Ryan Bridge: Diplomacy’s gone to the dogs

Remember it was only a month ago Trump was parading around an Alaskan Air Force base, talking up peace for Ukraine.

Within weeks, Putin sends 800 drones across the border - the biggest attack of the war so far.

He’s targeted EU and British government buildings in Kyiv. He’s now entered NATO airspace. The fighter jets were scrambled. The alarm bells rang in Brussels.

Chris Lynch: Peters outlines foreign policy priorities, rejects claims of radical shift

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has defended the Coalition Government’s approach to foreign affairs, saying New Zealand must engage with “more energy, more urgency and a sharper focus” amid what he described as a sharply deteriorating global environment.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 29/4/24

If there has been any fiddling with Pharmac’s funding, we can count on Paula to figure out the fiscal facts – can’t we?”

Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business.

Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 23/6/23

Willow-Jean Prime adopts the Beehive practice of mixing two languages – and the effect (dare we say?) is bumfuzzling

Point of Order has engaged in a hasty bit of linguistic research on hearing – or rather, reading – the opening sentence of a speech delivered by Associate Health Minister Willow-Jean Prime.

As has become common practice in the Beehive, this sentence was crafted to combine te reo and English.

Point of Order: Govt serves good news by helping shoppers gauge whether this item – or that one – provides the better bang for our bucks

Good Christmas news for shoppers came in the form of the Government announcing it is working on a set of rules intended to help consumers compare the prices of grocery products at supermarkets.

They can do that now, of course, although the procedure is exhausting: shoppers hoping to get the best bang for their bucks can visit every supermarket within a comfortable travelling distance, then walk down the aisles with their shopping lists and take copious notes of who is selling what for how much.

Shoppers furthermore can calculate whether a 150-gram tin of sardines (or whatever) is a better deal than the 150-gram tin of sardines on the same shelf.

Point of Order: Greens are cheered by renewable energy news and exploration pause.....

........but overseas coal exporters will be delighted, too

The Point of Order team will be keeping an eye on how coal imports are affected by one of the latest Beehive announcements. We share ACT’s belief that global coal exporters will be delighted by the news.

The announcement – from Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods – is that the government is stalling on the granting of further petroleum exploration permits, beyond the work already underway, until early in the next Parliamentary term.

So what’s the link between this announcement and the graph above, showing a burgeoning of coal imports in recent years.

Point of Order: National and ACT remind us that they would pull the chain on the govt’s Three Waters legislation

Readers of Point of Order will be familiar with the raft of issues that bedevil legislation to implement the government’s Three Waters reforms.

They extend far beyond co-governance to financing and debt arrangements and have been revealed in a comprehensive series of articles by Thomas Cranmer.

The government is charging on with the reforms regardless, after Parliament’s Labour-dominated Finance and Expenditure Committee reported back comparatively minor changes to the Water Services Entities Bill that will establish four publicly owned water entities to deliver water services around the country.