Lushington Brady: Japan Claims Deep Sea Mining Success

As I wrote recently, deep-sea mining is fast moving out of the realm of science fiction. While the Deepwater Horizon disaster has put the brakes on undersea oil drilling, oil is far from the only resource to be found in plenty on the ocean floor. Of critical importance in the current geopolitical climate are rare earth minerals.

Lushington Brady: Japan Returns to the Polls, Again

Here they go again, for Japan’s long-suffering voters. Just months after electing their fourth prime minister in five years, Japanese voters are going back to the polls for another snap election. The election will decide the future of Japan’s first female leader, who remains hugely popular even as her party’s fortunes remain dire.

DTNZ: NZ and Japan sign new defence and security agreements

New Zealand and Japan have signed two new agreements aimed at strengthening defence cooperation and information sharing between the two countries.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins confirmed the arrangements following meetings in Tokyo.

Andrew Moran: The Japanification of China

Will the world's second-largest economy be Japanified?

No country for old yen, or big trouble in little China? While the world’s two economic powerhouses can share movie title puns, they are also experiencing comparable economic conditions, albeit three decades apart. In the aftermath of the pandemic, there have been increasing signs of the Japanification of China, which could threaten not only Beijing’s influence but also President Donald Trump’s efforts to rebalance international trade.

DTNZ: India surpasses Japan as fourth-largest global economy

The South Asian nation’s economy has grown to $4 trillion, surpassed only by the US, China, and Germany.

India has surpassed Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, government-backed policy think tank NITI Aayog has said. The Indian economy has grown to $4 trillion, behind only the US, China, and Germany, NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam stated in a press briefing on Saturday.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 22/7/24

Karen Chhour can cobble whatever words she likes, but the media are sure to stick to “boot camp”

The government’s official website today serves as much as a ministerial travel guide as a record of governmental decisions.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 20/6/24

Shane Jones and Tama Potaka invite Maori troughers to slurp into a $20m swill and Jones tells us his focus is on … guess what?

Three of the latest posts on the government’s official website result from the Prime Minister’s trip to Japan, aided and abetted by Air New Zealand stepping in to provide transport for him and his entourage after their Defence Force aircraft got them no further than Papua New Guinea.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 11/6/24

How the govt is balancing NZ’s delicate foreign relationships – by posting news of a Japan visit but not a China visit

News of the PM’s plans to visit Japan are recorded on the government’s official website today. News of the Chinese Premier’s plans to visit New Zealand this week are not.

Point of Order shall leave it to foreign affairs pundits to explain why this has happened.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Bizarre Claims

On Richard Prebble and Don Brash's Bizarre Claims about the link between Trade and Military Alliances

Last week, former ACT Party leader & Labour Minister, Richard Prebble, who reads this blog, wrote an opinion piece for Main Steam Media behemoth, the NZ Herald, with the blazing headline, "It is lunacy to join a military alliance aimed at our biggest trading partner". Don Brash, former National Party Leader & RBNZ Governor, together with Helen Clark, our former PM, have been writing articles with the same theme.

Michael Mouat: Japan has gone its own way on fighting inflation - can NZ learn from a global outlier?

Like most countries over the past three years, New Zealand has tried to manage inflation by increasing interest rates. Japan, on the other hand, has taken a different tack – with clear success.

In 2016, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) set the country’s interest rate at -0.1% and left it there. During the same period, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has adjusted the interest rate 18 times, with 12 upward adjustments since the end of 2021.

Japan’s annual inflation rate peaked at 4.4% in January 2023, while New Zealand’s peaked at 7.3% in June 2022, before dropping to 6.0% in June this year.

What might explain these differences in interest rate policy and inflation outcomes? The answer begins with how Japan views inflation in the first place.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Is Luxon saying we need more babies controversial?

Luxon’s struck a nerve, hasn’t he?

He’s been telling Kiwis to have more babies. He was at an infrastructure conference, talking about our shortage of workers to build the infrastructure we need.

And he said: “We need people. Here is the deal – New Zealand stopped replacing itself in 2016. I encourage all of you to go out there and have more babies if you wish, that would be helpful.” 

Point of Order: Beehive brays about King’s Birthday gongs and a deal with Japan....

.....but it is bashful about rebuff of a Chinese request

The government’s official website – dominated today by announcements of who has been awarded King’s Birthday gongs – also carries news of a development in New Zealand’s relationship with Japan.

This sits alongside the speech which Defence Minister Andrew Little delivered to the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue 2023 in Singapore, in which he said New Zealand’s most recent defence assessment identified climate change and geostrategic competition as the two greatest security challenges to our place in the South Pacific.

Point of Order: Mahuta heads overseas...

......(but have non-Maori been left out of her delegation?) while Luxon gushes about Nats’ Three Waters plans

Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta’s latest travel plans have been posted on the Beehive website today, advising she is packing her bags to travel to Japan and Singapore tomorrow “to strengthen Aotearoa New Zealand’s connections with Indo-Pacific partners”.

But it seems she is strengthening the connections only for some New Zealanders.

The press statement says:

Geoffrey Miller: What Japan’s foreign policy shifts mean for New Zealand

Japan is a country on the move.

Since World War II, Tokyo has largely been happy to outsource its security needs to Washington.

But this is now changing to a more equal partnership.

On Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called his country’s alliance with the United States ‘stronger than ever’.

Richard Prebble: Logic versus emotion

Whether you have voted or not, the Herald Auckland mayoral debate is revealing.

Efeso Collins really does not know there is no such thing as free transport. Taxpayers pay for Gold Card holders “free” joyrides on the Waiheke ferries. Tourists will joyride “free” public transport. The cost to ratepayers will be conservatively four times Efeso’s estimate.

Wayne Brown sees everything as an issue with a rational solution. What is the problem? What are the facts? What the options? Wayne is right. It is logical to spend money to utilize the full potential of the existing roads before spending billions on new projects. No wonder successive governments have used him as a problem solver. It also explains why Wayne clashes with those who think emotionally. Auckland has no shortage of issues for a rational problem solver to fix.

Geoffrey Miller: Jacinda Ardern’s trip to Japan and Singapore about more than just trade

International analyst Geoffrey Miller examines the motivations behind Jacinda Ardern’s first foreign trip since February 2020 – and says her tour of Japan and Singapore is about much more than trade

This is far from Jacinda Ardern’s first foreign trip – but it almost feels like one.

Ardern’s tour of Japan and Singapore this week is the first trip abroad by New Zealand’s Prime Minister in 781 days. Ardern has not travelled outside the country since February 2020.

The Government is calling the trip a ‘trade mission’ to show that ‘New Zealand is open for business’, given the phased removal of New Zealand’s Covid-19 border restrictions.

Ron Smith: Fukushima: the consequences

The earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck Japan on 11 March of this year, caused enormous damage over a wide area of the east coast of Honshu. It also inflicted major damage on key nuclear assets, near the provincial city of Fukushima. Specifically, the coastal site of Fukushima-Daiichi, which housed six reactors, was so badly affected as to raise questions, not only about the future of the Fukushima-Daiichi site but also about the future of nuclear power in Japan and, indeed, around the world.

At the moment of the earthquake, only three of the Fukushima reactors were in operation. All three immediately went in to automatic shutdown, as they were programmed to do. However, the cores of shutdown reactors (reactors where fission is not longer taking place) still contain fission products, which continue to decay and produce heat. They thus need continuous cooling. The genesis of the problem at Fukushima was, because of damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, that this cooling could not be maintained. Electrical power was lost and back-up arrangements were damaged. There is also evidence that essential pipe-work, serving the reactor cores, was also damaged. The net effect of this was a meltdown of the overheated fuels rods, which damaged the reactor containment structures. This made maintaining cooling even more difficult, since water that was inside was able to escape.