A bill proposing a stricter NZ superannuation has passed the first hurdle in Parliament.
The NZ First Member’s Bill would mean migrants to New Zealand would have to wait longer for superannuation.
The New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill passed its first reading on Wednesday.
If passed, the bill, proposed by NZ First MP Mark Patterson, would raise the minimum residency for super from 10 years to 20 years, after age 20. …
“Currently, a migrant of just 10 years’ residency in New Zealand is entitled to full NZ Super without any requirement to contribute to the economy. This would also apply to an expat Kiwi who left New Zealand at age 25 and returned at age 60 after spending 35 years contributing to another economy,” Patterson said.
The current coalition agreement with NZ First means Labour is committed to leaving the age at which people qualify for NZ Super at 65.
While National supports the bill, Labour has not committed to it.
I think 10 years is too short a period of residency to qualify for NZ Super. 20 years seems fairer to me.
Today I am confirming a minor shadow cabinet reshuffle due to the retirement of Paula Bennett.
Dr Shane Reti will be ranked number 13 and will take on Associate Drug Reform. Shane has demonstrated a huge intellect and capacity for work, supporting Michael Woodhouse in our Covid-19 response, as well as achieving much in the Tertiary Education portfolio.
Reti is very solid and a deserved promotion. He is well respected within the tertiary sector for his approach to the portfolio.
Simon Bridges will be picking up the Foreign Affairs portfolio and will be ranked at number 17.
Good to see Simon get the portfolio he wanted. Foreign Affairs is a good portfolio for a former leader.
In 101 days, New Zealanders will determine whether or not cannabis should be legalised. In making that decision, there is plenty to learn from the Christchurch and Dunedin longitudinal studies, which together have contributed a vast amount of knowledge regarding cannabis-related harm.
The Christchurch Health and Development Study and the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study were both founded in the 1970s. Each includes more than 1000 participants, with individuals followed into their 40s. Along the way we have repeatedly asked about their involvement with cannabis and problems arising from this. Professor Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland, an internationally renowned figure in substance use research, has referred to our studies in the context of cannabis research as “the best designed and most informative of these [epidemiological] studies”.
These studies are the gold standard for research.
What did we find? We learned that cannabis use is very common, with as many as 80% of participants having used cannabis on at least one occasion. Rates of regular use (using at least weekly) were far lower (35%). We also found that higher levels of cannabis use, particularly at younger ages, were related to mental health problems including increased risk of cannabis use disorder and major depression. Most strikingly, earlier and heavier cannabis use was also related to increased reports of psychotic symptoms in the Christchurch study, and increased risk of meeting criteria for a diagnosis of psychotic illness in the Dunedin study. Further research by both studies has found that long-term cannabis use is also associated with gum disease, impaired lung functioning, and cognitive problems.
In addition to these findings, we also found that earlier and heavier users of cannabis were less likely to complete educational qualifications, and were more likely to report being unemployed, or receiving a benefit. In addition, while only a minority of cannabis users went on to use other, possibly more dangerous illicit drugs, those participants who were heavy cannabis users in adolescence were especially at risk.
So a lot of negative outcomes associated with high levels of cannabis use. Very useful reminder that this drug is harmful.
Given our research on the risks associated with cannabis use, why do the directors of both the Christchurch and Dunedin studies maintain that cannabis should be dealt with as a health issue, and not a justice issue? The reason again is related to our findings.
First, despite being a banned substance, cannabis is commonly used across both cohorts, indicating that prohibition does not stop people using cannabis. Second, we found that those who were arrested or convicted of a cannabis offence did not reduce their use of cannabis (in fact some increased their use), suggesting that being subjected to the force of the law does not deter people from using cannabis. Third, the Christchurch study found that Māori were three times more likely than non-Māori to be arrested or convicted on a cannabis offence, showing that prohibition law is enforced by the police and courts in a racially biased way.
Collectively, our findings suggest that cannabis prohibition laws are not fit for purpose, and that in the 21st century we must deal with the problems associated with cannabis in a way that promotes health, equity and justice for all New Zealanders. The way forward is through legalisation and strict regulation as provided by the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill.
A useful reminder that one can agree that cannabis use is harmful but also agree that criminalising its use is not the best way to deal with it.
The freedoms New Zealanders enjoy under the level 1 Covid-19 alert level rely on ongoing vigilance, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.
And she has a stern message to the 367 people who have left 14 days’ managed isolation without being tested and had not returned contact from the Ministry of Health.
“Do your bit, get back in contact. It’s a small thing that you can do as a member of our team of 5 million.”
You know maybe you shouldn’t have released them!
It is easy to test someone when they are in an isolation facility.It is far harder to do so once they have left. This is why it was such a fail that over 1,200 people were released without testing.
Sir Peter Gluckman, former Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Air New Zealand chief Rob Fyfe have co-authored a paper saying New Zealand needs to start the process of working out how the country can “more completely re-engage with the world”.
“We need to be thinking about defining our longer-term strategy. Is New Zealand prepared to hold itself in its state of near-total isolation for the indefinite future?” the paper asked.
“Even opening the Trans-Tasman bubble looks further away than it did a month ago with resurgent community spread in at least one Australian state.”
A vaccine against Covid-19 could be much further away than the hype suggested, the authors said, questioning whether New Zealand could “afford to wait out another year, two years, or even more in almost total physical isolation”.
“This is not just affecting tourism and export education, but also the many ways in which New Zealand projects and leverages its place in the world.”
With an election in less than three months, the authors also queried to what extent the political cycle was affecting necessary discussion and decisions.
Its madness to keep the borders closed for two or more years.
What the Government needs to do is set explicit objective criteria for allowing people to travel to NZ. This might be:
Coming from an area with a covid-19 rate below x
Has proof of a negative covid-19 test in the last week
On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologise for the climate scare we created over the past 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
But as an energy expert asked by the US congress to provide objective testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to serve as a reviewer of its next assessment report, I feel an obligation to apologise for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.
To make it clear he is not saying that climate change isn’t a serious environmental problem. He is saying it is over hyped.
Some people will, when they read this, imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s co-operatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.
Strong left credentials.
But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilisation, and called it a “crisis”. …
I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence. And so my formal apology for our fearmongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
● Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress.
● The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land.
● The most important thing for reducing pollution and emissions is moving from wood to coal to petrol to natural gas to uranium.
● 100 per cent renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5 per cent to 50 per cent.
● We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities.
● Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4 per cent.
And he makes a useful comparison:
The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, COVID-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.
Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicisation of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform. Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.
The decision to vote down a bill, that would see offenders of king-hits causing death face a maximum of 20 years in prison, has been met with “anger and disappointment” by survivors of recent attacks.
National MP Matt King’s Coward Punch Causing Death bill is now effectively dead in the water.
There was hope the bill, first drawn in September 2018, would go further given some recent attacks in Auckland.
But it stalled at the first hurdle, voted down by 63 votes from Labour, NZ First and the Green Party during its first reading. …
A 24-year-old Auckland man, who was involved in one of the incidents in early June, told Stuff he felt let down by the news it wouldn’t be going any further.
He witnessed the attack on his friend, who was punched from the side and left unconscious for more than 15 minutes.
“I’m just angry to be honest, it seems like there’s no real deterrent for these types of attacks, it’s just like any other assault,” he said.
“I don’t get politics and that, but it seems pretty simple to pass for me – they already have something similar in Australia and it works.”
In 2014, Australia’s Government of Victoria introduced the Coward’s Punch Manslaughter Law, which carries a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence.
A guest post by former North Shore Councillor Tony Holman:
This is a major, difficult task for Council and for its ratepayers. Unfortunately, Council has a shaky history over 10 years of so-called consultation through which it has tried to use persuasive language to achieve the desired ends. It seems to many, including me, that it has then basically ignored whatever feedback from citizens that was not in line with Council’s intent. Woven into the Council language has been a goodly number of euphemisms and background static smudging the facts.
In other words, it seems that Council may have been its own worst enemy, and now, when it needs sensible and robust, co-operative help, it is unlikely to get much of that because of previous “consultations” and also because of the size and complexity of this exercise.
Perhaps one approach for those who wish to try, is to select some aspects of the problem and to respond to those.
That is what I started to do, and then I quickly met the following euphemism: “Asset Recycling” Read that as flogging off the people’s assets at bargain prices, to interested pirates. What is selected for the bargain bin is not specified. That makes it easy to avoid any questions or, heaven forbid, protests.
Turning to ‘smudging’ in the backgrounding of Council’s needs, it brings water to our eyes by mentioning the drought and the needs of Watercare in the future. However, the official description carefully avoids the fact that there is no rating by Council for Watercare!!
Watercare’s website states:
“How we are funded: We do not receive any funding from Auckland Council…All the money we receive from customers…”.(ie you and me paying our water charges.) The money Watercare receives goes into operations, treatment plants (water and wastewater,) etc.
So why throw Watercare into Council’s need to raise household rates? We are already paying for that separately.
Now some positive suggestions:
CCOs. The Mayor already has an expensive survey of these troublesome, largely separate companies underway. Council could just truncate that and carry out the following:
1. Abolish ATEED: (Basically an events and overseas visitor attractant) Visitors will be far fewer for some time, especially via cruise ships). Leave the matter of visitors to the NZ Government and its overseas arms to deal with. Any remnants needing Council oversight can be brought back in house.
2. Abolish Regional Facilities. Bring back in house. With a highly reduced list of events and activities, there can be no contemplation of renewals or additions to these now, or for a number of years.
3. Abolish Panuku. (Selling or “improving” publicly owned assets and open space.) Can’t afford “improvements” at this time. Also, like ATEED it is also involved in economic development. Why two economic development bodies?
The abolition of these bodies would mean that there would not be three separate little “empires” each with its own unelected Board, own Chief Executive and staff , and would likely save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The COUNCIL.
The Mayor should set the example to his staff by voluntarily taking a meaningful salary reduction for the next 2 years.
Councillors should vote to cut any travel outside of Auckland and overseas by 80% for the next 2 years,
The GOVERNMENT & COUNCIL.
Unfortunately, one of the Council’s major problems is that it is not a local government. It is a huge unitary government, imposed on the people without any referendum.It was forged by two governments – started by Labour, with a Royal Commission. Labour was superceded by a National/Act government which came up with a quite different proposal although that continues on the objective which both governments desired – creating a “Super City” fantasy.
As long as Parliament continues with that desire, Aucklanders will continue to pay substantially for it. The most important suggestion I can make is that this Council, its Mayor and its people, is that there be strong and continued lobbying of Parliament to ensure much larger amounts of funding from Government coffers to meet Auckland’s infrastructural, environmental and social needs, and meantime stop pushing more and more people into this region.
The first pertinent question we asked was, “what part of the atmosphere is Methane?” The answer is, “not much”.
All of the Greenhouse Gases (GHG’s) (CO2, Methane, Water Vapour, Nitrous Oxide and Ozone) struggle to make up 1% of the air around us in New Zealand (white coats will state it varies from the polar regions to the tropics but 1% is accurate for us in Godzone). What you rarely hear from the warmists is that water vapour totally dominates the GHG’s. In that 1% water vapour crushes it at 95 – 96%. CO2 is 0.04%. Ozone and Nitrous Oxide add a smidgeon. Methane limps in at 0.019%. That’s 0.00019% of the whole atmosphere. Two parts per million.
Infinitesimal.
The second question is how much of that piddling, minute percentage is anthropogenic. (nice scientific word, eh?). Dr Jock Allison sent me this graph on the sources of all Methane emissions. The numbers come from NASA – the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with a budget of $US 28 billion.
It shows 33% natural and 67% anthropogenic. Only 15% comes from ruminants – cows, sheep, elephants, gazelles, giraffes and unicorns.
As an economy that is dependent on agriculture we want to know if we are a significant player. We are not. We can’t even muster up 1% of the world’s ruminants. So at very best, with a tail wind, we are 1% of 15%. We also emit minor amounts from other human activities.
So, totally meaningless, if you are trying to assess NZ’s agriculture’s emissions from livestock relative to the whole atmosphere. The world may be a big place but 1% of the 15% of the 0.00019% just won’t fit in the calculator window. It takes a deluded romanticist (or a well paid scientist??) to think that somehow our cows belching is heating the planet. We are spending hundreds of millions to reduce belching by 20% as if 20% of 1% of 15% of something that is 0.00019% of the atmosphere has some validity. Does your head in, doesn’t it?
What are these miniscule numbers of Methane molecules supposed to be doing that has the world “alarmed”? Why are we even discussing cutting back our livestock numbers and penalising farmers and our exports for such a trivial percentage?
Now it gets all tricky and technical. But hang in there with me and we will try and get it down to hayseed lingo.
When the sun shines it heats stuff up. Some of the heat/energy bounces back up into the atmosphere. It is called re-radiation. The GHG’s welcome specific bands of this radiation energy with open arms. They all jostle around and some energy gets absorbed by the GHG’s slowing down its journey out into space. And that, ladies and gentlemen is the Greenhouse Gas Effect.
But hang on a mo. Not quite so fast. Nothing in climate is that simple. If only!!
The whole theory is based on models. Climate Change is a theory based on models. Models need full and accurate inputs to be of any value. With climate there are so many variables and so little is known of them with certainty that the models are of limited use. All of the science on warming including the claims against Methane originate with these models. Despite valiant and even cringing efforts by warmists trying to explain the gap between what the models predicted and actual temperature recorded the gap keeps opening. This yawning gap, three times warmer than actuals will soon swallow the remaining vestiges of the warmist’s credibility.
Facts, that only the most biased and those milking the money tree dispute:
1. Over the planet temperatures have been creeping up slowly long before GHG’s increased.
2. Historically, through countless ages, global temperatures have risen and CO2 has followed
3. Temperatures have stayed pretty much flat for the last 20 years when CO2 kept rising
4. But here is the biggie. Water vapour at up to 96% of the Greenhouse Gases dominates the re-radiation process. Water vapour is 25 times more abundant than CO2 and 5,000 times more abundant than methane. A few CO2 molecules get to absorb some heat/energy because there is a very tiny window on the spectrum where water vapour isn’t running the show. According to world recognised physicists like Tom Sheahen, Will Happer, William van Wijngaarden and increasing Methane can’t do any more worth writing about. Water vapour has it totally corralled.
The big guns in science say stuff like this…. “Very low concentration greenhouse gases from agricultural sources are shown to make only a minute contribution to the absorption of solar radiant energy and long-wave re-radiation back from earth. Methane only has a few narrow absorption bands with none absorbing 100% at their active wavelength location within the spectrum. – Dr Geoff Duffy FRSNZ, DEng, PhD, BSc, ASTC Dip., FRSNZ, FIChemE, CEng is Professor Emeritus – Chemical Engineering, University of Auckland. Yes, a minute contribution swamped by water vapour.
So, Methane is a dead duck. Water vapour is fully prevalent. There is simply no room on the electromagnetic spectrum where water vapour lets Methane get a look in.
Seeing is believing. Below is a diagrammatic look at the spectrum. It shows that Methane is operating on two places of the spectrum where there is no absorption or influence and one band where it is 50% efficient (the turquoise peak on the right).
Now look what happens when water vapour is added to the spectrum. It completely blocks out Methane.
Methane and Nitrous Oxide have very small absorption bands on that electromagnetic spectrum, at positions where there is significant disruption from water vapour, which has concentrations thousands of times that of the minor gases.
Here is what you hear from the warmist scientists. They rarely talk about water vapour as a GHG. Not even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment lets the words cross his lips. They rarely quantify. All fancy buzz terms but no hard equations. Why do they avoid the electromagnetic spectrum discussion? Is it an ‘inconvenient truth’? They do warble on about “feedbacks”. But like the infamous Yeti one has yet to be spied. Feedbacks remain unproven and disputed.
Conclusion: Methane is too insignificant and physically unable to have any influence of consequence on temperature. Farmers are facing payments running into hundreds of thousands of dollars should current regulations and green interests get their way. Why are we willing to take an axe to our best performing industry when the case is so water(vapour)tight?
Help from:
Dr Jock Allison Ph. D. (Sydney University) ONZM, FNZIPIM
Dr Michael Kelly Ph. D. FRS, FREng Professor at Cambridge University.
Dr Will Happer Ph. D., Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.
Dr Geoff Duffy FRSNZ, DEng, Ph.D., BSc, ASTC Dip., FRSNZ, FIChemE, CEng is Professor Emeritus – Chemical Engineering, University of Auckland
Dr William van Wijngaarden Ph.D. (Physics)
Dr Tom Sheahen Ph.D., 1966: Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The US Republican Party was set up in 1854 as an anti slavery party
The 1st Republican (of the current party) President was Abraham Lincoln
In the 1857 Dred Scott case which decided negros were property not citizens, the only two dissenting judges were Republican and the seven majority judges were Democrats
John Wilkes Booth was a Democrat
The Democratic Party opposed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment, which gave blacks citizenship; and the 15th Amendment, which gave blacks the vote
22 black Republicans served in the US Congress by 1900. The Democrats did not elect a black man to Congress until 1935.
The founder of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was a Democrat
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was supported by 80% of Republicans in Congress and less than 70% of Democrats
A Democratic Senator filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 75 days
I follow US politics a lot but I wasn’t aware of all of this.
David Clark has resigned as Minister of Health and as a Minister.
I think this shows Labour is very worried about the polls and how his carrying on would continue to erode their previous gains.
Of interest is he resigned, rather than sacked. Ardern kept saying she has confidence him when it was clear no one else did. She should have sacked him on the day we entered Level 1.
Chris Hipkins has been appointed Minister of Health (which is what I recommended a week ago!). It shows how devoid of talent they are that they had to give the portfolio to someone who is already overworked with Education, State Services and Leader of the House.
Politically this is good for Labour. People were appalled at how Clark dumped on Bloomfield, which was the last straw. Clark going removes that weeping sore.
I probably have little in common with a lot of Kiwiblog readers. I’m pro gay marriage, anti smacking, pro decriminalisation of marijuana, support increasing our military by 100% and our police by 50% and funding it via a lot more taxation, nationalising a lot of key industries, and generally could be seen as a leftie. Even worse, I’m a public servant – yes, a dreaded “trougher.”
But the fact is, in the current times, I have a lot more in common with people here than I do with my supposedly “traditional” leftie allies. And it’s all to do with freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, and censorship.
I’ve stated my opinions, but I don’t expect everybody to agree with them. I like debate. I think people can be vitriolically anti-gay. They can say they think homosexuality is evil and should be punishable by death; that’s their opinion, and they have a right to it. It’s not my opinion, and I would try my best to convince them otherwise, but I would never hold they couldn’t have their own opinion.
This “window of opinion” was as broad as could be in the 1980s. Libertarians. Anarchists. Socialists. Big “C” Conservatives. It was a time of intellectual ferment and difference of opinions. It was a child of the liberalism of the 1960s.
Today, that window has shut, and it’s getting darker. The window of acceptable opinion is so narrow nowadays it reminds me of the Victorian era; instead of whether we’re revealing an ankle, it’s whether we’re mispronouncing Taupo. The so-called liberals are about as illiberal as can be. Freedom of speech is being shut down. We cannot have the fundamental debates about what is right, what is wrong, and what’s inbetween because there is a baying crowd that has already decided. I think George Floyd was murdered for being black. Others may disagree. They have the right to their view, and the right to a civil debate.
The “safetyists” will say that there is no need for civil debate when people’s lives or safety are at risk. That’s hypocritical; they are taking it as a given that human safety is the ultimate ethical imperative, when it’s exactly the sort of thing that is open for debate. The people of Great Britain thought that defiance, democracy, and true liberalism were more important in 1940 than saving lives by surrendering to Hitler. Alexander the Great thought fairness in war was more important than achieving an easier, less costly victory by advancing at night. Humanity has always considered some virtues more important than life and safety at specific times and places. What matters is the freedom to debate which values are more important than safety at a given time. If a slave risked his life for freedom, was he doing the right thing? Modern safetyists would be contorted in knots trying to justify that action, as it would bring into conflict their own preconceptions.
I want a country – and a world – where regardless of the economic system or political system, we have the freedom to debate everything. Where ethics classes at universities can ask whether murder or slavery can ever be morally justified. Where people can protest, or not protest, without immense peer pressure.
As a public servant, I value my political neutrality, but it is becoming harder and harder as so many politically-loaded activities (such as karakia before meetings) are loaded in and seen as “neutral” (i.e. they are so normalised now, nobody sees how political they truly are). There are examples the other way; the normalcy of capitalism, for example, is never questioned even though that is also a political, not a technical, viewpoint. When Auckland Council banned those speakers from community facilities, they were bringing politics into a bureaucratic decision.
I hope I haven’t waffled too much, but that my central point – we are losing freedom of debate – has come through. I don’t know what to do.
I’ll be voting National this year, not because I like them, but because they’re the lesser of two evils.
If Trump was here, even though I believe he’s likely a halfwit, sex offending, buffoon, I’d vote for him. Simply because I would feel my freedom of debate would be stronger under him than it would be under Ardern.
In her final months, my mother would say that she wasn’t afraid of dying, but that she was afraid of pain. She had been traumatised – we all were – by my father’s death two years earlier. That had been long and slow, excruciating for him and almost unbearable to witness. We had all done everything we could back then – for him and for her – but there were frustrations and regrets, and wishes that things could have been gentler. Grief is a messy beast, and harder to live alongside when it comes with what-ifs and why-couldn’t-we and how-could-we-have-done-better.
So after her own terminal diagnosis, Donna was clear about what she most wanted for herself. It wasn’t more time – she was philosophical about reaching the end of her life even when we weren’t. What she wanted was as little pain and as much dignity as could be managed. Her life had been about graciousness and elegance, and she wanted her final chapter to match the ones that had gone before. …
Death (and I know my mother would agree with this, because we talked about it many times) is one of life’s bookends. We work hard to make the other bookend – birth – as safe, as free of pain and trauma, and as welcomed as we can. That’s what the End of Life Choice Bill aims to achieve for terminal patients – an acknowledgment that when death comes, we can allow people to leave with the least pain and trauma, and the most dignity. To let them continue to have a voice, even in their final moments.
We have just marked one year since Donna died. You never go back to being the person you were before, but you learn to wrap the grief more gently into the person you are now. You find ways to honour them. Which is why I will be voting Yes for Compassion in this September’s referendum.
This issue affects so many people, who all have their own experience with someone who has been terminally ill.
The death of George Floyd in Minnesota has turned the spotlight yet again on the fractious topic of race relations and police brutality in the United States. With terrible regularity, we see news headlines about a person in the US (usually “black”) being killed by a police officer (usually “white”). Sometimes the victim has committed a relatively petty crime; sometimes they appear to be entirely innocent. In most cases the police seem to have used sustained, disproportionate and unreasonable force.
Floyd’s killing has flung a match into a tinderbox of simmering resentment not only in the United States but around the world.
So it was that I was walking through The Octagon late this afternoon, and observed the remnants of a protest in solidarity with those protesting in the United States. The crowd was youthful, peaceful and earnest. I was sympathetic. But I was particularly struck by a large fabric banner strung up under the statue of Robbie Burns. Starkly, it proclaimed: “Abolish Whiteness.”
I was momentarily baffled. I am “white” – if you go back a few generations my heritage is mainly Scottish – and until that moment I found myself in agreement with the protest. I stared at the banner for several seconds. A few questions occurred to me:
– What exactly do they mean by “Abolish?”
– By what method would they hope to see this abolition to be carried out?
– What exactly do they mean by “Whiteness?”
I wondered if there are any circumstances, ever, where it would be acceptable to display a banner proclaiming “Banish Blackness” or perhaps “Banish Maoridom?” If such a banner would be considered a stain and embarrassment on any person hoisting it (and, to be clear, that is precisely how I would feel about it)… why is this “Abolish Whiteness” banner any different?
Let’s be charitable and assume that “abolish” is just a generic term for disapproval: “Boo to whiteness.” The question remains, what do they mean by “whiteness” and why did someone feel the need to raise a huge banner disapproving of it?
In the most slavishly literal sense whiteness refers to skin tone. If your skin is on the lighter end of the human spectrum, if you have a certain look, typically (but not entirely) associated with European ancestry, then you’re “a white”. But the people who hoisted the banner wouldn’t be happy if we just hit the tanning salon. No, what they are really referring to is the nebulous idea of “white culture.” It seems impossible to define, but make no mistake that it is a terrible thing and it is inextricably tied to the problems seen in the US.
It comes with the increasingly common, and lazy, narrative: the problem here is not racism per se, not systemically awful police training, not general militarisation of the police (although these might be side effects of it). The real problem is the “culture” inextricably tied to a race – one race.
By being born white, we have apparently been tarnished by a form of original sin — racism and bigotry might as well be branded into our flesh. (This is, to shovel on the irony, an entirely racist perspective.)
Don’t derail this narrative by mentioning well-known incidents where black U.S cops have killed innocent whites (Justine Ruszczyk) or indeed where white U.S. cops have killed innocent whites (Daniel Shaver) – just keep your focus on “whiteness bad.”
Don’t point out that on a global scale, “whites” are actually a distinct minority (about 10-12% of the world population). Don’t point out that, say, for all the shame and horror of slavery in the United States, it was hundreds of thousands of white men who gave their lives for the cause of emancipation in the US Civil War. Don’t go digging into homicide statistics from around the world to uncover some uncomfortable truths about who is killing who, and how often, these days.
No, don’t try to defend “whiteness,” whatever that means – no matter your humbleness, no matter the depth of your sorrow and sympathy and solidarity for your black brothers and sisters in humanity – if you dare to defend your racial identity as a white person you’ll risk being branded as a racist, perhaps a white supremacist, maybe even a fascist. Don’t worry – those insults are practically meaningless these days. (A shame, because there are still some real fascists and white supremacists out there, and if we throw the terms around willy-nilly we will find ourselves lost, like the boy who cried wolf, when we really need to use them accurately.)
In conclusion, at its core this banner is incoherent – a vague call for intolerance in the name of tolerance; a formlessly racist sentiment in the name of racial equality.
We desperately need a world with less hate and more understanding. The sentiments expressed in this banner are doing nothing to help.
It’s too easy to dismiss the Greens’ Poverty Action Plan as a flight of fantasy – pie in the sky stuff that’ll never happen.
But think again.
Making policy like they’re planning takes power. And while the Greens may not have it at the moment, it could be a very different story after September 19.
The power in this Government lies with the Winston Peters’ handbrake party, New Zealand First, the only party in the formal coalition. The Greens’ opinion poll rating has been pretty consistent – above the 5 per cent threshold – whereas Labour’s coalition cobbers are struggling at 2 to 3 per cent.
So chances are that after September 19, the Greens could well be where NZ First was after the last election and able to make demands – such as moving tax rates for those earning over a hundred grand to 37 per cent, and those on $150,000 having 42 per cent of their income going into the government’s pocket.
Does anyone think Labour would fight against tax increases?
Smiling all the way to the ballot box if that doesn’t happen will be National, which will be out selling what a Labour/Greens coalition could look like.
Yep a vote for Labour is a vote for increasing taxes during a recession.
The report “A DOG’S BREAKFAST: New Zealand’s Anti-Smacking Law 13 Years On” examines the social indicators relating to child abuse affecting our children and families in the years leading up to the ban on smacking (2000 – 2007) and since the law was passed (2007 – 2019). Using official government data from Oranga Tamariki, NZ Police, Stats NZ and the Ministry of Health, it asks: Has there been any improvement? Have the warnings about the anti-smacking law targeting the wrong parents been proved right? Is the law doing more harm than good? And is it time for politicians to respond to the concerns of law-abiding parents?
Key findings of this report include:
notifications of abuse to government agencies continue to increase at alarming rates
rates of physical abuse (including serious physical abuse) found by both the police and Oranga Tamariki (OT) have increased significantly since the law was passed
successive governments have failed to reduce physical abuse as promised, and any government targets appear to have been abandoned altogether
child homicides continue to fluctuate with no sign of any long-term, sustained improvement. New Zealand has one of the worst abuse rates in the OECD, and Maori are disproportionately represented
we have more children in care (especially Maori children)
there are disturbing trends in the wellbeing of children, including the high rates of self-harm, suicide, and emotional and behavioural problems
there are significant warranted concerns around increasing levels of violence in schools, including bullying and physical violence targeting principals and teaching staff
while politicians claim the new law does not criminalise “good parents” for lightly smacking their children, a legal analysis finds this is inconsistent with the actual legal impact of the new Section 59
“The fact that so many social indicators around the welfare of children continue to worsen – rather than improve, or even abate – proves we simply are not tackling the real causes of child abuse. It demonstrates that the law has been completely ineffective in terms of tackling the problem it was supposed to confront.
Newshub has obtained an explosive audio recording of Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash talking about NZ First MPs Winston Peters and Shane Jones.
The recording was from February 2018, around the time the Government first delayed the rollout of cameras on nearly 1000 fishing boats – since then it’s been delayed again until at least October next year.
In it, Nash points the finger of blame squarely at them for delaying plans to put cameras on commercial fishing boats to make sure they don’t break the law.
Cameras on fishing boats are causing conniptions and contradictions.
“New Zealand First has not been the cause of delays on cameras,” Nash has claimed on Tuesday.
But in February 2018, a few months after he took office, the explanation was remarkably different according to this secret recording obtained by Newshub.
“I’ve got to play the political game in a way that allows me to make these changes. Now, Winston Peters and Shane Jones have made it very clear they do not want cameras on boats,” Nash can be heard saying in a recording.
So do we believe what the Minister has said publicly or what he was recorded saying in private? Not a hard one.
NZ First MPs are adamant they haven’t delayed things, with Jones blaming the pandemic.
“I’m not the Fisheries Minister, but I suspect that COVID has got a lot to do with it,” Regional Development Minister Shane Jones told Newshub.
“Cameras on fishing boats is really interesting. We haven’t blocked cameras on fishing boats,” NZ First MP Tracey Martin told Newshub Nation.
Although in an interview with Newshub less than two weeks ago, party leader Winston Peters eventually acknowledged NZ First was involved in the delay.
“Do we listen to industry representation, yes. Are we concerned about families and their economic representation? Yes. Are we the cause of that delay? Well, we are part of the representation that has ended up with a more rational and sane policy, yes” he said. Asked whether that was a yes to the original question, Peters responded: “yes”.
So two NZ First MPs deny it is anything to do with them, while Winston says it is. Such an honest bunch.
Fishing company Talley’s donated $10,000 to Shane Jones’ 2017 election campaign. RNZ also revealed that Talleys donated $26,950 to the NZ First Foundation.
Now here is what is interesting.
The Greens haven’t said a peep.
Imagine if this was happening as part of a National-led Government. Greens would be decrying it as corruption. They’d be laying complaints with the Police, the SFO, the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman etc. They’d demand a Commission of Inquiry into it and would denounce it daily in Parliament.
Instead they stay silent rather than risk the baubles of office.
Paula Bennett has revealed she’s been physically assaulted three times, received “numerous death threats” and had to call the police to her house in an eye-opening interview about her political career with The AM Show. …
“I’ve had numerous death threats, I’ve had police at my house, I’ve been physically assaulted three times – which I’ve never said before,” she said.
“There were three times – one time, when they chased me and I managed to get in my car and lock it and they kicked my car door… Another time I was just shoved, and one of my colleagues managed to get in and physically restrain the person.”
This is terrible stuff, and no MP should have to put up with this.
I note some MPs run off to the media almost every few weeks with a story about how they are being picked on online. Meanwhile Paula has had actual death threats and assaults, but doesn;’t use them as a form of profile raising.
I recall being a junior staffer in the mid 90s and there was a campaign against then Health Minister Bill English over Pharmac not funding some drug. There were tens of thousands of postcards and more than a few of them included death threats not just against him but also his family.
