Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Did the Government botch their conservation announcement?

National probably has the right intention with underused conservation land but they completely botched the communication of the plan and its implications.

There’s a little bit of green in every New Zealander - and I could not agree with that more.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 14/10/24

Polls dip for Nats but govt sticks to its guns on growth – and the restoration of “mauri” (but how is it measured?) plays a part

The phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid” was coined by James Carville, a strategist involved in Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential election campaign against George H W Bush.

It worked for Clinton, whose team used it successfully to unseat Bush the elder, despite the fact that 90 per cent of the country approved of the job that the incumbent had been doing just a year before the election.

John Porter: Does no-one care?

Does no-one care that a minority of our population is being supported, encouraged and abetted by publicly elected politicians and public servants in their quest to impose tribal rule in New Zealand?

Does no-one care that, arguably, one of the world’s best ways of life is being ruined? Ruined for all people of New Zealand.

Does no-one care that one of the world longest existing democracies is being undermined and eroded at an ever-increasing speed?

It certainly seems like it to me. 

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 12/7/24

An OECD report shows why Seymour is intent on shredding red tape

Our daily monitor of ministerial machinations and Beehive braying has been on the blink for the past week, alas. No, not a technical problem. Rather, a matter of ill-health.

Today we are catching up and herewith record the headlines posted on the government’s official website since we last buzzed on July 4.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 5/10/23

Six new marine reserves to be established (all going well on October 14) and local iwi will become management partners

Willow-Jean Prime and Rachel Brooking have struck another blow for conservation, in the last-gasp days of the 2020-23 Labour Government. Whether they have successfully struck a blow for their job conservation will become plain on October 14.

They have announced plans for six new marine reserves between Timaru and the Catlins – and for the establishment of another Crown-iwi partnership. The new marine reserves will be managed by Kāi Tahu in partnership with the Department of Conservation.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 11/9/23

Better protection of native wildlife is on the legislative agenda and an unstated sum is being spent on revitalising te reo

A few days ahead of the opening of the Government’s books, when we learn what’s in the kitty to help the parties pay for their plethora of election promises and how much must be borrowed, two ministerial statements provide a measure of how public money is being spent on Hipkins’ watch.

The government is spending a few million on making Top of the North roads in the South Island more resilient (and pitching for the votes of people who live in the Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough regions that have been affected by recent extreme weather).

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 31/8/23

$110.783m of highway spending comes from the govt – payments to the news media will come from corporate giants

Transport Minister David Parker today explained what is happening to $110,783,000 of the government’s $419 million Transport Resilience Fund.

Work will start this year on the first 94 projects under a fund dedicated for early preventative works to protect our state highway network from future severe weather disruption, Parker said.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 14/8/23

Willow-Jean Prime’s stream planting prompts check on how the govt is going with its One Billion Trees programme

Point of Order’s monitors of ministerial announcements, pronouncements and what-have-you detected just two press statement on the government’s official website today.

The Attorney-General, David Parker, has appointed a new High Court judge and the Minister of Conservation, Willow-Jean Prime, kicked off Conservation Week 2023 at a South Auckland stream restoration project.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 10/8/23

$40,000 party splurge at the Ministry for Pacific Peoples is well publicised – but what do we pay to support pidgin?

Ele Ludemann rises a good question on her blog today in an article headed No respect for other people’s money.

She has been riled by Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes’s criticism of extravagant spending on a farewell and welcome at a government agency.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 9/8/23

Now the groundwork has been laid, the govt invites us to have our say on the shaping of a low-emissions economy

The government is empowering and protecting us today, along with appointing a new High Court judge.

The empowering is being done through a consultation that will allow us to say what we think of the government’s plans for transitioning New Zealand towards a low-emissions economy.

Lushington D. Brady: Plenty of Good News on Conservation

An ABC piece about the death of a platypus in suburban Hobart shrieked that it was a sign of the species’ imminent threat. While it is indeed shocking and tragic that the animal died because of a loop of twine embedded in its fur, it might also be pointed out that the presence of platypus right in the middle of one of Australia’s capital cities hints at something else.

As Bjorn Lomborg has pointed out, cities are not, as we might imagine, antithetical to wild animals. Indeed, some wild animals thrive in human spaces.

Point of Order: Albanese makes it easier for Kiwis to become Aussie citizens....

.....and that looks likely to make emigration even more attractive

Travel has loomed large in Beehive press statements over the past 24 hours or so.

The PM has travelled to Australia, the Minister of Education is off to the US for a teaching conference, kiwis have returned to the Tongariro Forest, and the last live farm animals to travel by sea from this country have been shipped out of New Plymouth.

The PM’s press statement today is the most significant insofar as it tells us we all have been given a strong incentive to make our own travel plans and emigrate to Australia.

Point of Order: While the PM and O’Connor were announcing VIP visits......

......Mahuta was pouring out some thoughts on the wretched water bill

News of the government hoovering the red carpet for VIP visits and cleaning up the environment by advancing the green cause emerged from the Beehive yesterday, including another announcement of Māori mātauranga being to the fore in the government’s conservation programme.

And there was a speech from Nanaia Mahuta which affirmed the Water Services Entities Bill is a done deal and (she expects) the bosses of the four new co-governed water entities will be appointed before the end of the year.

Matt Ridley: Invasion of the alien species

In July, the New Zealand government announced its intention to eradicate all rats, stoats and possums from the entire country by 2050 to save native birds such as the kiwi. It’s an ambitious plan, perhaps impossible to pull off with the methods available today, but it’s a stark reminder that invasive alien species today constitute perhaps the greatest extinction threat to animal populations world-wide.

Birdlife International, a charity that works to save endangered birds, reckons that of the 140 bird species confirmed to have gone extinct since 1500, invasive alien species were a factor in the demise of at least 71—an impact greater than hunting, logging, agriculture, fire or climate change.

Matt Ridley: Getting the rich to pay for conservation

The vast Bubye Valley Conservancy in southern Zimbabwe is slightly larger than County Durham, as well as much hotter and drier. Yet both contain abundant wildlife thanks almost entirely to the hunting of game. In Bubye Valley, it’s lions and buffalo that are the targets; in the Durham dales, it’s grouse. But the effect is the same — a spectacular boost to other wildlife, privately funded.

Bubye Valley was a cattle ranch, owned by Unilever, until 1994 when it was turned over to wildlife. A double electric fence was put round the entire 850,000-acre reserve. Gradually the buffalo, giraffe, wildebeest, zebra and antelope numbers grew. Elephants and rhinos were moved there from areas more vulnerable to poaching, and the conservancy now has the third-largest black rhino population in the world.

Matt Ridley from the UK: The ecological restoration of South Georgia

The success of a bold bid to rid a subantarctic island of rats and deer - how South Georgia's environment has been repaired.

In claiming the Falklands, the Argentinian government also claims South Georgia, even though it is 700 miles further away from its coast, was unambiguously claimed by Captain Cook when uninhabited, and is run as a separate territory by the British government. Indeed, as I found out last week when I was lucky to visit courtesy of the island’s government, it is a place where something truly astonishing has been achieved in the world of conservation.

David Round: The Conservation Estate Belongs to Us All – not just Maori

It may surprise you to know that the Conservation Act 1987, which governs the Department of Conservation and the public conservation estate, contains a section ~ section 4 ~ which says that ‘[t]his statute shall so be interpreted and administered as to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’. Why is this provision here? The public conservation estate is the property of us all, not just of Maori, and conservation is, or should be, a matter of universal public interest.