Ian Bradford: The inherent danger of lithium-ion batteries

I have previously written  about cobalt for batteries in EV’s, and indeed many devices, being mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by small children as young as seven.  Amnesty estimated there were about 40,000 children working in the mines. Many have been killed and many others will suffer serious lung damage.  The New Zealand government launched a “Plan of Action” on the 16^th march 2021 by the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety, The Hon Michael Wood. The plan reaffirms New Zealand’s commitment to prevent and eliminate all forms of modern slavery and child labour. Instead, just a few months back, they did yet another push for electric vehicles giving even more incentives to purchase them. What a bunch of hypocrites. 

Thomas Cranmer: Revealed - NZ Medsafe's Safety Assessment of the Pfizer Vaccine for Pregnant Women

Chris James, Group Manager of Medsafe told in Court by an expert, "It is concerning that public health officials did not reveal this atypical feature of Comirnaty."

As part of New Zealand’s provisional approval of the Pfizer vaccine, the country’s regulator Medsafe prepared a Non-Clinical Assessment in January 2021 which concluded that:

Michael Bassett: Labour and its out-of-control bureaucracy

Remember after the 2017 election when Winston Peters, for no good reason, threw his support behind the smaller of the two main parties and brought Labour to office? That party had only slogans they called policy, and proceeded to establish more than 200 taxpayer-funded working groups to flesh out the detail. Then they set about employing more bureaucrats, 15,000 over the years, to assist with the implementation of the detail. Not content with that, Jacinda Ardern and now her successor, Chris Hipkins, hired consultants as well, paying them hundreds of thousands each day. The cash register was clinking furiously before anyone in government even started the implementation process. Hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, had gone out the door before there was anything tangible. Remember the hapless Phil Twyford and the 100,000 new Kiwi Build houses that weren’t built?

Clive Bibby: Cover ups and consequences

There is something going on in NZ politics at the moment and it has the capacity to destroy this government well before their popularity is tested at the general election in October. In fact new information coming to light almost on a daily basis exposes an administration frightened of it's own shadow, running around like headless chooks. It would be comical if it wasn't so serious.

And the reason for this chaos is as much as anything to do with the probability that senior members of cabinet, including the former Prime Minister, have been involved with attempts to cover up serious transgressions of others and the damaging effects of misplaced policy that is now a time bomb.

Damien Grant: We're having a free speech moment. It isn't going well

Kim Hill was at her patronising best. “Why would you be worried about being attacked?” she asked Posie Parker, before the events of last week unfolded.

Hill, perhaps sensing that this question was best left unanswered, segued quickly into demanding why Nazis liked to attend Parker’s rallies. Guilt by association was a politically safer line of questioning than asking the British activist about her actual views and why she was touring the antipodes in the first place.

We’re having a free-speech moment. It isn’t going well.

Point of Order: NZ slaps more sanctions on Russia while welcoming Brits into the CPTPP

We haven’t exhaustively put this proposition to the test, but we suspect there’s just one thing Nanaia Mahuta has mentioned more often than “sanctions” in her press statements. That would be “three waters”.

Mahuta has popped up in the latest batch of Beehive press statements to announce a further tightening of the thumb screws she is applying to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Thomas Cranmer: Identity Politics and the Challenge to Conservatism

In recent years, New Zealand has witnessed a significant rise in identity politics, which poses a considerable challenge to conservative ideology.

Identity politics is a political framework that prioritizes the experiences, perspectives, and concerns of marginalized groups, including ethnic and racial minorities, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others. This framework is in contrast to conservative ideology, which values individualism and traditional social structures.

The rise of identity politics in New Zealand is not surprising, given the country’s increasingly diverse population and its growing significance overseas. New Zealand has a long history of welcoming immigrants from all over the world, and this has contributed to the country’s rich cultural heritage.

Stuart Smith: The Right to Free Speech

The right to freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, and it is crucial for the functioning of a democratic society.

It allows individuals to express their opinions and beliefs, even if they are unpopular or controversial. This right is protected by international law and is enshrined in our Bill of Rights.

Oliver Hartwich: Democracy undermined by biased policing

In a liberal democracy, the police are crucial to maintaining order and enforcing the law. But recent incidents, such as the disruption of British feminist Posie Parker’s event in Auckland, have raised concerns about the police’s ability or willingness to carry out these duties impartially.

Parker’s event was violently disrupted by protestors, resulting in physical assaults on her supporters and a forced cancellation.

The police did not prevent this from happening. Instead, according to Parker, they subjected her to an extensive bag search on arrival and made her hotel cancel her booking.

This is not an isolated incident. It fits into an emerging pattern of selective law enforcement.

Matthew Birchall: Paying the price for slow progress

New Zealand’s resource management system is a contradictory mess.

At least, that is the impression you get reading a recent report commissioned by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission on the cost of climate consenting.

Prepared by Sapere Research Group, Infrastructure Consenting for Climate Targets looks at changes to energy and transport infrastructure that may be necessary to reach net zero.

Bryan Leyland: Storage - the Achilles heel of wind and solar power

The Government’s “Net Zero New Zealand by 2050” ambition foresees 12,000 MW of new wind and solar power – 1.5 times the entire existing installed generating capacity – to meet the 50% increase in energy and peak demand expected from electrifying transport and heating. The disproportionate increase in installed capacity results from the low average output of wind and solar farms. Installing this much new capacity is a major challenge in terms of technology, cost and resources. According to Professor Kelly, an eminent New Zealand engineer now residing in the UK, it will cost more than $500 billion.

Guy Hatchard: The Last Ditch Deceptions Aimed at Saving the Doomed and Deadly Covid Vaccines

An article by Penny Murray, Stuff newspaper’s news director, appeared yesterday with the headline “Bivalent booster likely spared me the worst when Covid burned through our house”. Stuff has received financial support from the government to operate a programme called “The Whole Truth” which promotes Covid vaccination. Since the government has just started rolling out the bivalent vaccine, it is no surprise that Stuff is blowing their trumpet.

Penny reports that her two kids under 12 have had two mRNA shots, her husband three, and she herself has had four including the bivalent booster a few days ago. The kids and her husband have fallen ill with Covid and feel very unwell. They have a variety of symptoms including vomiting, headaches, and fever. Penny has a Covid infection too but her only symptoms are in her words: “a grinding headache and feel awful. Everything hurts”. Miraculously she has skipped the fever. In the article, Murray concludes that the bivalent booster is the key to avoiding serious Covid symptoms.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Human rights – the gift of pale but not stale males to humankind

 Some of the pale non-stale males who drafted the 1789
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings - they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color [sic], religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most fundamental - the right to life - to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty. 
-  UNHR Office of the High Commissioner

The expression ‘human rights’ has mantra status, but what exactly does it refer to?

Andrew Dickens: Dunedin hospital - do it once and do it right

With the news cycle dominated by the Nash controversy, the agitation that Marama Davidson's politics always involves and the ruckus over Posey Parker's visit, some very important stories have been kept off the front page.

No story for me right now is bigger than the Government asking Health New Zealand to cut $100 million off the construction budget for the new Dunedin Hospital.

The story could be worse as the project is running $200 million dollars over budget but calling taihoa over a project that's further down the track than so many of their pipedream ideas seems reckless to me.

Thomas Cranmer: Hipkins Struggles to Contain Official Information Act Scandal

Whilst it is being portrayed as a one-off innocent mistake by two hardworking and trustworthy civil servants, in truth it reveals a glimpse of the Machiavellian machinations of government.

Former Labour Minister Stuart Nash’s quick succession of missteps now threatens to snowball into something altogether larger and more serious for Prime Minister Hipkins.

The Prime Minister says the case of two staffers not flagging an email from Stuart Nash containing confidential Cabinet matters is more of a “cock-up” than a “conspiracy”.

Point of Order: Incomes are lifted for many Kiwis and Maori mountain managers in Taranaki get $35m.....

.....but “Egmont” is being expunged

The big bread-and-butter issue of pay packets and weekly incomes was at the core of three ministerial statements since Point of Order’s previous monitoring of the Beehive website.

Andrew Little was earning his keep, meanwhile, by delivering a speech in which he discussed co-governance.

Eric Crampton: The Vogon's toe

Anyone who has read Douglas Adams's excellent Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy knows about the Vogon race of Vogsphere – the galaxy’s natural bureaucrats.

They’re officious and callous.

They’re stubborn.

And their poetry is not strongly recommended.

If you believe, as I do, that significant parts of New Zealand’s bureaucracy are in fact Vogons in disguise, observing our bureaus helps fill in important gaps in Douglas Adams’s account.

Medsafe may well be a Vogon outpost.

Yvonne Van Dongen: When Transwomen Aren’t Women

In November last year a violent male was sent to Auckland Women’s Prison.

Six months earlier Matthew Richard Nelson had stormed through the back of an Indian restaurant in Hamilton and stabbed three people before smashing the shop’s front window. One of those stabbed was his ex-partner, a woman. The other two victims were men.

Karl du Fresne: On activists from other countries and their role in the culture wars

A commenter on this blog a few days ago drew attention to the fact that some of the most active antagonists in the culture wars are relatively recent arrivals in New Zealand.

I commented on the same phenomenon in a post two years ago. I named the abortion activist Terry Bellamak (American), the Green MP Ricardo Menendez-March (Mexican), migrant activist Guled Mire (Somalian) and our old friend, chief human rights commissioner Paul Hunt (British).

Since then there’s been a slight reshuffle of the names. Mire seems to have gone quiet and Bellamak has dropped out of sight, presumably because she achieved her goal of making New Zealand one of the most hazardous countries in the world in which to be an unborn child. Job done.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 26.03.23

Saturday April 1, 2023 

News:
Emotions on show as hundreds witness history-making moment for Taranaki Maunga
On Friday, Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown initialled the agreed Taranaki Maunga redress package, named Te Ruruku Pūtakerongo.

The negotiated deal bestows Taranaki Maunga, the national park Te Papa-Kura-O-Taranaki, and the nearby peaks, with rights of legal personhood. Known as Te Kāhui Tupua, it reflected the tūpuna status the landmark has within Māoridom.