National’s Blue Green conference on the weekend suggests that the party has moved on from outright denial that cliamte change exists to grudging acceptance that it is a phenomenon but “balance” requires that it is tolerated.
National has responded to Labour’s ATAP proposal by refusing to accept there is a problem, drumming up anti Auckland resentment in the rest of the country and claiming they would have done the same thing.
Democracy’s permanence is not inevitable. Its imagining is not beyond imagining. And New Zealand is one of the shrinking number of democracies who really have it.
Minister Phil Twyford and Mayor Phil Goff announced the ATAP, the transport programme for Auckland for the next ten years. At $28 billion it is the largest civil infrastructure programme since World War II.
Some movement on social security (a thing we all deserve)
In a gross example of click bait journalism a senior political commentator at a major media outlet has claimed that Jacinda Ardern and Donald Trump are similar.
Media pundits are claiming on the evidence offered by one poll that the Government’s political honeymoon is over. But the same claim was made four months ago.
The Independent’s Robert Fisk reports from Douma, where he interviewed one of the clinic doctors who said that the images that outraged Trump, May and Macron were real, but the cause was oxygen starvation from dust, not poisonous gas. Could it be that misleading images started a bombing war? What might this say about Western values?
Jacinda Ardern has accepted the US, UK and French response to the Syrian crisis. Should she have instead condemned it?
The two greatest powers at work in the world right now are the roles of global finance, and climate change. In New Zealand we don’t yet see how these intersecting worlds of finance and climate change are interacting, or the government’s role in forming that interaction. But this is close.
National now seems to adopt the position that climate change is real and has to be addressed. But it is refusing to accept that to address the problem New Zealand is going to have to give up its reliance on oil and gas.
Remember how early on during his reign as National leader John Key talked about the underclass and how they were a blight on New Zealand society? Well over the past year WINZ has been giving grants to homeless families to live in tents.
The Government has announced that there will be no new offshore oil and gas exploration permits issued under the block offer process.
Marama Davidson’s question to Jacinda Ardern in Parliament yesterday allowed Jacinda to outline the enormous mess the last National Government has left the country in.
Steven Joyce’s $11.7 billion fiscal hole is becoming more and more of a reality although it is in hidden infrastructure costs that National had suppressed in search of the elusive surplus.
Partial transcript of a speech as reported in “The Independent”
Another easy decision. Gerry Brownlee wins for overseeing a $210 million blow out in EWC’s liability for Christchurch earthquake re-repair work and for being upset when Megan Woods called him on it.
Does being incoherent work sometimes? With the President of North Korea visiting China for the first time, meeting with the South Korean President for the first time, and preparing to meet with the Japanese President and with the President of the United States, was Trump’s approach actually right for the circumstances?
or more accurately one. A failed vanity flag referendum.
Between the crisis facing Middlemore Hospital’s buildings and the farce surrounding the cost of repairs of repairs of the Canterbury rebuild, National’s claim that it is a party of strong economic management looks at least misguided.
Can we please now save David Seymour from his violent oppression and relieve him of his tax-funded salary?
The Government has released a draft Government Policy Statement on Transport for consultation. A radical shake up of the Transport system is being proposed.
It is predicted that today Parliament will pass a law allowing for the expunging of convictions of adults for engaging in homosexual behaviour.
In the second stage of a false flag attack, facts go out the window and the sole issue becomes “are you for us or against us.” Our media and National Party politicians are well into this stage in the Skripal affair. But as questions mount and skeptics proliferate from all sides, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters may well be wiser than media advisers by not following blindly the western herd. 26 countries is not the whole world. Update: Porton Down unable to establish Novichok of Russian origin.
The past week has seen the Herald focus on issues concerning Clare Curran to the almost exclusion of anything else, including the perilous state of our Health system and Kim Dotcom’s successful appeal against the last Government’s breach of his rights of privacy.
Highlights from the Climate 2050 event in Wellington last night.
Steven Joyce’s prediction of a $11.7 billion deficit in the Government’s finances may be true. But this is because the last Government has underfunded health and hidden problems.
A few weeks ago Sarah Wilson at Writehanded looked at the promise in Labour’s welfare policy and whether we are going to be disappointed.
The first big Kiwibuild announcement, 3 to 4,000 houses in Mt Albert has been made. And National has responded that it was all their idea and they did not want to announce it because it would be seen as pork barrelling.
“Article 17.4 says the government must ensure that SOEs like Air New Zealand act solely in accordance with commercial considerations, unless there is an explicit public service mandate for services that operate purely within the country. There is no such mandate for Air New Zealand.”
Keep it seemly …
Make no mistake: this is the single biggest anti-trade act the world has seen since the Iranian revolution’s nationalisation program from 1979.
The signs are that Aucklanders are going to support a regional fuel tax designed to alleviate congestion.
A good start from Labour on rent reforms, but will their bigger plans be enough?
Nick Smith has been caught out by Trevor Mallard telling a porkie in Parliament.
A whistleblower, Christopher Wyllie, has explained how Cambridge Analytica managed to secure the data of 50 million Americans and how it was used in the last US Presidential election.
