Interesting choice of words.
Hysteria is another term that is used to undermine women
Printable View
Who cares?
Hipkins does not know what a woman is so is Ardern even a woman?
One thing for sure - she is clueless and useless.
And Hipkins is cursing her daily.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...g?format=2500w
Panda-nz - Labour shill (& BS artist) who asserts that France & Australia are going back to the stone age because they ban mobiles from schools.
Yawn.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...pg?format=500w
Hilarious cartoon in the herald this morning.
Did you see it Logen or have you stopped your herald subscription?
I wonder why Dilbert was there as he is always fighting against the corporation. I would have thought Scrooge McDuck would have been funnier and more appropriate.
David Seymour stands for COMMON SENSE.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/will...AFEU2T3JBOWTI/Quote:
“People are tired of accusations of racism. It is a very serious accusation and people who make it need to explain what it is that I have ever said or done they believe is racist,” the Act leader said.
“Racism is treating someone differently because of their race. It is a strange irony that we are called racist for criticising Government policies that treat people differently because of their race.
“There are Māori and Pacific people who are doing extremely [well] and there are non-Maori and non-Pacific people who are having problems.”
"Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson says in his opinion Act leader David Seymour - who he once described as a useless Māori - is the country’s most dangerous man"
There are a growing number of people who believe Willie Jackson is the country's most dangerous man.
Reminds me of Winston Peters and NZ first.
Thanks to a commonsense ACT supporter I know to be careful this summer as I am vaccinated. "Gilchrist apologised when comments he'd made linking a spate of drownings to the Covid vaccine resurfaced online."
Although I agree with the anti Maori stuff the selfish tax policy puts me off. Not sure that smaller govt and lower taxes and trickle down economics is the answer to everything, but neither is higher taxation and more govt waste a solution.
I suspect weak leaders pandering to the most selfish, deluded and angry people is putting a lot of people off these elections altogether.
Regarding co-governance and race base policy for hospital waiting lists. It makes me feel a bit like a second class citizen in my own country. If this is how Maori have felt for the last 200 years I can now understand why they are so angry. Unfortunately two wrongs don't make a right.
Todays N Z Herald ( fishnchip wrapper lefty rag ) has a so called cartoon, very poor taste, for balance I wonder when the cartoon artist will produce one of the labour lackies, Ive been waiting for 6 years now of this current mob and nothing produced so far. NOT CONSISTANT imo.
Always remember, " the left is a lie " !!
I’ve never understood the Left and their insistence on calling everything ‘trickle down’. Surely a prosperous society is one that pays more tax overall, and can better afford a social welfare support system. I would have thought that was evident, but apparently not. Or does the left expect that every welfare beneficiary would be living like a millionaire if so-called ‘trickle down’ worked well?
Rather that use these hackneyed terms like ‘selfish’, ‘fair’, and ‘trickle down’, perhaps the left could elaborate on what they truly expect, and is it really their expectation that a long-term beneficiary would live in the lap of luxury?
Secondly, when has Grant Robertson ever said that he needs more revenue. My understanding is that - prior to the recent post-budget slump of this year - the government had been collecting an extra $100 million a day due to bracket creep and a healthy corporate tax take. (‘Trickle down’ seemingly working well). And we know that Labour are borrowing huge amounts of money. So isn’t it a total fallacy to suggest that Labour would have delivered something akin to utopia ‘if only there was a wealth tax’?
Something about Seymours real friends including such luminaries as evil Springfield magnate Monty Burns. Yes, it’s a full-on left wing attack on ACT and National for 7 days out of every week. ‘Stuff’ you’d expect it of, but the editor at the Herald is truly gutless and steering his paper towards ruin.
(Somewhere a left winger is yowling “TREEEMAAAIIIIN!!!!)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rod-em...BQ7HLUR2NYSSI/
Fair is at a minimum paying at least the same percentage tax rate on all income compared to an average worker. Though, ideally more if a tax system is progressive.
Not making an already regressive tax system like NZ's worse.
I gather the Left want to tax *unrealised* capital gains. This is how they calculate that the system is ‘unfair’. Anyway, Lefty’s spend their whole lives fretting over ‘fair’ and yearning for revolution; with every intervention left wing governments do to try to make things ‘fair’, the law of unintended consequences kicks in and you get greater distortions and problems.
Let’s also consider that you’re average ‘wealthy’ property owner has to shoulder the burden for funding local government themselves, while the ‘poor’ renter does not. Hey, is that ‘fair’? Is it fair that an elderly person on govt superannuation sees their rates bill go up by 14% while they struggle with a cost of living crisis? What’s ‘fair’ about that?
I would be OK with National's tax plan..
IF it was funded by a CGT with a 2% one off solidarity surchage (ie wealth tax ;) ) on Net assets over $5m to cover the revenue gap until it kicks in.
Though they're not interested in any new ideas just the same old stuff we've heard for 40 years.
Their only environmental agenda is recycling bad policies.
Maybe if I answer the second question first. A capital gains tax is not a panacea for everything wrong in the world (I appreciate you are prone to hyperbole though). It is a way to broaden the tax base so we can reduce the burden on hard working people running businesses or trading their time for money as we currently tax income not wealth. Maybe we could lower the GST rate.
One thing that has been happening is that a smaller and smaller amount of people are accruing a greater and greater amount of the wealth and income from society. I would suggest they are being amply rewarded despite what David Seymour and Richard Prebble think by the fact that the disparity in wealth and income continues to grow. I don't think it can be all put down to good looks and hard work as FP might suggest. In fact if they are just collecting rents or dividends then they are probably contributing very little to society other than providing the consumption for the people who are producing the goods and services. Do rentiers add much to productivity? I want to be a rentier but I don't think holding existing assets adds much to society. maybe if I had built the business myself but not just holding wealth and collecting rents and dividends.
Rather than trickle down we could call it the wealth effect. Do you think Adrian Orr did the country any favours pushing house prices to where they are? He explained why he did it, the "wealth effect" has this made the country better off? Has the wealth effect provided greater opportunities for our young people or has it entrenched the wealth divide and reduced social mobility?
Sorry to hear you can't afford a herald subscription, it is the preeminent source of information in NZ based on the awards it earns.
I need to stop posting now, like the main stream media, constantly talking about ACT and David Seymour only makes them more popular.
I agree with you that a CGT - had it been brought in 2 decades ago - would have broadened the tax base and resulted in a significant revenue windfall that *could* (though it may not have been) have been used to build much needed infrastructure. Sadly, the horse bolted with the gains many years ago. Today we have young people buying bog standard houses through raiding their KiwiSaver and a few other tricks and stretches - with an eye-popping mortgage by the way - and finding themselves in negative equity & on the sharp end of interest rate rises.
The ‘wealth effect’ was very much central bank driven and was very much the rage after the GFC when the Fed was coming up with creative ways to stave off a second ‘Great Depression’. So we got QE, ultra-low interest rates, and the focus on creating the ‘wealth effect’ artificially through boosting asset prices. The ‘wealth effect’ was about making people *feel* richer so that they went out and kept spending. And that’s the issue and the problem with the wealth effect: you are boosting peoples wealth ‘on paper’. And when they felt richer, they borrowed more to spend on consumer goods & they chucked cars and boats and travel on the mortgage by way of a ‘top up’. But now with real estate prices falling that ‘paper wealth’ is exposed & the consequences of that spending and borrowing are coming home to roost. The risk involved in the decisions these individuals (and households) took was much greater than what they had calculated it to be.
This is the issue with taking a risk - and maybe it’s something that the left wing mind finds it hard to consider as well; todays ‘rich prick’ might be tomorrows bankrupt.
I’m not paying anything to the Herald because I don’t support their clear political bias. Nothing to do with what I can and can’t afford. The number of awards a big fish in a small pool may or may not win is also not a factor for me. Emmerson is apparently an ‘award winning’ cartoonist: I find his style to be ugly, his humour to be as weak as water, and his bias to be readily apparent and over-bearing.
Ask a first home buyer whether the "paper" gains on real estate has mattered to them.
What really f*cks me off is when central banks keep stepping in every time the "risk takers" look like losing. Instead of "risk takers" suffering any downside in NZ we have a "cost of living" crisis whereby average conservative savers in term deposits are getting their wealth stolen from them through inflation to bail out the "risk takers" and the average hard working person's life is getting tougher through the inflation tax as we are all paying to bail out the "risk takers".
And as it turns out the risk takers are doing OK as long as the asset inflation stays ahead of the cost of living crisis.
So what is wrong with being hard working, honest, successful , diligent , caring focused, generous AND rich ?
In a nutshell, the central banks extended ‘too big to fail’ to encompass global property markets, thereby co-opting a much, much larger people into their dangerous monetary game than just the cabal of banksters of the GFC.
As I touched on, central bankers and people who went ‘all in’ on property didn’t actually think there was any *risk* at all involved with the deliberate inflating of asset prices: the central banks & governments had their back, and the belief was that asset prices would never (could never be allowed to) fall. The one event that brought the whole scheme undone was the kryptonite of the system: inflation. Inflation was thought to be dead and buried, a problem in previous decades but ‘this time is different’. Then it rose from the grave and made a massive comeback, and proved that history does always repeat.
The same Middle Class that are likely to now deliver the current desperate mob of Labour Incompetents and Green Clingons a king shot of massive proportions that won't be forgotten for decades ? ;)
Bring it on .. Labour have been just begging that Greater NZ deliver up something substantial, so the Comrades
can hide in peace unseen in the bottom of the large holes & potholes around now :)
ACT's housing policy promises to scrap consent process again.
ACTS’s housing policy is definitely a backward step in my opinion. Allowing builders to opt out of building consents will do nothing to improve the quality of housing.
Builders would be able to opt out of council building consents too, which Seymour said would increase affordability and innovation. Innovation - yeah right! Cost cutting and lowering standards.
Seymour’s comment that “most of the time, people are trying to build houses in an old horse paddock where there is no biodiversity," ignores the fact that most protests are in established housing areas when there is redevelopment and intensification. As this headline in Stuff says 'Future slums' coming to your neighbourhood, residents' petition warns.’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/300817211/future-slums-coming-to-your-neighbourhood-residents-petition-warns
The ACT Party says it will allow builders to opt out of council building consents to improve the supply, quality and cost of housing.
Party leader David Seymour announced the housing policy today, which would also include scrapping the reformed Resource Management Act and using building insurance as an alternative to building consent authorities.
"Housing is still in crisis and Labour and National are equally responsible, it's time to stop demand-side policies that aren't working and set a target for supply," he said.
ACT calculated the country needed to build 51,000 homes annually for the next five years to meet demand, he said.
What we need is an overhaul of resource management law in New Zealand based on the assumption that you can do what you like on your property, so long as you are not harming your neighbours," Seymour said.
"We say if you can get it privately insured, you can build it. If you can't, maybe someone's trying to tell you something, but having the government trying to zone various parts of the country in or out and then making itself the de facto insurer is less efficient and counter-productive for everybody," Seymour said.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political...-process-again
I can't see anything against the insurance scheme. It gives developers an option, and a better option IMO. If they don't like it they can still run to the council, but I doubt many would.
"We say if you can get it privately insured, you can build it. If you can't, maybe someone's trying to tell you something"
ACT housing policy not my favourite, my concern here would low quality social outcomes because developers bear no responsibility here (incl. Kainga Ora).
Also what's going to stop insurers from ending up taking the same position as Councils and refusing to insure for "innovative design and materials"?
Seymour floats a Confidence only partnership with no supply.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/election-...ship-no-supply
Which means a minority government and brings with it a risk of govt collapse during each budget.
Luckily we don't have a debt ceiling eh? ;)
I wouldn’t be surprised if private insurance was more expensive. Insuring against the risk of something like leaky homes. Cost cutting is common practice.
Leaky-home bill estimated at $6.3b in 2010. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/leaky-home-bill-estimated-at-63b/HQNWIDY7SI6ZNPOB4RV6EO4RHY/
2014 - The systemic failure by cost-cutting apartment developers to build fire-safe apartment blocks in New Zealand's major city is being kept under wraps by secret legal settlements. Lawyers for leaky building claimants say around one in five claims for defective and shoddily-constructed apartment blocks also involve claims to fix faulty and sub-standard fire systems.
Leaky building litigator Paul Grimshaw says the problems with apartment buildings would be better described as construction defects rather than weathertightness issues.
"Leaking doesn't really cover it . . . There are fire issues, there are structural issues, there are cladding issues."
He says builders and developers have cut corners by not correctly fire rating buildings.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/ind...e-safety-deals
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/early-edition/audio/ashley-church-property-commentator-says-acts-housing-policy-sounds-good-in-theory-but-a-step-too-far-in-reality/
A view ACT's new housing policy sounds good in theory - but is a step too far in reality.
The party's unveiled its housing policy - which would see builders able to use insurance companies as an alternative authority for consenting - to speed up the process.
It aims to cut local councils out of the consenting process.
Property commentator Ashley Church told Kate Hawkesby he believes in getting rid of bureaucracy - but this policy is all over the place.
“I think there’s a risk with this that you’ll end up with shoddy housing – you'll end up with some equivalent of what happened with leaky homes back in the late 90s and we’ll be right back in that space again.”
You're missing my point, which is that it potentially just moves the same problem to a different place. Lack of innovation (there's a big area between today's building material choices and dodgy materials/methods) could still be a problem if the insurers are equally as unwilling to move away from fletchers range of products.
The polls seem pretty clear. We can expect to be governed by an ACT/Nat coalition containing a large proportion of people like Balance. I can only hope that their apparent hatred and contempt of those less able and fortunate than themselves is tempered by pragmatism.
Their veins certainly don't overflow with the milk of human kindness, and if ACT have a big influence, I fear we are heading for a harsher more punitive ideologically driven regime which will increase inequality and ultimately make us all worse off.
No government has done as GREAT a job as this Labour government of Hipkins, Ardern & Robertson of destroying the economic, social and racial fabric of NZ - period.
Go back to your cloud cuckoo land of kindness and equality via breeding parasites, beneficiaries, criminals and losers, davflaws.
Where is the Red Queen of Woke Ardern who was going to lead you to that paradise?
Tell us what she has delivered to better NZ in the last 6 years?
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...pg?format=500w
Correction - She promised 1 BILLION trees. Instead she overspent the budget by tens of billions of dollars, loading up on debt for future generations to carry - that's how generous the red Queen was.
Nobody does hatred and contempt like the Left. Leftism is all about grouping people according to various tropes & then spending your whole life wracked with envy and thirsting for violent revolution, howling about how things aren’t ‘fair’, and calling other people ‘selfish’ at every opportunity. The irony is that many of the people who spend their lives decrying capitalism actually do extremely well out of parasitically tapping into the financial benefits & higher living standards that a capitalistic society enjoys. You’ll note that not many of them are in a hurry to move to socialist utopias like Venezuela and North Korea….better to sit here in some ivory tower or public service role, absolutely milking it while lashing out at ‘selfishness’ and ‘neoliberalism’.
Kiwis out & migrants in is what is happening under Labour. Exploited immigrants living in their own filth, 40 to a house, with no food and no hope. It seems Labour have actually given up on governing, yet want to be elected back in as the government. Extraordinary that an NZ First voter such as yourself - who would obviously favour low immigration - spends all your time defending Labour and attacking National.
Hey, we just gained 19 new people for every 1000 already living here. This will show up when you try to see a doctor, when you need a procedure at the hospital, when you try to get a rental property, when you want to take a drive on one of our clogged roads, when you go to purchase goods on the CPI basket. More strain on our creaking infrastructure, more inflationary pressures. Stupid is as stupid does. We are an idiocracy.
https://www.interest.co.nz/economy/1...es-immigration
Strong arrivals of non-NZ citizens, relaxation of border restrictions & changes to immigration settings drive record net migration gain
12th Sep 23, 11:10am
‘Provisional estimates show New Zealand experienced a record net migration gain of 96,200 in the July year, Statistics NZ says.
The gain stems from net gains of non-NZ citizens, follows progressive relaxation of Covid-19-related border restrictions from early 2022, and changes to immigration settings, says Statistics NZ. The gain reverses a net migration loss of 14,500 in the July 2022 year.
The previous net migration peak of 91,700 in the March 2020 year was partly due to travellers arriving in late 2019 and early 2020 prolonging their NZ stay as Covid-19 border and travel restrictions took effect, Statistics NZ says.
“The record net migration gain in the July 2023 year follows 12 months of a fully open New Zealand border and equates to a net gain of about 19 people per 1,000 population,” Statistics NZ population indicators manager Tehseen Islam says.’
What has $20 bucks got to do with anything? You’re a pitiful broken record on this subject. And getting rid of scores of useless bureaucrats will have no impact whatsoever on the delivery of public services, contrary to boring Left wing dogma.
We are talking about the insanity of Labour’s ‘open the floodgates’ immigration boom. Get used to high inflation as a consequence: Treasury says it’ll remain high until the end of 2024 now.
———
Treasury: Migration boom has stabilised housing market, and eased labour shortages - but will worsen inflation
‘Households and businesses will feel the pinch for longer as Treasury predicts inflation will stay high until the end of 2024, and that interest rates may need to be hiked even further to get it under control.’
You’re just repeating Left wing talking points, as any propagandist would. The actual substance of ACT’s policy has been ignored by you and replaced with a simple lie. Lying has been a hallmark of Labours campaign & I don’t doubt for a moment that you are a committed Labourite. Your talk of voting for Winston is just laughable.
Is winston running on deregulating housing standards? I didn't see that anywhere.
If you don’t know how he’s personally got plum roles out of past coalition agreements then I can’t help you. I assume the other party in any debate has a basic knowledge of past events. Vote for him to lower immigration & he’ll grab the Deputy PM role instead. Vote for him to deal with the ‘treaty grievance industry’ & he’ll pocket the coveted Minister of Foreign Affairs role instead.
Here's what to expect from the Leftist Labour Coalition of HATE :
Brickbat
Goes to Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, who told Q+A’s Jack Tame that National and Act want to see Māori die seven to 10 years early. Just incredible.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...pg?format=500w
Pre-European Maori had a life expectancy of 28 - 30 years, and their ‘healthcare system’ and dietary intake were rudimentary at best.
For example:
‘Bracken fern root was an important staple for many iwi. Eating this increases the chance of cancer. The fibrous Māori diet meant people tended to wear their teeth out, which over time led to malnutrition, disease and death.’
So tell me again how ‘colonisation’ has lead to appalling outcomes for Maori….
https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-hauora-m...-health/page-1
Your post is disgraceful. It is you who are ignorant, as you seem oblivious to the fact that Maori life expectancy has vastly improved. By becoming subjects of the British Crown, Maori also saw an end of their cultural practices of slavery, cannibalism, and inter-tribal warfare. The end of these practices demonstrably vastly improved the lives of those maori who stood to be eaten or enslaved if colonisation had not occurred.
I find you posts to be deeply racist in that they do not acknowledge uncomfortable warts-and-all truths, but instead seek to perpetuate *racist* noble savage tropes while seeking to demonise people who did not come to this country with evil intent, but rather came to build a new country through hard-work and mainly peaceful cooperation with the stone-age civilisation that they found here.
Hopefully the Leftists ‘cultural practice’ of personally abusing others in deeply offensive terms will end over time. History does not support their propositions, so instead they scream ‘racist’ and seek to rewrite or erase those parts of history that they cannot deal with. This must stop as well.
Any crocodile tears shed by you over below invasion and conquest davflaws?
https://teara.govt.nz/en/chatham-islands
‘The people who became the Moriori arrived on the (Chatham) islands from Eastern Polynesia and New Zealand around 1400 CE. They had no contact with other people for 400 years, and developed their own distinct culture. They were hunter-gatherers with strong religious beliefs, and outlawed war and killing.
In 1791 an English ship, the Chatham, was blown off course and found the main island. Later European sealers, settlers and whalers arrived.
In 1835 two Māori groups, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga, invaded the Chatham Islands. They had left northern Taranaki due to warfare, and were seeking somewhere else to live. Moriori greeted them, but the Māori killed more than 200 Moriori and enslaved the rest.’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_Islands
On 19 November and 5 December 1835, about 900 Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama previously resident in Te Whanganui-A-Tara (Wellington) and led by the chief Pōmare Ngātata arrived on the brig Lord Rodney. The first mate of the ship had been 'kidnapped and threatened with death' unless the captain took the Māori settlers on board. The group, which included men, women and children, brought with them 78 tonnes of seed potato, 20 pigs and seven large waka.[36]
The incoming Māori were received and initially cared for by the local Moriori. Soon, Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama began to takahi, or walk the land, to lay claim to it. When it became clear that the visitors intended to stay, the Moriori withdrew to their marae at te Awapatiki. There, after holding a hui (consultation) to debate what to do about the Māori settlers, the Moriori decided to keep with their policy of non-aggression.
Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama in turn saw the meeting as a precursor to warfare on the part of Moriori and responded. The Māori attacked and in the ensuing action killed over 260 Moriori. A Moriori survivor recalled: "[The Māori] commenced to kill us like sheep... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed – men, women and children – indiscriminately".[37]
A Māori chief, Te Rakatau Katihe, said in the Native Land Court in 1870: "We took possession ... in accordance with our custom, and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed; and others also we killed – but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom. I am not aware of any of our people being killed by them."[38][39]
After the killings, Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori, or to have children with each other. Māori kept Moriori slaves until 1863, when slavery was abolished by proclamation of the resident magistrate.[5] Many Moriori women had children by their Māori masters. A number of Moriori women eventually married either Māori or European men. Some were taken away from the Chathams and never returned. Ernst Dieffenbach, who visited the Chathams on a New Zealand Company ship in 1840, reported that the Moriori were the virtual slaves of Māori and were severely mistreated, with death being a blessing. By the time the slaves were released in 1863, only 160 remained, hardly 10% of the 1835 population.[36]’
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scho...1-body-d5.html
‘It was in the year 1828 that the noted chief Te Rauparaha appeared on the pages of Southern Maoridom. He has been described as a man of small stature, but of a proud and stately bearing; possessing a face deeply tattooed, deep penetrating eyes, and yet a face stamped with the courage of a born leader.
He had taken Kapiti Island in Cook Strait and from there “like an eagle from his eyrie,” looked towards the South Island and laid his plans for further conquests. “He had carried fire and desolation and terminated his butcheries in horrid cannibal feasts, and left behind him a bloody, smoking trail of misery and tragedy.”
From his island pa at Kapiti he made ready his schemes to invade the South Island, and at the same time to possess himself of its coveted greenstone. He accordingly manned his fleet of canoes with Ngati Toa and Ngati Raukawa warriors, armed as far as possible with the musket of the pakeha, and made for D'Urville Island. Primitive weapons were hopeless before the bullets of Te Rauparaha's invading Ngati Toa and the victory was complete. A cannibal feast followed, and the defeated who were spared the oven were sent off to Kapiti.
Delighted with his success, the ‘Maori Napoleon’ next invaded Northern Marlborough and conquered the Rangi Tane. Flushed with victory, the conqueror was keen to subdue the Kai Tahu. Accordingly he allied himself with his savage kinsman, Te Pehi, and in the following year, 1829, landed at Kaikoura.
The chief pa of the Kai Tahu at Kaikoura was named Takahaka and stood under the terrace of the foreshore north of the peninsula, where the town of Kaikoura stretches on either side today. Te Rauparaha's victory was swift and complete, for the invaders were not expected. The chief Rerewaka and the people of Kaikoura were expecting a visit from some of their southern friends, and when they awoke in the morning in question, seeing a fleet of canoes on the beach, they took them for their friends. They were, however, soon undeceived, for the visitors fell upon the unarmed people and made great slaughter. The pa was quickly taken. About one thousand of the Kai Tahu were killed and many more captured. The chief Rerewaka was one of the captives. The pa was plundered, the Ngati Toa feasted upon the dead, and the remaining captives were taken to Kapiti. Rerewaka was tortured and put to death.’
Posting by the racist davflaws who asserts that a NZer is without culture or heritage unless they are Maori or adopt Maori culture.
Why should anyone adopt a culture which is in their opinion, inferior, primitive and violent?
Why should anyone adopt and use a language which has hardly progressed from the Stone Age in their opinion? Try teaching maths and science with te reo Maori.
Why is it so difficult for racists & do gooders/ socialist failures like davflaws to accept reality that there are superior and inferior cultures and languages out there?
Why are maori not pushing to adopt their traditional cultural practices that were deemed to be ‘dreadful’ only by the alien ‘colonists’ who apparently stripped them of their culture?
Surely slavery, cannibalism, torture, inter-tribal warfare, and the taking of land by conquest, were all seen as a completely normal part of maori culture in the relatively recent past, and can therefore only be viewed as abhorrent or ‘wrong’ through an alien ‘post-colonial’ lens? If todays maori view these vital practices as ‘wrong’, surely they are continuing to think with warped ‘post-colonial’ minds that must be further ‘de-colonised’?
I see web advertisements inviting maori students to take appropriate courses at learning institutions that will ‘decolonise their thinking’. The supreme irony being that the degrees, diplomas, and courses being undertaken as per colonialist roadmaps and conventions on higher learning, in institutions modelled on colonialist frameworks. It’s a farce from the get-go, an absurdity. ‘Let’s get rid of colonialism by embracing colonialism’.
Surely the meaning of a haka is as per the conqueror, cannibal, torturer, and slave taker Te Rauparaha intended: as a challenge and rebuke to enemies in a time of war. Take it out of that context and it simply becomes a piece of kitsch; it’s ersatz, it loses all meaning and vitality.
Maori is actually a living language, in that new words are being created all the time. Words like ipurangi (internet), motoka waka (motor car), waka motoka (motor boat). Science is ‘pūtaiao’ in maori. (It’s a living language that doesn’t allow words from other languages). And if you don’t think there are plans afoot to incorporate maori in the teaching of subjects like science, then you haven’t reviewed the proposed new curriculum.
English is also a living language. A living language that is expected to assimilate words from the maori language; words like mana, whanau, mahi, kai etc.
Here’s a science teaching resource on how decolonisation will take place. Even our cities are to be ‘decolonised’ -
https://unesco.org.nz/assets/general...sed-cities.pdf
Davflaws thank you for spelling it out so clearly in your post what we can expect under an ACT/Nat coalition. I think your comment about apparent hatred and contempt of those less able and fortunate than themselves is so true and it certainly generated more vitriol on this thread as they do not like to have to have their behaviour criticised. They are so quick to deflect the discussion away from themselves and respond with to personal attacks on posters and just ramp up their criticism of the Left or Maori etc. You are criticising their behaviour which is not okay, and they attack the person.
‘Re-indigenisation is similar to decolonisation. Some of the practical methods of decolonising will mean re-indigenising. Still, there’s an important shift in mindset that comes with re-indigenisation because it no longer centres coloniser cultures or assumptions. Instead, it focuses on how Indigenous people want to be represented and reflected.’
“In Aotearoa New Zealand, practical decolonisation, underpinned by te Tiriti o Waitangi, could be used not only to redress past wrongs but to build a more just, equitable, and inclusive society.”
- Jade Kake
“[Decolonising] requires a shift not just in what actions are taken, but also in how people think. This process can have positive results for not only the indigenous people, but for the entire community.”
- Victoria University of Wellington with Rebecca Kiddle
“Decolonizing the way we think about design and architecture and the processes by which we create the built environment begins with taking humans off the top if the pyramid and placing them as an equal part of a circle”
- Matthew Hickey
https://talkwellington.org.nz/2022/w...-in-our-towns/
https://talkwellington.org.nz/2022/r...nising-design/
I disagree with your comment that nobody does hatred and contempt like the Left unless you are identifying yourself as Left.
Most the hatred on Sharetrader comes from those with a Right perspective, and I’ve read plenty of similar comments on the Herald from readers who are National supporters. But I haven’t come across a similar sustained barrage of abuse from the Left. There are occasional comments that are over the top. I would be interested to read those comments expressing hatred and contempt by the Left if you have a source.
It would be interesting to find out just what exactly you are objecting to. All I can see are pitiful attempts to silence debate & shut down the sharing of factual information from both the historic and contemporary record.
We were told Labour was to be ‘the most open and transparent government ever’.
How history will judge this government will be that it - and its close supporters and confidants - attempted to advance a quite revolutionary agenda by stealth.
The more the agenda is brought out into the light where it can be examined, the more it will perturb and alarm a great many New Zealanders.
Well you picked out one sentence from my post in isolation. Present it with the rest of my post, and the meaning can be comprehended. My post intimates that the entire philosophy of the Left is grounded in hatred and contempt. I wrote:
‘Leftism is all about grouping people according to various tropes & then spending your whole life wracked with envy and thirsting for violent revolution, howling about how things aren’t ‘fair’, and calling other people ‘selfish’ at every opportunity. The irony is that many of the people who spend their lives decrying capitalism actually do extremely well out of parasitically tapping into the financial benefits & higher living standards that a capitalistic society enjoys. You’ll note that not many of them are in a hurry to move to socialist utopias like Venezuela and North Korea….better to sit here in some ivory tower or public service role, absolutely milking it while lashing out at ‘selfishness’ and ‘neoliberalism’.’
Peters weenie.
Some wish it would peter out.
I was getting to the rest of your post.
I did read the rest of your post earlier and I didn’t comprehend it then it expressing hatred and contempt and that is why I asked for sources, and after rereading it I still don’t.
I can understand that you feel “attacked” by some of the comments by the Left but that doesn’t mean they are expressing hatred and contempt. They have a different view to you. You are exaggerating by saying their whole life is wracked with envy and thirsting for revolution and howling about how things aren’t fair. You are attacking the people and not addressing the issues about fairness etc.
I struggle to see how the entire philosophy of the Left is grounded in hatred and contempt when it is actually about making the world a better and fairer place. In general, the left-wing philosophy emphasizes ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform, and internationalism, while the right-wing philosophy emphasizes notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction, and nationalism.
The organiser of the Greenpeace banner roll-out at Parliament writes blog posts which include a picture of Karl Marx with the wording ‘I’d rather have a revolution than a Labour government’. That is implicit violence right there.
I have no idea how many left wingers are latent revolutionaries but I do know they are on a moral crusade, convinced that the world is ‘unfair’ and must be made ‘fair’.
Fairness - or Social Justice - cannot even be defined. One persons fair is another persons unfair. It is all entirely subjective. The problem is that Leftists have their (vague) notion of what is fair and their burning desire to change the ‘unfair’ to ‘fair’, hence the shrieks of ‘selfish’ or ‘racist’ aimed at anyone who pushes back against what is really a slow-motion revolution that can never end.
Take social welfare for instance: raise all benefits by $100 per week and still someone is ‘poor’ relative to someone else. The quest for ‘fair’ is illusory, but can never end.
——
‘ Freedom’…to pursue happiness in your own way and not as part of a collective?
‘ Rights’…to own property, a business?
‘Progress’….to what? And how?
‘Reform’…..of what? To get to where?
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‘Authority’….really? How come the most authoritarian governments the world have ever seen have been in the USSR and China?
‘Order’….you prefer Anarchy? Revolution?
————
Again: Fairness - or Social Justice - cannot even be defined. One persons fair is another persons unfair. It is all entirely subjective.
Michael Novak argues that social justice has seldom been adequately defined, arguing:
‘[W]hole books and treatises have been written about social justice without ever defining it. It is allowed to float in the air as if everyone will recognize an instance of it when it appears. This vagueness seems indispensable. The minute one begins to define social justice, one runs into embarrassing intellectual difficulties. It becomes, most often, a term of art whose operational meaning is, "We need a law against that." In other words, it becomes an instrument of ideological intimidation, for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion.’[93]
Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian School of economics rejected the very idea of social justice as meaningless, self-contradictory, and ideological, believing that to realize any degree of social justice is unfeasible, and that the attempt to do so must destroy all liberty:
‘There can be no test by which we can discover what is 'socially unjust' because there is no subject by which such an injustice can be committed, and there are no rules of individual conduct the observance of which in the market order would secure to the individuals and groups the position which as such (as distinguished from the procedure by which it is determined) would appear just to us. [Social justice] does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term 'a moral stone'.[94]
Hayek argued that proponents of social justice often present it as a moral virtue but most of their descriptions pertain to impersonal states of affairs (e.g. income inequality, poverty), which are cited as "social injustice." Hayek argued that social justice is either a virtue or it is not. If it is, it can only be ascribed to the actions of individuals. However, most who use the term ascribe it to social systems, so "social justice" in fact describes a regulative principle of order; they are interested not in virtue but power.[93] For Hayek, this notion of social justices presupposes that people are guided by specific external directions rather than internal, personal rules of just conduct. It further presupposes that one can never be held accountable for ones own behaviour, as this would be "blaming the victim." According to Hayek, the function of social justice is to blame someone else, often attributed to "the system" or those who are supposed, mythically, to control it. Thus it is based on the appealing idea of "you suffer; your suffering is caused by powerful others; these oppressors must be destroyed."[93]
Ben O'Neill of the University of New South Wales and the Mises Institute argues:
‘[For advocates of "social justice"] the notion of "rights" is a mere term of entitlement, indicative of a claim for any possible desirable good, no matter how important or trivial, abstract or tangible, recent or ancient. It is merely an assertion of desire, and a declaration of intention to use the language of rights to acquire said desire. In fact, since the program of social justice inevitably involves claims for government provision of goods, paid for through the efforts of others, the term actually refers to an intention to use force to acquire one's desires. Not to earn desirable goods by rational thought and action, production and voluntary exchange, but to go in there and forcibly take goods from those who can supply them!’[95]
Psychologist Steven Pinker argues that social justice "sees society as a struggle for power, also zero-sum, among different sexes, sexual orientations, and races [and] also has a contempt for science".[96]
I would like to silence the tiresome repetitive comments such as “Labour was to be the most open and transparent government.” I don’t see that as debate. The comments are boring and childish. We know how you feel, you have told us countless times. Too many times.
But I don’t want to silence debate, which is having a reasoned discussion, and being open to seeing other perspectives. I would like to raise the standard of the discussion. You can share factual information and so can others who have a different view. I see debate as a discussion, not as an argument, a dispute or a contest to win.
I am objecting to tiresome repetitive comments, shallow discussion, lots of personal attacks, name calling, exaggerating and demonizing the other side to show how bad they are.
Moka, your comments and objections are probably reflective of many readers.
However, many others, and active posters have actually been traumatised and distressed by what 6 years of Labour government has done to NZ.
For them, to post and read what like minded posters say, is a cathartic exercise, that will lead to their healing.
I trust that perspective will help.
‘Demonising the other side to show how bad they are’.
This is all the Left ever do though. Disagree with them about the need to make everything ‘fair’ (i.e. ‘socially just’) and then will call you ‘selfish’. If you attempt to roll back any aspect of their ‘progress’ (revolution by stealth) and they will shriek ‘reactionary’. It is a rigged game because it is the Left who define what is ‘fair’ and what constitutes ‘progress’. Nobody else gets a say, even when you point out that ‘social justice’ is anything from poorly defined to illusory nonsense.
Leftism usually exists for any one person right up to the point where living standards begin to fall as a result of Leftist governments attempts to make everything ‘fair’ (which is akin to pursuing a mirage.) Many doctors and nurses leaving for Australia would have voted for Labour and ‘fairness’ at the last election. And why are they going now? Higher pay and higher living standards in a country that exploits its natural resources and is less intent on pursuing ideological clap-trap down a rabbit hole.
Ok then let's have state owned or highly taxed mining company dig up resources where the environment can still be protected.
Hmmm will ideological clap trap somehow get in the way?
Or is it better to have a tax dodging singaporean enterprse do it instead
Thanks for your comment, Getty. I agree that releasing pent up emotions by cathartic exercise is a great idea. This can be done through physical exercise, progressive muscle relaxation, making noise, acting out on inanimate objects, and journaling.
Catharsis is a powerful emotional release that, when successful, is accompanied by cognitive insight and positive change.
The term catharsis is often used to describe the experience of looking for closure, and it can also be used to describe an emotional moment that brings forth a positive change in a person’s life.
People may even feel as if they are going to "explode" unless they find a way to release this pent-up emotion.
Rather than venting these feelings inappropriately, the individual may instead release these feelings in another way, such as through physical activity or another stress-relieving activity.
However, although catharsis might relieve tension in the short term, on these threads I see it as serving to reinforce negative behaviours and increase the risk of emotional outbursts in the future. It seems to be encouraging people to vent, and giving them permission to vent and the intensity is increasing. It does not seem to be leading to insight and positive change.
You say for them to post and read what like minded posters say is a cathartic exercise. It seems to me to be bonding over a common enemy which is not a healthy behaviour.
Van K Tharp in his book Super Trader has a chapter on Removing Stored Charges. He says charges (stored feelings) will cause you to keep limiting beliefs because the charges give a belief energy. One method he recommends for releasing the feelings is the Sedona Method. The Sedona Method is available as a book by Hale Dwoskin and there are many videos on YouTube. I use and recommend the Sedona Method.
Tharp also suggests just welcoming the feeling, opening your arms and just welcoming the feeling when it comes up. Feelings are meant to pass through you, not be stored inside you. He personally has found this exercise to be quite helpful.
https://www.sedona.com/What-Is-The-Sedona-Method
The Sedona Method is a unique, simple, powerful, easy-to-learn and repeat technique that shows you how to uncover your natural ability to let go of any painful or unwanted feeling in the moment. The Sedona Method consists of a series of questions you ask yourself that lead your awareness to what you are feeling in the moment and gently guide you into the experience of letting go. Watch this short, 4-minute video.
Ya what? You do some reading (I am delighted - do some more) and come up with some precontact life expectancy estimates - which incidentally are arguably better than pertained for common people in Europe at the time of first contact -and use the fact that Maori figures have improved as an argument to deny the deleterious efffects of colonisation on Maori Health in the context of a discussion about the gross and disgraceful current disparities between Maori and non Maori life expectancies. You consistently conflate European contact with colonisation. That is what is stupid, ignorant, and racist.
Of course Maori statistics have improved. I doubt there is anywhere in the world where statistics haven't improved in the last two hundred and fifty years. But the fact that Western technology and forms of political organisation has generally improved people's lives is not the same thing as colonisation and it is ignorant, stupid and racist to deny the disastrous effects of indigenous people's loss of land, cultural, political and social hegemony that characterises colonisation as distinct from contact and adoption of technologies and practices on more equal terms.
It is possible to have the advantages of contact and the technologicaland social change that goes with it without the bad effects of colonisation, and in the context of a discussion about the current disparities in Maori health, it is misleading to conflate the two.
You cite some atrocious behavior. I could cite many further instances and incidents. You can deplore them, and I join you in that judgment, but they are not relevant to the issue of the effects of our history colonisation on current Maori health.
Cannibalism, tribal warfare, and slavery were all on the wane by the time TOW was signed, and effectively eliminated before the wave of colonisation that swamped disenfranchised, and disposessed Maori from the 1850s to late in the century. Again, cultural and social practices change over time, faster with the adoption of new technology, but the equation you are claiming between those changes and colonisation advances a false argument in the service of racist position.
You have confused my posts with someone elses. I have never claimed that European contact was bad, or that Maori were noble savages. Life in all pre industrial societies tended to be ugly, brutal and short. Read Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature", Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel", Belich's "New Zealand Wars", "Making Peoples" and "Replenishing the Earth", or dig further in the Te Ara site.
I do not demonise the settlers. My forbears on both sides came here in the 1860s as part of the wave that swamped Maori. Some of them were good people, but at least one was a very successful fraud and cheat. Some of them worked hard, but at least one was a "remittance man" sent to the "colonies" to avoid a scandal.
They did not find a "stone age civilisation" here. They came to a place where social, political, and economic conditions were changing rapidly, and some western technologies and social practices were being eagerly adopted. And they effectively disposessed and subjugated the indigenous people. They were not individually evil, wicked, mean or nasty, but the disposession had and has ongoing effects. The fact that you deny this, along with your "stone age" characterisation, is what is ignorant, stupid and racist.
The menz movement accepts rednecks and tree huggers, Covidvax refusers and mandaters, wifebeaters and nonviolent communicators, astrological energy healers and medical research scientists. All of us share common experiences as men irrespective of our personal histories and the belief systems that have developed from them. We don't have to remain isolated.
Catharsis and reintegration is an important part of what we do.
https://www.essentiallymen.net
An example of just how fed up white middle class NZers are with all the woke BS that Hipkins and Ardern with the Maori cabal have been ramping down their throats (without any electoral mandate but via their hidden & secret agenda) :
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political...maori-mentions
This is the real legacy of Ardern the useless red Queen of Woke … and we can see that Hipkins has been happily following along as long as they both not only enjoyed the office of power but are prepared to sell their souls and NZ down the drain in the pursuit of that power.
That’s what NZ has had in the last 6 years - incompetent career politicians mad for and mad with power.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...pg?format=500w
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...pg?format=500w
davflaws, how does giving back large patches of farm/forestry land help urban/the majority of Maori?
Doesn't seem to be a real solution?
Firstly, negative effects of ‘colonisation’ are a given and were not disputed by me. There are positive and negative effects in any area of human affairs that you would care to look at. In this instance, I merely started that pre-contact Maori had a life expectancy of 28 to 30 years old and in modern New Zealand Maori have a life expectancy of mid to late 70’s. You cannot get from here to there without colonisation, because colonisation is an historical fact. Shortly thereafter your dander was up & the ‘racist’ card was - invariably - played.
One of the most obvious positive effects of colonisation for todays mixed-race people (understanding that we are all a hodge podge of ethnic origins) is the very fact that the person doing the incessant bleating would not even exist themselves if not for all sides of their ethnic history converging to bring them into this world. It is demonstrably a fact that you, I, or anybody else would literally not exist as an individual human being if we our ancestors - whoever they may be - did not form conjugal unions that resulted in children.
So we have a half-Irish person dressed in part in 1840’s attire, with accompanying facial tattoo, educated according to modern standards and in a well paid job, railing against the British Crown and continuing to decry ‘colonisation’ - colonisation, occupation, Europeans coming here en masse, call it what you will.
I’ve denied nothing as regards history. Your highly dismissive, abusive, and offensive tone reeks of arrogance. Maori have often been dispossessed of the lands and lives; frequently this was done by other Maori. ‘Subjugation and dispossession’ was done by one Iwi to another. The effects upon those people being subjugated were brutal, often they were enslaved or their lives terminated. Sorry, I’m not going to wave this away. I’m not going to falsify history and state that Maori played by different rules than the British when it came to the struggle for land and resources: might was right. When each tribe effectively functioned as its own nation-state, conquest and enslavement and cannibalism all were part & parcel of Maori history pre-contact and post-contact:
‘In 1830 Captain John Stewart of the brig Elizabeth made an arrangement with Ngāti Toa leader Te Rauparaha to ferry a taua (war party) of 100 warriors from his base on Kāpiti Island to Banks Peninsula. Te Rauparaha wanted to surprise his Ngāi Tahu enemies and avenge the killing and eating of several Ngāti Toa chiefs at Kaiapoi in 1829. Te Pehi Kupe had suffered the ultimate insult when his bones were made into fish-hooks. Te Rauparaha was keen to reassert his mana over his southern rivals.’
With regards to your attack over the use of the term ‘Stone Age’, anthropologists would certainly categorise the civilisation that the first Europeans encountered as ‘Stone Age’; how else could it be described? Iron Age? No. Bronze Age? No. The trouble with people like you is that you see history itself as a ‘dog whistle’ or ‘racist’. Likewise, your constant harping on about ‘colonisation’ seems to read like you’ve undertaken some sort of sanitised course: the entire history of the world is one of people moving to new lands seeking land and resources. Maori got to New Zealand as part of this process, and then the people that got here battled each other for land and resources. Protein was scarce so there is a certain sense and logic in the fact that victims of these wars were eaten.
You say that cultural practices change over time. With this blithe dismissive statement you wave away any connection between what you call colonialism and the abandonment by Maori of those ‘cultural practices’. Cultural practices that can be viewed as ‘wrong’ only by applying different standards than the Maori applied to the inner-workings of their own civilisation.
Obviously Maori are keen to re-adopt unadulterated ‘cultural practices’ that were more common in the 1800’s that the 20th century, but I take it that there will be some that were part of their culture - for centuries - that they will not be readopting.
International socialists are calling out the racism of the NZ left.
The Labour-Greens government has for its part supported various forms of “co-governance” to benefit the Māori tribal elite. This includes supporting the creation of reserved Māori seats in local councils and on water infrastructure governing bodies, and separate “by Māori, for Māori” healthcare services. Any criticism of this divisive and anti-democratic agenda, and of the Treaty of Waitangi itself, is denounced by Labour and its supporters as “racist.”
The Socialist Equality Group opposes all forms of nationalism and racism. We call on the working class to oppose Māori nationalism, and all forms of racial identity politics, from the left—that is, on the basis of a socialist perspective. Genuine equality can only be achieved by fighting for the unity of working people of every nationality and ethnicity, based on their shared class interests, to overthrow capitalism, end the division of the world into rival nation states, and place society’s wealth in common ownership. This is the only way to put an end to racism, xenophobia and every other toxic prejudice that is whipped up by the ruling class to divide workers and keep itself in power.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/202.../kbwu-s13.html
Interesting isn’t it. Here you get a taste of the dunderheaded Marxist / Socialist world-view: any and all prejudices are ‘whipped up’ by the so-called ‘ruling class’ to divide ‘workers’ (who? Uber drivers, fruit pickers, web designers, customer service staff, the chap who delivers the mail?) It’s like history began & ended for them during the Industrial Revolution.
Various ‘ism’s’ - the fear and loathing of one group toward another - have been with us since the dawn of humanity. They certainly weren’t invented by any ‘ruling class’. The entire philosophy of the Left is built on psuedoscience and a version of history that is farcical in the extreme.
Speaking of revolution, ‘fight and overthrow’ is as ever their cry, and once everything is in ‘common ownership’ and millions have been liquidated or sent to the gulags, all our problems will be solved - apparently. So right back to the USSR or the China of Chairman Mao then, with power in the hands of a dictatorship, mass murder, & appalling living standards.
The Left and the Maori Left wing intelligentsia here is NZ will be very hurt at being decried by Socialists. I’m sure they’d like to say “pssst…we’re on your side. We’re doing by stealth exactly what it is you’re wanting. We’re selling it as ‘decolonisation’ and ‘re-indigenisation’ to promote societal fairness and more equitable outcomes.”