The Breaking Views blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at NZCPR.com. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
The proposed changes are a seismic shift that will give the State full control of vocational training.
Industry Training Organisations (ITOs), which since 1994 have been delivering the training industries need, are being abolished and replaced by a centralised government-appointed body.
In the 250th anniversary celebrations of Cook’s landing in New Zealand last year the government tried to bracket this with the Maori arrival nearly 800 years before. This is typical of the way the European discovery of NZ is downgraded now by the state and put on a par with the Maori discovery centuries before; it is all part of a state orchestrated campaign to vilify and disparage European culture in this country.
There is no comparison between the two, the sophistication of the latter being far greater than the former. The doctoring of history continues by the Maori activists and their Pakeha partisans and the dispute last year about replacing the statue of James Cook on Mt Titirangi at Gisborne was another example of it. Barney Tupara, a representative of Ngati Oenone says that the first meeting between Maori and Pakeha was violent and 9 Maoris were killed. This is another example of the rewriting of history that Maoris are engaged in where their own role is sanitised and that of the European is vilified.
Students will be given a lop-sided picture of our early history if the curriculum ignores or romanticizes the pre-1840 period where several Maori tribes went on annual marauding exercises to settle old scores. They killed between 40,000 and 50,000 Maori, approximately 25% of the total number of Maori in the country at that time, eating some, and enslaving others.
Fear not, good people of the Clutha District, for you are not alone as a cursory glance at the Dunedin City Councils stewardship of another essential utility – electricity distribution - shows. The debacle over Aurora’s neglect and therefore the DCCs lack of oversight of that network, shows a disturbing trend of inattention towards the less sexy but entirely essential services.
An article published by the Weather Channel tries to link climate change to a variety of environmental “disasters,” that struck around the world in 2020. The article cites limited evidence for any link. In reality, none of the asserted disasters are tied to supposed human-caused climate change.
In the Weather Channel article titled, “2020’s Worst Environmental Disasters, and How Climate Change Played a Role,” the author writes, “In a year of unprecedented disasters, much of the damage done to our planet in 2020 was self-inflicted.” Historical records and data show none of the disasters discussed in the article are, in fact, unprecedented.
We decided to recognise a true genius in the field, christening the prizes “the Emmas”, to mark Ms Thompson’s ludicrous devotion to the dark art of shamelessness.
He has spent the
last 20 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. A few weeks ago he went to
a Parole Board hearing at Rolleston and was told that he would have one more
year behind bars. His case is a huge black mark against the New Zealand Police
and one of the worst miscarriages of justice in our history.
The disappearance of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in the Marlborough Sounds was the big news story of 1998. Now 22 years later the case against Scott Watson is going back to the Court of Appeal.
I think we need to bring Fletcher into this covers nation about Ihumātao.
Despite their role in this, they’ve been near invisible in it, and I don’t think they should be.
Most of the public anger has quite rightly been directed at the government over this deal
They’ve wasted $30 million of taxpayer money on something the Prime Minister should never have involved herself in.
They’ve potentially undermined private property rights by essentially forcing a land sale through their involvement.
But what about Fletcher? What’s their role in this?
China promises its primary energy use will peak in 2035
In this newsletter:
In his book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab writes that the covid-19 crisis should be regarded as an “opportunity [that can be] seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on the path toward a fairer, greener future.”1 Although Schwab has been promoting the Great Reset for years, the covid crisis has provided a pretext for finally enacting it. According to Schwab, we should not expect the postcovid world system to return to its previous modes of operation. Rather, alternating between description and prescription, Schwab suggests that changes will be, or should be, enacted across interlocking, interdependent domains to produce a new normal.
So, just what is the Great Reset and what is the new normal it would establish?
If Trevor Mallard was hoping that appearing before the select committee today was going to make things better for himself, he misjudged that horribly.
He has just made things a whole lot worse.
It turns out $330,000 is not the end of the Mallard clean-up bill us taxpayers are paying. We are in the gun for more.
How the EU opened the door to natural gas and nuclear energy to coax Green Deal sceptics
In this newsletter:
1) EU countries agree to use natural gas and nuclear power for Green Deal
EurActiv, 15 December 2020
Last year’s
catastrophe was an accident waiting to happen and it appears that because of
the blasé attitude and greed of the tour company, lives were lost. Most people
would have expected a Royal Commission to investigate the tragedy as happened
with the Pike River Mine disaster and the shootings at the Christchurch
mosques. Instead the government workplace regulator WorkSafe carried out an inquiry and last week decided to prosecute
– 10 organisations and 5 individuals – seemingly anyone who had anything to do
with the tragic events in the Bay of Plenty in December 2019. However Work Safe did not include themselves!
This scattergun approach to assigning culpability may have been intended to soften the blow for the chief culprits: the Ngati Awa tour operators.
Politicians around the world are notorious for apportioning
blame after the publication of damning reports that highlight failures of
leadership under their watch as long as the number of those who might lose
their jobs doesn't include themselves.
Even our own country has a shameful record of senior ministers being slapped on the wrist before, after the mandatory stand down, being readmitted to the cabinet clique on full pay. "Welcome back! Have a good break?"
Trevor Mallard should resign from The Speaker's job before he faces a vote of no confidence when Parliament resumes sitting in February.
National's lost confidence in him and Labour, the party that preaches well-being and kindness, surely will have no choice but to vote against his continuing in the role.
It's been confirmed that the almost $334,000 in legal costs have been paid out by the taxpayer. Why? Well Mallard had the rules changed after he made his outrageous comment to protect him from having the pay the bill for something he clearly knew would go against him.
It’s become fashionable to talk about an intergenerational divide, but I’m not sure I totally buy this argument.
The latest installment of this argument came yesterday from the ANZ economic report which argued that the wealth gap between the young and old is growing .
That’s because of three things:
Today we are bringing you this show from Parliament.
It’s the last sitting day of Parliament before the House wraps up for the year.
Which means it’s not a bad time to reflect back on the political year, and what to expect next year.
Looking back now, it feels like there are two parts to the last year, even to the last term of government: before Covid and after Covid.
Nothing from before Covid really counts any more, does it?
One Maori party co-leader – in his maiden speech to Parliament – pledged to be an unapologetic Maori voice while the other railed against early New Zealand governments as “monsters, murderers and rapists” and projected herself as a survivor of a “holocaust”.
A “holocaust”?
That same powerful word was bandied by the party’s founder, Dame Tariana Turia, some 20 years ago. She later apologised for using it to describe the experience of Maori.
Shrinks seek to make Britons accept radical Net Zero restrictions
In this newsletter:
Deals were struck (usually accompanied by the tinkle of gold) with local personages who would see to it that the favour would be returned by all members of that constituency under their influence (bearing in mind that numbers of electors were much smaller in the days when only men who owned property could vote).
The Lancet, once a respected medico-scientific journal and now just another me-too mouthpiece for theusual suspects, ran an editorial this week on climate change – on which subject it has neither expertise nor a missio canonica to pronounce. Here is a letter to the editor in response:
Sir, – Your notion of a “climate crisis” (editorial, December 2), though fashionable among the classe politique, is misplaced. That notion sprang from an elementary error of physics perpetrated in the 1980s by climate scientists who had borrowed feedback formulism from control theory, another branch of physics, without quite understanding it. Interdisciplinary compartmentalization delayed its identification until now.
I brought my young family to live here in Uawa / Tolaga
Bay 40 years ago last June.
At the time, l had this unquenchable thirst to have a go farming on my own account before the opportunity would pass me by. Although, on balance, it was a decision l don’t regret, in retrospect the hardship encountered during those years is something we could have done without.
Someone should advise those nutritional dunderheads that all real meat is plant-based. Real beef and lamb are built from live plants like grasses, lucerne and mulga, plus salt, minerals and clay; the best chicken is built mostly on seeds and shoots of wheat, corn and grasses plus a few worms, insects and gizzard-grit; and when I was a kid our bacon was built by porkers from pollard, whey and vegetable scraps.
EU leaders poised for clash over climate targets
In this newsletter:
1) Green Deal in doubt as EU's existential crisis deepens
Associated Press, 4 December 2020
2) EU leaders poised for clash over climate targets
Bloomberg, 3 November 2020
Study reveals 90% of global atolls are stable or growing
In this newsletter:
EU faces existential threat over conflict with Poland and Hungary
In this newsletter:
1) Will Trump send the Paris Agreement to the US Senate?
Benny Peiser, GWPF, 30 November 2020
2) 'Not a developing economy': Biden pressed to maintain Trump's pressure on China
Guy Taylor, The Washington Times, 29 November 2020
What a deflating experience it was Friday reading watching listening to all those in the horticulture industry responding to the government’s 2,000 Recognised Seasonal worker decision.
The manipulation I would like to think hasn’t passed most of us by.
The shabby and shoddy way these farmers are being treated is really an outrage dressed up as a solution.
They all said basically what they had to say when you’re dealing with the government and afraid to say what you really think for fear of your livelihood being stuffed completely.
God bless the 20 year old Young Greens activist who wants a citizen initiated referendum on the decriminalisation of cannabis.
All he’s doing is highlighting how the government got this wrong first time round.
How much the pro lobby shot itself in the foot with its attempts to legalise? Mixed messaging, confusing misleading statements about medicinal, the advantage it would give big business, the smattering of weed shops around the country. It over shot the mark, went too far, and it didn’t convince enough New Zealanders to make it a reality.
It should've focused on decriminalisation not legalisation in the first place. It should have kept the messaging simple. But that’s all history now. The fact is, they lost.
It included amongst its guests two former Prime Ministers, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, who appeared incapable of learning the lessons from their own time in politics when they both experienced disastrous losses in support as a result of promoting climate change policies that were unacceptable to the bulk of the Australian electorate - in fact these policies ultimately lead to both men being removed from the office of Prime Minister.
