Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 1/10/24

New name – and a richer swill – for 20-year-old government fund to help clean up contaminated sites

Oinkers will be heartened to learn the Government has established something that looks like a new trough. Or rather, it has put more swill into an old trough and given it a new name.

Mind you, it’s not the most alluring of names. It’s the Contaminated Sites and Vulnerable Landfills Fund, a source of dosh intended to help councils and landowners clean up historic landfills and other contaminated sites that are vulnerable to the effects of severe weather.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 2/5/24

Ruckus over AUKUS – Labour demands Peters step down as Foreign Minister, but he still had the job this afternoon

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs.

The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised former Australian MP Bob Carr’s views on the security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 20/3/24

Penny Simmonds is winning the headlines – thanks to an announcement (bungled) that she did not make

Penny Simmonds is the minister winning the big headlines this morning.

But they were headlines of the sort best avoided by a politician, such as:

Point of Order: Mahuta brings Māori values into foreign policy......

......while two colleagues bring Aussies into the assault against climate warming

A press statement from Finance Minister Grant Robertson (headed NZ well placed as economy affects Govt books) has not been posted on the government’s official website, but it says “the Government books are reflecting a further moderation in economic activity…”

A speech from the Foreign Affairs Minister has been posted, but it does not tell us to whom she was speaking.