Monday September 25, 2023 

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Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 25/9/23

More migrant workers should help generate the tax income needed to provide benefits for job seekers

Under something described as a “rebalance” of its immigration rules, the Government has adopted four of five recommendations made in an independent review released in July,

The fifth, which called on the government to specify criteria for out-of-hours compliance visits similar to those used during the dawn raids, requires an amendment to the Immigration Act. That’s a job for the next Parliament.

Peter Hemmingson: Maori Socio-Economic Disadvantage

The propaganda claim to a collective [part-] Maori socio-economic disadvantage has become one of NZ's most enduring tropes.

Adolf Hitler’s “big lie” technique: repeat a lie loudly and often enough and it becomes the ‘truth.’

As I will demonstrate below, aggregates are politically useful but factually vacuous.

Danny: It Is for the People to Decide

Under David Seymour, the ACT party has grown to a realistic representation in our parliament, yet at the same time has become a shadow of its former highly principled and innovative self. With so much discussion rattling around the political echo chamber about the so called ‘wasted vote’ under MMP, one can’t help wondering how ACT supporters are currently thinking about political principle and whether rat-swallowing is high on the agenda for the many of us desperate for a change of government.

Suze: Here Is a Question for Erica Stanford

Will you speak up for women’s rights, or continue to censor those who do?

National minister Erica Stanford better sort out her priorities pretty darn quick, because her inability to separate fact from fiction regarding the Posie Parker debacle makes her a target for political manipulation and of real concern when she takes on more responsibility in the new government.

Cam Slater: Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die

1News, as part of their finance debate between Grant Robertson and Nicola Willis, polled people to seek their opinions on paying for poverty reduction and climate change. The debate was an unedifying spectacle that illuminated no one but the poll results were as anyone would have expected.

The first part of the poll was about whether or not voters think NZ is on the right track or the wrong track.

Bob Jones: Stuff and nonsense

A recent lengthy article in Wellington’s Post newspaper by Julie Jacobson headed “Council offers rich-lister’s support to secure tenants” left me incredulous.

Julie babbled on about the Wellington City Council’s efforts to woo tenants into my company’s central Lambton Quay large retail block, formerly occupied by the David Jones department store. Almost every assertion she wrote was wrong.

Cam Slater chats to Muriel Newman on Reality Check Radio about various political issues

In this interview, Former Act MP and head of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research Muriel Newman joins Cam to discuss the rise of polarisation, separatism and overt racism in New Zealand politics, plus the state of play in the polls.

Click image to listen

Guy Hatchard: What Policies Could Improve Our Health Outcomes?

As you know, public health is my major concern. Little is possible without robust health. So the most important question is, what alternatives are available to solve the public health crisis?

This release augments my interview on Reality Check Radio’s Breakfast with Paul Brennan earlier this week and my presentation to the NZDSOS conference on Saturday, 16th September. As election campaigning heats up, it is worth taking a cool look at what is being claimed by wannabe leaders for their proposed policies, and what else could we be doing.

Michael Bassett: Why can't our journalists do their jobs?

As the probability that National and Act will win the election grows stronger every day the left is going berserk. Not content with making new spending promises everywhere he goes, Chris Hipkins has taken to absurd allegations about his opponents’ policies. Even after Christopher Luxon had told us all in the Leaders’ Debate that National supported school lunches, Hipkins whose hearing must be deficient, claimed that they were in danger of being scrapped if National won. Labour looks and sounds desperate, a state that never inspires confidence.

Kevin: Danny’s Been Drinking the Kool-Aid

Danyl McLauchlan writes in the Listener why he thinks Labour has taken a massive nose dive.

 Sunday September 24, 2023 

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Mike Butler: Two Governments under tribal control

For those interested, here is a letter that was sent to the Hawkes Bay Today newspaper - which has not yet been published.

Had Neill Gordon listened during the disrupted Julian Batchelor seminar in Hastings in July, he would have learned about the current government’s co-governance plan, how it is set up to work, and that there is no reference to partnership in the Treaty of Waitangi.

Mike Hosking: Labour can't understand they've divided this country

Willow-Jean Prime, who I think it is fair to suggest will lose her Northland seat this time around, has nevertheless been out on the hustings campaigning and she has struck trouble.

She has been in local and national politics for 20 years and has never seen racism like it, she says. She calls it unhinged.

Roger Partridge: The inequality debate we should be having

The debate about inequality is one of the most impassioned in contemporary politics. It touches on core beliefs about justice, rights and the ideal structure of society.

Important philosophical differences fuel the debate, each stemming from divergent worldviews and principles. Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. Individualism versus collectivism. Meritocracy versus structural determinism. The debate spans the gulf between the political left and right and between advocates and opponents of the politics of identity.

Suze: A Legacy of the Pandemic That Wasn’t

A blunt political tool

What is the difference between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy? Covid supplied the answer, which is time: the time taken for facts to become public knowledge.

They told us Covid would kill 80,000 New Zealanders. Social distancing and masks stop the spread. Stay home and save lives. Don’t speak to your neighbour. Get vaccinated and boosted – it’s your moral duty. We didn’t question government edicts as propaganda or conspiracy theories but the passage of time shows they were just theories, the science wasn’t available, and they were actually government edicts based on fear and ‘hopium’.

Benjamin Macintyre: Politics actually

Everyone knows the best rom-coms are built on love triangles. Think of Mark, Juliet and Peter from Love, Actually. Audiences swooned. The premise was that it’s okay to try to get your best friend’s partner to cheat on them as long as you ask using cardboard signs.

Love triangles are a popular trope because they’re dramatic. Who will the protagonist pick? Will it be the sensible man her parents love, or will she go for the bad boy with improbably good hair?

Lushington D. Brady: It’s Ok to Teach the Greatness of the West

One Australian uni pushes back on the war against the West

Is there still hope left for the West’s universities? Probably not, to be honest. Some are giving it the ol’ college try (pun intended) of course: New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, has just abolished its Gender Studies department. Provoking the predictable howling fury of leftist academics (my apologies for the tautology), naturally.

But has the cancer simply spread too far to be cut out? Maybe it’s time to put the universities out of their misery.

Michael Johnston: Palaeolithic walruses in the age of reason

Here are a couple of highlights from the leaders’ debate last Tuesday evening:

“That’s a good point, Christopher. Most economists do agree that selectively removing GST from fruit and vegetables is a dumb idea. We’d better rethink that one.”

“Well, Chris, you make a good point too. It looks as if the foreign-buyer tax won’t raise as much as we’d first thought.”

They didn’t say anything of the sort, of course.

Matthew Birchall: Wellington's water woes

The Bucket Fountain in Wellington’s Cuba Mall has long been the capital city’s iconic water feature. However, it seems that new competition is emerging.

Burst pipes and leaks have become a regular part of life in the world’s leakiest little capital. Around 44% of the region’s water supply is currently lost to leaks. That’s the equivalent of 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools down the drain each day.