Written By:
- Date published:
6:00 am, May 7th, 2026 - 45 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
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 …
I now it's solid wonk but GreaterAuckland does a good job explaining the extremely expensive SH1 Warkworth-Te Hana section of SH1 that will eventually be a 4-lane highway to Whangarei.
The nation's most expensive road (so far)? – Greater Auckland
Both the National Infrastructure Plan and the rapidly accelerating oil crisis are moments in time to push pause and reconsider this.
There are so many easier fixes to the Warkworth interchange and to the Brynderwyns. A simple 5km bypass of Warkworth parallel to the existing rail line would do the job.
And Auckland is grossly underinvested in public transport compared to its motorway network: in a multi-year oil crisis that's where the investment priority should be.
It is the right time for government and Auckland Council to see the results of its massive City Rail Link project be proven, because guaranteed these returns will be fast and will immediately demand more investment in the Rapid Transit Network.
Is is the wrong time to commit $4 billion, to a PPP, on one small stretch of 4-lane highway that doesn't even get you to the Brynderwyns.
The existing toll road already bypasses warkworth.
It finishes several kilometres North of Warkworth.
Sorry Wellsford.
Incognito posted this comment yesterday evening.
The decline in NZ's Press Freedom ranking has gathered steam on a NActF track – at 22nd place in 2026, it's never been lower. I wonder if NZ-based Canadian billionaire and fossil fuel investor Jim Grenon's entry into the NZ media scene in 2023 is a 'foxy foretaste' of just how far and fast NZ Aotearoa's media environment could deteriorate.
Who's worse, the wreckers and haters, led by DPMs Seymour and Peters, or our spineless
PMCEO, missing inaction? A coalition of self-serving charlatans in deed, aided and abetted by billionaire oligarchs – Broadcasting Standards be damned.Winston will be remembered for his boundless bile, urging Kiwis to hate Kiwis
Straight from the Trump press attack phrasebook…(actually I had a mental image of Trump saying it ! )
And re :
Fortune willing, that will be his epitaph, politically speaking of course : )
I've just been looking at a cluster of teacher cases where people with gutter minds managed to get through to this important and previously high status job. One report from NZ Herald picked up and republished by RNZ does not give the name of the mentally unstable person (perhaps fair), nor what his home country was, nor the school that had chosen to employ this overseas teacher despite being told of his condition. And not providing support for it. And in such need that they started him without any NZ training. Within a week his lack of suitability was plainly and shockingly displayed. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/587583/tribunal-finds-teacher-who-had-manic-episode-at-school-guilty-of-serious-misconduct
Was this a charter school? Was the lack of naming a cover up for the school business? And there are further cases of teachers' sex talk, loose behaviour not acceptable to people with a modicum of personal values. And our young people are being exposed to this in other schools for sure, only these haven't come to light yet.
NZ retreats not to a cave, but a robbers' ken to use argot (flash-ken) that I found in a Heyer book about a rescue from crims. So much for our fine standing that we had before 1984. (George Orwell wrote his dystopian novel with that title, it's all his fault)!
The image of Seymour on a wrecking ball demolishing RNZ is on point – he's an Atlas lacky, and an embarrassment. Seymour (a wrecker) and Winston (a hater) are tools of business oligarchs, tag-teaming RNZ and TVNZ. Could someone please start a petition to keep these jokers at arms length from NZ Aotearoa's state broadcasters.
DMK : I read that article….whooboy.
NZ desperately, critically even, needs a change of direction from NACT1 !
On another (Is RNZ related though) IMO this very well written article encapsulates our Climate risk..s.
A big, (in some ways depressing) read, but it really puts it all there…in a page. How hard can it be to actually heed the dire warnings from Scientists, Engineers, Professors,Doctors, et al?
“Climate Change Commission report urges ‘decisive’ action as major risks loom”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/environment/594507/climate-change-commission-report-urges-decisive-action-as-major-risks-loom
We must kick NACT1 out November…and save our lovely land.
Nothing new in that: Warren Cooper did much the same thing after the Nat landslide in 1990. Many if not all the then-current RNZ board were "invited" to submit their resignations. (I was personally acquainted with one of them, so it really did happen that way.)
Except, perhaps, Dave Nobody Seymour, Winston Nobody Peters, and Chris Nobody’s There Luxon.
https://thestandard.nz/open-mike-06-05-2026/#comment-2061635
Trust isn’t the issue really. When RW pollies want to have their oncologist fired run and run off to a quack it isn’t because they don’t trust trained medical professional expert, it’s because they don’t like hearing the diagnosis & prognosis and they prefer the quack telling them that they’re not a cancer.
If I was Atlas Dave, I'd be trying all the levers to undermine trust in 'entitled' public services and institutions – private capital never sleeps.
Measure twice, cut once?
Shame Jones (not just in bed with the fishing industry, he is actively protecting them from inside Parliament : (
If we think blocking the Strait of Hormuz is causing us problems, wait unti China blocks the Taiwan Strait.
From Anna Fifield
https://substack.com/home/post/p-196607296
"Some experts are now concerned that China will take inspiration from the Hormuz precedent and consider a blockade in the Taiwan Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
That would be a far bigger deal for New Zealand than the closure of the Strait of Hormuz: More than NZ$4 trillion worth of goods – amounting to more than 20 percent of global maritime trade – passes through the Taiwan Strait each year."
Not likely in the short term, but I hope somone, somewhere, in some ministry is planning for this.
Not in the present Govt anyway…..
There are a couple of important differences between the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait.
A closure of the Taiwan Strait would be economically serious, no question. It is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, with around 1,200 ships crossing it per week.
But blocking traffic through the Strait is not the same as successfully blockading Taiwan or pinching it off entirely.
Shipping can route east of Taiwan, which complicates the problem for China. An effective blockade would likely require China to control or credibly threaten access around Taiwan more broadly, not just the waterway between Taiwan and the mainland.
That is a much larger military and diplomatic problem. It risks escalation with the United States, Japan, and South Korea, all of whom have direct interests in keeping regional sea lanes open.
Japan and South Korea are especially exposed to disruption in the Taiwan Strait and, along with Singapore, possess advanced and capable naval forces that could significantly complicate any Chinese attempt at regional naval hegemony.
So yes, New Zealand should absolutely be planning for it. But it is not quite the same kind of chokepoint problem as Hormuz. A major disruption is plausible; sustaining a long-term blockade is a much harder proposition.
Moreover, China itself relies enormously on maritime trade. There is no realistic amount of road, rail, or Belt and Road infrastructure that can fully substitute for seaborne trade at that scale.
Why, would China be interested in blockading mostly Chinese flagged or flag of convenience ships trading with NZ?
Unless of course we join in the ill advised war with China some in the USA want. In which case they don't need a blockade. Just a simple ban on trading with NZ.
Another difference is that China is not ruled by religious fanatics, and is thus more likely to take a realistic and worldly view of the situation.
No, but it is ruled by a ruthless authoritarian regime with an increasingly muscular approach to foreign policy and a somewhat conditional attachment to the concept of sovereignty when applied to other states.
It's possible that China and the US are entering into something resembling a Thucydidean trap that increases the risk of conflict between a rising and established power. But that outcome is not inevitable, and treating it as predetermined would itself be dangerous.
Neither is it as simple as assuming the US would be the sole driver of any conflict, or that aligning with China would necessarily be in New Zealand's long-term interests.
Yup, in the MoH (Ministry of Hope).
And I am sure, if there is Justice, the Trump crime family's insider trading time will come too…..
Trump and blood for oil…(there are many more)
The young, gone, but not forgotten ? (well, by some)
Amidst all the economist angst…there was this. IMO just sad as fuck..
Wont someone think of the
childrenyoung people ?(FYI I know the Green party do )
It's a tragedy. A government that was not in thrall to bad economic ideas concerning fiscal discipline would not be deepening a recession through its own actions. How much has changed in our political spectrum in the last few decades and how much narrower the range of acceptable ideas has become. It was after all a National party government that initiated the "Project Employment Programme" (PEP) scheme for young people that lasted from 1978 till about 1986. It got many young people started on careers.
The BSA is no longer.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/government-to-scrap-broadcasting-standards-authority/H3XIDDJ2LBCDTPJUU7QZ3WAUTQ/
Does that give every one, including the left, licence to lie like flatfish??
Be comfortable that they'll all self-regulate. Regulations are only implemented when industries can be seen to be failing to self-regulate. If only regulators would butt out and leave industry to self-regulate, there's be no issue, because we can all be trusted to self-regulate. Don't really need checkouts at supermarkets, an honesty-box would do the trick. Speed-limits are unnecessarily regulatory, drivers will just read the conditions and self-regulate. Jails are superfluous, as the general population is more than capable of self-regulating behaviour. It's odd, isn't it, that Right Wingers want MORE jails and HARSHER penalties, I just don't get it!!
It's actually pretty unfortunate for Shaun Plunkett, his investigation by the BSA temporarily brought me the closest I've ever been to watching or listening to some of his comment (in that I actually watched some of the clips of things he was being slapped on the wrist for). Now Plunkett won't even be able to attract attention for his poorly informed and bigoted views in that way.
On the bright side maybe, just maybe there is a future where a bankrupt Plunkett has to sell his platform to the Civilian to run parody articles on it. Is he hocking gold, crypto or supplements yet?
"Does that give every one, including the left, licence to lie like flatfish?"
Only if you won't be taken to court for defamation or libel. But, because it is mostly well-resourced individuals and organisations that can take legal action against you, it means that you cannot lie about the powerful, but can lie almost to your heart's content about the powerless. And that's an outcome that is entirely consistent with all other indicators as to whose interests this government serves.
So, Winnie can say can say what he likes. But if I say something "untruthful" about WInnie, I'm in trouble.
Good to know /sarc
That's it, right there. Thanks, AB.
Looking just at the posts above, we have a ridiculously expensive $4 billion dollar highway, a massive fine imposed to prevent the fishing industry being held to account, and big cuts to RadioNZ' s budget.
These are just a few of many extreme things this government is doing. The people of NZ will recognise this and vote them out in November.
Coz "The people of NZ …" are smart, right?
My point is that this government has has done so many extreme things that even the people who don't usually pay attention will be motivated to vote against them.
Nat leaders such as John Key did many things that I didn't like but managed to keep many of these things under he radar. The radar was disconnected when this government was elected.
John Key built more expensive motorways than anyone. The holiday highway was his baby.
I encourage you to look at the Standard archives though the Key years if you think he did things under the radar.
Stephen d the Taiwan straight is probably safe as long as the orange turd stays away from there, it's his fault the hormuz is shut
That's fine until Xi pulls the trigger.
POM elections
https://youtube.com/shorts/xO96rEsu_AE?si=fMd_YviZgU8Ayj_k
Shoulda gone to Nicky No Boats for advice on cut-price Corollas.
No one yet has done, naff?
Curious…
WTF does this comment mean Merc?
I think it's a play on the cartoon submarine NAF = (totally) naff. NZF doubling down.
Sorry for the obscurity, BG. "Naff" meaning,
"N-A-F-F. British slang. It means worthless, tacky, unfashionable – 'that's naff', 'the party was naff', 'those clothes are naff' – unenjoyable, of poor quality."
National, Act, NZF, as shown in the cartoon where the coalition submarine is labeled, NAF.
Those people are naff.
Hope this helps 🙂
Thanks…it does.
A Dialect is not the same as a Dalek. Although some Daleks have their own Dialect. : )