Chloe seemed unable to comprehend the fear Jewish people have of that chant. She was unable to own any blame.
The rest of the interview made me feel that the fresh and intelligent woman who entered parliament has been replaced by a hard line radical informed only by her own echo chamber.
The Greens are in deep trouble. The Ghahraman resignation and forthcoming trial. James Shaw, the one calming influence, the man billed as a relationship builder, gone. The prospect of Davidson and Swarbrick ruling a radical socialist party.
The damage is already evident in the polls this weekend with the Greens dropping 4.8 per cent to sit at 9 per cent.
They're fast becoming unelectable. A socialist party that pays lip service to the environment and has forgotten about why they came into being in the first place. - Andrew Dickens
In an interview with Tame that was more cringe-inducing than inspiring, Swarbrick showed not only that there is a ceiling to her political skills, but she's likely hit that ceiling already.
Tame did his best to wrangle her back on track, but Swarbrick's overuse of non-sequiturs and lines that felt cribbed from either an entry-level Politics paper or an over-fluffed document from a multinational consulting firm that charged by the amount of corporate jargon used in an hour. - Haimona Gray
Politicians can be dogmatic sometimes, even offensive, but an electorate MP dismissing an ethnic community in her electorate so coldly was shocking. -
The catastrophic interview concluded with Swarbrick promoting herself as someone who can work across the aisle and promote unity. This might be undercut by the things she says, the communities she ignores, and the sense that it is unity under her, not alongside her, that she is offering.
This is somewhat acceptable as a list MP - you are an MP thanks to your party's voters alone, you should be speaking to your base - but as the electorate Member of Parliament for one of the most diverse communities in the country, it is disturbing. - Haimona Gray
In this way, Chloe Swarbrick is an outlier in our national politics. She is a hardliner in a nation dominated by centrist politics, a hawk in a nation that prides itself on promoting nonviolence, and an electorate MP seemingly uninterested in the views of her electorate members. - Haimona Gray
If you're in your 20s and 30s, do you believe the pension will be there for you? You should. Are you depending on it? You shouldn't. You should make provision as much as you can for yourself and see the Super as an extra.- Kerre Woodham
Unfortunate things happen to all of us in a personal or business capacity- and it's often not the unfortunate thing that gets you in the most trouble but the failure to fess up about it and handle it properly. -Heather du Plessis-Allan
Labour, the leading party of the centre-left since 1916, is still licking its wounds after its election trouncing. . .
It will be easy and tempting to blame its defeat on its lack of delivery of key policies, especially over the past three years, post-Covid, when it had the novel luxury of an absolute majority. But the real reasons for Labour's defeat run deeper than that. They are far more to do with what the Labour Party has allowed itself to become since the Helen Clark and Michael Cullen era.
Since then, Labour has become a party of passing causes rather than deep-set convictions. It has become the captive of special interests, more focused on doing their bidding in the hope of an electoral dividend than promoting its own values and policies. Simultaneously, it has managed to appear on the proper side of all the concerns of the left, while itself standing for nothing. Hence, when it came to government – albeit unexpectedly – in 2017, it could say all the right things but had little in the way of clearly thought-out policy to implement. - Peter Dunne
So, as well as its role of opposing National and Act to its right, over the next three years at least, Labour will also be fending off increasingly hostile attacks from the Greens to its left.
But the Greens' strident and overly self-righteous approach is off-putting to many, so might just be enough to save Labour, at least in the short-term. Like Labour, they too have not yet seen a bandwagon they do not want to climb on. But they are still seen as brittle and untested when it comes to the pressures of government, despite their recent years as Labour's government support partner. This will especially be so after the departure of James Shaw, the "common-sense" Green, and the ongoing flaky performance of Wellington's Green Mayor, Tory Whanau, and its Green-leaning council in dealing with the capital's many problems.
For these reasons, Labour may not be done – just yet. But it will be a close struggle. - Peter Dunne
The struggles for supremacy on the centre-left are not surprising after more than a century of Labour-dominance, and the perception that Labour no longer has effective answers to today's challenges. Consequently, a historic transition process seems to be underway. But Labour's struggles over the next three years will be internally debilitating and will certainly detract from the bigger picture of providing an effective Opposition. - Peter Dunne
Why were racist jokes on a WhatsApp group punished more harshly than the public glorification of Hamas?
So in Britain in the 2020s, you can be sentenced to jail for making a racist joke about Meghan Markle in private, but you'll only get a slap on the wrist if you publicly celebrate the racist monsters of Hamas. - Brendan O'Neill
Slur a duchess and you get jail. Big up Hamas and you get a telling off. Rarely has the arbitrary rule of woke censorship been so starkly revealed. - Brendan O'Neill
Think about what this means. In Britain you can get a jail sentence for cracking racist jokes but you might receive no sentence at all for celebrating one of the most racist organisations in the world. Make a bigoted quip to your mates about the Duchess of Sussex and your punishment could be severe – publicly celebrate an army of anti-Semites just days after it carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust and your punishment might be non-existent. - Brendan O'Neill
My view is that neither of these cases should have got anywhere near a courtroom. No one should be criminalised for expression. Yes, that includes expressing admiration for the scum of Hamas. - Brendan O'Neill
The liberty to utter is enjoyed by all or by none at all. The bigoted, the ridiculous, the malevolent and the dumb must enjoy free speech equally to everyone else. When we allow the state – whether the courts, the cops or the cultural elite – to determine what is sayable and what is not, we cease to have freedom of speech and instead have licensed speech. The right to speak so long as we don't say anything that 'they' consider wrong, wicked or dangerous. - Brendan O'Neill
To criminalise people for things they say in private takes us into Stasi territory. What next – a telescreen in every home to keep an eye and ear out for iffy jokes and unwoke utterances? Neither dodgy gags about Meghan Markle nor juvenile awe for Hamas, neither private chatter nor public commentary, should be a matter for the police. Ever.
Yet these two cases force us to contemplate the staggering double standards in the policing of speech. - Brendan O'Neill
It's getting ridiculous now, isn't it? That calling for violence against gender-critical feminists or sympathising with anti-Israel lunatics is punished less severely than being an antiquated white duffer who tells off-colour jokes on WhatsApp is all the proof we need that censorship, always, is a tool of ideological control and political enforcement.
This goes far beyond one judge. Britain is now a country where Christians are arrested for praying in their heads near an abortion clinic while Islamists who holler for 'jihad!' are left alone and even defended by police. It's a country where you can march through central London dressed like a Hamas killer but you'll be lectured by cops if you put up a sticker saying 'Women don't have penises'. It's a country where hundreds of people are arrested and interrogated every year for tweeting things or making jokes that the establishment disapproves of. The creep of censorship has become a tsunami. Forget a 'fairer' application of censorship laws – it's the wholesale scrapping of these pernicious tools of thought control that we should be calling for. - Brendan O'Neill
We have an abundance of water that is desperately needed in different place.
And when you think about how it can help transform regions or make land use more productive, that's all good for us because it means we're enlarging our economy.
And when we enlarge our economy, we get higher wages and salaries for regular Kiwis and that's what it's got to be all about.
So we're very pro water storage. - Christopher Luxon
We are pleased that what we regard as simply sensible long-term infrastructure planning is finally finding favour in the wider community and in the corridors of power. - Tim Gilbertson
Water security is very important to Hawke's Bay and water storage is a key part of that, alongside managing demand and takes, water conservation and efficiency of use. We all benefit from healthy rivers and aquifers. Water security is important economically, socially, and culturally, - Hinewai Ormsby
The reason I never use 'preferred pronouns' is simple: I don't subscribe to the neo-religion of gender ideology, which would have us believe that there are two you's – your mysterious inner gendered soul and your outward biological appearance. Every time we declare our pronouns, or genuflect to someone else's 'preferred pronouns', we are implicitly buying into this very modern delusion, this woke hocus pocus. I'm with Mrs Itkoff – the idea that people can choose their pronouns, rather than being allocated pronouns that accord with the truth and reason of their biological sex, doesn't 'make sense to me'. - Brendan O'Neill
The trans ideology has enacted numerous cruelties on women. Rapists in women's prisons, men in women's domestic-violence shelters, women's sports almost entirely upended by an invasion of mediocre blokes who've changed their name to Crystal or whatever – there is no female right, no basic tenet of decency, that cannot be sacrificed at the altar of gender validation. Now, even the charitable urges of an elderly lady can be thrown on to the bonfire of the cruelties – goodness erased in the name of never offending men who think they're women. That so-called progressives back this sacrifice of women's right to organise and speak as they see fit in the name of appeasing delusional men is concerning in the extreme.
Then there's the ageism. We need to talk about the searing hostility of the woke towards older people, especially older women. You don't even have to be 90. Witness the ceaseless haranguing of 'Karens', a derogatory term for middle-aged, mostly white women who dare to stand up for themselves in public. They've become the hate figures of our time. The author Victoria Smith refers to it as 'hag hate', an 'ageist misogyny' aimed at women who are perceived not only to be past their supposed sell-by date, but also, even worse, to be possessed of 'incorrect' beliefs. The old ducking of hags in open water has been replaced by the shaming of hags on open web forums. - Brendan O'Neill
It should not be surprising that the cult of transgenderism – an ideology that indulges men's jealous coveting of the hyper-sexualised female body – should be so staggeringly hostile to older women. To women who have 'sagged', whether physically or morally, and thus put themselves beyond the cravings of trans activists who seem to value only the young, the pert, the sexualised. That women are human beings, who go through every stage of human existence, seems to be beyond the moral grasp of trans ideologues for whom womanhood is costume and little more.
But there's something else going on, too. Today's fashionable ageism is not only misogynistic – it's Maoist. When I read about the case of Fran Itkoff, it was Maoism that came to mind. For wasn't that also a crusade against 'the old'? Those hotheaded cancellers of 1960s China openly declared war on the 'Four Olds' – old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. They demonised and tortured those who gave voice to 'old' ideals. Are we not witnessing something similar today? Statues of 'problematic' historical figures are torn down, 'offensive' old literature is rewritten, old people – like Fran – are sent into social oblivion. Wokeness is Maoism with better PR. We need to do something about it before we arrive in a world where people like Mrs Itkoff are not only cancelled but are also made to stand in public squares with placards around their necks identifying them as rancid old wrongthinkers. It is time to defend 'the old' from the crazed young of the woke crusade. - Brendan O'Neill
When ideology collides with the real world, it makes for a hell of a splat. NIWA and DOC and the like, banging on about climate change, and rightly so, but they're not walking the talk because they can't. The technology they need doesn't exist yet, and they need to realise, and the government needs to realise, and the ideologs need to realise, and the Green Party needs to realise, that it's the same for the poor grunts who are trying to run their businesses, and pay their taxes that pay for these bloody utes.
Sure, encourage people to transition into environmentally friendly alternatives when there are alternatives. But don't you dare punish people when they simply do not have a choice. - Kerre Woodham
I took an Avanti train recently painted in all the colours of the rainbow and others beside. On the side of the train, more than once, in huge capital letters was painted the word "Pride". Apparently, the train company had run a train with a staff exclusively of LGBTQ+ personnel.
Pride in what, exactly? If sexual orientation is not a choice and therefore nothing to be ashamed of, then it can be nothing to be proud of either. Taking pride in what is not an achievement is stupid, self-congratulatory and arrogant. It is an invitation to poor behaviour, insofar as it exculpates in advance in the name of being proud ex officio. - Theodore Dalrymple
I would rather have the Government try everything to get kids back to school, even if some of it doesn't work, than try nothing.
And I hope it actually works. After love and safety, education is the most important thing you can give your child. - Heather du Plessis-Allan
Imagine what the quarter billion dollars knowingly wasted on light-rail consultants could have done for, say, reading recovery and early literacy support in decile 1 primary schools in South Auckland? Or partly funding tax cuts targeted at minimum-wage workers? - Matthew Hooton
The pride of man makes him love to domineer. The heirs of Thomas Carlyle have an abundance of ideologies to command us to perform petty rituals for our benefit; from paper straws, compulsory lectures on diversity and perpetual commands to stop smoking. - Damien Grant
No one knows how to fix a local community's problems better than the community itself. Centralisation has seen money and resources moved out of communities and into the hands of people based in Wellington.
Well-meaning officials make important decisions about how critical funds are allocated to not-for-profit organisations that are more often than not making a substantial difference on the ground.
Too often it is who you know, not what you are doing or the difference you are making that sees you get funding. It's how loud you shout or the clout you have. Small organisations fight for a small piece of the pie so that they can do what they know is desperately needed. - Paula Bennett
We need to get out of the way of those that are doing it. We need to decentralise and move more funding directly to the frontline. Be clear about what success looks like, hold them to account for it but otherwise just listen, show respect and be grateful. - Paula Bennett
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