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6:00 am, August 20th, 2026 - 35 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 …
Greenpeace recently organised public protests against the Conservation Amendment Bill.
One in Auckland had a satirical "auction" of conservation land, while about 40 others took place across NZ with anti-Bill banners.
Auckland's March for Nature is next – 19 September.
Stand up for public land or you’ll lose it for sure – politicians can’t be trusted.
However you view journalism, and many see it as a pick and mix bin, feeding existing bias, this is an angle worth reading.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/19/rightwing-witch-hunt-jason-arday-legitimate-journalism
I won't bother to read it, because this is the same Guardian that put up more than 20 items on the topic after the tabloids set the narrative. This was despite the editor being approached beforehand with serious concerns. It’s butt-covering.
"where the Guardian had been told publicly and privately that he was highly vulnerable…The Guardian’s actual response was to dramatically increase the intensity of its coverage. After his resignation, and before his tragic death, the Guardian published well over a dozen pieces about Professor Arday, including podcasts which it seems to have pushed on multiple channels."
https://goodlawproject.org/the-guardian-and-professor-jason-arday/
It's interesting to note that prominent GC commentators, like Kathleen Stock and the Guardian regular Sonia Sodha, were at the forefront in the attack against Arday's reputation and appointment. Not just 'protecting women and girls' anymore.
Aye the same guardian who ran with the anti semitic corbyn narrative and was virtually silent on Assange.
The "Good Law Project" – don't make me laugh. I would want a better "source" than that. Arday appears to have been a fabulist and a plagarist who was very quick to run off to the Police when journalists started asking for some examinations of his many and hyperbolic claims to fame.
Just face it VS, The Guardian has clearly been shown up to be one of the UK media mobbers.
I understand your antipathy to the GLP, who support many different minority legal challenges, against all sorts of iniquitous UK legal rulings and policy. Including the For Women ruling, and the openly anti-trans ECHR policy. If it’s such poor legal and policy decision-making, then it should stand up to such legal challenges. After all, the UK is a democracy, a flawed democracy, but still kinda there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
"such good legal and policy decision-making"
Here's a good discussion about the UK media ecosystem with 'Mic Wright to discuss his new book Breaking: How the media works, when it doesn't and why it matters'. Interviewed by Scotland's The National, a UK paper that still does proper journalism, he critiques the incestuous and self-absorbed UK media. (From 28 min.)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gZKSUa2vvUY&t=7s&pp=2AEHkAIB
“…tabloid mentally that is baked into the press”
https://keenlens.substack.com/p/the-rbnz-printed-54-billion-now-it?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=ryrbu
About how the Reserve banks models contradict the reality, of how we directly financed State infrastructure in the past, with minimal inflation.
Or. How State investment in assets, instead of re financing existing assets, builds prosperity.
Thanks for that. The critiques are stacking up, but the mainstream dial is not shifting.
USA gross national debt is now $NZ69,000,000,000,000.
That is NZ$200k per capita, or NZ$800k for a family of 4.
The bond markets are going to lose patience one day.
The Bowen Peak Ltd proposal in and above Queenstown may be the worst fast-track application in NZ. But that doesn't mean it won't get consent.
"…the application is likely to generate significant adverse effects upon the environment, and the current level of information does not provide sufficient certainty regarding natural hazard risk, infrastructure servicing feasibility (transport and three waters), landscape capacity, economic benefit realisation, and long-term implementation sequencing to confidently confirm that the statutory threshold of significant regional or national benefit has been met.”
There are so many other issues that the community has with the proposal: the damage that would occur to the historic One Mile Powerhouse, the permanent change to existing natural habitat in the reserve and wildlife impacts, the destruction of land identified as outstanding natural landscape, and the effects on the already established bike trails and other recreational values."
There are many fast cracks showing in the Fast-Track Approvals Act. Faster rarely means better and faster rarely means more efficient in the long run. The willy-nilly approving & consenting by Minister Bishop is all over the place and smells of favouritism, at times.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/20-08-2026/new-fast-track-fights-growth-paying-for-growth-v-local-backlash
Yes, I agree with you Incognito, the use of the fast track is a blatant abuse of power.
Fast track should only be used in extreme circumstances like an environmental disaster, an epidemic or war.
I see there has been a few backdowns, but it is election time, so what do you expect.
And as you and many others have mentioned rushing is not good when it comes to making major decisions, better to do it once and get it right and have all the checks and balances in place.
…Chris Bishop told RNZ’s Morning Report … “The fast-track system was designed to facilitate developments that are out of sequence, so the system was working as intended,”
Facilitating things that are out of sequence is just a way of saying that you don't trust the logic that is behind the sequence – and rather than being prepared to argue that case, you're just going to break the sequence anyway.
It's a type of 'anti-planning' that I recall hearing in NZ's early neoliberal period, but has now faded from view as neoliberal management techniques (both within individual firm and the Government) is obsessed with quantitative planning that optimises resource use. For example, think of the planned and quantified surveillance that goes on in an Amazon warehouse. (See http://www.ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/)
So, it's an odd throwback in a way. Or perhaps not, if we just view it as a thinly disguised gift to the donor class.
Thank you for the link, which was good and I did read the second article by the same authors as well.
I’d love to provide a more elaborate, because those two articles gave much to contemplate, but unfortunately, I’ve got too many things on the go.
The last sentence about the donor class sums it all up; you have to look after your mates, especially when (i) they are a source of funds (ii) they can provide lucrative directorships once you have left politics.
The white flight Tories of Queenstown need to cut out the middle man and just vote for the Leopard eating your face party directly in November.
The fast track approvals for housing developments in areas without adequate or any infrastructure, and therefore at risk of environmental damage, are mainly in National electorates.
In Orewa waste water from the proposed Delmore housing development would be trucked to Whangarei for disposal. How in any sense is this acceptable?
"In August, developer Vineway Limited won fast-track approval to build a 1200-home subdivision in Ōrewa.
The decision came after a different panel declined an earlier application, citing concerns about water infrastructure and roading connections".
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361022583/fast-track-city-big-projects-being-backed-get-auckland-moving
"A Tai Tokerau community leader who helped spearhead a successful campaign against sewage spills into Whangārei Harbour fears a proposal to truck wastewater from a fast-tracked Auckland housing development could create new risks for the harbour…
"Based on figures from Whangārei District Council (WDC)'s initial discussions with the developer, about 1600 tanker loads of treated wastewater could be trucked to the Kioreroa Rd treatment plant, carrying about 504,000 litres a day north over summer".
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361014381/dumping-ground-aucklands-wastewater-alarm-over-plan-truck-waste-north
Mayors Wayne Brown and John Glover have joined forces in opposing these developments.
"Arrowtown residents are rallying against a proposal to build 1210 houses and a commercial precinct between Lake Hayes and the Kawarau River.
“The unchecked use of the fast-track system to force tens of thousands of houses into rural areas with limited public infrastructure is not helpful for addressing these challenges and will in fact make them slightly worse,” Brown and Glover say in the letter.
“Accelerating greenfield housing development in places that are not infrastructure-ready only causes congestion, service constraints, higher long-term costs and community unrest, as we have seen across Queenstown and Auckland".
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/mayors-band-together-to-pressure-government-over-residential-fast-track-developments/75JP3IL6SFFAFBLVLU45J7II5M/
Given the justifiable opposition by some/many? residents, it will be interesting to see if the National supporters in these electorates continue in a sheep-like manner to vote for National or the other Coalition parties.
Nurse Practitioner on Morning Report this morning – she is seeing people being released from prison and hospitals with nowhere to go, no followup care, no support, some on anti-psychotic medications, deeply unwell.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019048385/nurses-seeing-impact-of-state-caused-homelessness
Yes, Matiri your correct and I know of a young man who was recently released who had multiple suicidal attempts whilst in prison. He was released with no mental health help or any medical help, and the prison did not inform his whanau, and he committed suicide a few weeks ago. Corrections are failing as they have a duty of care. And people who get out are actually worse than when they went in to prison, not good for families or our communities.
What a tragic story. I suspect there are similar failings behind the recent events in Christchurch where a jogger was attacked, young cyclists mown down and a dog killed. The perpetrator was too unwell to meet his lawyer or appear in court for his first hearing.
I might be a tad biased but when I hear/read anything from Luxon, it sounds to me he’s dog-whistling the Symphony of Superlatives.
He’s barking up the wrong tree in the wrong room thinking he’s having a chinwag with Modi, when he talks of the Indian middle class and wants them to invest their retirement savings in NZ. Wait till Winston hears about.
I hear relentless negativity when Luxon is having a go at local authorities and local leadership and castigates FENZ.
He says he’s an optimist, that’s how he sees himself, and that he’s got a communication problem relaying who he (really) is. I think the problem is much bigger & deeper, Luxon is delusional and has no idea how he comes across.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/19/luxon-the-optimist-tries-to-break-through/
Luxon is like a Stalinist apparatchik declaring that the 5-Year Plan is 'exceeding expectations' or 'on-track to exceed expectations' or 'unfolding in line with targets' – when in reality the needle is not moving. And that seems to me to be in line with Abbey Innes's point in her book Late Soviet Britain.
*Not only utopian assumptions but also 'a priori' assumptions.
AB Interesting analysis. We need prismatic thinking; turn the regular and understood so a different angle plays a different light on it causing a different reflection, and there is an amazing surprising change of view.
Luxon is a people pleaser, he tries hard to please his audience who mostly vote for his party. He shoots from the hip and does not think about what yuck rolls out of his mouth. He has tendency to blame. He is a poor public speaker who lacks tact and he does not have the ability to think on his feet or compromise. Instead, he puts people and groups that challenge him down, not good qualities for a leader of a country. And not good when afterwards he has to apologise
And people pleasers can therefore come across as fake. Or 'trained to within an inch of their life' can also come across as just fake.
And people sense they're fake.
Luxon has an authenticity problem. Will the real Luxon ever be revealed?
I think he' already revealed himself and it's not nice. Short list:
Entitled to his Entitlements
Limo to travel 200m
Lectures people instead of talking with them (Rotorua)
No empathy
Thinks he's the smartest man in the room.
+100 and there's the brightline changes he immediately took advantage of and the use of our airforce for national party business.
His optics are very on brand.
NZ voters clearly see the Coalition as responsible for the current economic pain they’re experiencing/suffering, and of the three Coalition parties, they see National as the biggest baddie.
So much for the targeted, timely, and temporary reprieve measures that did diddly squat to quell negative public opinion of the Coalition and National in particular.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/19/kiwis-say-trump-and-coalition-to-blame-for-inflation-not-labour-poll-finds/
Heh! More detail can be found in the full survey report linked in here: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2608/S00149/public-hold-coalition-government-and-trump-most-responsible-for-rising-prices.htm
Rob Campbell QFT
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/361061327/why-big-rush-data-centres-arent-only-thing-we-should-be-hitting-pause
Indeed, this is a vital infrastructure issue and some.
Yanis Varoufakis is all over this arguing that capitalism is dead and being replaced by technofeudalism.
Whitney Webb has also got some good research into "tech lords" and modern oligarchy
Thanks for the link
3 roads back into government
1.outlining what National's coalition did in the past 3 years that would end.
2.stating what will be restored
such as a real food in schools programme (and support for food banks), better tenants rights and higher MW increases and Fair Pay Agreements.
25% income related rent for social housing & a return to a policy of increasing Kainga Ora’s housing stock.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/1066090/greens-vow-to-restore-original-school-lunch-programme-include-more-schools
3.what would be policy in matters now before us (see 10 above).
With National drumming up fear of the left, Labour need to put out a first hundred day plan so voters know what to expect from them this time around