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6:00 am, March 10th, 2025 - 30 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 …
NZ's Anti Woke hisself. Winston not only lairy of freethinkers, but also ramping up targetting wokeness, etc etc….as he and his NZ maga party cuddle up to trump think
And obviously dog-whistling to his vote base..(even if ironically called out on where he was earlier)
Winston and his NZ Fist cronies …Not a NZ I want a part of .
well you are part of that NZ, we all are. The challenge for the left is to tell a different story that is compelling for NZF voters. The extremes of identity politics is a failed story. This doesn't mean we abandon fairness and social issues, it means we have to think about everyone and stop trying to make people think like us. We cannot win if we simply say 'those bad people over there are bad and should change'. It just doesn't work. Why do increasing numbers of people not trust the left?
What story can we tell of fairness? To do that we should be looking at the lack of trust in the face and then figuring how we can change our approach.
I know there is a lot of talk about increasing defense spending, but before we do that can we please do something about the woeful to the point of ridiculous lack of knowledge about defense in our media?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/penguin-flies-in-world-first-test-for-new-zealand-defence-force/S2U4L5RR4VCZBOGVLEGQE4PFCY/
This article is almost funny it is so stupidly ignorant.
Penguin is NOT a cruise missile. It is a relatively short ranged light anti-ship missile for dealing with small targets.
Firing one is not a world first, even from a Seasprite – its been around since the early 1970s and is so old most countries have either retired them or are in the process of retiring them for the last decade at least.
The real take out is we've supposedly had this weapon in our inventory since 2013, but it's taken ten years to actually fire one in an exercise, which should be a giant red flag as to how poorly funded our military is.
But honestly, if we are planning to triple or quadruple our defense spending we desperately an access/legacy MSM that actually has a clue about anything beyond if it has tracks it is a tank, if it is missile it is a cruise missile….
Anyone studying journalism these days will graduate convinced by their tutors that an interest in defence is a marker of fascist or other far-right politics, so knowing anything about it is a red flag for wrongthink.
Militarily, NZ is indeed in terrible shape. I was in the territorials in 1982/83 to get me through university, and our spending back then was around 2.5% of GDP. Now it's 1 point something. If anyone wants to claim NZ had more money back then in the late Muldoon period than now and was therefore better able to afford military capability, I will metaphorically laugh in your face.
Expenditure has pretty much been downwards since then, although there was a little bit of a jump 2017 – 2020.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=NZ
NZ apparently uses some odd commercial accounting method for military spending that is unique in that counts depreciation as a cost (or something like that). Yet another Rogernomics era legacy.
Using more conventional measures used by almost everyone else then we spend as little as .7% on defense, a truly miniscule amount – an increase to 2%-2.5% togther with changing the accounting method would imply a tripling or quadrupling of spending, and that kind of money demands close scrutiny by an informed media.
It appears to have not occurred to anyone in the MSM to ask what the implications are for our really expensive P-8 fleet of the USA going rogue and turning off support at a whim for its equipment. The P-8 is more than just a maritime surveillance aircraft. It's software has a significant electronic intelligence capability. For example, if a RAAF P-8 in the South China sea drops a sonobouy and hears an unusual sound, that information is uploadedfor analysis to the US, where it is identified as, say, a new sound profile for a Chinese nuclear submarine. That updated sound file is then auto-loaded into the software of all allied P-8s as an sutomatic update, so when an RNZAF P-8 hears that same noise near, say, three Chinese ships in the Tasman doing live fire exercises the aircraft systems will know what it is listening to and inform the P-8 crew of the presence of a Chinese nuclear submarine nearby. The same thing applies if the RAAF P-8 detects a new digital radar signal, and then if the RNZAF P-8 detects the same signal they'll know more about Chinese ship radars, which we then automatically share etc etc.
We needs to know if that sort of capability remains safe.
Yep – in my day when we were calculating the cost of the ANZAC frigates, training costs, yearly "manpower"* costs, and maintenance costs had to be taken into account. So while it might be nice to think of 4 – 5 frigates when you take into account the thru life cost – you can only afford 2 – maybe 3.
* today it's probably more appropriately called personnel costs. We were still wrestling with the fact that ships were going to be crewed with both men and women in the future as demographics changed .
I am curious about one thing.
What would happen if the sonobouy was to detect a signal that investigation showed was characteristic of a US nuclear attack submarine. Would that information be passed on to all the P8s so they would know in the future when the Chinese, or any other countries, naval ships were being followed by a US attack submarine?
Of course not.
I was inclined to think the same thing until I considered this possibility.
Suppose push had come to shove and we really wanted to hit back at a Chinese vessel. Would we drop a depth charge near a submarine to persuade it to surface only to discover it was friendly? (Or at least as friendly as a Trump led country might be)
It's a question on the minds of all American ex-allies at the moment (ex-allies because America Firsters don't seem to accept the USA has such things). I sure as hell hope it's on the minds of our political leaders, but it's easy to overestimate their competence.
I never thought I'd write the sentence "de Gaulle was right," but in this case he was. Keep the US at arms length and maintain your independence.
First the fun stuff.
This link.
Launch a fort apparently.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/missile-launch-a-fort-for-nz-defence-force/SXJS343VYJCVS2P62CSSNRMQJE/
Detail
https://thedefensepost.com/2025/02/19/new-zealand-penguin-missile/
But as for one claim a world first.
It comes from here.
https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/media-centre/news/behind-the-penguin-missile-launch/
The other odd thing in the Herald article is this:
"…Without the Seasprite and Penguin missile system, the frigate would not be able to engage sea targets beyond the 11km range of torpedoes,.."
which indicates to me the author is not aware the torpedos are purely an anti-submarine weapon that cannot engage surface targets, or that the pointy cylinder sticking out of the turret on the front of the ship is a 127mm gun with a maximum range of 24km.
Mary Trump is live on twitter, interesting listen. She talks about US politics and rising fascism, and her family and how fucked up some of them are (which makes a lot of sense of the sociopathic president)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1LyxBWVdbaYKN
Farrar and the Taxpayers 'Union' must be having kittens at this latest poll – conducted by Curia (that 'unregistered' company) which usually favours the right!
When (not if) will Luxon be rolled?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/544327/chris-hipkins-overtakes-christopher-luxon-as-preferred-prime-minister-in-taxpayers-union-curia-poll
I wish they'd hurry up and roll him, because Luxon can give the opposition a false sense of security. When you're facing the worst and most unpopular new PM this century (and arguably, in NZ polling history) then you're going to poll well without saying or doing anything much. He's that bad.
No replacement for Luxon will give as many free hits (nearly every week, every media appearance). So Labour need to prepare for a contest against somebody competent. It looks like they are doing that, behind the scenes, but they'll only be properly tested once their biggest asset has gone.
And an amusing aside on that poll … it tells us 8.6% want Winston to be PM, but only 5.1% want to vote NZF.
You wonder what those extra 3.5% are thinking … vote National, get Winston as PM?
The way I read it:
No Winston => No more NZF
Isn't that pretty much what we've already got?
No death flights… yet
https://fpwellman.substack.com/p/they-are-disappearing-people-in-the?
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yly3aulwiwaboatf2v2pjkhc/post/3ljy4qgl5fc2f?
Death flights might appeal to DOGE because of their superior efficiency and savings – we'll see.
Meanwhile, Kahanists…
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mauyb6lpeigsu7ddlvjs5dzg/post/3lk24mlp7f22y?
The Anti-Defamation League confirmed on Friday that it has added Betar USA, a far right and militant Jewish group, to its online database of movements and organizations that "subscribe to and/or promote extremist and hateful ideologies."
A review of the ADL website indicates that Betar USA – the American branch of the worldwide Betar movement, which has ideological links to Israel's ruling Likud party – is the only group, among hundreds on the database, that is Jewish.
[…]
The brand-new entry draws parallels between the American branch of Betar, and the Jewish Defense League – a militant, anti-Arab group founded by the American rabbi Meir Kahane, which has been designated a right-wing terrorist group by the FBI.
https://archive.li/sharO (haaretz)
edit:
https://zeteo.com/p/exclusive-meet-the-pro-trump-pro
Canada's Liberals have a new leader, and new PM to be.
And guess what? The leader was chosen by … a party leadership election! Yes, that's how it's done in the vast majority of democracies around the world, including Right-wing parties like the UK Tories. This is normal behaviour.
What's abnormal is a) tapping somebody on the shoulder and saying "You're up", or b) going into caucus and coming out an hour later to say "I'm the new leader, and I won't tell you how many votes I got, who the candidates were, or anything at all. Confidential to caucus, so don't ask".
NZ National and Labour are complete outliers in the democratic world. And our political media are so insular, so tame that they don't even question this.
Parliament as private club. With journalists as members.
Remember in 2012 when Labour had a very long, very public, and very democratic leadership vote, picked David Cunliffe, and then proceeded to get annihilated at the next general election? Or when the Greens lost nearly James Shaw well before his time because a vocal minority of party activists decided that pragmatism was a betrayal?
Leadership elections can be great when they represent a genuine contest of ideas and direction, or when they provide a clear political narrative, as seems to be the case with the Liberals in Canada.
But they can also come at enormous risk, especially when they turn into performative infighting or when party members are more focused on ideological purity than electability.
And let’s be honest. There’s a lot of lazy analysis in political media that ignores context.
The same people who insist that a leadership vote is always the most democratic option are often the ones who spent the last few months blaming Kamala Harris for being the Democratic nominee in the last US election. As if a single person at the top of the ticket is solely responsible for the outcome of an entire campaign.
Leadership matters: but parties win or lose because of their policies, their strategy, and their ability to connect with voters. Not just because of how they pick their leader.
Personally, I'd take a filthy, Aussie style caucus coup that gave Labour a clear communicator with a concise policy program that resonates with voters and delivers real change over a pointless sideshow of a leadership election any day.
But even an Aussie "spill" includes the nomination of candidates and revealing the actual voting numbers. History here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_spill
When National pick a new leader they refuse point-blank to even tell the public what the vote was. Again, nobody in the democratic world does this. So, the world is wrong and only little old NZ is right?
Wiki again:
Todd Muller won the vote for the party leadership, and Nikki Kaye won the vote for the deputy position in a secret ballot. On 24 May, the Herald on Sunday reported that Muller may have won the leadership by a single vote. By contrast, Stuff reported that while Bridges' supporters were claiming such a margin, the margin was likely to have been wider. In October 2020 an outgoing National MP said Muller won by one vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2020_New_Zealand_National_Party_leadership_election
That is a farce.
Nice for some eh – Andrew Bayly. I suppose it's 'out of sight out of mind' – https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/544317/embattled-former-minister-andrew-bayly-to-visit-mt-everest
How will he treat the Sherpas? Like he treats working people in this country?
Why does Luxon think Bayly needs time to clear his head? Luxon 'relaxed' on Andrew Bayly taking leave to visit Mt Everest
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/03/10/luxon-relaxed-on-andrew-bayly-taking-leave-to-visit-mt-everest/
According to Luxon, all he did was touch someone on the shoulder?
Or is Luxon hinting there was more to it than that?
I'll bet he doesn't enjoy his time off as much as Debbie Ngarewa-Packer did when she took of to the Cook Islands to celebrate her wedding anniversary. Bayly would have to consider the possible end of his Parliamentary career.
Even Carmel Sepuloni and David Seymour probably enjoyed their vacations more, although how anyone could enjoy going in shows like those Treasure Island or Dancing ones is completely beyond my comprehension.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/03/10/luxon-relaxed-on-andrew-bayly-taking-leave-to-visit-mt-everest/
He’s obviously running for the hills and Luxon might not be far behind and even on the same flight.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/544349/christopher-luxon-announces-india-trip