-
Been listening to lots of Steve Jobs quotes recently with it having been the tenth anniversary of his death.
A famous one is about the world being built by people no smarter than you.
With this current government, and the current version of National, but particularly the government, can’t help but think George Carlin was closer.
Think of how dumb the average person is and half the people are dumber than that. In NZ, that half is running the country.
-
@kirwan said in NZ Politics:
Indefensible in short.
It's not entirely unknown to requisition supplies in times of emergency - I certainly remember requisitions following the Canterbury earthquakes by Civil Defence, and the USA has legislation for war time which it was using for Covid. That said, this smacks of trying to salvage a terrible decision after the realisation dawned of how terrible it actually was.
Here are a few highlights of Labour's term(s) to date - I'm sure some of these aren't popular here, but they did get done:
-
Cancelled National Parties tax bracket moves and increased Working for Families and Accommodation Supplements substantially
-
Added a new tax bracket for the very high income earners
-
Bright line test extended
-
Property losses ringfenced
-
Property interest deduction reduced
-
Overseas investment in property mostly banned
-
Increased benefit rates by the most seen in a generation (still work to do of course)
-
Indexed benefits to average wage increases rather than CPI
-
Introduced Winter Energy Payment
-
Free lunches in schools
-
Increased Student Allowances
-
Fees free scheme (1st year at tertiary institutes, free apprenticeships)
-
Restored adult night class funding
-
Kainga Ora building more than 2,000 houses/year
-
Improved tenancy legislation by eliminating no-fault terminations by landlords
-
Credit contract reform
-
Increased minimum wage to $20
-
Extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks (from 18)
-
Increased sick leave to 10 days p.a.
-
Matariki
-
Improved Employment Relations Act – union delegates now specifically protected, collective agreements must include pay, 90 day trial removed for medium and large employers, breaks reinstated
-
Pay equity legislation and settlements e.g. social workers, admin workers, teacher aides, nurses and ECE teachers coming, others in the pipelines
-
Feebates for electric cars
-
Reduction in prisoner numbers by over 15%
-
Restored voting rights for prisoners with less than 3 year sentences (I think that's a net positive, but acknowledge that others will disagree)
That's some off the top of my head, there are others. For all the Covid doom and gloom (and there is plenty of weakness to judge them harshly on), we have close to the lowest Covid death rate in the world and a negative excess mortality rate, so they must have got something right somewhere.
I'm not sure how to handle the public service being slow and bureaucratic - that's what they do, but it's also a feature of large organisations generally, it's not unique to government departments. There's something about large numbers of people that creates annoyingly large amounts of middle management of one sort or another that just turns processes into molasses. Any attempts to cull managers always seem to result in reviews later which create more management positions...
-
-
Not sure if this goes in here or Covid, relevant to both I guess (the article dated this from last year post our first L4 lockdown)
-
@taniwharugby Imagine that at 1pm in place of one of the usual press conferences...
-
Looks like we have a free trade agreement (in principle) - https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126744981/uknz-free-trade-agreement-reached-promising-zerotariffs-and-970m-economic-boost . Good to see.
-
-
@taniwharugby and from another article on the subject;
"If you are more conspiracy minded – and plenty are on this issue – you’ll see the new entities, which will have strong iwi representation, as a cover for transferring ownership, or control, or cashflow to Māori. A sharing of resources with a Treaty partner, but without any mandate from the people to do so and without the consent of the ratepayers and water users who have built up the assets"
Further evidence of seperation of our country by racial lines.
-
@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
The Dictatorship continues...
This is not what they should be concentrating on right now
-
@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
If I was sneaky? Yeah!
-
@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
Well, there is a reason why they release stuff on the Friday of a long weekend.
As for what they are concentrating on, Collins asked Cindy in parliament if we had enough ICU beds to handle the Covid crisis and Herr Highness answered with "yes".
So panic over, nothing more needed to be done here.
-
@kirwan said in NZ Politics:
@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
Well, there is a reason why they release stuff on the Friday of a long weekend.
As for what they are concentrating on, Collins asked Cindy in parliament if we had enough ICU beds to handle the Covid crisis and Herr Highness answered with "yes".
So panic over, nothing more needed to be done here.
If we have enough what the hell are we doing still under house arrest!??!
-
@canefan said in NZ Politics:
@kirwan said in NZ Politics:
@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
Well, there is a reason why they release stuff on the Friday of a long weekend.
As for what they are concentrating on, Collins asked Cindy in parliament if we had enough ICU beds to handle the Covid crisis and Herr Highness answered with "yes".
So panic over, nothing more needed to be done here.
If we have enough what the hell are we doing still under house arrest!??!
"It's not a matter of running out, it's a matter of whether or not we are in a position where we need to have a little less demand."
I guess it applies to ICU beds as well as vaccines.
-
@paekakboyz said in NZ Politics:
@kirwan no supplementary questions after?
Not that I saw from the clip, just a lot of shitty one word answers from our supreme leader and ineffective questioning from Collins.
-
@kirwan I'm sure that @Godder could give more clarity but I think there are rules around how many questions the opposition can ask.
From what I can see sometimes the best they can do is get a Yes/No answer to get it on the Hansard record so they can repeat it back to the answerer at a later date. Andrew Little has already publicly said that he thinks there is enough stretch capacity for ICU so I can only imagine Collins specifically wanted the PM to say the words on the record in parliament.
-
My understanding and @Godder will probably tell me how I am wrong, is that supplementary questions are at the discretion of the Speaker in order to add clarity to a Ministers initial response. If that is correct then a simple Yes or No potentially limits the ability to ask another question as you have had a definitive answer that doesn't need clarification?
-
@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
My understanding and @Godder will probably tell me how I am wrong, is that supplementary questions are at the discretion of the Speaker in order to add clarity to a Ministers initial response. If that is correct then a simple Yes or No potentially limits the ability to ask another question as you have had a definitive answer that doesn't need clarification?
That's true, although the Speaker (and previous Speakers) usually follows a formula to give each party questions and supplementary questions based on their size, with the government size only counting back bench MPs (i.e. not ministers or under-secretaries), so in practice it's not entirely at random or the whim of the Speaker. The Speaker also likes to add or remove supplementary questions as an incentive to behave.
Also agree that it's hard to expect more clarity for a yes/no question. What is probably being set up is the ability to ask a question at a later date if/when more information comes to light about the preparedness (or lack of) of the hospital system in the face of increasing cases. The questions tend to be worded along the lines of "Does the Minister/PM stand by their answer to (insert question here) on date X?" and then followed by awkward revelations in the form of questions, or just combine the awkward revelation with a difficult question referring back to this question at a later stage.
NZ Politics