The Government will introduce legislation this year to enable time of use schemes to be developed to reduce travel times on our busiest roads and boost economic growth, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.
“Congestion is a tax on time and productivity. It means that we are away from home for longer, sitting in gridlock. It results in fewer jobs being done, fewer goods being moved, and delays to services across the city.
Very pleased to see this. It is a more sophisticated form of user pays.
“Schemes will be focused on increasing productivity and improving the efficiency of traffic flow in our cities. Local councils will propose schemes in their region, with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) leading the design of the schemes in partnership with councils to provide strong oversight and to ensure motorists benefit from these schemes. All schemes will require approval from the Government.
“Time of use schemes will need to consider the impacts on motorists and businesses that use the roads that fall within the charging areas, as well as the impacts on the wider network.
“Any money collected through time of use charging will also be required to be invested back into transport infrastructure that benefits Kiwis and businesses living and working in the region where the money was raised. Councils will not be able to spend this money on other priorities or pet projects.”
This is important, and why the Government needs to sign off on any charging schemes, otherwise Councils would just use them as revenue raisers for pet projects.
Vigilantes posing as underage teenagers online are luring men to meet-up spots in Tauranga before forcing them to strip naked and bashing them.
The vigilantes, who are filming their attacks and posting footage online, say they are providing a community service.
But police say their actions are “appalling” and have launched an investigation after receiving a complaint.
The motivation may be good but the actions are not. If you really want to make this your hobby then just record all their online conversations and send it to the Police to follow up.
The group targets gay men by posing as underage boys online and arranging to meet at night, then confronting them.
So they’re not worried about straight men who are pedophiles, just gay ones?
She met most of the criteria, Johns said. The requirements include having a terminal illness, being in an advanced state of irreversible decline, experiencing unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved to a tolerable level, and being competent enough to give informed consent. There are also extra safeguards in the law: patients cannot apply purely on the basis of a mental illness, disability, or age.
But Smith failed a key test. Her two assessing doctors could not say with confidence that she was likely to die within six months. Her application was declined.
“She was clearly disappointed,” Johns said. “And what happened after that was totally predictable – she had a terrible time.” Smith became more agitated and afraid. Her memory faded, she struggled to digest food, and she had to wear nappies for incontinence. She needed 24-hour nursing care and was placed in the Te Hopai care facility in Newtown. Her pain was unrelenting.
Smith died in Wellington Regional Hospital in October 2022. It was almost exactly six months since her assisted dying application was turned down.
I was quite involved in the campaign to get the law passed. The six month rule was a compromise to get the numbers to pass it. It would have failed without it. The Greens were bound by a policy pushed by some of their disabled members who thought the bill was devaluing disabled lives and could be used to pressure disabled people to end their lives. This was not the case as you actually had to be suffering from an irremediable condition and in grievous suffering. But better a law that allowed choice for some, than no law that allowed choice for none. And the compromise got the bill through (along with another compromise with NZ First for a referendum to get them on board).
A future law change (presumably a conscience vote in Parliament) would at a minimum need the Greens to change their policy. But even if that happens the current Parliament is more conservative than the 2017 – 2020 Parliament so I wouldn’t rate the chances of a law change as high.
When a doctor says a patient is going to die in two weeks, they are almost always right. Similarly, doctors can accurately predict that a person will die in 12 months around 70% of the time.
Between those two points is a window of uncertainty, where predicting time of death is much more difficult.
“Our law falls right in the middle of that range,” said Dr Gary Payinda, an emergency medicine specialist in Whangarei who provides assisted dying services on his days off.
Payinda said in his experience, a large number of applicants who failed the six-month test reapplied one or two months later when their health had deteriorated further. At this point, they were usually “gravely disabled” and unlikely to live for long enough to go through the application process again.
“So it’s a Goldilocks problem,” Payinda said. “These poor patients are either too healthy or too sick to qualify for assisted dying. And I’ve seen this play out time and time again.”
He is pushing for the requirement to be extended to 12 months.
I’d personally favour having no time limit at all (it should just be based on if it is incurable and the level of suffering), but even extending the time limit from six to 12 months would be beneficial.
A speech which ordinarily would have failed to raise attention outside the walls of New Plymouth Boys’ High School has grabbed national attention after a student was banned from delivering it.
Oliver Jull’s speech – The Decline of Western Civilization – was scratched from the school’s speech finals last week out of concerns it could cause offence.
An official reason for the ban has not been forthcoming after Boys’ High headmaster Sam Moore did not respond to questions from the Taranaki Daily News.
Jull, 15, said he was told by a teacher he could not deliver what he had written because it could upset those in a 100-strong audience.
The speech covered Jull’s opinion on the decline of western civilization through the erosion of traditional values, the decline of religion and the impacts of multi-culturalism.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) was defeated in a primary Tuesday, becoming the second member of the progressive Squad to be ousted this year after massive spending by pro-Israel groups.
Wesley Bell, the elected lead prosecutor in St. Louis County, Missouri, beat Bush in what became the second most-expensive House primary in history, thanks largely to the over $8 million in spending from the United Democracy Project, the super PAC arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Although the Israel-Hamas conflict had barely factored into the primary — United Democracy Project’s ads were about other topics — the wave of outside spending in the St. Louis-based district had amplified Bush’s vulnerabilities. She’d faced a federal investigation this year into her campaign spending on security services and had alienated some local allies with her voting record.
It wasn’t about Gaza. It was about the fact she is extreme and scandal ridden.
A gun has been fired at the distinctive orange ute of a controversial New Plymouth councillor, leaving it pock-marked, as the Māori wards debate begins to heat up in the city again.
Murray Chong campaigned against the introduction of a Māori ward and on Tuesday abstained on a vote on whether or not the council should retain its Te Purutanga Mauri Pūmanawa Māori Ward.
Fighting back tears, Chong told a two-thirds full council chamber “don’t shoot the messenger” before saying that he would not be fronting any resistance to a Māori ward next year because he feared for his safety.
This is appalling that a Councillor feels they can’t safely speak on an issue.
“I’m now scared. I’ve had my life threatened several times in letters. I now can’t walk by myself at night because I’ve been told I will be king-hit and I’ll wake up in a hospital. I’ve had people say they will grab my dog, chop it up into quarters and leave it on my doorstep. I’ve had my daughter hassled.”
Chong said he was used to people yelling obscenities at his house as they drove past, but last week “something even more disgusting [happened]”.
“I don’t even want to say it. It’s a whole other level and now I’m really worried,” he said without elaborating .
So this is more than a few anonymous posters on social media. I hope he has gone to the Police.
During a break, he told RNZ his ute had been hit by a single shot fired at it while parked outside his house on Thursday night.
“It was just a drive-by on my property and the police are looking at that, but it’s another level. I get abused by people driving by. Most people know where I am on a main road. I’m quite used to that but this is a whole other level.
“It was only a slug gun, but it’s still a firearm and it definitely left marks.”
Mayor Neil Holdom said he had seen evidence the Chong’s vehicle had been shot at.
This is the inevitable outcome of an issue becoming so inflamed that rather than having a debate on the pros and cons on race based seats, you have cries of genocide.
So what does panic on the streets of England mean for New Zealand? Not a damn thing.
The West is over, arguably it’s been dead since the end of the Cold War.
While England has gone through a period of significant political instability and failed leaders over the past 20 years, locally we have reached high levels of stability and cultural harmony.
Yes, people protested our strict lock-down protocols, but they were a peaceful and ethnically diverse group who only ruined some grass and a slide.
We, Aotearoa New Zealand, are better than the UK.
We’re better than The West, too.
We’re better than any nation on earth when it comes to not being dragged into hatred and division.
In a joint effort, the U.S. News and World Report, the BAV Group, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed people across 36 countries about racial tolerance.
New Zealand ranked first, a position it holds in numerous other global studies of peace, societal stability, and freedom.
Far from perfect but better than everyone else. Yet we have a political party that is trying to spark a race war by claims of genocide as a cynical ploy for publicity to increase their vote.
It is sad and deeply problematic that the only times we seem to engage on the important issue of racism it is a trojan horse for partisan hackery or other interests.
A Maori bully is still a bully, and some of the most racist people I’ve ever met are fellow Maori.
We need to check ourselves too sometimes.
I recently worked for an organisation that was founded a year before I was born. After a few weeks I was talking to the big boss about the history of the company and he informed me that I was the first Maori staff member they have ever had.
It felt weird. Not ‘bad’ entirely, and certainly not racist, just weird.
After some time weighing up whether this was a slight or just an earnest statement of a company coming of age, I realised that it was a well intentioned statement meant to highlight that Maori are taking on more prominent roles and breaking into industries that were once the sole domain of pakeha men who attended private schools.
Like a grisly wound, it can be hard to always see from the outside the healing going on underneath.
We are going through some growing pains, that’s because we are still growing, but we’re getting to a place as a society where someone can be judged solely for that actions.
That should be celebrated.
We should be proud to challenge all people’s bad behaviour equally, we’re judging people for their bad character and not the colour of their skin.
It’s great we accept refugees and even better that one can go on to be an MP.
It’s wrong when that person steals thousands of dollars of clothes from local businesses – clothes they could afford given their salary and earning potential as a lawyer – but it is great that a politician can’t just use their influence or play the race card to avoid prosecution.
Can’t agree more.
Racism is real, and should be stomped out anytime it appears, but the seriousness of racism also means it deserves better than being used as a lazy retort when your ‘fave’ gets called out or a half-arsed column idea.
There is no perfect model nation we can copy from, sadly we’re closer to that status than anyone else.
Our most Trumpian politicians are indigenous – which is quite wild, America couldn’t imagine such scenes – and our most vocal opponents of these politicians are also indigenous people.
We’re different.
We’re a bit special, but we shouldn’t be satisfied just yet, and we certainly shouldn’t be copying off or comparing ourselves to lesser nations such as those of the old Western Civilisation.
There are still those growing pains, but we’ve evolved beyond West vs East, and we’ll continue to improve with sufficient effort and maturity.
Embattled construction union the CFMEU and its members have broken federal law more than 2,600 times, costing the union more than $24 million in fines, new court documents claim.
The Fair Work Commission has outlined the union’s history of breaches and made allegations of threats and intimidation in the construction industry as part of its Federal Court case to put independent administrators in charge of the union.
The crackdown follows media reporting about stand-over tactics and bikie infiltration, which the Fair Work general manager Murray Furlong told the court were evidence the union had “ceased to function effectively”.
“Since 2003, the CFMEU has been the subject of findings of contraventions of federal workplace laws on more than 1,500 occasions, plus 1,100 contraventions by its office holders, employees, delegates and members,” Mr Furlong said in a submission.
He added approximate 213 court cases had resulted in “total penalties ordered against the CFMEU of at least $24 million, plus at least $4 million ordered against its office holders, employees, delegates and members.”
It’s amazing it took so long for action. It resembles organised crime more than a union.
The Hipkins/Tinetti 6-year education combination has left a huge amount of NZ young people in a deep hole. The state of our literacy & numeracy for children has been well canvassed (although Tinetti tries to say 2/5 doing okay is not so bad. Hipkins just blamed National Standards – a measurement tool – not a teaching one).
As you see below at the high school level the results have been sliding too.
In 2023, 37.8% of all school leavers attained UE Standard, a 0.7 percentage points decrease from 2022. In 2023, UE Standard was attained by 17.6% of Māori school leavers overall (in 2020 it was 22%) UE Standard was attained by 21.9% of Pacific school leavers overall. UE Standard was attained by 60.2% of Asian school leavers overall. UE Standard was attained by 41.2% of European/Pākehā school leavers overall.
We are now getting down 1 in 5.68 Maori students leaving school with UE. It is shameful.
Here is Level 1 NCEA for Leavers.
In 2023, 12,048 Māori school leavers (71.7%) attained NCEA Level 1 or above. This was a decrease of 2.5 percentage points from 2022. That is; 28.3% of Maori young people are now leaving school for good without even attaining LEVEL 1 NCEA. Each has been funded for 13,200 hours and our schools have failed to get them over the lowest of hurdles.
To put it even more starkly: During 2023 – 3,410 Maori youth left school for good – with no qualifications.
Tinetti – with Jack Tame on Q&A – offered no answers – just a whole lot of couldn’t care less and don’t cross the unions.
Her only stated plan was to cancel Charter Schools if/when she gets back into power. – it won’t matter if they are improving outcomes for students – especially Maori. (She simply talked down her nose about Maori organisations applying to run Charter Schools … she knows much better). – it won’t matter if parents, students and the teachers working in them love them. – it won’t matter if underserved communities and towns with no education choice love the new schools in their area. Tinetti knows best – and only the unions matter to her – and the Charters will go!
NB: she espoused no plan to shut down the many State schools that, especially under her watch, were/are demonstrably not working.
I am working with a new Charitable Company and we have applied for four Charter Schools. Two in the central city of Auckland where there are no walk-up schools for 57,000 families. One in Epsom, on transport routes, for the range of students who need 1:15 classes and other features of our model. One in Warkworth – with a growing population and huge desire from families for choice. We are also VERY open to working with State schools who see the benefits of operating as Charters and will seek to change.
Tinetti takes no responsibility for the disgraceful state of our education system but claims to be highly knowledgeable. I will never attain the heights of being a Minister of this important sector – but from my lowly position I extend an open invite to debate the former (and aspiring) Minister on cause, effect and solutions to our education crisis.
The NZIER Shadow Board is divided over whether the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) should decrease the Official Cash Rate (OCR) in the upcoming August Monetary Policy Statement. Over half of the Shadow Board members viewed that a 25 basis-point decrease in the OCR is needed now, given the continued slowing in the New Zealand economy and the labour market, and annual CPI inflation is nearing the 1 to 3 percent inflation target band. The rest of the members recommended the Reserve Bank keep the OCR at 5.50 percent.
What concerns me is non-tradable or domestic inflation is still close to 6%. Overall inflation is down due to the tradable sector. I think the RBNZ should wait for a further quarter of inflation data before deciding to ease. Australia has just had their inflation rate sneak up, and we don’t want to have the same here.
Christopher Luxon was right; it was an unusually petty line of questioning yesterday from Chris Hipkins compared to the many issues deeply affecting Kiwis at the moment. …
Labour only get a few questions a day, and they decide to use one of them on the fact that a NZ Minister prefers to use English when writing to an Australian counterpart. Do they really think this is what will matters to NZers, rather than health, education, incomes etc?
The Government is ending New Zealand’s nearly 30-year ban on gene technology outside the lab in a move which will bring health, productivity and climate gains for New Zealanders.
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins today announced legislation ending the ban and implementing a dedicated regulator to oversee applications to use gene technology will be introduced to Parliament by the end of the year.
“This is a major milestone in modernising gene technology laws to enable us to improve health outcomes, adapt to climate change, deliver massive economic gains and improve the lives of New Zealanders,” Ms Collins says.
This is great news. Our current regime is ridiculously restrictive – much more so than the Royal Commission recommended. Every review in the last couple of decades has said it should be liberalised, but little ever happened. It shows the difference a determined Minister and Government can make.
“The changes we’re announcing today will allow researchers and companies to further develop and commercialise their innovative products. Importantly it will help New Zealanders to better access treatments such as CAR T-cell therapy, which has been clinically proven to effectively treat some cancers. It can also help our farmers and growers mitigate emissions and increase productivity, all of which benefits our economy,” Ms Collins says.
This could make a significant change to our agricultural methane emissions. If you really think climate change is an existential threat, you should be gleefully celebrating this announcement.
In an audacious armoured assault into the Kursk region of Russia, Ukrainian armed forces have advanced further than either side in almost two years. The attack by at least two brigades took the Kremlin by complete surprise. Or at least it was launched and seized significant territory before any counter move could put a stop to it. So much for the supposedly transparent battlefields of the 21st century.
The advantages of surprise in war are transient but even after four days fighting, Russian forces have yet to contain the incursion. That’s hardly surprising given the thinly spread defences along this part of the border. So far local irregular forces and conscripts have been sent in and at least one battalion of reaction forces was apparently largely destroyed by what seems to have been a long-range missile strike.
When Russia invaded Ukraine they expected the war to be over in a few weeks. I bet you they never expected a consequence would be having Ukraine take control of a part of Russia!
The Government’s plan to end the large-scale use of emergency housing is working, with new figures showing a 32 per cent reduction in the number of households living in motels, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says.
“Emergency housing is one of the biggest public policy failures we’ve ever seen in New Zealand, growing from a few families using it for brief periods into a situation where thousands of tamariki were growing up in motels,” Mr Potaka says.
“National promised change and in Government we are delivering it, with more than 1000 tamariki moved out of motels and into homes under our watch.
“From last December to June this year, the total number of households living in emergency housing has gone from 3141 to 2133 – a 32 per cent reduction in just six months. We have seen over 1000 tamariki depart emergency housing during this period.
Can anyone deny this is a good thing. Motels are good for tourists and travellers, not for kids to grow up in.
“In April, we introduced the Priority One category which puts whānau with dependent tamariki who spend longer than 12 weeks in emergency housing to the top of the social housing waitlist.
“As of July, 540 whānau have been supported out of emergency housing under this priority.
Very sensible.
“The next step, starting at the end of this month, is to bring in clearer obligations for emergency housing assistance.
“For example, to ensure emergency housing is used by people in genuine need, people may be asked to provide evidence of their housing situation when they apply.
“People staying in emergency housing have responsibilities they must agree to and meet. If they stay longer than seven nights, they’ll need to complete agreed activities to help meet those responsibilities.
“This includes paying their emergency housing contribution, and activities which will help them get a home. This could include things like meeting with a housing broker, attending a Ready to Rent course, engaging with support services or looking for a private rental.
“At each re-grant appointment, their case manager will check they’ve completed the activities they agreed to and talk with them about any support which may be available. This is an important part of helping to set people up for housing success.
“If people don’t meet their obligations without a good reason, they’ll receive a warning. After two warnings, if they don’t meet their obligations again, they won’t be able to get an Emergency Housing Grant for 13 weeks.
Emergency housing has become free accomodation for some, including gang members. It should be for emergencies and temporary.
The United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency has spent more than nine months denying its employees work alongside Hamas, dismissing these claims as Israeli propaganda. On Monday, the organization fired nine staffers for participating in the Oct. 7 terror spree that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) announced that it will fire a handful of its employees based in the Gaza Strip for working alongside Hamas as it slaughtered Israeli civilians. “For nine people,” UNRWA spokesman Farhan Haq said, “the evidence was sufficient to conclude that they may have been involved in the seventh of October attacks.”
This is code for the evidence was so strong, we could no longer pretend it wasn’t.
In the 11 months to 31 May 2024, a total of 2220 people claimed refugee status in New Zealand.
Half of these asylum seekers – 1108 people – were from a single country: India.
Before the Covid pandemic, the number of refugee claimants averaged only 400 people a year.
So a 400% increase in asylum claims strongly suggests, there is gaming.
It’s not because more genuine refugees are coming to New Zealand.
Pre-Covid, approval rates for refugee claims were around 35%, but that rate has dropped to 21% in the past three years.
So the vast majority are not legitimate.
Refugee claimants qualify for Emergency Benefits from Work & Income, and free legal aid from lawyers specialising in refugee claims. In 2000, it was estimated by INZ that each refugee claim costs New Zealand $30,000 – that figure is likely to be a lot higher now.
Let’s say it is now $50,000. The annual cost could be $100 million, which is not available for other purposes.
Refugee claimants are currently being granted 12-month ‘open’ work visas while awaiting their claims to be heard. This encourages more people to try coming to New Zealand to gain asylum-seeker privileges.
Two government departments are investigating the mysterious NZ Edutech Trust charity, which took $500,000 in public funds without any clear evidence of what it’s been spent on – and a chairman who was already under scrutiny by Internal Affairs. Steve Kilgallon investigates.
They said they would work with children and schools, offering educational classes, tai chi, art workshops, parenting courses, cultural festivals and even try to “alleviate poverty” – and they got over half a million dollars in community funds to do that work.
But now the NZ Edutech Trust is facing two government investigations into what it actually did with all that money – and its founding trustee has said she felt “tricked” into being part of the organisation.
The Trust’s chair, Shun Xu, also known as Shun Liebenberg, has already been tied up in an inquiry into another charity of which she was a trustee, the Angel’s Children’s Educational Foundation. That charity received almost $1m in similar grants but appeared to shutter operations after a Stuff story in 2022 raising questions about what work it had actually done.
So the Chair had a bad track record, yet still got hundreds of thousands in this new charity.
The NZ Edutech Trust’s was duly formed in August 2021, with its founding trustees being Xie, Liebenberg, and Liebenberg’s husband, Tjaart Liebenberg.
Xie said she’d tried and failed to apply for grants from different providers in the past, but the new trust quickly had success with gaming machine trust BlueSky, which gave them $561,000 over 17 different grants between July 2022 and August 2023.
This is the amazing part – they got 17 different grants. Now I can imagine you make get an initial grant based on a proposal, but surely no sensible body would keep handing them out without proof of delivery.
BlueSky is a trust which distributes community grants from pokie machines. It states its purpose as providing grants for “education, community cultural and arts festivals, public amenities, sports facilities, amateur sport and other charitable and non-commercial purposes that are beneficial to the community”.
It did not respond to Stuff’s questions about what the grants were intended for, what reporting it required on their use, and what auditing it conducted.
Te Pāti Māori says it “will no longer engage” with the New Zealand Herald after the newspaper published a front-page advertisement bought by lobby group Hobson’s Pledge.
This is astonishing. This isn’t just a political party effectively banning a media organisation because of their editorial stance, but they are banning them because they don’t like one of their advertisers. They are saying that if you accept an advertisement from groups we disagree with, we will refuse to deal with you.
I recall Muldoon banning Tom Scott from his press conferences because he didn’t like what Scott wrote. This was covered by numerous other media scores and scores of time. Everyone was outraged that a leader would do this. Well what TPM are doing is arguably worse,. They are saying that if you even accept advertisements we dislike, we will refuse to deal with you.
Is the parliamentary press gallery going to complain to TPM about this? Will the Media Freedom Committee? Will the NZ Council for Civil Liberties? Will NZME competitors editorialise is solidarity with NZME?
More recently we have Winston Peters regularly sparring with and sometimes attacking the media. There have been dozens or scores of articles decrying him when he does this.
So lets wait and see whether TPM are held up to the same level of scrutiny as other politicians.
The irony is that what TPM is doing, is very similar to what Donald Trump does. Trump hates it when Fox News runs advertisements critical of him, and he does late nights posts attacking them, and urging people to swap to other mediums etc.
Parliamentary parties and politicians should not be using their power to try and prevent lobby groups from being to advertise.
I recall seeing Lisa Carrington win her first gold medal in 2012. I was in a bar in Martinborough and everyone was watching and cheering. Her down to earth nature shone through as much as her athletic achievement.
She has now won her eighth Olympic gold medal, and even more remarkably has done it over four Olympics. Only seven people in Olympic history have won more gold medals than her. The closest any other NZer has done is four for Ian Ferguson.
