OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance
402 Responses
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Our best bet on dodging this particular bullet remains Japanese resistance.
Plus, even if the US trade negotiators get everything they ever dreamed of, getting TPPA through Congress isn’t assured. Republicans in Congress could kill it just because they don’t want to give Obama anything.
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@nzlemming, #renting, thanks. I'll have to find a better line for how good people like money for valid and morally sound reasons next time.
@48% #notamajority, I guess, if that's what helps y'all sleep at night. Imagine how much of "not a majority" of voters they'll have after specials. Sweet. Barely 47%. Yeh, I know, I'm not counting Conservatives, but it's because we don't actually count the Conservatives' votes for seats on account of them being Nazis, or something, I forget.
@izogiWe might as well just do away with all the other laws and processes which protect the rights of everyone, even when they voted for someone else.
Well, no, not at all. But really, there are no such protections against the assent of Parliament in New Zealand. They casually removed the vote from thousands of people a couple years back and no one even blinked.
They didn't like who people voted in for ECAN, so they scrapped ECAN and appointed some dictators instead. No one even cared, their vote went up in Canterbury. People ironically want the rivers down there protected and also want a government who doesn't let them vote for that.
They made Gerry Brownlee an absolute dictator in Christchurch. He's literally above the law down there, or anywhere that he cares to say would aid the earthquake recovery. He uses his power to ... basically prevent the rebuild from going ahead in every way that is politically advantageous to the National party. Makes it all look like the fault of the RMA, because they're going to gut the RMA and need an excuse.
Those things, and any other thing, including retrospective immunity from prosecution, can just happen because Parliament assents to it. We have a constitution act and a bill of rights and they can just change them if they feel the need at any time. If they write a new law which just says "this law overrides the bill of rights" then it does. They did that for the family caregivers of disabled people just recently.
Compared to them ignoring the cabinet manual, which is not a law and instead just a set of guidelines they update all the time to reflect their current behaviour, or abusing the hell out of the OIA for political gain, they've done worse. Much worse. By just writing laws that say they can. Welcome to NZ, take care with your vote.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
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Anyway, this term and after there will probably be recurring announcements about new blocks of public land being more strongly protected. Some will go into more National Parks, more Conservation Parks, or more Reserves, which is always going to reflect warm and fluffy karma back to the government of the day.
A Government that hasn’t given a toss before. We’ll see, I hope you are the correct one here.
Let's see what next weeks conference with big oil and Gas in Auckland brings also. Is it safe? I see the online Granny story has disappeared since this morning. -
Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
Republicans in Congress could kill it just because they don’t want to give Obama anything.
Fancy finding myself cheering on the GOP. Scum. But in this solitary circumstance, useful scum.
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TPPA - US gets to write our law
(apologies if it's been linked to earlier) -
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Found the article in Granny. Oil and Gas coming to Auckland next week
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
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TPPA – US gets to write our law(apologies if it’s been linked to earlier)
Yep, that's why it's so dangerous. Team Key are going to cement that which they have been lining up in the past 6 years.
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krothville, in reply to
After all, weeks – literally weeks – of Dirty Politics coverage didn’t move the polls at all.
Because "the media" (with damn few exceptions) didn't cover Dirty Politics as much as National's dismissal of Dirty Politics.
+1
Seriously. -
Jan Rivers, in reply to
Thanks Katharine,
I'm in touch with Action Station and we worked together on their democracy campaign before the election and we are in touch about this initiative but it's at a preliminary stage yet and I wanted to test the water on this to see whether it was an attractive idea. Similarly with ECO. ECO members were involved in the recent conference as organisers and speakers.
Thanks for your helpful thoughts on this.
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krothville, in reply to
Sure, I'm not doing anything more interesting right now anyway...
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izogi, in reply to
A Government that hasn’t given a toss before. We’ll see, I hope you are the correct one here.
I'm not sure what I'd be correct about, but I'm concerned.
I've no doubt we'll be getting more land placed under higher protection, simply because that's the most useful thing to do with most Stewardship Land, it should have been done from the start, and it won't be controversial. It'll also be largely budget neutral except for the overheads to get it done, because most of this land is already being managed according to the value DOC's known that it has for the last 27 years---it just hasn't had the legal protection to go with it. I've also no doubt that the government will point to all this higher protection it's applying, and claim brownie points for caring, even if most land being protected is land that would never have been controversial beforehand.
The devil will be in the detail of what's left out, and the detail will probably be strongly influenced by the government of the day and whichever commercial lobbyists have been out on the golf courses.
At least, under the circumstances, Nick Smith is a million times better as a Conservation Minister than Kate Wilkinson ever was. I don't always agree with his decisions or his party, but he actually takes an interest instead of simply seeing it as his duty to automatically rubber stamp everything Joyce and Bridges tell him to. He's obviously had low points in his career, but in the current Cabinet (or what it's likely to be) I see him as one of the better ones.
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Jan Rivers, in reply to
Thanks Rob. I'll add this into the mix.
I'm unsure whether this could be a conventional research project. Wouldn't the polling methods, advisory organisations and spending be a closely guarded secret for all parties?
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izogi, in reply to
Hi @tussock. Yes I've no argument about the unprecedented way in which this government has stomped on all the precedents and process. I've complained about that in other recent PA threads and it also needs to be addressed, but as well as this I think outright ignoring of the law should be absolutely unacceptable. If there's no effective way to stop that from happening, the whole population of New Zealand loses.
I've found other governments depressing, but I guess I just find this one disgusting by comparison with how it runs things, ignores all the processes and precedents which have been put there for good reason, and which until now were normally treated seriously by those to whom they applied. :( In the 1980s we were apparently "not ready" for a binding constitution. It'd be nice to do something about that, even if it's just to give proper teeth to the Bill of Rights.
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Jan Rivers, in reply to
suggest adding how journalistic ethics are being acted out, reflected on and maintained in newsrooms.
Thanks. Good idea. There is some interesting information in the Transparency International 2013 report chapter on the media related to the lack of ethics training, a lack of clarity about codes of conduct, and the routine lack of disclosure of payments and in kind benefits by most journalists.
The recommendations state:Industry self-regulatory and regulatory bodies need to be more proactive in reviewing and promoting adherence to their integrity frameworks. The capacity for investigative journalism is lacking, and diversity is limited in terms of media
industry ownership and content -
Sell TVNZ , Sell National Radio and start public broadcasting again. They are too tainted for recovery.
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krothville, in reply to
Context - Hardly an attack on Snowden - just pointing out some hypocrisy.
"Bizarrely, it is somehow seen as perfectly all right for Dotcom and his associates to use stolen National Security Agency files to try to prove the Prime Minister a liar on how his Government has administered national security, but not for Key to declassify New Zealand's own files to prove he isn't a liar."
Snowden and Greenwald released *American* files. Key released *New Zealand* files. New Zealand has laws about what things can be classified and subsequently declassified and Key broke those laws in releasing the previously classified files. Context yes, but you're falsely making equivalent two different sets of information, one set leaked by a whistle-blower, the other declassified for no other reason than it was politically convenient to provide a "squirrel!" moment for the media.
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Jack Harrison, in reply to
Moment of truth. Fran O S was a cheerleader for Sara Palin. S.P was like a political litmus test. The people who vetted her , hard core Republicans, have now apologised to the American people for their idiocy.
Fran lives on planet Fran, and she is dirty. Cathy O dirty.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Wouldn’t the polling methods, advisory organisations and spending be a closely guarded secret for all parties?
Probably :) I suppose that's why I want to know. It's a good part of Hollow Men and Dirty Politics. Hager writing about it in 2008
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krothville, in reply to
Perhaps. But I think that no one has picked up on what seems to me to be a very important distinction re: the information both parties (S&G v Key) released.
Which is actually a major problem I have with the media in this country. Not picking up on false equivalences, and subsequently falling for misdirection. Pisses me the fuck off every time.
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Wonder how John Key's all important Flag Poll will go?
and if anyone will chop it down? -
Jack Harrison, in reply to
Not perhaps. Did she ever talk to wail and co, did she talk to them? She needs to come clean, stop the trickiness.
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krothville, in reply to
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I meant, perhaps, as in perhaps that's relevant to her false equivalences, perhaps it's not. I know she's a right wing mouth piece and all.
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Jack Harrison, in reply to
Dirty politics is a story of journalism gone fucked.
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I think it's much more than that.
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Jack Harrison, in reply to
Politics historically : an arena of much manipulation.
Media: The peoples journal.
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