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6:00 am, May 5th, 2026 - 46 comments
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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 …
Just a big shoutout to the doughty and determined Waitakere Local Board's Greg Presland for organising the petition to ensure the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Act is recognised as a protective layer in the new RMA replacement.
As Sir Bob Harvey commented "Never in my lifetime did I think we would have to save the Waitakeres again."
I would urge anyone to sign this petition particularly if the live in Auckland.
Save the Waitākere Ranges Heritage Area | OurActionStation
If anyone, like I have, have had the privilege of both living inside this subtropical rainforest and also worked to restore it, you will get how important this one is to save. We need our own local Act of Parliament respected and not trashed.
Marvelous! NZ is now mates with Russia and Putin.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nz-and-singapore-agreement-protects-fuel-supply
And that is Really Bad News.
We are not aware here – being protected from the atrocities that are being carried out in Russia at this very moment – bit if any one doubts the state to which Putin has in recent years reduced the freedom of Russian citizens I refer them to the most excellent documentary – filmed in Russia by a Russian teacher, and now screening in NZ cinemas
Mr Nobody Vs Putin.
Russian oil is ‘refined’ in Singapore, i.e., transmutated, so it’s okay to sell & use in NZ.
It is amusing in a wry cynical way, that we have our principles until we hit a touch of turbulence then can hand wave them away.
They were gone by lunchtime, 4 days later.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-zealand-announces-more-support-%E2%80%AFukraine%E2%80%AFsanctions-russia [press release by Winston Peters on 24 February 2026]
With our governments love of flogging off the family silver, this was an interesting read.
https://theconversation.com/chinese-companies-are-increasingly-taking-on-foreign-governments-its-not-just-the-port-of-darwin-282045?
“The Chinese-owned firm that operates the Port of Darwin isn’t happy about the federal government’s push to return it to an Australian owner. Now, the situation is escalating, with the stage set for an international legal showdown.”
Horizon Research has done a poll on the fuel crisis. Some results surprised me.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/05/04/newsroom-survey-majority-lacks-confidence-in-govt-to-manage-fuel-crisis/
Of the respondents, 20% are concerned about flight reductions because of the overall fuel situation, and 13% have reduced their air travel. WTF!?
On the other hand, I see no responses indicating that more people have bought an EV, invested in solar panels, or started car-pooling, for example. Maybe they fall on the 7% ‘other’ that people have changed in response to the fuel crisis.
The Government’s handling of the fuel situation so far and its ability to handle the situation effectively in the future were judged with high disapproval and low confidence, respectively. People who voted National Party in 2023 are most pleased and confident; there must be many with a Koru Club membership among them.
I am really impressed with the high percentage of people who have changed their behaviour, with only 19% "not done anything". 81% show they have elasticity which is more than I expected.
Don't be discouraged by the lack of a specific line for people not switching to a new EV car or solar panels. Very few people have any savings to make that kind of purchase – far far fewer than in 2020 when this current economic recession began. Even the big corporates are just hanging in there or cutting back hard or flat going out of business.
We're just in survival mode now.
This is a hard time, and we have years more of it to go.
Good points, thank you!
Most of us are just completely unaware of the mode we are in. If we listen to our beloved leaders, all is rosy; the only flies in the ointment being those awful, profligate Lefties who got us into this mess!
At most, the vast majority of people feel only mildly anxious thanks to our shared authoritarian outlook; Big Luxy will save us, even though he is a knob.
That is not what the report cited states.
As fuel prices go up and consumer confidence goes down, trust in Luxon goes down too.
Authoritarians; people who support authority figures, feign dissatisfaction when things are uncomfortable, but when it comes to the real crunch, fall in behind their tough guy. Coz toughness is the winner, might is right.
It would be enormously helpful if we all travelled less; much less.
We do though, find ourselves in a very difficult position: many of us have family members living beyond walking/cycling distance, we have jobs that require us to travel in order to turn up, our food sources/supermarkets usually have to be driven-to.
Never-the-less it would be enormously helpful if we all travelled less.
What got me was the number of respondents concerned about flying, apparently. I’d think that business-related flying is less of a concern because the ‘boss pays’. The 20% figure is under-stating the real number of travellers-by-air, I’d assume, so that’s an awful lot of Kiwis taking flight.
There’s that famous (unattributed) quote:
According to all aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly because its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wingspan. But ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway.
I can paraphrase this as:
According to all common sense, Kiwis shouldn’t fly because it consumes precious jet-fuel, emits huge amounts of carbon eqs., and is prohibitively expensive. But ignoring these common sense considerations, the Kiwis fly anyway.
Coz, adult children living in England, justifiable, well-earned holiday in Samoa/Fiji (It's wot keeps me going!) Robbie Williams concert in Welly (Why shouldn't I !!!)
NZ is a long spread-out country and we are said to have only 3 degrees of separation? Also we have a great lot of overseas immigrants creating connectedness with the world's large countries plus the small islands that appreciate having an air travel option.
With that amount of interest on the business, or familial level or needing to travel to obtain sickness treatment within NZ or getting it overseas which is often good and attractively cheaper plus obtainable only away from our own country, we need to be able to fly, many of us across water.
Also if we could get that NZ connectedness in working together as a communal country with cohesive, interacting interests we could get round the flight thing and start managing for the difficult 21st century. At present we seem steeped in 20th century whirlpools. Pulling the sticking plaster off the wounds that fractured, sharp change makes will slow us down. But if every post or step was a winning one what a great lot of tarradiddle this would have been to write and read!
There's want, need & really need. Human exceptionalism is exceptionally harmful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can%27t_Always_Get_What_You_Want
https://thestandard.nz/are-whales-people-the-green-party-bill-to-give-whales-personhood/
ACT are socialists now? Who knew?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/594278/let-the-kid-on-act-wants-children-to-be-able-to-hop-on-any-passing-school-bus
“The ACT Party wants children to be able to hop on any passing school bus as long as there's space onboard.
Under existing rules, students can use the free bus transport only if they attend the nearest school they can enrol at. They must also live more than 3.2km from their primary school or intermediate or more than 4.8km from their high school.”
ACT MP Andrew Hoggard said some families in rural areas were "burning fuel" driving their children to school despite the bus on the road in front of them having empty seats.
Why aren't rural kids attending "the nearest school they can enrol at"?
Thats become an increasingly complex subject in some areas. There's lots of different things going on causing the issue.
As I understand it in some areas there is no bus that goes to the nearest school. So parents enrolled their children in further away schools that were serviced by a bus so far so good for quite a period of time until the 'rules' were enforced and some students were no longer allowed on the bus even though it wasn't full.
In some cases it can be a case of wanting siblings going to school in the same town, say one intermediate aged and the other in high school. In some places even though the bus is going past one sibling is allowed on the other isn't. Basically its got beyond the point of sensible in some parts of NZ the Horowhenua is a good example.
Its basically impossible to manage after school activities or weekend sports if one child is going to school in one town and the other is two towns over.
It's actually a decent policy but defo not socialist ACT are very pro choice in schools they'd have a voucher system if they had their way this bus thing sits pretty well with that.
"Its basically impossible to manage after school activities or weekend sports if one child is going to school in one town and the other is two towns over."
This is a "First-World" problem, right? Privilege. I've seen photos of Indian children hitting a hoop with a stick 🙂
Government gives councils amalgamation ultimatum
""For areas that do not come forward through the head start pathway, the government will implement a backstop process to ensure reform still happens across the country. This will involve a standardised approach, including transitional governance arrangements while changes are put in place," Watts said."
Parse that, if you have the stomach for it!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/594289/government-gives-councils-amalgamation-ultimatum
The Coalition only stands for common sense when it suits them.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/plain-language-act-repeal-bill-passes-first-reading
"Do what you are told, or we will spank you"!
Same as Stanford's approach to teaching.
Seems a common theme with this Coalition of Cockups.
"Do what you are told, or we will spank you"!
Bottom-line 🙂
Big Daddy knows Best!
Are you … surprised?
Stanford is SO compromised by the providers of "teaching software".
They are levering real content out, in favour of their pay-as-you-go offerings.
Rob Campbell has written another excellent piece and there are many paragraphs I’d like to quote verbatim, but I won’t except for one; just read it (it’s not long).
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/05/04/for-many-nzers-elections-are-done-to-them-not-by-them/
I don’t think this quite true and reads like a false dichotomy and a little fatalistic. A recent article in Jacobin, ‘Zohran Mamdani and the Contradiction of Democratic Socialism’, delved into the contradiction embodied by Zohran Mamdani [mayor of New York City] [HT to Darien Fenton @ https://thestandard.nz/i-didnt-vote-for-jacinda-but-can-i-say-sorry/#comment-2061351 ]. Arguably, Mamdani does have a movement behind him that got him into his position, which is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
This tension, or contrast, which remains unresolved, between purity & perfectionism (which is not equivalent to principled) and the practical reality & pragmatics of power (realpolitik) is also present here in NZ, particularly in the Green Party but also in the Labour Party even.
Rob Campbell talks of “cynicism or disillusion” that is understandable. Indeed, it’s a rational, logical, and even acceptable response to the current system, situation, and outcomes. The Jacobin piece ends on a slightly positive and constructive note that each of us can take to heed and action:
On the perfectionism-pragmatism conflict. This may be a naive observation, but it's a conflict only when a government does just one of them. Both have to be done – simultaneously but on wildly different timescales. If both are being done, the conflict is defanged to some extent.
Take something like Labour's CGT on residential rental property in order to fund free doctors' visits. That is pragmatic, fairly easily understood, fairly quick to implement, probably quite popular once it's in action and therefore hard to undo, and really helpful to many poorer people. That's great, well done.
But the policy poses bigger questions: why are so many NZers so poor that they cannot afford doctors' visits; why do doctors choose to, or need to, or are able to charge so much on top of the subsidies they already receive for seeing patients; why do some parts of NZ not have enough doctors, so free visits to non-existent doctors is scarcely an improvement; why are so many poorer NZers so unwell? Understanding these social and economic facts and having plans to change them matters, Each pragmatic step should be a bridgehead, a stepping stone or a Trojan Horse that pushes in the direction of the larger plan.
Not according to the Jacobin piece, and thinking this is possible and attempting it is futile.
Staying within and working with the system leads to timidity, tinkering, and incrementalism where nothing fundamentally changes, which is often-heard criticism by the Left of the Left. In any case, it won’t please or do anybody any good in the long run. So, it’s a real impossibility, not a paradox or conflict that can be overcome.
Arguably, this is a so-called ‘wicked problem’; every (progressive) change or intervention is met with an opposing one to reshape the outcome. The core problem is that governing and transforming are opposite tasks & actions. This is one reason why politicians/parties can perform quite well in opposition but struggle when in power – purity doesn’t equal power, and criticising doesn’t make for building institutions or bipartisan bridges.
There are many very good take-away messages in the article for NZ Labour supporters (or Greenies, for that matter) – best to read it yourself – but the most uncomfortable ‘truth’ for socialists might be the realisation that there’s no assurance that forging ahead with even the best (socialist) intentions will inevitably lead to a lasting system of post-capitalism – call it a work-in-progress with an uncertain outcome and completion date.
"Staying within and working with the system leads to timidity, tinkering, and incrementalism where nothing fundamentally changes … [s]o, it’s a real impossibility, not a paradox or conflict that can be overcome."
Which is a restatement of the Jacobin piece: "that is, a contradiction in the properly dialectical Marxist sense: an antagonism that cannot be resolved without overcoming the larger system that gives rise to it, such as that between capital and labor."
This sounds very clever and suitably dialectical, but the practical implications of it are far more paralysing than having to work through the years-long slog of progressive change that I tried to describe. Because it implies that any effective action is predicated on one of two things: a.) somehow being outside the system – whatever that might mean in the case of democracies based on the frustrations of electoral politics, or b.) destroying the system (presumably market capitalism) in order to effect change. Because how does such destruction occur? You can't will market capitalism out of existence, or legislate it out of existence because it is not one thing but a myriad of inter-related things, and you can't (or shouldn't) use force, because that makes everything worse.
If there is any one thing that makes me not a Marxist, it's the tendency of its acolytes to be depressingly determinist. My inclination is towards 'guided emergence' – market economies are complex and fragile beasts, change things in a direction you think will lead forward, observe and correct, keep moving, keep the electorate in mind and adjust the pace, do not collapse the house of cards.
A collapse now would be awful, so by any and all means make the 'house' more 'nimble'. Still, imho this iteration of civilisation also needs to be contemplating how to exit our overshoot Ponzi gracefully, and Mars isn't the answer. Let it be?
I like the idea of ‘guided emergence’ although I don’t think this will necessarily have the outcomes we desire. At the point of emergence aka the time of bifurcation (see link in https://thestandard.nz/open-mike-14-04-2026/#comment-2060077), something will happen that’s truly beyond our imagination and control. This uncertainty – misplaced faith for some, misguided fear for others – may explain the reluctance or resistance of many who rather stick to the devil they know (Plato’s cave allegory comes to mind). In the meantime, we shouldn’t give in to despair and keep labouring, as you suggested and how the Jacobin piece finished.
Simply put I think must be the difference in style of politics and planning between quoting and using ideology which tends to the idealistic and preaches purity (could be called singing 'odeology'). This tends to lay blame on others for non-achievement. And the pragmatic with big doses of – is this what we need, and will the general populace use it and afford it, and is it the first in the list of needed projects etc, and what is the least debt we need to utilise?.
Good if the beginning of planning discussions showed the wanted outcomes in large letters at the top of the page. Then consideration of what would be okay if the whole deal couldn't be brought off. Then discussion of budgets, examples elsewhere, whether they similar, what outcomes would be an improvement in the short term but enabling movement further towards better sericeable outcomes etc.
Perhaps there is too much off the shelf stuff that some bozo has been sold, and put forward as the latest in the name of the people or greater productivity or whatever. Pragmatism must rule now being a change from continuing mess-ups, but advantageous goods or methods must be mixed in as affordable. Outcomes aimed at would be reasonably budgeted, (not cheapest), practical and good-looking. Sounds a simpleton's choice but is being forced on us to prove we are a thinking nation by circumstances coming in dire, and growing patches.
Campbell has become a breath of fresh air, I can almost forgive him for a period back in the 80's and 90's when I believe he was an enabler of the Douglas / Richardson faction. I will apologise if my recollection is wrong.
I seem to remember Rob Campbell being Left and then being made a Director of one of the Banks. Seemingly sudden elevation. Don't know about the reasons.
I looked it up. From Wikipedia:
Luxon – "He was Vice President of Deodorant for North America "
Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
"By his own account, he was formed by this experience, and he has never been anything but immensely proud of it."
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
https://andrewdicksonnz.substack.com/p/what-is-glued-to-luxons-heel
Finally, we get to know the man, i.e., who is Chris Luxon? It’ll stick.
Stick with a knob.
Roll on, Christopher, roll on.
Even with a stick Luxon cannot walk the talk.
He does though, stick to the script, like **** to a blanket 🙂
For any fans of 1st XV rugby, the final of the Sannix tournament in Japan is about to kick off (4,45pm). Broadcast on You Tube on the Sannix channel.
Rotorua Boys High vs Feilding High School (finalists in last years NZ 1st XV competition).
Up the FAHS!
And…. well done to Rotorua Boys winning the final 46-19 to go with their wins in 2003 and 2004.
RNZ has unattractive way of foisting other nation's tragedies on us as if 'this is being done for your enjoyment and edification'. And that this one involves a brown man and a 5 year old makes it more salacious I expect. Should I make a formal objection? How would I word it?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/594323/jefferson-lewis-excused-from-first-court-appearance-since-5yo-kumanjayi-little-baby-s-alleged-murder
Are we or nearly all of us, able to sing together with trained minds and verve and let go with O Fortuna (Carl Orff). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuVvN339HRk
Or have we reverted to the class construct that our elders came here to rise above and form a better country, which we were acknowledged as being? It was going to be a fight to keep up our trading so we could buy the manufactured goods we wanted. The wealthy who understood the meretricious financial system changed the economy, we got rolled and still don't realise the extent.
The limp men and women at the top are many, and those that aren't limp are taut, sharp and perform surgery without anaesthetic and while we suffer they foreclose on our assets and sell them off to the best bidder. That is what we will receive if we settle back like this Monty Python skit. We'll be gorn by Christmas.