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6:00 am, April 19th, 2026 - 23 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 …
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360964746/iran-war-political-climate-sparks-surge-americans-eyeing-remote-safety-nz
The last thing this country needs is to be swamped with rich Americans , bringing there right wing rubbish here
completely agree. But it might be progressive wealthy Americans as well.
But America has gone so far right that even progressive Americans have embedded right-wing norms.
I was thinking of the US philanthropy minded immigrants. They're not MAGA, and they often buy up large tracts of land and improve management of them. Don't have a sense of who they vote for, but they're different in character from the likes of Thiel.
https://archive.li/yN7GC
Danyl McLauchlan in the Listener writes about the fiasco that is Wellington governance.
This quote struck me.
”In 2023, Mariana Mazzucato – an Italian-American described by her enemies as “the world’s scariest economist” – published, with Rosie Collington, The Big Con, a critique of government outsourcing. Wellington Water is a textbook case study of her thesis: that when the public sector outsources core services to the private sector it loses the ability to understand the work. The public, in this case the residents of Wellington, still carry the costs and risks but government loses the expertise needed to judge whether it’s getting value for money. It becomes a dumb client.
When Wellington Water was formed, in-house engineering and water services knowledge moved to the CCO, leaving staff who oversaw governance, stakeholder engagement, public relations and marketing. The money that was theoretically saved via outsourcing was consumed by this new function.
Wellington Water then subcontracted its own work to private sector providers, who hired in additional subcontractors. Each delegation added a profit margin and added more complexity to the delivery, further degrading the council’s ability to monitor spending or outcomes.
For Mazzucato there are three questions governments need to ask when they outsource core services: is there a real market for the entities delivering this? Can you specify and measure what you want and whether you’re getting it? And who carries the risk of failure?”
For Wellington Water, call it the current NZ government.
What ever it is called it is not working particularly well.
We used to do things well in this country 100 years ago, now we work on the Neoliberal Corporate Model with highly paid consultants employed to advise us with no responsibility or accountability. This has resulted in numerous C*ck Ups ie BNZ Collapse, Auckland City Amalgamation to name a few exxamples.
"is there a real market for the entities delivering this? Can you specify and measure what you want and whether you’re getting it? And who carries the risk of failure?"
There are high transaction costs for governments in obtaining answers to these questions – determining if the market in which potential suppliers operate really is competitive or a monopoly of some sort, doing the work to define scope, set objectives and metrics, and negotiating sound contracts. They might well need additional second and third tiers of contractors to help with all this. And after doing that they might still walk away from the project – and if they do that gets decried as money 'wasted'.
So, it's much easier to anoint a 'trusted partner', embed them in your operations and go along for the ride. For the private contractor, embedding is the real long-term goal because it becomes harder to replace you. If we don't want governments to behave like that, they need political permission to spend money and take time.
Excellent article thankyou.
It takes a bit of memory now to imagine city councils that owned airports, ports, massive pensioner housing blocks, road maintenance depots, road and bridgebuilding capacity, rubbish collection and storage facilities, electricity reticulation and retail companies, big dams and treatment plants, and much more. And for that their leaders had communal standing and decisionmaking heft. Just a few still do own some of those, just a very few.
George Monbiot is excellent today in the Guardian. Oh the delicious irony.
"Donald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone else alive…The [Iran] war has triggered a global surge in demand for electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, heat pumps and other fossil-free technologies. Inquiries about buying EVs have risen 23% in the UK since the attack on Iran began, by 50% in Germany and by 160% in France. There’s similar interest in India, south-east Asia and South Korea. Even in the US, where Trump has done everything possible to stymie the technology, there’s 20% more interest than before the war. The same goes for domestic solar panels and heat pumps."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/18/fossil-fuel-trump-green-revolution-us-iran-renewable-energy
Talk about unintended consequences!
The COC's Fossil Fuel Strategy with architects Shane Jones and Christopher Luxon, is not looking good in the present Economic Climate, looks like they backed the wrong horses.
""Something is moving in the world. It is visible in the fracturing of political orders, in the rise of authoritarian nationalism, in the strange intensity with which religious fundamentalists across traditions speak of imminent final battles."
I hope this link works for anyone interested.
https://www.facebook.com/bruce.lyon.520/posts/pfbid02jFSgSKpDMr7FciNEEksViFtG5YMXf5ea1wUMSASa3gpUMLRWJMR6AicUBAKCzXyMl
It’s an open and shut case
I thought the two-week ceasefire wouldn't go the distance; happy to be wrong.
Anyone know what Labour's position is on the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024?
Will they repeal it (and the RMA changes) f they get into power?
The Green co-leaders are giving their annual State of the Planet speech today. It's livestreaming on FB and Instagam, which means we can only start watching live not from the beginning.
It looks like it's being filmed on a phone. The sounds quality has been poor, and there's a lot of background noise from people obviously not listening to the speeches and sometimes groups of people laughing.
Thirty people are watching the IG, and 37 the FB streams. These are tiny numbers.
There's nothing on their website, not the speech transcripts nor a pointer to the speeches. No articles since the 10th of April.
The Greens have abandoned their twitter and youtube accounts.
This is the crux of why I am disappointed in them. If they can't even get these basics comms right, why should they be trusted to be in government and running departments. It's shockingly bad.
I know they've had a hard number of recent years, but they're not a scrappy little party, they're a mainstream party with seats in parliament.
I will listen to the start when it's finished and available to see if they explain, but I probably won't bother to listen to the speech.
I will still vote for them, and support them this year to get as many votes as they can, but this is just wrong.
FB livestream replay is up.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1504493681258131
Stuff report on it, specifically focusing on the solar panels loan plan:
Will that reduce the profits of the gentailers, or the lines companies? If solar is taken up in volume it will save the gentailers from having to put capital into wind or additional hydro, and lines companies will have additional costs for the costs of solar linking to the local grid at inconvenient times. Getting banks to fund solar panels will boost their profits as well – why not use government money through Kiwisaver for administration to fund loans at lower cost than the Aussie banks can handle?
Chloe's call for a national electrification plan is worth voting for.
hopefully they will release details ahead of the budget.
NZF is going to break up the Supermarket Duopoly- how many times have we heard this from Shane Jones and Winston, it is like a broken record, and nothing has ever been done about it. However it is potentially a Vote Catcher.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/592799/poll-result-national-falls-in-favour-coalition-count-lower-than-left-bloc
Yes the left!
Comms strategist and former Labour staffer, Clint Smith, on the latest polling,
https://x.com/ClintVSmith/status/2045751345404395558
Click through for the visual
Verily verily, this is the way
Labour 37 Greens 11
National 30 NZF 10 ACT 7
TOP 3 TPM 2