Last week, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This is a coalition of NGO's from over 100 countries, which has led the charge to convince nations to outlaw nuclear weapons. The committee honored…
Another term of the Nats would be bad news for the institutions of democracy. Quite apart from rewarding the tactics of blatant lies and dirty politics, the damage to specific institutions would continue. Consider this recent warning on the justice system: Chief Justice: ‘We need…
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The massive artillery barrage at Passchendaele was supposed to cut the German wire and make advance easy. All it did was churn up the mud though which so many doomed New Zealanders slogged and died. A monument to military incompetence and political disaster. These days…
A neat series of tweets yesterday looked at elections past. https://twitter.com/lukechristensen/status/917893903155527681 https://twitter.com/lukechristensen/status/917894465083150336 https://twitter.com/lukechristensen/status/917894785041498112 https://twitter.com/lukechristensen/status/917895539961733121 That's a great reminder of just how gobsmacking it is to be even mentioning FPP in a favourable light in 2017 (looking at you RNZ). In addition to the points being…
So today is very likely D day. One of two things will happen. New Zealand First will accept the offer from National. This will be signed off quickly by the National Party caucus and the Board. After all the retention of power is its raison…
It's the last day of coalition talks (probably). RNZ: Coalition talks to be done by tonight It's crunch time for Winston Peters as he pushes into the final day of talks over forming a new government, and he says today will be the most substantive…
A few thoughts from social ecologist and green politician Nandor Tanczos on the options for the Greens in the coalition deal process, On the other hand, if he goes with Labour and elbows the Greens into the position of a support party outside of government,…
https://twitter.com/cgnetwork/status/918042666696429568 Background on the Weinstein case. https://twitter.com/ICaitlinCherry/status/917951481394761729 https://twitter.com/golrizghahraman/status/917998611526328320 When contacted by Newshub, Mr Plunket originally claimed no knowledge of the tweets. Later in the night, he clarified that he did not know which tweets we were referring to as he "hadn't tweeted [tonight]". "I've deleted…
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step up to the mike …
Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …
Despite its scholarly pretensions, The Spinoff feature Election 2017: a vote for the status quo by Dr Claire Robinson seems little more than a highly aggressive PR strategy for the National Party. (Robinson = Massey Administrator, media pundit, “expert” in political marketing, former Academic & former Private Secretary to Jenny Shipley)…
This isn't new, but it came up again recently. Authorities and industrial dairy, including Federated Farmers and Fonterra have known about this from at least 2010. It's worth revisiting in a week when the next government of NZ is going to be decided by a man who…
Reposted from No Right Turn _________________________________________________________ In the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, the government red-zoned a huge swathe of the city and used coercive buyouts to depopulate and demolish it on "safety" grounds. Now, having snapped up those properties cheaply due to the red-zoning,…
Fran O'Sullivan has a good piece this morning on the policy priorities that appear to be emerging from the coalition talks: Fran O'Sullivan: Winston Peters wish list has sensitive topics ... Peters has put overseas investment, the NZ currency and affordable housing near the top…
Widely reported last night: Winston Peters: It won't be known on Thursday who the new government is Winston Peters says no announcement will be made about the next government on Thursday... ... Peters said back in July that a decision would be made public on…
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Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …
Good work form the Greens and Newsroom (Shane Cowlishaw): Government investigating fuel tax hike The Government has been investigating fuel tax increases to plug holes in its transport budget, despite ruling them out during the election campaign. ... Before the election Labour announced it would,…
In the last month in both Germany and New Zealand, new parliaments were elected. In neither case did the outcome predicate a particular coalition between political parties. In Germany, the election winner was Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, CSU.…
From the realms of political fantasy - David Seymour says Winston Peters will become prime minister. The reckons of Seymour are as bizarre as ever, don't waste your time. But one thing did catch my eye - On Monday, the ACT Party leader, who is…
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Policy is everything, Winston Peters said today. This should not come as a surprise. Before every election, he has refused to give any hint of Party support preference until after the vote. But it is highly likely that he has thought a lot about what…
Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …
Duncan Garner has done a piece that basically channels NZ Labour immigration policy. Essentially, so the argument goes, NZ has too many people and not enough infra-structure and so must "take a breather" to get things in order. So I'll just point out the fucking…
This Guest Post is by Standardista Incognito. Spoiler alert: reading this may spoil the fun watching the movie Arrival for the first time! In the recent movie Arrival aliens land on Mother Earth. Well, technically, they don’t actually land but their ‘ships’ just hover in…
The complete mess that National has made of our health system got plenty of airtime during the election campaign. While it received less coverage, the education system is a mess too. RNZ this morning: Tertiary enrolments fall as cost of living rises Tertiary enrolments have…
For the next four (presumably) days the media is going to go nuts trying to cover the coalition talks. Quite apart from the genuine and significant public interest, they have column inches to fill, and nothing much to fill them with. Expect to see agendas…
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