Danny Simms: The Carbon Cycle, livestock emissions and carbon influence on crop growth

It is widely accepted that around 50% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are from livestock, mostly in the form of methane and carbon dioxide.

I will show below that this in fact, is false.

NZCPR Newsletter: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Dear NZCPR Reader,

On behalf of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research I would like to say a huge thank you for your on-going interest and wonderful support over the last 12 months – and wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

Without a doubt, 2022 has been a most challenging year. Covid, the economy, the gross incompetence of the current government, and the co-governance agenda, have cast a long shadow over our country.

NZCPR Newsletter: Labour's Decline

As we finish the second year of Jacinda Ardern’s premiership of the only majority Government to have been elected outright under our MMP voting system, two polls and a by-election spell bad news for Labour.

Taken chronologically, Monday’s 1News Kantar poll showed support for Labour continues to slide, down 1 to 33 percent – the lowest ranking since before the 2017 election. National increased 1 to 38, ACT rose 2 to 11, the Greens were steady on 9, and the Maori Party steady on 2 percent.

On those results, National and ACT would have the numbers to govern with 64 MPs.

Graeme Reeves: Call An Early Election

The Government has lost the trust and confidence of the electorate and should call an early election.

There is a doctrine under employment law which is analogist to the situation confronting the Labour Government.

Under employment law when there is a loss of trust and  confidence in the relationship between and employer and an employee, caused by the behaviour of an employee, there are grounds for a justifiable dismissal.

That is because trust and confidence goes to the core of the relationship and without it there is no longer a viable relationship.

The 6^th Labour Government led by Jacinda Ardern is not only incompetent but also deceitful. 

Gerry Eckhoff: Boot Camps

It would seem that concept of boot camps –  no doubt modified from past attempts to change the behaviour and attitude way of a small percentage of wayward youth, has not found  favour with society's professional apologists.  

Apparently past experience has shown that around 15% of attendees benefit from boot camps which is good if you were to be one of their victims.  

Editorials attacked the National party’s resurrection of military style “boot camps” as one way of combatting ram raids and some youths’ contemptuous attitude to all norms of societal behaviour. 

Currently neither the media nor the Labour Government have published any meaningful response to the out-of-control behaviour of youth who have unlikely ever experienced any kind of sanction for their –“we don’t give a dam” behaviour. Rather perversely the Government is saying that the ram raids are diminishing as police catch the offenders - so we mustn’t overreact.  That’s a bit like saying the road toll dropped this week so we don’t really have a problem with road fatalities.   

Bruce Moon: Reflections - a Memoir

Step out of your comfort zone and the world may surprise you!

Margaret, my dear late wife, had been working with patients that afternoon at the Tibetan Delek Hospital at Gangkyi and had accepted a lift up the hill to our residence from some workmen in a utility van.  

I had been halfway down the hill to collect our laundry from the devoted little Indian who did it for us and I had set off up the hill with my load when a van drove up with a Tibetan driver and Margaret in the passenger seat.  Of course it stopped so I clambered into the back with a couple of Tibetan workmen and their shovels.

Kate Hawkesby: It's not right that we have to stop and think about what healthcare is available to us

 

I think one of the great travesties of this Government, when we eventually look back on their long line of failures, will be what happened to mental health.

Don’t get me wrong, no government from what I can see, has ever got mental health right, it’s forever been a sector in dire straits, under resourced and woefully misunderstood.

But mental health itself has only become bigger and worse as the years has gone by, and arguably peaking as a real crisis now, post the pandemic.

Kate Hawkesby: The PM's post-Cab chat yesterday was stomach churning

 

The PM’s post-cabinet chat yesterday was stomach churning in so many ways.

The lies, the disingenuousness of it all, the theatrics and the pretence that they’ve actually been active as a government on crime. Embarrassing. No one’s buying it.

This new fog canon measure is too late – they know it, we know it.

Worse yet, the PM tried to deflect all blame from her Government by saying that there’d be a delay on said fog cannons – due to a global shortage. This turns out to be an outright lie.

Clive Bibby: The death of Woke

Apart from all the conclusions being drawn from the mid term elections and what the results might mean for both Republicans and Democrats in the 2024 Presidential race, the message is clear - the Woke movement that has permeated almost every aspect of modern US and many other supposedly liberal societies like New Zealand is in fact on its last legs.

The reason for that and the lesson that we here at home should take out of this “return to conservatism” is clearly this - it is a big mistake to threaten the basic freedoms of hard working, tax paying, law abiding citizens who don’t take kindly to being told that your simple values are out of date. The backlash to that wrong headed assumption has real consequences for most of those who have had their day in the sun.

Clive Bibby: Cry The Beloved Country

If you want to see a real life tragedy that has all the hallmarks of a “dead man walking” you need look no further than my beloved Tairawhiti region on the East Coast of the North Island. Ironically, it is also a mirror image of the South Africa of yesteryear described so eloquently by Alan Paton in his 1948 novel “Cry The Beloved Country” that preceded the establishment of the apartheid system in that country. 

The racial issues described in Paton’s book are not dissimilar to our own but in our case, ironically, it is the pakeha majority who will suffer as a result of the imposed NZ version of the apartheid system. 

Robert MacCulloch: PM's Conference Speech written by economically illiterate advisers

PM Ardern's Labour Party Conference Speech was written by economically illiterate advisers

Oh dear. What an embarrassment. 

The Prime Minister's advisers wrote her a conference speech which summarized why this government has become unfit to govern. Since it was based on a misunderstanding of the Covid-19 shock and, as a consequence, the types of changes we need to make to get things back on track. 

The start of the speech copied the Finance Minister's Budget Speech of 2021 when he said the first Labour government of Michael Joseph Savage and his establishment of the welfare state after the Great Depression in 1929 was the inspiration for this present government's welfarist policies after Covid-19. 

Frank Newman: Straight Talk - Te Huia a flop

Despite great expectations and lofty promises to “shape the future of rail public transport”, the Te Huia passenger service between Hamilton and Auckland is a gigantic flop, and has been from day one for the reasons stated previously. See HERE >>> 

One assumes the only reason why it has not been mothballed is that Transport Minister Michael Wood would rather have taxpayers and ratepayers sink more money into a black hole of hopeless ideology than admit he was wrong.

Jacqueline Athanasatos: Hands Off Our Bard!

Is nothing sacrosanct from the insidious creep of The Cancel Culture? Apparently not.

The distressing, un-glad tidings that Creative New Zealand has withdrawn its modest $30,000 per annum funding for the Shakespeare in Schools programme, has come as a body blow to those who value the enduring literary power and drama of the late great William Shakespeare.

This decision was apparently justified by its “advisory panel” opining that “Shakespeare was locked within a canon of imperialism and missed the opportunity to create a living curriculum and show relevance to the contemporary art context of Aotearoa.”

Ian Powell: Colossal ‘porkies’ and band-aids don’t’ make a health workforce plan

On 1 August Minister of Health Andrew Little announced what he described as the start of a plan for the beleaguered workforce in Aotearoa New Zealand’s health system: Government’s 5 year late health workforce announcement.

In October 2017, when Labour became government with its two coalition parties, it inherited a health workforce crisis from the previous National-led government. As a consequence of a high level of inaction, partly due to a misplaced faith in restructuring as the solution, the situation has unfortunately further deteriorated.

NZCPR Newsletter: Policy Failure

Since their election in 2017, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government has embarked on an ambitious  programme of significant public policy transformation and reform.

In line with the PM’s deeply held socialist view that more State control produces better outcomes, centralisation has been the preferred approach.

NZCPR Weekly: A Changing of the Guard

On Thursday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he would be stepping down as leader of the ruling Conservatives in the face of mounting pressure from the party.

While he will remain prime minister until a replacement is chosen, his resignation has triggered a contest within the party to find a new leader and PM.

Boris Johnson had led the Conservatives to a landslide election victory in 2019 on a platform of delivering on the Brexit referendum and orchestrating Britain’s departure from the European Union.

Ian Powell: Is the health system an electoral Sword of Damocles for Labour?

The legend of the Sword of Damocles – about the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power – is relevant to voters in the 2023 general election, when they contemplate the Labour government’s stewardship of the health system.

In 2017 the Labour-led Government inherited a health system in crisis, with severe workforce shortages.

While this was an inherited, the Government has largely ignored it. Workforce shortages now range between ⅕th to ¼ depending on the occupational group. Even before the pandemic these shortages were impacting severely on access to planned surgery and other treatments, overcrowded emergency departments, availability of hospital beds, and compromised capacity to diagnose patients in a clinically timely manner.

Covid-19 accelerated this, but did not cause it.

The Government’s response was transparently pathetic. In 2018 it trumpeted the formation of a committee; in fact, it was a reconstituted committee with less authority than its predecessor.

Frank Newman: Roy Morgan poll confirms continued slide for Labour

Labour's support is continuing to slide. An historic defeat in 2023 now seems likely for Labour and Jacinda Ardern.

The latest Roy Morgan poll taken last month, has Labour down 2% in May to 31.5%, its lowest level since gaining 50% of the vote in the 2020 general election. It is the eighth month in a row that Labour has lost support.

Assuming this poll result translates to the 2023 election, National and ACT could form the next government with 64 seats, 51 and 13 respectively. A Labour/Greens/Maori Party block would have 54 seats (assuming the Maori Party retains its electorate seat). With only 1.1% of the party vote the Maori Party would lose its second MP.

Danny Simms: The Carbon Cycle, livestock emissions and carbon influence on crop growth

It is widely accepted that around 50% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are from livestock, mostly in the form of methane and carbon dioxide.

I will show below that this in fact, is false.

I am hugely frustrated that organisations purporting to represent farmers have bought into this narrative and likewise the politicians who are supposedly in “Opposition”.

Instead of standing on the truth and categorically rejecting the premise they have meekly acquiesced and followed the government line, suggesting modifications and slowdowns.

Gary Kerkin: Is Net Zero For New Zealand Worth $550 Billion Dollars?

Last month Michael Kelly, Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the The University of Cambridge, a New Zealander, published a Note under the auspices of of the Global Warming Policy Forum, London, entitled “NET ZERO FOR NEW ZEALAND - A report from a Putative Delivery Agency”[1] stating in the Executive Summary:

The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed $550 billion, a workforce comparable in size to the health sector will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers, and it will need about 10% of the global annual production of lithium, cobalt, neodymium and other materials.

Given his credentials and reputation there is no reason to doubt his findings which suggests an expenditure of around $290,000 per dwelling or an average of $110,000 per person over the next 28 years. The Net Zero Emissions Legislation (NZEL) will enforce this as an annual tax on everyone.

Can we afford such an impost? Or, even more importantly, is such an impost necessary?