Graham Adams: Going where the media won’t

Behind the coverage of David Seymour’s rise in the polls and Maori Language Week lurk inconvenient truths. Graham Adams argues journalists need to be more even-handed to maintain their credibility.

In the hullaballoo that followed Curia’s poll results last week, the media focused mainly on the startling fact that National’s support had collapsed to 21.3 per cent — with all its dire implications for Judith Collins continuing as the party’s leader.

Predictably, the dismal figures spawned a flurry of articles predicting a palace coup — with the rider that the mutiny could not be immediate because Level 4 lockdown prevented the party’s Auckland MPs flying to Wellington en masse to disembowel their leader in person. A coup conducted over Zoom would have been unseemly and presumably unsatisfying to those consumed with blood lust.

Mike Hosking: Two obvious trends are emerging from the polls

 

Shall we give balance a bit of a crack on the old polling? 

I have never really understood the preferred Prime Minister part of polling. We don't elect Prime Ministers; we can't vote for them. So beyond stoking a bit of rumour and scuttlebutt, whether Judith Collins is on 6%, 16% or 86% doesn't make an awful lot of difference. 

The same way David Seymour being second only to Jacinda Ardern really isn't a reason you would or wouldn't vote for ACT. 

GWPF Newsletter: Europe to switch back to coal to survive bleak winter

 

Starved of Gas, European Electricity Producers Snap Up Coal

In this newsletter:

1) Green Britain: Households will ‘not be able to cope’ amid rising energy and living costs this winter, charity warns
iNews, 25 September 2021
 
2) Rising inflation & surging energy prices to cripple Britons

Daily Express, 25 September 2021

Heather du Plessis-Allan: We need local lockdowns

 

I imagine 45 new cases today will have come as a bit of a shock to some. It shouldn’t.   

It’s been clear for weeks that we’re not getting back to zero in Auckland. 

The clue has always been in the mystery cases popping out of nowhere and we got another 12 today. 

That’s a big number. 

The clue has also been in the types of people getting infected lately: gang members and people in transitional housing. 

GWPF Newsletter: Downing Street is bracing for a new 'Winter of Discontent'

 

Tories fear voter backlash from rising cost of living

In this newsletter:

1) Downing Street is bracing for a new 'Winter of Discontent' 
Daily Mail, 23 September 2021

2) Care homes warn crippling energy bills could force closures
The Guardian, 24 September 2021

Barry Soper: This Government is running out of fingers to plug the holes in the dyke

 

This Government is running out of fingers to plug the holes in the dyke. 

Observe the body language of the Prime Minister and it's obvious the pressure she's under, she was fidgeting with her face mask to such an extent in Parliament's debating chamber yesterday that the audio had static. 

It's as though the stable door's been ripped off its hinges and the horse is no-where in sight. Everyone's being caught by surprise with the Government being about as transparent as a brick wall. 

Take the last 24 hours for example. 

Frank Newman: Three Waters - reality check

Here are four realities about Three Waters that have been ignored by Minister Mahuta and the mainstream media.

Reality check one

The Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS) report assumes the four new water entities will significantly reduce operating costs, and deliver lower-cost capital spending. They assume there is "an efficiency gap" (by that they really mean inefficiency) that will be closed within 10 years and will result in a 53% saving in annual operating costs from year 10. This, they say, is based on evidence of water reform in the United Kingdom (UK).

They qualify this by saying;

Kate Hawkesby: Sir John Key is on the money, but will the Government listen?

 

Sir John Key’s piece yesterday was so good it ran front-page across two rival news websites. If you haven’t read it, look it up. It’s refreshing. You can’t argue with common sense, and it was so fortifying to see someone being ambitious for our country, someone being sensible and forward-thinking and optimistic, someone not bogged down with fear and a hermit mentality.

It laid bare what we’ve been missing all this time. Grown-ups. People with proper ideas and tangible solutions.

When inexperience is at the helm, you get bogged down in the minutiae of laborious detail. The same way you get dragged into an argument with a toddler who refuses to put clothes on to go out into the cold. You find yourself pointlessly arguing at their level a thousand different ways. And I feel like that’s what’s been happening in the last few weeks with our Covid response. We’ve been getting bogged down in flawed ideology peddled by an inexperienced unambitious government, which has left us dissecting and debating stuff that isn’t even worth the effort.

Clive Bibby: Our Country - our place New Zealand

What is it about race relations in this country that we allow the slow creep of woke agenda to permeate every part of society without a reaction to this “cancel culture“  inspired move toward changing our identity.

It is pretty obvious that we are capture to the whims of those who are intent on eliminating every part of our history that offends or isn’t slavishly adhering to the revisionist version of our heritage.

What have we become? - a pathetic bunch of lame brains who are content to see the distorted rants of radicals supplanting the records of those who fought and died in defence of a proud multi cultural upbringing that offers equal opportunity for all.

Why are we not pushing back against this current attempt to change the face of who we are. We are New Zealanders - not Aotearoeans We are all part of a multi cultural society that has added some of the best and worst aspects of foreign cultures from whence we all originated.

GWPF Newsletter: UK Govt considers nationalisation of energy companies to stop collapse

 

Minister warns of 'really difficult winter' amid rising energy costs and food shortages

In this newsletter:

1) Britain considers nationalisation of energy companies to stop collapse
The Independent, 21 September 2021
 
2) Minister warns of 'really difficult winter' amid rising energy costs and food shortages
ITV News, 23 September 2021

NZCPR Weekly: A Dangerous Time for New Zealand

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

In this week’s NZCPR newsletter we reflect on the danger to New Zealand caused by government funding of the media and we share our interview with Sky News, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Bruce Cotterill outlines why a free and independent press is a critically important foundation to a democracy, and our poll asks whether you trust media that have received funding from the Government’s Public Interest Journalism Fund.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

GWPF Newsletter: China plays its green card

 

In this newsletter:

1) China plays its green card, promising to sell the world its wind and solar projects produced by cheap coal
GWPF International, 22 September 2021
 
2) Vestas closes wind turbine factories in Europe, manufacturing moves to Asia
Clean Energy Wire, 21 September 2021

Frank Newman: Fact-checking the fact-check

On the 15th of September 2021, Sky News Australia host Andrew Bolt ran a segment on "apartheid" in New Zealand. He introduced it as follows:

"Jacinda Ardern. Prime Minister of New Zealand. She has been the poster child of the left for a couple of years now. But what she is doing to New Zealand actually amazes me. In fact it scares me. Be warned. This is where woke politics is taking us all to a form of apartheid."

During the segment, the Australian news channel host interviewed Dr Muriel Newman, director of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research which she founded in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament.

The interview canvassed a range of topics including: the He Puapua report, Maori representation, the Treaty of Waitangi, the Public Interest Journalism Fund, and Three Waters. The full clip can be seen  HERE.

Chris Trotter: Is this what we really want?

Heavy Hands: Over the past few days, the centre of Melbourne has witnessed some of the worst political violence in a generation. Police officers have been hospitalised. Rubber bullets have been fired. Hundreds have been arrested. And all because the state government of Victoria is insisting that all construction workers present evidence of vaccination before being allowed onto their building sites.

“YOU NEED TO GIVE PEOPLE what they want. Not what you want to give them. Or they’ll get it from someone else.” The whole trick of dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic effectively has been to convince a solid majority of the population that they actually want what the experts reckon they should have.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 19.09.21

Saturday September 25, 2021 

News:
Ruapehu councillor's Three Waters motion criticised as dumb and divisive
"I look at the Treaty and Article 2 says they've got tino rangatanga over the assets that they own, but I can't see how Māori own a reticulated water supply the council owns. I can't find anything in the Waitangi Tribunal and even the principles of the Treaty don't talk about co-governance.

"Case law doesnt talk about co-governance. It's not even in the Labour Party manifesto, but it is in a Cabinet paper.

Bob Edlin: Classism and the pox weren’t the only exports sent here by the Poms

ACT​ leader David Seymour (who is doing nicely in opinion polls) irked many people when he sent out priority vaccination access codes intended for Māori.

The critics (no surprises here) included

• Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, who said the move was “despicable” and she would be writing to Speaker Trevor Mallard about it.
• Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, who said it was a “low-life move” aimed at intentionally sabotaging the Māori vaccine campaign.

Graham Adams: Double-edged sword of government-funded journalism cuts deep

TVNZ’s apparent lack of interest in Dr Siouxsie Wiles’ unmasked trip to the beach has raised questions about the media’s impartiality. Graham Adams assesses the fallout.

On Sunday morning, National’s Dr Shane Reti asked on Facebook for people’s “thoughts” about TVNZ’s decision not to broadcast the video of Dr Siouxsie Wiles sitting with a friend on a beach unmasked and later wading into the water to chat to her while she swam.

The video had allegedly been sent to 1 News by the person who filmed it. 1 News apparently held onto it for five days before deciding it wasn’t newsworthy enough to broadcast. It was then given to the right-leaning website The BFD, which did publish it — spurring immediate outrage.

Henry Armstrong: Pathetic Planning, Puerile Politics and the Pandemic

In May last year, as the Covid19 pandemic was becoming established in New Zealand, I penned an article for NZCPR in which I raised a number of issues which, if not already obvious, would soon be seriously confronting us. 

These included issues where ethnic groups took the law into their own hands or claimed the response to Covid was “racist”; issues with contact tracing and privacy; vaccine shortages; border problems and MIQ control; numbers in gatherings exceeding the rules (by certain ethnic groups); and the media adulation being heaped on the Prime Minister following her constant daily TV exposure. 

I warned of the dire consequences of anyone daring to even challenge, much less criticise the government’s Covid response.

Eighteen months later, where are we at?

GWPF Newsletter: Europe's energy crisis goes from bad to worse as Russia keeps firm grip on supply

 

Skyrocketing energy prices threaten to cripple Europe’s economy

In this newsletter:

1) Europe's energy crisis goes from bad to worse as Russia keeps firm grip on supply
Bloomberg, 20 September 2021

 
2) Skyrocketing energy prices threaten to cripple Europe’s economy
OilPrice.com, 18 September 2021

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Shaun Hendy's model is not plausible

 

I don’t even want to start guessing why the PM released that doomsday model this afternoon.  

But whatever her motivations, I am not in the slightest convinced by the numbers.   

According to the model – designed by Shaun Hendy – even if we get 80% of us vaccinated, we will still see 7000 deaths a year from covid.   

That’s 135 a week.   

That will scare the living day lights out of some people.

Kate Hawkesby: Now Auckland's in Level 3.. let's not stuff this up

 

Bit of a double-edged sword today, and I’m not sure what we should be worried about more. The hundreds of thousands of extra Aucklanders back at work today all mingling in kitchens, cafes and businesses, or the absconders who continue to flee the border. 

We’ve had the Hamilton Maccas run cowboys, the gang with the boot load of KFC, the Northland sisters skipping the border, the drug taker running along train tracks to avoid a border, the driver who tore through paddocks to avoid the border, the infamous Wānaka couple, the high-profile Aucklander who went to Queenstown, the man to Whakatane, the Uni students, another school student yesterday who tuned up magically in class in Dunedin after weeks locked down in Auckland Level 4.  

Derek Mackie: TVOne News abandons any pretence at balanced reporting

I usually try my best to miss the TVNZ One News bulletin because it invariably annoys the hell out of me and I start arguing with the TV. This is when my wife tells me to go away and don’t come back until I can think of something positive and uplifting to say. Sometimes, the best I can dream up, desperate as it is, is to point out that things could be much worse if we had a Greens majority government. This doesn’t impress her much. 

Anyway, last night I inadvertently wandered into the lounge and saw the pink-haired lady telling everyone at home what the Covid rules were and how important it was that we ALL follow them. There was nothing new in what she was telling us. In fact, it’s the same warnings that we get ad nauseum from the media news channels every evening in lockdown. 

That got me thinking. Why give Siouxsie Wiles her own personal slot on the 6 o’clock news when Wendy or Simon could just as easily have told us the same thing? I was about to give the 43” a piece of my mind when I got a very hard stare from the sofa. So, I decided to retire to the cupboard under the stairs and take out my frustration on the computer. 

Melanie Phillips: Downing Street's green emperor has no clothes

Boris Johnson's government is in denial over the crisis it has created

In a hole, Boris Johnson is still digging — oblivious to the toxic rubble he’s piling up in the process.

Off to the US to persuade the Biden administration to stop dragging its feet over “climate change” targets at next month’s COP 26 climate summit, Britain’s prime minister played down the chances of world leaders agreeing to a $100 billion fund to help the developing world “go green”. Said Johnson:

It's going to be tough. But people need to understand that this is crucial for the world.

Ye gods! How can such an intelligent man be so bone-headedly…dumb?? It’s Boris Johnson who needs to understand that the policy he is promoting of Net Zero carbon emissions is leading his country and the world off the edge of an economic and social cliff.

GWPF Newsletter: Britain faces food shortages as energy crisis shuts down factories

 

Greenflation: Household bills to soar by more than £1,500 a year

In this newsletter:

1) Britain faces food shortages as energy crisis shuts down factories
GWPF Energy, 18 September 2021
 
2) UK energy groups in emergency talks with government over natural gas crisis 
Financial Times, 18 September 2021

Sir Bob Jones: NZ’s Elimination Strategy Has Made Our Country the Envy of the World in the Pandemic

New Zealand’s Elimination Strategy Has Made Our Country the Envy of the World in the Pandemic.

The above, a recent opening line in the New Zealand Herald by its Science reporter, Jamie Morton.

Plainly Jamie doesn’t read the foreign press. All year New Zealand has been a laughing stock in the British media over its closed off society and vaccine failures.

The serious media such as the Economist, in articles on dealing with covid has always politely dismissed the New Zealand hermit state approach as essentially infantile, unnecessary and hugely harmful.

Michael Bassett: Media Greedies

Early this year, under the guise of “enhancing public interest journalism” that was deemed to be at risk due to COVID, the Cabinet established a Public Interest Journalism Fund. It is to assist the media to produce stories that keep New Zealanders informed and engaged, and to support a “healthy democracy”. The fund is also to “protect jobs at a local, regional and national level” believed to be in peril. Applications for grants were invited for $55 million to be made available over the run-up to the next election. New Zealand On Air is administering the fund.

The first handouts have been made. Interestingly enough, they haven’t been mentioned in any mainstream media that I’ve seen. Stuff received $300,000 to establish a “cultural competency course”. To encourage Maori TV, NZME, Pacific Media, Newshub and support partners to take on journalism cadets who are Maori or Pacific, a cool $2.4 million was handed out. NZME that produces the New Zealand Herald got $440,000. One estimate I’ve seen is that 40% of the total beneficence will go to Maori projects.

Mike Hosking: Mongrel Mob meth programme exposed for what it is

 

Opposition player of the weekend goes to Dr Shane Reti, who has exposed the Mongrel Mob meth $2.75 million for what it is.

It's a soft Labour Party sop surrounded by no checks, balances, and certainly no rigour around expenditure of other people's money. 

This is the programme personally signed off by the Prime Minister because among other things, according to her, of its success rate.

Because Reti has got some medical background and a brain he asked a few pertinent questions.

Questions that should been stock standard of any government programme involving taxpayers' money.

How much testing was done on those before they entered the programme? 

Frank Newman: Apology required

 Dover Samuels has renewed his call for the Crown apology over canings for speaking te reo at school.

Stuff reports, "A former Labour government Māori Affairs Minister, Dover Samuels, is renewing calls for Māori to receive an official apology from the Crown, for the generation who were beaten for speaking te reo in school. He said he and other students were caned when he attended the Waiharara Native School at Matauri Bay in Northland in the 1940s, when they spoke te reo Māori." See HERE >>>

Clive Bibby: Lockdowns and Opening Up

My sense is that Kiwis are beginning to recognise the true nature of this administration - particularly the mechanisms that have become standard practice for maintaining control.

History tells us that the modern version of totalitarianism is little different to the previous ones that seized control of countries then set about dismantling all the democratic institutions that underpinned individual freedoms.

The current government has another thing in common with those abusive regimes.

It is the speed with which they have cancelled the civil liberties of any group or association that dares to challenge the validity of their authority.

Mike Hosking: The Māori Party need to take a leaf from ACT's book

 

The Māori Party's petition to change the name of New Zealand is, of course, going nowhere, which may ultimately be an indication as to where the party itself is going. 

They are a rarity in MMP, a party ousted from Parliament, but able to make a comeback. 

Many a small party have come and gone, and with the exception of New Zealand First, no one has managed the trick. 

The trick about the trick, if you pull it off, is not to look a gift horse in the mouth and blow it. 

But my guess is, that’s exactly what they are doing. 

GWPF Newsletter: Europe’s energy crunch is forcing UK factories to shut down

 

Europe may turn to more coal if gas crunch persists

In this newsletter:

1) Europe’s energy crunch is forcing UK factories to shut down
Bloomberg, 15 September 2021 
 
2) You don't say: Green push leaves UK energy supply at the mercy of weather
Bloomberg, 17 September 2021

NZCPR Weekly: Update on Covid-19

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

In this week’s NZCPR newsletter we examine the Government’s Covid-19 strategy, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Professor John Gibson outlines why he regards lockdowns as one of our greatest peacetime policy failures, and our poll asks whether you regard the Government as the “single source of truth” about Covid-19.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

Breaking Views Update: Week of 12.09.21

Saturday September 18, 2021 

News:
Call for Stratford-wide seats so Māori ward voters get more say
Campaigners for the Māori ward in Stratford District want councillors to create “at large” seats, so Māori roll voters get a fair say in next year’s elections.

In May a strong iwi turnout convinced councillors to support unanimously a Māori ward in 2022, overturning a vote three days earlier.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Collins has got to go

 

When it rains it pours, and it’s pouring for the National Party isn’t it?  

21% in that poll last night is horrific, but given the horrors of the last couple of weeks, really no surprise. 

This does nothing but reinforce the same point that we keep making, which is Collins has to go. At some point. 

Why don’t we just deal with the thing that you want to know: Who takes over?  

From what I can see you got two realistic options that are obvious to us right now: Simon Bridges or Chistopher Luxon. 

Bob Edlin: Health Researchers Stumble Over Treaty

Health researchers measure the benefits of taking precautions – but they stumble when they bring the Treaty into considerations.

The headline on a recent press statement from Massey University showed what great things emerge from state-funded research, although it seemed to state the obvious:  New research highlights the benefit of injury prevention measures in Māori households.

Was research really required to find it’s a good thing to take steps to prevent injuries in Maori households – or any household, come to think of it?

Andrew Bolt: Interviews Muriel Newman - Ardern leading New Zealand to apartheid

 

Sky News host Andrew Bolt says he is concerned New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s “woke politics” are leading the country towards “a form of apartheid”. 

Garrick Tremain: Media Lapdogs

 Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on media lapdogs! 

Derek Mackie: Are women more left-wing than men?

The NZ Taxpayers Union has just released an opinion poll they commissioned last week. The Curia poll was taken during the current Covid lockdown and not only tells us how the parties are standing but delves a bit deeper into the voters preferences. 

•  Labour has rebounded to 45.8%, up about 6% from pre-lockdown ratings. This is unsurprising and likely reflects a large proportion of the public’s approval of the virus elimination strategy. 
• ACT are at an all-time high of 14.9%, up another 2% on recent polls. This is probably due to the relatively favourable media coverage that they have enjoyed recently and the lacklustre performance of the National Party. 
• The Greens polled 9.6%, so steady as she goes. 
•  The Maori Party scored 1.2% indicating that, as usual, most Maori don’t want a bar of what they advocate. 
•  NZ First got 2.7% and other small parties collectively polled 4.5%.
•  National are the big losers, attracting only 21.3%, down about 8% on recent polls. Needless to say, this is a terrible result and signals a party which lacks strong leadership and direction, only appealing to its die-hard supporters. 

Based on these results, we would get a Labour-Greens coalition government with 70 seats in parliament - a very comfortable majority. This would allow Labour to progress its He Puapua agenda unchecked and would also lead to more extreme environmental, climate change and social policies from the Greens - the perfect storm, you might say. 

GWPF Newsletter: Energy prices in Europe hit records after the wind stops blowing

 

EU braced for pandemonium as Yellow Vests chaos to spread across Europe

In this newsletter:

1) Energy prices in Europe hit records after the wind stops blowing
The Wall Street Journal, 13 September 2021

 
2) EU braced for pandemonium as Yellow Vests chaos to spread across Europe
Daily Express, 13 September 2021

Frank Newman: Media bias

Nothing like a survey to prove what we all know to be true: The media is biased.

A group called MediaBias has released the results of media monitoring for the period Oct 1 2019 to Aug 31 2021.

They say, "MediaBias is a service offered as a public good, that measures political bias in the New Zealand media, using a machine learning model that evaluates the sentiment of sentences from news articles and blog posts containing the names of Members of Parliament (MPs) and political parties."

Mike Hosking: We're starting to hit the vaccine resistance wall

 

You could see it coming from a mile away. We're now hitting vaccine resistance. 

We have done well with about 78 percent of the eligible population jabbed or booked for a jab. But it's where we hit the wall, and we hit it this week. It would be one of the highest resistance walls in the world; so that in and of itself is something to be proud of. 

There are many countries who ultimately ended up being widely vaxxed but hit a wall way earlier than us. What it means is the mad push we have seen get underway this week is not going to be as arduous as it has been elsewhere. 

GWPF Newsletter: Boris Johnson plans last-ditch attempt to save UN climate summit

 

COP26 and carbon imperialism: A looming showdown

In this newsletter:

1) COP26 crisis deepens as Boris Johnson plans last-ditch attempt to save UN climate summit
GWPF International, 12 September 2021

2) Alok Sharma faces embarrassment on world stage as Environment Bill won’t be ready for Cop26
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 September 2021
   
3) UK planning last-ditch China climate talks to break impasse before Cop26
The Guardian, 10 September 2021

Peter McCullough: Texas Senate Testimony - importance of early treatment for Covid-19

 

Peter McCullough, MD testifies to Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee - March 11, 2021 about the importance of early treatment protocols for Covid-19. 

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Is there anyone left who thinks Judith Collins is a future PM?

 

Is there anyone left who thinks Judith Collins is a future PM?  

If you were still unsure last week then Friday’s outburst about Siouxsie Wiles surely decided things for you.  That was unbecoming of a PM in waiting. Regardless of what Dr Wiles did or didn’t do, Kiwis do not like it when our politicians punch down or launch personal attacks. We expect our PMs to be statesmanlike and that was anything but.  

If you were still in Camp Collins, welcome to reality. The rest of accepted Collins is not a future PM a long time ago:  either because of the shouting match with the young interviewer on Breakfast, or the weird decision to pray in front of cameras during the election campaign, or the apparently vengeful decision recently to demote Chris Bishop during a lockdown even though he’s one of National’s best performers.

Barry Soper: It's time the labels of essential business and workers were redefined

 

The decision taken around the Cabinet table on the 10th floor of the Beehive yesterday wasn't just as simple as unlocking Auckland.

For this Government which has never admitted to any wrongdoing, it was a nightmare. To come down from Alert Level 4 would have been an acknowledgement that the lockdown wasn't working and that its Covid elimination strategy, now ditched by most of the world as being unworkable, was in fact just that.

So the lock's been kept in place for just over another week which is simply delaying the inevitable.

GWPF Newsletter: Australia rebuffs Biden, Boris and the UN; vows to keep mining coal

 

Chinese coal power companies on the verge of bankruptcy

In this newsletter:

1) Australia rebuffs Biden, Boris and the UN; vows to keep mining coal
GWPF International, 9 September 2021

2) Australia vows to keep mining coal despite climate warning
AFP, 9 September 2021

Graham Adams: David Seymour is cast into hell - alongside Tova O’Brien

Tweets about giving Maori priority access to vaccines have blown up. Graham Adams assesses the damage.

In his epic 14th-century poem Inferno, Dante depicted sinners who questioned established religion or whose heretical views damaged the fabric of society as trapped in burning tombs in the Sixth Circle of Hell, and suffering horrific pain.

This week, Seymour found himself tormented in the Sixth Circle of Twitter after he tweeted a code that enables Māori to be prioritised for vaccination at the Trusts Arena in West Auckland, run by Te Whānau o Waipareira. The code was accompanied by the tag: “If you’re worried about vaccination waiting times, you no longer need to make an appointment. All you need to do is use this access code.”

Clive Bibby: Difficulties with reality or simply outright lies

The most consistent message we are getting from the Prime Minister’s daily press conferences down to and including every cabinet ministerial announcement is that every effort is being made to ensure no one is left behind as we chart a course through these tumultuous times. The catch cry has always been - “We are all in this together”

Yeah right! The evidence suggests otherwise.

Continual repeating this daily chant is wearing thin on a populace confronted with events that are proving that line to be just another lie.

Garrick Tremain: Three Waters

Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on the Government's Three Waters proposal!