General Debate 14 February 2025

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CJames

I sent an email to the PM on 4th February complaining about NZ doing an expensive virtue signal by signing up to another Paris to put in their climate targets that we can’t afford. There are a lot more pressing needs here like infrastructure replacement and expansion.
I got a polite response from one of his staffers on Wednesday which says in part:
“Leaving the Paris Agreement could put our Trade Agreements at risk. That means less money for farmers, less money going into rural economies, and less money we can spend on important public services like health and education. We are not willing to put our trade agreements at risk when our 2035 target does not close down farms or send billions of dollars overseas. The 2035 climate target is realistic, responsible, and necessary. It supports long-term economic growth through access to international markets while ensuring New Zealand meets its global commitments without undue reliance on forestry or international carbon credits.”
Then I see in Australian news (something not reported here for some inexplicable reason//) an article from a day before the email stating that almost all nations had missed the deadline . Only 9 other than NZ did it. Among those defaulting are Australia, China, India and EU. The US did sign as one of the 10 but Trump has since pulled them out. Evidently, the EU is waiting on elections – unspoken was a pledge would have been a big boost to the right-wing anti-EU parties. Many countries have implied they will sign it later in the year – no doubt once they realise the big 3 are going to do nothing, they will find some excuse not to do anything. Just like NZ should have done.
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/almost-all-nations-miss-un-deadline-for-new-climate-targets/news-story/32f3b7a2ae6cb103da0fdbf0c1efa195
Now who are the trading partners that will punish us for not doing what they haven’t done? I don’t think we have to worry about loss of trade with Andorra or St Lucia. The Paris climate agreement is a Norwegian Blue parrot.
Who is responsible for such bad advice to the government about the pledge? And who were the Ministers that didn’t look outside the bubble before accepting it? Talk about not reading the room. No doubt, National politicians will wonder why their popularity is dropping. Reason 253 right here.
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February 14, 2025 8:01am
- Matt Long
  
  This very much reminds me of Douglas announcing Labour were increasing the taxation on livestock on farms to make it easier for farmers to exit the industry.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:06am
  - Mark Hanley
    
    Luxons steady as she goes approach is reflected well in the latest poll results…. especially in the middle of an inflation taming, necessary, long and deep rescession!
    
    These results will improve as the economy recovers.
    
    There were changes in the composition of support for the National-led Government with National up 1.5% points to 32.5% but support for ACT dropped 4% points to 9%. Support for NZ First increased 1% point to 8.5%, its highest level of support since the 2023 New Zealand Election.
    
    https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9833-nz-national-voting-intention-january-2025
    
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    February 14, 2025 8:51am
    - Grunter
      
      What’s that got to do with the Paris Accord?
      
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      February 14, 2025 9:47am
      - Tom Hunter
        
        I think Mark Hanley is addressing CJames’s post about farming vs the Paris Accord by chanting “Four legs good, two legs bad”
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:07am
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        What’s the Paris accord signed 15 years ago got to do with today?
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:08pm
      - coge
        
        The Paris accord is based upon old discredited economics and science. Pre AI. It will be even less relevant by next year. National, under Chris Luxon, has missed the memo.
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:29pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        Grunter….. I’m responding to another non referenced and inaccurate abuse of luxon (see below). Maybe reading the constant stream of act supporter made up abuse Is turning people away from ACT. Hence their drop in popularity.
        
        “Talk about not reading the room. No doubt, National politicians will wonder why their popularity is dropping. “
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:57pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        The Tom. Matt Pope Jack poster is so busy logging on and off KB that he doesn’t have time to look up facts.
        
        Here is a fact…. unless you are a Labour spin doctor, your constant stream of misguded made up abuse Is hurting the ACT party (see the poll result’s i posted above)
        
        What do they say about insanity and trying the same thing over expecting a different result?
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:02pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        Coge, Luxon understands the complexity of the climate change bs and that overseas competitors have used the climate change excuse to hurt nz exporters before…. and will again.
        
        Also, those comparing Luxon and little old NZ to Trump, the US military super power, and the largest economy in the world….
        really need to do more reading and thinking before they post.
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:09pm
      - Tom Hunter
        
        The Tom. Matt Pope Jack poster is so busy logging on and off KB that he doesn’t have time to look up facts.
        
        Good grief, it’s been years since any nube claimed or implied that I was a blog sock puppet, especially on KB where I’ve been commenting under my own name since 2007.
        
        Maybe reading the constant stream of act supporter made up abuse Is turning people away from ACT. Hence their drop in popularity.
        
        Didn’t vote for ACT and despite approving of some things they push I’m against others.
        
        But in any case the fact is that in the world outside of KB National’s not doing so hot in the polling either, especially considering how useless the Opposition are – and this is before negatives like Net Zero start hitting us.
        
        In you I sense the same complacency I saw with the British Tories for 14 years, although your fluffing of Luxon/National is akin to the Biden defenders I used to see here.
        
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        February 14, 2025 2:38pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        So someone else noticed the similarity and synnergy of the Tom Matt Pope Jack Domacles poster. I’m not surprised,
        
        National’s not doing so hot in the polling either…. YES but as I mentioned, we are in the middle of an engineered and necessary rescession so they’re holding up well in this stage of the economic cycle…..
        
        I hope you’re right, If National gets 14 years in government, NZ will be humming!
        
        Unlike your conglomerate of handles, I reference my facts….. no fluffing (see the poll reference above)
        
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        February 14, 2025 3:45pm
      - Tom Hunter
        
        Unlike your conglomerate of handles, ….
        
        Oh god, it’s worse than I thought. You’re not being funny but serious.
        
        Anybody else want to tell him? DPF?
        
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        February 14, 2025 4:05pm
      - Ghost
        
        You’ve been found out Tom. There really is no one else on here but Tom, we are all his alter egos. Damn Tom, you’ll have to start a new one now.
        
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        February 14, 2025 4:23pm
      - Tom Hunter
        
        Uptick for you, Ghost. It’s important to keep a sense of humour – especially in the face of doom.
        
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        February 14, 2025 6:05pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        Similar and synchronized again…. i
        
        [Mod – no one is using more than one account, so that conspiracy is put to bed now]
        
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        February 14, 2025 6:23pm
      - Tom Hunter
        
        I’m bookmarking this one.
        
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        February 15, 2025 10:25am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Rubbish, GE grass seed and dung beetles will drop farmers emissions by 50%, planting on none productive land will get their emissions below 50%. They will not have to pay emissions if they use tools provided, why do people think they have to pay ever bit off emissions, they do not.
    
    Also I note it is only something to bang Nats around the head about, let’s never remind the e we hungers on here this government have taken farming out of the ETS, no let’s not remind people of that
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:07pm
    - Matt Long
      
      I’m sorry G, I’ve seen no proposal whereby a farmer could mitigate his modelled GHG emissions by using GE grasses or dung beetles.
      What I have seen is the very low grade thinking in modern government, where we have a tool that can improve water quality, reduce nuisance flys, improve soil structure, help reduce dependency on failing chemicals for internal parasites and reduce N being given off by dung, and rather than working out how to best cover the country with dung beetles, our science people leave it to an ad hoc prohibitively expensive model.
      
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      February 14, 2025 12:33pm
    - GJM
      
      the trouble is the 50% is of a ficticious number. I look out my window on the farm and see grass, bushed, hundreds of trees (if not thousands). None of these count at all. Come and talk about reducetion once you have got the accounting right.
      
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      February 14, 2025 4:26pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  They are basically saying farmers are stupid. If the farmers thought they could not sell their farm produce they would change their behaviour.
  
  Nationals expect our farmers to pay taxes for methane when no other country does.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:11am
- Gravelroad
  
  Sorry – reported by mistake.
  I have been involved with farming and rural communities for 50 years.
  I strongly object to the government (any government) cynically using “helping farmers” to push and justify debatable policy.
  Politicians use farmers, their families and communities when it suits them and ignores and vilifies them when it doesn’t.
  This reported reply to CJames subtly grows the belief that land use for growing food and fibre is the main driver of climate change.
  Thanks for nothing National – nothing at all.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:17am
  - CJames
    
    It is not reported Gravel – it is uneditted & verbatim, though I did take out the bullet point symbols. I make it a point to ensure that I never change stuff inside quotes (barring things like name redactions which are signalled) and the extract is long enough so things can be seen in context.
    I note the response starts “Thank you for writing to the Prime Minister, Rt Hon Christopher Luxon. He appreciates people taking the time to share their feedback, concerns and ideas.” Now there is an idea he may live to regret.
    
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    February 14, 2025 8:26am
    - pdm
      
      CJ – PM Luxon may say he appreciates the feedback etc but it does not mean he will take any action.
      
      I have the clear impression that if it does not suit his agenda he does not want to know about it. The Treaty Principles Bill being but one example.
      
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      February 14, 2025 8:31am
      - David Garrett
        
        pdm: Quite so…the Treaty Principles Bill being by far the best evidence of him being tone deaf to the concerns of the people who elected him.
        
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        February 14, 2025 8:49am
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        The old TPB bullshit, you were well aware of both Nats and NZFs stance on a possible TPB before the election. TPB is Seymour’s agendas, Luxon has nothing that has to suit
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:16pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    They were not be paying any taxes if they cut their emissions, get this into ya head. GE grass seed will drop emissions by half, dung beetles that were banned by the left will drop emissions to half, planting in non productive land will push emissions below 50%
    
    The science has also found away to breed stock that breeds off the lowerer emissions stock right through their herd or flock, but you lot e we I’ll never listen to what is happening, just d weed hinge cause we must hate Luxon.
    
    And as I said above, this government has tsken farming out of the ETS
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:14pm
- info@cruzpro.com
  
  If Trump can pull the USA out of the Paris climate agreement why couldn’t New Zealand do the same?
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:18am
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    Simple. Because Trump did it, NZ won’t do it.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:46am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Luxon doesn’t want to offend anyone important.
    But we can go to hell.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:49am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Again, our system says he can’t do that with a flick of a pen, this was done 15 years ago. We do not have a system anything like the US ffs, I thought most were intelligent on this site, but here people are and can not figure out the difference between their federal system and our Westminster system.
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:19pm
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      Jacinda did captain’s calls. No notice, no select committees, no votes. Just crazy socialist Jacinda said so, and so it was.
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:43pm
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Because the USA is in a position to fight trade wars, and we aren’t.
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:21pm
- BananaLlama
  
  I raise livestock and that settles it for me. I don’t vote National but will be talking with my local candidate about what i expect from them if they go into a National party coalition.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:32am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Hshshahaha, good luck with boring NZF they say what you want you to hear and piss off, so you won’t be using the new grass seeds that will cut your emissions? You will not use the new technology that ables you to breed the lower emission stock through your entire flock or herd?
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:22pm
    - BananaLlama
      
      Look this is the part i have a problem with
      
      Leaving the Paris Agreement could put our Trade Agreements at risk.
      
      Could, not would, these guys are bullshit artists.
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:31pm
- Grunter
  
  Just to rub salt into the open wound that is the Global Boiling scam with NZ as the leading sucker…..
  
  The UK, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Switzerland, Uruguay, Andorra, Ecuador and Saint Lucia met the deadline, but the UN has warned that the UAE, Brazil, and Switzerland have plans that are “not compatible” with meeting the 1.5C target by 2035. The UN said that the UK is potentially on the right track if it agrees to INCREASE SPENDING to help other nations meet their goals, a role formerly filled by the US.
  
  “Without dedicated efforts to ramp up finance, you’re not going to achieve the triple [renewable] energy target, so that’s definitely something that needs to be reckoned with in the global stocktake outcome,” the Centre for Science and Environment told Carbon Brief.
  
  So that leaves just 5 countries compliant with The Paris Accord.
  
  Does anyone, apart from Luxon and Simon WTF think that this is a good deal for NZ? Remember, we are on the hook for about $50 billion.
  
  This is almost beyond belief.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:38am
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    Where is this money coming from? It is $10,000,000 for every Kiwi.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:52am
    - Chuck Bird
      
      What is $10 million times 5 million? I make it $50 trillion.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:01am
      - Steve Otto N Shore
        
        Yes. That dam roving decimal point got me that time, and it doesn’t happen often. I must be getting senile!
        $10,000 for every Kiwi.
        
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        February 14, 2025 11:33am
      - Swifty
        
        You’re as bad as AOC Steve!
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:22pm
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        And you really believe that bullshit
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:24pm
      - Steve Otto N Shore
        
        Swifty gets an uptick.
        Yep, only zeros, and zeros have no value right? LOL.
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:59pm
    - leoj
      
      Equally important, where does our $24billion go?
      
      Who gets it and what is it used for?
      
      What’s in it for us?
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:51am
      - Bridgenag
        
        salaries
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:14pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        Swiss bank accounts for un-named heads of failed states.
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:19pm
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        Do you are suggesting we will never get out emissions down, we will just sit back and pay the billions, grow up
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:25pm
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      We will not be paying for that bullshit, anyone thinking that is deluded
      
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      February 14, 2025 12:23pm
      - Tom Hunter
        
        I suggest you read Paying The Danegeld – For Cooler Temperatures.
        
        The government’s own agencies acknowledge that we are going to exceed our GHG emissions cap by 2030 – we were 60% of the way through it by 2024. The only question is by how much. Estimates are for three scenarios: exceeding it by 114.1 Mt, 99.2 Mt, and 88 Mt.
        
        We will have to buy carbon credits and that will cost billions. They’ve estimated (guessed) the carbon credit price at a market cost $95.10, between developing nations at $41 and developed nations at $227.
        
        My estimate is that we’ll exceed the cap by 147Mt because the best GHG reduction we’ll get will be 5% per year, and even that may be optimistic. I also estimate that we’ll have to buy the carbon credits from developed nations because there’s no reason developing nations would sell their CC’s cheap.
        
        All up I reckon $30 billion, and for that we will end up raising taxes, possibly even on a per cow basis as the Danes are planning.
        
        From your perspective it probably won’t matter since it will be a Labour-led government holding the bag, and fully deserving to do so.
        
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        February 14, 2025 2:31pm
  - info@cruzpro.com
    
    $10,000 for every Kiwi. Unfortunately a great many Kiwis (like young children, unemployed, etc,) don’t pay taxes. Those that do pay taxes are going to be on the hook for a great deal more than $10,000.
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:37pm
- rouppe
  
  Can always put that back to the minister /staffer?
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:52am
- thirteenstars
  
  “Who is responsible for such bad advice to the government about the pledge?”
  
  The ideology of the public service is such that it was always going to give pro-Paris advice. Don’t think there is just a handful of nefarious actors. They all sing from the same hymn sheet.
  
  Couple that with a National Party that has long been a sickly shade of Teal and a PM and front bench that are in the tank for anthropogenic climate change, and you need wonder no more.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:41am
- Pope Punctilious II
  
  Norwegian Blue Parrot?
  
  “AI Overview
  
  The Norwegian Blue Parrot (Scandinavius caerulea) is a rare, non-native parrot with striking blue plumage. It was introduced to urban areas by the pet trade.
  Appearance:
  Uniform blue in color
  Black beak and legs
  Long, loud squawk
  Can repeat human speech
  Habitat: High-density urban areas and Seldom seen in the wild.”
  
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  February 14, 2025 11:03am
- Benedict Yu
  
  “our 2035 target does not close down farms or send billions of dollars overseas…..”
  
  How is that true? Agriculture is around 50 percent of emissions. How will it be possible?
  
  Same as the cost of offshore carbon credits.
  
  They can’t both be true. If agriculture is left alone the targets will need to be met by offshore carbon credits.
  
  I would pay attention if he had replied “attached is the Treasury analysis that explains how everything will be fine”.
  
  It is lies. If directors of a company lied on that scale they would be in prison.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:08pm
- sirknz
  
  I wouldn’t expect much to happen if Paul Goldsmith was anything to go by on social media last night. Apparently his biggest problem to solve is requiring TV manufacturers to install TVNZ On Demand, Freeview, and the piece of crap TV3 calls an app on TVs brought into NZ because people don’t know how to use the app store apparently.
  
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  February 14, 2025 2:09pm
peterwn

Shane Jones (NZF’s Associate Minister of Energy) claims the talks between power generators concerning Huntly indicate a market failure. I consider he is 180 degrees wrong. On a standalone basis it would make commercial sense for Genesis to shut down the Huntly Rankine (original) machines. Now that would be a market failure unless Genesis was forced at gunpoint to keep Huntly going or the Government purchased it at scrap value (and I doubt the present Government wants to directly own generation assets). It was Meridian who originally raised objection to the proposed shutdown of Huntly and it was agreed that Genesis would keep it available. However Genesis cannot be expected to be Mother Teresa and keep Huntly available including a stock of coal as a philanthropic gesture. Hence the talks between the generators to find common ground to keep Huntly going. Surely this sort of thing is exactly how the market should operate.
It is unfortunate that MMP has delivered an Associate Energy Minister who has little understanding of the realities of the business he is supposedly helping to oversee.
(Sorry, I cannot find a relevant news article apart from paywalled Business Desk to link to).
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February 14, 2025 8:01am
- Inandout
  
  Labour have completely fucked our energy production and the Coalition has dragged its feet in trying to repair the damage. Luxon is an idealogue so beyond saving, but surely some in National can see this country is floundering; and then we look at what Trump is achieving……
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:20am
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    Trump has done more in 3 weeks than NZ Govts have done in 20 years.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:54am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Again Trumps system is not the same system as here. Ardern through us into a state of emergency to simply dictate how the country could be run, only to go to court and be found guilty of unlawful practices, anyone thinking Luxon can change law with a stroke of a pen has to be soft in the head
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:29pm
    - Benedict Yu
      
      You are mostly wrong. Firstly, Cabinet can make many big changes without parliament. On fiscal policy. For example.
      
      Also let’s say that National wanted to repeal the Zero Carbon Act. Of course they have the numbers.
      
      You seem to make ever more outlandish excuses for a poor government.
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:12pm
    - Inandout
      
      G, we are repeatedly told Parliament is the highest court in the land. When Douglas introduced Rogernomics, brought in GST and sold off state assets with the resulting redundancies, it was done with a stroke of a pen. As alluded to we don’t need an emergency to bring in fiscal changes, just a government that says what it means.
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:26pm
- wsk12345
  
  . It’s a pragmatic alternative to developing a capacity market while we wait for the intermittent generation madness to come and go….
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:33am
- rouppe
  
  Huntly should be converted to small scale nuclear
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:54am
  - peterwn
    
    The Rankine machines are near end of life and so maintenance costs would be rising. Conversely reliability will be dropping. That is why Genesis is planning to shut them down within the next several years. Despite this, running Huntly in the short term is worthwhile since its capital cost is ‘sunk’.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:43am
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      Shut stuff down but nothing being replaced.
      Makes sense for NZ.
      
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      February 14, 2025 9:57am
      - Waipuk
        
        Yes there has. There is heaps of new wind and solar in the pipeline
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:26am
      - imalwaysright
        
        That’s why the management get the big bucks!!
        We need something like a Ministry of Energy so that this sort of thing is monitored and planned….
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:58am
      - Steve Otto N Shore
        
        Waipuk,
        Solar and wind generation will need replacing in 20 – 25 years.
        We all know that NZ needs NUCLEAR, but nobody will bite the bullet.
        Look at that – there they go! I mentioned NUCLEAR and all of the loony left are rolling around on the floor making stupid noises and having anxiety attacks.
        
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        February 14, 2025 11:38am
    - Tom Hunter
      
      What is going to replace Huntly that is equally reliable and not intermittent in power production?
      
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      February 14, 2025 11:01am
  - G152
    
    A couple of reactors out of subs should do it
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:30am
    - rangitoto
      
      They normally use highly enriched fuel which isn’t used in civil reactors. There could be issues obtaining the fuel as is could potentially be diverted for weapons use.
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:11pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Maybe, Joe do you think that would go down
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:31pm
- RoboRob
  
  I read this yesterday…
  
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/541804/energy-minister-simon-watts-delivers-ultimatum-to-gentailers
  
  Unfortunately it confirms all my fears. The ultimatum…
  “We [the government] are playing our part to unshackle the energy sector, and now the sector must deliver. Otherwise, further action will be inevitable,”, Oh noooooo ‘further action’. Whats the action so far, NONE.
  
  Lets look at what National have done so far.
  
  ‘listed six initiatives the government was working on to tackle energy security and affordability’
  
  Exploring a Consumer Data Right (CDR) for electricity, which could give customers the right to require data holders (like retailers or metering companies) to share information
  
  Keyword here is ‘Exploring’. Nothing happening here.
  
  Establishing the Gas Security Response Group to bring together government agencies, gas producers, and major users to coordinate action on security of supply and raise any further emerging barriers to gas security
  
  Working group.
  
  Reviewing the performance of New Zealand’s electricity markets to ensure the electricity sector works in the long-term interests of consumers
  
  Another working group, maybe not even that.
  
  The joint Electricity Authority and Commerce Commission Taskforce, focused on driving more generation investment and strengthening competition in the energy sector for the long-term benefit of consumers
  
  Yet another working group. Perhaps the same one as all three above?
  
  Urgently repealing the previous government’s offshore oil and gas ban to restore investment confidence and ensure New Zealand has sufficient gas to power the economy as we transition to a low-emissions future
  
  Sensible action, taken immediately. Unfortunately damage well done by the previous vandals and this action isn’t doing anything to solve power availability for the next 5+ years
  
  Removing regulatory barriers to investing in dry year security, including importing liquid natural gas (LNG)
  
  This is the ONLY action they have taken that could have a tangible effect on supply. This happened 6+ mths ago. Has the government confirmed that gens have organised LNG Generation and ordered said supplies? No mention of this key aspect.
  
  So of the 6, 4 are working groups, perhaps ‘just’ one working group looking at 4 different things. Clearly no urgency on this stuff, its not like ‘Winter is coming’.
  One makes absolutely no short to medium term difference to supply. The only thing really done is ‘allow easier import of LNG’.
  
  We had businesses closing and others forced to shut down due to lack of supply last winter (and prior). That was with good hydro supply. What will happen this winter? What will happen when we get a drought?
  
  I am glad National has recognised there is an issue. I am not sure they are acting fast enough. Remember we called out the last government for not doing anything and just having endless working groups.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:58am
  - David Garrett
    
    Robo: For the reasons I have explained here several times the oil and gas exploration industry in New Zealand is as dead as a dodo. In short once political certainty – which we had since 1937 in oil and gas – has once been lost it is gone forever
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:30am
    - Don Beckett
      
      And reinforcing that is the National led governments attitude toward the Treaty Principles Bill which will be DOA, and therefore will frighten off any investors in the energy industry.
      
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      February 14, 2025 12:23pm
      - G the giant from Dunedin
        
        they stated their intentions as did NZF on this bill well before the election.
        
        Polls are showing that Māori issues are a small worry for voters, funny that small proportion of people are all on here.
        
        PS I am for the bill, but if it’s not going to pass then it wastes time
        
        [Mod – tone your language down please]
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:34pm
      - pdm
        
        G – I am sure I saw that Maori issues rated 3rd after the economy and Health in one of last weeks Polls.
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:17pm
    - RoboRob
      
      I 100% understand that, which is why I say revoking the oil and gas ban will do nothing in the short term. It is funny seeing it listed as an action that might help with this winters power supply
      
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      February 14, 2025 3:00pm
  - peterwn
    
    They all think that walloping the four gentailers will solve the problems. What they forget is if the four gentailers stop investing in new generation, the Government is in big shit – unless the Government wants to get into the power generation business itself.
    Funny, there has not been a major drop in the share values of the four gentailers despite recent announcements.
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:41am
- thirteenstars
  
  There is no such thing as market failure. There is only supply and demand and the prices that flow from that.
  
  All “market failure” is government over-regulation failure. For decades large scale power projects, that is, hydro, have been impossible to consent.
  
  If the government were to announce special legislation to fast track a 1,000 MW hydro station and called for tenders, they would be spoiled for choice. But that ain’t happening because NZ is choosing suicide over life.
  
  Roll on winter.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:48am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Fast tracking allows virtually no wasted time like what was happening under the previous government, there is now no excuse, and don’t come back saying fast track is only for clean energy ffs, mind you hydro is clean
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:37pm
    - thirteenstars
      
      You’ve missed the point: such a proposal would never be approved. It’s anathema to the Teal faction in National let alone the environmental lobby and media that National are scared to go head to head with.
      
      If Luxon & Co. are concerned about rocking the boat with Treaty and culture wars issues then they must be petrified at the thought of specifically building a dam to rescue Kiwis from viciously high power costs, cold homes and blackouts.
      
      Perhaps a cold winter will give them some courage but I doubt it.
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:39pm
Benedict Yu

Another te ao Maori lesson.

This from MBIE. It presents guidance for staff. This is about how to achieve a “just transition” from our current state to New Zealand in the future. Zero Carbon and Treaty compliance.

“Principles from te ao Māori the Māori worldview | He aronga Māori ki ngā mātāpono”

One of the lessons is….

“Mauri”

“Mauri is the life force, metaphysical essence or energy within a system that supports interconnected vitality. Mauri is present in lands, waters and all living things. From this perspective, just transitions are normally needed because mauri is out of balance or broken. The main point of a just transition is usually to restore, rebalance or rejuvenate this mauri.”

https://www.mbie.govt.nz/business-and-employment/economic-growth/previous-economic-development-work/just-transition/just-transitions-guide/foundations/principles-from-te-ao-maori-the-maori-worldview

Staff are asked to apply the restoration of Mauri in designing policies not for Maori but for all of us. Real policies. Regulations on the environment and business.

The problem is that there is no such thing. For example rivers do not have a “life force” which gets out of balance. They become contaminated with pollutants, and regulators in all developed countries deal with it. As a tiny nation we would be well advised to pick the best from other countries and adopt it.

I have no issue with Maori believing in life force. Like Christians believe in the spirit of Christ. However adopting it in the design of government policy. No.
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February 14, 2025 8:08am
- G152
  
  So little Maori in the bloodline and so much European..
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:20am
- Yvette
  
  The problem is that there is no such thing. For example rivers do not have a “life force” which gets out of balance.
  
  Benedict, you will know that many religious beliefs, from the Aramaic language Christ spoke to present day Indian teachers as Sadhguru, and Shinto, talk about the equivalent of “mauri”, focusing on the relationship between humans and the natural world, which is all debatable, but I believe what is questionable here is the raising up of one belief system, te Ao o Maori (Maori religious world view) above all others – the essence of a State Religion, where none should exist – Government should be secular.
  
  I feel that it is a little misguided (for want of a kinder word) to question the beliefs themselves, when the question (I would submit) is that the State or any of its services should mention, let alone support, any religious belief.
  
  Also the conflation of mauri and common sense may loose some aspects of something as vital as water – an obvious life-force. That it is the tears of Rangi is “not Helpful”; but that water needs to be as pure as possible is “essential”, but could be a baby that is thrown-out with the waste water. Secularity of Government would help cut through all that krap.
  
  And if Government led with clearing religion out of services, other public utilities may change if they will be seen to maintain the exceptionalism of aspects of a culture which don’t serve them, if they were isolated – would you buy your electricity from a power company run by Gloriavale or risk a non-payment under Sharia Law?
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:46am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Yvette
    
    Rivers, like everything else in the universe, probably do have life force energy running through them. The Waitaha (arrival 100BC~100AD) understood that far more than the primitive Maori.
    
    They, like many other people of the land, believed that nature was here for everybody’s benefit, and they welcomed new arrivals with open arms. They believed that no-one could “own a river”, and that to do so, was an extreme act of selfishness.
    
    No-one can own a river anymore than a duck can own your swimming pool. If rivers have mana or whatever, that mana is more likely to upset by the selfish money grubbing ego trips the Maori are placing on the river in order to use it for monetary gain.
    
    The mainstream media and the Maori activists are painting themselves as calm peaceful loving souls.
    That might depict the Waitaha, and earlier inhabitants, but not the bloodthirsty Tahitians that arrived and plundered the Waitaha.
    
    If the “rivers are angry”, they are angry at the self serving Maori activists who are taking “their name” (the river’s name) in vain, in order to continue the tribal plundering of yesteryear.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:24am
    - Pope Punctilious II
      
      Jack you have some persistent and severe delusions.
      
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      February 14, 2025 11:35am
      - JackRabbit
        
        Jack you have some persistent and severe delusions.
        
        If I do, then so do many modern day Maori who:
        [1] Still practice oral history
        [2] And that history records those.
        
        A word of device, debate the facts, not the messenger. If you have contrary information, please present your argument. Personally slagging me off is not debate. It is your attempt to discredit me.
        
        And it shows you have not done any real research.
        
        So specifics please. Which of the statements you find false and for which reason?
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:49pm
      - Pope Punctilious II
        
        Jack you’ve repeatedly posted the same nonsense about pre-Maori New Zealanders. And I’ve repeatedly presented you with scientific evidence that your claims are completely false. As I’ve said before, the massive wave of extinctions that followed Polynesian settlement of this archipelago makes it very clear that the local fauna had no prior exposure to Homo sapiens.
        https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.757988/full
        https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1314972111
        https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6436
        
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        February 14, 2025 5:22pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        @Pope Punctilious II
        
        No, you have NOT presented scientific evidence at all. What you have done is present articles that “debunk” the evidence that exists about people living here BEFORE the Maori:
        
        Evidence such as:
        [1] The oral history of the Ngapuhi which goes back 75+ generations here, as reiterated time and time again by Ngapuhi elder David Rankin. And that the oral history speaks of fair skinned people here when they arrive 75+ generations ago?
        
        Can you please present your evidence that the Ngapuhi oral history is false.
        
        [2] The Rarotongan website, up to very recently, and may still, claim they have been traveli
        
        Can you please present your evidence that the Cook Island oral history is false.
        
        [3] The newspaper article in the late 1800s of Auckland council workers finding a cut down tree stump and adze UNDER the Auckland lava flows that geologists have confirmed occurred between 30,000 and 60,000 years ago.
        
        Are you suggesting that the well known geology of Auckland’s volcano field is all made up?
        
        There are hundreds of pieces of evidence, none of which you will debate, so lets start with those. Specifics please.
        
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        February 14, 2025 6:23pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        Edit: [2] The Rarotongan website, up to very recently, and may still, claim they have been traveling to NZ since 500AD.
        
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        February 14, 2025 6:34pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    I’ve said this before and now I’ll say it again.
    Secular government is impossible. All human societies have been run on metaphysical belief systems, a society without religion has never existed.
    Even the Soviet Union had a state religion, it was just an atheist one.
    Democracy, Human Rights, Justice, Harmony are all metaphysical abstractions that do not exist outside of the mind perceiving them
    The problem with running things on “Mauri life force” is not that it’s a metaphysical belief system, the problem is that it’s a crap metaphysical belief system.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:25pm
- Pope Punctilious II
  
  Maori animism now appears to be the state religion. There’s no shortage of equivocation about this – “I won’t mention any atua (gods) in this morning’s karakia, OK?”. And we let ourselves be fobbed off by this line. “Mauri” is a core concept of Maori animism. Has the NZ Association of Rationalists & Humanists had anything to say about government departments and universities preaching animism? They’re supposedly staunch advocates of a secular state, but I guess like most of us they’re afraid of being branded “racist”.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:47am
- David Garrett
  
  Bene: For example rivers do not have a “life force” which gets out of balance
  
  Don’t forget rocks mate…they also are supposedly infused with “mauri”. Such beliefs are nothing more than the primitive animism found in many societies who have not had the benefit of scientific – as opposed to quasi-religious – knowledge.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:53am
  - Chuck Bird
    
    I would guess that a higher percentage of Maori are Christian than non Maori. Christian Maori would not believe in primitive animism.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:00am
    - Tarquin North
      
      I thought our government was supposed to be secular? They seem to be if anyone want’s to push something christian but as soon as anything Maori is mentioned they fold at a record rate and agree to anything. And Luxon still can’t work out why they are dropping in the polls.
      
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      February 14, 2025 9:15am
    - David Garrett
      
      Chuck: You would also think that Maori ministers of Christian churches would not believe in Maori Gods, but we frequently hear of said ministers giving “Maori blessings” invoking Gods other than the Christian one.
      
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      February 14, 2025 9:17am
      - pdm
        
        DG – the Reverend Kaa (a Maori) the Anglican Minister who married my parents at Porangahau in March 1945 was very much a conventional Anglican Minister based on everything I heard about him while growing up.
        
        He was very well respected in the community.
        
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        February 14, 2025 9:52am
      - Yvette
        
        Does Destiny Church believe in river worship or Jesus Christ, or both?
        While Brian railed against the Islamic Call to Worship being broadcast across the nation to honour those slaughtered by Tarrant, Brian seems to say nothing of te Ao o Maori (the Maori religious worldview – yet again) becoming the adopted “State Religion” and therefore being given Aryan privilege above Jesus – and a position possibly contrary to Christopher Luxon beliefs too.
        
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        February 14, 2025 9:58am
      - David Garrett
        
        Pdm: I suspect that Maori ministers of 80 years ago are very different from those of today. By their actions shall ye know them.
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:15pm
    - Pope Punctilious II
      
      Not sure about that. Syncretism?
      
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      February 14, 2025 9:26am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Absolutely….
        The great bit is that, more recently, we’ve been able to express that more clearly. So, in our latest prayer book, we acknowledge Ranginui and Papatūānuku as beings. It uses capital letters for their names. Like proper nouns. Those names are not just metaphors or images. The prayer book actually acknowledges Ranginui and Papatūānuku. Because, as Māori, we’ve never let that go.
        
        https://e-tangata.co.nz/korero/hirini-kaa-maori-and-the-church/
        
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        February 14, 2025 12:43pm
- Quail
  
  These mythical constructs , and others are deeply embedded in RMA legislation!
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:56am
  - Quail
    
    Note my post refers specifically to “ Mauri “ but there are others.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:11am
- Simon
  
  Life force top down mumbo jumbo forced upon the plebs, unconnected with average Maori
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:08am
- imalwaysright
  
  The subtext that seems to be developing is that everything on, below, above, and surrounding NZ belongs to Maori and is of greater actual and spiritual importance than people who have no Maori blood.
  
  In other words, non-Maori have no value.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:25am
  - Chuck Bird
    
    Any religion of Maori is less harmful than the religion of climate emergency.
    
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    February 14, 2025 4:49pm
- Grunter
  
  Thx Bene for your examples. This stuff is truly nuts!
  
  If anyone wants to believe in invisible friends in the sky – go for it! But don’t make it compulsory and don’t force it down our throats and use other peoples money for your lunacy.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:27am
- PurplePen
  
  I’m still not quite sure what “just transition” means. Matters not though.
  
  What gets me is that religious concepts such as mauri and their equivalent in other religions or secular beliefs are paraded as some sort of fact with no scientific evidence or research. And yet intelligent people will act on these made up ‘facts’.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:51am
  - thirteenstars
    
    “I’m still not quite sure what “just transition” means. Matters not though.”
    
    Oh, it does. It’s corrupt and bloody nasty:
    
    https://www.mbie.govt.nz/business-and-employment/economic-growth/previous-economic-development-work/just-transition/just-transitions-guide/foundations/what-are-just-transitions
    
    That’s linked from the page Benedict provided. You need to read it and not scoff. They take this seriously and you are increasingly forced to interact with it either directly or indirectly.
    
    One quote from that link:
    
    “The concept of ‘just transitions’ emerged decades ago from North American unions concerned about job losses from environmental policies affecting polluting industries.[1] This evolved into a call from the international labour movement for a just transition towards an environmentally sustainable economy that is well managed and contributes to the goals of decent work for all, social inclusion and the eradication of poverty.[2]”
    
    Gee, how about that Paris Net Zero thing that is going to cost us $30 billion? Sounds like a “just transition” to me.
    
    You may not be interested in just transitions but just transitions are interested in you.
    
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    February 14, 2025 5:32pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  May as well believe in the flying spaghetti monster.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:00am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Interviewed a candidate for a job, and while he had a resume that looked OK, something was “off” about him.
    
    Looked him up online and sure enough he was a Pastafarian, of the “flying spaghetti monster” cult, and he had a photo of his driver’s license, the photo of which had a colander on his head.
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:55pm
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      Tin foil hat with holes. A little bit gets out, but nothing gets in.
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:55pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        I don’t think anything got in even before the colander was there.
        
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        February 14, 2025 6:33pm
- pb
  
  The force? That’s a star wars ripoff.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:41am
  - thirteenstars
    
    Regardless, if Mauri is real then so is the Force. Actually, the definition of the Force given in the Star Wars universe is as coherent and believable as Mauri, perhaps more so.
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:04pm
  - sirknz
    
    “You were supposed to stop this Luxon, not join them!”
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:23pm
    - Ghost
      
      It was closed down last year. Seriously do people just read posts and not bother to look up to see what’s actually going on?
      
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/environment/532284/fossil-fuel-jobs-unit-closed-because-it-didn-t-align-with-government-priorities
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:28pm
- leoj
  
  Maori has Luxon by the balls.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:52am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Impossible to have someone by the balls if they don’t act like they have any.
    
    Besides it is not Maori that have him by the balls, it is Klaus and the Klaus Kluck Klan.
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:56pm
  - crikey
    
    leoj: Based on other comments on this blog (and elsewhere) it is impossible for Maori to have Luxon by the balls.
    
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    February 14, 2025 3:41pm
  - Ghost
    
    Really? Because it is the current government that closed this labour program down.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:23pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  I do not think Dr Ayesha Verrall is Maori. If you look at the Taxpayer Union awards it is she who is responsible for this waste.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:59am
- alphabeatrium
  
  The only saving grace, from my experience, is that everyone knows that no one takes this stuff seriously, it’s just that everyone also knows that they have to pretend to. It won’t have practical effect, but it will make things take longer and certainly will lead to some form of corruption in terms of a koha stop on the gravy train. Depressing.
  
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  February 14, 2025 12:24pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Well once again I can only tell you my experience in health, Māori had completely gone in January, and in June last year there was still some utterances, 3 years ago every single doctor, nurse or medical professional greeted me with Māori, that was completely gone, one nurse was Māori and she never uttered one word
  
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  February 14, 2025 12:41pm
- Ghost
  
  Just transition was closed by the current government last year.
  
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  February 14, 2025 5:42pm
Morgan H

Will replacing Luxon be detrimental to the Act party?

Act is trying everything it can to get a boost in the polls but nothing has worked yet. If National replace Luxon with a candidate more aligned with the Right would that lead to voters deserting Act? Would Act return to being a lower than 5% party?
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February 14, 2025 8:10am
- pdm
  
  If National were to replace Luxon they may not necessarily do so with someone from the right.
  
  That prospective leader, say Simeon Brown or Chris Penk, would have to head off Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop first.
  
  The popular public choice may very well not be the one the National Caucus chooses.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:55am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Too early for Brown, but this crap about Bushop bring leftie has been mentioned so many times before, but am watching, and he appears to be anything but, go watch his speech the other night, it was all about building stuff and cutting regulations, hardly sounds like a leftie to me, he was vocally praising the extraction industry including coal
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:49pm
- Matt Long
  
  Yes, when the major party in a coalition is perceived as doing a good job the minor parties tend to disappear.
  When the major party is unpopular, the minor parties prosper.
  In the UK for example the Conservatives went so woke they are now third in polls behind Reform and the highly despised Labour.
  Sean Plunker is currently running a poll on who should replace Luxon.
  https://x.com/SeanPlunket/status/1889941762120269948
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:02am
  - PurplePen
    
    I picked Collins, if I could in his survey would also have ticked Brown.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:53am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Collins? After her last disaster
      
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      February 14, 2025 12:51pm
      - peterwn
        
        Judith was the only suitable leadership contender when Todd Muller resigned a few months before the 2020 election. Todd was a mortal trying to be Superman and was on the verge of health issues. He was let down by a few of his MP’s and a then Prominent National figure outside the house.
        Judith Collin’s brief was damage control, winning the election was an impossibility while quite a few thought she walked on water. This did give Judith a chance to prove herself as leader in 2021 but could not gain the general support of her MP’s (which I predicted). However rather than leaving Parliament she has hung in and is a valuable asset to Cabinet and the Party.
        
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        February 14, 2025 2:28pm
      - peterwn
        
        Correction – “while quite a few thought [Jacinda] walked on water”. I did mean Jacinda Arden, not Judith Collins.
        
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        February 14, 2025 3:16pm
      - PurplePen
        
        Yeah I know. I’d expect she’d have learnt. Perhaps a bad choice.
        
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        February 14, 2025 9:46pm
      - Ghost
        
        Agree, Judith was weak as a leader, a disaster, and a disappointment. She has no leadership abilities
        
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        February 14, 2025 9:56pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Then why is Act now losing the support they built up before Christmas? Go look at recent polls and Act are dropping every time, they are losing support to Nats and NZF
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:50pm
- RoboRob
  
  Yes. I am sure many Act voters would move back to National if they had a more right wing leader.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:03am
  - Bobba Fret
    
    But the most likely replacements (Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop) are no more right wing than Luxon.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:16am
    - peterwn
      
      Throw Simeon Brown into the mix too. A hard right wing leader would be an overall vote loser for National despite what some Kiwibloggers think.
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:33pm
      - RoboRob
        
        I’m not asking for hard right. I just dont want a Helen Clark clone, which seems to be where Luxon sits.
        
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        February 14, 2025 3:03pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Hahaha, polls show voters moving back to Nats and NZF
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:52pm
  - peterwn
    
    And some current left of centre National supporters will move left to Labour or NZF. I am sure Chris would rather bleed right wing votes to ACT than bleed left wing votes to Labour, Greens or NZF.
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:31pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Act are losing support because as we keep seeing Seymour is a tool, they dropped 4% in the Morgan poll, and are now just a fraction ahead of NZF once NZF head Act then Act roll fall away, people are seeing how just how harmful this TPB is, polls gave shown, no one is interested in Māori issues, one poll after another.
  
  Seymour today telling business Nats have not moved, but Labour have moved hard left. Who do we believe? The haters on here, or your saviour Seymour that looks like he could chuck it in at any moment
  
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  February 14, 2025 12:45pm
  - Yabster
    
    [Mod – debate the topics, not the person]
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:39pm
  - thirteenstars
    
    And every ACT vote is stolen from is rightful owner, National, right?
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:07pm
  - RoboRob
    
    I did the latest Roy Morgan poll and posted about it here. Dont know if this is the one being reported on now. My comments were that the questions would lead the interviewer to think I was happy with National, the economy and country direction. The asked who I want for the next government, National or Labour, no other option.
    
    They did ask who I plan to vote for next election however.
    
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    February 14, 2025 3:08pm
Matt Long

Even Steve Bruniaa of the Herald found the conviction of Liz Gunn for “assault” absolutely disgusting.
Now that her conviction has been overturned, how about prosecution for the thugs who permanently injured her?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/liz-gunn-free-at-last-the-law-is-an-ass/BXPV2B4DDJBEDJPAOSFDEGXZFQ/
https://x.com/SeanPlunket/status/1889902561521705195
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February 14, 2025 8:14am
- imalwaysright
  
  Now its time to find the cop who ordered the arrest and then find the person who told him to….
  There must be a public chain of responsibility established and published.
  They all seem to melt into the background.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:23am
- NoFax
  
  It’s clear that the persecution of Liz Gunn was political. People didn’t like what she says. That’s irrelevant to the assault charge. I hope Liz takes this further and gets justice – the district court judge and the police prosecutor who made the decision to take the case should be sacked.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:42am
  - cmm
    
    ” That’s irrelevant to the assault charge.”
    
    That should be irrelevant, but it likely is not.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:49am
  - peterwn
    
    If the victim agreed to the assault charge being laid, then that needs to be respected especially as she was just an airport employee doing her job. If a Police officer was similarly assaulted a charge would be extremely likely.
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:39pm
    - NoFax
      
      Doesn’t work like that. People make complaints all the time but it’s up to the police to lay the charges and seek prosecution based on the evidence they have. Not every complaint makes it to court. The Police persecutor made the decision and, therefore, should be fired for political bias and that goes for everyone else involved.
      
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      February 14, 2025 5:23pm
- kowtow
  
  NZME story is paywalled .
  I note I can’t find any mention of this very important legal finding in the print version , how strange given NZME’s former obsession with all things Scamdemic.
  I urge people who care to have a look at the footage of the arrest of both her and her cameraman and draw whatever conclusions you wish about the police action that day and why the perhaps the Crown were so eager to get a conviction , any conviction in that case .
  
  In respect of the Herald today it’s a full court press against the coaltion , again .
  
  From a front page about the flat economy , cruel cuts to health and school services and science services . yet another personalised and rather juvenile in style cartoon attack on Luxon and perhaps importantly , the editorial.
  
  They now side with the banks against the coaltion . That’s fine but it’s the hypocritical rationale they use .
  
  Private business should not be subject to govt dictat , but instead be answerable to their shareholders and board.
  
  Try as I might , I can’t find anywhere where they have spoken out against themselves for taking the Judas silver , doing the Ardern regime bidding , joining her , for their accepting the corrupting 30 pieces of silver , to actively promote and protect the principles ( which don’t exist) of T o W.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:17am
  - Matt Long
    
    Yes, NZ ME sent me a month free, which really reinforced why I don’t subscribe.
    I had to do a deep search to see if they were covering the story at all, there are several articles.
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/liz-gunns-airport-assault-conviction-overturned-by-high-court/P5AS5PCRFFGSBHUVCFELEQJBGI/?ref=readmore
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/liz-gunn-challenges-assault-conviction-over-auckland-airport-incident-in-court/R6Q7CNZX5VGRLC2SIFG4RBE5TU/?ref=readmore
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:08am
    - Jethrod
      
      Yes I got the same deal…. should be renamed the Harvey Norman Herald cos some days there is 10 PAGES of adverts for said dealer.
      Will continue with the Premium online plus Sat Herald. Mainly for Sudoku and Deaths column.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:16am
      - peterwn
        
        Do not give Harvey Norman and the Herald sponsorship ideas. The Post could be called the Tory Whanau Tūnga.
        
        4 1
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        February 14, 2025 2:44pm
Matt Long

This is a ten minute video from Douglas Murray, explaining how western education departments are attempting the overthrow of Western civilisation.
Unfortunately under Sanford, New Zealand is continuing in the same path.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889958349858603265
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February 14, 2025 8:18am
Yvette

OPINION: As controversy swirls around the Treaty of Waitangi, the failure of the Crown in keys areas is having a profound effect. One area is education. In education Māori have been divided from the rest since the Treaty was signed.
– from the 8:20pm Alwyn Poole post yesterday evening

Taking this as a random example, with no reflection on Alwyn Poole, why is “the failure of the Crown in keys areas having a profound effect”?

Why, in another random example (which, OK – I have cherry-picked a little) was the covid vaccine not delivered by being dumped at certain points around the country and the population told “Here it is – come and get it” – this being for the sake of this comment, and the degree of information at the time, that our elders were threatened by a rampant virus, which had devastated the same intergenerational families in Italy and decimated Island people and Hawaiians in Los Angeles, and we should be vaccinated at least for our elders’ sake to reduce the impact.

Why can Maori seemingly not handle a “Here it is – come and get it” situation, rather than millions being spent to reach every last person in rural Northland? Should not recently discovered Maori unity (since the Maori King’s speech at the last Waitangi Day he attended) serve to reach every last whanau?

Of life situations you are either wiser or wounded. Why, frankly, as a vast generalisation, are Maori so good at being wounded?

Why is the failure of the Crown in keys areas having a profound effect?

Where was the recently discovered unity to be irrational regarding Seymour’s bill, when it was needed to ensure vaccination – when that was nationally accepted as a right thing to do

And yes – I know vaccination is now seemingly discredited, but that is “another argument to have with the Crown”
Oops! – here comes the morning medication: half of which I am convinced do not work
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February 14, 2025 8:19am
- PurplePen
  
  I know it’s a cliches but the “Here it is – come and get it” situation” has a high hit rate if it’s KFC or any food. Not so with the vax, as you pointed out.
  
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  February 14, 2025 11:05am
Matt Long

Both RFK and Tulsi Gabbard have now been confirmed, Gabbard has unfortunately backed Bernie Sanders for president previously so may not be a good pick. Time will tell.
In news that may not be connected, the NIH deputy has just resigned.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nih-principal-deputy-director-who-led-agency-during-covid-resigns-abruptly
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February 14, 2025 8:26am
- Philview
  
  I have always thought that Bernie Sanders is an honest politician in the mix of other politicians who line their pockets etc It may be the case that he is as bad as the rest of them and I missed the story.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:52am
  - Matt Long
    
    Both a politically a communist, but very wealthy and one of the worst for taking money from pharmaceutical companies.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:10am
  - sungsamning
    
    RFK exposed him as the biggest recipient of funding from big pharma. Liz Warren was second.
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:27pm
- imalwaysright
  
  RFK will, hopefully, destroy the sickness industry and jail the criminals who run it.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:56am
- David Garrett
  
  Matt: I think RFK is a disastrous pick for Health Secretary; anyone who still believes the MMR vaccine causes autism – and he has continued to evade questioning on this belief in that nonsense – is a huge danger to all Americans – especially American children.
  
  For the record, opposition to the Covid “vaccines” is an entirely different thing – as are those “vaccines” themselves.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:57am
  - NothingLeft
    
    We’ll see, I expect the good he does far outweighs any bad. There are people in politics with all sorts of disastrously nutty beliefs that never have much impact because they can’t get support to act on them. Eg religions; both theistic and modern secular far-left insanities
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:24am
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Yes, RFK is a very unfortunate appointment that will harm many Americans and damage the Trump presidency. Somebody please show RFK a photo of FDR in a wheelchair, crippled by polio.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:30am
    - Bridgenag
      
      ….mmm…… cant find the article but he was mis diagnosed apparently ………
      
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      February 14, 2025 12:43pm
      - David Garrett
        
        Bridgenag: Are you serious? Are you claiming FDR wasn’t crippledby polio? Seriously?
        
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        February 14, 2025 2:28pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Based on the age that he developed his paralysis, there’s been some suggestion that he had Guillain–Barre´ syndrome.
        
        https://www.ehdp.com/out/jmb_2003_v11_p232-240.pdf
        
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        February 14, 2025 7:11pm
  - Anthony Melchett
    
    If there is nothing wrong with the vaccines then surely there is no issue with rfk investigating them to put everyone’s mind at ease?
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:35am
    - Matt Long
      
      Exactly, if they’re safe, why not test them in the combinations they are being used in real world usage, and set everyone’s minds at rest?
      Imagine what that would do for uptake.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:13am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Correct AM,
      Seems there is an element whose intellect is faith based.
      Actual evidence, to them, is antithetical.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:15am
    - David Garrett
      
      Anthony: doesn’t it depends on who does the testing? Supposed “studies” by those who believe in homeopathy purportedly show that it works – even in doses so diluted that not one molecule of the original substance remains. No sensible person belives that.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:23am
      - cmm
        
        I think to immediately leap to the strawman of homeopathy is a bit of a stretch.
        
        What we have had thus far is a ridiculous set of “testing” that blindly accepts the Covid vaccine regardless of how rigorous the tests were or their outcomes. There is a massive amount of middle ground without leaping to incense and crystals.
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:41am
      - JackRabbit
        
        … even in doses so diluted that not one molecule of the original substance remains.
        
        I agree that seems weird. But the science is not settled on how and why homeopathy works or does not, as we do not fully understand the finer parts of the human psyche / body interaction.
        
        And molecules are by far not the smallest item in a body.
        
        I have seen homeopathy work spectacularly and seen it not work, and I’ve seen healers and charlatans.
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:08pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  Donald Trump was once a Democrat.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:46am
  - JJ56
    
    And this time around Saunders didn’t vote for Gabbard.
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:44am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  She was standing for president herself that year, and when she pulled out she stated Sanders, all so the rotters that got in would not
  
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  February 14, 2025 12:56pm
- sungsamning
  
  And in other totally unconnected news; Google searches for ‘criminal defense attorney’ are up 500% in the DC area. I hope the Deep State wing at Gitmo is ready for occupation.
  
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  February 14, 2025 2:26pm
Bridgenag

GOOD BEHAVIOR
JUDGMENT COMES

“The Constitution never promised judges lifetime appointments.

It promised them something far more dangerous:

Their seats would last only as long as their good behavior.[sic]

Today, that behavior shattered.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/eko/p/good-behavior?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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February 14, 2025 8:27am
- pdm
  
  Today, that behavior shattered.”
  
  There is still the Haka Party Privileges Decision to come.
  
  If it does not go The Maori Party way, and it shouldn’t, yesterdays showing could only be the curtain raiser. Expect a full on protest from the Activists – all 6 of them.
  
  Popcorn sales will skyrocket.
  
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  February 14, 2025 8:35am
  - pdm
    
    Ooops misread Bridges first line.
    
    But, still…………………………………
    
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    February 14, 2025 8:57am
Maggy Wassilieff

Michael Bassett discusses who is responsible for tikanga at funerals:

If you are like me and constantly surprised by what constitutes tikanga, ….
Once upon a time, officials would have treated a request to fund a tangi feast with the derision it deserves.

https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/michael-bassett-maori-welfare-and-tikanga
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February 14, 2025 8:36am
- David Garrett
  
  Maggy: That IMO is one of Bassett’s best pieces.
  
  The woman’s lawyer didn’t have to look at indigenous societies in other countries to discover that food is “an essential part of the mourning process”. In all western societies – including ours – one of the first things that happens when a family suffers a bereavement is they are inundated with gifts of casseroles, cakes, homebaked biscuits pastries etc. presumably so the bereaved don’t need to worry about this basic human need at a time of grieving.
  
  As Bassett says, unless this ridiculous decision is firmly stamped on, half the Maori in the country will be asking for another handout.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:07am
  - cmm
    
    If Maori want this cultural hand out then let them have it.
    
    But they can have it from all the billions of full and final settlements and top ups etc.
    
    This is not something that the taxpayer should be stumping up for.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:36am
    - riffer
      
      You do understand that the entirety of full and final settlements is something just slightly more than half of the tax breaks landlords are getting in this three year term, don’t you?
      
      Poor idea.
      
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      February 14, 2025 7:43pm
  - PurplePen
    
    And if they do then all other NZers not able to afford a funeral can rightly do the same as the food culture for a NZ funeral is the same.
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:09am
Matt Long

Pam Bondi has started prosecutions of NY state officials refusing to follow the law on illegal migrants.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/12/us-news/attorney-general-pam-bondi-announces-doj-lawsuit-against-new-york-hochul-and-state-ag-james-over-sanctuary-status/
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February 14, 2025 8:42am
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  Good stuff. No messing about.
  “As you know, we sued Illinois,” Bondi added. “New York didn’t listen. So now, you’re next.”
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:54am
BeaB

The news media are obsessed with school lunches. TV1 News even led with the story about kids getting a pie today.
If we have so many desperately poor families in NZ why aren’t we feeding those kids in every school instead of in only about a quarter of our schools? Why isn’t a kid in a school receiving ‘free’ lunches allowed to bring their own lunch? Why are well-off families in those schools forced to accept school lunches instead of making their own?
Every school knows which kids are in need. Provide food for them, not the whole school roll.
If they are so hungry, feed them as soon as they get to school. Why make them wait until lunchtime?
There’s no need for a cooked meal. There’s plenty of nutrition possible in sandwiches, milk and fruit.
Ditch this wasteful and pointless policy and enable every school to nurture truly needy kids.
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February 14, 2025 8:44am
- Anthony Melchett
  
  Get every local supermarket owner to sponsor each school 40 packets of weetbix (supplied via sanitarium at cost) a week plus milk and bananas for the kids that don’t get breakfast.
  
  Gets the kids fed when they need it and takes the heat of the gross supermarket profiteering…
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:41am
  - MCōs
    
    Lunches are the issue, not breakfast
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:22pm
- Suze Wainwright
  
  A easy topic for Swarbrick to increase her brand recognition by…?
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:49am
- Taieri
  
  The news media are obsessed with school lunches.
  ———
  
  When was the last case of child starvation recorded in NZ?
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:52am
- Swifty
  
  The strange thing about all this school lunch stuff is that it appears it hasn’t dawned on many, many New Zealanders that either way it is them that will be paying.
  
  Either they pay to make their own kids lunches or they’ll be paying for lunches through their taxes – but either way they’ll be paying.
  
  Some of the comments I’ve seen reveal that there are some New Zealanders who think ‘government’ will pay.
  
  How totally naive. How totally ignorant.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:00am
  - cmm
    
    Naah, most people getting school lunches will not be net tax payers but rather tax takers.
    
    For them, they are already getting more out of the taxpayer than they are putting in so everything else they can get is “free”.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:33am
    - Swifty
      
      Whoooosh!
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:42am
      - Yabster
        
        he actually has a point swifty- if your not a net taxpayer (ie you get more back than you pay through family credits etc) then you aren’t paying for school lunches are you! You are double dipping – getting net taxpayer paid for lunches and family tax credits designed for you to amongst other things give your kid lunch- so double whoosh…..
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:46pm
      - Swifty
        
        Yabster, you and cmm have made good points but they’re not the points I made.
        
        My point is our taxes pay for school lunches, not some mythical ‘government’ as some seem to believe.
        
        Hell, if we cut government waste and spending, maybe we wouldn’t need to tax people so much and then transfer some or all of it back to them because they now can’t afford to live.
        
        The fact that some people receive transfers is a separate issue.
        
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        February 14, 2025 3:50pm
      - cmm
        
        Swifty, I don’t think that is quite correct.
        
        You said “Either they pay to make their own kids lunches or they’ll be paying for lunches through their taxes ”
        
        That is incorrect.
        
        They won’t be paying for the hunches through THEIR taxes, we will be paying for THEIR lunches through OUR taxes.
        
        For every $ of tax these people pay they are probably already extracting $2 to $5 of benefits. There is none of THEIR taxes left to pay for anything.
        
        Thus, for them getting even more is a good deal. They’re not going to pay more tax, but they get even more benefits.
        
        This is the fundamental problem with giving the vote to people who are not net tax payers – they will always vote for more spending which other people pay.
        
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        February 14, 2025 4:23pm
- pdm
  
  BeaB – mind you if the parents fed their children breakfast.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:02am
- Bobba Fret
  
  The one day a week that I was allowed to buy my lunch at school I normally had a potato top pie. Was always a lunch I looked forward to.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:24am
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  I never had free lunches. Two slices of bread, one slice of luncheon, tomato sauce. The sauce will not soak into the bread if you use enough butter on that side. I was making this aged 5.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:59am
- PurplePen
  
  It’s a sledgehammer solution. It’s only a minority of kids that have parents that don’t feed them. So we decide to feed all kids as the solution.
  
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  February 14, 2025 11:13am
- Gravelroad
  
  AFAIK there are no free lunches at the large primary school my grandkids attend.
  I understand that the teachers there are fully aware of children who may come to school with no food (for whatever reason) and they have a supply of suitable snacks which are discreetly given to those children with no publicity or political fuss.
  I do not know who pays for the snacks, but it seems to work.
  The current situation has turned into an opportunity for politicians , unions and the media to use school kids as activist fodder.
  Shame on them.
  They have no respect.
  
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  February 14, 2025 11:15am
  - cmm
    
    Even more shame on the parents not feeding their kids.
    
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    February 14, 2025 4:25pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  But simply brilliant to give Māori kfc and maccas to get them to do their sensus
  
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  February 14, 2025 12:58pm
Swifty

The Taxpayer Union awards for government waste, 2025 edition:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Qzcrmc6KM&t=935s&pp=ygUPVGF4cGF5ZXJzIHVuaW9u

I’ve been thinking more on the whale song and kauri dieback rort. Really, it does show the absolute contempt with which Labour, and the people involved with funding or delivering the ‘study’, regard taxpayers.

You’d think as they get matauranga Maori off the ground and seek to raise its profile in the country they would be picking studies all but guaranteed to benefit New Zealanders. You know, to establish credibility. But no, they pick something, to waste $4 million of our hard-won dollars on, which is almost guaranteed not to work. But what’s worst they structure the ‘study’ without the necessary controls and scientific principles so we can’t even tell whether playing whale song to kauri works or not!

We are none the wiser!

For Verrall, the Minister of Science, to allow this to happen and be funded by our scarce science dollars is shameful and it’s no wonder she didn’t turn up to the Taxpayer Union awards show to explain herself.

She should be hounded out of office to the waste and for besmirching legitimate Maori causes.
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February 14, 2025 8:51am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  I note she has not been in the house this week, and before Christmas she was not doing the health questions, something is going on with her
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:00pm
- cmm
  
  Yes, Labour are a bunch of muppets, but a bigger question is why National – the supposed grown ups in the room – allowed this to continue for another year.
  
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  February 14, 2025 4:27pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Our inefficient Public Service

https://www.politik.co.nz/roche-says-public-service-has-lost-its-way-and-needs-to-get-out-of-wellington/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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February 14, 2025 8:58am
- Suze Wainwright
  
  Is it just me or does Richard Harman take every opportunity to have a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) dig at the National Party as compared with any Labour Party announcements?
  
  (Brian Roche is National’s ‘hand picked’ man – as opposed to ever raising the issue of anyone who Labour may have hand picked).
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:53am
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Wot? You’re expecting the NZ media to be impartial??
    
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    February 14, 2025 5:28pm
BeaB

The RNZ political editor Jo Moir tells us her nephews don’t like their ‘free’ school lunches. Surely on her salary she could help out with a few dollars for their poverty-stricken parents.
I can’t imagine anyone not helping when their family is in such dire financial straits they cannot afford to feed their own kids.
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February 14, 2025 8:58am
- pdm
  
  Moir’s kids should not be having school lunches unless she pays for them.
  
  Another lefty bludger,
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:04am
  - Ghost
    
    We have a school down here that when approved for school lunches banned the parents from giving their kids lunches to take to school
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:14am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Which school?
      That is a bizarre situation.
      If the parents play along with that then they should be ashamed of themselves.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:22am
      - Ghost
        
        Parents went to tge papers to complain.
        
        4 0
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        February 14, 2025 12:55pm
    - BeaB
      
      I think they have to. Every kid in these schools are compelled to have the provided lunch, whatever the finances of the parents. This rule is supposedly to remove the stigma from children who need the school lunch.
      So the taxpayer foots the bill for thousands of school lunches for kids whose families can afford to feed them.
      
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      February 14, 2025 11:10am
      - Don Beckett
        
        Haven’t we become a country of weak emasculated people who have allowed radical feminism and woke safety rules to dominate everything.
        What has happened to “Go and get stuffed.” ?
        
        12 1
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        February 14, 2025 12:31pm
      - Jules99
        
        Reminds me of a guy in the USA whose two kids had their home made lunches inspected by the school and were told there was too much protein. To balance it with more carb they gave the girls a box of snax crackers which the father was charged for. We need to ensure these bureaucrats don’t take control of our kiddies food.
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:08pm
      - imalwaysright
        
        Correct DB,
        We have become a country of spineless drones keenly awaiting the next instruction while trying to maintain a façade of staunch independence.
        
        Seymour made a comment the other day that why do we always seem to have to ask permission before we do something?
        He’s dead right. There’s always someone watching who can’t wait to tell you “you can’t do that”
        
        8 1
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        February 14, 2025 1:09pm
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      A fully unionised shithole
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:01pm
  - MCōs
    
    In defence of Jo Moir it’s not her kids
    Apart from that the free lunches are sent to lower decile schools not individual kids
    
    3 6
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    February 14, 2025 12:34pm
    - Ghost
      
      I don’t think people can read, people commenting it’s her kids…..
      
      2 1
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      February 14, 2025 12:55pm
- PurplePen
  
  Mum always used to say to us “If you don’t like it, you can lump it”. I suggest Jo Moir stops molly coddling her kids. They’ll be the better for it.
  
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  February 14, 2025 12:52pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Yes, maybe the nephews can go without food for a day and then give their opinion on the lunch.
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:17pm
Matt Long

The beneficiaries of corrupted taxpayer’s money in the US are going ballistic to protect their cash.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/opinion/musk-trump-government-takeover.html
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889922510977728542
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February 14, 2025 8:59am
- infused
  
  Every morning I get a great smile on my face reading this.
  
  No needs a Trump government.
  
  9 1
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  February 14, 2025 9:15am
  - sungsamning
    
    Yes, I’m rationing myself to one medium cup of liberal tears, and one full sized bowl of schadenfreude per day. Too much salt is bad for you. And schadenfreude can turn to hubris.
    
    6 1
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    February 14, 2025 2:36pm
- pb
  
  Rory Stewart the turncoat YooKay conservative outs himself. His wife received $1M USAID dodgy fund, and it has been cut to zero. He so sad.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:38am
Steve Otto N Shore

Trump’s About To Name Names As He Vows To Provide DOGE List Of Those Benefitting From Government Fraud And Waste.
“I went through a list of 200 expenditures that were made, and I found three that looked like they were reasonable,” he added. “Okay, three.”
Time to ruin a few false representations.
Elon is only scratching the surface, keep digging. Underneat that scab is a festering sore!

https://thepoliticalinsider.com/trumps-about-to-name-names-commends-elon/?
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February 14, 2025 8:59am
- Grunter
  
  I wonder if we can request to become the 51st State before Canada? Bring DODGE to NZ asap.
  
  This is what Melei did in Argentina. It is the only way to deal with the bloated corrupt blob called The Public Service…. CTRL-ALT-DELETE
  
  15 2
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  February 14, 2025 9:33am
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    ASAP.
    
    7 2
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    February 14, 2025 11:42am
- MCōs
  
  I wonder if Elon Musk is on the list?
  
  6 2
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  February 14, 2025 12:37pm
  - Don Beckett
    
    He works DOGE for free.
    
    5 1
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    February 14, 2025 1:24pm
- PurplePen
  
  That trust investigation underway here, only scratching the surface here? BTW, when is the report now due out?
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:01pm
Maggy Wassilieff

So information about top Managers’ salaries at Auckland Uni was publicly available in the USA, but not in NZ.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/541823/release-of-university-of-auckland-managers-salaries-has-staff-looking-sideways?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

How weird is that?
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February 14, 2025 9:07am
- Taieri
  
  How weird is that?
  ———-
  
  The information on the salaries of all people paid from the public kitty should be freely available.
  They do that in Sweden and the world hasn’t ended there.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:57am
  - PeeJay
    
    Most Council’s in Australia also have a salary register where each position’s salary is publicly available.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:20am
  - PurplePen
    
    Used to work for ECNZ in the 1990s and asset management teams at Southern Generation were given a bucket of money and set their own salaries from that. Required some coaching at first as the first a suggestion from each team is ‘fair would be to pay each of us the same’.
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:04pm
  - Jules99
    
    I was living in the UK when public salaries came in. There was much consternation at the time, but it was quickly forgotten and the world moved on. Good thing about the UK is salaries are published in job adverts so you don’t waste your time applying for something below what you are looking for.
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:11pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  “We have contacted directly the people affected to inform them of the situation and offer support.” Freshwater.
  Why do the precious petals need support? What kind of support – more money?
  
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  February 14, 2025 11:10am
imalwaysright

Lead story on tv1 news last night was horrific and should have come with an advisory notice for the fragile souls amongst us:

The Government issued school lunch today may contain a….. PIE !!!;

Multiple MPs, teachers, etc asked for a sound bite.
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February 14, 2025 9:08am
- Grunter
  
  “Friday Pie Day”
  Always has been for me…..!
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:35am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Confession time:
  
  Tonight hubby and I will dine on pie….and kumara mash.
  
  Aksh’lly.. We’ll be dining on last night’s pork hock casserole left-overs enclosed in a pastry casing.
  
  2 meals for 2 people from 1 pork Hock ($6.50), a couple of carrots (50c) and half a tin of pine-apple pieces ($1.20).
  
  Perhaps if our school kiddies were all taught how to make pies, cornish pasties, bureks etc from left-over offerings, then they’d acquire a useful skill to help with family finances, rather than receiving the notion that a pie was not nutritious and was a second-class lunch option.
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:54am
  - Taieri
    
    2 meals for 2 people from 1 pork Hock ($6.50), a couple of carrots (50c) and half a tin of pine-apple pieces ($1.20).
    ———-
    
    This week the Mad Butcher is selling whole chicken legs for $6.99/kg.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:59am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Yes, I got 3 chicken thighs Pack and Save this week for 6 bucks, 3 meals right there
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:04pm
  - Swifty
    
    I did a lamb neck chop casserole last night, hadn’t done one for probably 25 years.
    
    Fantastic! Cooked low and slow. Tender as all hell and great flavour.
    
    I really had forgotten how good it could be.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:07am
    - David Garrett
      
      Anthony: doesn’t it depends on who does the testing? Supposed “studies” by those who believe in homeopathy purportedly show that it works – even in doses so diluted that not one molecule of the original substance remains. No sensible person belives that.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:30am
      - Swifty
        
        There’s nothing homeopathic about my lamb neck casserole DG – it’s grunty stuff!
        
        It’ll put hairs on your chest!
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:33am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Yes, Emmersons restaurant in Dunedin at the brewery use to have it, it was stunning, until they cut it from the menu
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:06pm
    - alex Masterley
      
      My wife does a stunning neck chop casserole. It turns up on the menu every two to three months. yum.
      It also means I get the left overs for lunch at work. Even more yum!
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:55pm
      - Swifty
        
        Much underrated but so, so good when done well.
        
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        February 14, 2025 3:40pm
  - OlderChas
    
    Maggie – Maybe there IS no such “leftovers” from KFC or Maccas?
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:58pm
- pb
  
  These count for 2 meals:
  
  https://www.sangaspies.co.nz/
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:35am
- thirteenstars
  
  We looked forward to our pies at school, ordered at the local dairy on the way to school and delivered hot at lunch with our names written on the bag. Soon the idea was extended to fish and chips which we could order in class, the order then picked up by the shop and delivered a couple of hours later. But mostly it was various sandwiches, a piece of fruit and some homemade biscuits or cake.
  
  Now we need an expensive school lunch programme and a pie is child abuse.
  
  What a great little country we’ve built for ourselves.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:54am
  - OlderChas
    
    AND the poor starving kids were taught early how to make and wrap their own sandwiches. I know in our house (4 kids with 6 year age spread) we took turns at 1. Spreading the butter on ALL the slices, 2. Applying the fillings, 3. Cutting the sandwiches, and 4. Wrapping. (Noting 2 – if big sister was miserable with fillings on all but her sandwiches – you could get your own back next week when you were rostered for fillings. The fairness of spreadings was quite amazing lol.) The lunch-making chore was done in the evenings after dishes chores.
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:05pm
  - lifesgood
    
    13 stars, having a meat pie at school was a HUGE treat. We were always allowed one on our birthdays and occasionally other days. Best lunches of the year. I imagine all the kids getting pies today are thrilled to bits. I am totally opposed to this horrendous school lunch nonsense. If kids truly are starving give them something to eat but not all the other kids. The kids I see buying cokes and pies on their way to school in Glen Innes don’t look starved to me. The schools in GI will be getting free lunches for sure. It’s a bloody tax payer funded rort. Who came up with his stupid idea?
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:43pm
kowtow

Another car mass casualty ‘event’ in Germany.

They must have a very poor driver licensing regime .
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February 14, 2025 9:22am
Northshoredoc

This post at thestandard is worth a look for a giggle.

https://thestandard.org.nz/as-long-as-it-takes/

Not for the bixzarre marxist anti USA rant from Mike Williams but for the comments from lefties attacking his nonsense.
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February 14, 2025 9:25am
- Tom Hunter
  
  As amazing as it might seem that makes the Lefties at The Standard look sane compared to the commentators at The Psychic Scream attacking former NZDF member Ben Morgan for his balanced takes on the Ukraine-Russia war.
  
  They’re even crazier on the matter of Israel v Hamas/Hezbollah.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:57pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    Ben Morgan’s takes on the Ukraine war are utter propagandistic nonsense. He treats any statement from Kiev as solid gold, no questions asked.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:54pm
I remember when

Inside the People’s Vaccine Inquiry – Part Three:
Dr Clare Craig. (The Conservative Woman).
“* The vaccine suppressed immunity for two weeks, triggering infections earlier in those susceptible.
* The two-week window after vaccination?
They called it ‘unvaccinated’. A barefaced lie.”

” And clinical trials?
The authorisation were all based on only a single claimed placebo covid death in the trial evidence.
This is science by cowboys.
Millions are being spent on the lawyers for this inquiry who let this pass without challenge.
Representatives for AZ, Pfizer and Moderna were all questioned.
Dr Justin Green from AZ claimed that on the basis of only one death in the placebo group.
He said ‘that gave us a really good indication that we had an excellent product here that was going to be really effective.”

“* 3 per cent of the mRNA recipients have evidence of heart damage.”

” The twin pillars of the covid era are:
* The myth of an unstoppable tsunami of death.
* The myth that vaccines saved us.
Both are false.”
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February 14, 2025 9:26am
penguincouple

The more I read on news in the US, the thinner my patience wears with the National Party under Luxon.
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February 14, 2025 9:28am
- David Garrett
  
  Penguin: I am no fan of Luxon but to compare the powers of a PM in a Westminster system to those of the president of a republic is comparing apples with oranges.
  
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  February 14, 2025 2:39pm
  - Jethrod
    
    Well said sir!
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:53pm
  - penguincouple
    
    David: I understand. However, the differences in attitude and determination as a leader are what I find really concerning/despairing.
    
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    February 14, 2025 3:19pm
  - cmm
    
    DG: Yes, certainly the President has his Executive Priviledge, but that is not all of it by a long shot.
    
    Trump also came to office with a massive action plan having spent the majority of his time out of office compiling lists and getting ready for his return.
    
    While our system in NZ does not have the same powers, there is nothing preventing politicians in NZ being able to prepare properly and hit the ground running on day 1.
    
    Instead we have people who are still trying to figure out what to do 15 months into the game.
    
    A clear case of this is that policy stuff that Melissa Lee did in January 2022 (she posted here on 10 January 2022) on a whole lot of proposed “what National would do to fix IT” stuff.
    That was just political ammo to attack Labour.
    
    That could have been developed into coherent policy ready to go in November 2023. Instead, here we are 3 years later with no policy and a whole lot of dithering bullshit from Luxon on encouraging non-English speakers to come to NZ with $5M. A few sound-bites but nothing of substance.
    
    So yes, there are limits to how fast they could act, but they are not that limited.
    
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    February 14, 2025 4:42pm
  - cmm
    
    DG: You may recall we once had a politician in NZ called David Garrett who performed very well and that unfortunately attracted a bit too much scrutiny for being too efficient which then brought about his downfall.
    
    This bloke Garrett entered parliament in November 2008. By May 2010 he had got the 3 Strikes legislation signed into law. That was less than 18 months to get a new, and rather contentions, act sorted, negotiated, revised a few times, coalition partners straightened out and put on the books. That took some drive.
    
    Here we are 16 months into the game and most of the Coalition MPs haven’t yet even figured out what policies they want!
    
    Sure, we don’t have the President’s speed of execution available to us, but our politicians could at least be a bit more like that Garrett bloke.
    
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    February 14, 2025 4:55pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    Not really, the problem is not the legal architecture.
    A leader with willpower, verve, and even a bit of pompous braggadocio can achieve massive things even within a Westminster system
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:05pm
Chuck Bird

I have been following the story about the Muslim nurses in Oz who said they would kill Jews rather than treat them.

It should be noted that not one Muslim organisation there condemned what the nurses said or anything else said by Jew hating Muslims.

Australia has a major problem with the high number of Muslims in their country. The biggest problem is the ones who were born in the country.
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February 14, 2025 9:34am
- David Garrett
  
  Chuck: “The biggest problem is the ones born in the country ”
  
  Quite so…and that is why Muslim Immigration is so dangerous…no matter how carefully you select the “refugees”, there is no way of predicting how their children will turn out. And as citzens of the country the children cannot be deported
  
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  February 14, 2025 9:59am
  - Matt Long
    
    Cannot be deported under current laws.
    https://x.com/GadSaad/status/1889877103442813129
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:24am
    - cmm
      
      I am not aware of any country that can strip its citizens of their only citizenship.
      
      Australia will strip people of Aus citizenship if they have another citizenship, but there are probably international law issues preventing someone from being made stateless.
      
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      February 14, 2025 10:57am
      - Chuck Bird
        
        I just saw this today. This guy is to be deported to India, a country he has not even visited. NZ has criticised Oz for deporting NZ criminals. I have lived in Oz for a few years. There is not that much difference with the same language. I must let Andrew Bolt know in case there is a case where NZ complains about criminals being deported.
        
        New Zealand-born teen facing deportation to India appeals to authorities to stay
        
        https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/new-zealand-born-teen-facing-deportation-to-india-appeals-to-authorities-to-stay/27YAI2D4XRD2BEQMESYQ357RX4/
        
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        February 14, 2025 8:25pm
  - Nigel Kearney
    
    You keep saying that, but in fact there is a huge difference between educated Muslims from places like Malaysia and Pakistan who come here to work, and those from Arab countries or Africa who come here as refugees.
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:49am
    - Swifty
      
      Like this guy?
      
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjem_Choudary
      
      Indian/Pakistani Muslim, born in the UK.
      
      Not Arab, not African, not refugee.
      
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      February 14, 2025 12:02pm
      - David Garrett
        
        Swifty: “born in the UK” being the crucial phrase. Can’t be deported, only locked up.
        
        2 0
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        February 14, 2025 2:46pm
      - Swifty
        
        And he has been DG – for life.
        
        A minimum of 28 years.
        
        Good job.
        
        He is one of the worst human beings I’ve ever had the misfortune to listen to or watch – and I’ve seen plenty of him for I’d say 20 years now.
        
        Islamism has completely rotted his soul and left him a shell of a man.
        
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        February 14, 2025 3:38pm
    - David Garrett
      
      Nigel: Comprehension is clearly not ur strong suit. Who would be silly enough to say there is no difference between – say – a poorly educated Somali Muslim and a Malaysian Muslim doctor? Not me.
      
      My point – which seems to elude you – is that it is the children we need to be concerned about, whoever the parents might be.
      
      Sadly there is ample evidence that the children of educated moderate Muslims can become radicalized and cut people’s heads off or blow them up. No matter how “moderate” their parents may be.
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:57pm
      - cmm
        
        DG: Yes, this is at least partially attributed to an effect known as “Reversion to the mean” or “regression to the mean”.
        
        Basically, a highly intelligent person is a statistical aberration (particularly from a low IQ population as most Muslim populations are) and thus their children are far more likely to be less bright than they are and are far more likely to be closer to their genetic norm (ie. low IQ).
        
        This often means that the doctor who came from Pakistan has a son who is not capable of being a doctor and fitting in as a Westerner, gets disillusioned and falls easily into his role as Mohammad’s servant.
        
        Add to that a few years of school where they get told how terrible the West etc are and they become putty.
        
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        February 14, 2025 5:08pm
- MCōs
  
  One Muslim hating Australian has actually killed more Muslims in NZ than vice versa
  
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  February 14, 2025 12:48pm
  - David Garrett
    
    So what? That is a total non sequitur
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:58pm
I remember when

The Salvation Army’s State of the Narion 2025 Report:
“The report shows a decline in Maori confidence to express their identity dropping from 84% in 2018 to 75% in 2024.”

Nothing to do with the change of government?

Obviously I have been mislead by the Treaty Principles hikoi and the prevalence of facial, moko kauae, arm, leg and body tattoos.
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February 14, 2025 9:38am
- NoFax
  
  I think it’s probably true in some circles that some people don’t want to be identified as Maori. I know when I was hiring people certain people aren’t going to get considered – blue hair women, anyone with a massive tiki, or tattoos on the face including the scribbled chin on some Maori women, plus a few others. First, I doubt their competency but more importantly, you know it will be difficult – there will always be some issue that needs dealing with that has nothing to do with the work. As Maori make things more difficult the harder life will be for them in other areas.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:18am
- cmm
  
  Is it really “confidence to express their identity” or, rather, “motivation to express their identity”?
  
  Why would anyone want to make a fuss over what race they are? The only reason to do so is if there is a special hand out for doing so.
  
  This race obsession is bizarre. Do white people feel the compulsion to identify as Pom or Scot or whatever?
  
  I suspect if there were quotas so that Scottish people could get preferential access to government had outs or university etc then everyone would know their clan tartan even if it is buried behind 5 generations.
  
  PS: I’m MacNeil of Barra (Buaidh no bas). The dumb pricks that built their castle in the sea.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:25am
  - Don Beckett
    
    Yes, Scottish is “one” of my ancestries – along with Norse, Saxon, Celtic, Cornish & Norman.
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:20am
  - Diogenes
    
    Hi cmm, I’m fascinated to read that you are of the Barra MacNeil clan. As I am also. And I know that the clan motto you quote translates loosely as “Victory or Death”. I actually call that the family curse, because while it sounds very noble, at heart it means that if I do not succeed, I die. This led to some problematic behaviours in my early years until I realised what was going on. But I can verify that the MacNeils are a very stubborn lot!
    As a light historical note, my great-grandfather was born in Argyleshire, press-ganged as a teenager into the British navy, jumped ship at Invercargill, and eventually made his way up to Woodville, where he married a widow who already had eight children. (He added another three.)
    
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    February 14, 2025 11:23am
    - david
      
      Surprisingly similar to Clan Gunn (invernessshire) “ aut pax, aut bellum” (peace or war – no half measures).
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:56pm
    - cmm
      
      Hi Cousin!
      
      I have to go back 4 generations to actually have a MacNeil surname, but having a castle in the family is cool (even if it stands in the sea).
      
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      February 14, 2025 5:21pm
- Jake Dee
  
  What the heck is “confidence to express their identity” and can it be counted mathematically?
  Trying to get numbers on this sort of abstraction is like trying measure ghosts, it’s pseudoscience.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:22pm
pb

Not much MSM discussion about Reuters receiving US$9M for a “Large Scale Deception” program. LSD.

The crazy implemented since the 60’s was entirely funded by the US GOVT. Quite a reveal. Now, who chaparoned it.

The silence is awesome.

RFKJ confirmed and is entering the department of health to swap out Biden’s obese tranny.
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February 14, 2025 9:53am
sungsamning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv-lbbFja1E
RFK Confirmed.
Bobby Kennedy has been confirmed by the Senate. Bobby and Tulsi have brought part of the Dems voter base with them. Fauci, and big pharma are thrilled. Flights to Brazil have been booked. //
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February 14, 2025 10:29am
sungsamning

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/02/11/theres-a-new-set-of-balls-at-dogeand-cnns-segment-on-it-is-beyond-epic-n2652044
Elon Musk Baited the Media…and Oh, Did They Bite.
Elon Musk decided to grow a pair to mess with the media, and they took the bait. The man helming the Department of Government Efficiency at the behest of President Donald J. Trump changed his Twitter handle to “Harry Bolz,” and CNN’s segment on it was pure gold. It’s comedy.
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February 14, 2025 10:29am
greybeard

The Wellington Golden Mile fiasco:

This will never eventuate, and the timing of the latest plans proves it.

This year a relatively minor redevelopment ( the Cambridge Terrace / Courtenay Place intersection ) will proceed, but that is the only bit signed-off.

No contracts for anything else will be signed before the next council elections in October 2025, at which time any remaining plans for the Golden Mile will be scrapped.

Tory Whanau will then be able to retire from the lists with her pride intact, as she can then claim that she was ousted before the remainder of the job was done.
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February 14, 2025 10:40am
- JJ56
  
  Pity the flyover puff that accompanied this didn’t show it on a typical Wgtn day – outside cafe set clinging onto the bike racks for grim death.
  
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  February 14, 2025 11:53am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    And native trees reduced to bare stalks as the salt-laden wind and rain burns them off.. (assuming the drunks/vandals in Courtney Place had left them alone for a few weeks).
    
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    February 14, 2025 12:56pm
    - Don Beckett
      
      They should have planted pohutukawa.
      
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      February 14, 2025 1:26pm
      - lifesgood
        
        Pohutukawa, loathsome things in an urban setting.
        
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        February 14, 2025 1:50pm
Handyman

The term “supermarket profiteering” has become commonplace.
But have you seen any calculation on the impact on your grocery bill?

Woolworths made $108 million EBIT of revenue of $8,000 million. So your $100 checkout would reduce by $1.25.
EBIT is before interest and tax. After tax of 25c and interest on the supermarket building loan say another 25c then the return to Woolworth investors is 75c.
Hardly excess profiteering.

I expect left wing politicians to say any profit is too much but I am disappointed to see the busy Finance Minister trying to convince every international supermarket company that she knows more than them about running supermarkets.
She is sailing perilously close to Maduro-like food price controls and subsidies.
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February 14, 2025 10:52am
- imalwaysright
  
  As cmm pointed out yesterday, we have a lot of variety of the same products, and products in general, for the small population that we are. That’s expensive.
  Two or three brands of the same product would mean savings through scale as well as reduced logistics etc.
  Maybe specialty shops could carry low volume higher cost items.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:34pm
- david
  
  I suspect even that margin is manipulated by having associated entities acting as wholesalers between supplier and supermarket and taking a slice along the way. What you see is not always what you get.
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:00pm
- Matt Long
  
  I wonder if Woolworths has to pay for intellectual property in its home market, or in a tax Haven like Ireland.
  
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  February 14, 2025 6:02pm
Steve Otto N Shore

NZ needs this to happen. Sure it costs, but NZ needs to get rid of the deadwood in the Public Sector.
Not move them to another dept, not re=employ, just terminate them
Some of the deadwood has been there for decades, doing nothing.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/staggering-number-of-federal-workers-accepting-trump-s-buyouts/ss-AA1yYbHK?
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February 14, 2025 11:54am
JJ56

Chris Trotter continues to produce astute observations on what is happening in NZ https://democracyproject.nz/2025/02/14/chris-trotter-visitors-with-votes/. Describes how the programme driven by the Maori and left wing elites is inevitably having to face the democratic realities of NZ.
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February 14, 2025 11:57am
- PurplePen
  
  If it’s true, it’s appalling, much as I dislike that word.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:41pm
Bevan

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360581219/new-school-lunch-controversy-anger-over-programmes-religious-disrespect

Oh FFS! Complaining over a free f&%ken meal! Here’s an idea – send you kid to school with a prepared lunch if the FREE meal doesn’t meet you religious dietary requirements. Or better yet, f&%$ back off to the middle east.
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February 14, 2025 12:09pm
- PurplePen
  
  I would have thought that kids from Islamic families would not be those from bad parents so don’t need the lunches anyway. And if they complain that everyone else gets them, they’re wrong. Not all schools get free lunches. I still think it’s one of the stupidest govt programmes to fix a problem that plagues only a minority.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:44pm
Swifty

FFS.

Now the long-suffering taxpayer is forced to fund Islamic certifying organisations – just like some Maori and Mafia organisations, clipping the ticket on everything that goes on.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360581219/new-school-lunch-controversy-anger-over-programmes-religious-disrespect
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February 14, 2025 12:11pm
- imalwaysright
  
  “Dr Ashraf Choudhary wrote, “It’s shocking that care is not being taken to ensure that school lunches and their preparation places are not certified halal.”
  
  Maybe Dr Choudhary should watch the videos of his Gazan cousins raiding food trucks.
  I don’t think many were too concerned about the provenance of the food.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:44pm
  - Yabster
    
    he’s an ex Liemore minister- what do you expect- MP for about 9 years- anyone ever heard of him?
    
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    February 14, 2025 2:21pm
    - David Garrett
      
      Yabster: in my two years in parliament I never heard Choudry speak, not once.
      He resigned shortly after trying – and failing – in a TV interview to defend Islams prescription for death as the punishment for numerous sins.
      
      The fool tried to say that “of course” what the Koran prescribes was always right – just not in NZ.
      
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      February 14, 2025 2:53pm
      - MCōs
        
        As long as you’re going to disparage the guy you might as well get his name right.
        I remember little of him except his unfortunate interpretation of the Koran with regard to capital punishment
        “The evil that men do lives after them;
        The good is oft interred with their bones.”
        ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
        There’s a few MPs this could apply to
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:43pm
    - Jethrod
      
      Did his 9 years, now has an excellent parliamentary pension plus general super!
      
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      February 14, 2025 3:00pm
      - MCōs
        
        That pension scheme lapsed last century, well before Dr Choudhary was an MP.
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:38pm
  - MCōs
    
    Dr Choudhary is a Punjabi. No relationship to Palestinians who are Arab.
    
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    February 14, 2025 10:09pm
- DistantObserver
  
  Principal of Papatoetoe Intermediate School in South Auckland, Pauline Cornwell, wrote to her school community on Thursday to alert them to the fact that the School Lunches Collective meals were not certified as halal.
  
  You always know before you look it up, but they always look like a dishevelled member of the NZ female species.
  
  https://papint.school.nz/pauline-cornwell/
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:16pm
Bridgenag

the teutonic tragedy
nachtigall, ick hoer dir trapsen

“elon, DOGE, X/twitter, it’s all part of a rising popular tide that has had it with government by faulty champagne breaking machine and grifter supra-nationals. all over the west, a small dictatorial class funded by slush funds and NGOs whose coffers were stuffed with taxpayer money have been immiserating we the people in their uneven handed grifts and schemes.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/the-teutonic-tragedy?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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February 14, 2025 12:29pm
goNZ1

the madness continues – from stuffed today.
The school lunch provider has been providing lunches to Muslim students that it admits are only “halal friendly”, not certified halal.
Principal of Papatoetoe Intermediate School in South Auckland, Pauline Cornwell, wrote to her school community on Thursday to alert them to the fact that the School Lunches Collective meals were not certified as halal.
“From the time the lunch provider was announced I have been seeking assurances that the lunches provided to our Muslim students are certified as halal,” she wrote.

this nonsense it getting out of control, COALITION , PLEASE DO SOMETHING !!
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February 14, 2025 12:31pm
- Hugh Jarse
  
  The meals in schools programme is a prime example of a land mine left by the previous government designed to blow up in the face of a gullible new government too scared to upset a small percentage of the population. Have the media clarified whether all food variations expected now were available during the previous regime ?.
  
  Parents, if you don’t like the food available to your little darlings then stop bludging off the taxpayer and buy the food yourself and make their bloody lunches according to your standards or religion or health needs like the previous ten generations of New Zealand’s have done.
  
  The fruit of your loins managed to survive ok during the Christmas school holidays, in fact some seemed to have positively blossomed looking at the size of them.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:23pm
- PurplePen
  
  They could always change the rules of their religion. None of it is set in stone and like the other 2,999 religions in the world, they’re all the creation of some mortal somewhere back in history and so are artificial constructs.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:46pm
goNZ1

THE PURGE CONTINUES

Director-General of Health Dr Diana Sarfati has announced she will be stepping down from the role.
3 down so far,that must have saved a million or 2 already ?
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February 14, 2025 12:34pm
- MCōs
  
  I don’t see it that way
  Not only is the health service seriously underfunded, but since the commissioner was appointed the minister has changed and the top two leaders have resigned one after the other
  Others will be appointed to fill the vacancies, but what miracles are they expected to perform
  To look at their departures merely in terms of how much money is saved is laughable
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:01pm
  - goNZ1
    
    stupid decision from the past lunatics to create the $500 million set up cost TWO monster during the covid panic anyway
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:22pm
    - MCōs
      
      I remember the days when whoever set up twenty DHBs was criticized for all the duplication.
      
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      February 14, 2025 3:11pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Hopefully their replacement can bring themselves to sack at least two thirds of the so-called administrators.
    
    How about, for every new doctor or nurse that we need, we sack the equivalent dollar cost of administrators?
    
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    February 14, 2025 1:55pm
    - MCōs
      
      Make the doctors fix their own computers
      
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      February 14, 2025 3:21pm
- Matt Long
  
  Who will lock up the WDC councilors then, it seems like it was hardly worth parliament giving the DGH despotic powers in 2021.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:15pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Media screeching as if its failure, it’s what was promised, dead best lefties will be gone
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:31pm
- Jethrod
  
  Clark, Hipkins, Little, Verrall were the Health ministers from 17 to 23. 18 months in already 2 …Reti and Brown. It is the ministry of health and yet the poisoned chalice is still being passed.
  Chuah, McKernan, Bloomfield, Sarfati all the DG of Health in last 7.5 years.
  Is it too much interference from the politics or what?
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:26pm
goNZ1

NY Post today –
Kanye West and Bianca Censori’s marriage is on the rocks.
“She’s had enough,” a source told the Post on Thursday. “The swastika shirt was the last straw. She told him that’s not who she is, and that she can’t be associated with that.”
KW should be behind bars a la Diddy
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February 14, 2025 12:38pm
- lifesgood
  
  Did he force her to go naked to the awards ceremony?
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:35pm
- Jake Dee
  
  Exactly what crime should Kanye West be charged with?
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:34pm
goNZ1

Auckland well on the way to be the cess pool of crime that Democrat-run New York has become.

“From a Woolworths New Zealand perspective the wellbeing of our customers and team are of utmost importance and keeping everyone safe in our stores is our priority.
“That’s why across our stores we are investing $45 million over three years in covert and overt security measures, including team safety cameras, trolley lock systems, fog cannons, double-entry gates and anti-sweep shelving. Point Chevalier is no exception to this.
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February 14, 2025 12:45pm
- Jules99
  
  Interesting. I was shopping at the newish Woolworths in Takanini, Auckland yesterday. The meat chillers were upright with doors. Signs said it was more environmentally friendly, but I wondered if they were harder to thieve from too. Looked good actually. Also saw a sign up as I drove out saying that the trolley’s lock past this point. Saw this in the UK when I lived there, and it’s good for stopping people taking them home then dumping them in local streams.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:24pm
- PurplePen
  
  What’s anti-sweeping shelving?
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:48pm
- alex Masterley
  
  It would be simpler to shut that supermarket.
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:10pm
Allan

More of the BS lawfare from the corrupted Democrat Judges is being overturned.

Looks like they have been reminded to stay in their lane.

Smells like victory.
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February 14, 2025 12:45pm
Maggy Wassilieff

I get the impression that there is only one clued-up School Principal in NZ

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/540954/the-school-where-students-still-love-their-free-lunches
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February 14, 2025 1:00pm
- MCōs
  
  They make their own lunches that cost a third more than the mass produced variety and apparently the kids love them
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:17pm
- Swifty
  
  I wonder how we’d be going if the education union people, principals, Labour MPs, assorted academics, lefty-luvvie newspaper columnists etc who are ripping shit out of Seymour and the new school lunch provider, had directed even a fraction of their venom or criticism to the deadbeat parents and caregivers who have been sending their kids to school with no lunch over the last few years?
  
  I confidently say deadbeat because I believe from experience that the vast proportion of folks sending their kids to school lunchless have found plenty of dough for nice to haves in the house – flash sneakers, branded clothing, phones, massive tvs, booze, vapes, pokies etc etc.
  
  There will be a small minority who are genuinely too poor, but again they will be a tiny proportion, and a massive hundreds of millions of dollars annually widespread lunch programme is an extremely poor and inefficient way of addressing that.
  
  This whole thing has turned into a farce.
  
  We are lambasting the doctor, not the disease.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:29pm
  - lifesgood
    
    Don’t forget expensive tats. So many “poor” are covered in them.
    
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    February 14, 2025 3:37pm
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    I can’t believe any of these whining folk are “real” working-class Labour folk.
    
    If I’d whined that food I’d been given was yuck or inedible, I’d have been sent to my room/bed with nothing further to eat.
    
    If I didn’t like what I was to eat, I was taught to at least try it, before politely and quietly leaving it at the side of my plate.
    
    Are our schools raising a bunch of spoilt, whiny kids or are they staffed by a bunch of whiny middle-class adults?
    
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    February 14, 2025 4:18pm
- Hugh Jarse
  
  They are of course not free lunches, it’s just that their parents probably aren’t paying for them, the taxpayer who may or not be their parents are.
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:33pm
All_on_Red

Trump on Tariffs
‘Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on all foreign countries that implement tariffs on American goods.
“On trade I have decided for purposes of fairness that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America we will charge them. No more, no less. In other words they charge us a tax or tariff and we charge them the exact same charge or tariff. It’s very simple,” Trump said, joined by incoming Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik. “If you build your product in the United States, there are no tariffs.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2025/02/13/trumps-reciprocal-tariffs-are-here-n2652182?
Hopefully that means we are fine.
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February 14, 2025 1:04pm
- info@cruzpro.com
  
  Hopefully “reciprocal” means any tariffs are only going to be charged on similar items, not across the board on everything a country exports to the USA.
  
  For example, if a country charges the USA a tariff on only clothing, would the USA then start charging that country a tariff on everything they export to the USA?
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:26pm
- marcw
  
  We charge GST on all goods sold here – a tax. So expect at least a 15% tariff on all NZ exports to the US.
  
  (Jack5 covered this more comprehensibly earlier) https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2025/02/general_debate_14_february_2025.html#comment-3680898
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:56pm
Maggy Wassilieff

FFS!!!!!

Thieving School Principals

The report said auditors reported sensitive spending that provided a personal benefit to the principal in 54 schools.

The payments covered expenses including gym memberships, pilates classes, sports events, nutritionist consultations, nutrient products, adventure tourism, guided walks and overseas family travel.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/541873/schools-spending-money-on-gyms-family-travel-for-principals-auditors-say
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February 14, 2025 1:04pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  They should of course be named…..but I have a feeling that that might be culturally unacceptable…..
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:17pm
- Swifty
  
  But the schools are under-funded!
  
  //
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:33pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  ” appreciation for their work during the Covid-19 period”
  I must have that wrong, I thought schools were closed during covid – shut down like Auckland was!
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:56pm
- Hugh Jarse
  
  Weren’t the teachers and principals also flogging kids lunches provided by the taxpayer under the last regime ?.
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:35pm
MCōs

Kinleith Mill to shut down, 230 jobs losts plus a number of contractors out of work
Whatever they manufactured will now be imported from some Asian country with cheap labour no doubt
Trump wouldn’t stand for that!
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February 14, 2025 1:25pm
- Don Beckett
  
  I understand it is the paper manufacturing part that is being closed down.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:33pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  This is old news, but do you realise the other mill that was to close is now staying open? You didn’t see media reporting that, the rotten media are getting worse now
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:34pm
  - Jethrod
    
    What mill is staying open? Is it Penrose Mill?
    
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    February 14, 2025 3:33pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  … some Asian country with cheap labour no doubt…
  Try cheap energy and you’ll be closer to the mark.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:44pm
- PurplePen
  
  So long as there’s still soft 3-ply available from my local I don’t mind where it comes from.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:50pm
- kowtow
  
  What, so now you’re a fan?
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:51pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  Thing is the mill is productive – not a Govt department swaning about producing nothing other than a payslip.
  
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  February 14, 2025 1:52pm
  - MCōs
    
    With some minor exceptions government departments are not in the business of returning a dividend.
    
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    February 14, 2025 9:50pm
Steve Otto N Shore

200,000 Federal workers to go.
How did it ever get this bad? I think 200,000 is about 10 % of the public servants, not sure.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/trump-admin-orders-immediate-mass-firing-of-some-federal-workers-200-000-possibly-at-risk/ar-AA1z0LAN?
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February 14, 2025 1:36pm
Jack5

Gold is being flown across the Atlantic for settlement as the two big gold markets, New York and London, vary in price.

Trump’s tariff talk has sent gold prices soaring to a record high and the current price is lower in America and than in London, reports the Wall Street Journal. Gold ingots are being flown to London as cargo in commercial airliners.

Gold futures reached $US2906 an ounce in European trading on Wednesday (yesterday, NZ), reports the newspaper. The price has risen 9.4 per cent this year.

Gold prospecting has surged in the South Island’s West Coast and Otago, but new chums need to be aware you have to make reports on permits to Maori:

https://www.nzpam.govt.nz/permits/engaging-with-maori/guidance-on-iwi-engagement-reports

Gold price “likely to reach $US3000 an ounce this year”:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-prices-could-hit-3-000-per-ounce-in-2025-goldman-sachs-says-a1ff5c19
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February 14, 2025 1:54pm
Jack5

Veteran Leftist commentator Chris ~~Trotsky~~ Trotter in the Otago Daily Times today likens President Trump to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Sadly behind a pay wall.

A sample, with the words put in the mouth of a fictional opponent: ” … Trump’s unleashing a revolution, tearing up the rules, repairing what’s been broken. It makes me laugh when I hear people say: ‘he can’t do that, it’s a breach of international law! Well so was the invasion of Iraq — and Ukraine. The only question all the bleating defenders of the ‘rules-based international order’ should be asking themselves is who’s going to stop Trump’s America? The Danes? The Canadians? The Panamanians? Hamas?”

I hope Chris Trotter retains the right to put the article up on his own blog.
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February 14, 2025 2:19pm
- Jack5
  
  Could Trump whack New Zealand over GST?
  
  The Daily Mail reports Trump has said he will charge reciprocal tariffs.
  
  The newspaper says Trump told reporters he regards VAT as a tariff. VAT is Britain’s equivalent of GST.
  
  He’s said he will address each country “one by one”.
  
  Britain’s VAT is 20 per cent on most goods and services. New Zealand’s GST is 15 per cent.
  
  A reciprocal Trump tax would put 15 per cent on exports to America.
  
  NZ does not impose GST on goods exported from this country.
  
  Fortunately, NZ has bugger all tariffs on imported goods – from America or from anywhere.
  
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  February 14, 2025 2:46pm
  - JackRabbit
    
    A reciprocal Trump tax would put 15 per cent on exports to America. NZ does not impose GST on goods exported from this country.
    
    Your statements are unclear.
    
    GST is not a tariff, but if it is, removing GST on exports could be seen as a negative tariff. So instead of a 15% add on to exports, would that not be a 15% reduction. i.e. subsidy?
    
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    February 14, 2025 6:31pm
    - Jack5
      
      Yes, we know GST isn’t a tariff. And, as pointed out, are aware that goods exported from NZ are exempt from GST.
      
      Trump is obviously talking about GST-type taxes imposed on American goods in the buying country — such as NZ.
      
      The report says Trump’s counter-tariff threats include value-added tax. This type of tax includes NZ and Australia’s GST taxes.
      
      From the article in the Daily Mail on Trump’s view of what are the “tariffs” he sees as unfair to US exports:
      
      They include tariffs, ‘unfair, discrimination or extraterritorial taxes’ including a Value Added Tax, which is common in Europe.
      
      Trump himself said he wouldn’t tolerate the European Union’s VAT, which he called ‘brutal.’
      
      GST is a value-added tax.
      
      The article:
      
      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14395455/Britain-economy-multi-billion-pound-raid-Donald-Trump-tariffs.html
      
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      February 14, 2025 9:53pm
      - Jack5
        
        Now Reuters has reported on Trump’s counter-tariff strategy.
        
        He’s signed a directive starting investigation of “levies” imposed by other countries on US goods.
        
        The directive includes calculating duties to match those countries’ duties on US goods, and to counter-act “non-tariff barriers such as vehicle safety rules that exclude US autos and value-added taxes that increase their cost.”
        
        The Wall Street Journal also reports:
        
        “Trump’s team will likely target nations such as European Union members with value-added taxes, or VATs. The President’s trade advisers have long viewed VATs as an export subsidy because companies are given rebates when they export abroad.
        
        “VATs ‘will be viewed as a tariff,’ Trump said in the Oval Office.”
        
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        February 14, 2025 10:45pm
slightlyrighty

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DpeFUwz1f/

Why am I not surprised….
2 1
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February 14, 2025 2:57pm
Benedict Yu

I see there is outrage over Muslim students getting fake halal school lunches.

Honestly for the entire school I would provide two choices. If students have special dietary requirements they can bring their lunch. These folk are asking the government to pay for adherence to their religious beliefs.
20 1
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February 14, 2025 2:59pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  The schools are already paying homage to religious beliefs it is called Te Ao Maori and they are doggy deep into that spirituality……
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:08pm
- Ian
  
  But all the Muslim ones are poor, don’t you know. And of course the whole school has to partake of the school lunches so as not to ostracise the poor ones for feeling poor….
  
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  February 14, 2025 3:19pm
- Jack5
  
  Seventh Day Adventists as a whole favour vegetarian food.
  
  If Muslim schools are to get taxpayer-funded halal meals, Seventh Day Adventist schools should get State-financed vegetarian food.
  
  Free school-lunch grizzling is a diversion from the maths teaching disaster in our schools.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:04pm
- Jake Dee
  
  They could just do bread, rice, beans and vegetables. Perfectly fine, inexpensive and nutritious and no religious problems.
  
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  February 14, 2025 10:41pm
Steve Otto N Shore

They’re all getting exposed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Ost6s14GA
3 1
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February 14, 2025 3:08pm
MCōs

Never mind carping about all our local issues, on Thai TV this morning they’re celebrating a couple of centenarian rice farmers on Valentines Day still living the humble life up country.
1 2
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February 14, 2025 3:54pm
Ghost

this reporter needs a pay rise

https://youtube.com/shorts/IJdgXfcVs-Y?si=WkExWQUPLqrpKjIS
3 0
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February 14, 2025 4:24pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  That is a beauty Ghost.
  
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  February 14, 2025 4:29pm
Swifty

Ferris gets his arse kicked in the house today, particularly by Jones:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oHvA38y8z-8

I see too Ferris being castigated for his performance during Peter Williams’ treaty principles bill submission today. Fair enough I say, just who repeatedly picks his nose and eats with his mouth open during a select committee hearing? I just don’t get it.
3 0
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February 14, 2025 5:23pm
- Scooter
  
  Another disgrace at the TPB select committee is Willie Jackson, you can hear him say when Julian Bachelor’s speech is over “thank god, what bullshit”. These people have no class, don’t know how to behave like civilised people and sit there like arrogant sloths.
  
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  February 14, 2025 7:33pm
Swifty

What an absolute shit of a situation – completely and entirely the fault of the law-breaking parents:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360582079/kiwi-kid-who-faces-being-deported-country-hes-never-been

The parents should be ashamed of themselves. – wilfully putting their child through this. They knew this day would come and carried on anyway.

I see too the MP for Tijuana doing what he does best, making out like it’s Penk’s fault, advocating for the law-breakers and incentivising future law-breakers all to curry political favours with the immigrant community.

This is an MP from a party that is constantly whining about the virtues of an international rules-based order – but rules he’s happy to toss aside when he sees political advantage.

More stinking Green hypocrisy.
7 0
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February 14, 2025 6:42pm
- Ghost
  
  Interesting case. Mother and father have been here since 2001, her visa ran out in 2004, she has been doing cash jobs and only started paying tax 3 years ago. Oh so she only started to pay taxes when they started to look for a legal way to stay in the country. I feel sorry for the boy.
  
  5 1
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  February 14, 2025 7:15pm
  - Swifty
    
    Quite right.
    
    Boot out the criminal parents and let the boy stay.
    
    4 1
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    February 14, 2025 7:21pm
    - Ghost
      
      Agree, give him a pathway to residency.
      
      1 1
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      February 14, 2025 7:30pm
    - greybeard
      
      If the boy got married to a NZ citizen would he be able to stay ?
      
      0 0
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      February 15, 2025 9:07am
- Rich Prick
  
  Greenies always stink, and hypocrisy is just one of their wiffs, didn’t this asshole import his newest boyfriend from Mexico during Covid when kiwis couldn’t get home?
  
  3 1
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  February 14, 2025 10:19pm
kevn

US madness to balance the US corruption…
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1890174548902892014
4 2
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February 14, 2025 7:06pm
Rich Prick

Democrats are nuts. This is why Kamala got spanked out of politics.
2 1
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February 14, 2025 10:25pm
surfing

TVNZ are once again in full attack mode tonight against the government and school lunches.

This is the most boring story on TV, yet it leads on one news with the deplorable Maiki Sherman whom I detest for her far left reporting bias.

And, we get to watch a parade of [Mod – unnecessary] school principals from Sth Auckland, getting their 5 minutes worth of fame. These are the principals who have presided over plummeting educational standards, maybe they have other things to worry about, like doing their job!
2 0
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February 15, 2025 12:00am

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