIE.

The phrase “culture of fear” was used by almost everyone I spoke with, and not only to explain the dearth of resistance to the company’s craziest DEI excesses, but to explain the dearth of innovation from what might be the highest concentration of talented technologists in the world.

Their list of failures is stacking up:
– They lost Cloud infrastructure to AWS (Amazon Web Servers) and Azure.
– Google’s Moonshot Factory to combat X-Twitter, the “secret crazy technology development” strategy appears to pretty much be fake.
– It lost social media (R.I.P. Google+).
– It lost augmented reality (R.I.P. Glass).

As I wrote back then, Google have to win AI because the failure to deliver on that could strike at the heart of Google since that heart is being a search engine linked with advertising and AI could kill such search engines, just as search engines killed older forms of information seeking like phone books and the Yellow Pages. That’s why Google has been going after AI, to stay ahead of the competition. But because their business management is woeful and their business culture sucks, they actually screwed up right at the start when they trashed the DeepMind team that they purchased.

And now it looks like this most recent failure is catching up with them in a way that those previous ones did not.
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May 17, 2025 12:40pm
- Keith White
  
  “How sad. Anyway…”
  
  5 2
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  May 17, 2025 12:50pm
- Master Mariner
  
  As there Mantra ” Do no harm” states.
  I think they have a bit of explaining to do.
  
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  May 17, 2025 1:17pm
kiwikidsnz

RNZ editorial calls Privileges decision racist.
“Research has repeatedly found that in any justice system, dark-skinned defendants are treated more severely based on ethnicity.”

RNZ showing their “true colours”

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/561329/the-house-parliamentary-privileges-race-as-an-aggravating-factor
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May 17, 2025 12:55pm
- Culture War Criminal
  
  They are treated more severely because of the kinds of crimes they commit and the quantity of them. Because of the consistent pattern that emerges “in any justice system” with which such “dark-skinned defendants” interact, there is a good argument that the pattern is indeed due to ethnicity, but not in the way the article suggests. In other words, the phenomenon is not a consequence of any common feature of the disparate justice systems, it’s a consequence of a common feature of the dark-skinned people.
  
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  May 17, 2025 1:06pm
- Jack5
  
  Our Coalition Government isn’t going to fix the stridently Left bias of Radio NZ.
  
  In the face of the bloc of State-owned TV and Radio NZ, and subsidised newspapers, the Coalition’s the Black Knight against King Arthur in the Monty Python Holy Grail:
  
  https://youtu.be/ZmInkxbvlCs?si=AXPcfQ5MYEIe3sBx
  
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  May 17, 2025 1:32pm
- kowtow
  
  And while the author straight out accuses Collins of a deliberate falseity , he does,and so many of his fellow disinformationers in the legacy does the same thing by re iterating they’re punished for haka . No they also basically engaged in death threats !
  
  Oh and our media are desperately turning the process into some US ante bellum race stuff , which it of course isn’t.
  
  Hopefully the Wet Nats will get woke and defund the media.The media are one of the most divisive agents in our societal rot.
  
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  May 17, 2025 3:27pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    And not turning up to the committee twice made punishment worse
    
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    May 17, 2025 10:35pm
Ghost

Andrew has announced as mayor he will do what he didn’t do as an mp……

Little’s priorities as mayor would be transparency, public engagement and an ethos of “no more rushed decisions”.

Article

What was that about no flying pigs this morning? I think a whole fleet just went by the window
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May 17, 2025 2:21pm
- rouppe
  
  You can do all those things and still ignore what the city wants in favor of what the Labour party wants.
  
  Tory’s council also “engaged” but then ignored what people wanted. Like no crossing over Cobham Drive to the airport
  
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  May 17, 2025 3:46pm
- Hugh Jarse
  
  Hahahahahahaha, Tūīs Ad of the year so far right there
  
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  May 17, 2025 4:25pm
- greybeard
  
  Little knows that as a famous person he only has to open his mouth to get support: what comes out of that mouth is irrelevant. He is truly repulsive.
  
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  May 17, 2025 4:55pm
Chuck Bird

Like many here, I am appalled at the atrocities that happened on 7 October. However, I am also shocked at seeing starving babies and young children on TVNZ many evenings.

There must be a better way to defeat Hamas than starving most o the population.
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May 17, 2025 3:50pm
- kowtow
  
  Does tvnz do starving babies many evenings on any places other than Gaza .
  
  Plenty of failed states for them to chose from .
  
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  May 17, 2025 4:09pm
- AitchW
  
  Hamas steal any aid before it reaches the general population and hides behind women and children and in schools and hospitals.
  Any starvation can be laid at the feet of Hamas. Which, let’s face it, is most of the population of Gaza.
  
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  May 17, 2025 5:18pm
- artemisia
  
  Returning all hostages would be a start.
  
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  May 17, 2025 5:21pm
- In Vino Veritas
  
  The images are indeed terrible Chuck. But that is war. Perhaps not starting a war would have helped? Perhaps surrendering all known Hamas members would help? Just remember, most of the population voted for Hamas. And most of the population supported Hamas 7 Oct attack. The population is starving because of the choices they made.
  
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  May 17, 2025 6:02pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    I know about the evil scum that committed the atrosicies on 7 October, A 5 month old baby did not have a say. Hamas would think that the starving babies and children would help their cause.
    
    Maybe they should have a section just for mothers and children. Offer men food if they give useful ingo where Hamas is. If anyone tells where any hostages are reward them well.
    
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    May 17, 2025 8:11pm
greybeard

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360690259/spreading-himself-thin-man-who-drives-750km-cheap-butter
I suspect that Mr.Halverson will get a letter from the IRD next week !
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May 17, 2025 4:52pm
Jack5

Latest concern about solar power …

Solar panels generate DC power and inverters convert it to AC for the grid. Most inverters are made in China.

Reuters reports energy officials are reassessing risk posed by these Chinese-made devices after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them.

They play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure. Some sources even describe the Chinese inverters as “kill switches”.

Yahoo Finance said a US House subcommittee heard Manny Cancel, of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, say, “The Chinese activities are quite alarming.”

The Telegraph says a source told Reuters that compromising such equipment would give Beijing the ability to inflict blackouts on the West, claiming it would create “a built-in way to physically destroy the grid”. China has dismissed the claim as a smear.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-machine-rogue-communication-devices-found-chinese-inverters-2025-05-14/
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May 17, 2025 5:33pm
- rouppe
  
  After the blackout in Spain and Portugal, it is believable that the ability to control inverters could pose a threat to grid security.
  
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  May 17, 2025 6:18pm
- judith8409121
  
  solar panels are an undermining of society – to have the chinese adding equipment to compromise them seems a bit of belt and braces – generating energy fro the grid with solar is in itself a compromise by there very existence. but, i guess, the chinese just want to make sure the west destroys itself.
  
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  May 17, 2025 6:55pm
  - greybeard
    
    Would it be fanciful to suggest that Chinese-made EVs may also be a threat by containing such equipment?
    
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    May 17, 2025 8:38pm
rouppe

I think this is a very good article on racism and why in Australia the “Welcome to Country” amplifies racism.

Very similar arguments could be made here, and the Maori Party is a perfect example of those promulgating Marxist racism.
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May 17, 2025 6:16pm

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