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August 23, 2024 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 23 August 2024

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General Debate

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NeverMindTheBollocks

The Ross bridge needs repairs to remain part of the West Coast Wilderness trail. It’s been suggested that cyclists pay a toll. User pays and all that.

Cyclists to divert some of their money from expensive bikes and gear? The same cyclists who pay nothing extra to hog publicly owned, bike-only cycle lanes?

Yeah, right.

http://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/525886/mayor-calls-for-cycle-trail-tolls-after-dangerous-bridge-closed
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August 23, 2024 8:01am
- mandk
  
  The NZ Health Survey shows Māori are disproportionately likely both to use methamphetamines and to drink hazardously.
  
  So, it’s no surprise at all that they are disproportionately likely to be tasered.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:13am
- NZL Fusion
  
  Millions spent on gold plated cycle ways around NZ, then nothing lift to fix old essential ones 🙃
  
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  August 23, 2024 6:29pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

RNZ reports that large brown men are disproportionately likely to be tasered by Police.

I wonder what the proportions would be if gang members were stripped out of the numbers.
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August 23, 2024 8:06am
- cmm
  
  If you look at the numbers then a Maori of criminal persuasion is less likely to be tased than a white criminal.
  
  Just shows that you can play the stats to support any narrative.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:23am
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Lies, damned lies and statistics
    
    Mark Twain
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:49am
- PurplePen
  
  Perhaps if they weren’t so large they wouldn’t be such an easy target.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:39am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  As the police union hack said to hosing this week30% of cops are Māori regional commanders are Māori, deputy commissioner is Māori, so why would they be teaching cops to pick on Māori, it’s utter bullshit
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:11am
  - peterwn
    
    And several years ago the SMH reported that there were more Maoris employed in the NSW prison service than there were Maori prisoners.
    
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    August 23, 2024 5:12pm
- mandk
  
  The NZ Health Survey shows that Māori are disproportionately likely both to use methamphetamines and to drink hazardously.
  
  So, it’s hardly a surprise that they are disproportionately likely to be tasered. Both those behaviours are likely to make them violent or psychotic.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:18am
- Taieri
  
  large brown men are disproportionately likely to be tasered by Police
  ———-
  
  Big targets are easier to hit than small ones. Just imagine if they were large orange men…
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:46am
- Surely Knott
  
  Surely that is because a large muscular man is more likely to be tasered because it is harder for a police person to forcibly subdue them because they are big and strong, and many officers will be smaller and weaker. I would imagine that small skinny females can be badly behaved but would be easier to physically hold and cuff.
  
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  August 23, 2024 12:41pm
Pope Punctilious II

I don’t always agree with the NZ Initiative, but this report shows they’re clear-eyed about academia:
https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/reports/unpopular-opinions-academic-freedom-in-new-zealand/
They identify the three main threats to academic freedom in NZ as:
– progressive radicalism within universities
– foreign interference in the form of the Chinese Communist Party
– the managerial, brand-focussed nature of contemporary universities.
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August 23, 2024 8:07am
- Philview
  
  I have some exposure to a few academics through work. The sort of comments I am picking up is that they have to toe the woke line or they will be off the payroll. Those doing research are finding it hard to get funding if not tied to racial priorities. Things maybe changing with the new Government. I would bet with the cut backs the free speakers are first to get the cut and this will make things worse.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:27am
  - SWIM
    
    have some exposure to a few academics through work.
    
    Do you wear rubber gloves?? Is there an anti venom if you get bitten?
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:32pm
- Phronesis
  
  They are problems but I’m not sure they are the most serious problems. The CCP certainly have their own interests and these are taken far more seriously from a security point of view in the Australian university system. But they are a minor problem for the university itself. Management are a drain on resources and certainly play their part in making cultural change difficult. And it is the culture that is killing the university.
  
  An institution that relies on attracting and developing the talents of the very best in their fields is particularly vulnerable to the scourge of DEI. This happens to have coincided with a period in many disciplines where we’ve reached the limit of what can be achieved through hard work alone. Advances have been incremental at best for decades. New thinking is required from uniquely talented people but there is neither the right people nor the necessary environment to allow that.
  
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  August 23, 2024 12:08pm
Maggy Wassilieff

I’m missing Maggie Pie.
Can someone search the nail clinics and ~~High~~ tennis Courts of Remuera and bring her back to KB?
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August 23, 2024 8:08am
- imalwaysright
  
  Fed up with being censored perhaps.
  I miss her also.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:15am
- Benedict Yu
  
  Well the flip side is that she posted comments daily that tested the patience of the moderators, particularly comments that were implicitly, or in some cases, overtly racist. She was then given a 24 hours holiday.
  
  She can come back whenever she wants to come back.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:29am
  - David Garrett
    
    Bene: I’m afraid I disagree with my friend Maggie…I find Ms Pie’s comments often vapid in the extreme.
    
    That, and her irritating inability to understand that a person can, by definition, only have ONE “best friend”
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:49am
    - imalwaysright
      
      If you consider her comments extremely vapid then why did you read them?
      
      And the comment above insinuating that she is racist is cheap and nasty.
      
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      August 23, 2024 8:58am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        You are missing my point. It does not matter whether I think that her comments are racist. The moderators do not give a toss what I think. All they care about is whether her comments violate the comments policy of the blog, as set by the owner of the blog.
        
        It is not my job to defend the moderators. However I will tell you that contrary to what you have concluded, Maggie’s comments are not “censored” to protect people’s feelings from being hurt. The moderation of this blog is very light handed. Perhaps 1 in 200 comments are deleted. Probably fewer. To have a comment deleted, you pretty much need to set out to have that result.
        
        [Mod – there are currently 217 deleted comments in trash, they date back to 2022]
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:13am
      - OlderChas
        
        I have seen several comments suggesting if you don’t like something – then don’t read it. How on earth can you decide that you don’t like it – or find it vapid – without reading it?
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:07am
    - Observer of Life
      
      DG: You do realise it’s all very tongue in cheek stuff she writes? Or am I just bring naive?? 🤪
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:00am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        You are being naive.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:14am
      - David Garrett
        
        Observer: I disagree…if she is not a “lady who lunches” from Remuera, she would certainly like to be one. I get the feeling she is none too bright – and that’s not just because she doesn’t understand you can’t have multiple “besties” to use her teenage language.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:20am
      - mogg
        
        You are right only a fool would think otherwise.
        
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        August 23, 2024 1:34pm
      - Benedict Yu
        
        Excellent. You think that the moderators are fools?
        
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        August 23, 2024 4:14pm
    - Sir Cullen's Sidekick
      
      DG – Are you back in NZ? If so, what is the word on street about this government and Luxon as opposed the best PM we ever had i.e. Dame Jacinda.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:09am
      - David Garrett
        
        SCS: No, I am still enjoying 25C weather in the Kingdom. I was actually due to come back for some R and R today, but a few pressing things have come up here – and the weather in NZ is bloody awful right now.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:49am
    - SWIM
      
      DG you think its a “her”?
      I always thought its a cock in a frock.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:32am
      - imalwaysright
        
        Why?
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:35am
    - Flossie
      
      Is your “friend” Maggie, or Maggy?
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:37am
    - lifesgood
      
      Well I have wondered if Maggie is even a female and I don’t believe she is Catholic. She? has created an internet persona. I suspect said person is absent because she will be attending the Polkinghorne trial. She seemed to have an intense interest in it.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:02am
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Yes, MP’s recent drift into racist comments has blighted his/ her/ their otherwise entertaining contributions.
    
    Perhaps s/he’s off at reeducation camp, sans device.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:16am
  - Inandout
    
    BY, you have lost the argument when you trot out that bloody term ‘racist’. Maggie was expert at riling your good self.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:22am
    - Ghost
      
      And yet she got a ban
      
      So whose wrong
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:07am
      - kowtow
        
        We were all banned from travelling .many banned from their employment .
        
        Who was wrong.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:15am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        As I recall she got a 24 hours holiday. Hardly a ban.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:15am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        And it is “who is” or “who’s”.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:16am
      - Bridgenag
        
        Maggie was a great balance to the nasty trolls on here. Site not the same without maggie and krazikiwi.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:37am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      See my other comment. The moderators I don’t think give a toss whether she riles me up. It is not their job to protect me from Maggie induced hurt feelings.
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:17am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    After you get a ban you have to re issue a password, I almost gave up then it worked
    
    [Mod – important to check your spam folder for the reset we send out. If you have problems let us know. Also make sure your email address is correct]
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:21am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Mod yes, but maybe we Maggie doesn’t know
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:27pm
- Mike
  
  Probably working a few extra shifts at Fresh Choice Otahuhu.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:32am
- Damocles11
  
  Could you ask the person behind the ‘parody account’ to make contact with you directly so the two of you can start corresponding? There must be some way Maggy and ‘Maggie’ can get in touch with each other.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:41am
- Suze Wainwright
  
  I’ve just assumed they’ve set up camp at the Polkinghorne trial.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:55am
  - Paulus
    
    Can’t see that I have read any evidence of the charge that he killed his wife yet.
    Everything else but it is early days yet !
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:28am
- mogg
  
  Ditto, Maggie Pie was a real breath of fresh air for KB, it’s a much duller place without her.
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:02am
  - Don Beckett
    
    Yes, most of her commenting is ‘tongue-in-cheek’, and contrary to DG’s opinion, I think she is a pretty intelligent lady, but occasionally her humor gets a bit on the – shall we say – smutty side.
    But I get a laugh from her most of the time.
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:29am
    - mogg
      
      Yes, what is very interesting is that Maggie does her abstract humour very well, yet the people who get upset using accusations of “racist” can be seen from their own comments as being very ‘concrete’ in their thinking. It would be interesting to know what they think of the ‘Dead parrot’ or the ‘Cheese shop’ sketch. The Pythons have a beauty which is still on YouTube, ‘Never be rude to an Arab’. If you can, look it up.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:40am
    - Hard Cheese
      
      Horses for courses, but I find “her” Remuera tennis club schtick tedious and worn out
      
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      August 23, 2024 5:37pm
- thirteenstars
  
  “her”? Are you sure?
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:44am
  - Flossie
    
    As we’re apparently entitled to choose our pronouns I believe Maggie Pie has opted to be “her” and that’s entirely “her” prerogative.
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:39am
- Bobba Fret
  
  I can’t say I miss them.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:33am
- wsk12345
  
  And for those who prefer a more remote environment, anyone know what happened to Clan? Not heard from him in ages on here!
  
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  August 23, 2024 1:23pm
- NothingLeft
  
  She professed unacceptable wrong-think on an almost daily basis. Un-personing was the only proper action possible to avoid potential swooning injuries and damage to pearl necklaces.
  
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  August 23, 2024 1:46pm
artemisia

In times of rising costs and reduced income, enterprises struggling to survive, or even to deliver contracted outcomes, could do a whole lot worse than examine wasted effort and resources. And in the case of taxpayer funding, should be required to do so and report back stat.

There are well tried waste minimisation guidelines out there, like Kaizen and Six Sigma, often based on the mantra that there is 30% waste in every process.

And that even applies to the ‘untouchable’ health front line. How much waste has been identified there? Has anyone checked? If not, why not?
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August 23, 2024 8:11am
- Skippytony
  
  Anyone who has been on the receiving end of “health services” knows there is vast waste and inefficiency, from the moment you walk in the door.
  Arguably it is run, like the education sector, where cost to serve is a very low priority.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:48am
- Ian Boag
  
  Just out of curiosity. I used to be involved in teaching QA – kaizen, 6 sigma, quality circles and all that – the “30% waste in all processes” is a new one for me …. where did you get it from?
  
  Working on the principle that the biggest savings will come from the most costly activities, perhaps we should see if there is 30% waste in NZ’s pension scheme :-).
  
  And we might wonder why the CAA is not facing any cuts at all ?
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:00am
  - artemisia
    
    Common as a guideline for managers and process improvement. Of course the 30% may not be so in all cases. Maybe some will be higher.
    
    There is also root cause analysis. Plenty of waste when the ‘wrong problem’ is being ‘fixed’ ie funded.
    
    If you were teaching eg Kaizen, how much waste did the case studies show? And perhaps more to the point, how many actually put such tools into practice. My experience in large organisations, very few.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:08am
- rockape
  
  Here is an example. One individual runs what was a DHB. He is on an annual salary close to 400k for presumably a full time job. He is a consultant and still manages to do locums in one of his hospitals where he is paid 3x the normal pay for a consultant. Now that is not only sucking at the teat, it’s managing to get two teats in your mouth at once.
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:08am
  - PurplePen
    
    Wouldn’t the teats have to be close together to do that. Not sure there’s an animal that fits that description.
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:44am
    - Don Beckett
      
      Nah – just a big mouth – which most of them have.
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:14pm
    - sirknz
      
      Public sector appears to be just such a beast…
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:17pm
- cmm
  
  A lot of what drives the health decisions is image.
  They want to be seen to be doing what ticks boxes rather than actually achieving it.
  
  For example they wanted to cut some costs and got rid of nurse aid staff. Great, you might say, they are not getting rid of nurses!
  But now the nurses are spending more of their time doing low-end things that nurse aid staff could be doing, so yes, those cuts came straight out of the nurses.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:32am
- PurplePen
  
  NZ Herald today, the actual paper in a cafe, ” $1.4b cuts will hit frontline’. The article reports the NZ Medical Journal said “the cost overruns were unlikely to be caused by poor management alone”.
  
  That means the journal agrees that poor management exists and is one of the causes of cost overruns. Yet the whole article focuses solely on funding. Nothing about poor management.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:48am
  - sirknz
    
    Media lies by omission, water is wet.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:18pm
  - Keith White
    
    The modern NZMJ is more woke than a rabid insomniac parrot on q.i.d. Adderall, epinephrine and methylphenidate.
    
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    August 23, 2024 1:21pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Yesterday Chuck Bird commented about nuclear power in Australia, and what a 17 year old had to say about it.
Will Shackel.
This is Sky Australia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0VHQ6th23w

After going to Will Shackel’s website I find quite a few very good videos he has made or hade made on nuclear power and who is holding it back. Once again the fear porn.

https://www.nuclearforaustralia.com/

There are 6 videos and a petition. Same freaks doing the same nonsense in NZ.
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August 23, 2024 8:17am
- Master Mariner
  
  Don’t forget the big Media Tech companies cancelling debate about Nuclear.
  
  https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/chris-kenny/mindboggling-metas-confusing-censorship-of-nuclear-posts/video/eaf5d64c97389dff89397dc3111c9017
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:25am
  - Steve
    
    Will Shackel is hoping for 100,000 to sign his petition.
    Over 26 million people in Australia, why is the target nit 1 million signatories?
    
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    August 23, 2024 2:03pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  Thanks Steve.
  
  The following is worth an hour of your time.
  
  The nuclear speech the Teals wanted cancelled | Robert Parker
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6EyJcMet_c
  
  Over here our problem is Luxon.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:27am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Thanks. I will absorb it this avo.
    I skimmed it, about 18 min in is interesting and explained in simple terms.
    Cheers.
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:46am
  - Steve
    
    Thanks Chuck Bird.
    One hour of my time and yes, totally worth it.
    How many others watched it or saved it?
    
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    August 23, 2024 3:37pm
David Garrett

I made my oral submission on the woeful three strikes reinstatement Bill yesterday. While waiting for my turn, I heard several other submitters, including some dopey female academic who was seriously suggesting that all prisons should eventually be closed.

Had I been on the Committee I would have asked her what – in her utopia – would be done with the Graeme Burtons, William Bells – and of course Brenton Tarrants who currently occupy our jails. Sadly no member of the Committee asked the obvious question.

How can any academic be so utterly stupid and retain a job?

My next question would have been has any country ever functioned without prisons? Well I suppose traditional Maori society did – but I doubt Ms Dopey would have agreed with their alternative methods of responding to serious crime.
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August 23, 2024 8:17am
- Chuck Bird
  
  Brenton Tarrants would be sent to Oz.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:22am
  - David Garrett
    
    Chuck: We have no such reciprocal arrangement with the Aussies. If he was sent there without some formal agreement he would be a free man.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:27am
    - Observer of Life
      
      Isn’t that Chuck’s point? He’d be free here in NZ, in “Ms Dopey’s” world, ergo, we may as well send him home to Oz ?
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:04am
    - Matt Long
      
      DG, if we simply tipped off some prominent members of the religion of peace in Australia to pick Tarrant up from the airport for a conversation about mutual interests, I’m sure the matter could be resolved to the mutual interests of nearly all parties concerned.
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:10am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    It is Brenton Tarrant.
    
    Australia has reciprocal “prisoner swap” agreements with dozens of countries. New Zealand has never signed up. For one obvious reason.
    
    So New Zealand is stuck with him.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:33am
    - Nukuleka
      
      Interesting to hear that there is ‘one obvious reason’ for this, Ben, but I have no idea what it is. Could you enlighten me about the ‘obvious’?
      
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      August 23, 2024 8:48am
      - sirknz
        
        We would be getting more people sent back than we would be sending back, it would cost us a lot more money.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:24am
      - Michael Johnston
        
        There are a lot more kiwi prisoners in Australia than there are Australian prisoners in NZ.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:28am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        Because there are, vastly, more New Zealand citizens in prison in Australia than there are Australian citizens in New Zealand prisons.
        
        If New Zealand were to be sign up to the Australian prisoner exchange programme, most of the New Zealand citizens in Australian prisons would be eligible to transfer to New Zealand prisons, after serving a minimum required time in an Australian prison.
        
        https://www.ag.gov.au/international-relations/international-crime-cooperation-arrangements/international-transfer-prisoners
        
        This arrangement would materially expand the New Zealand prison population. This effect would be amplified because Australian sentences, are, on average harsher than New Zealand sentences, particularly for serious crimes. A condition of the prison transfer is that the receiver country agrees to honour the sentence and parole conditions imposed by the Australian courts.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:41am
      - cmm
        
        BY: That is not at all obvious to me.
        
        Under the Australian law, the prisoners cannot be forced to go. They have to want to go.
        
        Most NZers in Australian prisons have all their families and have their lives in Australia. Most of them would want to stay in Australia I would think.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:39am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        Well I can’t think of any other reason for New Zealand refusing to sign up.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:48am
    - peterwn
      
      If I were the NZ Government, I would deport him in 2029 (when he has served 10 years). I would give the Aussies one years notice that he is going to be 501’d (using Oz terminology) to Australia. This will give the Aussies a year to put through special legislation to enable him to be locked up in Goulburn supermax. If the Aussies do not want to do that, that is their worry.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:32am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        Your comment is a fantasy. He has been sentenced to life without parole. How could he be released after 10 years?
        
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        August 23, 2024 2:22pm
      - peterwn
        
        Benedict – Parliament can pass an act specifically to achieve this if need be. The Government can probably do it anyway as they did to the two French agents who blew up the Rainbow Worrier causing loss of a life.
        
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        August 23, 2024 5:15pm
  - cmm
    
    Not only is there no such agreement, but under Australian law the prisoner cannot be forced to take it either.
    
    The intent of the law is not for Australia to take and imprison its worst.
    
    The intent seems to provide better accommodation, in Australian prisons, for Australian citizens stuck in shit holes.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:45am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      Yes good point. Even if New Zealand were to sign up to the Australian scheme, why would Tarrant transfer to Australia? IIRC he is estranged from his family. All he wound be doing is signing up for life in the Goulbourn Supermax prison.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:45am
      - peterwn
        
        Well, a lot of 501 deportees have no families or connections in NZ despite being born in NZ.
        Also as he was born in Oz, the Aussies may as well pay for his lifelong upkeep at Goulburn supermax rather than the long suffering NZ taxpayer bearing the cost.
        
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        August 23, 2024 5:17pm
  - G152
    
    As ash
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:23am
- cmm
  
  “How can any academic be so utterly stupid and retain a job?”
  
  Because they have created a bubble entirely divorced from the real world.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:36am
  - David Garrett
    
    cmm: Yes, but someone is paying her a no doubt generous salary. I didn’t catch where she was employed – but she did introduce herself at length in Maori, despite being as white as me.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:45am
    - Grunter
      
      Most likely Otago University. They/Them is possibly one of Robertson’s top advisors.
      
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      August 23, 2024 8:57am
    - Simon
      
      “but she did introduce herself at length in Maori, despite being as white as me”
      
      Pointing that out, and if they could, they would find a place in prison for you. As is happening in the UK.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:03am
    - sirknz
      
      but she did introduce herself at length in Maori
      ******
      
      Yup, that sounds like every teacher, academic, and HR department today.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:26am
    - cmm
      
      “but someone is paying her ” and they are inside exactly the same bubble too (or course with money from the taxpayer that comes from outside the bubble, but that’s a different story).
      
      Why do you think she did that Maori babbling? That was the “skill” required to be employed.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:39am
    - Conservatarian
      
      This is also common in the public service. White women, especially young white women, are adopting the trappings of a modern public servant which could be the female tendency of agreeableness.
      
      Alternatively, women know they are the majority of the workforce in the “industry”. The competent ones fly upwards, but the average ones (the DEI beneficiaries) need to differentiate themselves from other white women to gain promotion.
      
      Hence discovering some ancestry (and adopting the identity) or “going on a journey” in order to get on the team.
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:30am
      - David Garrett
        
        Conservative: Yes, I have noticed that almost everyone- particularly the young – seem to be “on a journey” of some kind these days…there was some silly bint at the parliamentary protest earnestly telling some young journo that the tatts she was covered in represented “her journey”…and she was about to get another one to represent her time at the protest
        
        Goodo
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:24am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        David if you apply for a government role you will frequently be asked to explain your “progress on your te ao Maori journey”. Such requests have intensified since the current government came to office.
        
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        August 23, 2024 2:24pm
      - julesnzuk
        
        “Female tendency of agreeableness” – please explain.
        
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        August 24, 2024 3:32am
  - PurplePen
    
    I despair. I like the ODT. It always has pieces from one or two academics such as Meteria Hooray, Dr Eketone to name two. But their arguments defy logic, are cliches. It’s the same usually for just about any academic it seems from Otago and Auckland that appears in papers.
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:55am
- Ian Boag
  
  If you want to get a handle on what goes on in prisons try the book “Behind Bars” by Anna Leask. It’s on Amazon Kindle …..
  
  While getting a handle on NZ life, you could also try “Gangland” and “Gangster Paradise” by Jared Savage. The arithmetic on meth distribution is just mind bending. Also both on Kindle.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:39am
  - David Garrett
    
    Jared Savage is by and large an apologist for gangs and other violent criminals.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:59am
    - Ian Boag
      
      apologist for gangs and other violent criminals.
      
      If you say so.
      
      The two books I mentioned are not remotely pro-gang.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:06am
      - David Garrett
        
        Ian B: I take your word for it…I have not read either of the books you refer to, but Jared’s first major work “Patched – the history of gangs in New Zealand” is certainly very gang friendly.
        
        Perhaps you would be kind enough to send the kindle versions of both you refer to, to: d.garrett@xtra.co.nz
        
        I don’t have any idea how to download kindle books.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:16am
      - cmm
        
        DG: Access to Kindle books are bought from their service. Can’t just download them.
        
        7 0
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        August 23, 2024 9:41am
      - David Garrett
        
        cmm: Thanks for that…I am still congratulating myself on being able to use WhatsApp…talking to friends and family in NZ for virtually nothing! Brilliant “app”.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:52am
      - Rex
        
        Garrett is incorrect, he is referring to Jarod Gilbert who is an apologist for gangs and often writes for NZ Herald.
        
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        August 23, 2024 5:09pm
    - Taieri
      
      Perhaps you would be kind enough to send the kindle versions of both you refer to
      ———–
      
      Just sent all these books in epub format to your email address. Check spam folder if you don’t see them in your mailbox.
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:02pm
  - Simon
    
    The gangs are protected by the State. Normal people would tear them apart and they would disappear. The police’s role is to stop people ending gangs.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:05am
  - GJM
    
    dead tree version is available for non kindle users eg https://www.mightyape.co.nz/product/gangland/33469761
    $28
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:47am
- Damocles11
  
  How can an academic be so stupid and retain a job? Blame Postmodernist thinking. ‘As a philosophy, Postmodernism rejects concepts of rationality, objectivity, and universal truth.’
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:39am
- David Garrett
  
  I must say I was very impressed with a female Maori MP – I was unable to read her name. While she didn’t challenge Ms Dopey, she was having none of the “the problem is all down to poverty/drugs/childhood abuse etc. etc.” being offered up by some of the fools as excuses for violent crime.
  
  The supposed link between unemployment and violent crime is absolute bollocks, and always has been. Firstly, in 1932 – the year people in New Zealand were looting shops in Auckland for food – also saw the lowest violent crime rate per 100,000 in the 20th century.
  
  Second, at the end of the Clark era, when she said correctly “everyone who wants a job in New Zealand has got one” violent crime kept on increasing.
  
  If the theory held any water, violent crime ought to have hugely increased in 1932, and plummeted in 2005. Instead the opposite happened, in both cases.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:43am
  - cmm
    
    DPF: “The supposed link between unemployment and violent crime is absolute bollocks”
    
    I disagree, but not entirely.
    
    Links can go both ways.
    
    There is a link but I think the causal effect is the other way around: crime causes poverty rather than poverty causing crime.
    
    Or potentially, there is a common cause ( Factor X causes poverty, Factor X also causes crime).
    
    But, as you say, just because we see often see crime and relative poverty occurring in the same group does not mean you can choose that one causes the other to support activism.
    
    In support of your 1932 observation, there are many Africa there are many rural areas where poverty is real (way, way worse than what is called “poverty” in NZ) and many of those areas have low levels of violent crime.
    
    I would feel absolutely safe walking at night through some of the highest poverty areas of South Africa or camping alone. However there are also areas less than 50km away where I would feel unsafe in broad daylight.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:57am
  - pdm
    
    The Greens have a couple of part Maori MP’s who occasionally speak with a fair bit of commonsense. I saw one of them, Tamatha Paul, do so in a debate replay last night.
    
    The other one (I think) has the Maori surname Carter but she is prone to going off in tangents into an unknown language. When she sticks to English she too beaks the Green mold and makes some sense.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:24am
    - David Garrett
      
      pdm: The woman I refer to is perhaps 40 odd, thickset…Is this Ms Carter on the Justice Select Committee??
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:27am
      - cmm
        
        https://www.greens.org.nz/kahurangi_carter
        Look the same?
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:42am
      - David Garrett
        
        cmm: No, that’s not the same woman…the one I refer to looked at least 40, possibly a little older.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:53am
      - wsk12345
        
        Rima Nakhle (National)?
        
        https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/scl/justice/tab/mp
        
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        August 23, 2024 1:39pm
    - Burtland
      
      Tamatha Paul is a hard core marxist activist
      – has her MPs salary enabled her to see the light and now shop at scotties?
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:09am
    - Mod88
      
      Tamatha Paul will be next co-leader with the demise of Marama which is imminent. The Chloe & Tamatha Show is going to be a hoot.
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:30am
  - MCōs
    
    Here’s some info from 2018 that indicates crime shot up in the Muldoon/Lange/Bulger era and went down thereafter
    Somewhere along the line police started paying more attention to domestic violence, drunk driving and drugs flailed up. https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/library-research-papers/research-papers/from-offences-to-victimisations/
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:36am
    - PurplePen
      
      It will be policing. I worked with a bank for a bit and I remember a talk from the head of fraud saying as soon as they stop or lessen the monitoring fraud, the amount of money lost to fraud goes up. It was easily quantifiable.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:01am
- Colinxy
  
  I’d put money on it that she was a Marxist of some flavour. One of the tenets of Marxism is criminality is caused only by the existence of class. This has been expanded to colonialism, race, “gender”, disability, fatness ad infinitum.
  
  The only true criminal, under applied Marxism, is the thought criminal. It’s why, for example, the Zeks (thought criminals) were more heavily punished than murderers or rapists in the Soviet Union.
  
  Thus, when the communist utopia has arrived, there won’t be any criminals and of course, the ability to think outside Marxism will have been biologically removed. Therefore, no prisons (except for the Mephistopheles dystopian one that no communist or Marxist wants to admit was the core motivation of that arsehole Karl Marx).
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:59am
  - Taieri
    
    No political prisoner (or “thought” prisoner) in the former Soviet Union penal system would have referred to him/herself as “Zek”. “Zeks” were invariably criminals.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:10pm
    - Colinxy
      
      Obviously, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the author of the Gulag Archipelago, didn’t exist then. And neither did Article 58 of the Soviet Union’s criminal code.
      
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      August 23, 2024 3:59pm
      - Taieri
        
        And what does the Article 58 have to do with “zek” terminology and its lack of self-application by the Soviet political prisoners?
        
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        August 23, 2024 5:22pm
      - Colinxy
        
        Article 58 of the Soviet criminal code was the typical method that one became a political prisoner under Stalin (there were other articles too, ones that Lenin used for example) and therefore a zek.
        
        It is quite detailed in both the Gulag Archipelago and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; the latter is known as historical fiction.
        
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        August 23, 2024 5:51pm
      - Taieri
        
        Colinxy
        ————
        
        I’m perfectly aware of what the Article 58 was.
        
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        August 23, 2024 8:14pm
- Sir Cullen's Sidekick
  
  DG – These are the dopeys who vote for Greens and now you know why the toxic Greens are always around 10% despite all controversies. 10% of Kiwis are born without brain.
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:11am
  - Burtland
    
    polls last election showed the strongest Green voter were women under 50
    – its women voting for women and the warm fuzzies
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:35am
    - NothingLeft
      
      They disengage their brain before entering a voting booth.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:15am
    - julesnzuk
      
      Because women, especially young women, are socialised to be “kind” and “nice” and therefore think they will gain social capital by behaving in a way they perceive fulfils this. Ask yourself why this is – the reality is that male expectations have something to do with it.
      
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      August 24, 2024 3:36am
- BananaLlama
  
  Ask her why she thinks Pedophiles should be allowed to roam free among the public.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:55am
  - sirknz
    
    It will be some variation on;
    
    “Love is love”;
    “It’s an illness”;
    “It’s a sexual orientation/preference”;
    “Age is just a number”;
    or some word salad bingo version of all of the above.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:29pm
    - Colinxy
      
      If she’s a Marxist like I believe she is, she may well be opposed to any age of consent laws.
      
      Simone de Bouvier and Sartre were both opposed to France having any age of consent. And while technically the original post modernists weren’t strictly Marxists, they were also opposed the same law in France.
      
      Queer theorists like Gayle Rubin are also into societally disapproved “cross-generational” engagements[1]. And queer theorists all seem to be Marxists (“Queer is an identity without an essence” – David Halperin).
      
      [1] I suspect that’s how people like Rubin got around the pedophile word, much like modern Queer theorists use the term ‘Minor attracted people’ for the same reason.
      
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      August 23, 2024 6:44pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  And let’s not forget where Burton should have been before his killing spree during the Clark regime, not sure about Bell but he may well have been baled pre court case
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:26am
artemisia

“A Ruapehu iwi is calling on the Government to intervene in the proposed closure of forest products company Winstone Pulp International.”

While wrapped up in ‘let’s find solutions’ the request is really for taxpayer money. And with job cuts in the thousands happening, keeping an unviable commercial business operating is a very slippery slope.

“Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones told Morning Report on Wednesday when asked if the Government would intervene, …. there was currently no proposal in front of him to pay any subsidy to the likes of Winstone and was certain others would be forced out of business due to high energy prices.”

Probably best not to mention Captain’s Calls and New Zealand’s abundance of lignite.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/pulp-friction-mana-whenua-to-be-most-affected-if-winstone-pulp-closes-ngati-rangi/HNVGY4HJWZGKTNBGWU5EAFTKJY/
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August 23, 2024 8:18am
- Damocles11
  
  Can Iwi groups not but the mill if they believe it can be run at a profit? The ‘Maori economy’ is worth more than $70 Billion. Why it always taxpayers that must front up the money to fund Maori whims? Have they absolutely no shame?
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:26am
  - Damocles11
    
    *buy the mill
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:18am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      That’s a labour idea, buy businesses struggling to make a profit
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:18pm
      - Damocles11
        
        If they want it up and running, my view is that they (Iwi) should buy it.
        
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        August 23, 2024 1:47pm
  - Burtland
    
    they work in partnership with the government – government provides the money and iwi gift the name.
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:39am
  - artemisia
    
    The iwi had several suggestions – “… innovation in key forest products; biofuel opportunities; improved energy options; ventures with SCION research; riparian planting; analysis of redundant infrastructure; environmental restoration projects.”
    
    Maybe the iwi could pick one and fund it until it delivers a profit. Start small. Show the way.
    
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    August 23, 2024 1:35pm
- Ian Boag
  
  I do wonder. Has the cost of generating power gone up by 8x recently? If I owned a gentailer would I be busting to increase supply and drive the price down?
  
  I don’t know the answer to the Ruapehu problem but I think the answers to the two questions are “no” and “no” …..
  
  I don’t think the captain’s calls were a great idea, but bearing in mind that the last new gas was discovered in 2001 or thereabouts and 16 years had elapsed with nothing new found …… and of course if you don’t look you won’t find and all that.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:42am
  - David Garrett
    
    Ian: I seem to recall you having some idea about the oil exploration industry.
    
    In short, if the stuff is not being found, incentives such as tax breaks and royalties can be adjusted to entice explorers here – but nothing can be done now, because Dopey Cindy destroyed the political certainty which has always been one of our chief selling points for oil and gas explorers.
    
    Like virginity, once lost political certainty can never be restored, no matter what incentives are subsequently offered.
    
    Taranaki remains relatively under-explored by world standards, and the enticing East Coast Basin is virtually totally unexplored in the modern era. A sub-commercial gas field was found near Wairoa in the mid 90’s. It was sub-commercial only because there is zero infrastructure for dealing with gas on the East Coast.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:57am
    - fightingtemeraire
      
      Bunker Hunt did exploratory drilling S of Stewart Is in the 170’s and found O&G. However, in those days they did not have th e technology to extract and bring ashore.
      
      Likewise recently off Timaru.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:08am
      - Master Mariner
        
        Yep, And off Peuysegur , The Rig got repaired in Stewart Island due to an excessive operating enviroment.
        Incidently Oil seaps naturally in Leasks Bay in Oban ( SI) when a high pressure system is above the Island.
        Another interesting note for the Uni Kids, Is the fact an estimated 70-80% of Hydrocarbons naturally seeps into the Oceans every year.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:33am
      - Sol Invictus
        
        If you haven’t already seen it there’s an excellent doco on ‘the fighting temeraire’ on Prime Video in a series entitled ‘The World’s Greatest Paintings.
        
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        August 23, 2024 6:57pm
    - Ian Boag
      
      So what was happening between 2001 and 2017? Was it a matter of insufficient incentives?
      
      Don’t get me wrong – I think the call was a dopey idea. But on the balance of probabilities it doesn’t seem all that likely that another Maui is waiting for us offshore someplace. We just don’t know ….
      
      Taranaki has been a producer since the Kapuni field happened in 1960 and there have been other onshore finds, so I’m a bit surprised that it is “under-explored”.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:21am
      - Cassandra
        
        The NZ Electricity Authority “What we do”: Consumers’ best interests are at the heart of everything we do. We work to achieve a competitive, reliable and efficient electricity market for the long-term benefit of everyone in New Zealand.
        
        2 0
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        August 23, 2024 9:29am
      - David Garrett
        
        Ian B: You were doing alright until the last sentence…Taranaki is underexplored by world standards. This is for a number of reasons, not all of them having to do with the government.
        
        One reason is that our significant hydrocarbons are almost invariably found deeper than 3000 metres as opposed to Texas and Louisiana, where payable – albeit very small – reserves can still be found less than 1000 metres down. The deeper the well the greater the cost of course. The greater the cost, the higher the probability needs to be to decide to drill a well.
        
        Secondly New Zealand’s geography makes wells more expensive, with access roads often having to be built or seriously upgraded to cope with rig moves. The last well I worked on near Gisborne required turning a 7km farm track which could manage 4WD’s into a road capable of coping with heavy trucks.
        
        Thirdly, offshore conditions here are as bad or worse than the North Sea, meaning big and expensive semi-submersibles and drillships are needed to drill a well offshore NZ (except for a few fields close to shore for which much cheaper jackups could be used.)
        
        Etc etc.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:03am
      - Ian Boag
        
        Thanks for the clarification DG. Did we have these semi-subs and drillships and the like here in any numbers between 2001 and 2017?
        
        IIRC there ws a bit of stuff went on in the Great South Basin – even found a few sniffs – but the amount was totally under what would have been needed to justify the cost of bringing it onshore. A pretty unfriendly place …
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:43am
    - Tauhei Notts
      
      I read on a foreign oil and gas site several years ago that Ardern’s decision meant that New Zealand had less political certainty than did Nigeria.
      Ni bloody Geria!!! I could not believe it at the time. I do now.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:24am
      - David Garrett
        
        Tauhei: That is most interesting…several doubters on here – who actually know fuck all about the oil business – have disagreed with me about the utterly disastrous and irreversible effects of Ardern’s stupidity.
        
        Obvious the writer of your source agrees with me.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:38am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        I don’t know why there are “doubters”. I still recall where I was when I read her announcement. I was in a cafe in Wellington. My immediate thought was that the industry was wrecked permanently.
        
        The most likely scenario is that New Zealand will now import LNG. Or if you believe that guy with the beard at the climate change commission, New Zealand will simply cease consuming gas. Entirely.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:27am
      - cmm
        
        Nigeria is easy to predict. The oil industry has been in full swing since the 1960s etc.
        
        All the bribe networks have been operating smoothly so everyone knows what to do.
        
        So long as the rules are clear and everyone knows what to do there is certainly.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:47am
    - Master Mariner
      
      With the “Anointed one’s” Great announcement banning all future Oil and Gas exploration,
      All the current NZ Block / Permit Holders from a lot of the Oil Majors simply handed all permits back and cancelled all exploration immediately. ( Why waste more Money).
      There is still a lot of prospective Oil and Gas pretty much on the whole Eastern Seaboard of NZ.
      
      Until the education system produces outcomes for students that Oil and Gas come from underground, Meat comes From Farms and Power comes from numerous sources etc We will be doomed to repeat a “Scorched Earth ” policy.
      
      We are far from it !!
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:28am
      - David Garrett
        
        Mariner: Spot on – particularly about the virtually unexplored East Coast, both on and offshore.
        
        As you may know, the crude that has been found in the East in some wildcat wells is of much higher quality than Taranaki – the problem has always been the terrible drilling conditions.
        
        But even since the last campaign – near Wairoa in the mid 90’s – technology has moved on, potentially making it possible to properly complete wells (many were abandoned in the past well short of TD because of drilling problems).
        
        The last well I worked on was Rere-1, onshore near Gisborne in 1985. It took more than six months to complete IIRC, and was unfortunately a dry hole.
        
        Both on and offshore, there are some Maui size structures that have never been drilled. Sadly now they probably never will be – all thanks to that vapid school girl.
        
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        August 23, 2024 9:44am
      - cmm
        
        The other factor is that we have enough lignite in Southland to provide ALL NZ’s energy needs for over 300 year:
        * Burn some of it to make electricity.
        * Use the Fischer-Tropsch process to make petrol and diesel.
        …
        Not that I’d want a Fischer-Tropsch plant in my back yard.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:51am
      - Burtland
        
        the “ship load of fools” cheered when Oil & Gas Exploration got cancelled
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:09am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      I keep saying, that woman should be in jail for what she has done to our lovely New Zealand. Aftershocks for decades!
      
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      August 23, 2024 10:20am
      - cmm
        
        She is the result of the voters.
        If she hadn’t turned up there would have been someone else to fill the slot.
        
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        August 23, 2024 10:52am
      - lifesgood
        
        And it looks like the moronic yanks are going to vote for a similar one.
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:12am
      - Burtland
        
        cmm voter – singular – Winston
        
        she certainly changed hertory – we would have got Bill English
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:14am
      - AitchW
        
        cmm, sorry reported you by mistake! You’re right, had Jacinda not been there someone else would have filled that void. However I don’t know that it would have been someone so incredibly naive as to shut down the oil and gas exploration industry with no notice, no consultation and, worst of all, absolutely no thought as to a replacement or the obvious consequences.
        Her actions were those of a 16 year old student politician. Unforgiveable.
        
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        August 23, 2024 11:26am
    - Taieri
      
      And off Peuysegur
      ———-
      
      We have done an extensive seismic survey programme there, around Solanders and around Stewart Island in 2004 and 2005. The results were promising as far as I know, but at the time, said to be uneconomical.
      Another extensive seismic survey was done in that period off the NI East Coast and from the East Cape north into the BOP. This one was on behalf of the NZ Government. Not sure as to the results, but had many problems there with sharks attacking the streamers.
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:18pm
    - Taieri
      
      Another interesting note for the Uni Kids, Is the fact an estimated 70-80% of Hydrocarbons naturally seeps into the Oceans every year
      ———-
      
      Used to be able to see it in the New Plymouth harbour.
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:22pm
      - Master Mariner
        
        “Used to be able to see it in the New Plymouth harbour.”
        
        Still do !
        
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        August 23, 2024 5:22pm
  - CJames
    
    The answer is no – they haven’t got spare power and are struggling to supply their own customers. Power that is available has to be thermal and that costs, especially with carbon charges. To get 50MW from Whirinaki, you need to burn 12t diesel an hour.
    
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    August 23, 2024 8:57am
  - Cassandra
    
    Isn’t that why we have an Electricity Authority? Isn’t this – I might not have its name right – the body which ensures that gouging does not occur?
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:25am
    - Burtland
      
      the gouging is designed to occur to reduce consumption
      – the gouged profits need to go towards new generation rather than shareholders
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:18am
      - mogg
        
        An average 4.5% gross dividend return to shareholders is not gouging, you have been listening to too much MSM commentary.
        
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        August 23, 2024 1:31pm
      - CJames
        
        mogg is right. If they are gouging, where is the money? It isn’t in their annual reports. All the big 4 have recently reported their 2023 results to stock exchange. Look at the capital investment, both for Stay in Business and New Production.
        The facts don’t match the near hysterical reportage.
        
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        August 23, 2024 2:28pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    Solar and wind will not cut it. We need nuclear.
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:01am
- rouppe
  
  I wonder how much wood waste there is in the process from felling to milling, and whether that waste would be enough to run a “biomass” plant at the site to at least cut the top of power price spikes…
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:53am
  - cmm
    
    As a kid in South Africa in the 1960s and 70s, we often drove past a sawmill that burned its waste material for power. It generated more than enough power for all the sawmill operations and exported some power back onto the grid.
    
    The same for some of the sugar factories that burn their cane wastes.
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:55am
    - Burtland
      
      old geezer : “bring back steam”
      teenager: “burning is bad, I will die”
      
      The worst thing is the Uni’s may have dropped steam from engineering.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:53am
    - CJames
      
      Almost all the big mills already do that – Ive seen the turbines at both Red Stag and PanPac. Bigger unit at Kinleith. Embedded generation. Also means they don’t have to deal with sawdust or bark dumps. Though it often needs supplemental gas firing because moisture content is so variable.
      
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      August 23, 2024 2:31pm
  - Burtland
    
    these companies walk away because theres no cost effective replacement – if there was a cheaper way they would be doing it
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:46am
- CJames
  
  The question that needs to be asked is why Winstones was on the spot market. Most have a significant proportion of their power supplied on long term power price agreements. The sensible companies spit their contracts so they are never in an all or nothing negotiation.
  The spot price (which is only about 5% of the market) was very low six months ago. When lakes are full and the wind is blowing, the price is under $30, sometimes under $1 at night. No doubt then, Winstones was congratulating itself on its “savings” at that time.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:54am
  - Burtland
    
    they probably need to be in a low spot market to survive globally
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:57am
  - wsk12345
    
    I talked to an old colleague recently who works at one of the pulp and paper outfits. Quite simple he said, we took proposed hedges to our boards and they said “too expensive”, and decided to go for the cheaper power available on the spot market. Utter stupidity when it was pretty clear the lakes would be low a year on.
    
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    August 23, 2024 4:50pm
- MCōs
  
  The power generators aren’t going to build a coal fired power station which most of the time would be standing by idle when they can be making vast amounts of money by sailing close to the wind.
  
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  August 23, 2024 8:55am
  - rouppe
    
    Most of the power generators are 51% government owned. They could be made to commission more base load.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:25am
    - peterwn
      
      See my comment to Mcos. Yes, the Government can theoretically boss around three of the five big generators but that has serious downsides. The Government would risk tanking the share prices of the three companies and that would have a chilling effect on investment in NZ at large. If the Government considers more reserves are necessary, then it needs to set the appropriate ‘climate’ so the generators (and possible newcomers) will provide the reserves.
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:52am
      - Burtland
        
        As a nation we decided to let a bunch of freeloaders (shareholders & managers) into the power industry – so rather than have cheap power as a cornerstone of our economy we have shareholders and managers with full pockets.
        
        “Energy Minister Max Bradford today rejected claims by power companies that electricity prices would rise under the Coalition Government’s reforms package -1998.”
        
        https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/electricity-reforms-mean-lower-prices-0
        
        The ComCom says two supermarket chains arent enough competition – well the energy sector has five and that isnt enough either – the Bradford reforms were a failure.
        
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        August 23, 2024 12:02pm
      - CJames
        
        Burt
        That is an inane comment from you.
        Max was last century. NZ power to consumer is cheapr than OZ or almost all of Europe.
        If it was so bad, how come it hasn’t been changed by any of the Labour governments since then?
        
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        August 23, 2024 2:34pm
      - CJames
        
        Peter
        There is a proposal out at present from EA/SO that wind and solar cover the instantaneous reserves because their generation is so unreliable. I am not certain as to where that is at. If implemented, I suspect the generation build will change.
        
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        August 23, 2024 3:48pm
  - peterwn
    
    In power generation planning, you stay as close to the wind as possible, otherwise you have idle assets that you cannot make a return on. You do not build a power station unless you can sell the power. Having said that, the generators will allow some reserve for maintenance, breakdowns, dry years etc, but cannot allow for ‘black swan’ events.
    The Government can ‘do something’. It can decide that more ‘reserves’ are required, set a figure and the generators will oblige. The Government can then decide to underwrite the cost of these reserves or allow (via regulators) the cost to be recovered from customers. Governments would strongly prefer to be ‘hands off’.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:46am
    - kowtow
      
      ‘Governments would strongly prefer to be ‘hands off’.’
      
      Labour , Green aren’t hands off .
      
      Their preference is hands in our pockets and ’round our throats .
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:55pm
  - MCōs
    
    My previous car, a Corolla, had a brand new spare tire that was used once in about eight years
    On that basis it’s an expensive waste of space, which could be replaced with a thirty dollar emergency repair kit.
    Building a coal fired power station is like having two spare tyres for your car when it’s probably cheaper to outfit houses with free solar generators on the roof.
    Problem is who’s going to pay for it and who’s going to decide who gets free power so that everyone else will have an uninterrupted supply?
    It’s not in the interests of the power generating companies for obvious reasons and a right wing government wouldn’t stump up the cash.
    
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    August 23, 2024 2:25pm
    - wsk12345
      
      Solar on house roofs is certainly not cheaper than a central power station. Nor is it reliable and there when needed.
      
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      August 23, 2024 4:58pm
    - Taieri
      
      If you have no spare tire you walk. If you have no electricity you die.
      
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      August 23, 2024 5:04pm
- Chris Nisbet
  
  It’s almost as though NZ has more pressing concerns that the imagined ‘climate crisis’.
  Hmm, I wonder how NZ will fight this crisis if the country loses its industry and becomes even poorer than it is now?
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:05am
  - kowtow
    
    “Climate crisis” . Te media paahti exploit all they can on that subject , where ever they can.
    Luxury yacht sinking they keep hyping , a relatvely minor story , caused by climate change .
    
    Er no , crew didn’t close port holes and there’s a question about the keel being up.
    
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    August 23, 2024 9:32am
    - cmm
      
      Keel being up? On a boat with a 75 metre tall mast? Sounds as unstable AF.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:08am
      - Don Beckett
        
        Many yachts, even large ones like the one in question, have lift keels to enable access to shallow water. But there was no reason to in 50 metrs. of water, so I doubt it was raised.
        
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        August 23, 2024 12:23pm
      - kowtow
        
        Exactly .
        
        But NZME ; climate change!
        
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        August 23, 2024 12:37pm
      - kowtow
        
        DB
        
        There are a lot of claims and counter claims going on.
        Keel partially up is from a report in the UK Daily Telegraph from the rescue divers .
        
        The boats builders are also claiming the boat was extremely safe ( they would) and had it been properly prepared for the weather , which wasn’t sudden , as claimed , then it would have survived ,like a nearby yacht ,much older did. And apparently the local fishing fleet hadn’t gone out either , due to weather forecast .
        
        Hey , I don’t really care , I’m just saying our media have blamed “climate change” which it wasn’t.
        
        No doubt we’ll have to wait for the Italian authorities to rule on this , by which time everyone else will have moved on , but the media will still be doing their best to frighten stupid people.And no doubt stupid politicians will follow suit. And our power bills will keep rising and our factories close.
        
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        August 23, 2024 12:52pm
  - Burtland
    
    the “rock star economy” has an after party hangover
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:06pm
- Simon
  
  There is a Maori per capita GDP number. National are spending hundreds of millions pa to normalize this number. Does anyone know Maori per capita GDP?
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:08am
- Grunter
  
  Shane Jones forgot to add his own personal apology to the workers who are losing their jobs…
  
  “I apologise for going against what the majority voted for and anointing Ardern as PM in 2017. She of course went on and made her ‘Captain’s Call’ to ban oil & gas exploration, which has now caused you all to lose your jobs. At the time Winston and I knew that Ardern was a rabid socialist and likely to F-over our country- but we did it anyway because we fancied some personal power ourselves. For that I am sorry.”
  – Shane Jones
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:08am
  - SPC
    
    A total deception the oil and gas exploration decision had no impact on the current power supply market.
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:42am
    - Taieri
      
      No direct impact on the current market, but very serious impact on the future. No serious player is going to invest considerable amounts of money either, at present or in the future, in the country where the situation of the power sector can change overnight on the whim of a single politician.
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:28pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        No serious player is going to invest considerable amounts of money
        
        Sounds good. I thought the current players haven’t been heavily into new generation investment in the 15 or so years since Max B waved his magic wand over the new improved competitive power system.
        
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        August 23, 2024 12:51pm
      - CJames
        
        No Ian. Max was over 25 years ago and about 4000MW has been built since then.
        
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        August 23, 2024 2:36pm
    - CJames
      
      SPC
      Where is the drilling rig which could have worked over those gas wells which have failed prematurely? Or drill the replacement in-fill wells. Oh that’s right, there isn’t one because they aren’t coming here to drill exploration wells.
      Stop being an apologist for the incompetence of the previous administration.
      
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      August 23, 2024 3:53pm
      - Taieri
        
        The last offshore gas job in NZ was Valaris 107 jack up working on phase 2 development of the Kupe field in the Taranaki Bight. This was completed in December 2023. To my best knowledge nothing else is expected or planned in the foreseeable future.
        
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        August 23, 2024 4:06pm
      - SPC
        
        It was National that sold shares in the power companies and expected them to deliver a return to shareholders. And then there is the market system of using price to manage down demand when the supply was short.
        
        All of which meant higher prices for business.
        
        Jones is a relic of old industry, a shill for carbon use, yesterdays man.
        
        The Europeans and Oz are lowering their cost of power via solar and battery storage.
        
        Our future is solar in the home and the roofs of business. This means lower power price for the home and also off the grid.
        
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        August 23, 2024 4:27pm
      - Benedict Yu
        
        I would pay more attention if you cited some data and analysis.
        
        As European nations currently have the most expensive power globally, your claim does not stack up.
        
        https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
        
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        August 23, 2024 4:56pm
      - Taieri
        
        The Europeans and Oz are lowering their cost of power via solar and battery storage.
        ———
        
        They are. Particularly in Germany. About 25% price increase for domestic consumers in 2022 alone.
        
        https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-households-pay-electricity
        
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        August 23, 2024 5:01pm
      - CJames
        
        SPC
        Confirming what BY wrote – here are worldwide Dec 2023 electricity prices.
        https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
        So stop repeating rubbish talking points that come out of some twerp’s head.
        
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        August 24, 2024 6:38am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Labour also banned coal mining at Huntley, now we buy Indonesian coal
      
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      August 23, 2024 9:35pm
      - CJames
        
        They didn’t ban coal mining at Huntly. Huntly East exhausted its seam, Huntly West is on fire but Rotowaro and a few other sites are still providing coal to the market.
        
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        August 24, 2024 6:39am
- cmm
  
  Hey how about the Iwi investing some of their extortions in this company? They should be able to buy it for a some.
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:44am
- Mod88
  
  The Taxpayer should be nowhere near bailing out one of NZ’s richest/biggest Companies. The perfect example of what happens is Air NZ, loss after loss, year on year.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:33am
  - peterwn
    
    Agreed, especially if the company made dud power purchasing decisions like CJames outlined at 8.54am.
    The moral hazard here is companies would be tempted to make careless or reckless strategic decisions in the knowledge that the Government would bail them out.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:04pm
    - Ian Boag
      
      moral hazard
      
      Some sort of hazard also associated with a rural region getting the scorched earth treatment. Under the bus and all that.
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:55pm
- PurplePen
  
  Agree with all the comments following (above?). The thing is, these businesses are the lifeblood of each town and the people that live there. Kaitaia is another one where a closure is imminent and will be devastating to an area that is already at the bottom of the economic scale. Successive governments didn’t allow the likes of the BNZ nor AirNZ to fail. A bailout is not the answer. But the failure of the electricity market is on successive governments. An argument could be mounted that until government fixes the market, electricity is subsidised to a point when the market is fixed. Unfortunately, that could be a long time and can we afford it.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:11am
  - peterwn
    
    The electricity market has not failed. It is just that some major customers and small retailers are overly reliant on buying power at spot prices. The problems with that approach are:
    1. They risk getting their fingers burnt then demand that the Government ‘do something’.
    2. By playing the spot market instead of entering into proper power purchasing contracts, they fail to signal to the generators that they need a quantum of power so the generator can build the capacity.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:09pm
  - CJames
    
    The elecricity market has not failed. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to. It is sending signals to both consumers and generators as to what electricity is worth. For consumers, go for longer term supply contracts. For generators, when to build stations.
    If one reads about the 10th paragraph in a lot of new station announcements, you will see that the decision was brought about because a significant long term supply contract was signed. That is a good example of a market decision.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:54pm
    - CJames
      
      In the Transpower reports here, you can see what spot power prices were for last 18 months
      https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/notices-and-reporting/market-operations-weekly-report
      Until March this year they were low and lakes were full.
      
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      August 23, 2024 2:39pm
Paulus

In an Insurance article by a University person there is no mention that Mortgagees must have insurance cover enough to satisfy the Mortgage lender.
In the old days an annual certificate was required in Commercial Insurance Mortgages.
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August 23, 2024 8:19am
- peterwn
  
  I suspect for residential property the conveyancing solicitor has an obligation to ensure the property is insured before completing the transaction and would advise the mortgagee of the insurance company. If the insurance falls into arrears, the insurer would notify the mortgagee who would pay or guarantee the premium. The mortgagee can then either clobber the owner as appropriate or pay the premium and add it to the mortgage plus an admin fee. If the owner consistently to pay the premium the mortgagee could probably call up the mortgage but that could attract bad publicity.
  
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  August 23, 2024 2:06pm
Damocles11

A brilliant lecture by Professor Stephen Hicks in the link below on how the Left came to embrace Postmodernism (Postmodernism says that there is no real truth. It says that knowledge is always made or invented and not discovered.)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKMwJo9DHUQ
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August 23, 2024 8:23am
Master Mariner

In regards to CMM post regarding Nord Stream pipeline Bombing,
I find it totally implausable that that a Ukranian rented a yacht and blew up 3 out of the 4 pipelines.

( Disclaimer , I Have worked with Subsea Divers and Pipeline Layers extensively).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gnuIEqQy80

Here is Russia’s response at the UN Security Council,
Basically stating only fools would believe the Latest
“new finding” regarding who Blew up reported from Germany.

And even more interestingly,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsO7LbT95MA
Zelensky Under Fire: German MP Calls for Ukraine to Compensate for Nord Stream Sabotage.

Gee, Well remember who did NOT want an investigation by the UN security council and voted in favour of not doing an investigation, As did all other nations except Russia.
Now Germany is Blaming Ukraine as being responsible and not Russia.

So being extremely sceptic, The “conspiracy theorist” in me would assume
they want out of Ukraine ( Nato) due to not having a shit show of winning and now about too throw Ukraine under the Bus by (Now) blaming them for Nord Stream.

What an absolute Shit Show.
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August 23, 2024 8:35am
- cmm
  
  I am curious as to what you find implausible.
  
  The depths are easy to work at. 60 metres. Not only that but you don’t even have to dive to the bottom to place explosives. You can just dump them over the side with weights and pull them into place with ropes.
  
  Finding the pipes is easy enough. They would show up on a $1000 fish finder or a magnetometer and their position is known to a few hundred metres.
  
  Judging from the video I saw, the holes in the pipe were around 1 to 2 metres in size. I am no explosives expert, but I propose that 50kg of explosives would do that with ease.
  
  I am no longer in the diving scene, but if I was in Cape Town and had my diving connections there I bet you I could put that operation together in an evening or two (including sourcing the explosives which are often used in the offshore diamond mining).
  
  The technical challenge of blowing this up is low. All it really comes down to is motivation.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:13am
  - Master Mariner
    
    Fair comment CMM and agree with some comments,
    However these Pipes are buried by a Ship towing a large trowl and pipes layed into a trench.
    
    3 x pipelines blown simultanousely would require a timing device after attached.
    
    The Pipelines are patroled and/or constantly monitored by adjoining countries Navies, Ports etc.
    
    The Damage done due to explosions was immense,
    
    Operating depths of up to 80m is at the very extreme end of diving apart from Saturation Diving which requires a lot more than can be found on a small yacht.
    
    In a nutshell, Well outside the realms of even professional Navy Divers for the time frames involved.
    
    There was a Reason why everyone voted against an investigation in the UN security council at the time ,.
    Why ?
    FWIW I believe in Seymour Hershes article and the use of Oil & Gas Divers who do this day in and day out .
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:49am
    - cmm
      
      Are those pipes actually buried deep in the mud? From what I saw they are only partially buried in places and for most of the way it is just resting on the sea bed.
      
      Here is a video about the construction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzibtVSamrY
      
      The pipes are mild steel (maybe 20mm or so thick) covered in concrete. The damage I saw would be about the same as caused on ships by a 5kg or so limpet mine. So 20kg of explosives would be far more than is needed to do the job.
      
      Timing circuits are simple enough to buy (or make). All the detonators and explosives are used in mining operations all over the world. Easy to access.
      
      The average depth of the Baltic Sea is only around 50 metres. I believe these pipes were blown at around 62 metres. That does not need saturation diving.
      Saturation diving is only used for people spending extended periods underwater (ie. days).
      
      60 metres is close to the extreme depth for scuba diving with air. I’ve done it myself (max 65 metres or so). That was an aborted”bounce dive” just 2 minutes at the bottom. Didn’t even need decompression. We had planned on 10 minutes at the bottom with a 15 minute decompression but that did not happen.
      
      Putting explosives in place and flicking the switch would not need more than 2 minutes.
      
      People diving with trimix (including amateurs) can easily go over 100 metres for hours.
      
      Here’s an article about people diving 120 metres off South Africa to photograph coelacanth. This is in conditions with far more currents etc than the Baltic: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240507-the-deep-ocean-photographer-that-captured-a-living-fossil
      
      I disagree that this needs a top end Navy regardless of what Seymour Hersch says. There is nothing in this that could not be carried out by a bunch of reasonably trained hobbiest divers.
      
      There are also all the divers from the little countries in the Baltic. They all train with the Royal Navy (up to Royal Navy standards). The main work of these divers is to blow up unexploded ordinance from WW2 (the Baltic is littered with bombs). I expect you could easily hire some Estonian, or whatever, divers for a few thousand $ for a day’s work.
      
      The technical challenges to blow this are low. All that really matters is motivation.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:50am
      - Master Mariner
        
        CMM,
        “Are those pipes actually buried deep in the mud? From what I saw they are only partially buried in places and for most of the way it is just resting on the sea bed.”
        
        Yep sure are, Or Rock dumped on top.
        
        It mentions vaguely in your YT Video but heres another accurate procedure etc for Laying Pipe.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-LbbNP58nk
        @24:20 mark and 33:50 etc
        Up to 5m underwater for pipe layed.
        
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        August 23, 2024 2:59pm
  - David Garrett
    
    cmm: I’m afraid I beg to differ, based on my experience working on a dive ship off Taranaki 40 odd years ago.
    
    For a start, to work at 60 metres, divers would have to breathe mixed gas – as I’m sure you know, most people get “narked” if they breathe air below about 30m.
    
    Secondly, unless they were to spend an inordinate amount of time on water stops, they would need – at the very least – a decompression chamber if not a full blow habitat on the support vessel.
    
    None of the above is insurmountable, but not a walk in the park either. Facilities require would way exceed those available to a PADI diving course operator
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:52am
    - cmm
      
      dg: Yes you can get narked over 30 metres but “narked” is just getting a bit tiddly though it does impact different people differently.
      
      I have been over 60 metres once, and have had many dives to 50 metres.
      
      I have also done some “dives” to 50 metres in a decompression chamber (I volunteered for some experiments for the SA Navy). Those were interesting because some of the people got very narked. Still everyone survived fine.
      
      Do not confuse getting “narked” with the need for decompression. They are different issues. Narking happens pretty much immediately and goes away almost immediately too as soon.
      
      If you are work diving at those depths for long periods, then yes you absolutely need gas mixtures. However you certainly do not need special mixes for short “bounce dives” (say 10 minutes or less). For 2 minutes or so you don’t even need decompression.
      
      How long do you think it takes to place a charge the size of a briefcase and flick a switch? You should get change from 2 minutes.
      
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      August 23, 2024 11:59am
      - SWIM
        
        cmm.
        Agree.
        Its a simple task for a couple of motivated chaps. but lets face it they will be military trained divers, far better than I was even on my best day.
        A mid water stop for 10 mins at 10M would do it and that can be done while traveling away via scooter submerged.
        It would be pitch black down there so no difference doing it at night.
        Sites could easily have been marked with rope/buoy a week beforehand so they just went down using scooters and placed charges. Piss off and leave timers to do the rest.
        
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        August 23, 2024 12:59pm
      - David Garrett
        
        Cmm: All fair comments Sir…but i disagree about being narked being just “getting a bit tiddly”…during my time as a divers tender i recall more than one diver at around 30m telling us thru the intercom (diving with dry helmets) that he thought he would take his rat hat off…at 30 m
        
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        August 23, 2024 1:00pm
- Damocles11
  
  I find the ongoing carry on over Nordstream to be tedious. Germany indicated that it was moving away from Russian energy, and indeed it has done so. The second string of Nordstream 2 was not damaged in the attack and could be used if there was any desire to take Russian gas, which there isn’t. Germany us supplying arms and financial support to Ukraine which has been invaded by Russia. The Russian attack on Ukraine threw Europe into turmoil as it put Western Europe in an invidious position of extricating itself from Russian energy; Western Europe built its reliance on Russian energy based on the proviso that Russia was a stable and reliable partner that would not do something extreme…like invading another European country! Putin thought he could act with impunity because of Europes reliance on Russian energy, he thought they could not extract themselves from that situation & would have to accept his actions. He was wrong. In the first year of the war, as winter approached, there were predictions Europeans would freeze to death en masse without Russian energy. This prediction was wrong. There were also predictions that the European economies would collapse due to high energy prices caused by the absence of Russian energy. This prediction was also wrong. The German government does not want – and will not take – Russian gas, so (again) this renders the existence of the Nordstream 2 project a ‘it’s neither here nor there’ scenario.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:30am
- NothingLeft
  
  No need to dive. Sonar plus camera and light on end of a long cable. Lower explosives a on rope. Easy.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:25am
  - cmm
    
    Yup, I don’t think you need divers for this but even if you did use them it’s an easy job.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:00pm
    - SWIM
      
      yeah a couple of hairy arsed divers are easier to source, transport and manage than a $10Mil ROV !
      
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      August 23, 2024 1:02pm
      - NothingLeft
        
        A rope to lower a time-bomb and a high-end fish finding sonar don’t cost $10 million.
        
        Although there are lots of hobbyist ROVs available for $2-3k.
        
        And deep-diving for a minute or two is safe enough with conventional gear using air. Free divers regularly go below 100m in dives that take a couple of minutes and record is 214m deep.
        
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        August 23, 2024 3:48pm
kiwikidsnz

“…keeping an unviable commercial business operating is a very slippery slope.”

Not without precedent, especially when iwi interests are involved https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/511601/ruapehu-alpine-lifts-gets-7m-bailout-from-government

However an exporting business receiving direct Govt subsidies is also likely to breach international trade agreements
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August 23, 2024 8:40am
kowtow

NZME powerfully attacking the Nats , again , juxtaposing their evil stand on LGNZ wasteful spending with a $700 k + spend on some dance fest .

Well past time for the Nats to get really serious about protecting the taxpayer’s wallet .

And now they can cite te media paahti’s disdain for waste in public spending .
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August 23, 2024 8:45am
- Grunter
  
  The LGNZ group are seething because they were hit with the reality of life that Free Stuff isn’t actually Free. Luxon did a great job.
  
  But the reaction from Mayors and LGNZ is showing how far these Leftards have moved into an ideological space that simply did not exist in NZ even 10 years ago. They are advocating, for example, that local councils are in charge of our cultural well-being!! And they are totally tone-deaf in saying their 15%-25% rates increases are OK (no apology).
  
  We are becoming more polarised as the far-left ventures into new territory.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:41am
- Damocles11
  
  $700,000 is chicken feed compared to the crazy waste of the previous Labour government, hundreds and hundreds of millions wasted on phantom projects. Hardly surprising the mainstream media is being this pathetic though: remember the palaver kicked up by Newshub over $300 worth of PPE gear.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:21am
- PurplePen
  
  NZ Herald reports Maori and Pasifika at LGNZ conference saying we’re not a set of KPIs. Then later on there’s this quote reported
  
  “At the moment, with the way government are looking at things, with all the Pacific government agencies, it just looks like at the moment they’re not a priority for this government.”.
  
  And there’s an issue right there “all the Pacific government agencies”. Why on earth are there all these Pacific govt agencies in the first place.
  
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  August 23, 2024 12:46pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Trump has turned down intelligence briefings.
“U.S. spy agencies offer briefings to presidential candidates once they have secured their party’s nomination to prepare them for life as commander in chief.”
Trump says they will give him a briefing, leak it two days later, then he leaked it.
One step ahead again. More like propaganda briefings.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/trump-says-he-has-turned-down-intelligence-briefings/ss-AA1pgzkV?
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August 23, 2024 8:50am
Colinxy

Liberation Theology

There was an interesting discussion from the thread https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/08/guest_post_criticising_cuba.html on the topic of Liberation Theology (or at least I thought so).

While I don’t doubt the creators of Liberation Theology would claim antecedents from centuries or millenia ago, it was a creation of the 1960s. To quote from the Encyclopedia Brittanica:

“liberation theology, religious movement arising in late 20th-century Roman Catholicism and centred in Latin America.
…
The birth of the liberation theology movement is usually dated to the second Latin American Bishops’ Conference, which was held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968. At this conference the attending bishops issued a document affirming the rights of the poor and asserting that industrialized nations enriched themselves at the expense of developing countries. The movement’s seminal text, Teología de la liberación (1971; A Theology of Liberation), was written by Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian priest and theologian. Other leaders of the movement included the Belgian-born Brazilian priest José Comblin, Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, Jesuit scholar Jon Sobrino, and Archbishop Helder Câmara of Brazil.”

Also of note is its Marxism:

“The liberation theology movement gained strength in Latin America during the 1970s. Because of their insistence that ministry should include involvement in the political struggle of the poor against wealthy elites, liberation theologians were often criticized—both formally, from within the Roman Catholic Church, and informally—as naive purveyors of Marxism and advocates of leftist social activism.”

https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberation-theology

Was the KGB involved in its creation?

Perhaps. As was noted in the thread, the main source of KGB influence on Liberation Theology came from Ion Mihai Pacepa, and in particular:

“I have good reason to suspect that there was an organic connection between the KGB and some of those leading promoters of Liberation Theology, but I have no evidence to prove it. For the last 15 years of my life in Romania (1963 – 1978), I managed that country’s scientific and technological espionage, as well as the disinformation operations aimed at improving Ceausescu’s stature in the West. [Emph. mine]”

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/31919/former-soviet-spy-we-created-liberation-theology

However, this Spectator article suggests there was a commitment by the Soviet Union/KGB in general to “Marxise” Christianity: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/former-communist-spy-kgb-created-catholic-liberation-theology/

“The new Christian Peace Conference was managed by the KGB and was subordinated to the venerable World Peace Council, another KGB creation, founded in 1949 and by then also headquartered in Prague …

During my years at the top of the Soviet bloc intelligence community I managed the Romanian operations of the World Peace Council (WPC). It was as purely KGB as it gets. Most of the WPC’s employees were undercover Soviet bloc intelligence officers … Even the money for the WPC budget came from Moscow, delivered by the KGB in the form of laundered cash dollars to hide their Soviet origin. In 1989, when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, the WPC publicly admitted that 90 per cent of its money came from the KGB. [Emph. mine]”

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/former-communist-spy-kgb-created-catholic-liberation-theology/

So, it appears there was some influence from the KGB. I doubt the KGB would have given money for pure altruisistic reasons; they would have wanted something in return.

To the vulgar Marxists (a term I’ve taken from Kimberle Crenshaw) atheism is critical to their religion. However, from the cultural Marxists onwards, atheism isn’t important. Liberation Theologians being one example of a mixing of Marxism and other religions together. Indeed, Jim Jones of People’s Temple is another example, and there are Islamic versions too. Antonio Gramsci outlined the necessity of undermining religion as part of his attack on cultural hegemony. This hegemony is what Gramsci believed prevented the great prophet Marx’s prophecy from occurring where it should.
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August 23, 2024 8:51am
- Conservatarian
  
  James Lindsay’s New Discourses podcast has talked extensively about the now dead Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, known for his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and for teaching illiterate peasants how to read by seeding in examples of their supposed oppression within the reading lessons. Lindsay states that Freire’s method was picked up by the Brazilian government and later mainstreamed by the “long march through the institutions” and is now embedded within the Schools of Education at US universities (and presumably elsewhere).
  
  Lindsay seems to have stated Freire was a liberation theologist. Freire’s Wikipedia entry makes a link also. Freire of course receives a glowing review on Wikipedia.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:36am
  - Colinxy
    
    Under then Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, Friere’s poison entered the NZ curriculum officially. We now have Critical Literacy and Critical Mathematics as part of it. These need to be removed.
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:33pm
- Taieri
  
  During my years at the top of the Soviet bloc intelligence community
  ————–
  
  There’s a bit of a problem with this statement.
  Ion Pacepa was never “at the top of the Soviet bloc intelligence community”.
  Pacepa was the head of Securitate, the Romanian secret political police and, at the time of his defection, the ACTING head of the Romanian intelligence service. While, these positions were at the top of the Romanian secret police/intelligence food chain, they were nowhere near being “at the top of the Soviet bloc…”. Ceausescu and his regime were not trusted by the Soviets and only tolerated because of their tight control of the Romanian population.
  After his defection, Pacepa published a book “Red Horizons”. Quite a good and easy reading, obviously he had a way with words. But how much of it was true and how much of it was written to please his new masters? I’ve got the original edition and somehow find it very difficult to believe that Pacepa and Andropov, the head of the Soviet KGB at the time were bosom buddies.
  
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  August 23, 2024 4:24pm
  - Colinxy
    
    The Soviet Bloc refers not just to the Soviet Union but the entire Eastern Bloc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc
    
    In that sense, Pacepa is not lying since you admit he was the Acting head of the Romanian intelligence service. Though he might be ‘over-egging’ his importance overall.
    
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    August 23, 2024 6:27pm
Chuck Bird

“and of course if you don’t look you won’t find and all that.”

Exactly, and Woods says the oil and gas exploration was the right thing to do.
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August 23, 2024 8:53am
- Sir Cullen's Sidekick
  
  Megan Woods can generate all the energy NZ needs. BTW where is she?
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:14am
  - SWIM
    
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/523646/the-best-pie-in-new-zealand-finally-goes-to-a-south-island-bakery
    
    Being a judge?
    
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    August 23, 2024 1:04pm
    - CJames
      
      On a different but unrelated topic, note how many of the winners of the most European of foods don’t have classical European names? Looks like yet another example of Western culture being assimilated into other’s, to the benefit of all.
      
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      August 24, 2024 8:38am
- PurplePen
  
  I bumped into the Labour ministry for trade etc a couple years back, O’Connor and amongst other issues asked why on earth did Labour stop exploration etc. His reaction was an eye-roll up. Frustrated. I just assumed he’s a good party member and toes the line quietly, as any member should I suppose.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:18am
Libertarians are right

Tim Walz perfectly debunked (accidentally) their Project 2025 attacks during his speech.

He said that, as a coach, you don’t write a playbook without implementing it.

Walz was a part time assistant coach. They often write up their own playbooks with the direction they would take the team. That has zero relevance to the direction taken by the actual coach. That’s Project 2025 – a bunch of part time assistant coaches (like Walz), writing up their own wishlists of what they’d do if they were in charge.
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August 23, 2024 9:00am
- Philview
  
  Tim isn’t much older than me per his official age but he looks about 15 years older than most people I know of similar age. He must have had a tough life.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:38am
  - Conservatarian
    
    I believe his life was made considerably more stressful over the years by his stolen valour, his historic DUI (i.e. drink driving) arrest and conviction during which he pretended he was deaf and couldn’t hear the instruction to submit for a DUI test, his love of the CCP, and his bending the knee to BLM in Minneapolis ceding them control over the city over the George Floyd Riots and to allow his wife to revel in the smell of burning tyres to alleviate her white guilt.
    
    I guess he lay in bed at night and lost sleep knowing eventually his lies and incompetence would be made public by new media.
    
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    August 23, 2024 1:15pm
rouppe

With respect to the Lake Onslow project, the Australians have their own, called Snowy Hydro:

After a succession of delays and dramas, Snowy Hydro has been forced to acquire an additional tunnel boring machine to make sure the $12 billion Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project is completed on time.

Repeated problems with an existing machine named Florence, combined with “initial design immaturity” to deal with geologically complex terrain, prompted the re-calculation of what it would take to complete the tunnelling works.

Snowy 2.0’s costs have already blown out by $10 billion and its start date pushed back six years.

From this we can deduce:
* initial estimate was AU $2B now $12B. Onslow was NZ $2B then $15B at planning phase.
* “design immaturity due to complex terrain.” I wonder how many assumptions were made about the geology at Onslow
* Snowy Hydro now has FOUR tunnel boring machines on it. NZ as a country has none. I’ve never understood why the tunnel boring machines used in Auckland and Northern expressway weren’t brought to Wellington to get tunneling to the airport started.
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August 23, 2024 9:23am
- Ian Boag
  
  Pumped hydro is not exactly unknown around the world. The Snowy one is obviously a bit of a dog but (Wikipedia)
  
  Pumped storage is by far the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of 2020, accounts for around 95% of all active storage installations worldwide, with a total installed throughput capacity of over 181 GW and a total installed storage capacity of over 1.6 TWh.[3]
  
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  August 23, 2024 12:24pm
slightlyrighty

Conservative media commentator Ann Coulter has really shit the bed on Twitter last night.

She, in a now deleted but extensively screenshotted and reported tweet, posted a picture of Gus Walz’s emotional reaction to his Fathers speech at the DNC with a disparaging comment.

If you do not know, Gus is Neurodivergent, with a non verbal learning disorder.

The backlash has been swift, and public.
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August 23, 2024 9:27am
- kowtow
  
  If politicians and the political machine that runs them politicise their children why attack people who comment on said emotionalist propaganda.
  
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  August 23, 2024 9:44am
  - greybeard
    
    I can recall a certain NZ Prime Minister who politicised her daughter. From before birth !
    
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    August 23, 2024 10:59am
Jack5

Tuck away for an interesting read …

William Manley, a British officer who won the Victoria Cross while in the land wars in New Zealand (he was at Gate Pa), later, in another war, this time in Europe, was awarded the German Iron Cross.

A history video of just under 14min:

https://youtu.be/BzpXT3SEngk?si=7NON0gKSqFXifd2D
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August 23, 2024 9:35am
David Garrett

pdm: The woman I refer to is perhaps 40 odd, thickset…Is this Ms Carter on the Justice Select Committee??
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August 23, 2024 9:35am
- cmm
  
  Here’s the menu:
  https://www.greens.org.nz/our_people
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:15am
- Matt Long
  
  https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/members-of-parliament/nakhle-rima/
  National Party member of justice select committee.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:33am
Skippytony

Here we go again…..

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/geoffrey-palmer-lurching-towards-constitutional-impropriety/ar-AA1pghCv?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=d2a0237d45cc40d9a5ad610043915643&ei=15
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August 23, 2024 9:38am
- thirteenstars
  
  Isn’t it staggering that the prime mover of the Bill of Rights Act can make this statement:
  
  Meanwhile the Local Government Act has been amended to require that Māori wards in local government must be subject to an affirmative referendum and Councils will no longer be able to create Māori wards, unless the electors in the locality vote for them directly. This must be regarded as a backward step and likely to cause justifiable resentment.
  
  He’s saying that when it comes to the fundamental aspects of our democratic institutions that there should be no greater safeguard than a simple majority of a bunch of temporarily-elected councillors, and even worse, that voters should not then be able to overturn such decisions by calling a local referendum, which was the law until recently changed.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:04am
- Eastlander
  
  If I were Geoffrey Palmer I wouldn’t speak of my premiership.
  
  He has nothing to offer but the same wretched, meritless arguments he was peddling in the 90s. Written constituons don’t protect citizens, they entrench judicial and bureaucratic interests and transform the failed policies of defeated governments into holy writ. No, the pure Westminster system is the only real democratic system that has ever existed or ever will. It allows us to amend our faults instead of making idols out of them – may it live forever.
  
  Palmer and his colleagues have done enough damage to this country – let him shuffle off in silence to the ash heap of history where himself and his ideas belong.
  
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  August 23, 2024 10:31am
  - Skippytony
    
    Can you imagine trying to write a constitution for NZ? The TOW is not going anywhere and you will never get *some* people to agree to anything that undermines the TOW primacy.
    So, IMHO the TOW is the constitution of NZ, which is why its important that there are pragmatic, persistent meanings established.
    We are two steps away from losing the principle of actual ownership of property in NZ which will trigger a massive capital and talent flight.
    
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    August 23, 2024 11:21am
    - Eastlander
      
      Yes, I can imagine exactly how it would go under a labour government. The ToW would be incorporated, naturally, and it would be expressly protected against any amendment or removal, as certain parts of the German basic law are. The treaty principles might be referenced and incorporated but not defined since they must always expand to encompass the latest Iwi demands. Then there would be the parade of special interests to be accommodated…
      
      Seymour’s bill would give us those pragmatic and persistent meanings. The need for it is becoming so obvious even the Prime Minister might begin to see it.
      
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      August 23, 2024 12:15pm
- Grunter
  
  His Opinion Piece is a long, boring, academic waffle – Palmer hasn’t changed over the years – arguably he has become an even worse version of his old self!
  
  He espouses the usual rubbish about legislating special rights and privileges for those who identify as Maori. That by definition is racism in action.
  
  It would be interesting to hear how he, as ‘a legal expert’ would determine who is actually a Maori and how the State proves that.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:05am
  - Burtland
    
    not sure what Palmer thinks actually matters ….
    
    for Ngai Tahu, an 1848 census of maori seems to play a part …
    
    https://ngaitahu.iwi.nz/ngai-tahu/whakapapa/whakapapa-registration/
    
    https://ngaitahu.iwi.nz/assets/Documents/Ngai-Tahu-1848-Census.pdf
    
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    August 23, 2024 1:21pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    He was also very quiet when our human rights were trashed by the adern regime.
    He is nothing more than an activist.
    
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    August 23, 2024 1:56pm
Eastlander

Local authorities are unrepentant, swollen with pride and brimming with insolence:

https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/reports/the-pulse-of-local-government/

“Local council members are telling us they know their communities best,” said Max Salmon, a research fellow at The New Zealand Initiative. “They want the ability to make decisions that suit their specific local needs, rather than having one-size-fits-all rules from Wellington.”

‘However, the survey also highlighted challenges. 80% of respondents said that resistance from local ratepayers makes it hard to build necessary infrastructure. And 98% believe the central government will resist handing over more power to local councils.’

https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/localism-enjoys-council-support/

‘New Zealand’s councils want more of a say over local matters. Informed by local knowledge, they believe they can make better choices for their people (!!!!!) than the central government in Wellington.’

So there you have it, these organisations which have proven that they cannot do anything right – anything at all – get a well-justified upbraiding from the Prime Minister and demand even more power.

We are beyond normal politics here – this is a 21st century barons’ rebellion. Self-styled regional leaders rebelling against the government for trying to restrict their privileges. Rebellion! What should the government do with rebels?
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August 23, 2024 10:16am
- PurplePen
  
  “they believe they can make better choices for their people (!!!!!) than the central government in Wellington”.
  
  They should be able to do this as they are the local council. But the thing is, they don’t. Central Govt can’t as they’re too far removed, and that’s fine. Leave them to deal with the macro. Until the culture of local authorities in NZ is changed I don’t trust them with any more power than they have, nor to spend any more money better. I say strip them of all their community and culture responsibilities and see what bubbles up naturally from the communities etc in the vacuum. It would be an experiment for sure, but would be better than the waste that we currently have.
  
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  August 23, 2024 11:33am
  - Eastlander
    
    That’s exactly right. They’re crushing the life out of communities because they think they themselves are the life of the community. Nothing at all for them until that changes.
    
    Another thing I’d dispute is how local any of them really are. I visited the Wairoa District Council office once and the staff were all parachuted in from outside the district. How many people working in local government are actually animated by deep love of their communities and how many are just there because they need the job and don’t give a damn about the community because they’ll be moving on as soon as they get a better offer?
    
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    August 23, 2024 12:30pm
Jack5

Northern Territory political issue: pet saltwater crocodiles.

Under a new 10-year crocodile management plan, the state government will no longer allow residents to apply for permits to own saltwater crocs.

With a “state” election a day away, the Country Liberals have pledged to review the ban if they are voted in.

(I notice in reports that the local media refer to the Northern Territory as a “state”. That’s premature.)

https://www.9news.com.au/national/nt-election-crocs-as-pets-becomes-contested-issue-between-liberal-and-labor/6bf18fc9-f8b4-4a3a-979e-354d04306c47
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August 23, 2024 10:17am
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  Not sure I’d be happy if the neighbours had a pet Salty.
  
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  August 23, 2024 7:10pm
Yvette

Sorry about the length, but feel the width

“The decision to ban new offshore oil and gas exploration in 2018 was done without analysis, without a Cabinet decision, and without public consultation.
“It was subsequently revealed that there was no cost-benefit analysis and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment found it would actually increase global emissions by forcing activity offshore.
https://www.act.org.nz/oil_and_gas_ban_led_to_more_emissions

This was not an agreement made around the Cabinet table, by New Zealand’s most powerful body, acting in the best interests of New Zealand, bound by collective responsibility.
It was a political deal, struck after intense lobbying between the leaders of political parties, who agreed what was going to happen. The Cabinet was informed after the fact.
Cabinet is the room where many political promises ultimately die because bright minds convince the body that the consequences are too great or the outcomes will be different to what politicians hoped they would be.
It is little wonder that Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones made such petulant showing when the announcement was made: dragging his feet, covering his eyes and grabbing the lectern as if it was a brace.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/104474838/arderns-rush-to-announce-oil-exploration-ban-risks-her-moral-high-ground

• Record a Cabinet minute regarding the lack of process followed prior to the National-led government’s sponsorship of UNSC2334
https://www.parliament.nz/media/4486/362429780labourandnewzealandfirstcoalitionagreement.pdf

• Not to question the fact that Resolution UNSC2334 was a verbatim copy of Islamic state Egypt’s rejected resolution except for 13 paragraph numbers added, but as a McCully Captain’s Call it had not been approved by Cabinet

If this wasn’t a decision taken by Cabinet, then how was Winston persuaded to back it. The decision runs totally counter to their policies and rhetoric. There must be some sort of political pay off in exchange. Maybe the price was the Greens continue to back the waka jumping bill?
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2018/06/rutherford_on_the_oil_and_gas_ban.html.

And now with electric vehicles full up-take requiring 3.2 x Benmore Hydro output and AI in the States projected to require the equivalent of USA’s present total out by 2030, with a relative similar demand here, if we are to keep up with US and China in this sky-rocketing field – like it or not, it would have been nice to confirm if a further natural gas field does exist off Oamaru.

And all of this for legislation the Greens won’t use – who needs AI when this clown-show-car-crash writes itself?
And, the Fickle Finger of Fate having writ,
flits on to the Treaty “debate”
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August 23, 2024 10:38am
Maggy Wassilieff

Who cares about kids on buses?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/two-girls-attacked-in-aggravated-robbery-on-auckland-bus-to-sylvia-park/HGAC4MGWAJG57MKFKK3AG5SZMI/
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August 23, 2024 10:45am
- kowtow
  
  Daylight robbery on a camera monitored bus .Not to mention , there’s an adult in charge and present ( the driver).
  
  Proof that these “youths” have no fear of the consequences.
  
  Something needs to change and fast.
  
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  August 23, 2024 12:18pm
  - cmm
    
    Poor bloody bus driver… signed up to drive buses, not be a security bouncer.
    
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    August 23, 2024 2:52pm
Chuck Bird

Sinwar Demands His Own Survival as Ceasefire Talks Implode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxnlrh0-r2k
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August 23, 2024 11:19am
Grunter

New terminology… ‘Kamala Maths’

Americans for Tax Reform have added up Kackling Kamala’s promises….$5 Trillion (that’s USD)!!!

It includes an unrealised gains Wealth Tax just like the one our far-left Labour Party wanted.

How could anyone with half a brain support this extreme Leftard? (Sir Bob Jones?? DPF???) I just don’t understand. Trump is not perfect but Hariss is such an obvious clown.

https://www.atr.org/5-trillion-list-of-tax-hikes-kamala-harris-just-endorsed/
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August 23, 2024 11:28am
- newview
  
  Grunter they both have trillions of dollars promised in tax cuts. There are also trillions of expiring tax cuts initiated by Trump in 2017. Who ever gets in has to face that. You are reading one eyed news. The ordinary hard done by American that Trump says he stands for would likely support a wealth tax I would have thought.
  
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  August 23, 2024 1:26pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  I made this point the other day about Jones; that only class or personality revulsion can explain effectively rejecting all the policies you’ve ever argued for in your life.
  
  And I think that’s true of many Right-Wing Never-Trumpers. In which case I never again want to hear any criticism from them again about how Lefties are increasingly voting for Feelz (i.e. Jacinda 2017 & 2020).
  
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  August 23, 2024 1:40pm
Surely Knott

“Two girls attacked in aggravated robbery on Auckland bus to Sylvia Park” last Saturday.

And yet no arrest? More violent crime with no info. No names, description of offenders, no CCTV from the bus, or arrest. No description of the victims.

Any word on the little girl beat up in the bathroom? When will the court case be for the man who assaulted the 88 year old woman on federal street?? Does he have name suppression?
By contrast we were shown the photos of the young man who had his teeth knocked out on the bus, but was that only because he posted on Chinese social media?.
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August 23, 2024 12:03pm
- Surely Knott
  
  And while there is no CCTV for the bus or bathroom assaults.
  
  It looks like there has been CCTV released of the alleged pride flag thieves.
  
  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/police-appeal-after-dozens-of-pride-flags-stolen-in-queenstown-ahead-of-festival/H7BE7RP5C5EHPEPZCXZ6PK4RZY/
  
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  August 23, 2024 1:20pm
  - kowtow
    
    Priorities.
    
    Look at the resources Plod threw at the pedestrian Xing painters.
    
    You’d swear that was the crime of the century given how many were turned out to it.
    
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    August 23, 2024 3:55pm
  - Ghost
    
    CCTV footage only gets released by the police when they need help to identify. I would expect being kids they will want to identify them without releasing it. Police have spoken to people involved in the bus attack so they know who it is.
    
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    August 23, 2024 4:09pm
Apteryx

Compare and contrast.

A private company investigates sites in New Zealand for building a rocket launching facility. One contender is a spit near Lake Ellesmere but this is rejected for technical reasons and because of the difficulty in completing a “cultural impact assessment”. No prizes for guessing what that entails.

The company selects a Mahia site and is highly successful, pushing New Zealand to fourth in the country rankings of space launches per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab_Launch_Complex_1

The government partners with two tribes and develops the site near Lake Ellesmere. This includes building a long runway that was not even eligible for the government funding applied. This budding spaceport has attracted no customers. The new government is reluctant to throw good money after bad.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/525932/plans-for-spaceport-at-kaitorete-spit-in-strife-as-government-rejects-further-funding

A case study in the rigour required when spending your own money rather than someone else’s.
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August 23, 2024 12:26pm
Pope Punctilious II

Oh dear. Top US college’s diversity slumps after affirmative action ban. A delicious irony apparently lost on the writer is that the % of white students on campus hasn’t been increased by the end of affirmative action – in fact it’s dipped slightly from 38 to 37%. Asian Americans have been the main beneficiaries of the restoration of meritocracy, rising from 40 to 47% of the student body. If the US education system really was set up to perpetuate “white supremacy”, it’s been a spectacular failure.
7 1
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August 23, 2024 12:31pm
- rouppe
  
  Stu Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions, said he expected a fall and “that is what happened”. He said he had “no doubt that we left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants… who would have excelled”.
  
  Why would well qualified applicants have missed out?
  
  The university said the court decision had prompted it to expand recruitment and financial aid initiatives that prioritise low-income students from all backgrounds.
  
  Surely that’s a more equitable approach?
  
  Mr Schmill added that the university now looks for diversity through “prospective fields of study and areas of research, extracurricular activities and accomplishments, as well as economic, geographic, and educational background”.
  
  Again, would have thought that was better, though surely the only educational background suitable for MIT is that they have high grades? And who cares what state they came from?
  
  Edward Blum, whose Students for Fair Admissions group brought the Supreme Court case, told The New York Times that “every student admitted… will know that they were accepted only based upon their outstanding academic and extracurricular achievements, not the colour of their skin”.
  
  Stu Schmill sounds dodgy as…
  
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  August 23, 2024 1:25pm
Swifty

I would say coming soon to NZ but of course it’s already here.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13770831/Taliban-new-lifestyle-laws-Afghanistan-women.html

There are a few niqabi up around my way and will never look you in the eye nor respond to even a cheery good morning.

Twyford must be repeatedly challenged as to why he wants more and more of this in NZ.
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August 23, 2024 12:32pm
- PurplePen
  
  I see Taliban in Afganastan are making redundant from their police any men that don’t have a beard as required by sharia law. This includes men that can’t actually grow a beard. Turns out the beard must be at least as long as your fist and it’s required by law to sufficiently distinguish men from women . You’d think that dangly thing between the legs would be sufficient. In any case, you can’t see women’s faces if they’re also covered up. I don’t see what the problem is.
  
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  August 23, 2024 12:50pm
  - Swifty
    
    Men are clearly meant to have a beard because this is what Allah equipped them with.
    
    Cutting it or otherwise grooming it is meddling with Allah’s creation and is therefore forbidden.
    
    That’s the logic as I understand it.
    
    5 1
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    August 23, 2024 1:13pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Surprise for Kamala?
Is Dudge Merchan so pig headed that he will jail Trump on Sept 18th?
Or will he start thinking of what his future is if Trump wins?
Dudge Engoron may think the same. Election interference, all of them.

https://patriotpulse.net/a-judge-is-about-to-hand-kamala-harris-this-ultimate-october-surprise/?
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August 23, 2024 12:37pm
sungsamning

UK Finally Wakes UP? You Won’t Imagine What Is Happening In UK Now: All Migrants Moving Home?
In this video, we dive into the UK’s newly announced massive deportation plan following recent riots and violent incidents involving illegal migrants. As tensions rise across the country, the government is taking decisive action to address public safety concerns and restore order. We explore the details of the deportation strategy, the reasons behind these drastic measures, and the reactions from both supporters and critics. [Smoke and mirrors.]
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August 23, 2024 12:51pm
sungsamning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pUQQx9EIOg
National Insecurity | Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain.
National Insecurity rules the roost. Nobody wants to be called ‘raycist’, or get cancelled.
2 2
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August 23, 2024 12:51pm
Chris Nisbet

Has National shitcanned the ‘10,000 EV chargers’ policy yet?
Didn’t Act have a coalition agreement condition that this would only go ahead if it passed a C/B analysis? Surely 5 minutes worth of scribbling on the back of an envelope is all that’s needed to work out that this wouldn’t be a good use of our money.
7 1
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August 23, 2024 1:04pm
- cmm
  
  Who is the National person pushing it?
  Nichola Willis is an openly Green Blue politician. Maybe its her pipe dream?
  
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  August 23, 2024 2:48pm
BeaB

Why are people in the media such liars, even when we have seen something with our own eyes? Today the RNZ political panel told us Nicola Willis was like a ‘possum in the headlights’ when asked about funding for an international dance event. I saw her. She was cool, composed and ready with a polished response.
Mind you, that panel is disturbingly juvenile – sneering, chuckling and careless with the truth.
16 1
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August 23, 2024 2:03pm
cmm

I saw HMNZS Canterbury in Lyttleton yesterday.
I’ve never seen a Naval vessel, from any military, in such shocking condition ever.

Rust streaks down the port side. Sad to see such poor treatment of taxpayer dollars.
7 2
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August 23, 2024 2:46pm
- Inandout
  
  cmm, I do feel sorry for our Navy but here is some discussion about the Devonport dry docks.
  https://www.navylookout.com/the-future-of-surface-ship-support-at-devonport-dockyard/
  
  1 2
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  August 23, 2024 3:18pm
  - Taieri
    
    Your link is for a different Devonport. The RN base in the UK.
    The Calliope drydock in Auckland has very restrictive working hours. Before you can paint a ship, you’ve got to clean it. It’s a noisy job and Devonport residents don’t like listening to industrial noises in their modest multi-million dollar abodes. Can’t say that I blame them though…
    
    1 1
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    August 23, 2024 4:34pm
    - fightingtemeraire
      
      Calliope DD is out of date and far too small. There is a small DD in Lyttelton.
      
      Build a floating dock and bring it down, would take 2-3 years. Want to build a DD, at least 10 years with all the BS.
      
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      August 23, 2024 5:14pm
waikatosinger

My kiwisaver scheme has just sent me a letter saying how proud they are that they have divested from all companies that do business with Israel, and that they only invest in companies with strict ESG and DEI policies. I strongly disapprove of all this but I am not being given any choice. They didn’t used to do this political stuff when I started investing with the scheme. At this stage it is going to be a bloody hassle getting my money out.
8 2
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August 23, 2024 2:49pm
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  Which KS provider was that, Singer?
  
  1 0
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  August 23, 2024 7:17pm
- fernglas
  
  Change providers. There’s plenty out there
  
  1 0
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  August 23, 2024 9:15pm
Surely Knott

Tickle vs Giggle Gender ruling.

Oz courts ruled today that a Transwoman was discriminated against because he was refused entrance into a females only app. The womens only app scanned faces to exclude males. The Womens App team said biological sex is real and they were discriminating on real biological sex difference not gender.

But the judge said “sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary”, so Identity trumps Reality and the Transwoman won the case.

So what does that mean for NZ. And also what does that mean for racial discrimination .

Currently uni targeted admissions scheme. You must identify and PROVE their whakapapa.

To be on the Maori roll you can’t “identify”, you have to be of Maori DESCENT.

Both these discriminatory place require you to provide some objective PROOF of your ethnicity which has been ruled discriminatory by the courts..

If identity trumps reality for Sex then why is it different for Race.
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August 23, 2024 3:45pm
Damocles11

ACT MP Todd Stephenson Xeets about political activism in the public sector –

https://x.com/toddmstephenson/status/182648811727011872

‘Some of the political activism I’m being tipped off about in the public sector is incredibly brazen. This week a Health NZ nurse distributed campaign material opposing ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill to more than 50 of her colleagues, including her entire senior leadership team. All using her Health NZ title and email address.
Might be time for the Public Service Commissioner to issue a reminder on the requirement for impartiality.’
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August 23, 2024 4:16pm
NothingLeft

Fascinating insight into Bill Gates recent high-profile public philanthropic efforts from Peter Theil – was it perhaps just a drawn out maneuver to prevent Melinda from taking half his fortune:
https://youtu.be/klRb0_BAX9g?t=7449
2 3
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August 23, 2024 4:52pm
Steve

Roasting the Democrats. The United Spot.
This is humour OK?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmRpW7tkk9Y

Moderated as usual.
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August 23, 2024 6:09pm
Ghost

What a load of bullshit

A violent assault by seven prisoners on a fellow inmate was “utu” that restored the mana of the attackers and the victim, says a lawyer representing two of the offenders.

Article
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August 23, 2024 6:14pm

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