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 - 26/8/24

Govt keen to get cracking on meeting NZ’s demand for energy – but first cabinet will wait for a report on gas options

Two items of interest to foreign-affairs buffs were released from the Beehive today.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will travel to Malaysia and the Republic of Korea next week, accompanied by a senior business delegation.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 12/6/24

News of visit by Chinese Premier is belatedly posted on Beehive website – now we await official post of banking inquiry

Let the record show that the PM’s news about China’s Premier visiting New Zealand this week was posted on the government’s website yesterday, after Point of Order had published its June 11 Buzz report.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 19/7/23

New law strikes at snake oil peddling, but rongoā healers will be spared because regulators can’t define what they do

The Government claims to be delivering certainty to displaced homeowners affected by the recent North Island extreme weather events, providing an interim payment to support them when their insurance payments for temporary accommodation run out.

But certainty for taxpayers is missing from the press statement from the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Carmel Sepuloni. It contains not one figure with a dollar sign. which means the sum being budgeted by the government for this initiative is a mystery.

Ron Smith: Korea: the war that never left

Seoul is a bustling modern city of 12 million people, with a veritable forest of sky scrapers and a sleek modern transportation system. It is also the capital and undoubted hub of the 12th largest economy in the world, with a GDP per capita of nearly $30,000 (which is slightly larger than that of New Zealand – though, of course, the size of the South Korean economy is much larger).