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.
Asking the Ministry of Education to draft a compulsory New Zealand History curriculum for school children was always fraught with risk.
The Ministry has disavowed knowledge-based curricula – to the extent that the much-vaunted National Curriculum fits on a scanty 64 A4 pages. It covers the entire social sciences for years 1-13 in a single page.
A Lincoln University philosopher said it does, according to one report of the proceedings.
Indigenous Digital Philosopher, Karaitiana Taiuru says, “We’re kanohi ki te kanohi, you know their mauri, you can touch something and get the mauri and the internet, it’s nothing, it’s te kore and it’s hard to try and quantify that. But if you use the internet for the right purposes then it will have mauri.”
Here at Point of Order we trust we are putting the internet to the right purpose by drawing attention to the cultural and spiritual thrust of the recently released Tourism Future Taskforce Interim Report. It says:
This is a taskforce and report that from day one has been inspired by the Te Ao Māori perspective.
The wisdom and guidance received from Māori leadership has been incredibly significant to the thinking along the journey towards these [the taskforce’s] recommendations
The concept of “mauri” looms large in the taskforce’s vision for the tourist industry.
Anyone
over the age of 70 years in New Zealand today (especially if you are male and
of European descent), can be forgiven for feeling that somehow, after a
lifetime of struggle, commitment to, and hard work in the interests of our
country, New Zealand, we have suddenly become “the enemy”!
Green Party MPs, almost to a person, condemn “old white men” as somehow being responsible for all of the ills of modern-day New Zealand society. Julie-Ann Genter’s infamous statement to a class of school children in Christchurch (aged around 10 years) that “old white men” needed to move aside from their domination of boards (she did not specify which boards-charities, SOEs, closely- held family companies, Stock Exchange listings), as some kind of cleansing process after which organisations would be refreshed and renewed.
It’s remarkably simple; when you’re saturated by a language it’s very easy to learn it as you’re exposed to it all the time. I can see now how people become bi-lingual in countries which promote two languages.
Did you know Te Papa was bi – lingual, or rather I should say it is Maori with English translation? On my walks along the waterfront I pop into it now and then and promise myself to learn 20 new words on each visit.
The Police are in the news at the moment for several reasons – one, they have new cars, and two, Napier’s Mayor fears they’re stretched to their limits in her region, weighed down with gang violence issues. She wants more Police for her area, and has written to the Police Minister to say so.
Good luck getting a response on that.
Hers is not the only region feeling short of a Police presence. Wellington, recently accused of becoming too dangerous to walk the streets of the CBD at night, is making moves to try to combat anti-social behaviour by committing to a ‘social contract’ and looking to take collective action.
Another appropriate quote that could be added in today’s
corrupt political climate is one used by JFK - “the only thing necessary for
the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!”
When these memorable lines are added together, they provide
a powerful lesson for keeping us safe.
Make no mistake, l believe that evil does exist in our
society, most of it in subtle forms that are too often overlooked because we
are encouraged to accept an environment that peacefully co-exists with the
consequences.
Let me explain.
The pace of the vaccine rollout, the privacy details of those being vaccinated getting breached, the MIQ fees that remain unpaid.
I mean, do we even care anymore or have we just given up?
We’ve been told a goal of 2 million New Zealanders vaccinated by the middle of the year. We know the speed of the global vaccine rollout is critical. We know NZ has secured 10 million doses - but how fast are we jabbing?
What’s happened is this year the capital’s CBD has suddenly
become an attractive destination for maori gangs. And why? Because the bloody
unbelievably idiotic Welfare Department is putting them up at taxpayers expense
in central city hotels. This is sheer madness.
This filth is now everywhere on our CBD streets, threatening pedestrians. I’ve heard numerous stories including incidents from my own staff.
Climate Change Commission
PO Box 24448
Wellington 6142
hello@climatecommission.govt.nz
New Zealand Centre for Political Research Submission
on the Climate Change Commission’s Draft Emissions Budget
Dear Sir,
Thank you for providing the opportunity to submit on the Climate Change Commission’s draft emissions budget.
This submission is on behalf of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, a public policy think tank established in 2005 by former Member of Parliament Dr Muriel Newman.
We propose to address three issues of major concern.
1. The emissions budgets are not evidence-based
Another example for you this morning on the weaknesses of democracy especially at local body level.
The Whangārei mayor is against fluoridation of water. Is the Whangārei mayor a medical professional? Looking her up, she appears not to be.
I’m not even sure she represents the view of the people who elected her.
But that’s democracy isn’t it? We appoint or anoint people with experience and skill in little if anything and expect them to run important stuff.
What makes her fluoridation objection so ironic is the fact she’s from Northland and it is Northland that would appear to have the disproportionate amount of trouble in the social areas - one of them being dental health.
The housing announcement yesterday, apart from being a total broken promise from the government in terms of the bright line test, is essentially penalising mum and dad investors. And those are the investors running the rental homes providing tenants with much needed accommodation.
And the concern here is that the costs go up for those tenants, and that due to the government pinging them if they sell within 10 years, that landlords will hold onto rental properties for longer. And when they do that, you don’t get a cooler housing market, you get fewer houses up for grabs. What’s galling here is the brazenness with which this government has back tracked.
The Prime Minister campaigned on not introducing a Capital Gains Tax.. she was adamant, it was one of her biggest election promises. Not on her watch, she said. Grant Robertson is on the record ruling it out, saying it would never come to pass. And yet, here it is. A Capital Gains Tax in all but name.
If there's one thing this Government's good at, better than any of its predecessors, in fact standing head and shoulders above them - it's making an announcement about an upcoming announcement.
The hospitality industry was on the edge of its bar stools, hotels were remaking the beds, the snow field chair lifts were being oiled and more generally the tourism operators were filling up the jet boats, the Kaikōura whales were being brought out of hibernation and the bungy cords were being stretched to ensure they will be able to take the weight of a a desperately needed Aussie influx.
There was an expectation we would have at least had an indication of when we would be enveloped by the Antipodean bubble.
Given the status of Dunedin’s Burns statue, I was concerned
a few years ago to find that it had been disrespectfully adorned by a group of
Maori staging a Parihaka protest in the Octagon. I wrote to the DCC expressing
the view that, whatever the merits of the cause the Parihaka protesters were
espousing, that did not entitle them to show disrespect for the culture and
heritage of others, especially that of the city’s Scottish founders. I
requested that the DCC require future groups allowed to use the Octagon to show
proper respect for the city’s iconic Burns statue. The reply I received advised
that no action was being taken not because my case lacked merit but because I
was the only person who had lodged such
an objection.
Therein lies an essential truth about politics. Politics is about numbers not logic.
So are we getting a trans tasman bubble announcement this coming Monday?
The jungle drums are certainly beating that way and it would be great timing for the government.
They’d save face after being shown up by Scott Morrison, it would help the PM’s cred after that 15 point drop in the latest preferred PM poll, and it would take the glare off that shocking GDP figure out yesterday.
There’s never been a better time for some good PR for a govt that loves good PR.
If we do get the announcement Monday, word is it will be mid to late April that the bubble opens up.
Boris Johnson’s G7 dilemma: Carbon border tax vs geopolitical realism
In this newsletter:
1) The world’s three biggest coal users get ready to burn even more
Bloomberg, 16 March 2021
2) Greenwashing: Europe's aviation industry carbon scheme highly flawed, Brussels warned
Financial Times, 18 March 2021
Paul Conway, the BNZ’s new chief economist, he reminds me of the Australian Reserve Bank’s deputy governor a number of years back who famously said, upon the country entering a recession, that recessions can be good because it shakes out the shonky companies that weren’t up to much any way.
Conway, speaking to the NZ Herald, used an economist’s term: creative destruction. While you’re there look up the story of the brewery owner on the West Coast who has to sell after his quote-unquote “year of hell” due to the closed borders.
And in the two stories is the collision of theory vs reality.
In exercising their right to freedom of expression, the University expects its staff, students and visitors to be respectful of the differing opinions of others, in line with the University’s core value of freedom of expression. The University also expects its staff, students and visitors to be respectful of the diverse identities of others, in line with the University’s core value of freedom from discrimination.
I found this wording completely unacceptable.
The intent seems to be to create a new world order by promoting a radical, anti-Western, anti-democracy ideology. This is being facilitated by the internet’s global reach and behaviours of international bureaucrats, the mass media, large corporates, law firms and those lacking critical thinking skills. Here in New Zealand, organisations enjoying government or council largesse are particularly prone to looking the other way – and their numbers are growing by the year.
I am quite prepared to acknowledge my own limited abilities to see through the deceit and fraudulent posturing that seems to bedevil much of what we have grown up believing is essential to our existence as a orderly society - trust in the law and peaceful coexistence with one another.
I become frustrated when society itself seems to have abandoned the traditional hallmarks of nationhood based on equal opportunities and concern for the genuinely disadvantaged. Instead we seem hell bent on destroying everything that our forebears fought and died for that has survived the test of time simply because it had been proved to work.
Tenby Powell is keeping up the good fight.
He’s the former mayor of Tauranga. Having moved back to the region, he won the election only to find small town New Zealand at times, especially at council level, can be introspective and spiteful. He ended up quitting and such was the mess around the chamber, commissioners have been put in.
Looking on from the side-lines but still clearly passionate about his region, he has made the appeal for those commissioners to consider merging local councils so they can then actually get on with running the place.
In the Powell plea is the plight of local body politics: we are hopelessly over governed.
Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children – study
In this newsletter:
I’m just wondering if we are living in a heightened age of upset and this level of angst is all new - or have previous generations gone through this much agitation?
Have we always railed against societal norms and demanded change and that’s actually how we’ve evolved as a civilized society?
Have we always had this many grievances, but they’re just being flagged more now due to social media and the easy access to click on a petition and make a complaint? Or are we living in peak angst?
Change.org, for example, currently has a petition for just about everything.
Many here and throughout the Commonwealth think it’s another step towards severing the ties, Newshub reported, especially in the light of a remark that triggered the belief the Royal Family is racist:
But The Daily Blog’s Martyn Bradbury took considerations beyond whether New Zealand should become a republic and proposed entrenching the so-called “Treaty Partnership” into an overhaul of our constitutional arrangements.
An Upper House would be established. Half the seats would be filled by Maori, giving governmental expression to what “partnership” really means.
Coal projected to be India's largest source of power in 2040
In this newsletter:
1) India's coal use to surge as power demand is set to double
Energy Voice, 17 February 2021
2) Coal projected to be India's largest source of power in 2040
The Economic Times of India, 12 February 2021
The body of the communication remains in English for the good reason that the writer intended it to be understood. Why, then, a salutation and conclusion in Maori?
At the end of 2019, the CEO of Forest and Bird even went as far as to wish supporters Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in Maori despite the fact that Christmas is a European Christian festival and Matariki is in the middle of the year. Has the language that served Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson et al. so well suddenly become inadequate for beginning and ending a letter?
I’m glad we’re talking vaccine rollout, it’s high time we get some set dates and times around this. It was after all November last year that Chris Hipkins told us from the pulpit of truth that we’d be ‘at the front of the queue.’
It’s high time the government start looking forwards. So group one is the border and MIQ workers, group two is frontline workers and those in high risk settings, health workers, and South Aucklanders over 65 with underlying health issues.
Next up is priority populations, that’s about 1.7 million Kiwis, and following them is everybody else, vaccines for all should start rolling out in July.
So a plan at last, and by no means one that involves us being at the front of the queue – or indeed anywhere close.
Was Stuart Nash misleading us yesterday when he said the reason we don’t have a two-way bubble with Australia is because of the Australian government?
Scott Morrison was asked about National's position raised on the show yesterday with Judith Collins who told us the bubble needed to be up and running now. 72-hour negative test, jump on a plane, land here, and get on with your holiday.
Morrison said the only reason Australians weren't on holiday right here, right now was on our government. As we suspected.
An Open Letter to Dr Rod Carr, Chair, New Zealand Climate Change Commission
For the personal attention of
Dr Rod Carr
Chair
New Zealand Climate Change Commission
Email: Rod.Carr@climatecommission.govt.nz
Dear Dr Carr
The third-to-last paragraph of your “Letter from the Chair” in the Commission’s Report dated 31 January 2021 is:
“We are seeking feedback on our draft advice before it is finalised. There are matters of fact, assumptions and value judgments we invite you to review. We are committed to true consultation. We will consider all evidence we receive through consultation and are prepared to change any part of our work in light of this.”
