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June 3, 2025 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 03 June 2025

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General Debate

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NeverMindTheBollocks

Immigrants wanting to bring their aged parents to NZ to live criticise the ballot system.

Me too. Why do we even offer this? I’m not aware that any other country lets migrants bring the older generation with them.

Just cancel the scheme, sack the bureaucrats and save on Super.

http://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/562893/emotional-immigration-wait-after-ballot-draw-error-in-a-sytem-with-no-queue
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June 3, 2025 8:01am
- Jack5
  
  Agreed: it’s outrageous that an economically slipping country like NZ is providing old-age retirement and welfare to foreigners who haven’t paid a cent in NZ tax.
  
  This is an economically insane excess. Mad Ardern’s socialism led us to it.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:01am
  - Culture War Criminal
    
    National have been in for 18 months or so and they haven’t stopped it either.
    
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    June 3, 2025 2:03pm
- Handyman
  
  For every highly skilled Uber driver admitted into New Zealand, we need to factor in his wife (who he may or may not have met) and their four parents (under the family reunification policy).
  The grandparents will never speak English and won’t collect NZ Super for ten years but will be an immediate load on the health system.
  
  I’m convinced that somewhere in Wellington there is an anti-DOGE department dedicated to making everything worse.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:06am
  - Taieri
    
    won’t collect NZ Super for ten years
    ———
    
    20 years.
    
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    June 3, 2025 1:25pm
  - MCōs
    
    My wife’s niece and husband worked in a Thai restaurant in Gisborne for about ten years and then moved to Auckland where she continued to work as a chef in a top hotel for a couple of dollars above minimum wage.
    He worked as an Uber driver. I asked him how much he made and it was less than $60k pa. No way their parents would be coming out here unless they worked.
    They were tired of living hand to mouth and are now in Melbourne earning a lot more money
    
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    June 3, 2025 4:56pm
- cmm
  
  Does this really give them a bite at Super?
  My understanding, which could very well be wrong, is that to qualify for Super you must have lived in NZ for 10 years.
  
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  June 3, 2025 12:07pm
  - Flossie
    
    Even if they don’t qualify for super they are potentially a liability for the health system as soon as they artive? I stand to be corrected.
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:30pm
    - cmm
      
      I suspect so.
      If they have PR then, from day 1, they can access medical services as well as numerous other benefits.
      We certainly received full medial benefits from the moment we arrived in NZ as PRs.
      We wouldn’t let them go hungry – that would be unkind. Doesn’t cost us anything right? The government pays!
      
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      June 3, 2025 1:08pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Sure, there’s a 10 year delay. If the Aged Ps arrive in their mid 50s then they’ll qualify for Super at the same time as you & me.
    
    I think there’s a proposal to extend the delay period out from 10 years, not sure where that’s got to. But, the principle remains.
    
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    June 3, 2025 1:11pm
    - MCōs
      
      Not a proposal. Depending on your birthday the period can be up to twenty years.
      Date of birth and number of years you must have lived in NZ since you turned 20
      On or before 30 June 1959 10 years
      1 July 1959 – 30 June 1961 11 years
      1 July 1961 – 30 June 1963 12 years
      1 July 1963 – 30 June 1965 13 years
      1 July 1965 – 30 June 1967 14 years
      1 July 1967 – 30 June 1969 15 years
      1 July 1969 – 30 June 1971 16 years
      1 July 1971 – 30 June 1973 17 years
      1 July 1973 – 30 June 1975 18 years
      1 July 1975 – 30 June 1977 19 years
      On or after 1 July 1977 20 years
      Looking at that table if you’re fifty you’ll have to wait 18yrs plus any time you’re out of the country in the interim
      
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      June 3, 2025 3:31pm
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        Any 50 year old New Zealander likely won’t be getting Super until aged 68 anyway.
        
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        June 3, 2025 6:49pm
  - KH
    
    The Super rule is a joke. If you can’t get super they just give you the emergency benefits.
    Idiocy bought to life by our civil servants.
    
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    June 3, 2025 1:17pm
    - MCōs
      
      I know a couple of Kiwis who had been out of the country, retired at 65 and came back to Godzone to find they didn’t qualify.
      One of them wasn’t too fussed, but the other didn’t know about the residential requirements and had to find a job. At 65 the opportunities are limited.
      Maybe selling used cars was preferable to an emergency benefit
      
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      June 3, 2025 3:45pm
- Paulus
  
  They would not be able to access NZ Super anyway, as you need to have lived here and funded same over a long period.
  
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  June 3, 2025 1:52pm
  - cmm
    
    There is no requirement to have funded it – just lived here.
    
    That is why people who have lived on the benefit their whole life get switched over to the NZ Super at 65. And their entitlement goes up from approx $350 a week to approx $500. A big thank you from the taxpayer for a hard life in the yoke.
    
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    June 3, 2025 3:59pm
    - Ian Boag
      
      people who have lived on the benefit
      
      and farmers ….
      
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      June 3, 2025 6:29pm
- Ra Henare
  
  a simple Google/Ai request gives the following(in response to “” I’m not aware that any other country lets migrants bring the older generation with them.)
  
  In the United States, U.S. citizens who are at least 21 years old can petition for their parents to live in the United States as permanent residents, but lawful permanent residents cannot petition for their parents.
  
  In other countries, the situation differs. For instance, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that family migration is a significant factor in migration flows, with 43% of permanent-type migration flows to OECD countries being due to family reasons in 2023.
  
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  June 3, 2025 3:23pm
Cassandra

Jim Bolger: The biggest issue was to get Pākehā to “face up to the reality that we owed Māori. Māori … had been badly, badly treated by the early settlers, we owed Māori redress and change. I put that higher than managing the books.”

“The Treaty principles and recognition that the early European settlers did not treat Māori fairly, I think was hugely important.”

Bolger said he did not understand those, such as David Seymour who “want to diminish the role of Māori in New Zealand. They were here first, they were here very much before everybody else, and they have been part of our history from that time on.”

Note that Bolger and co never got round to defining the principles of the ToW.

The key here is “Bolger said he did not understand.”

Somehow 150 years later New Zealanders owe something to other New Zealanders who happened to have a rellie who might have been disadvantaged a very long time ago. Bolger attributes his attitude to his Irish roots. The English mistreated the Irish 200 years ago so he has inherited his bigotry. I believe him. It’s all weird. Fortunately not for much longer. We’ve got to move on from perpetual grievance. It didn’t happen to you. I didn’t do it. We’re both in this together. We’re all Kiwis.
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June 3, 2025 8:01am
- Flossie
  
  Being part Maori I’m unsure if I am supposed to feel aggrieved or guilty.
  As Cassandra says, it’s ancient history and we all have to move on.
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:18am
  - AC
    
    Pretty much everyone could have a grievance against the government if they looked back in history.
    
    For example two of my ancestors aged 17 and 16 were dispatched from England as convicts as they stole a loaf of bread !!
    
    More recently (1950’s)our family has had two instances where land was claimed under the Public Works Act and very little compensation was paid.
    
    Maybe we could all bitch about that for ever.
    
    Maybe we should hold all German and Japanese people accountable for what happened in the 1940’s . That was a lot more recently.
    
    Maybe the Anglo-Saxons could have a bitch about what the Normans did in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings.
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:22pm
- cmm
  
  This whole “We owe” concept is bullshit.
  
  There is nobody alive today that was badly treated by an early settler. Instead there are people who live a massively improved life with a life expectancy more than twice that of their great grandfathers with various other mod-cons thrown in.
  
  I was born overseas. I didn’t mistreat Maori. Nor did any of my ancestors. So do I still “owe” Maori just because of the colour of my skin?
  
  Maori in NZ have had a particularly good deal. Maori got the vote BEFORE white people did. That’s almost 150 years ago.
  
  If you still have a chip on your shoulder after 150 years, with all the opportunites of the world made available to you, then that’s all on you.
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:20am
  - sungsamning
    
    Yes, ‘indigenous issues’ = griftdigenous issues.
    
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    June 3, 2025 9:31am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Correct. The grifters have appropriated the word Maori for financial gain.
      
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      June 3, 2025 10:57am
- Scott
  
  Jim Bolger is like just about every National prime minister, soft on social issues. Bolger was liberal, John Key was liberal. Chris Luxon is no worse than them on social issues, in fact I would say he’s a lot better than John Key who never once stood on the conservative side of any social issue.
  
  Regarding Maori, write this down. In the 19th century the Maori were beautifully treated by the British settlers. The people of Great Britain were the most enlightened people in the world.
  Also write this down. On the other side if the Maori had won, and at times the outcome of the war seemed very much in doubt, they would have killed, and eaten, everybody.
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:24am
  - John Loveridge
    
    That’s a very good point that I’ve never considered before.
    
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    June 3, 2025 9:20am
  - RoboRob
    
    That is the point that Maori seem to have missed. The English treated the Maori FAR better then almost any other indigenous people. Where most colonisers attempted to wipe out existing populations, the English tried to integrate them. The Australians treated the Aborigines FAR worse, not even regarding them as human.
    
    Yes there were bad deals and Maori were sometimes ripped off and taken advantage of. That happens to all sorts of people in life. You either get over it and move on or spend the rest of your life miserable with a chip on your shoulder. In the 80s and 90s the government started trying to redress some historic wrongs. The has been great for some tribes but it appears Maori leaders have chosen to look backward rather then forward.
    
    Time to move on. Any Maori tribes that have yet to settle, tuff shit. In Christchurch there are still people trying to settle EQC claims. In all cases that I personally know of, those people are being intractable and unreasonable. Sure there might be reasons but at some point you need to settle and move on. I believe the same is likely true for he likes of Ngapuhi, who would rather bitch and moan then make their people better off.
    
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    June 3, 2025 9:35am
    - cmm
      
      Were Maori really “ripped off”?
      
      At the time, land was not valuable to Maori as they were not capable of developing it and population was low. Only a very small % of land was suitable for kumara and such and after the demise of the moa, land was no longer associated much with hunting value.
      
      Sure, a 10 acre parcel of land would be very valuable in Auckland now, but 150 years ago it was pretty worthless. What made that land valuable was all the development that was done to it in the last 150 years.
      
      If a Maori guy sells me a bucket of sand for $1 and I then make that into computer chips which I sell for $1 million then did I rip him off? Should I have given him $900k for the bucket of sand? Of course not!
      
      Well comparing land is pretty much the same deal.
      
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      June 3, 2025 10:21am
      - the deity formerly known as nigel6888
        
        Indeed, and funnily enough, the land Iwi were sitting on in 1840 had often been conquered from the previous tribe. Why is Ngati Toa the “tangata whenua” of Wellington – oh yes they stole it off Ngai Tahu and Ngati Kahununu during the musket wars – themselves having been pushed out of the Waikato…
        
        Why is Ngati Raukawa in Otaki when they are a Waikato Iwi? Same deal.
        
        Why was everyone in the upper North Island scared of Nga Puhi?
        
        Chiefs signed the Treaty for bloody good reasons, and sought an end to the endemic warfare that had blighted the place for the previous 40 years.
        
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        June 3, 2025 10:46am
      - Jack5
        
        Indigenous concepts of land holding, which don’t include “private ownership,” kept and sometimes, as in NZ, still keep, indigenous peoples economically behind.
        
        Without private title, land can’t be used as security for raising capital, and it’s capital that creates housing, industry, infrastructure.
        
        In NZ, the Government and smarter tribes are exploring ways of enveloping communal land ownership in complex trust arrangements to give financers security for lending. With, of course, at least a hint of Government last-resource backing.
        
        However, world banking standards require levels of security in lending. This counts for countries that have tens of billions in foreign debt. Lower internal credit standards and you must lower you international credit standing.
        
        Our danger is a Labour-Maori Party government, or a wishy-washy centrist coalition, letting NZ international credit ratings fall.
        
        Letting them fall to allow near private-land scale security for loans on communal land.
        
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        June 3, 2025 11:28am
      - cmm
        
        jack5: “Indigenous concepts of land holding…”
        
        Communal land ownership still has the concept of territory, but that is often tied more to the people living on the land (who can be coerced into paying “tax”) rather than the land itself. That’s even the case in historic Africa which does have grazing etc.
        
        It is only scarcity linked with productivity that gives something value. With a low population there isn’t scarcity. With no technology and market there is no productivity.
        
        At the time Europeans arrived in NZ, only a tiny fraction of NZ land was being utilised.
        
        There were an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Maori at the time that Europeans arrived. Given that Polynesian populations at the time lived quite high density lives (20 to 50 per square km), it is fair to think that Maori only “used” at most 2000 to 5000 sq km of NZ. That is less than 2% of the NZ land area.
        
        So land would have been virtually worthless.
        
        Maori didn’t have any way to really generate surplus agricultural output (no mechanisation or draft animals etc). Nor did they have grazing live stock or even a commercial export market. Even with a bunch of slaves there’s a limit to how many kumara you can grow and what you can do with them.
        
        Land only became valuable after the Europeans arrived and started grazing, began exporting and built industry that converted land into something productive.
        
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        June 3, 2025 1:29pm
    - David Garrett
      
      Robo: The Major “confiscation” claims were settled and put into law in the mid 1940’s, when the government of the day agreed to pay both Tainui and Taranaki iwi the value of the good dairy farm – let’s say about $5 mill today – in each and every year in perpetuity.
      
      Those payments were duly made to trust boards set up to receive the funds – which appear to have been squandered – until the two iwi came back for a second “full and final settlement” in the 1990’s. Once you have a second full and final settlement, the door is open for 20 more. Which is what is happening.
      
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      June 3, 2025 12:36pm
      - cmm
        
        Yup, once you’ve cashed a cheque twice, why stop there? a third time, fourth, fifth,…
        
        Not only is that not going away, but the grievance industry only expanding on other fronts too.
        
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        June 3, 2025 1:34pm
      - Bloody Dago
        
        It’s called a cunning cashflow mechanism, a veritable pokey machine that rings the bell every year or so with a payout. Thats what the cherubs want.
        
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        June 4, 2025 4:38pm
    - Paulus
      
      Had the French taken New Zealand there would be no Maori anyway.
      Ngapuhi are holding on for as long as possible in the intention of the longer they hold the more money they will get.
      
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      June 3, 2025 1:58pm
      - Scott
        
        Paulus – let’s not be mean about the French! 😎
        No doubt the French would have killed all the natives in NZ just as they killed all the natives in New Caledonia.
        Oh wait?? 🤔
        
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        June 3, 2025 2:24pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        ….and Tahiti, where they brutally suppressed an uprising.
        
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        June 3, 2025 4:28pm
  - R
    
    Scott, your last paragraph is correct; your first paragraph is ideological drivel
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:38am
  - mogg
    
    It’s race grifting victimology a speciality of the hard left, they really want anarchy TPM and the Greens, the big danger is that Hipkins will support them into power. Chris Trotter;
    https://www.interest.co.nz/users/chris-trotter https://www.interest.co.nz/users/chris-trotter.
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:47am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      The only chance Labour has if they boot Hipkins, he comes across as petulant school boy, the poll tonight says the the coalition is still in 63-57 seats, it’s not changing, yes Nats down 2% to NZF but next poll may well go back to where they were a month ago, one thing is for sure, pay equity has not made a scrap of difference
      
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      June 3, 2025 7:00pm
- Eastlander
  
  Reflexive, mindless solidarity with allegedly oppressed peoples from the West Bank to the Waikato is the worst predilection of the Irish, both in the old country and the diaspora. As though the Irish had some world-historical mission to lend a hand to every pack of losers with a sob story!
  
  Count me out of it James, and no I don’t think we owe Maori because they lost wars or made bad real estate deals. I’ve no common interest or sympathy with a community that chooses the Maori party to lead it.
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:37am
- Yvette
  
  [1] The Treaty was written and translated by Europeans without any input from Maori, presented to them as a fait accompli, and not amended in any way after that, so if there are principles they are not at all apparent.
  
  [2] Maori may have in some cases been wronged in history in a way that was physical (outer condition) and could be classified as colonised, but all Maori, generally are told by parents or family (or te Pati Maori), of the physical colonisation, so becoming mentally (inner condition) colonised by their past – the clean slate Maori children are born with is largely written on by whanau (or te Pati Maori) and colonisation for a second time is their own choice.
  
  “No one—no one—changes the world by accepting the role of a victim”
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:41am
- NothingLeft
  
  There’s nothing so destructive to individual effort and enterprise as to be told you are entitled to special treatment from others without any concomitant effort on your part. It means you never need to work and sit back waiting for the world to be handed to you.
  
  Everyone on the planet knows that spoiled/indulged children become useless unhappy adults, and most parents make a conscious effort to prevent this from happening.
  
  Bolger and his fellow indulgent ‘caring’ bigots on the left – think Māori are so collectively hopeless as to require perpetual mothering and special assistance by the Nation – like disabled children – from him and others who clearly feel superior (though they’ll never say that aloud).
  
  But the truth of it is that their superficial paternalistic ‘niceness’, the bigotry of low expectations, is destroying the very people they imagine they are helping. Locking them into learned infantile helplessness, reliant on govt and others to support them in their sad low-agency lives. It’s fucking them and their kids, condemning them to shitty lives on the bottom rungs of society,
  
  An end to all special treatment and concessions – tough love and return to the pre-welfare state days demand for industriousness and self reliance (an end to easy welfare) will make them far happier, prouder of their achievements, better parents and role models for their kids and actually contributing to society.
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:44am
- cmm
  
  Wasn’t Jim Bolger the “full and final settlement” guy?
  
  If so, then surely he would think that after that we owe nothing.
  
  The whole point of the “full and final settlement” was to wipe the slate clean (whether it was justified or not) and put this grievance politics to bed – once and for all. But somewhow it drags on
  
  So wtf Spud? Did you screw up?
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:00am
  - Paulus
    
    Bolger cannot be considered one of our outstanding Prime Ministers.
    His Irish Catholic leanings favoured the devolution of the Crown to a Republic.
    
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    June 3, 2025 9:23am
    - pdm
      
      As I recall Bolger’s best work was as Minister of Labour in the 70’s when he confronted Knox, Skinner, Anderson and others in General Wage negotiations.
      
      If my memory is right he usually bested them.
      
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      June 3, 2025 10:41am
    - Jack5
      
      Paulus’s Bolger …favoured the devolution of the Crown to a Republic.
      
      With Jim Bolger as the first president.
      
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      June 3, 2025 2:17pm
    - Quail
      
      Muldoon promoted full and final settlements.
      I think he was first l but could be wrong
      
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      June 3, 2025 5:23pm
    - Quail
      
      Bolger as PM
      * With Ruth Richardson carried on with Rogernomics (after calling it evil on the campaign trail)
      *Appears to still spend his time influencing in the MMP murky world of politics.
      
      * Put Geoffrey Palmers ( Labour)RMA into law.
      
      *Facilitated MMP.
      
      *Was rolled by Jenny Shipley.(I wonder why’?)
      
      His retirement and enduring silence is long overdue!
      
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      June 3, 2025 8:15pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        *Facilitated MMP.
        
        With a referendum even. The KB-approved mechanism. If the answer is wrong, have another one. #3 is probably in the works someplace 🙂
        
        It was a plus … we had seen what Muldoon could do with FPP and fewer votes than Labour. I imagine the Richardson budget helped too – elected dictators needed their wings clipped.
        
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        June 4, 2025 5:22pm
- bennerg
  
  What I’m astounded by is how guilt has been used as the major tenet for arguments to “recompense” the native tribes who inhabited New Zealand before the Europeans arrived.
  
  Logic tells us the Maori tribes came here (why we do not know as it appears their point of departure had a much better climate) and for a few hundred years did not progress their civilisation, or the local fauna and flora. From what we know the Moa went extinct, indicating they were simply hunters and gatherers. A stone age people, steeped in slavery, cannibalism, and very patriarchal.
  
  When another “tribe” (aka “Ngati Vikitoria”) came along in the late 1700’s, they brought civilisation as we know it today. Agriculture, industry, education, music (while we see their innate propensity to making music, back then the maori had no tonal scale – so no “Ten Guitars”, nor guitars.), governance and medicine. And while I admit they brought along a few diseases, given advances in travel around the world, the Maori tribes could not expect to be immune from them forever.
  
  So what happened here was unique in world history, the European actual recognised the inhabitants, and enjoined them in their society. “We are one people” was the cry. Unlike elsewhere where as in Tasmania where they had a “turkey shoot” one day.
  
  We have had intermarriage now to the point where there are no pure Maori, and very few, if any, with more than 50% Maori DNA.
  
  So who actually are the recipients of these guilt payments? Seems like they are mainly people with predominantly Europeans heritage, often (but not always) with European names (except where they adopt a maori one), often “white” skinned with perhaps a slight look of a good day in the sun, and who live lives predominantly of the European culture as it has become. ie no different to the rest of us.
  
  Disadvantaged? Hardly!!
  
  Right now, if we suddenly found a lost tribe in the Urerewas, I would be all in on providing help and assistance to get them ahead.
  
  As to those who have had a couple of hundred years to benefit from what the Europeans brought to this country, you’ve had your opportunity, make or break it like the rest of us please.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:04am
  - cmm
    
    “why we do not know as it appears their point of departure had a much better climate”
    
    Certainly. NZ is not a good place for darker skinned people. Vitamin D levels are too low for dark skinned people to thrive here without
    
    The one plausible theory for why they left is that they were banished.
    
    In many cultures, criminals or other undesirable people were banished from the rest of society. This happened in Africa. This happened in Polynesian and in Europe. It happened in the American Wild West. It likely happened in pretty much all societies.
    
    One area I have some familiarity with is the Owambo region in Namibia. In the early 1900s most Owambos lived in villages about a day or two walk from each other (enough distance not to have territorial disputes). People who were not desired in the villages were kicked out to live as outlaws. This was a risky life due to not having the protection of the village, wild animals etc. Some traded livestock for a living (either stolen or bred).
    
    To lose your place in the village was considered a huge punishment and pretty much close to a death sentence. If you came back to the village you’d be killed.
    
    It is quite possible that Maori were a group (or groups) that were kicked out of their Polynesian islands and told to never come back.
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:38am
    - R
      
      Cmm, your presentation sounds familiar to others that I have read about the origin of TePati ancestors
      
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      June 3, 2025 10:47am
    - the deity formerly known as nigel6888
      
      It does make sense, for why else would they have taken women with them on fishing expeditions?
      
      It is possible these were voyages of exploration – but they were expected to be one way trips into the complete unknown – not something you send important people away to do.
      
      Its always the surplus, the unruly and the troublemakers who get invited to leave.
      
      So to paraphrase the great Douglas Adams, the settlers of NZ might quite likely have been on the B Ark!
      
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      June 3, 2025 10:49am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      But these were Island/ coast-dwellers…as were my ancestors. Their ancestors would have included sons and daughters who did not inherit the chiefly role.
      
      What was a fit, young teen to do….. hang around under the command of some old has-been chief/autocratic upstart or set off to found their own dynasty?
      
      Perhaps overpopulation/food shortage/cyclone damage disrupted island life and drove inhabitants to look elsewhere.
      
      For the men on my ancestral island there were few options – the eldest son would take-over the family croft and stock. The other sons went to sea or the Church (i.e. they had to leave the island if they wanted to live above a subsistence-starvation Level).
      
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      June 3, 2025 11:09am
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        Priest, publican or policeman.
        
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        June 3, 2025 11:29am
      - alex Masterley
        
        That sums up the reason my great-grandfather and his brother came to NZ. They were down the pecking order in their family and wouldnt inherit the family farm.
        
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        June 3, 2025 12:29pm
    - bennerg
      
      CMM, your theory is plausible. After having visited many of the Pacific Islands, I always wondered why the Maori culture was so violent compared to what I saw elsewhere.
      
      In Samoa for the first time when I heard they were going to perform a Samoan Haka I expected something quite different to what was in the end a benign celebration, not too much different from a Morris Dance.
      
      Whatever we have what we have today, and there are still vestiges of that “warrior gene” as it is referred to, and that needs to be addressed, but not in the way the guilt trippers and effectively scam artists are trying to do at the moment.
      
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      June 3, 2025 11:31am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      For the last 200,000 years members of the Homo genus have indulged in a bit of O.E. (Overland & Overseas).
      
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mND8qWrY16E
      
      There really isn’t anything remarkable in the fact that some folks eventually reached NZ shores.
      
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      June 3, 2025 1:08pm
  - Paulus
    
    Can’t see in the arriving Waka where there was room for Cows and Sheep !
    
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    June 3, 2025 2:02pm
    - Don Beckett
      
      No, but rats & dogs though.
      
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      June 3, 2025 4:29pm
- imalwaysright
  
  Maori have voluntarily assimilated with non maori to the extent that the race itself can never regenerate.
  This started, presumably, as soon as the settlers arrived and continued at a rate that appears to suggest that maori considered it to be in their interests, as did the settlers.
  This has happened in every other country on earth and is the natural consequence when people meet.
  Eventually everyone is better off.
  
  The current group of activists who deny their antecedents in order to profit should be seen for what they are…
  Scam artists
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:08am
- Simon
  
  Yep National have been the govt over the yrs 2/3 to Labo 1/3. That includes the Lange govt with Douglus. John Key was so repulsed by Douglus his govt refused to have anything to do with him. There is your “broad church” National party. They are true rubbish. The steady rate decline of NZ, crime, soft corruption, Maorification, increasing taxes, globalisation and unproductive govt is core National
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:35am
  - R
    
    Simon have been reading your history book upside down!
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:49am
  - Ian Boag
    
    Goodness. Do you have a one para executive summary about how all this could be fixed?
    
    Without touching the pension of course 🙂
    
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    June 4, 2025 5:25pm
- Michael Sommerville
  
  And it was Bolger who was PM when we introduced MMP. It was he who went against the Electoral Commission recommendations at the time of disestablishing the Maori seats as a consequence of establishing MMP. It was he who oversaw a major constitutional change by allowing a majority vote of those who voted in a referendum rather than requiring a majority of those who were entitled to vote or a 66% majority of those who voted.
  
  He is the reason we are having all these dramas now rather than focusing on getting Everyone to be the best they can be.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:12am
- alex Masterley
  
  I work on the simple theory that I have nothing to apologise for.
  My forebears arrived in NZ in the 1890’s and worked hard first as casual labourers in the region in which they fetched up and then through the land ballot process (the crown break up of large stations in the south island) on the land that was balloted to them.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:49am
  - Pineapple Lumps
    
    Alex – I like your position but encourage you to take this further than just not being apologetic. Please be proud of your forebears who have endowed a great many riches and wealth on all NZers:
    
    – exponentially lifted the productivity of NZ which made all NZers more prosperous
    – advanced the technological, civilisational, educational, prospects for all New Zealanders
    – created a society that led to the enhancement of lifespan for all NZers
    – shared their wealth of cultural, spiritual, artistic, scientific, mathematic, literary riches for the benefit of all NZers
    – tamed the land, introduced farming, gardening, horticulture and agriculture practices and species that have prospered all NZers.
    
    Our forebears, mostly were of few means, but came to this country with a desire to create wealth for their families and did so with much blood sweat and tears. Many generations of our forebears struggled and grafted and it has only been the last 2 generations in my case that have truely prospered. Now my children are being told they prosper due to privilege. That is BS! They will only prosper if they do what our forebears do and be hardworking, good and wise people.
    
    Envy and CRT and equity are not forces that will continue to lift prosperity in NZ. They diminish us and divide us and must be slapped down.
    
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    June 3, 2025 9:09pm
- Prince
  
  The wonderful Bolger Govt (in his eyes anyway) proposed a $1B cap, and all settlements to be complete by 2005.
  Currently the spend is over $3B, and the end is nowhere in sight.
  How’s that Jim ? A trap you created to hobble any future Govt. Are race relations better now ? Are Maori better off ?
  Frankly I think Biden has a better grip on reality than Bolger, and that’s saying something.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:21am
- Graeme Hall
  
  Jim Bolger misses the point that the tough people, who arrived a couple of centuries ago and supposedly mistreated early-Maori, grafted away to create the society providing the benefits those of Maori ancestry treat as their own.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:33am
- Jigsaw
  
  Bolger’s legacy is really a poor one with regard to the way he left the areas of Taupo and Rotorua. In Taupo he gave the local tribe the lake bed and the space the water occupies – which they have now turned into a petetusal money machine charging all of the boat operators 7% of their gross income. As well the tribe gets fees from boat moorings and boat ramps as well as an annual fee from trout fishing. Their stranglehold on the area grows year by year all thanks to the ignorance of Jim Bolger.
  
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  June 3, 2025 1:27pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    What makes you think it was ignorance on Bolger’s part?
    
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    June 3, 2025 6:55pm
- Ra Henare
  
  Bolger doing a Joe Biden??
  Early onset dementia.
  
  Bringing the country together to benefit ALL Kiwis is the way to prosperity.
  
  NOT dividing the country on racial lines.
  
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  June 3, 2025 3:24pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  We were all born into the modern world. We all have the same rights and responsibilities. Woke “treaty principles” are simply crap made up by lefties and other assorted grifters.
  
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  June 3, 2025 6:11pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

If only she had trusted her instincts.

http://www.1news.co.nz/2025/06/03/jacinda-ardern-on-a-lifetime-of-feeling-never-quite-good-enough/
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June 3, 2025 8:02am
- John Loveridge
  
  She’s damned right. She’s not good enough.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:47am
- Handyman
  
  Finally something Ardern was right about.
  She thought she wasn’t good enough and she was right.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:11am
  - Gravelroad
    
    One of the inmates here is getting stressed that the recent media campaign in support of Ms Ardern might be a signal that she is testing the waters with the view of coming back to lead the Labour Party into the next election – to win it back for them.
    But why would she?
    She has a new life now, travelling the world by plane to tell people about climate change and kindness and so on.
    Added to which, her previous minders and protectors in government, Mr Robertson and Mr Mallard, will no longer be in attendance to smooth the way for her.
    She has a book to sell.
    Is that all it is?
    
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    June 3, 2025 4:24pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

It’s official: women are stronger than men, across a range of physical feats.

I’m expecting the feminists to now campaign for the removal of the sexist ‘Man strikes woman’ provision in the Crimes Act – not.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/31/women-strength-performance-endurance-recovery/
May be paywalled
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June 3, 2025 8:02am
- cmm
  
  No they are not stronger. Their endurance recovery is faster. Completely different attributes.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:08am
Frank the tank

A lot of stories “popping up” regarding our former PM, Jacinda Ardern.

Gearing up for a SG tilt in 2026?
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June 3, 2025 8:03am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Na…
  just trying to keep heaps of her new book out of the Remainder bin
  
  https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/06/03/jacinda-the-first-review/
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:09am
  - pdm
    
    Is it time to `turn Ardern’ in bookshops etc again?
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:44am
  - mogg
    
    She said it was a very difficult and lonely decision to leave.
    No it wasn’t the Labour Prty told her to go she had become a serious liability, when the free money was finished and the inflationary storm took over her popularity plummeted like a stone, to this day Labour still avoid the mention of her name.
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:55am
  - Jethrod
    
    Hosking reported this morning that she received 1.5 mil for the book, and it is reported she was very effusive in her praise for a writer who does ghost-writing for people. Go figure. He also had a figure of 170,000 books that need to be sold before a profit is made.
    
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    June 3, 2025 1:21pm
    - Culture War Criminal
      
      Why does she need a ghost writer? When you are a former leader of a reasonable sized, reasonably advanced nation (particulary when you single-handedly saved the lives of around 50 million NZers), you should be sufficiently intelligent to be able to write your own book. I mean, it’s a personal political memoir, not “Crime and Punishment,” or the “Critique of Pure Reason” after all.
      
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      June 3, 2025 2:16pm
      - Ra Henare
        
        or use AI 🙂
        
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        June 3, 2025 3:27pm
      - cmm
        
        “Why does she need a ghost writer?”
        Especially if you are a communikashuns grajuit.
        
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        June 3, 2025 4:11pm
    - Pope Punctilious II
      
      So Harvard Uni awarded an honorary doctorate to someone incapable of writing her own memoir? But is there any hard evidence that it’s ghost written?
      
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      June 3, 2025 6:56pm
  - Observant Octagenarian
    
    Too late. Its $39 at The Warehouse today.
    
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    June 3, 2025 2:11pm
    - Bloody Dago
      
      Soon to be $3.90
      
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      June 4, 2025 4:49pm
  - cas
    
    Thank you Maggy. I loved the review.
    
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    June 3, 2025 2:27pm
  - Jack5
    
    Ardern book. Another by TVNZ breakfast host Jenny-May Clarkson, and, and, and … one by Paddy Gower.
    
    Are these the reason the the National Library purged 600,000 books of its international collection?
    
    The State vandalism was to make storage room for NZ and Pacific books.
    
    https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/20-01-2020/the-national-library-cull-of-600000-books-could-be-a-disaster-for-researchers
    
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    June 3, 2025 2:30pm
  - cmm
    
    … soon to be pulped for egg cartons …
    
    Who want’s to place a bet on when it hits the $2 bins at Warehouse?
    
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    June 3, 2025 4:05pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Good luck, she is actually hated y a large sway of the country, she lost twice in Auckland Central to Kay, and has to be wheeled in to take a seat that has only have 4 MPs in 50 years
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:46am
- John Loveridge
  
  Nah, she’s got a book to hawk.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:47am
- R
  
  Frank….quite likely, along with Comrade Clark and goof
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:52am
- Prince
  
  Unlikely. It’s all to do with the film, the book, the tour. And most of all, money. Money for Ardern.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:24am
  - Quail
    
    Prince ,
    A Horror Story
    Watch out ,Ardern may yet stand for PM .
    In her holidays she probably read all about Argentinas Fva Peron.
    NZ certainly would shed many tears if that happens!
    
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    June 3, 2025 3:23pm
Southern Raider

Bolger like Shipley and Clark etc just needs to go and retire somewhere quietly.

Was interesting that TVNZ actually had some informative articles on Iwi in last couple of days
– one highlighted how Ngati Whatu had settled and were rapidly growing their asset base through mostly Auckland property deals. This enabled them to provide free health insurance and other services to their 7,000 members. To me this is positive for NZ. Only question I had was how do they only have 7,000 members.
– Second was Ngapuhi and how they have refused to settle, only have $400 of assets per member (about 100,000), major social issues and economic deprivation. I can’t see anything postive happening in Northland until Ngapuhi pulls their collective heads in and stop living in the past and settle.
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June 3, 2025 8:14am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Just can’t understand why Clark Bolger, Ardern are being pushed in our faces yet again, the arrogance of media to put Clark on tv and ask that Marxist how would she mark the coalition, she knew she shouldn’t have said anything, but meekly spat out a 2. Let me guess, she would have given the previous regime at 9
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:55am
  - OlderChas
    
    And she baldly stated that – as well as giving the Nazi salute “Oh yes – it most definitely was” were her words IIRC – she stated that Musk’s/Trump’s closure of USAID would cause at least 4 million – more likely 6 million deaths, and got the 6 million in a couple of times to make sure we all corelated it to the Nazi word . “but spat out a 2” lol. Yes her contempt is palpable. So who the f*** are YOU anyway, Helen bloody Clark. Oh that’s right, a failed contender for the United Nations head poohbar job.
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:20pm
    - Ian Boag
      
      Helen wasn’t my favourite polly, but ….
      
      She was elected as an MP. Four times? Four more times than I was. She got elected as PM. Twice. Twice more than I was. Maybe a few times more than you would ever be …
      
      So a whole lot of people liked having her in gummint. No accounting for taste I suppose but that’s bloody democracy for you …
      
      Why doesn’t some as smart as you come out? Put your name in front of us all, get on a party list and coast into parliament.
      
      Then noone will be able to accuse you of missing out on a pooba job. Anonymity helps of course.
      
      KBers will all be right behind you …. 🙂
      
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      June 4, 2025 5:35pm
- Cassandra
  
  Amazing that it’s only 7,000. I suspect that the tribal leaders have been punctilious in requiring proof of descent.of course there are other tribes with Auckland claims.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:02am
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Ngati Whatua desperately need the support of the Crown in fighting off the claims of other iwi to Auckland – particularly Nga Puhi and Tainui.
    
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    June 3, 2025 9:17am
    - muzled
      
      You mean where Tuku the great stood up and told Ngati Whatua that the land they were standing on was Tainui land and Ngati Whatua had to go to a ‘white mans court’ to prove it.
      
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws20VErIyOU
      
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      June 3, 2025 5:47pm
  - Handyman
    
    Ngati Whatua, like all Maori tribes, lobby for funding based on surveys of those who “feel Maori” (18% of the population) but only distribute funding to their proven Maori tribal members.
    This indicates that taxpayer funds should not be distributed via iwi groups. Luckily there is the Waipareira Trust. Hmm, maybe the problem is not confined to iwi.
    
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    June 3, 2025 11:24am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    punctilious = Precise; scrupulous.
    
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    June 3, 2025 6:14pm
- Pope Punctilious II
  
  Add Palmer and Key to that list.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:17am
- AitchW
  
  Ngapuhi’s problem is that they have, for years, promoted themselves as the most warlike of all the iwi.
  Now they’re starting to believe their own press and, as a result, cannot agree among theselves who is to represent them in negotiations with the Crown.
  Until they get over themselves they’ll never be able to settle.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:31am
  - pdm
    
    Aitch – my understanding of why Ngapuhi have not settle a Treaty Claim is that they cannot agree on someone to lead the negotiations.
    
    A prime example of tribalism.
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:47am
    - imalwaysright
      
      A prime example of a bunch of greedy freeloaders who will sell out those who they call their people.
      Maori people need to put these bastards out of business.
      
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      June 3, 2025 11:10am
    - AitchW
      
      Yup, every family wants their Kaumatua to lead the negotiation team!
      
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      June 3, 2025 11:34am
    - Grunt
      
      That, plus Ngapuhi are probably getting an annual fee from those tribes who have settled, to delay their settlement claim, as those tribes that have settled have the top up clause. The longer Ngapuhi delay, the bigger the likely top up!
      
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      June 3, 2025 1:30pm
- John Loveridge
  
  Shipley now lives in Russell and runs the place like a little fief. Far too many of the locals bow and scrape to her. Horrible woman. But at least she’s happy as a fat fish in a small pond and doesn’t suffer the same delusions of grandeur as Helen Clark the “Elder”.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:53am
  - Jack5
    
    Jenny Shipley is far from leading a quiet life beyond Russell.
    
    Shipley suggested the Treaty Principles Bill might lead to civil war, and, according to Radio NZ, “threw her support behind” the Maori Party’s Hana-Rawhiti Maipa-Clarke, who ripped up a document and did a war dance in Parliament.
    
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/533944/treaty-principles-bill-inviting-civil-war-jenny-shipley-says
    
    On China, Shipley remains active. Her links with the country go back decades through her directorship of Mainzeal, part of Richina Group.
    
    Yesterday Shipley was on the English-language TV channel of Chinese TV, calling for coolness in Trump’s stand-off. She was interviewed in a programme called “Leaders Talk”.
    
    Shipley told the interviewer that President Xi wants peaceful growth and prosperity.
    
    Shipley, said the interviewer, had on multiple occasions quoted Confucius.
    
    Holy shit!
    
    Shipley on China TV:
    
    https://youtu.be/pzNbYg3XREc?si=uQP0Ug1FQUsMuHLO
    
    Shipley is among the directors of Mainzeal ruled liable to pay $39.8 million plus interest and costs to creditors and subcontractors left $111 million out of pocket when the company collapsed a decade ago.
    
    https://www.lawfuel.com/dame-jenny-shipley-directors-lose-40-million-mainzeal-appeal/
    
    A MinterEllison lawyer two months ago gave tips to directors on how to avoid similar problem. The guts:
    
    – Question everything, as accepting financial information without proper scrutiny is no longer a viable defence.
    
    – Board composition matters, especially in “skill sets”.
    
    – Group think is a major board risk, especially when established members dismiss concerns raised by newer directors.
    
    https://www.lawfuel.com/nz-law-the-110-million-lesson-what-every-director-should-learn-from-mainzeals-collapse/
    
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    June 3, 2025 3:22pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Shipley is lucky that she’s not living in the Big House
    
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    June 3, 2025 6:59pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    She has lived at Russell for years, at leadtv15 years going by what the guy that took us on a tour and showed us her house on the way passed, he also stated you very really ever see her, not sure what s this other stuff you have written has to do with that
    
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    June 3, 2025 7:07pm
Scott

British Attorney General, Lord Hermer, declined to review “unduly lenient” sentences given to a rapist and a terrorist fundraiser despite signing off on the prosecution of Lucy Connolly.

The criminals received softer sentences than Connolly, who was imprisoned for 31 months for a tweet about last year’s Southport attacks.

Farhad Mohammad, from Essex, who sent money to his nephew in Syria knowing it was to fund his terrorist activity. Mohammad also avoided prison time, getting a three-year community order in October last year.

Ben Churcher, from Wiltshire, who was given 28 months in prison in January for raping a woman in her home.

Actual rioters at Southport received lesser sentences:

Former postmaster and school governor Steven Mailen, 54, and his partner Ryan Sheers, 29, were each handed a prison sentence of two years and two months at Teesside Crown Court on Thursday.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze5g4djeplo

Mailen, of Arch Street, Hartlepool, was described as “one of the main instigators” of a large-scale disturbance in the town on 31 July.

A judge said Mailen and Sheers, of Powlett Road, Hartlepool, were “at the very forefront of the mob”. The judge said they tried to push their way through a police cordon, with Mailen taunting officers and encouraging others to use violence towards them.

At the same court, Kieron Gatenby, 19, was sentenced to 16 months’ in a young offender institution after he was found to be part of a group throwing missiles at police and smashing the windows of houses, cars and shops while chanting racial slurs.

So in the British justice system what you say is treated more harshly than what you actually do. Lucy Connolly is being penalised for her one harsh tweet about immigration and the crimes committed by immigrants. Meanwhile people receive lesser sentences for actual rioting and actual rape and actual criminal damage.

This also shows us that Britain does have a two tier justice system. Mr Mohammed convicted of funding terrorism gets no jail time. One mean tweet from a white British woman with no criminal record gets 3 years.

Also the government is keen to make sure everyone knows you can’t question immigration. You tweet the wrong words and you’ll get 3 years. Lucy Connolly is being made an example of. Others will get the message, speech against immigration will not be tolerated.

Lastly the police in Great Britain are hopeless. In some areas they haven’t solved a single burglary. But tweet the wrong thing and you’ll have 6 policemen at your door.
Free speech in Great Britain is dead.
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June 3, 2025 8:18am
- Mike
  
  Some speech is not free. If you tweeted asking someone to burn down an asylum center, then you should be in jail.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:45am
  - Scott
    
    Mikey – this is where you and I disagree. Lucy Connelly was upset by the killings of 3 girls at Southport and fired off an emotional tweet. She subsequently thought better off it and took the post down and has since apologised.
    She has no criminal record. She certainly was not in touch with any criminal elements who were going to actually burn down the asylum centre.
    
    Maybe she should have been warned? Maybe a charge and a fine?
    
    But jail for 3 years for one tweet? That’s harsh and disproportionate. Actual rioters committing actual crimes got less. I cannot understand how people can see this as fair?
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:57pm
    - Mike
      
      1. “set fire to all the hotels for all I care” is more than an ’emotional tweet
      2. she pleaded guilty to incitement
      
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      June 3, 2025 3:07pm
      - Ra Henare
        
        Of course, the “”for all I care””, is surely not an incitement but a position on the subject.
        
        Thank goodness I dont live in the Gulag UK.
        
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        June 3, 2025 3:32pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    Mike: “Some speech is not free. If you tweeted asking someone to burn down an asylum center, then you should be in jail.”
    
    How about if you chortled with glee at a presidential candidate being shot at?
    
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    June 3, 2025 6:16pm
  - Pineapple Lumps
    
    Critical race theory is alive and well in the UK, and free speech is clearly the loser. Neo-Marxism in action.
    
    You defend the TPM guy threatening to bash Seymour under the guise of a charity boxing match and but continue to state Connelly was inciting violence, where she clearly didn’t state “go and burn down the hostel”. While abhorrent it appears semantics could be used to argue, “I don’t care if their hostel is burnt down”. While not pleasant, saying “I hope you die” isn’t the same as inciting the mob to “kill them”.
    
    Pleading guilty makes one guilty under the law, but as you well know many that have pleaded guilty have done so to minimise sentences not because they were actually guilty. Keep pushing your stance on Connelly, but it doesn’t change the facts that you support violence against those you dislike – Seymour – but are happy to twist the words of a Nationalist who doesn’t suit your CRT, globalist, Marxist worldview.
    
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    June 3, 2025 8:39pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  I see that the retired detective who had six bobbies searching his house and commenting about his “Brexity” collection of books – this after he got into an online fight with some Gaza supporters and said they were anti-Semitic – has now received a £20,000 award and an apology from the Kent Police for a wrongful arrest.
  
  The apology was direct to him in a phone call from none other than the Chief Constable of the Kent Police force.
  
  All very well, but I’m more concerned about the six cops and the processes involved in the original arrest. How the fuck can they be cops and not have some reservations about doing such a thing? Was there no judgement involved or not allowed – “Just following orders”, etc?
  
  Or is that so many good cops have quit over the years that all that remain are social justice warriors, as this article by a former British cop, describes in, The Police We Deserve. I did laugh at the following quote:
  
  Many commentators suggest that Theresa May lacked a sense of humour. I have to disagree. She appointed Tom Winsor, who officers considered the axe-murderer of British policing, Chief Inspector of Constabulary. In policing, the small gestures count: Winsor wore police uniform as part of his new role, despite having never served. Police officers, many of whom were natural Tory voters, swore never to vote Conservative again. May is, to coppers, what Margaret Thatcher was to the miners.
  
  I’ve long thought that May was one of the most useless PM’s Britain has ever had, but my assessment was around her handling of Brexit. I didn’t know about the police aspect, but that history (and he lists plenty of other stuff the Tories did) is yet another black mark on the “conservative” party of Britain.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:59am
  - Scott
    
    Tom, that case is another good example of the police questioning and arresting people for what they say on social media. Apparently 30 people a day are interviewed by the UK police about their social media posts. 30 a day!
    
    In these same areas you can’t get the police to turn up for a reported burglary. But in the case you cite 6 policemen turn up in response to a social media post. Their priorities are all wrong.
    
    And the courts are severe on social media posts and Lucy Connelly gets 3 years for one post, which she took down in 4 hours after thinking better of it.
    
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    June 3, 2025 11:45am
  - kiwimike
    
    Tom
    a family member served as a cop in parliament towards the end of their 30 yr career as a cop in the Met.
    
    One day on protection duty in the Select Comm area he observed Teresa May then a minister taking a mobile call in the coridoor outside the room.
    
    when she’d finished a Parliament security guard approached her to ask, “how come you get to claim accom allowance on somewhere that isn’t your home for 30,000, more than I earn”. (it was big commotion at the time)
    
    she looked at my family member 5m off and they just looked back.
    she went back into Select Comm room.
    
    next day my family member noticed the sec man was no where to be seen.
    and never was after ……
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:03pm
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Teresa May’s Greatest Hits:
    – Proposed gender self-ID legislation (happily, it didn’t happen)
    – Congwatulating Bwitish Muslims for celebwating Wamadan, and for completing the Haj.
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:49pm
- mogg
  
  Starmer and Hermer are both from the same mould, as human rights lawyers they have both exploited UK law to stop illegal immigrants from being deported. Farage is exploiting this to the max, there is now a desperation creeping into Labour’s comments about Reforms 10 point lead in the polls.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:08am
Pope Punctilious II

The National Poet of Wales, one Hanan Issa, complains about British literary events historically being too white https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c787v53190zo
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June 3, 2025 8:18am
- John Loveridge
  
  I wonder what sort of reception I’d get if I took part in a, say, Nigerian literary event, and complained it was too black.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:33am
  - Colville
    
    Before or after they chopped you up with a machete?
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:30am
    - John Loveridge
      
      I assume by after you mean the reception I’d get gently sauteed with onions?
      
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      June 3, 2025 3:02pm
Maggy Wassilieff

In no other Western democracy does the ordinary citizen so enthusiastically offer themselves as a sacrificial vessel for the errors of their rulers. In no other civil society are people so eager to drape themselves in guilt not their own, speak in a borrowed tongue they do not understand, and recite protocols they do not believe—just to win the favour of cultural gatekeepers they neither elected nor dared challenge.

https://pointofordernz.wordpress.com/2025/06/02/the-altar-of-atonement-how-new-zealanders-came-to-worship-their-own-submission/
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June 3, 2025 8:32am
- cmm
  
  That all presupposes that there were errors made by the rulers.
  
  Compared to just about anywhere else, Maori have had a bloody good treatment all the way through.
  Where else did a Western government give the native people the vote before the Western citizens?
  It might have happened, but I am unaware of it.
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:36am
  - Paulus
    
    Have not been able to fund the Identities of any of the Maori Wahine who came on the first canoes – were there any second ?
    
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    June 3, 2025 2:11pm
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      One of my old Botany lecturers (David Penny) estimated that about 70 (50-100) females were needed to become the founding mothers of the Maori population.
      
      https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/105-Alpha-Series-Mitochondria-and-maori-migrations.pdf
      
      https://www.jstor.org/stable/20707074
      
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      June 3, 2025 4:14pm
- Eastlander
  
  The Australians engage in similar rituals and Britain is more or less openly governed as a reparations fund, it’s not unique.
  
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  June 3, 2025 8:39am
- Souvlaki
  
  A first class article really. Psychiatrically speaking , on the ‘button’ .
  Although Stockholm Syndrome is said to be ‘rare’…it appears rampant in the Public Service in NZ…’madness’ in the true sense !
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:38am
cmm

Group guilt is the flip side of the same coin as group pride. I understand neither.

I can’t see the point in people feeling proud of some accident of their birth (eg. proud of their nationality, proud of how tall they are, proud of having blue eyes or their innate intelligence they were born with).

If you have personally accomplished something (eg. done well in a test after studying hard, won an Olympic medal, exercised and lost 20kg) then yes, feel proud of your accomplishments. But vicarious pride (eg. being proud of the All Blacks or Sir Edmond Hillary) seems crazy.

Group guilt is exactly the same thing in reverse. It is Original Sin stuff – blaming people for the sins of Adam.

If I am supposed to feel group guilt then allow me to claim the benefits from my ancestors too.

If I am supposed to feel guilty for slavery, then give me the credits of both my grandfathers fighting against slavery in Africa in the early 1900s. And a bloke with the same colour skin as me invented 99% of modern medicines etc.
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June 3, 2025 8:33am
- NothingLeft
  
  Its a basic offense to the whole concept of justice – to punish or reward someone for the offenses or or and ancestral genetic relationship to people they never even knew or met is utterly repulsive and should be completely preposterous. And yet the left and the fools they enable actively promote it sit around getting high on their own bullshit. They are morally and ethically bankrupt – every bit as bad as other irrational zealots.
  
  All of us have ancestors who were by parts villains and heroes. If you have Scots or Irish heritage then your ancestors were screwed over every bit as bad as some Maori were in the 19th century (Highland clearances and Potato famine) – the only difference being we view those episodes with sanity as another time and place uncoupled from any relevance to today.
  
  Stop indulging the Treaty insanity. Maori need to grow up and start pulling their weight without special treatment.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:03am
  - Don Beckett
    
    “Maori need to grow up and start pulling their weight without special treatment.”
    Let’s remember that the majority of Maori in fact do pull their weight. It’s the radical shit stirrers & welfare bludgers, gangs & their affiliates – who do make up a minority – albeit sizeable – that need to take your advice.
    
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    June 3, 2025 11:28am
    - NothingLeft
      
      Agree, most are great kiwis, just a rump few who think they are entitled to aristocratic privilege or lost in dissipative lifestyles that couldn’t continue without mutually destructive exploitation of taxpayer generosity. So lets stop giving that corrosive few (and their air-headed enablers) license to continue in their ways.
      
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      June 3, 2025 12:34pm
    - cmm
      
      “Let’s remember that the majority of Maori…”
      
      Sure, but the number of shit stirrers is a very large % and that majority are not disowning them in sufficient numbers.
      
      I would argue that one way to measure this is to look at the electoral roll. There are more Maori on the Maori Roll than the General Roll.
      
      That tells me that most Maori feel entitled to be treated differently and have special treatment. That is race-hustling.
      
      Others might think differently, but I would argue that anyone voting for TPM are racial extremists. That’s over 10% of Maori.
      
      If 1% of whites were skinheads I think we’d say we had a problem – let alone 10%.
      
      The difference is obvious though. Maori don’t tend to speak up about these issues.
      
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      June 3, 2025 1:55pm
    - Paulus
      
      But many Maori’s weights double that of many others, mainly Wahine.
      Look at any Maori gathering.
      
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      June 3, 2025 2:12pm
- Scott
  
  cmm – umm, most NZers have felt pride in the All Blacks or in the achievements of Edmond Hillary. It’s what makes us as a nation.
  
  Also a general respect for our ancestors and the legacy they have passed onto us.
  Let me give you a concrete example. Here is a picture of Wellington in 1866:
  
  https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/34169/wellington-new-zealands-third-capital-1866
  
  Notice what has been built already. Amazing when the first settlers arrived in 1839! So in just 27 years they had built all that.
  
  Our ancestors were amazing. We can only hope to emulate them and get on and build things and make progress as a country once again.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:31am
  - cmm
    
    I think you can have respect for what others have achieved and be inspired by them without feeling the need to claim that “we” did it.
    
    The slippery slope of a national identity is the feeling that there should be some sort of group reward for being part of the group: The All Blacks win, so “we” are friggin awesome. “We” are special, therefore we deserve X.
    
    And it is exactly the same thing that leads to group guilt.
    
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    June 3, 2025 10:49am
    - Scott
      
      No, it’s a sense of belonging, of being a nation. Those are the things that bind us together and make us a coherent community where we can live side by side and trust each other.
      
      Why do we watch the Olympics and cheer for the kiwi athletes? It’s because they represent us.
      
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      June 3, 2025 11:04am
  - AitchW
    
    To be fair there was no RMA in 1839, no-one in Dargaville objecting to projects in Christchurch and holding them up in Environment Court…
    
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    June 3, 2025 11:33am
  - Colville
    
    Scott.
    Amazing what can be achieved when the frigging Council isnt standing in the way with its hand out!
    
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    June 3, 2025 1:40pm
Rod

85 years ago between 26th May-4th June 338,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk.

Some historians are of the view Hitler allowed this to happen as a peace offering to the British while others consider it a huge tactical error from him.
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June 3, 2025 8:39am
- cmm
  
  Or… maybe he had so many things on his plate that there were other things which were thought to be a greater priority.
  
  Hindsight is 20/20 vision and all that. Decisions should only be judged on the information that was available at the time not on the outcome some years later.
  
  While the Brits did get the men away, they still lost a lot of weapons etc and Hitler was probably more concerned with securing other areas they had invaded.
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:00am
  - kiwimike
    
    I’ve never understood how they let their personal weapons go.
    It was inculcated in us to hold your personal weapon unless harvesting others, even if you had no ammo for it.
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:06pm
    - Jack5
      
      Details of weapons losses at Dunkirk are detailed at the link below.
      
      Apparently, according to a Churchill history, three-quarters of the troops took their rifles with them.
      
      Pretty good if you’d waded into the seas to climb into a small boat while Stukas were around.
      
      https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/59403/why-was-the-british-army-so-short-of-rifles-after-dunkirk
      
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      June 3, 2025 1:40pm
    - cmm
      
      Personal weapons were of little value on the boats. What was far more problematic was the loss of vehicles, machine guns and artillery pieces. Those are far harder to replace.
      
      Still, apparently somewhere near 90,000 rifles were lost and replacing those would have taken some time. That would suggest that around 25% of soldiers lost their rifles.
      
      Many of the troops were standing chest deep in the water for hours waiting to be picked up. Stripping off heavy kit would have probably been a good idea and quite likely prevented many drownings.
      
      I wonder whether their training was similar to modern training? In my day you’d have had to work bloody hard to convince a soldier to give up his rifle.
      
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      June 3, 2025 2:06pm
- Paulus
  
  I listened to an Uncle who came off at Dunkirk, and it was not a pretty picture for them waiting to be rescued, wonderfully eventualy, and they all went back on D Day.
  
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  June 3, 2025 2:15pm
KH

The Bishop who confirmed me – Liston – was prosecuted by the New Zealand government for supporting the Irish.
The resulting furore led the enraged Auckland City Council to ban my father from the Auckland Domain on religious and ethnic grounds.
eg No school picnic for the combined Catholic primary schools.
Wadda ya reckon? Go for the PM apology and the $150K?
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June 3, 2025 8:45am
- Mike
  
  You think that was similar to being sexually assaulted in a boys’ home?
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:48am
  - Pineapple Lumps
    
    Well done Mike on taking trolling to a new level!
    
    What does sexual assault have to do with anything that KH wrote about?
    
    On this basis, any future comment about a member of the Labour Party can be responded to with “You think that was similar to being sexually assaulted at a Labour Party youth camp?”
    
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    June 3, 2025 8:13pm
imalwaysright

I saw Ardern last night say that a breast cancer scare was her reason for considering leaving politics.

The timing of this revelation with the release of her book is odd.

Wouldn’t she have announced it at her resignation speech and encouraged other women to get scans?
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June 3, 2025 9:21am
- lifesgood
  
  Just another load of tosh trying to garner sympathy and sales. It won’t work.
  
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  June 3, 2025 9:58am
- MCōs
  
  As an aside the Nats were critical of the Ardern’s government for not extending free mammograms to 74yo women
  https://www.national.org.nz/news/labours-inaction-on-breast-cancer-takes-a-womans-life-every-month
  A year and a half after National took over it’s still 69yo for some reason
  I wonder if those mobile units have an age restriction for free mammograms?
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:25am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Nelson has breast screening to age 75.
    
    The rest of us can have our mammaries squished up until age 75 from this October…. Yay!!!!!
    
    The aim is to progressively extend the age range for the rest of Aotearoa New Zealand from October 2025.
    
    https://healthed.govt.nz/products/information-for-women-aged-70-years-and-over
    
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    June 3, 2025 11:16am
- John Loveridge
  
  The perfidious Ardern can’t lie straight in bed at night. This is just another attempt at revising and polishing the Ardern legend.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:57am
  - Paulus
    
    Has she bought another property near Warkworth ?
    
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    June 3, 2025 2:16pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    perfidious = unable to be trusted, or showing no loyalty.
    
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    June 3, 2025 6:24pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  She’s just full of it. Lying till the bitter end, maybe she does think she will come back, and this was a sort of excuse for baling, don’t worry about the utter shambles she created
  
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  June 3, 2025 11:33am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    But she’s a “strong woman”. Only incel losers threatened by such can’t see this.
    
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    June 3, 2025 6:26pm
sungsamning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7relpNFrJD8
Alberta’s Exit Plan?
Alberta is pushing back like never before. Premier Danielle Smith has unveiled a bold new plan that could lead the province toward full independence by 2026. In this video, we break down everything—from the growing political tensions with Ottawa to the real story behind the Western provinces uniting for more control.
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June 3, 2025 9:29am
- Notsofast
  
  The only Canadian politician that knows what a woman is.
  Poilevre did for a moment.
  
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  June 3, 2025 10:48am
  - sungsamning
    
    Yes, it’d be interesting to see the process of Canada breaking up.
    
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    June 3, 2025 7:04pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  Woke Canada won’t let Alberta go. They need the Alberta resources coin to fund their wasteful crap.
  
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  June 3, 2025 6:29pm
sungsamning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xa4c1aIjtk
He’s not playing Around.
The Iceman has been busy. Liberals have taken offence so you don’t have to.
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June 3, 2025 9:29am
Quail

Corporate power?no just greed.
If analysis was done on these incorporations as to their ethnicity it is likely most would struggle to reach 50% indigenous. Indeed it is likely the Irish would have a probable majority in some.
As any good corporation does ,they use every avenue to achieve wealth and power. Indigenous guilt has been one of the most successful sources of wealth.And yet it is something that does not stack up in any reality.
The concept the taxpayer today is in anyway responsible for funding these corporations is total rubbish, along with the idea that ownership of fresh water belongs to any corporate.
And it is pretty clear that it is these corporations that have benefited,not the people whose name they have taken.
There should be no taxpayer support of any private corporations in this century .
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June 3, 2025 9:32am
imalwaysright

Luxon said that Bishop “should keep his thoughts to himself ” after Bishop expressed his opinion of a maori political event masquerading as NZ music awards.

Will Bishop have to ‘take the knee’ to Stan Walker and ask forgiveness ??

Who in their right mind would work under Luxon?
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June 3, 2025 10:01am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Luxon said Bishop had already said he should keep his thoughts to himself, and simply said he probably should have kept his thoughts to his self, what else was he supposed to say
  
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  June 3, 2025 12:22pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    He should have said I’m the boss, I’ve selected my team, and I’ve selected them on what they think, and I back them as I expect them to back me.
    
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    June 3, 2025 1:07pm
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      He said he was comfort with what Bishop has said to media, but I know, we have to hate Luxon
      
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      June 3, 2025 7:11pm
- pdm
  
  ima Luxon is not noted for supporting his caucus members when they talk a bit of commonsense.
  
  At least David Seymour stepped up and supported Bishop.
  
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  June 3, 2025 12:31pm
- kiwimike
  
  Luxon did the same to the National woman on Climate Change !
  REM the offer of a list of books to educate her.
  to protect one of his positions.
  
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  June 3, 2025 12:37pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    That’s rubbish, all Luxon has said Biship has said he should have kept his thoughts to his self, but left it at they, I know we are being Brian washed to hate Luxon, it’s all right
    
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    June 3, 2025 7:13pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  But was it crap?
  
  https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2025/06/ani-obrien-load-of-crap-how-radical.html
  
  (Disclosure: I seem to be amusic – can’t sing, dance, follow a rhythm, and couldn’t care less)
  
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  June 3, 2025 4:23pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  Pull the funding on this rubbish. Give the lefty arts posers something to squeal about.
  
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  June 3, 2025 6:30pm
Jack5

A first-class read on the NZ economy: it’s at interest dot co, which continues its growth as a very good news site.

Keith Woodford asks urgent questions about our exports and our population growth. He’s an old-time applied economist and he talks the hard truth:

https://www.interest.co.nz/economy/133515/keith-woodford-traces-structural-decline-capita-economic-growth-average-kiwi-having
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June 3, 2025 10:56am
G the giant from Dunedin

I had to laugh this weekend. Labour had a Facebook post up saying Labour returning to the farm. It had a sneering MaKaulty standing with a few of the previous losers ministers. Since when has Labour ever been a friend of farmers?

This MaKanulty is starting to make me feel sick, if he can get on side with Peter’s, then it’s s as ll over.

MaKanulty appears to already be the front of the party, not sure what’s going on, but I would say the knives are already going in
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June 3, 2025 10:59am
- OlderChas
  
  Maybe Hipkins will have a cancer scare? //
  
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  June 3, 2025 12:31pm
Harlequin

Chris Bishops inadvertent publicity given to an obscure talent quest seems to be a bit of a typhoon in a chamber pot.
The organisers will milk it for all it’s worth.
I wonder if Bishop should invoice them?
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June 3, 2025 11:00am
- pdm
  
  Harle – does anyone know how much Taxpayer dosh they get?
  
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  June 3, 2025 12:38pm
artemisia

Today’s sad stories. AKA give us more money.

Don’t these folk think ahead a wee bit? Seems not.

Engineering firm strips doors off Pūkaha aviary after $245,000 bill unpaid for months – Board co-chair Mavis Mullins said the breeding sanctuary needed to find $600,000 by the end of the week to avoid shutting its doors, after it was unable to secure funding from major partners the Department of Conservation and Rangitane Tu Mai Ra.

Universities will be weakened by Budget focus on STEM and science – professor – That’s because the Budget allowed an emergency two-year four percent funding boost to lapse.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/562887/engineering-firm-strips-doors-off-pukaha-aviary-after-245-000-bill-unpaid-for-months

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/562902/universities-will-be-weakened-by-budget-focus-on-stem-and-science-professor
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June 3, 2025 11:29am
- cmm
  
  “Universities will be weakened by Budget focus on STEM and science – professor ”
  
  Well, yes and no…
  
  I would argue that universities have been weakened by their focus on non-value providing fields (ie. most non-STEM fields).
  
  It is of course easier to set up, staff and run basket weaving degrees. This makes it easy for universities to put bums on seats and works fine for them – as long as they are not required to generate any value. Value generation is not required when the taxpayer is funding everything.
  
  But if people have to pay for what they’re getting (even the massively subsidised prices in NZ), then people want value. There’s no value coming out of those basket weaving degrees and, surprise, surprise, they are no longer viable.
  
  A refocus on value-delivering degrees might cause some short-term pain, but it will strengthen universities in the long run.
  
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  June 3, 2025 12:14pm
  - artemisia
    
    Agree, and also STEM is a plus for a small wired country at the bottom of the world. Basket weaving not so much.
    
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    June 3, 2025 12:29pm
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Predictable bleating from academic “experts”.
    
    But the worst isn’t “basket-weaving” degrees. The worst is the activism that’s been funded by the taxpayer for years – that isn’t just a waste of money, it’s positively damaging. People who want to dismantle the country’s institutions have been funded for years by the taxpayer. Here’s one example: https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/emilie-rakete
    Here’s another: https://e-tangata.co.nz/reflections/50-reasons-there-are-no-maori-in-your-science-department/
    What these people engage in isn’t research, it’s activism and “idea laundering”. You collect a string of “lived experience” anecdotes, bookend them with a tendentious introduction and an equally tendentious discussion, and conclude that, yes, institution x is systemically racist.
    
    It’s unfortunate the way the changes to the Marsden Fund have been framed. In the humanities and social sciences there are some genuine researchers who do bona fide research – research that doesn’t produce any direct economic benefits, but nevertheless enhances our understanding of (for example) linguistics, history, or psychology. It’s disappointing the government didn’t have the guts to come out and say they were going to stop funding activism and post-modern intellectual masturbation – that’s what needed to be shut down, rather than humanities and social sciences in toto.
    
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    June 3, 2025 1:02pm
    - Jack5
      
      From the link of Pope P … :
      
      The reasons I present here are not about our lack of ability to be scientists — we did navigate across Te Moana nui a Kiwa, after all.
      
      How could Maori have “navigated” to NZ if they didn’t know it existed?
      
      Can you have science without having a written language?
      
      Does basic navigation — stars, currents, wind patterns — qualify as science?
      
      Likely, Polynesians were squeezed off islands as populations outgrew resources. A pattern of move on to the next island, with the risk of occasionally disappearing into the never-never.
      
      If old Polynesia had science, including advanced navigation that allowed transport against current and wind patterns, why didn’t Polynesians reach and colonise Australia rather than the islands of New Zealand?
      
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      June 3, 2025 1:25pm
      - Pope Punctilious II
        
        In that article, Tara McAllister has taken her hysteria to new heights.
        
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        June 3, 2025 1:45pm
      - Mike
        
        Polynesian navigation was quite a bit more sophisticated than that.
        
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        June 3, 2025 2:33pm
      - cmm
        
        This is customary knowledge – not science. Science is different from knowledge.
        
        Science requires a rigorous framework for understanding something and attaching it to a theoretical foundation. That really means some form of documentation, mathematical framweowk etc.
        
        In the past I have used the example of the Edmonds Cookbook. This is a well documented, and precise, body of knowledge. This knowledge was achieved with many experiments and discussion with many experts. If you follow the precise directions on page 30 you will end up with some rather delicious scones.
        
        The Edmonds Cookbook is far more scientific than any body of “Maori Science” yet nobody would have the gall to call it “science”.
        
        Much of early Western science started off as “country wisdom” etc which only became science once it was properly codified. Many of the early Western natural scientists were the clergy and school teachers sent to work in the countryside where they encountered interesting “country knowledge”. They had the skills of writing, documentation and mathematics etc to be able to convert that knowledge into science.
        
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        June 3, 2025 2:49pm
      - cmm
        
        There is some evidence that really good seafarers were the Melanesians rather than the Polynesians.
        Maybe the “Polynesian” knowledge was learnt from the Melanesians.
        Melanesians are thought to have traveled as far as Madagascar
        
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        June 3, 2025 2:56pm
      - Jack5
        
        CMM, Micronesians had the navigational techniques and kept them alive.
        
        Micronesians and Polynesians both genetically derive from the indigenous tribes of Taiwan.
        
        https://farandawayadventures.com/micronesias-traditional-navigation-techniques-stars-and-waves/
        
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        June 3, 2025 4:09pm
    - Swifty
      
      What an appalling, hysterical rant from McAllister.
      
      She has had an upbringing, lifestyle and education billions around the world could only dream of and which her Maori ancestors would look at in slack-jawed amazement.
      
      But rather than gratitude and humility she displays spite, bitterness hatred and wants to tear it all down.
      
      What a horrible attitude.
      
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      June 3, 2025 3:11pm
      - Pope Punctilious II
        
        The Royal Society of NZ thinks Tara’s wonderful: https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/medals-and-awards/research-honours/2022-research-honours-aotearoa/2022-te-kopunui-maori-research-award-2/
        The extent of institutional capture in this country is frightening.
        
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        June 3, 2025 3:47pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Poor old Tara McAllister didn’t know the first thing about the Listener 7.
        
        She was clearly unaware the Prof Garth Cooper was as Maori as she was
        
        https://openinquiry.nz/why-did-i-resign-from-the-royal-society-of-new-zealand/
        
        or had any knowledge of Elizabeth Rata’s background.
        
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        June 3, 2025 6:56pm
- Mike
  
  I’m sure that Pukaha is a DoC scenic or nature reserve – funding back should start there.
  
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  June 3, 2025 2:34pm
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Website says Te Pukaha is run by a charitable trust, supported by DOC, Qualmark, and Te Rangitane o Wairarapa Inc. Maybe they could hit up the “kaitiaki” for some extra cash.
    
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    June 3, 2025 3:51pm
- Surely Knott
  
  What a bizarre political hit job from RNZ making it sound like DOC isn’t funding them, but their financials show it is Ministry of Education that funds them handsomely.
  
  The Pukaha National Wildlife Centre is a charity (#CC20604) and their financials are public.
  
  In 2023 they had a record level of grants. Their income was $5.5mill and their expenditure was only $2.9. Their funding increased significantly under the Nats.
  
  Their property assets in 2024 increased from $4.9 million to $12 million.
  
  If the Bird Board can’t manage their expenditure and pay their suppliers perhaps a new board should be appointed by the government.
  
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  June 3, 2025 4:18pm
  - MCōs
    
    Things have changed significantly since 2023 according to this article
    https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360707310/pukaha-doors-will-shut-without-urgent-funding
    
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    June 3, 2025 9:30pm
    - artemisia
      
      According to that article things have changed significantly since 19 December 2024.
      
      The trust board’s financial performance report, dated December 19, 2024, stated “the entity will continue to operate for the foreseeable future”.
      
      Sounds like incompetence.
      
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      June 4, 2025 6:52am
John Loveridge

Ah, fuck it. My colleague is in the office this afternoon, and he always puts on RNZ. I’m having to listen to Jesse Mulligan interview that bloody woman. I feel sick. Drastic action is needed.
11 2
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June 3, 2025 3:12pm
- cmm
  
  Workplace bullying.
  
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  June 3, 2025 4:06pm
kiwimike

Even trying to bully a Cabinet Minister…
Ani Obrien carry’s it very well here.
Stan is not the man anymore, seems he’s taken up the flag for TPM….

https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2025/06/ani-obrien-load-of-crap-how-radical.html
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June 3, 2025 4:18pm
- Gravelroad
  
  I agree with the writer:
  “New Zealand has activism fatigue.”
  An entitled minority demanding extra special treatment and respect at the expense of the rest.
  The “takers” are ruling the roost in New Zealand.
  
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  June 3, 2025 4:45pm
  - Ra Henare
    
    The entitled minority is only increasing because of the current (and Previous governments going back generations).
    
    PANDERING!!!!
    
    Stop pandering to all sorts of minority groups(ie dishing out money).
    
    Watch the number of the entitled minorities decline.
    
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    June 3, 2025 6:33pm
    - Pineapple Lumps
      
      Ra – lessons from history: Stand up to the bully! Don’t give the Dane the Danegeld!
      
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      June 3, 2025 8:18pm
kiwimike

More but a different source
TPM again

https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2025/06/matua-kahurangi-toitu-te-tiriti.html
6 1
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June 3, 2025 4:37pm
Handyman

Herald headline:
Wellington Town Hall: Inside the $329m project one year from completion.
First sentence:
Work on Wellington’s $329m Town Hall redevelopment continues ahead of its 2027 reopening.

I suspect we will find out the $350m so far is only for Stage One. Stand by for Stage Two funding costs, which begins by inviting the minister for a tour.
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June 3, 2025 4:45pm
JerJer

Should Jacinda be packing her bags?

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/5326891-rubio-visa-policy-censorship/

She did participate in restricting free speech, proposed a law to enforce it, and promoted it in a speech at the UN. She is a foreign national in the US (the bird brain at Harvard trump calls her).

Hope she doesn’t come back here.
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June 3, 2025 6:08pm

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