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Saturday, 03 February 2018, 1:24pm

Te wiki o Waitangi: Baby jokes, warm reception for PM

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was welcomed in the first day of her five-day visit to Waitangi with baby jokes and a warm reception from prominent iwi leaders.

The Iwi Chairs Forum hui was her first official engagement during her stay in Waitangi.

Ms Ardern said she was heartened by the discussions and said the hui was warm and practical. More>>

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Drugs, Blasphemy, Etc: Four Bills Drawn From The Ballot

• Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) • Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) • Crimes (Offence of Blasphemous Libel) • Accident Compensation (Recent Migrants and Returning New Zealanders) More>>

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Gordon Campbell: On National’s Leadership Rumbles

There’s a ritual to leadership changes after an election loss, and the National Party is dutifully following the script... Thus in October, Bill English and Paula Bennett were re-elected by the National caucus, unopposed. Dissent and competition was postponed, but not for all that long. More>>

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Anand Satyanand To Chair: Inquiry Into Abuse In State Care Announced

“We have a huge responsibility to look after everyone, particularly our children in state care. Any abuse of children is a tragedy, and for those most vulnerable children in state care, it is unconscionable.” More>>

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Medical Exemption: Green MP's Cannabis Bill Defeated

The bill in the name of Chlöe Swarbrick proposed amending the Misuse of Drugs Act to make an exemption for a person with a qualifying medical condition to cultivate, possess or use cannabis plant for therapeutic purposes, provided they have the support of a registered medical practitioner. More>>

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Gordon Campbell: On The Child Poverty Targets

As PM Jacinda Ardern said, targets alone are not enough. Yet it seems a good first step to create a suite of measures for systematically assessing the financial and material disadvantage of children and the progress being made towards reducing their poverty... Symbolically, it also seems a good idea to assess that progress on Budget Day, an occasion on which the economy routinely gets fetishized as an end in itself. More>>

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Support Ship Occupied: Threaten Of "Draconian" Anadarko Amendment

Police have warned climate activists currently locked onto an offshore oil exploration support ship in the Port of Taranaki that officials from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) are travelling from Wellington to charge them under the 'Anadarko Amendment'. More>>

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Up One Position: NZ Ranked Seventh Out Of 113 On Rule Of Law

The World Justice Project (WJP) has released the 2017-2018 WJP Rule of Law Index® which measures rule of law adherence in 113 countries worldwide based on more than 110,000 household and 3,000 expert surveys. East Asia and Pacific is the second-ranked region in rule of law, behind Western Europe and North America. New Zealand and Australia continue to be the top performers in the region, ranking 7th and 10th respectively out of 113 countries worldwide.More>>

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Metservice: Former Cyclone Fehi Hits

High temperatures were the story of January, with temperature records broken across New Zealand. However, February is starting in a much more unsettled vein. The remnants of Tropical Cyclone Fehi, crossing the South Island, are delivering plenty of severe weather across the country.More>>

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Earlier:
  • MetService - Summer heat followed by stormy weather this week
  • MPI: New Info Leads To A Small Change In Mānuka Honey Definition

    “[Additional] information showed that the definition for identifying multifloral mānuka honey was initially set too conservatively and would exclude legitimate multifloral honey.” More>>

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    Auckland Zoo: Galapagos Tortoise Hatchling An NZ FirstIn a first for New Zealand, Auckland Zoo is celebrating the arrival of a Galapagos tortoise hatchling, and has become only the second zoo in Australasia to breed this species. More>>

    Well Protection: Council Agrees To Temporarily Chlorinate Water

    The temporary chlorination has been approved for up to 12 months while work is done to ensure all the city’s below-ground well heads are sealed at the surface to protect them from contamination. More>>

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    Prices Stable: Lower Retail Prices Offset Petrol Hikes

    Prices rose 0.1 percent in the December 2017 quarter, Stats NZ said today. Higher petrol prices, air fares, and housing-related costs were countered by lower prices for vegetables, new cars, and a range of household goods. More>>

    Crown Accounts: Income, Spending Track Slightly Above Forecasts

    The Government’s accounts for the five months to November 2017 show revenue and expenses tracking above the latest Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) forecasts, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. More>>

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    Joeseph Cederwall: Progress On Open Government, Finally

    The Open Government Partnership features an Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) with an independent reviewer assessing each Government’s performance in order to keep them honest. The IRM for New Zealand has just released the latest draft report on New Zealand. More>>

    Gordon Campbell: On The Selling Out Of The Kurds

    Kurdish lives were expended to serve US – not Kurdish – military and diplomatic goals, in the belief that the US and European powers the Kurds had served so steadfastly in the battle against IS terrorism would be rewarded, afterwards. Instead, there is every indication the Kurds are being sold out once again. More>>

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    Gordon Campbell: on the inquiry into the abuse of children in care

    Apparently, PM Jacinda Ardern has chosen to exclude faith-based institutions from the government’s promised inquiry into the abuse of children in state care. Any role for religious institutions – eg the Catholic Church – would be only to observe and to learn from any revelations that arise from the inquiry’s self-limiting focus on state-run institutions… More >>

    Summer Reading:

    Charlotte Graham: I OIA'd Every Council In NZ...

    A “no surprises” mindset and training and advice that has taught public servants to see any media interaction as a “gotcha” exercise perpetrated by unscrupulous and scurrilous reporters has led to a polarised and often unproductive OIA process. More>>

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    Veronika Meduna: The Kaikoura Rebuild

    A Scoop Foundation Investigation The South Island’s main transport corridor will be open to traffic again, more than a year after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake mangled bridges and tunnels, twisted rail tracks and buried sections of the road under massive landslides. More>>

    Charlotte Graham: Empowering Communities To Act In A Disaster
    The year of record-breaking natural disasters means that in the US, as in New Zealand, there’s a conversation happening about how best to run the emergency management sector... More>>

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    Ramzy Baroud: Year in Review Will 2018 Usher in a New Palestinian Strategy

    2017 will be remembered as the year that the so-called ‘peace process’, at least in its American formulation, has ended. And with its demise, a political framework that has served as the foundation for US foreign policy in the Middle East has also collapsed. More>>

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    North Korea: NZ Denounces Missile Test

    Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has denounced North Korea’s latest ballistic missile test. The test, which took place this morning, is North Korea’s third test flight of an inter-continental ballistic missile. More>>

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    Campbell On: the US demonising of Iran

    Satan may not exist, but the Evil One has always been a handy tool for priests and politicians alike.

    Currently, Iran is the latest bogey conjured up by Washington to (a) justify its foreign policy interventions and (b) distract attention from its foreign policy failures.

    Once upon a time, the Soviet Union was the nightmare threat for the entire Cold War era – and since then the US has cast the Taliban, al Qaeda, and Islamic State in the same demonic role. Iran is now the latest example…More


    Catalan Independence:
    Pro-independence parties appear to have a narrow majority. More>>

     

    Howard Davis Review: An Air of Quiet Death

    Paul Thomas Anderson's seamless Phantom Thread is concerned with creativity, confrontation, and losing control - control of our emotions, control in our relationships, and especially control during times of conflict. It is also about the pleasures of haute couture, eating dinner, designing, sewing, and stitching, speeding down country lanes in a magnificent maroon Bristol 405, eating lunch, the dangers surrounding obsessive love, and above all eating breakfast. More>>


    Howard Davis Review: From Free Press to Fancy Dress

    The true protagonist of Steven Spielberg's The Post is publisher Katharine Graham, a stringently diplomatic businesswoman, reluctantly compelled to take an overtly political stance in the interests of democracy and freedom of the press. More>>


    Howard Davis Review: The Black Dog of Empire

    On the eve of England's contorted efforts to negotiate its ignominious retreat from Europe and the chaotic spectacle of the Tory party ratifying its undignified departure from a union originally designed to prevent another World War, there has been a renewed appetite for movies about 1940. More>>


    Howard Davis Review: Anger Begets Anger

    For fans of what Ricky Gervais termed "number movies" (Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, Ocean's 11, Se7en), Martin McDonagh's latest offering will be a welcome addition to the roster. The Irish playwright turned screenwriter and director has produced another quirky and darkly comic tragedy that evolves around the futility of anger and grief, retribution and revenge. More>>

    Dunedin: Corpse Plant Flowering At Botanic Garden

    The Dunedin Botanic Garden will soon be the smelliest place in the city with the corpse plant (Amorphophallus titanium) starting to produce its first, very rare and very smelly bloom. But there’s no way to know when the flower will open. More>>

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    Howard Davis: Sexting in George Dawe's Genevieve

    Compare the massive immensity of the bard's gorgeously gilded harp with the stubby metallic handle of the Dark Knight's falchion, both suggestively positioned at crotch-level. Dawe's enormous canvas invokes a whole history of blushing that pivots around a direct connection to sexual arousal. More>>

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