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notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, June 4th, 2026 - 22 comments
Categories: Daily review -
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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 …
China is placing a year ban on those MP's who visited Taiwan.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) local branch.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/361017316/when-foreign-governments-sanction-mps-naheCw-zealand-must-do-more-express-concern
Earlier
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361016787/china-bans-four-mps-after-taiwan-visit-mfat-stresses-visit-did-not-breach-one-china-policy
The USA has placed sanctions on ICC and UN staff (denying them access to banking and internet services), not a word from MFAT.
New Zealand has not joined other nations that signed statements criticising this.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165696
In a cost-of-living crisis? Optics, David, optics – Bennett must be doing one hell of a job!
"Zip it, sweetie."
The government has a plan to cut food bank demand in the medium term.
Eliminate some of the poor.
This will save Pharmac money, but transfer a greater cost onto hospitals.
Why are they doing it?
Ideology. It is policy to help Maori and Polynesians (to reduce the cost of future health care in hospitals, so we all win) so they are ending it.
They are transferring the money saved for a universal programme – lowering the test from 15 to 10% chance.
(this is so much like the 25% to 30% income related rent in KO housing to fund an increase for AS in private rentals)
White, have a rental property? The coalition government is on your side (soon to remove the Treaty from legislation).
https://www.thepost.co.nz/te-ao-maori/361016649/colonisation-action-pharmac-wants-cut-maori-and-pasifika-special-access-diabetes-drugs
Eliminate some of the poor, you say.
‘Well’, ‘poors’ are so bothersome for the sorted to budget for. At the rate NZ is being sold for parts, poor Kiwis may soon be unaffordable, and do they really need support? Anyhoo, not to worry, A.I. will boost our sorted unearned income streams.
Thanks SPC – Bennett's 63% pay increase (ooff!) makes more sense now
That extra support to those on AS has been limited.
Social Development Minister Louise Upston has reduced access to it.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361013591/1000-week-question-no-one-power-wants-answer
The concept is to further support lifetime renters with slightly increased levels of AS which I cannot argue with.
I'm less concerned with funding it by lifting the AS threshold for mortgage holders than I am with funding it by lifting social housing rents.
Long term renters and social housing tenants are in the position they are in because they have to be because banks won't lend. They don't have a choice but low income mortgage holders did have a choice. The bank anointed them to be able to service the mortgage even using AS so maybe they should be asked to do more with less, instead of asking those with literally nothing.
Seen in a corridor beyond the Grand Hall.
Much ado about nothing.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360988039/stuff-journalists-could-be-banned-parliament-over-hallway-photo
After the fawning by some commenters here this morning over Gerri Brownlee's response to Verity Johnson, it's weird he'd stand on such a hill to ban photographers from parliament.
MAGA, anyone?
The Master of the House role is part hospitality and part rules based order.
As per the future of hospitality, this is more useful than some
(recent take of "Chandler" – lower wages, place business owners and rich people first).
Owner-operator and smaller scale (another option is shared use of venues).
'https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360987900/old-bottle-broken-what-hospo-business-veteran-says-can-save-struggling-sector
did the photographer break the rules or not?
Did Te Pati Māori break the (haka) rules, or not?
It appears not. The photo was shot from an area where photos are allowed to be taken.
These people are so precious. They will wreck the lives of the poor because of their stupid ideology but be upset over a photo.
👍
I'm hoping the focus will change once Labour and the Greens start releasing policy.
Coz it shows Upston's bad side.
Here's the full image. Per the article (no photo credit given) the photographer was in an approved area and captured Upston as she walked in another area. This is exactly what a good photographer does, be alert and aware of opportunities to tell a story. Brownlee and the Nats want to censor that story.
To the image itself, it describes very well the Upston story. She's protected by the halls of power surrounded by the institutionalised, warm timber panelling of colonial NZ, and at a distance from the accountability of the people. But she's caught clutching privilege in the form of the blue binder, isolated, indifferent, haunted, and suspicious which reflects the spotlight she's under by claiming $52000/yr for her freehold house at the same time as increasing social housing rents by approx $1700/yr.
It really is a very powerful image and I'm stunned the Nats would use this to crack down on the media at this time. They never had a thing for the arts anyway.
It is indeed a ‘very allowed’, very powerful image of a very powerful minister.
And that must not happen again. Free speech [expression] anyone – anyone?
That’s ‘progress’ for you.
Policy
25 to 30% of income related rent
from 30 to 40% of income on rent before getting AS
(to be fair her apartment may be declining in value given it is based in the worst housing market for owners in the country – and with high insurance and rates cost)
Schadenfreude
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361013591/1000-week-question-no-one-power-wants-answer
On the button Muttonbird. Take for example something that happened to me years ago. I was being harassed by someone but not in a sexual way. I rang that person and spoke to them about it. That person then reported me for harassment. That is what Upston has done. Tried to project her own bad faith acting on to a photographer whose act was wholly legitimate in the cirumstances.
Yes, accountability is important and the media are the avenue for that. There is no other avenue.
Great post Mutton…so true.
Some clever practical good things are happening.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/regional/597268/mosgiel-students-harness-the-power-of-potatoes-to-battle-frosty-cars
Let's find the scattered community in NZAO of people who like each other, and are prepared to work together, and build a pouihi that builds ever higher. Something to match Inia Te Wiata's carved by him in a London basement so far from home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4ebPqW0Xv0 Inia Te Wiata carving his Pouihi plus Waiata Maori (Not forgetting he was also a renowned opera singer at this time.) Hine E Hine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjwcAWxuiwI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inia_Te_Wiata
I've been trying to reply to a comment and quote by weka on the FSU thread:
A sweeping statement with nothing to back it up. The left (in italics) in recent years have done what they have always done, champion those with a lesser voice.
If you are claiming we have suppressed debate and freedom of expression by the powerful (covid vaccinations and mandates, self-ID, Maori co-governance) it is all within the remit of left politics which is speaking for and lifting the disenfranchised.
If that is unacceptable to you, then you might identify in the wrong political sphere?