Today there are still a few who have faith in Jacinda's Labour government despite the overwhelming evidence that it is an outmoded religion, lacking analytical and executive skills. Ministers tell you they'll solve inflation by spending more; they'll fix the shortage of nurses in hospitals by refusing to allow easy entry for foreign-trained medical staff; they'll stop our locally trained nurses heading off overseas by getting them to settle their wage claims for half the current rate of inflation; they'll lift kids out of poverty by persisting with failed methods of teaching literacy and numeracy in schools, and by teaching them Te Reo; they'll improve Maori lives by giving co-governance powers to Maori aristocrats; they'll fix all your problems by employing 17,000 more bureaucrats than we had five years ago, and inflation will waft away on the breeze, hopefully in election year…. - Michael Bassett
The problem with this government is that many of its policies have been shown historically to work no longer. Even before the Labour Party was formed in 1916, rent controls led to landlords selling their rentals, causing central city slums in many countries. By the mid 1940s one European economist who had surveyed rent controls at work in Europe concluded that the only thing that did more damage to central cities than rent controls was pattern bombing. But we hear today's crop of Labour ignoramuses still musing about possible rent controls. Learning from history is not something the current lot are prepared to risk instead of their doctrine. A caucus of trade union hacks, low level lawyers and lesser bureaucrats simply rely on Labour's ancient religion: if it moves, control it, if it makes money, tax it, and if there's still a problem, throw taxpayers' money at it. - Michael Bassett
The banking lessons learned by the Fourth Labour Government in the 1980s where the ASB and then the BNZ under Jim Bolger quickly strengthened themselves by allying with expanding international entities, will now never be available to Kiwibank. You can count on it not growing much above its current 4% of the banking market. It will be tied hand foot and finger to the Minister of Finance and the government's purse strings. A stagnant asset. - Michael Bassett
Come the next election, I suspect the Labour government will resemble those 1931 pilgrims, traipsing down the mountain like wet sheep. One has to hope, however, that eventually a brighter, better educated crop of political hopefuls comes along, a group that understands what works and what doesn't, who aren't tied to some old-time religion, and have been living in the real world. - Michael Bassett
It's becoming more apparent every day that this Government is on its way out and I just wonder whether that's why they're spiralling now into the realm of the nutty. - Kate Hawkesby
I just don't know how they're so tone deaf. Their ability to try to barrel through policy that negatively impacts us, instead of doing anything that's actually useful, is worrying. - Kate Hawkesby
The Nats called it as they saw it; a government addicted to spending, and we know this with the free-for-all spray around treatment of the cost of living payment. - Kate Hawkesby
They're lucky to be a two-term government – thanks to Covid – but at this stage I don't think even another pandemic could save them.
This is a circus that fewer and fewer of us want tickets to. - Kate Hawkesby
The Ardern administration has finally confirmed — were confirmation required — that it is the most incompetent New Zealand Government in living memory, and perhaps ever. - Matthew Hooton
This Government has managed to "deliver" the biggest cut for at least 30 years in the real wages of the middle and working class — those a "Labour" Party supposedly represents. It is paying for it in the polls. - Matthew Hooton
It took this Government's special idiocy to decide that which wasn't broken should be fixed, by moving the Reserve Bank away from its laser-like focus on inflation, approving the appointment of Adrian Orr as Governor and signing the so-called dual mandate in March 2018.
Meanwhile, it accelerated increases to the minimum wage and began putting greater shackles around the labour market, including abolishing automatic 90-day trial periods, and restricting access to foreign labour and preparing the ground for 1970s-style national payment awards for workers.
After all this — and most likely because of it — real wages rose by just 1.5 per cent in Ardern's first three years, before any effect from Covid. - Matthew Hooton
Infamously, ultra-loose monetary and fiscal policy transferred about $1 trillion to property owners at the expense of wage earners and savers. Now the data is in on real wages.
From mid-2020, real wages began falling and have done so for eight quarters. Since the Labour Cost Index (LCI) began in 1992, that has never happened before. - Matthew Hooton
Perhaps a government of political science rather than economics student presidents could be forgiven for putting votes ahead of sound money, but the Ardern regime has proven incompetent even at handing out free cash.
It turns out cost-of-living cash went to foreign landlords, Kiwis living permanently abroad and those who are no longer alive. - Matthew Hooton
Perhaps we should forgive them their confusion for, on everything except public emoting, it is clear that they know not what they do. This is a pattern. - Matthew Hooton
The defeat of the Ardern Government is increasingly likely, and more than deserved.
Labour governments can do many things and survive. Enriching property owners while slashing workers' real wages isn't one. - Matthew Hooton
I suspect that we are fast approaching a state of society in which pedantry will be the best defence against the prevailing moral and philosophical (not to say physical) ugliness. Find a corner of the world about which nobody cares, and immerse yourself pedantically in it. That will be the way to survive until you reach the bourne from which no traveller returns. - Theodore Dalrymple
At its worst, and the worst was on display this week, the party puts too much emphasis on increasing the size of the state, and neglects to ask itself what it's taxing people for. If no one can articulate a good reason for why the Government is taking citizens' money, can you really blame them for getting upset? - Thomas Coughlan
Not only is increasing tax difficult at the best of times, but after committing not to introduce taxes beyond what it campaigned on at the 2020 election, Labour proceeded to break its promise in spirit if not letter, multiple times this term, most obviously in its extension of the bright line test, the removal of interest deductions for landlords, and now, on GST.
The party needs to regain the public's trust on tax. It won't do that through stealth taxes on their savings. - Thomas Coughlan
If the Minister of Finance demands evidence on value-for-money in adjudicating between different budget bids, because there will always be more bids than there's space to accommodate, that drives demand for rigour in analysis. If the Government wants everything put through a soft-focus wellbeing lens instead, then that razor gets dulled. And if you combine it with a ludicrously soft budget constraint where government borrows $50 billion, nominally for Covid, and then spends it on any darned thing that passes a comms test, you'll get what we've had. - Eric Crampton
It all looks pretty bleak. Europe's heading for disaster if the energy futures market is anything to go by. Covid shocks were bad but what happens when European factories supplying critical parts into NZ supply chains can't afford to run? There's terrible mess ahead, we can't afford for policy to continue to be this persistently stupid, and there's no reason to hope that policy will stop being this persistently stupid. - Eric Crampton
Lowering the bar means you allow yourself to dream but you don't chase dreams that are ridiculously out of reach — that they are in the ballpark of possibility for who you are: Your genetic inheritance, talents, skills and work ethic.
And that you don't hold off celebrating until you've smashed that dream over the fence. Instead, you enjoy, and celebrate, all the milestones — the twists and turns and tiny triumphs — along the way.
Because a successful life does not come down to whether you hit any high bar or not. It's not in the fact that your name and achievement will the answer to a pop quiz question 20 years from now.
It's in the life you quietly created below the bar, it's in the people who joined you on your journey and the experiences you had, along the way. It's in whether you stayed anchored to the things that mattered to you and found fun in the littlest things. - Karen Nimmo
I do not know quite where to place snobbery on the scale of vices, but wherever it is placed, I think it may be very serious in its effects, though it is probably ineradicable from the repertoire of potential human feeling and conduct.
Snobbery is the feeling of social superiority on the grounds of some quality over which the person believed to be inferior has little or no personal control, such as birthplace or parenthood. If this feeling is conspicuously displayed rather than merely felt, it is likely to provoke furious resentment, far more so than actual injustice. Disdain causes the rawest of wounds, which seldom heal. That is why people who triumph over snobbery in practice nevertheless often retain within themselves a strong core of resentment toward those of the type (not necessarily the actual individuals) who formerly disdained them. And this resentment often impels them to do seemingly self-destructive things. - Theodore Dalrymple
It is probable that intellectual and aesthetic snobbery are now more prevalent than the more traditional forms that attach to place of birth and parentage. Many of us are appalled by the tastes and interests of others and secretly, and not so secretly, congratulate ourselves on our superiority to them. I am far from immune myself from such feelings. I have to control myself not so much in my outer behavior—that is a relatively easy thing to do—but in my inner feeling, that is to say to limit my own feelings of superiority to the people whose tastes I despise. After all, there is more to people than their tastes or enthusiasms, and I have never talked to anybody who struck me as anything other than an individual. Just as we are enjoined to hate the sin but not the sinner, so we have to try to dislike the bad taste but not the person who displays it. This requires the overriding of emotion by conscious thought and self-control. - Theodore Dalrymple
Fear of appearing snobbish is harmful because it threatens the willingness to make judgments between the better and worse; and since the worse is always easier to produce, it contributes to a general decline in the quality of whatever is produced. This fear of appearing snobbish and therefore undemocratic is now very strong and pervades even universities (so I am told), in which one might have supposed that elitism, in the sense of a striving for the best that has been said and thought, would be de rigueur.
One of the forms that snobbery now commonly takes is disdain of simple, repetitive, and unskilled jobs (which are generally ill-paid as well). The educated can imagine no worse fate than to be employed in such a job, no matter how necessary or socially useful it might be—the person at the supermarket checkout (increasingly redundant, of course) being the emblematic example. With a singular lack of imagination and sense of reality about their fellow creatures, they simply put themselves in the place of these people and imagine thereby that they are being empathic. But of course there are people for whom such jobs are not unpleasant and are even rewarding. Not everyone wants to be, or is capable of being, a master of the universe. - Theodore Dalrymple
The trouble is that snobbery toward the unambitious overvalues ambition as a human characteristic, and thereby helps to usher in the regime of ambitious mediocrities, or even sub-mediocrities, under which we now live. There is nothing wrong with mediocrity, it is indeed very necessary; but it is harmful when allied with ambition.
Irrespective, then, of how bad a moral vice snobbery may be, it is socially harmful and must be guarded against—especially where it resides often in secret, that is to say in the human heart. - Theodore Dalrymple
The Pharmac Review Panel proposed that Pharmac's spending be skewed to favour the needs of "priority populations", notably Māori.
That approach treats Māori lives as being of higher value than those not in a priority population. The report illustrates how this might be quantified. It also shows how even Māori might end up worse off.
Official documents justify this racially polarising approach for health care generally. Their main grounds are relatively poor average health outcomes for Māori, 'equity', and the Treaty.
Non-Māori outnumber Māori by 40% in the bottom decile of according to New Zealand's Deprivation Index. To favour Māori over others in this decile violates horizontal equity. To favour Māori in better-off deciles over non-Māori in the lower deciles violates vertical equity. - Bryce Wilkinson
People who do not care for accurate diagnosis cannot care much if their remedy does not work.
Finding remedies that work for all is critical. The previous government's social investment approach had that focus. The current racially polarising approach does not. - Bryce Wilkinson
While political risk management shouldn't be the sole focus of any Government, it does actually serve a critical purpose, in applying a blowtorch to policies to make sure they are targeting the right people and there are no unintended consequences.
It's hard to know which is more damaging in this instance. Devising a policy which would have had such a disastrous effect on peoples' nest eggs at a time when inflation is already eroding their sense of wealth and wellbeing.
Or being so careless as to wave it through it without even understanding who it would hurt most. - Tracy Watkins
A lambasting by the Auditor General over the cost of living payment and the humiliating backdown on a plan to impose GST on KiwiSaver fees marked a torrid week for the Labour Government.
Both instances raise the question about whether Labour's political antenna is broken - and its willingness to be take responsibility for stuff-ups. - Claire Trevett
It may be too soon to tell how the public spending watchdog John Ryan will be remembered when his term finishes - but there are signs he is starting to get under the skin of the Government.
And looking at his work plan for the current year, it is easy to see why. - Audrey Young
What we don't see on the other side is 'what did we get for that money?' For the $130-plus billion a year, what got better, what got worse, how are things trending? Where is the reporting on that?
We really want to push quite hard on agencies to really hold themselves to account for their performance and to connect that to the public in what they are interested in seeing the agency do. - John Ryan
The art of the political U-turn, flip-flop, volte face – call it what you will – is a delicate one. If you don't call an end to an unpopular policy quickly enough, you stand to entrench voter outrage, which can result in an election loss. If you do too many of them your party is seen as inept and lacking in conviction, beginning with those within your own caucus. - Janet Wilson
Then there's the cost-of-living payment, in which the second of three instalments came out this week. Having earned a reprimand from the auditor-general, who said the Government should have made better efforts to make the sure the payment was going to its intended targets, and having shed a recalcitrant MP only last week, a prudent Government would be desperate to right the ship.
Instead, it finds itself in a conflagration of its own making, seemingly more interested in increasing its own coffers than helping cash-strapped Kiwis whose vote it'll want next year. - Janet Wilson
The fact that it's one of many, and is reminiscent of Ardern's captain's call in scotching the capital gains tax in April 2019, shows that when presented with either retaining its ideology or staying in power, this party will always choose the latter.
It also paints a party that can't be trusted when it comes to tax. - Janet Wilson
Not running a balanced Budget after the past couple of years is not a criticism, but the fiscal story has become unanchored from that basic discipline, and Robertson and Labour have not found anything significant to replace it.
The National Party, on the other hand, is forming a compelling narrative of economic turgidity with Labour at the centre of it – whether you agree with this or not. Its narrative is coherent, simple and builds a picture of failure, profligacy and incompetence that the current Government cannot fix. - Luke Malpass
Labour's retirement tax plan might be their biggest mistake yet. It was huge.
It would've affected most of us. Three million in all. It would've left us poorer. Some would've been down $20,000 by the time they reached retirement. And it would've hit us when it hurts the most: our old age. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
Labour will pay for this. The biggest price is trust.
This is the party that has now twice promised no new taxes and twice broken that promise. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
Labour's sneakiness will also cost them. The only thing worse than someone breaking their promise, is someone breaking their promise and trying to hide it.
Good luck to Labour trying to convince the public at the next election that they won't introduce new taxes. If National plans to run a tax-and-spend scare campaign at the next election, Labour will have no defence. They can hardly ask us to trust them that there will be "no new taxes". We've been there, done that, and we're paying the taxes. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
It's been a tough few weeks for Labour. The Sharma allegations made them look dysfunctional. The Auditor-General slamming them for sending cost-of-living money overseas made them look reckless with our tax dollars. And now they've been busted trying to take more without telling us .- Heather du Plessis-Allan
So unless there is a total breakdown of the normal decision-making processes within government, which is highly unlikely, this decision and the underhand way it was announced was premeditated.
How on earth could you get to such a tone deaf point? After all, this is not a new government, it has been in office for five years. Ministers surely knew this decision would wind up ordinary New Zealanders and cement the perception they are a high tax, high spending government. They must also have known that trying to avoid actually announcing the change could be political suicide, particularly given the media had given them fair warning they were interested in this upcoming decision. - Steven Joyce
There is every sign the Government believes its own BS to an unwarranted degree, so maybe it thought it could spin its way through this issue in the same way as it has so many others. The Prime Minister is certainly adept at arguing black is white and that failure to deliver is the result of aspiration, so there's plenty of evidence for this theory.
An even more likely possibility is that ministers are getting completely out of touch with the public they serve. There is a very long series of announcements suggesting that is the case. The TVNZ-RNZ merger, the bike bridge, Three Waters, Trevor Mallard's appointment to Ireland and his pending knighthood, the bank credit changes, immigration policy, and industry pay bargaining are some that leap to mind. They are either completely inexplicable (think GST on KiwiSaver), or clearly designed to serve a part of Labour's power base to the bemusement or downright hostility of the general public. - Steven Joyce
Whatever the final cause of the Government's awry political antennae, it appears very likely the die has been cast and the public have made up their minds about this lot, and ministers increasingly know it. - Steven Joyce
Expect to see much more attacking of the opposition over the next 12 months. Labour's strategists may not have been able to work out that adding GST to KiwiSaver this way was political poison, but they are aware that the only way to level the playing field for the next election is to drag the alternative government down and create as much doubt about them as there is about Labour. It's the 2005 and 2008 playbook all over again. And it won't be pretty. - Steven Joyce
The failures of letting government aspirations become unanchored from reality are becoming difficult to ignore. Doing a more limited number of things well might just be better than failing at many things simultaneously. - Eric Crampton
What is being proposed by Andrew Little and his minions is morally abhorrent. It is a paternalistic, white-man's burden re-imagined for a modern era.
As the Initiative report's title states, every life is worth the same. - Damien Grant
If a workplace relations system requires armies of HR people and lawyers to work, it is too complicated. -
These workplace relations reforms run under the name 'Fair Pay Agreements'. It is a misleading label since there is little that is fair about them. And with the threat of compulsion, they are not much of an agreement, either. - Oliver Hartwich
Still, the Fair Pay Agreements approach is based on little more than voodoo economics.
In conventional economics, wages reflect economic conditions. If a company does well, if it increases its productivity and then its profits, that growing pie will be distributed between owners and workers. So, in this way, the wage increase reflects how well the company is doing.
In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of New Zealand Labour, things work differently. Their starting point is not a how the economy is doing but how it should be doing. - Oliver Hartwich
This approach is courageous, in a 'Yes, Minister' way. No wonder even the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment warned its ministers about proceeding with their Fair Pay Agreements plan.
There is an obvious problem with banking on future productivity increases: They might not happen.
It comes down to companies deciding on paying above-productivity wages in the vague hope they will be able to afford them later.
But business does not work like that. And economies that see wages rise faster than productivity will sooner or later face rising unemployment, since companies will not pay their workers more than what they produce. - Oliver Hartwich
For negotiations to take place, it takes two sides. Though the unions are keen on going down the Fair Pay Agreements path, BusinessNZ has declared it is no longer prepared to represent the employer side. So either the government finds another organisation to represent business, or it must artificially create one.
Either way, while Australia has now started the process of reforming its broken employment relations system, New Zealand has started to break its working one.
That is good news for Australia. And terrible news for New Zealand. - Oliver Hartwich
No sane person should be fooled. A climate-cult madness has infected governments and their activist agencies; exemplar, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Delusions of grandeur is a common manifestation of madness. Climate cultists fit the profile. Clothing themselves in virtue, they strut about proclaiming that they can save the earth from a fiery end if only we would give away the foundational building block of progress and prosperity; namely, fossil fuels. - Peter Smith
Sometimes the best people to fix the problems are actually those affected most by them. - Kate Hawkesby
Rarely has a political party promised so much in an election campaign and achieved so little during its time in office.
Labour made extravagant promises to end child poverty, to build 100,000 houses over 10 years and make housing more affordable, to make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gases, and to improve our education system. Instead child poverty has increased on most measures; the number of new houses built has been trivial and, while house prices are at last easing somewhat, they are still among the most expensive in the world; we're still burning imported coal to keep the lights on; and more and more kids are coming out of the taxpayer-funded school system unable to read and write.
And to top it off, New Zealanders are now facing the highest inflation in more than 30 years. Some record! - Don Brash
The Prime Minister pretends that local councils will still own the water infrastructure which their ratepayers have funded but by every measure on which "ownership" is judged, this is a total nonsense: local councils will have absolutely no authority over the water infrastructure in their area. Among other things, because any new urban development is dependent on water infrastructure being put in place in a timely way, this means that the great majority of the decisions which a council makes around urban development – where roads and houses should go – will be effectively determined by the four enormous "entities" into which all water infrastructure will be grouped. - Don Brash
The legislation establishing the four entities makes it clear that it is tribal authorities which will control the four entities, not the local authorities which notionally retain ownership of the assets. - Don Brash
The audacity of the Government's move is surely astonishing. The effective confiscation of billions of dollars in water infrastructure assets built up over decades by ratepayers throughout the country is astonishing enough in its own right. But then to hand effective control of those assets to tribal groups up and down the country is almost beyond belief: it is a full frontal assault on any concept of democracy.
This policy alone should cost the Government next year's election. If it does not, it is a sad indictment on the Opposition parties, on the media, and indeed on every New Zealander. - Don Brash
But there's another even bigger and more tragic irony that Gorbachev's death forces us to confront. While we smugly complimented ourselves on winning the Cold War, the democratic, capitalist West was all along being systematically undermined from within by ideological forces far more insidious than Soviet communism.
Call it the culture wars, call it identity politics, call it wokeism, call it neo-Marxism … whatever the label, a multi-faceted assault on Western values has been fermenting for decades, mostly in our institutions of learning, and is now happening in plain sight.
It aggressively manifests itself in attacks on all the values that define Western society and culture: free speech, property rights, the rule of law, economic liberalism, history, science, literature, philosophy and, most damagingly, democracy itself. The attacks are sanctioned by our own institutions, including the media, and have largely gone unopposed by nominally conservative politicians who give the impression of being in a state of paralysis.
We watched enthralled as Gorbachev defied political gravity and neutralised what we regarded as a potential threat to the free world, but I wonder who will save us from the even more menacing enemy within. - Karl du Fresne
Organic beef farms, whose animals take longer to raise and need even more land, lose twice as much nitrogen for each kilogram of meat produced as conventional beef farms. They also create more methane during their extended lifetime. - Jacqueline Rowarth
As for veganism and reducing animal emissions, the concept of removing animals from the diet might seem positive, but the reality is that for a human to stay healthy, supplements and more food needs to be consumed, with consequent greater calorie intake, and hence waste material excretion. The waste contains more nitrogen and this has implications in terms of increased greenhouse gases . - Jacqueline Rowarth
Different people have different perspectives, but the science facts remain – more people, limited land, and organics and veganism are not the answer for the bulk of the population.
What is clear is that meat and milk produced in New Zealand has lower impact than that produced overseas. The global message should be minimising dietary impact by eating only what is needed – and, where possible, choosing New Zealand food. - Jacqueline Rowarth
We've had five f------g years of this 'be kind' guilt-tripping propaganda shoved down our throats and everywhere you look the results are crippled systems and crippled people. - Lindsay Mitchell
Another week, another demonstration of Government incompetence, nastiness and deceit. - Matthew Hooton
However good the political antennae of Ardern, Robertson and the rest of the 20-strong Cabinet, they can't fulfil even that modest function without reading the papers they receive each Friday. Once upon a time, prime ministers required that every minister read every paper before showing up to Monday's Cabinet meeting. There were even discussions and arguments before decisions were reached.
Apparently that rudimentary expression of Cabinet collective responsibility and basic political management is out of fashion.
With her PR talents, perhaps Ardern and her Cabinet don't think they need to understand decisions they are taking or announcements they are making. Besotted cub reporters in other daily media let them spin out of anything that pops up. - Matthew Hooton
While other countries are pulling out the stops to attract global talent to their shores, the New Zealand Government seems to think we can manage without it. It's a decision based on archaic thinking, and it will cost our economy dearly. - Aaron Martin
At a time when we're competing in a global talent shortage, Australia is rolling out the red carpet to skilled migrants, while New Zealand has put out a dusty old doormat. - Aaron Martin
Not staying globally competitive means we're not only falling behind in attracting the experienced people we need to build our own capability, but also puts us at risk of losing our own talent. - Aaron Martin
The New Zealand Government still appears to be stuck in the mindset that employers should be reducing their reliance on migrant workers. The philosophy of Australia is completely different – for them it's not about reducing reliance, it's about the very realistic approach of understanding what resources are needed to help their economy grow.
Reliance is ingrained in the modern economy, especially one that has a low birth rate and a low population – as New Zealand does. Not being able to offer certainty for migrants who are not on the Green List is going to make it hard to attract scarce and valued talent. That talent will be snapped up by countries who are taking a more progressive approach. - Aaron Martin
The government is completely blind to the fact that skilled migration actually leads to job creation. Internationally experienced managers play a crucial role in upskilling local staff. Without it, staff capability and business growth is limited, and so is the potential of New Zealand's economy.
So not only do we miss out on all the benefits of their expertise, but New Zealanders go looking for it offshore. If the government wants to put a stop to the brain drain and fix our skilled migrant shortage it needs to get its skates on to remedy our crippled immigration system. - Aaron Martin
Part of the hard-to-explain grief I feel today is related to how staggeringly rare that level of self-restraint is today. Narcissism is everywhere. Every feeling we have is bound to be expressed. Self-revelation, transparency, authenticity — these are our values. The idea that we are firstly humans with duties to others that will require and demand the suppression of our own needs and feelings seems archaic. Elizabeth kept it alive simply by example. - Andrew Sullivan
She was an icon, but not an idol. An idol requires the vivid expression of virtues, personality, style. Diana was an idol — fusing a compelling and vulnerable temperament with Hollywood glamor. And Diana, of course, was in her time loved far more intensely than her mother-in-law; connected emotionally with ordinary people like a rockstar; only eventually to face the longterm consequences of that exposure and crumble under the murderous spotlight of it all.
Elizabeth never rode those tides of acclaim or celebrity. She never pressed the easy buttons of conventional popularity. She didn't even become known for her caustic wit like the Queen Mother, or her compulsively social sorties like Margaret. The gays of Britain could turn both of these queens into camp divas. But not her. In private as in public, she had the kind of integrity no one can mock successfully.
You can make all sorts of solid arguments against a constitutional monarchy — but the point of monarchy is precisely that it is not the fruit of an argument. It is emphatically not an Enlightenment institution. It's a primordial institution smuggled into a democratic system. It has nothing to do with merit and logic and everything to do with authority and mystery — two deeply human needs our modern world has trouble satisfying without danger.
The Crown satisfies those needs, which keeps other more malign alternatives at bay. - Andrew Sullivan
The Crown represents something from the ancient past, a logically indefensible but emotionally salient symbol of something called a nation, something that gives its members meaning and happiness. However shitty the economy, or awful the prime minister, or ugly the discourse, the monarch is able to represent the nation all the time. In a living, breathing, mortal person.
The importance of this in a deeply polarized and ideological world, where fellow citizens have come to despise their opponents as enemies, is hard to measure. But it matters that divisive figures such as Boris Johnson or Margaret Thatcher were never required or expected to represent the entire nation. It matters that in times of profound acrimony, something unites. It matters that in a pandemic when the country was shut down, the Queen too followed the rules, even at her husband's funeral, and was able to refer to a phrase — "we'll meet again" — that instantly reconjured the days of the Blitz, when she and the royal family stayed in London even as Hitler's bombs fell from the sky.
Every Brit has a memory like this. She was part of every family's consciousness, woven into the stories of our lives, representing a continuity and stability over decades of massive change and dislocation. - Andrew Sullivan
The Queen was crowned in the cathedral where kings and queens have been crowned for centuries, in the same ceremony, with the same liturgy. To have that kind of symbolic, sacred, mystical thread through time and space is something that is simply a gift from the past that the British people, in their collective wisdom, have refused to return. - Andrew Sullivan
Because, in a way, the Queen became a symbol for many people in the English speaking world, even if England itself meant nothing to them.
A symbol of what you may ask?
Maybe of times gone past, of an old way of doing things. But maybe of a kind of ideal. A person of good character when so many news pages are filled with politicians and celebrities displaying the opposite.
A person who never stopped doing what she said she would. On her 21st birthday she said "I declare before you all, that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service."
And she kept that promise.
Maybe also because we watched her publicly face the challenges of being a mum, a grandmother, and the head of a family. That's a job a lot of us know is hard enough without having to do it in public.- Heather du Plessis-Allan
She would say that Prime Ministers were always faced with difficult decisions to make, and real challenges and there often was not a right answer, but to do the thing that you believed was the correct thing to do, was not always the easy thing to do.
She had huge amounts of grace and warmth, but equally so much history and wisdom that you could ask questions and get answers that came from a perspective and vantage point that probably no other person had seen. - John Key
In Britain, there have been few manifestations of extreme grief at the death of Queen Elizabeth. But there is a profound and shared sense of loss, that everything has changed, and all expressed in a controlled way. How very British.
She had breezed past the markers of mortality for so long, that in a quiet moment one could almost believe that she was a truly permanent fixture.
But the singing of God Save the King on the accession of King Charles was a marker of finality. And a reminder that one can't step in the same river twice. - Point of Order
One can guess that Her Majesty felt she had a great deal to live up to. Most would say she did it superbly.
And now that burden falls to her son.
Burkean conservatism is all about reconciling continuity and change, when change is necessary and can be undertaken in accordance with the traditions of the country and people.
Queen Elizabeth embodied something about 'us' and on her death, we need to reconsider just what 'we' means. - Point of Order
Perhaps, just for a moment, reflection on her life and death can briefly refract our thinking and remind us that while it does seem impossible to love one another, we do sometimes need to try a bit harder. - Point of Order
Because a human being can embody something that otherwise defies expression. She (or indeed he) can make the intangible concrete in a different way to symbols like flags (New Zealanders might recall) or words in legal documents.
Of course, in the beginning was the Word. But don't forget the still surprisingly widespread conviction that it became Flesh and dwelt among us.- Point of Order
Media coverage has laid bare what locals have known for a long time: Rotorua has, whether deliberately or through absolute dereliction of duty, been transformed into a dumping ground. A place where the vulnerable are treated like cash cows, lining the pockets of a select few.
I despair that I'm at the point where I'm writing this column, knowing that more negative publicity will compound the impact upon Rotorua. But the situation is dire, it must change, and the people who have created this nightmare must be held accountable.- Lizzie Marvelly
I find the word "transitional" ironic. Transitioning to where? The people in these motels are stuck. The conditions are squalid, the social challenges are profound and danger is ever-present. Many of the rooms in these motels don't even have functioning smoke alarms. Single mums and their tamariki have been housed next to 501 deportees from Australia. It makes you wonder whether they are better or worse off than they were before they landed on Fenton Street.
The people who are undoubtedly better off are those receiving millions of taxpayer money to house and care for the vulnerable. But what do we have to show for the money being thrown around? If the system was working we'd see the number of emergency housing motels decreasing. We'd see a reduction in negative social impacts as people received the support and assistance they needed.
We are seeing quite the opposite. What key performance indicators, if any, have been put in place? When organisations and the offshore owners of Fenton Street motels are receiving millions of dollars of public funding, surely the public have a right to know what the spend is achieving. Forgive the crass expression, but in my view millions of dollars of taxpayer money are being pissed into the wind in Rotorua. - Lizzie Marvelly
Rotorua has become a new kind of visitor Mecca, housing visitors who may never leave. - Lizzie Marvelly
It is undoubtedly vital that Rotorua looks after its own vulnerable citizens, with the appropriate support from Government agencies. It is outrageous, however, that such a small city, already decimated by the impact of Covid, is being expected to also take on vulnerable people from other cities and towns around the country. For a start, it fractures valuable social support that people may have in their home regions. Unsurprisingly, it has created a group of displaced, broken people. It's time for other centres to look after their own people.
What is often missed in the soundbites is that the tourism industry was the biggest employer in Rotorua, and many of the Rotorua people in emergency housing landed there because they lost their tourism industry jobs. How on earth are they going to get back on their feet, and out of transitional housing, if the tourism industry doesn't recover? And when walking around town in Rotorua can be objectively dangerous, why on earth would tourists want to come back?
It is the view of many at home that the current leadership, both locally and nationally, are destroying Rotorua. Locals have been voicing their concerns to officials for years, yet things continue to get worse. It is difficult to see how the city will recover. There must be an independent review immediately, followed by swift and lasting change. - Lizzie Marvelly
What I look like or what my body is like has no bearing on whether or not I'm a good person, whether or not I'm smart, whether or not I'm attractive, whether or not I'm sexy, whether or not I'm fit or motivated. [My size] doesn't have the relationship to those things that I had previously thought it did - Alice Snedden
Anyone who's fat or has ever been fat knows that's always in the back of your mind because that will have been an insult people have levelled against you. It doesn't feel like a good thing to be for the most part. - Alice Snedden
I'm interested in being a good person with the least inconvenience possible. It would be good if it were easy but what do we do in the face of knowing that it's not? - Alice Snedden
And I remember learning how flowers grow.
That flowers bloom not just with light from the sun, but also with rain from the clouds.
And then I realise that I can grow this way, too.
That grey skies will form and I will feel sad again, but I will grow understanding that my sadness is made of love.
That tears of sadness will come and fall like rain again, but I will grow knowing that my tears are made of life. - Ben Brooks-Dutton
The claims are unbelievable but I would venture to say that none of you has been through the emotional and physical trauma that being overweight can cause.
At first, I didn't think anyone would believe it. Then I remembered how insecure being overweight made me. How I desperately looked for answers and beat myself up daily for the poor choices I made and my lack of self-control. The company is completely playing on people's vulnerabilities. It is cruel and I am genuinely sorry for those who have been taken in by it. - Paula Bennett
I think it's possible to feel ambivalent (at best) about the institution and what it represents, and at the same time a deep respect for the Queen herself as an individual.
In her case, the privileges of the role, the money and castles and special treatment, were surely offset by the extraordinary burden of service.
The figure that stuck with me on Friday was 21,000 – the barely fathomable number of private service engagements the Queen undertook during her reign.
No one on the face of the earth will know a life quite like it. - Jack Tame
In an increasingly tribal and partisan world, she was a steady, neutral force.
She was the steady force. I admired the Queen's careful restraint.
The Queen lived through arguably the greatest period of change the world has ever seen.
And in that period of great change there is no figure on Earth who has represented a greater picture of stability. Queen Elizabeth was the constant. - Jack Tame
It is a sign of how dysfunctional Auckland Council is that it considers a debt-to-revenue ratio of 258% as a positive. It had budgeted for 290%. - Damien Grant
I'm an engineer. We don't do empathy. We fix things. - Wayne Brown
New Zealand has amassed billions of dollars in debt trying to make it through a global pandemic. Our debt levels are huge. Businesses, employers....They've carried the brunt of it. And now we're going to ask them to pay for everyone to have a day off, and at the same time face a 20 percent reduction in output and revenue.
Madness. - Rachel Smalley
What I would say is this - and I realise I am slightly practical when it comes to these matters -- but the Queen is dead. This woman who has lived through wars and great upheaval would tell us to crack on. I think she'd tell us that these are challenging economic times and we've already been disrupted by COVID and spent too much time at home, so she'd urge us to keep working.
Keep calm, and carry on, perhaps. - Rachel Smalley
In a world of vacuous comment, more people than not these past few days have come to the party with their thoughts in an eloquent and kind fashion. The energy and effort was put in to say more than you would have expected on other occasions. - Mike Hosking
In a post-Covid world where we have indulged ourselves to a ludicrous degree, for the monarch little changed.
Little changed as we moved to the country, invented quiet quitting, started the great resignation, and all wound up and bound up in our own wee world of upheaval and change.
I wonder how many times the Queen wanted to quietly quit?
But duty, service, and a promise made all those years ago overrode it all. They are wonderful, uplifting, life-affirming characteristics that are so sorely and sadly missing too often these days.
And you didn't have to be a monarchist to admire that. - Mike Hosking
Everyone is agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic drove people mad, but there is disagreement over who the madmen were, itself another cause of ferocious argument: a kind of meta-madness, as it were.
I am still not clear in my mind what I would or should have done if I had been in charge (would have done and should have done being very different, in all probability), or whether my darling scheme of concentrating efforts exclusively on those at significant risk would have worked.
What constitutes significant risk is, of course, not a purely scientific question. So-called listening to the science can never be enough—quite apart from the fact that the science does not exist where there are still many unknowns. It is not true that no scientific truths are indisputable: No one seriously expects it to be discovered, for example, that the blood does not circulate in the body. But even in the treatment of well-described diseases there are an infinite number of unanswered questions that could be asked. - Theodore Dalrymple
Giving up a worldview is more difficult than giving up a bad habit.
That is why conspiracy theories are so attractive to us. We want the world to be tractable, and for events to have been wrought by human design, even if those who do the designing are evil. In fact, it is really quite reassuring that the bad things that happen in the world must be by evil design (as, of course, some of them are). This gives us the hope that, by removal of the evilly disposed persons, the world may be made perfect. Besides, searching out evil is fun. - Theodore Dalrymple
Plenty will say the nation has lost its grandmother, that we are a family bereaved of its matriarch – and that comparison is not so wide of the mark. Not because everyone knew or loved the Queen like a relative, because obviously that is not true. But the comparison holds in this much narrower sense: she was a fixed point in our lives, a figure of continuity when all around was in constant flux. Everything has changed since the day in 1952 when she inherited the throne. That country – of black-and-white television, gentlemen in hats, and Lyons Corner Houses – and this one would barely recognise each other. The one thing they have – had – in common was her.
She was woven into the cloth of our lives so completely, we had stopped seeing the thread long ago. - Jonathan Freedland
As with parenting, so with serving as the national figurehead: a big part of the job is simply showing up. Elizabeth understood that very deeply, realising that continuity amid turbulence was the great value that a monarchy could add to a democratic system. - Jonathan Freedland
The result was that an epoch that witnessed enormous social upheavals, a shift to the demotic and democratic in manners and mores and an end to deference – an age that could have proved disastrous, if not terminal, for a feudal institution such as monarchy – instead saw royalty cement its position. Republicanism was a lost cause in the Elizabethan era, even as the notion of allocating any other role in public life according to genetic bloodline would have been dismissed as an indefensible throwback.
Advocates of an elected head of state struggled to gain traction for the simple reason that the Queen did the job so well. Republicans could only argue that it was a fluke, that although the lottery of heredity had thrown up a winner this one time, there was no guarantee it would do so again. But it was no good. For as long as she was there, the monarchy seemed to make sense – an illogical, irrational kind of sense, but sense all the same. - Jonathan Freedland
But millions will now be mourning something more intimate and more precious: the loss of someone who has been a permanent fixture for their – our – entire lives. Her death will prompt memories of all that has passed these last 70 years, and all those others who we loved and lost. There is grief contained within grief. Today we mourn a monarch. And in that very act, we also mourn for ourselves.- Jonathan Freedland
If republicans want to succeed, they will need to offer New Zealanders something they can gain from a republic, not just something they will lose. - Henry Cooke
The sadness I naturally feel at the passing of someone important, who had, in a sense, accompanied me throughout my childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and into my old age, Queen Elizabeth II, is accompanied by a sense of foreboding as to what might follow. It might give an opportunity for political mischief-makers to make mischief, not for the sake of human improvement or happiness, but for the sake of making mischief. - Theodore Dalrymple
There must surely be very few examples of such single-minded dutifulness in contemporary history. That is why she maintained her popularity from the moment she ascended the throne to the day of her death. Her conduct was as modest as her position was exalted. She never made the mistake of thinking that she was an interesting or remarkable person in herself, and thereby became remarkable. - Theodore Dalrymple
And then, of course, there are also the republicans who want to fish in troubled waters. Starting from the irrationality of monarchy when considered from abstract first principles, they point to the deficiencies of any monarch, though this was harder to do in the late monarch's case. In doing so, they forget that, in practice, people are infinitely more likely to be oppressed by their elected representatives than by their constitutional monarch, and indeed are increasingly oppressed by them every day of their lives. Like many intellectuals, they prefer to fight shadows rather than substantive beings: it is easier and more gratifying. - Theodore Dalrymple
Some MPs can swear an oath to the Queen and to "her heirs and successors" and then proclaim they are republicans. As they make promises they never intend to keep why should we be surprised that they do not keep their oaths?
A government that does not want to run on its record might be tempted to stage a diversion and hold a referendum to become a republic. Those who advocate holding a referendum first need to say what sort of republic. - Richard Prebble
Some nations have had parliament elect the president and others the electorate. Even if the head of state's role is ceremonial the election by itself gives the president power. The temptation to use power is overwhelming.
The conflict between presidents and parliaments is one of the reasons presidential government is so unstable. - Richard Prebble
A hereditary head of state from another country is weird. Constitutional monarchy just works better than the alternatives. The World Economic Forum says New Zealand is the world's third oldest democracy. The Economist Intelligence Unit this year rated New Zealand the second most democratic country. Why fix what is not broken?
We are a small, isolated country. Having a shared monarchy with the UK and 14 other countries has been advantageous and will be in the future.
Monarchy is more fun. It has given me one of my first memories, a social success, a great embarrassment, a nice compliment and an honour. - Richard Prebble
If we became a republic what would the Woman's Weekly do? Seriously, the record is that our system of government is much more stable than a republic.
We have real issues but being a constitutional monarchy is not one of them. -Richard Prebble
Death holds up a mirror to everything — moments of love, stretches of strife, memories that punish and exalt. This is true if your family is far removed from the public eye, and it's true if your family is ensconced in the world's spotlight. - Patti Davis
All of us know the difficulties and travails of the royal family. Each time the family members come together, the news media and the public analyze every gesture, every interaction. Did William and Harry speak? Embrace? Having been on the receiving end of such scrutiny, I can tell you that it's a balancing act. You want to be present, available, sincere, yet there is a part of you that's always aware you're being watched and, in all likelihood, judged.
Queen Elizabeth had the ability to call her fractured family together to show up … because of her. My father was the beacon of light we all gravitated to, no matter how we felt about each other. When forces like this die, the fault lines in the family that were always there remain. Yet the beauty of memorial services and funerals is that for a while, that breakage is healed. - Patti Davis
Several times during that period, friends remarked on how hard it must have been to mourn in public. I always said, "No, that actually was the easy part." I felt thousands of locked hands beneath me, keeping me from falling. That's also why I didn't want the week to end. Once it did, I would be left with the solitariness of my own grief, slogging through the waters that would inevitably rise around me.
Even if you are the royal family, the most famous family in the world, everyone doesn't see everything about you. There is grief that spills out in the shadows. We need to remember that when we watch the public ceremonies surrounding the queen's passing. - Patti Davis
Driving home through dark quiet streets, I knew the river of grief that was waiting for me, and I knew I would have to cross it alone.
My hope is that people remember this about the royal family: In the end, though they breathe rarefied air, they grapple as we all do with life and death, with the mystery of what it means to be human. When darkness falls, and they are alone, they sink into the same waters that everyone does when a loved one dies. And they wonder if they'll make it to the other side. - Patti Davis
I have often been labelled a conservative. This doesn't mean I am some unthinking reactionary.
Instead, it just means, to me, that we should always very carefully weigh the transaction cost of change.
When it comes to possibly moving on from the monarchy I believe those costs are much higher than would be commonly thought and indeed are too high to meet a threshold for change. - Simon Bridges
The point of this minor heraldic history, if any, is simply that politicians are almost infinitely and hilariously corruptible, for reasons ranging from cynical to deeply idiosyncratic, at even the most minute level.
Most of this can be easily handled and harnessed by the process of democracy. But as the final constitutional backstop, in the event of uncertainty or chaos, are politicians what we should rely on? - Ben Thomas
What we might really need is some institution stripped of agendas, aspirations, or even hope. And in the modern royal family, we have that. Of course, monarchy bestows wealth and privilege on the undeserving. And while no-one would overplay the hardships of royal birth in comparison with the vast bulk of humanity, who have something in the nature of real problems, it hardly measures up to ideas of what extreme wealth involves.
Elon Musk can potentially go to Mars. Her late majesty could go to Balmoral, where candid pictures showed a two-bar heater in the fireplace and council flat wallpaper. Mentions of her "life of service" are not a mere platitude, but a recognition of the daily grind of ribbon cuttings, ceaseless tours and banal social interactions.
Sitting up the front of a formal dinner or prizegiving while maintaining a facade of benign interest is fine for an evening. But smiling politely for 70 years?
Well, critics might say, we don't all love our jobs. The contradiction is not so much dullness in the middle of excess, but the paradox of powerlessness at the very epicentre of the sovereign. - Ben Thomas
But our head of state has almost no autonomy that they can exercise without receiving the imprimatur of Parliament or the advice of the prime minister.
The last remaining, ultimate power they have is deciding who has the right to be the prime minister, and will give them the advice to which they are beholden. This is the constitutional equivalent of carrying around the nuclear codes – a responsibility of last resort so great, and terrible, and absolute that it is generally unthinkable that it should ever be used. And in the meantime, sitting still, and acting interested. - Ben Thomas
If you were to take note of most public commentary on the issue, you'd be justified in thinking the weight of public opinion overwhelmingly favours a republic – but that's only because republicans make up most of the commentariat.
Many of these commentators miss the point, I suspect wilfully. They treat it as an issue of personalities. Their argument, essentially, is that the Queen was popular whereas Charles is not (although the latest opinion polls in Britain show a sudden spike in his favourability rating). Therefore the time has come to sever the constitutional connection with the Crown. - Karl du Fresne
Monarchists, on the other hand, view royalty strictly in constitutional terms. They ask the vital question: do our existing constitutional arrangements serve New Zealand well? Unarguably, the answer is yes. We may have acquired them almost by historical accident and they may be ill-defined and poorly understood, but they have made us one of the world's most stable democracies.
Paradoxically, they depend on a head of state who appears to do little apart from merely existing. The monarch's powers are more notional than actual, but they serve as a vital constitutional backstop in case they're needed. It's weird, but it works. - Karl du Fresne
The crucial point about the monarchy is that it gives us a head of state who is above politics. It provides an element of impartiality, stability and continuity that could never be guaranteed under a president.
Whatever method might be used to elect or appoint a New Zealand president, political factors would intrude. There are no constitutional mechanisms that can guarantee us a wholly apolitical New Zealand head of state. And unless the post is held for life, which would never be acceptable, there would be the risk of instability and uncertainty whenever it came up for renewal. - Karl du Fresne
There is another vital respect in which the monarchy works. As one authority has put it, the significance of the monarchy is not the power it possesses but the power it denies others. For "others" read "politicians", who may not always act with the purest of motives. The fact that the head of state is unelected runs counter to democratic principles, but it means the monarchy is immune to political pressures. As I said: weird, but it works. -
In constitutional terms, the Queen's death changes nothing. It may be true that people loved the Queen and don't feel the same about Charles, but the constitutional underpinnings are unchanged. - Karl du Fresne
I feel I knew the Queen because she was almost indistinguishable from my mother. They were born within three years of each other and died within two. Their hairstyles kept pace for 90 years. Their hemlines also. Both married soon after the war, and both had a son, followed by a daughter, followed by two more sons. (Thank you for asking, I am Edward.) Disregarding the odd palace, the Queen and my mother could have swapped photo albums.
Both women, then, were prisoners of their time and their biology. Nothing odd there. Most of us are. But the Queen was also imprisoned by her role, and that role was one of paradox. She was limitlessly wealthy, but she never shopped. She ruled over kingdoms, but went nowhere freely. She was top of the pile, but her job was to serve. She was just an ordinary woman, but it was her lifelong burden to embody the myth of royalty, the big juju.- Joe Bennett
Mentally, this country is already a republic. When royals visit, it is as characters from a soap opera, not as potentates or juju-mongers. No-one holds up a sick child for them to touch. So it would seem fitting now to sever the tie.
But there's a difficulty. Consider Africa. It is thick with republics and I would struggle to name an incorrupt one. The problem as always is power. To whom do you entrust it? - Joe Bennett
If we ditched the monarchy, we could vest its power in an elected politician. But would you be comfortable with, say, a President Muldoon? The alternative is to give power to someone apolitical.
The obvious choice would be the All Blacks captain. All Blacks are already local royalty. But they do tend to be blokes, and blokes have a worse record with power than women. Also, they get knocks to the head. Perhaps a cricketer, then, would be more suited to the role.
In the light of which, and in the event of our becoming a republic, I propose our head of state be the captain of the White Ferns.
Or we could keep Charles. - Joe Bennett
The critical minerals that will power green technology need to be mined somewhere. They cannot be recycled at the rate and volume they are needed, though of course the contribution of recycling will be valuable.
The West Coast has potential for such minerals, including, Nickel, Cobalt, Lithium and Rare Earth Elements. GNS Science has assessed that much of that potential lies in the conservation estate.
It makes sense to keep the option open for mining on conservation land to access these minerals. That is not to say it will happen at scale, or that it will be open slather. - Josie Vidal
We don't want to see opportunities for creating wealth, jobs and healthy regional economies lost overseas.
And we certainly don't want to see our best and brightest off to Australia which is on the cusp of a mining boom to beat all others.
While we fully support the Government's conservation objectives, we believe the negative impact of mining is overstated. The truth is that mineral extraction, suitably regulated, can and should contribute to the solution. - Josie Vidal
The real risk for biodiversity is with pests and predators, such as stoats, rats, and possums.
"Mining and other commercial activities can contribute to the funding of pest control. Mining is part of the solution to conservation, not the problem. - Josie Vidal
Of course, I knew that all men are mortal, etc., and therefore (if I had been asked) that the Queen would one day die, but I still entertained the faint and absurd hope than an exception would be made in her case. A locus of stability in an increasingly unstable and dangerous world, at least one thing was beyond contention except by a few professional malcontents. - Theodore Dalrymple
For someone in office for seventy years to remain as popular at the end as at the beginning, while also being an immensely privileged person, is surely a most remarkable feat, and a tribute both to that person's combined sense of duty and psychological canniness. Of course, it helped that she was a figurehead, at most someone with influence behind the scenes, rather than someone who exercised real political power, such exercisers of power retaining their popularity for a few months if even that. But the iron self-control she exercised in the performance of her duties—many of which must have bored her, and some of which, such as meeting and being polite to odious or even evil heads of states or governments, must have repelled her—was testimony to her sense of duty and her determination to keep her vow, made when she was twenty-one, to devote her life to service.
Another cause for astonishment, especially in the present day, is that she survived her seventy years of office, during which she was adulated, deferred to, and so forth, without becoming a monster of egotism. This was attributable, surely, to an existential modesty—an awareness that she received such deference and adulation not through any exceptional qualities, gifts, or virtues of her own, but by sheer accident of birth. Such modesty in celebrity is not exactly the characteristic of our age, to put it mildly. - Theodore Dalrymple
In Elizabeth's reign of seventy years, the country changed as much as it had during the reign of the previously longest reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. In many respects, especially measurable ones, the changes were for the better. The infant mortality rate, for example, declined by nearly ninety per cent. The kind of poverty in which millions of people had no indoor bathrooms has been eliminated. Comforts that were once the perquisite only of the better off have come to achieve the status almost of unalienable human rights. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, rationing of some items was still in force, the legacy not so much of the war as of the economic policies pursued after it, though with the excuse of war indebtedness—levels of which we may soon approach without having had a war to account for them. - Theodore Dalrymple
During her reign, money ceased to be a reliable store of wealth. In nominal terms, for example, it now costs eighty-eight times what it did in 1952 to post a letter. Many things that did not exist then are now deemed indispensable (invention being the mother of much necessity). Other things have become more expensive in nominal terms, but not by so much as postage. In terms of the labour necessary to pay for it, a house takes probably five or ten times as long to buy as it then did.
In intangible ways, the quality of life has deteriorated. At the beginning of her reign, Britain had a low rate of crime, but by its end it was among the most crime-ridden countries in the West. - Theodore Dalrymple
At the start of the Queen's reign, the general culture had not coarsened to such an extent that decorum and seemliness meant nothing: they had not yet been mocked to death, with the result that coarseness and vulgarity have become marks almost of political virtue.
The Queen was responsible for none of this, of course. She was in no sense an intellectual, and even appeared to have no intellectual interests apart from her formal duties in affairs of state, and this saved her from subscribing to some of the idiocies subversive of conduct and culture that have resulted in the sheer ugliness, physical, spiritual and cultural, of modern Britain. - Theodore Dalrymple
It is for their own lost virtues, exemplified by the Queen, that the people mourn, not least their distinctive understated humour and irony, now replaced almost entirely by crudity. - Theodore Dalrymple
Like all wordsmiths, Mr Bartlett understood that if one truly wishes to tell the truth, then one had best write fiction. - Chris Trotter
A government of the people, in Lincoln's phrase, has changed by degrees into a people of the government. When one considers the number of duties or obligations one must fulfill to the government, it is clear who is boss in the relationship—and it is not we, the people.
Naturally, the government offers us all sorts of benefits, some real but many notional, in return for obedience to its diktats. But it is as unreasonable to expect it to confer those benefits without taking something for itself—especially power—as it is to expect a company to sell us its products at no profit. The trouble is that governments make John D. Rockefeller look like a disinterested do-gooder. - Theodore Dalrymple
The fundamental point is, however, that the citizen (and bear in mind that I am not quite at the bottom of the social scale, at least not yet) is now so oppressed by his duties toward authorities that they are sufficient to convince him that he is of no more significance or account than is a single bacterium in a colony of bacteria on a petri dish .
And we call ourselves free! - Theodore Dalrymple
People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer. But in all cases those who serve will be loved and remembered when those who cling to power and privileges are long forgotten. - Justin Welby
We will all face the merciful judgement of God: we can all share the Queen's hope which in life and death inspired her servant leadership.
Service in life, hope in death. All who follow the Queen's example, and inspiration of trust and faith in God, can with her say: "We will meet again." - Justin Welby
If it was not for the existence of, and the protection of, women's sporting categories we would have no female medalists or even contenders on the international stage in any sport where strength, speed, or stamina matters. New Zealanders would have never heard the names of athletes like Alison Roe, Susan Devoy, Sophie Pascoe, and Lisa Carrington. As much as some people may wish to deny reality, biology and physiology matters because we play sports with our bodies, not our identities. - Rowena Edge
Save Women's Sports Australasia had heard from female athletes and the parents of girls across New Zealand who have been impacted by the inclusion of male transgender people in their sports category. They have included cricketers, cyclists, roller derby players, swimmers, netballers, runners, hockey players, weight lifters, and mountain bikers, among others. They have shared stories of how they have been injured and given up sports that they love. They have told how they have been ostracized by people they have previously considered to be friends, called bigots and transphobes, and dismissed by their sporting organisations when they raised concerns. - Rowena Edge
As another example, right now in a community cycling club in New Zealand there is a male transgender cyclist who holds the award for both best female cyclist of the season as well as best overall cyclist. Why? Because this cyclist not only cleaned out the women's field, posting times so fast that no female had a chance of competing for first place, but on some occasions even beat the fastest male competing in the men's category.
This is what kindness and inclusion now looks like. Female athletes being forced out of sports that they love and out of their rightful placings and recognition because including males in their category is considered to be a higher priority.
Sportswomen don't need saving, but their category certainly does. - Rowena Edge
Today's heirs of William the Conqueror are blank sheets that reflect the will of their prime ministers. Nothing emphasises this more dramatically than the speech from the throne, where a docile sovereign reads a speech written for them. Reducing the king to a ventriloquist dummy is a powerful statement. - Damien Grant
It is better to have an excellent monarch, such as Elizabeth, rather than one less impressive as Charles threatens to be, but in a constitutional monarchy it does not matter.
Its success in the modern era relies on the impotence of the office. It works because ultimate political power rests with a person unable to exercise it, and it works because it gives us a focus separate from the state, from the nation, from the prevailing political authority. - Damien Grant
In a constitutional monarchy, those with political, administrative, military or judicial power have it on loan from the sovereign. Their time in office is limited and the boundaries of their authority constrained, yet what power they do have is legitimised due to the sovereign's recognition of it.
No domestic president can compete. Replace Charles III, a literal and metaphorical descendant of Alfred the Great (warming-pan scandals notwithstanding), with some failed political apparatchik or even Richie McCaw, and we will have dropped something of inestimable value, simply for the pleasure of its destruction. - Damien Grant
As it is now common practice to accord sentencing discounts to criminals with childhood experiences beyond their control, what about surcharges for not exercising self-responsibility?
Every individual has the ability to exercise personal agency. It might be argued for some it is reduced to a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea but it is usually evident that arriving at that impasse could have been avoided. - Lindsay Mitchell
Effort and persistence go unremarked while failure and indifference mark out the victims among us. And don't we love victims.
So long as, of course, the culprits are fashionable - colonization, capitalism, racism and patriarchal oppression. - Lindsay Mitchell
If it were my call, there would be no discounts. They make a mockery of the free will that defines us. They are in direct conflict with the very reason laws exist. Worse, they send an ambiguous and confused message to offenders and society.
If they are going to be handed out, they should be delivered with a surcharge and explanation.
"Yes, you had a terrible childhood, but so did many others who managed to avoid criminality. You knowingly chose the wrong path so here's a matching surcharge for not exercising the self-responsibility that others with similar backgrounds managed to." - Lindsay Mitchell
There is a dialectical relationship between human reality and the language in which we describe it, which is why semantic shifts are so important and often contested. - Theodore Dalrymple
One of the shifts that I have noticed is in the use of the word depressed for unhappy. No one is unhappy any more, everyone is depressed. It is as if being unhappy were a moral fault, while being depressed is not merely to be ill, but to be laudably sensitive. How can any decent person be happy when there is so much suffering in the world? The news brings us evidence of fresh catastrophes every day: to be happy is to be complacent, and to be complacent is to be callous. To be miserable, therefore, is the only decent stance towards the world.
How did the shift come about? I do not think that anyone decreed or directed it, though no doubt it was convenient for some, for example the drug companies that were able as a result to sell their doubtfully useful wares to millions, even to tens of millions, of people. About a sixth of the Western world's adult population now takes them, suggesting either the looseness of the diagnosis or the misery of modern life despite its material advantages. - Theodore Dalrymple
The linguistic termites (or police) are now everywhere, and while no individual termite has much of an effect, hosts of them will eventually cause a building to collapse, often unexpectedly. I have in the past had one or two struggles with young sub-editors over the new moral correctitude of language, and so far I have been able to gain my point, though I am under no illusion that my little victories can be anything other than local and temporary. Apart from anything else, the struggle is asymmetrical. I do not want to turn myself into a monomaniac by engaging in prolonged struggles with monomaniacs. That is why monomania so often wins the day in the modern world: the subject of the monomania is only one among others for normal people, but it is all in all, the very meaning of life itself, for those who are in the grip of it. - Theodore Dalrymple
Semantic shift when it is not genuinely spontaneous is a manifestation of a power struggle that is not solely, or even to a very large extent, semantic. Some words are genuinely offensive, but most of the concern over terminology is not about the elimination of such words from polite conversation. Rather, it is a question, as Humpty Dumpty pointed out long ago, of who is to be master, or perhaps I should say dominant, that's all.- Theodore Dalrymple
We need unity now more than ever but some of our leaders can't resist the temptation to focus on separate development as a means to an end. It is a false narrative that will only harm those who need help more than most - it is a lie. - Clive Bibby
There's a reason why most people aren't engaged with local government, because by and large, the things it tends to do adequately are taken for granted (local roads, footpaths, rubbish collection), and people have busy lives getting on with making a living, looking after their families, their homes, and living their lives. - Liberty Scott
Local government also attracts a particular type of person. More often than not it attracts busybodies, planners, pushy finger-wagging types who think they know what's best, over what people actually indicate according to their willingness to pay. It particularly attracts socialists who see local government as a stepping stone to central government for Labour and Green Party members. - Liberty Scott
So vote if you must, but the real problem is that local government has too much power. It has stuffed up water, the only unreformed network utility (except in Auckland). Local government used to manage local electricity distribution, but that was taken off it in the 1990s. At one time it was responsible for milk distribution, which is why until the late 1980s buying milk OTHER than by kerbside bottles was unusual, and indeed there was no plastic or cartoned milk.
So pick candidates who want to get out of the way, of new housing, of new supermarkets, of enterprise and don't want to promise grand totemic projects that you have to pay for. Don't pick those who think that local government can "do so much good" by spending your money and pushing people around. Maybe pick those who actually have some understanding of the limits of the ability of local government. - Liberty Scott
However, I'm largely quite pessimistic. People wildly enthusiastic about local government are generally the opposite of people I want in local government, because local government attracts far too many meddlers, regulators and planners.
Try to pick the least worst and hope for the best, at least until there is a central government that keeps them on the leash. You'll have to make some compromises. - Liberty Scott
The pandemic response was the biggest public policy intervention in people's lives, in our lifetimes. From lockdowns to the mask and vaccine mandates, from closing the schools to effectively closing the hospitals. Everybody was affected. Everyone's life trajectory changed, some permanently.
People died, some from Covid and some from other things that could be traced to the choices we made about Covid.
We owe it to ourselves and to the memory of those lost to stop and take stock.
We need to examine what worked and what didn't. What had the biggest positive effect and what was more trouble than it was worth? When should we have moved more quickly, including both into and out of restrictions, and when should we have waited longer?
A Covid inquiry should not be a journey of recrimination or blame. Responding to a pandemic like this was never going to be a game of perfect. This has been a crazy two-and-a-half years of big decisions on top of big decisions where there was no game plan to work from. Nobody could have got everything right.
Some things obviously worked, some obviously didn't, and the jury is still out on many more. - Steven Joyce
If we do this inquiry right, we will have a game plan for next time. And to me that is the most important thing. The past two-and-a-half years have been a journey of policy experimentation by necessity. We now have a golden opportunity to perfect a blueprint for future pandemics. - Steven Joyce
The sort of lessons I'm interested in vary from the big to the small. How much did hard lockdowns achieve versus what other lesser restrictions could have? Could we keep working on, say, big construction sites with strong health and safety protocols without adding significantly to the risk? Could we keep butchers and fruit and vege stores safely open in hard lockdowns? How could we manage our border more humanely and stay connected to the world without materially worsening the risk?
What should be the threshold for closing our schools, and what are the true costs to the children of doing so, balanced against the risks of virus transmission?
How do we scale up hospital capacity quickly without sending ourselves broke in the meantime?
Is there a better procurement system we should use for buying urgently needed equipment and vaccines? And how do we ensure contestable advice from others besides the public health people, while respecting their expertise? - Steven Joyce
A well-constructed commission of inquiry will encourage reflection and planning for the future while learning the lessons of the present. Contrary to the Opposition's wishes and the Government's fears, it would likely not offer an advantage to either political side. The Government would probably even attract public kudos if it instituted a clearly nonpartisan inquiry for the country's benefit, rather than lapsing into its trademark defensiveness. - Steven Joyce
On Roe v. Wade, I am with the Supreme Court ruling, though I am by no means as opposed to termination of pregnancies as some people. It seems obvious to me that if you can derive a right to abortion from the American Constitution, you can derive anything from it, for example a children's right to teddy bears or an employee's right to four weeks' paid holiday a year at a resort of his choice. The proper aim of a constitution is not to secure all the things that people would like, but to provide a limiting framework of liberty in which laws should be made. By returning the legislation on the matter of abortion to the states, the Supreme Court was increasing the scope of democracy, not (as was dishonestly alleged) curtailing it. It remains open to believers in, or enthusiasts for, abortion to work for a properly worded constitutional amendment, granting the right they falsely claim to have found in the Constitution as it now stands; or alternatively (and more realistically) to work for changes in the laws of those states that are highly restrictive. That would be the proper way to go about it, if they believed in constitutional democracy, but they don't: They believe instead in their own virtue and moral right to govern. - Theodore Dalrymple
From the outsider's point of view, what is alarming about the situation in the United States is the complete polarization of opinion, precisely at a time when opinion is the sole measure of virtue. A man can be an absolute monster, but if he proclaims the right views at sufficient volume, he remains a good man. It follows from this that a man who disagrees with me does not merely have a different opinion from mine, but is a bad person, even a very bad person. And I am told by American friends whom I trust that people of differing political standpoints can scarcely bear to be in the same room together. They tell me (so it must be true) that the left is worse in this respect than the right, and that while a young conservative is happy to date a young liberal, the reverse is not true. It can't be long before sexual relations with a person of differing political outlook come to be regarded as a sexual perversion, indeed as the only sexual perversion, all others being but a matter of taste. - Theodore Dalrymple
Nevertheless, there seems to be something different about the present level of social hostility between people of different political outlooks, which has now become chronic. This cannot be a favorable augury for the future of a functioning democracy—or rather, for a free country (which is not quite the same thing). While a phenomenon that is more or less binary, sex, has become nonbinary, something that should be nonbinary, that is to say political opinion, has become binary. If you know a person's opinion on one subject, you know his opinion on all, and you either clasp him to your bosom or cast him out of your sight. Tolerance is not an a priori acceptance of how someone is, however he may be; that is indifference, not tolerance. Tolerance is behaving decently toward someone some aspect of whom one dislikes or disagrees with. I have friends with whose outlooks I strongly disagree, and which I believe to be deleterious (as they probably believe mine to be); I have friends with whose religious views I find alien to me. There is a limit to the tolerable, of course, and where that limit should be placed is a matter of judgment and no doubt of circumstance. But I do not want to live in a social world in which there are only two blocs, akin to those of the Cold War. - Theodore Dalrymple
My record of failure does not prevent or even inhibit me from prognostication, however. I think we have entered a golden age of bad temper that will last some time, one of the reasons being that too many people go to university where they have learned to look at the world through ideology-tinted spectacles. There is nothing like ideology for raising the temperature of debate and eventually of avoiding debate altogether. - Theodore Dalrymple
Poor evidence bases for major educational initiatives is, regrettably, nothing new. In fact, our education agencies have a history of flying in the face of evidence.
NCEA was introduced in 2002 against the advice of prominent professors of education. They warned that the standards-based assessment system would result in egregious variability in assessment results. In 2005, the Board Chair and Chief Executive of NZQA both resigned amidst a political storm caused by … egregious variability in assessment results.
I could go on: The literacy teaching methods promoted by the Ministry, their failed 'numeracy project' and the knowledge-poor New Zealand Curriculum are all examples of educational initiatives implemented against a preponderance of evidence. All have had disastrous results.
Perhaps the true inspiration for MLEs was the open plan offices in which public servants work. If so, the Ministry's record of failure might be all the evidence we need that MLEs were a bad idea. - Dr Michael Johnston
I fear for New Zealand's future when the mainstream news media, which not long ago championed free speech, are instrumental in creating a climate of fear, suspicion and denunciation that resembles something from George Orwell. It becomes even more dangerous when government departments appear to have been frightened or bullied by the media into succumbing to a moral panic. - Karl du Fresne
Cosyism: a new word for one of the most chronic problems in New Zealand public life. We are largely spared, thankfully, the envelopes-stuffed-with-cash corruptionthat infects other countries. But we're suffused with overly close relationships: nepotism, jobs for the boys, all that jazz.
Some call it cronyism, but that doesn't quite fit here: "cronies" sound too much like Mafia hitmen. "Cosyism" better describes those insidious processes by which public positions, jobs and contracts sometimes go not to the best-qualified applicants but to the friends, contacts and family members of people in power. It's an apt term for a famously small society in which cousins and mates are always – cosily – rubbing up against each other in public life.
Cosyism isn't solely an injustice to the well-qualified but poorly connected people who lose out; it can cost us all, since the winners – the well-connected but poorly qualified – often do bad work, expensively.
A cosy society also tolerates the most colossal conflicts of interest: situations where power-holders' decisions could be biased by a personal incentive, be it to protect a business connection or aid a relative. Even just a public perception of bias can be harmful, corroding trust and promoting political disengagement. - Max Rashbrooke
No doubt the agencies will improve their protocols, at least to meet current standards. But given what they allow, are those standards fit for purpose? Could any public servant, in any department, deal confidently with a contractor – including, if necessary, rejecting substandard work – if they knew the latter were the minister's relative?
What, too, about the advantageous information a minister could convey to their contractor relative? There may be no reason to doubt the integrity of current ministers, but that's not the point. We must design systems for the most corrupt actors, not the least.
Some people respond to such problems with a shrug: in a small society, they say, these conflicts are inevitable. But that's back-to-front: we have to be tougher on these problems precisely because we're a small society, and they will crop up so often.
The current default is to "manage" a conflict of interest by leaving the room, sometimes literally, when a particular issue is discussed – as if this removes every opportunity to influence the decision. That default needs to change. - Max Rashbrooke
A cosyism crackdown would, of course, be hard on some people. Too bad. That's the price we pay for probity, and for public faith in our institutions. - Max Rashbrooke
Voters don't dislike cycleways. They are over the priority placing they get compared to other civic enhancements.
The misalignment between voter preferences and what their elected representatives do is not a local phenomenon.
New data by global polling company YouGov, not yet publicly available but presented to a Toronto conference I attended this week, reveals seismic changes in what voters want governments to do. - Josie Pagani
Since Covid and rising inflation, our priorities have changed.
The cost of living worries 78% of people. It simply costs too much to exist.
This is an ''everyone, everywhere crisis'': all incomes and political persuasions. It's a survival issue for some, a top anxiety for others. - Josie Pagani
Seventy-six per cent of voters think that inflation is increasing inequality, and pulling communities apart. Even if you can weather the rise in prices, you're worried about how this will divide the nation even further.
People expect governments to do more. A whopping 84% of citizens think that it's a government's job to help (followed by central banks at 79%).
But only 46% want a one-off direct payment of cash (assuming a government can even get the cash out the door to the right people). - Josie Pagani
Here's another seismic shift: People are prepared to pay more for public services, but with a sting in the tail – they want the services in their local region. More money spent on their parks, sports clubs, wifi, police stations and services, rather than increases in welfare, or even tax credits. Voters want a transfer of wealth to their communities. They resist paying for services if they see the cash being spent elsewhere. - Josie Pagani
People are willing to trade some growth to bring poorer regions up to the level of wealthier ones.
Even if you don't live in a poorer region, rebuilding nations, and bringing citizens together after Covid, is a priority. Leave no town behind.
No-one in politics should ignore that there has been massive global shift to the left in the way people think about the economy. - Josie Pagani
The daily congestion on the harbour bridge costs the country money in lost productivity. People need to move to make money. They need to get to the pipes to fix them to get paid. They need to drop off the parcels to get paid. They need to open the shop to sell things. Refusing to build cars into the next crossing is actively choosing to keep Auckland and New Zealand poorer than they should be. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
The next Mayor of Auckland should be building a city for future growth, not stealing ideas from the 1970s. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
The blinkers have now come off for many. They feel lied-to. They feel cheated. All the promises, all the words about improving everything from child poverty to housing to crime to cost of living have come to nothing. In fact, we are substantially worse off. Yes, people are angry and they don't feel they are being listened to. - Paula Bennett
Perhaps the Government should listen to some of those angry people. Understand where they are coming from.
Perhaps they should stop with false promises and actually deliver something and then people might happily get on with their lives. - Paula Bennett
Through almost every tier of the social spectrum, there seems to be an excess layer of tension and anxiety creating conflict and division.
Whether it's the homeless fighting outside central city supermarkets, gang shootings, or the fisticuffs of middle-class parents at posh PTA fundraisers - the nation seems to be at boiling point. - Liam Dann
These females are walking, emoting examples of how women have risen to power in recent years and they are enough to put any sensible woman off.
It is increasingly obvious that the female 'leaders' held up as flagbearers for feminism, and who spend their time rubbing shoulders with celebrities, are painfully vacuous. They are promoted as 'nice' – gracing the covers of fashion magazines where they prioritise image ahead of competence, sound judgment, and the wellbeing of the people they are elected to serve.
No woman with serious mental firepower would want to be associated with such shallowness. - Lillian Andrews
It is as if adopting a caring head tilt and sad eyes in Insta(gram)-ready propaganda photos serves as the equivalent of having actual solutions to critical social and economic challenges.
It is also no coincidence that they are uniformly Woke in their politics. - Lillian Andrews
They bleat about how committed they are to openness and transparency while using media teams to deflect scrutiny away from their actions. When politics gets difficult, they opine obsessively about equality and fairness – as if having a vagina bestows some special insight. At the same time, they turn a blind eye to the cold, hard statistics that show deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and more people struggling.
Powerful women like this can thunderously denounce bullying in public life and then attempt to shove under the carpet contentions of rampant bullying that happens under their watch. They fanatically adopt mantras about gender equality to substitute for having no idea about how to increase security and prosperity for all. Then they use this as an excuse to appoint equally dubious women to senior positions, turning a blind eye to subsequent displays of incompetence, nepotism, and cover-ups.
All the while, the only contribution these women make to public debate is to recycle vague, tired platitudes about inclusion, kindness, and social justice. - Lillian Andrews
The message that women in politics send is this: if you want power without principles, influence without intellect, and command without competence, we want you. Women who secretly yearn to be influencers, but instead delude themselves into the belief that they are policy giants who deserve leadership roles, gladly answer this call. However, it is not one that will be heard by those with the strength of character of a Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, or even Helen Clark.
The more this self-perpetuating cycle repeats, the more insecure lightweights are going to become the carefully botoxed face of women in power. - Lillian Andrews
Men in politics are frequently every bit as bungling and hypocritical as women, but men's grandstanding is fittingly and increasingly 'called out' whereas women are allowed to hide almost interminably behind a cloak of faux-compassion and historical 'systemic' factors that were caused by somebody else. We are meant to believe that these systemic issues only become apparent after a woman gets elected on the back of promising to deliver a fix. Any woman of integrity rightly sees this as a demeaning and counter-productive double standard.
It is no coincidence that as the new wave of 'look at how much I care, aren't I lovely' female politicians have risen, other women's interest in being actively engaged in politics has languished.
Society believes it to be fashionable to denounce patriarchal oppression and sexism for causing this. In reality, the reason why women who should go into politics frequently choose not to, is because of the women who are already there.
For as long as their much-feted but ultimately fraudulent model of 'success' persists, the only women who will gravitate to politics will be the ones who are most interested in themselves and least suited for truly serving the public. And no amount of talk about childcare, sexual harassment policies, and flexible working conditions are going to change that. - Lillian Andrews
The expression "people of color" has always seemed to me in equal measure stupid, condescending, and vicious. It divides humanity into two categories, whites and the rest, or rather whites versus the rest; it implies an essential or inherent hostility between these two portions of humanity; and it implies also no real interest in the culture or history of the people of color, whose only important characteristic is that of having been ill-treated by, and therefore presumably hating, the whites. Compared with the phrase "people of color," the language of apartheid was sophisticated and nuanced.
It should not need saying that, as the history of Europe attests, whites have not always been happily united, and that "people of color" do not necessarily form one happy, united family, either. - Theodore Dalrymple
The very phrase "people of color" is as mealy-mouthed as any Victorian prude might have wished for and, among other things, is a manifestation of the fear we now live under, sometimes without quite realizing it. Truth has now to be varnished so thickly that it becomes imperceptible. - Theodore Dalrymple
On the whole I found listening to people and understanding where they were coming from was part of the job and actually made me better at it. Hiding from the public and hearing only the good stuff is ignorant and dangerous. - Paula Bennett
The blinkers have now come off for many. They feel lied-to. They feel cheated. All the promises, all the words about improving everything from child poverty to housing to crime to cost of living have come to nothing. In fact, we are substantially worse off. Yes, people are angry and they don't feel they are being listened to. - Paula Bennett
Perhaps the Government should listen to some of those angry people. Understand where they are coming from. Perhaps they should stop with false promises and actually deliver something and then people might happily get on with their lives. - Paula Bennett
These days we can no longer trust that what we're reading or seeing is actual smoke, let alone fire. It's a world where fake news flourishes on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and where any lie can easily be presented as fact – and swallowed as such by anyone who was already inclined to believe it.
But that's why governments, and those in power, need to be even more mindful of the need for transparency. And that's also why managing perceptions around issues like the current controversy surrounding Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta is even more critical. - Tracy Watkins
My thesis was that the Port of Tauranga, which had been partially privatised and therefore subject to market discipline, would do better than the Port of Auckland that was shielded from commercial scrutiny by being 100% owned by the Council.
No one paid attention and I didn't expect anyone would. If my wife doesn't take me seriously there is no reason why others should. Still. Haven't events played into my hands?
The Port of Tauranga just declared a $111 million profit. The Port of Auckland, by contrast, declared a $10m loss. The red-ink down at Quay St, however, is far greater than what has been reported. - Damien Grant
I have no view if the port should be moved or not. I think you need to own land in Ruakaka to have a strong opinion on this matter, but it is self-evident that the current governance model is broken and has been for far longer than a decade.
We know, through long and painful experience, that market provides a degree of discipline that those running a local council can never provide.
Perhaps we should try that; or just sell the cursed thing before any more harm is done. However, I am confident this will not happen, and I look forward to revisiting the topic in 2032. - Damien Grant
It's not easy looking after kids, and I wonder how many people in charge of hiring have never been alone at home with small children for any period of time? They don't appreciate how hard it is. It's relentless. You can't tell your kids 'Oh you guys can stop needing stuff now, I need a break'. - Kelsey Ellery-Wilson
In early childhood you're working with really vulnerable children who are going through a critical time in their development, and it's hard work," Cherrington says. "We know if we give them a good start now, they'll do better later in life.
I think the pandemic provided a window into that, and then people just picked themselves up and went back to work and forgot about it. - Sue Cherrington
Obviously I'm a staunch monarchist, but I've always thought in this regard, for those who want New Zealand to be a republic, they might want to ask themselves what they would actually get for that. - Sir John Key
If you want to change government direction then stand for government get involved in national politics. If you want to deliver locally for the community within the rules of our nation then stand for local council and get involved in delivering for community today. - Sam Broughton
It's a good example of the disconnect between the media and the real world. When the Queen dies, the media thinks of what the next angle is. Given her death isn't changing, all you are left with is the republic question. The poll result tells us we have better things to think about.
There are some suggestions the Prime Minister's offshore presence might have played better for them. I think the reality is that we are over that. If you were ever enamoured with Ardern on the world stage, that has worn well and truly thin, as it's become apparent that a lot of what she does amounts to literally nothing.- Mike Hosking
I think we'd feel better about the PM promoting New Zealand if and when her Government had addressed all the pressing issues really upsetting New Zealanders right now, like the upsurge in violent crime emergency housing, poverty, inflation and kids not turning up to school.
But if at home is a mess, there's a fierce labour shortage where many places still don't even have enough staff to open their doors, and then others who do are being ram raided and smashed into, then what does that say about priorities? - Kate Hawkesby
It should not be scary, or dangerous, to go into a mall with your family at the weekend. It should not be dangerous for retailers to go to work and yet, here we still are. - Kate Hawkesby
No person should be judged by their identity but rather by their words and actions, - Karen Chhour
It feels like if you don't agree with us, you're not a real Māori, or you're not Māori enough, or you don't have the mana of a Māori, and I find that quite hurtful. - Karen Chhour
But central government is not helping public perceptions of the effectiveness of local government. The more central government tries to centralise and control policy making as it is at present – in housing and water services especially – the more the public will see local government as ineffective. Therefore, to restore public confidence in local government, central government needs to pull back and allow local government more genuine say on these critical issues, rather than continuing to tell them what to do.
Until that happens, public apathy towards local government will continue, and the harder it will become to attract quality candidates for major leadership roles. The likely poor turnout at the coming election will undoubtedly shake local government leaders, but it should be an even bigger wake-up call for central government. - Peter Dunne
There is a modern superstition that for every terrible experience suffered there is an equal and opposite psychological technique that, like an antibiotic in a case of infection, can overcome or dissolve away the distress it caused or continues to cause. This superstition is not only false and shallow but demeaning and even insulting. It denies the depths of suffering that the most terrible events can cause, as well as the heroism and fortitude that people can display in overcoming that suffering. Fortitude can even be sometimes dismissed as 'repression'. - Theodore Dalrymple
A psychologically fragile population is the delight of bureaucrats, lawyers and professional carers, and resilience and fortitude are their worst enemies. Repression in the psychological sense is deemed by them not only as damaging but almost as treason to the self. A person who does not dwell on his trauma must expect, and almost deserves, later trouble, as does someone who wilfully ignores the formation of an abscess. - Theodore Dalrymple
Repression can also mean the deliberate putting memories of trauma to the back of the mind so that life can be got on with. It is not that such memories cannot be called to the conscious mind when necessary, or even that they never do harm: but the person who represses in this fashion has an instinctive understanding that dwelling on them is an obstacle to future life, rather than a precondition of it. They do not forget, either consciously or unconsciously; they choose to think of something else. - Theodore Dalrymple
Psychology seems often to forget or disregard the fact that humans live in a world of meaning, and that they are actors rather than mere objects acted upon. In the process, it destroys resilience, fortitude and self-respect. - Theodore Dalrymple
A university is a community of scholars. It is not a kindergarten; it is not a club; it is not a reform school; it is not a political party; it is not an agency of propaganda. A university is a community of scholars. - Robert Maynard Hutchins
How many universities see themselves as lobbies, political parties, reform schools, and agencies of propaganda? I'd say a large fraction, for political statements and social-justice manifestos proliferate on college websites. And of course you know how universities behave as kindergartens: just look at the recent follies of The Evergreen State University, Yale University, or Oberlin College. Will we even recognize the university as a community of scholars in fifty years, or will it abjure its academic mission in favor of an ideological one?- Jerry Coyne
There is a disturbing entrenchment happening in regard to attitudes to benefits and that is that it's just easier to give people a hand out, when the focus really should be on giving people a hand up.- Kate Hawkesby
But this is a government of ideology and no matter what you tell them, you must always remember that you are wrong, and they aren't. - Mike Hosking
What's the point of funding a programme if no one hears it, sees it, or reads it?
What's the point of the money and time if it plays to an audience of no one or one that barely registers? How much time and money do you want to spend on stuff people don't use, want, or absorb? And how much damage do you want to do to the other players in the industry as you pump up your own little fiefdom with money that isn't yours anyway?
The biggest issue with this issue is unlike Three Waters or co-governance it's not a political hot potato. They won't win or lose votes by doing it hence they'll probably get away with it. Plus, they seem desperate to get it up by next year.
It's only years down the track once they've been booted out of office that the damage will be done, and the folly exposed. - Mike Hosking
But beyond all this, there is one other enormous and overwhelming reason, never mentioned in the debate, why we must cling to King Charles. The very fact that it is never mentioned is itself significant. It is obvious ~ and yet it is deliberately ignored. The reason is simply this ~ that if the monarchy were to be abolished, that abolition would undoubtedly be the pretext for introducing the 'principles' of the Treaty of Waitangi into our fundamental law. The principles, of course, are a blank cheque. The latest announcement from the Waitangi Tribunal is that they require 'co-governance' ~ in other words, an end to democracy and racial equality. That not what they meant even a few years ago ~ and for all we know, we may discover a few years down the track that the 'principles' require complete Maori control of our country. That is, after all, what some radicals are saying right now.
But whatever the principles are, we can be certain that they would be to our disadvantage ~ and we would have them imposed on us in a new constitutional arrangement. The argument would be that the Treaty ~ in itself, of course, still a legal nullity, and in any case never anything more than a few vague words of general approach ~ was of course entered into by Queen Victoria's representative. It was a treaty with 'the Crown'. If we now do away with the Crown , the argument goes, the Treaty itself might somehow vanish, or be weakened ~ and so to avoid that heart-stopping eventuality the Treaty will have to be formally 'enshrined', as we enshrine other idols, in a special written constitution, so that it may last even when the 'Crown' has disappeared. - David Round
And once we had the Treaty in our constitution, we would be sunk. No matter how mild the references to the Treaty might be, we can be certain that they would be used, not just by politicians but by politically activist judges in the courts, to impose apartheid on us for ever. Even without such a provision, our previous chief justice, the unlamented Sian Elias, raised the possibility that judges were entitled to ignore Acts of Parliament which did not comply with her own radical interpretation of Treaty principles, and there is no doubt that several decisions of the courts have already done just that. What a disgraceful claim that was. But whatever we have in a constitution will be interpreted and applied by courts, and against the judgment of the highest of those courts there is no appeal. And even if a parliament far braver than today's pack of racists, incompetents and cowards were to say 'No, that is not what we meant', the judges would simply reply that parliament was breaching the constitution ~ was behaving unconstitutionally, and illegally ~ in saying that. Even now, the law is not what parliament says, it is what judges say parliament says. Once we get a written constitution, a higher law which binds parliament itself, there will be no stopping judges as they interpret it as they please. The entire argument for a written constitution, a higher sort of law, is an attempt to remove matters from parliament's' authority and hand them over to judges. I have little respect for most of our politicians, as you gather ~ but all the same, I would rather have elected people in charge ~ and after an election or two we might even get some decent ones ~ than hand our entire future over to a tiny handful of unelected woke racehorse-owning lawyers in the Supreme Court.
There might indeed even be more in any new constitution. But can we believe that any new constitution we might acquire would be, as in Cromwell's time, an opportunity for a new start and new just legal and social arrangements? For ending poverty and inequality, making the law available to all, attempting, in whatever way, to make our country a better and finer place? Dream on. At present, any new constitution would merely be the entrenchment of the intellectually bankrupt, politically correct, deeply intolerant and racist current establishment.
'Monarchy' and 'Republic' are but the battle cries. The battle is over what New Zealand is going to look like; what sort of country, in fact, it is going to be. The battle lines are being drawn. As in the English Civil War, when a hundred slightly different shades of support and sympathy for King and Parliament were forced by circumstances to coalesce into support for one side or the other, sometimes surprising alliances are being formed between different shades of opinion that realise that they have more to lose than to gain from standing alone.
Who is going to run our country? Them? Or us? - David Round
Under our present constitutional arrangements, the ultimate law-making power rests in Parliament - and, through our elected representatives, voters. That has been our democratic strength as it continues to remind our law makers that they are answerable to the people.
Those calling for a new "written" constitution want to transfer that ultimate law-making power from voters, to unelected judges – who cannot be sacked.
If we want to preserve what little democracy we have left, any attempt to replace our present "unwritten" constitution, must be firmly rejected.
Right now, iwi leaders are scheming over how best to introduce a Treaty-based constitution without alarming the public. If we are to counter this grave threat to New Zealand, we must ensure other Kiwis become aware of the dangers a new constitution represents. - Muriel Newman
At least now, MPs are able to repeal Judge-made law and replace it with laws that voters want.
Imagine just how much worse it would be if Judges held the ultimate law-making power through a new constitution, that usurped the authority of Parliament.
Worse, with Maori supremacists determined to enshrine the Treaty of Waitangi in any new constitution, New Zealand would be turned into an apartheid society, where race would determine whether we are part of a privileged ruling class or are relegated to second-class status.
Anyone pressing for constitutional change in this political climate, no matter what their intentions, would be opening up the country to capture by separatists. There are no two ways about it - a new constitution would lead to Judge-led tribal rule. - Muriel Newman
But sadly, this looming crisis appears to be receiving scant political attention – across the board. Yet the future of our young people is one of the most important determinants of our country's future overall. It ought to be taken far more seriously by all the political parties, whether in government or not, than appears to be the case at present.
Lofty speeches about the war in Ukraine, the risk of nuclear conflagration, climate change, and cyber security are of course important and deserving of much attention, but equally so too are the educational opportunities, attainments, and wellbeing of our children.
As New Zealand moves on from the pandemic and begins the slow process of recovery, looking after the future wellbeing and educational attainments of our children must become a top priority for all politicians, whatever their political stripe. - Peter Dunne
The worst aspect of all this is that the government's relentless pro-Maori push is seriously damaging race relations in New Zealand. The 83 percent of our population who aren't Maori – people like Chinese and Indians who have come here to work hard and to get ahead, not to mention the many generations of Europeans – have to watch rewards going to people on the basis of ethnicity rather than work ethic. Hard-working, talented Kiwi without a drop of Maori blood – and that's all that most self-designated Maori possess – are passed over for promotion and a place in the sun under this government. The hermit kingdom they call "Aotearoa", with its tightly controlled borders, has become a social laboratory aimed at facilitating a takeover of authority by a small racial minority backed up by a false narrative. - Michael Bassett
When Kelvin Davis used Question Time to say that I view the world through a "pakeha lens" it was nothing I haven't heard before: "You're a whakapapa Māori but you're not kaupapa Māori"; "You're a plastic Māori"; "You're a born-again Māori". It just comes with the territory of being a Māori woman who doesn't always fit the left's comfortable stereotype.
Problem is, I don't think Kelvin is the only Labour minister who thinks what he said. The others might be smarter at hiding it, but they also worship identity politics.
They believe that who you are can matter more than what you do or say. How do I know this? That attitude is all through the policies they promote. Oranga Tamariki, the area I was asking Kelvin about when he made his comments, is just one example.
I came to Parliament out of sheer frustration around these kinds of attitudes and to fight them. As Act's Children's spokesperson and as someone who grew up in state care, I'm starting by fighting against what I view as racism within Oranga Tamariki. - Karen Chhour
In fairness to Oranga Tamariki, it was following the law, something called Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. Section 7AA means the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki has to consider the Treaty when making decisions.
Sure, 7AA may be well-intentioned. But it creates a conflict between protecting the best interests of the child and race-based factors enshrined in 7AA. This conflict has the potential to cause real harm to our children.
I was a Māori child in state care. I could have only dreamed of a loving home like the one Mary was placed in.
What I needed was what every child needs. To be loved, cared for, clothed and fed.
I bounced between the system and family for years. I still carry the physical and mental scars from that time. It didn't matter to me whether the adults I relied on were Pākehā, Māori, Chinese or African. I just wanted to be loved and cared for.
I came to Parliament to fight for that for other children. - Karen Chhour
Last week, my Member's Bill was drawn from that Ballot. It repeals Section 7AA.
Since my Member's Bill was drawn, I have been called a racist. If anything, the opposite is true. My Bill will make Oranga Tamariki colour-blind. It will have to focus on all of the factors that a child needs, instead of placing race at the centre of their decision-making.
When this Bill comes up for the first reading in Parliament, the predictable and tiresome responses will come from the Labour Party, the Māori Party, and the Greens.
I ask them, before they vote this down, to think about Mary and what was best for her. A family who loved and cared for her? Or returning to her abusers?
Mary's foster parents traced their family tree back far enough that they could find enough of a link to say they were Māori. This twist also shows how bizarre the law is, Mary's foster parents are the same people, but something that happened centuries before they were born made it okay for them to parent.
Mary still lives with them. She has come out of her shell, she is doing well at school, she has a home for life where she is safe and is thriving. Thank goodness for that branch they found on the family tree, or Mary's story might have been very different.
I can only hope that my Bill gets a fair hearing because another child might not be so lucky.- Karen Chhour
KELVIN DAVIS believes that Karen Chhour is looking at the world through a "vanilla lens".
Racially-charged sentiments of this sort used to be reserved for embarrassing Pakeha uncles, a little the worse for drink following a big Christmas Dinner. Family members winced at the old man's reliance on "Māori blood" fractions to determine who was, and wasn't, a "real Māori".
Equally embarrassing, however, is the spectacle of a Māori cabinet minister belittling an Act MP of Ngāpuhi descent for refusing to leave "her Pakeha world". New Zealanders of all ethnicities now need to confront and deconstruct Davis's objectionable ethnic dualism – because it is extremely dangerous. - Chris Trotter
Essentially, Davis was declaring the existence of two quite distinct realities – Māori and Pakeha. Viewed from the perspective of Pakeha reality, the behaviour of Oranga Tamariki may appear to be egregiously negligent – even cruel. But, viewed from Te Ao Māori, its behaviour may be construed in an entirely different way. The key to unlocking this profound ontological problem is Te Tiriti – or, at least, Te Tiriti as currently interpreted.
The contemporary interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi would have us believe that it set out to define the relationship between Māori, Pakeha, and their respective instruments of governance. That it was, indeed, a document intended to regulate the interaction of two very different realities. Two ethnic worlds, which were to remain separate but equal in perpetuity. - Chris Trotter
However prettily the Treaty expressed the fiction of kawanatanga and tino rangatiratanga accommodating each other's needs in peace and harmony, the Māori world would not long survive its collision with the rest of Planet Earth.
And so it proved. Call it the inexorable march of "civilisation"; call it "colonisation; call it the making of the New Zealand nation; call it what you will. Te Ao Māori soon ceased to be a description of reality and became, instead, a metaphor. And metaphors are poor armour against the real weapons of one's foes. The Pai Marire faith may have reassured its warriors that a divine power would deflect the Pakeha bullets – or turn their soldiers to stone – but the imperial troopers cut them down regardless. In the end, there is only one world.
Kelvin Davis knows this as well as anyone. So why is he insisting on treating metaphors as if they were scientific facts? The only rational answer is that he, along with those controlling the increasingly powerful Māori corporations arising out of the Treaty Settlement Process, intends to alter the political reality of New Zealand in such a way that the Māori aristocracy, and the te Reo-speaking, tertiary-educated, professionals and managers of the Māori middle-class (the only Māori worth listening to?) will soon be wielding very real authority over the rest of New Zealand.
Included among "the rest" will be all those Māori without te Reo, without tertiary credentials, without six-figure salaries. Māori struggling to make it through the day in a world that has little sympathy for the poor. Māori without proper housing. Māori on the minimum wage. Māori lost to drugs and alcohol and crime. Māori whose kids suffer horribly for the sins of their fathers and mothers. Māori with backgrounds identical to Karen Chhour.
Chhour was demanding to know what Davis was doing for these, the most vulnerable inhabitants of her world, the real world, the only world. And all he could offer, by way of an answer, was a metaphorical bridge to a world that disappeared 250 years ago. A world which certainly cannot be conjured back into existence by a Minister of the Crown who does not care to be questioned by a wahine Māori who, all-too-clearly, sees him struggling to do his job. - Chris Trotter
When political figures are powerful they need to be held to account, regardless of race. Allegations of racism are extremely powerful, precisely because of the history of appalling discrimination towards Māori in this country. But such allegations should not be used to shield those in power from scrutiny. Te Pāti Māori is a product of our democratic political system and, as such, has to be held to account in the same way as other political parties, especially on an issue so important and fundamental as the funding of political campaigns. Double standards can't be accepted by anyone wanting clean and fair politics – especially those of us worried about vested interests looking for ways to leverage their political donations. - Bryce Edwards
Thomas Coughlan, Dr Eric Crampton, Karen Nimmo, Tracy Watkins, Claire Trevett, John Ryan, Audrey Young, Luke Malpass , Janet Wilson, Dr Oliver Hartwich, Peter Smith, Dr Jacqueline Rowarth, Aaron Martin, Andrew Sullivan, Sir John Key, Point of Order, Lizzie Marvelly, Alice Snedden, Paula Bennett, Jack Tame, Wayne Brown, Rachel Smalley, Jonathan Freedland, Henry Cooke, Patti Davis, Joe Bennett, Josie Vidal, Rowena Edge, Liberty Scott, Dr Michael Johnston, Justin Welby, Max Rashbrooke, Josie Pagani, Liam Dann, Lillian Andrews, Kelsey Ellery-Wilson, Sue Cherrington, Sam Broughton, Karen Chhour, Jerry Coyne, Robert Maynard Hutchins, David Round, Dr Bryce Edwards,
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