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6:00 am, September 10th, 2025 - 86 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 …
Today's Posts (updated through the day):
This trick of National could win them the 2026 election
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360816344/some-ministers-want-migrants-sign-kiwi-values-pledge-prime-ministers-not-so-keen
Act and nzf want a values card for dirty immagints .
Ideas from there world view please.
1. Must be corruptable
2.Must like making the poor suffer.
3.Prefer low wages for any one below them .
4.Big business is always right.
The Tiake Promise would be a good place to start – not only for visitors, and not only for mauhiri, but for all who live in New Zealand.
Home » Tiaki
I have no problem with some sort of affirmation on becoming permanent residents, they become voters at that point.
I would prefer allegiance to the Crown of New Zealand, the people mentioned are not even New Zealanders and we are a sovereign state.
Or maybe Chris Hipkins you grow a pair and stop simping for the neolibs for a change?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/572567/adopting-australia-s-inflation-target-insane-economic-illiteracy-finance-minister
Honestly, instead of grovelling that Labour wouldn't dare utter the merest hint they might upset the neoliberal consensus, how about saying something like "I am not taking lectures on the economy from no-boats Nicky who has single handedly smashed the economy with tens of thousands of kiwis fleeing New Zealand for Australia, 18,000 construction jobs gone, retail on life support and the country plunging back into recession?"
Hipkins is the most insipid load of old clarts on God's green earth.
Well put. Hipkins needs to return fire with fire.
He could spout all the fightin' words he likes, but they wouldn't convince anyone. Hasn't the appearance or the manner necessary to make them sound authentic.
McNulty does.
Obtrectator – Chris Hipkins presents as clear, sincere and matter of fact.
Aside from your reference to his appearance being incorrect, why do some people think it's acceptable to make negative comments about how people look, including, in some cases, about their physical characteristics?
Kieran McAnulty has stated several times that he does not want to be leader of the Labour party, so why is this issue continuing to be brought up? Surely unity is a priority.
Re policy announcements, as Mountain Tui commented in his article:
I Hate Labour! But…Wait…Why?
"…(Chris Hipkins) has explained his party is taking time to cost the implications of National’s policies, and not everything is out in the open yet – and I think last week’s revelation of an early $8.5 billion hole in National’s numbers reinforced the intelligence behind that. "…
Poor politics (timing) from Edmonds.
They have the government on the run with inflation at 2.7%, the same level predicted in 2023 for 2025.
So what has the no growth government achieved?
The public is concerned at their failure to reduce living costs anymore than was predicted before they were elected.
Run with that.
And say Labour could match them on inflation and have economic growth as well.
Willis is so devious.
Saying the target interest rate keeps inflation down. Well it would if her Government did not raise every levy they are able, plus shift costs from Government to Councils who have more expensive debt and fewer choices. So homeowners and small businesses end up under pressure.
This Government thought it ideal to have a short sharp credit squeeze, and a redirection of Public money. Those actions have underfunded services, spiked costs and plunged us into a morass of declining jobs increasing costs and stagflation which like Japan could last for years.
Willis still carries the fiction that Labour caused this because they "don't understand" Willis has to own the galloping downturn is her work, especially the last nine months as fiscal policy has a delayed outcome of about 12 months. So this is a CoC baby.
Hipkins is not going to make Policy on the hoof. Labour said they are examining all actions of this Government and any good Policy will not be overturned for ideological reasons. own responses are currently being planned through consultation. Democracy in action.
The Labour strategy is not to provide "talking points" for the Government to use to deflect attention away from their mess.
We on the Left are becoming frustrated as these two years have felt longer than the covid years. Join, put ideas forward at meetings, be phone help, flyer delivers, support writers from the left, talk to your local rep. Venting does not change governments. Ground root movements do.
We have numbers, and submit on the voting changes proposed at least.
I have the feeling we should start thinking in election year mode now. Joining parties and leg work are great ideas.
Religious supremacist confesses to the premeditated murder of a non combatant.
.
Daniel Raab shows no hesitation as he watches footage of 19-year-old Salem Doghmosh crumpling to the ground beside his brother in a street in northern Gaza.
“That was my first elimination,” he says. The video, shot by a drone, lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed when he is shot in the head.
Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.
“It’s hard for me to understand why he [did that] and it also doesn’t really interest me,” Raab says in a video interview posted on X. “I mean, what was so important about that corpse
[…]
“They’re thinking: ‘Oh I don’t think [I’ll get shot] because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon and all that, but they were wrong,” said Raab, who majored in biology at the University of Illinois before joining the Israel Defense Forces. “That’s what you have snipers for.”
After Salem was shot, his father, Montasser, 51, rushed to the site, and tried to collect his sons’ bodies for burial, but was also fatally injured by a sniper.
The need for a dignified funeral for loved ones is a core human instinct, protected in law and explored in art for millennia. It is at the emotional heart of Homer’s Iliad, one of the earliest surviving works of literature.
But on that day, Raab treated love and grief as cause to kill. “They just kept on coming to try and take these bodies,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/09/the-gaza-family-torn-apart-by-idf-snipers-from-chicago-and-munich
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/palestinian-terrorists-parade-dead-babies-bodies-through-streets-as-celebratory-music-plays/ar-AA1ztjSY
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8mv5dp0r3o
Good thing Hamas has never, afaik, touted itself as the world's most moral terror organisation with טוהר הנשק as a core value, eh sport.
/
PR equating "Palestinian terrorists" with the IDF. Massive fucking own goal there.
The Palestinian resistance says Netanyahu killed those kids.
I know who I believe.
This is why combatants need to wear uniforms. If you fight in civilian clothes, your opponents lose the ability to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and civilian deaths result. Likewise if you use children for military purposes. Hamas does both because its entire strategy is to generate propaganda about dead civilians. It would be nice if the IDF were a bit smarter about not helping them achieve their propaganda goals, but soldiers' IQs are a bell curve same as everyone else.
Nice victim blaming, but I'm sure you're proud of yourself.
One day you'll write something that isn't malicious misrepresentation and I'll be left wondering if someone hijacked your account.
They're all
VCHamas, now go and get them,…./
2. Every single Israeli is well acquainted with videos of Gazan civilians, including children, pouring through Hamas' breaches of the border fence to engage in rape, pillage and murder of the local kibbutzes, or chasing after Hamas utes for the opportunity to desecrate an Israeli corpse. That has effects, and sneering at those effects from the comfort and safety of New Zealand ought to embarrass people but apparently doesn't.
It is US backed Israel providing their enemy "with compelling, existential reasons to regard all your people as a threat".
So it shouldn’t be a surprise they treat all Israelis as a threat. Israeli compulsory military service and reservist forces, not to mention the foreign recruitment of mercenary combatants as described @5, and the foreign recruitment of supremacist colonists reinforces the truth that there is no such thing as an Israeli civilian.
You don't seem to even be aware you just provided an argument for it being perfectly OK for Israeli snipers to gun down Gazan civilians in the street. I'd never go that far myself, but you do you.
None of it is ok. But one is an occupying force and the other is a resistance force.
We know it’s an illegal occupation but there’s no international enforcement of their own rules. The most moral state is not actually a moral state at all.
That you same sides it is a big issue. The natural position of colonist supremacists the world over.
Your thesis demands the powerful all rights of expansion but the oppressed no rights of defence.
Hardly a position of someone claiming to be socially conscious…
If "none of it is OK," how about not presenting arguments for why it's OK for one side to gun down civilians in the street but not the other. Your opinions about "occupation" and "resistance" are just that: opinions. Others don't necessarily share your beliefs.
They are opinions held by our global rules based institutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Israeli_occupation_of_Palestine
Wow. Shane Jones is calling for the nationalisation of the power cos! But the catch is he also wants increase in fossil fuel.
Thanks for the link Caroline it's a great article.
Amazing to hear a politician basically say neoliberalism is failing us.
From the article: "Judith Aitken is a former regional councillor and public servant who has worked for the former Ministry for Energy and the former state-owned Electricity Corporation of New Zealand.'"
Judith thinks the price review enquiry was way too narrow and has some great ideas about where to from here.
Electricity reform (not tinkering) should be easy low hanging fruit after Health and Housing.
It's so wrong that a country that built hydro electric dams is now pricing power out of reach for those that funded the build in the first place.
My Mum has just been told off for lowering the temp on her heat pump after the latest bill. Sitting in her lounge with a wool hat and scarf…
I seldom agree with Shane Jones. However, he is correct on this occasion. The market approach has failed us.
And seeing as he has stated it publicly, it would be good to see other MPs speak up.
Surely, the Greens would agree the market approach has failed us?
What about the Māori Party? One would think they would also agree?
And then there is Labour, would they agree? Moreover, will they speak up about it?
why not read their policies so you can make informed comment?
https://www.greens.org.nz/energy_policy
Thanks.
Do you think they will put out a press release to further highlight the matter that Jones has brought the media spotlight upon? Catch the wave so to speak.
Energy is such a bad crisis that I'd suggest any Opposition party keep their heads fully down.
Nothing Jones says is worth anything now.
It is because energy is such a bad crisis Parties need to speak up.
Surely, you don't want Jones solely capturing all the voter attention and looking like the White Knight on an issue that is impacting so many?
Moreover, now (as it is out there in the media limelight) is the time to push this issue hard.
I dunno. At least with the housing crisis we have a regulator that anyone can beat around (so this government has with the RBNZ).
With power prices, I don't see anyone with the chops – in any party – to form the price control+deregulation plan that will do what Labour did for telecommunications 20 years ago. Nothing Jones says means anything and I think most people get that by now.
When there are no political solutions, just let the government burn.
This crisis is far too serious to ignore
This one needs fixing fast. And it's going to take real leadership to get it done
Failing to leads to nowhere good
I'm guessing a lot of people will be listening to Jones because many (right and left) want this sorted.
Agree.
Rather than continuing to use fossil fuel we should be developing the cheapest power on the planet, solar.
If Labour policy in 2026 was to encourage solar by investing in a new SOE called Kiwisolar, which also encouraged associated battery storage, we would be burning no fossil fuels within 10 years.
It's small but useful. People will be pretty gunshy after the failure of SolarZero which had plenty of state backing, and left taxpayers and customers holding the pieces.
Even the UK policy of new builds requiring solar panels would run into skepticism because of the Australian experience when it all went sideways. The AU National Construction Standard 2022 is about as strong as you are going to get.
Most new build homes must be fitted with solar panels – Miliband
I didn't realise that the state had any interest in Solar Zero or backed it in any way?
Rooftop solar has been a massive success in Oz.
From AI overview:
"Rooftop solar is booming in Australia, with over 4 million households and small businesses having installed systems, now accounting for over 12% of the nation's electricity"
The Greens have a Members Bill on this.
https://www.greens.org.nz/greens_echo_oecd_call_for_electricity_market_reform
Thanks. Of course, the Greens rightly include the need for more renewable energy.
Separation doesn't go far enough. And in fact, could make matters worse
https://theconversation.com/an-attempt-to-lower-nz-electricity-prices-could-end-up-doing-the-opposite-heres-why-263519
The same author [Richard Meade] has opined that "being able to flexibly change retailer" also takes us in the wrong direction.
There won't be a market solution because the market is the problem.
Power is far too vital to allow it to be profited from
Interestingly, the author of that article seems to argue for the current model and (?) status quo. If so, that’s not providing relief for customers. I lack the expertise and time to evaluate his claims properly and find research that might come to different conclusions.
Not so much arguing for the status quo, merely pointing out separation would more likely be worse.
In the link Drowsy posted, he suggested a way to somewhat improve competition.
However, IMO competition won't remove the profit incentive (competitors still want to profit) and thus, won't produce sufficient savings
The profit incentive fails to align with the national interest Thus, needs to be removed.
??
Have you looked at the Greens policy that Weka linked to?
Under our previous integration setting (before the Key sell-off) prices were better for consumers than they are today But since partial-privatisation, the benefits of integration have gone the other way.
https://union.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Generating-Scarcity-2023-update.pdf
So, in some settings it can have its benefits. And as Richard Meade states in comparison in the very next paragraph following your quoted section:
As for the Greens policy, love their vision. Especially prioritising public ownership over private profit.
I'm guessing this could possibly be achieved via a national security issue play
Scott Willis really needs a Regulatory Impact Statement to go with this.
Obviously that would need to come from both MBIE and the EA.
Scott is a good unit but I want to see more.
He has said that NZF had yet to decide on a policy.
It might be re-nationalisation of the 50% sale of power companies.
Or allowing outside interests getting a share of the business with any required separation of generation and retailing?
Or advocating building a new coal power plant or a plan for more gas for power generation (nationalisation of Methanex).
For all those that can see how real Yellowstone is compared to the lived Montana reality, this is a little CBS on the real deal on how to sustain local beef-raising farms in Montana:
Montana ranchers challenge status quo in bid to survive
Not easy to replicate in New Zealand particularly with dairy, but surely there must be a few good resilient stories out there?
The link shows a rare breed – a farmer who lives in Realityland.
Dairying shows a dark picture. I found this item on Iowa dairying and nitrates recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KXOO3gK5wo
As in Iowa, so in NZ; nitrates are a real concern. Prosecutions for dirty dairying are almost a weekly occurrence in the courts: https://www.nzlii.org/nz/cases/NZDC/2025/9297.html
Is it time some stopped fêting Stuart Nash as some sort of principled political canon and recognising what he is; a bumbling, morally and otherwise corrupt, misogynist. Which is un-coincidentally a perfect fit for Winston Peters and New Zealand First.
No wonder the Labour Party ejected him, and but it is a wonder it didn't happen earlier. Leave Nash to his fans on the far right where he belongs.
Asking for a friend… What has Nash done now?
Answered the "what is a woman" question with a reference to genitalia and breasts. Labour Women's Council now falling over themselves to virtue signal that a woman is anyone who utters the magical incantation "I identify as".
Nash could have done with a bit of virtue himself. Tits and pussy isn't a definition of woman that a prospective MP should be using.
On an X thread, Emma Hilton (developmental biologist) summarises the way humans are pretty good at perceiving the difference between male and female bodies. She doesn't cite the actual research, unfortunately.
However, she says women are better than men at telling the differences between men and women from a lot of cues.
eg she refers to studies where people were shown images of men and women. One of the differences between the sexes, is that men get focused a lot more on breasts as a major defining difference between the sexes.
This has been put down to evolutionary pressure because women fear the "angry, adult male".
interesting isn't it. It accounts for quite a lot of the liberal position on gender. Nash is an idiot, which I think accounts for his comments more than evolution 😉
So much this. "Adult female human" was right there, available for any non-idiot to use. Instead, he thinks why not appeal to manly types by talking shit about women. People like this make it into Cabinet in this country – him, for example.
Well, that is crass. Maybe that type of language is acceptable within some groups, as a way to refer to women? At least Nash is referring to a woman’s pussy, not a girls pussy, that would be beyond the Pale. On the other hand, some Green Party MP’s think it is okay to refer to a boys anus, as a “boy pussy”.
I must be getting old and out of touch.
Nash can say what he likes in private, hopefully his family and friends will teach him something. But if he wants to be an MP again. Using language like that is beyond the pale both for the sexism bordering on misogyny and for the political ineptitude.
Yeah I certainly agree that the language he used is pretty crass. I’m pretty relaxed with “smutty language”, when I’m having a beer or two and friends at the pub, there’s a time and place where this type of language is kinda ok… Certainly not on radio or tv, or around children
Apart from this incident showing what Nash and the NZF (and wider) gender critical movement really stand for it's super important to understand how incompetent and manifestly unsuited to politics Nash is:
Now, this is exactly the sort of naive, self-idolising behaviour which got him fired from the Labour Party. Like I said, a perfect fit for NZF although I don't think Peters will now take Nash on, even as an intern.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/10-09-2025/i-cant-stop-thinking-about-stuart-nashs-pussy-tits-mind
This is what happens when you invite conservative men to fight your culture wars.
Invite? I don't recall inviting any of them. I regard them as big a collection of bandwagon jumpers and invaders as the underwear fetishists and grifters who have wrapped themselves in the rainbow flag while denying the existence of same sex attraction.
Bussy is a portmanteau of boy and pussy and is used to talk about adult gay sex not children. The terms boy and girl get used for adults in some contexts. I’ve not seen anything from Benjamin Doyle using it to refer to a boy child and I saw that whole thing unfold in real time on twitter, including his IG posts.
Yeah understand that the term may refer to gay sex amongst adults, okay to joke about it in private amongst the lads. Though I think it’s just as crass as what Nash said in public. The optics don’t look good, and I feel it makes both guys look like they’re grubby men, and at their age, they should know better.
Doyle was an idiot too and I'm relieved he's leaving parliament because he was a liability to the Greens. I think he was incredibly naive, the posts weren't about his kid but he shouldn't have been conflating adult sexuality with child images. No-one should be subjected to that kind of abuse.
Labour, Green National and ACT MP's all voted for self ID.
This group advocated for it
https://www.ncwnz.org.nz/
He is gaslighting Hipkins over the word "woman"
Obviously it was the adult biological female.
But the state had allowed self-identity, so the legal definition became different.
Hipkins as PM had to go with the states legal definition (until differentiation of biological sex and gender).
Nash is exploiting the fact NZF were not in parliament when self ID became law. National and ACT MP's all voted for self ID.
NZF is in a coalition government that has continued to maintain self ID.
Has NZF said they would end self ID as a coalition requirement. Not yet.
Just another empty suit.
Afaik the state doesn't have 'a' definition of woman, or sex. Certainly self ID for trans people wasn't intended to be that. Internal Affairs said that self ID wouldn't remove women's single sex spaces (or something to that effect).
When I tried to look at how the law determined sex around that time, it looked a mess. In part because the term gender used to be used as a synonym for sex. Afaik that's not been sorted out.
https://www.dia.govt.nz/bdmreview—Frequently-asked-questions#implications-for-service-providers
changes to the BDMRR were intended to make life easier for some trans people, they weren't meant to replace sex with gender, despite the efforts of some activists. We can be grateful to Tracy Martin that things didn't go that far.
Alex Casey reminds Nash and Plunket that trans women and trans men may also fit their schoolboy definition of a woman.
She also makes mincemeat of these three self-appointed protectors of women, these three knights in MAGA armour.
Unbelievably, Nash has managed to embarrass Peters and highlight how puerile the man is for stoking these culture wars, and also derail the NZ conference and town hall meeting.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/10-09-2025/i-cant-stop-thinking-about-stuart-nashs-pussy-tits-mind
Women who say that they are men may fit that definition.
Men who say that they are women never will.
A [deleted] made of penis offcuts and bits of intestine which has to be kept open by "dilating" with a "former" for hours every day to stop it from healing up (as open wounds want to do) will never replace a vulva and vagina.
mod note: go easy on the language choise please. If I'd had surgical reconstructive surgery after vaginal cancer, I'd find the bit I deleted offensive enough to stay away.
From the policy,
I've read the article twice and I must be missing something. He is telling me he doesn't want my vote.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/572650/homogenising-maori-as-a-minority-te-pati-maori-mp-takuta-ferris-defends-controversial-social-media-post
My eyes glazed over half way through. I assume he's got a point to make about treating Māori as just another ethnicity rather than a treat partner, but I'm a bit over chaotic MPs.
Fortunately you can still party vote TPM.
He is talking about Maori electorate seats.
The other issue is whether Maori are just another minority group or the indigenous people of the Treaty – thus their own seats.
Nicola Willis has destroyed 50,000 jobs since December 2023. 10,000 of those in the last three months:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/09/10/employment-figures-three-months-10000-jobs-gone/
Wrong direction.
Wrong direction indeed.
And there are many more job losses to come.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/572507/two-large-retailers-preparing-to-lay-off-staff-as-sector-far-from-optimistic
Nicola Willis drove 73,400 New Zealanders offshore in July.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360819173/number-people-leaving-nz-increase-latest-migration-figures-show
Wrong direction.
The recent by-election in a Maori seat was discussed in the deputies discussion on RNZ this morning. It occurred to me that the observation that the ''two for one" result (resulting on both the main candidates being in parliament) may well have been attractive to many in that electorate. Now National are very familiar with that two for one scenario – they have continued to look for that in quite a few elections for the Mt Eden seat – electing Seymour as the electorate MP but with supporters of both parties giving their party vote to National. Now that both National and ACT are Atlas-led; it perhaps make less of a difference than previously, but could a similar arrangement be worth agreeing between Labour and TPM? Doing it for two or three seats would need some modelling to see what effect it would have had at the last election.
Simply want to encourage everyone to donate for Forest&Bird to do battle against the destruction of the Dennison Plateau for coal mining, one more time:
Denniston: too precious to mine | Forest and Bird
A thing I loved about doing the Paparoas last year was seeing the careful memorial to the Pike River dead, and also knowing it was never going to open again, and then over the ridge you could just see line upon line of the wildest deep forest you could imagine.
Even with the Fast Track legislation it's still worth fighting against.