10 March 2021
The Great Reset meets tourism in New Zealand - ""thoughtless, heedless tourism" is no longer welcome
I now have to get my news about my own country from a You Tuber from Romania.
As you can see all the coverage has come from overseas media sites.
Nothing from RNZ, TVNZ, Newshub, Radio NZ that I could see - no headlines - just this one article from a second-tier website.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/pro/curb-some-flyers-to-nz-says-air-nz-adviser
A year ago we welcomed tourists to the country - the more the merrier - and the locals could go to hell - but suddenly, with the Great Reset, they are not welcome any more and the whole industry is described as "thoughtless, heedless tourism" and are not welcome.
What used to be a petty-minded, isolated, narrow-minded little country at the end of the world is becoming more so by the minute, with bells on.
All this in the name of "saving the planet" while the rich fly around in their private jets and local businesses are sent to the wall.
New Zealand to tax flights to get less tourists
Charge more for flights to deter tourists and help the planet, says Air NZ adviser
8 March, 2021
Air New Zealand’s chief environmental adviser has said he is in favour of increasing the price of flights to New Zealand and “putting off some people coming” as the country considers a new approach to tourism post-Covid.
In an interview with Newsroom published on Tuesday, the airline’s chief environmental adviser, Sir Jonathon Porritt, said he supported hiking the price of international flights to pay for the greenhouse gas emissions they generated.
His comments followed a recommendation by the parliamentary commissioner for the environment, Simon Upton, that people departing New Zealand (including citizens) should be required to pay a departure tax to offset the environmental cost of flying .
As proposed by Upton, the tax could add as much as $155 (£80) to an economy fare to the United Kingdom and would be used to fund climate initiatives in the Pacific.
Porritt would not be drawn on whether he supported the passenger tax, as it was tabled for discussion at Air NZ’s three-day sustainability advisory panel at the end of the month.
Related: Could Covid give New Zealand's struggling tourism sector a chance to go green?
But he said that the aviation industry urgently needed to be forced to reduce its emissions and that there was “no going back” to tourism as it was pre-Covid. Porritt said air travel was a privilege, not a right.
“Controversial though it may be, I’m in favour of putting off some people coming to New Zealand. I just don’t believe in the idea that the number of international visitors to New Zealand can grow and grow and grow without limits. I just don’t believe that is credible [or] right. So, if a higher price for the privilege of flying to New Zealand puts some people off, good.”
Regina Scheyvens, a professor in development studies at Massey University, welcomed Porritt’s comments and said it was “promising” that Upton’s proposed departure tax was to be discussed by the airline.
“We can talk all we like about carrots or incentives for the aviation industry to change, but we keep also hearing that aviation wants to get back to business as usual in many parts of the world – we just can’t afford to do that because the environmental and human costs are too high.”
In 2019, there had been about 3.9m international visitor arrivals in New Zealand –leading Upton to warn of a looming environmental and social crisis of the kind created by “over-tourism” in European cities.
Related: Could Covid give New Zealand's struggling tourism sector a chance to go green?
But there has been little political will to act given tourism’s contribution to the economy. The industry is considered New Zealand’s highest export earner; pre-Covid, international visitors were contributing $17.5bn annually.
After nearly a year of closed borders, many businesses and communities dependant on tourists from overseas are now in crisis. Air New Zealand itself posted a $72m half-year loss earlier this month.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern indicated on Radio New Zealand today that borders could reopen at the end of this year, coinciding with the completion of the immunisation rollout.
But the government was being urged to take action beforehand to ensure tourism returns at a sustainable level.
In his report tabled to parliament last month, Upton urged the government to take advantage of the pause created by Covid-19 and transition “to a form of tourism that is less environmentally harmful – and more resilient”.
Among his recommendations were to make government funding for tourism infrastructure conditional on meeting environmental criteria and iwi consultation; crack down on freedom camping; and give the Department of Conservation more teeth to protect New Zealand’s wilderness.
The tourism minister, Stuart Nash, has so far demonstrated reluctance for the idea of a departure tax to dampen visitor numbers to New Zealand.
But Scheyvens said Air New Zealand could be proactive in changing its business model to reflect the true cost of flying, “and show some leadership in the global aviation industry”.
It was an opportunity for the airline to establish itself as “seriously committed to operating in more sustainable ways” that could have repercussions for tourism, within New Zealand and beyond, said Scheyvens.
“We do now need a completely new way of moving forward. That doesn’t mean that people can’t or won’t be able to travel internationally, but it means that many of us will have to reconsider whether we can afford it.”
April 21, 2021
JACINDA ARDERN IS NOW THE WEST’S WOKE WEAK LINK
From behind a paywall – an article from the Telegraph. From their (and the Australian government’s) perspective they are perfectly correct. New Zealand, for reasons that go back 40 years, have been two-timing ever since the corrupt Jenny Shipley was in power in the late 1990’s, right through the governments of Helen Clark (who signed the first Free Trade agreement in the world with China) and John Key.
New Zealand’s chickens are coming home to roost.
Con Coughlin, Defence Editor
the Telegraph,
21 April, 2021
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s tiresomely woke prime minister, often complains that one of the biggest challenges her country faces in promoting its interests overseas is that, owing to its remote geographical location, it sometimes finds itself left off maps of the world. Now, thanks to Wellington’s naive decision to prioritise trade with China over its membership of the elite Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, Ms Ardern can expect her country’s isolation to deepen further as New Zealand faces the very real prospect of expulsion from the alliance over its pro-Beijing stance.
The New Zealand Labour leader’s preference for cosying up to China’s communist rulers comes at a time when the consensus among the world’s leading democracies is that Beijing poses the greatest threat to their long-term well-being and prosperity. It is for this reason that leaders of the other members of the Five Eyes alliance – Britain, the US, Canada and Australia – have been pressing for the group to issue a joint communique denouncing Beijing’s suppression of liberty in Hong Kong, as well as its repression of the Uyghur Muslims.
This follows the alliance’s decision last year to expand its remit beyond its core role, dating back to its formation during the Second World War, of collecting and sharing intelligence. The network now also seeks to promote “shared values” on democracy and human rights. Yet attempts by the Five Eyes to present a united front against Beijing have been thwarted by the New Zealand government’s preference for maintaining cordial ties with Beijing.
It transpires that, rather than supporting efforts by other alliance members to hold Beijing to account over human rights abuses, New Zealand has been reluctant to sign joint Five Eyes statements criticising China.
Explaining the decision, the country’s foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, says her country is “uncomfortable” with expanding the alliance’s role, and that New Zealand should instead pursue its own bilateral relationship with Beijing. At the heart of it is a desire to forge closer trade ties with China, which presently accounts for 29 per cent of New Zealand exports.
Wellington’s willingness to ally itself more closely with Beijing has also resulted in accusations that New Zealand is not fulfilling its obligations to protect smaller nations in the Pacific, which have been the target of Beijing’s expansionist designs in the region. However, by pursuing such a patently pro-Beijing outlook, Ms Ardern not only risks undermining Western attempts to present a united front against China. New Zealand’s reluctance to cooperate with other Five Eyes members raises serious questions about its continued membership of the alliance.
This is not the first time that the country’s relations with the alliance have been strained. In 2003, serious consideration was given in both London and Washington to ending New Zealand’s Five Eyes membership after Helen Clark, the country’s then Labour prime minister (and Ms Ardern’s political mentor), ordered her country’s intelligence services to scale down their cooperation with Five Eyes because of her opposition to the Iraq war.
Ms Ardern’s ill-judged preference for fostering closer ties with Beijing will inevitably reignite the debate in Western intelligence circles as to whether New Zealand, which has long been regarded as the weakest link in the alliance, should retain its membership.
While New Zealand’s geographical location makes it a good listening post for the Pacific region, the country’s national security focus is much closer to home, and mainly involves curbing the activities of Maori gangs. The calculation for Western intelligence chiefs, therefore, is whether it is worth persevering with New Zealand’s membership when the Ardern administration has a very different set of policy objectives.
Ms Ardern can also expect her pro-human rights credentials to come under closer scrutiny. Previously, Ms Ardern has declared her support for “the values of human rights, social justice, equality, democracy and the role of communities”. How this squares with her aspiration to befriend a Chinese regime that is persisting with its crackdown on Hong Kong’s democracy movement by detaining and imprisoning activists is for the New Zealand electorate to decide.
What is not in doubt is that, by seeking closer ties with Beijing, Ms Ardern risks isolating her country from allies like neighbouring Australia, whose own trading relationship with Beijing has suffered heavily because of Canberra’s criticism of China’s attempts to cover up the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as its assault on Hong Kong.
We live in an age when, as US President Joe Biden has warned, countries that value democracy need to work together to counter the threat posed by authoritarian regimes like China. By choosing Beijing at the expense of her Five Eyes allies, Ms Ardern risks eroding New Zealand’s credibility on the global political map.
May 3, 2021
COVID-19: MORE BORDER WORKERS FACE JOB LOSSES FOR NOT GETTING VACCINATED
4 May, 2021
Thirteen people working in managed Isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities may be fired for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
Since Saturday, it has been mandatory for anyone working at the border to have had at least their first jab, under the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Order.
It has already been revealed that nine Customs workers have lost their jobs as a result of their decision to not receive the vaccine.
Nine Customs workers fired after refusing COVID-19 vaccine
NZ’s MIQ system more likely to be breached than Australia’s – report
New figures provided to RNZ from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) showed 97.4 percent of the nearly 5000 people who work within MIQ have received the vaccine.
MBIE said of the 127 workers who had not yet been vaccinated, 23 were booked in to receive their first dose.
That leaves more than 104 workers. Fifteen of these were unable to be vaccinated for a health reason. Thirteen were undergoing a “process that may lead to termination”.
The statistics from MBIE showed:
57 have been redeployed
14 are on extended leave
3 are undertaking alternate working arrangements (i.e. working from home)
15 have been stood down to seek alternate employment
2 have resigned
13 were undergoing a process that could result in termination
MBIE clarified that “stood down” means they have not yet been assigned to other tasks at another site, while the employer and employee works through the options: Redeployment, changing duties, taking leave, redundancy or termination.
As a result, the number of people who lose their jobs could more than double.
Why people are losing their jobs
The Health Order which made it mandatory for border workers to be vaccinated was not intended to put people out of jobs.
The Public Service Commission’s guidance to ministries is to offer redeployment, either within their agency or across the public service as a whole, or to provide paid special leave.
An MIQ spokesperson said redundancy was the last option and that, when that option was the only one left, proper processes were being followed.
“We have been actively engaging with the Ministry of Social Development so that employers are in place to provide support to any staff who may not be able to continue their work in a managed isolation and/or quarantine facility beyond 1 May,” they said.
But not all of the nearly 5000 people who work in MIQ facilities are Government employees.
They are also hotel staff, or staff employed by contractors, such as cleaners or security guards.
Issues around redeployment or termination are therefore an issue for the respective employer, and not solely for MBIE.
National Secretary of Unite Union which represents hotel workers, John Crocker, said it could be a lot harder for private companies, maybe individual hotels, to redeploy their staff.
He wanted to see the Government intervene.
“We’re asking them to step up. They have a lot of internal redeployment processes [and] I’m sure they have got plenty of vacancies – they’re the Government, they’re a huge employer,” Crocker said.
“So we just need to make sure that they’re coming to the table with some help for these workers who can’t get vaccinated, and it needs to be timely, and these workers need to be looked after in the interim as well.”
The figures from MBIE did not specify how many of those not vaccinated or of those losing their jobs were Government employees and how many were staff of contractors or hotels.
It also did not specify if any of the 13 who had lost their jobs were unvaccinated because of health reasons.
Other agencies also busy redeploying
MBIE are not the only Government agency to have employed people working at the border.
Also involved are Customs, the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), and the Civil Aviation Association (CAA).
Other than the nine Customs staff who have been fired, there have been no more terminations.
Statistics provided to RNZ from MPI showed of the 553 front line staff working at the border, 34 were unable to be vaccinated for a variety of reasons.
But Deputy Director General in charge of MPI COVID response Vince Arbuckle said none had been terminated as a result of not being vaccinated against COVID-19.
“The health and safety of our people is central to how we operate,” Arbuckle said.
“A small number of our front line staff, who cannot be vaccinated for a variety of reasons, have been redeployed to alternative duties away from the front line.”
Meanwhile, the CAA said its on-airport based staff were not subject to the health order.
However, it stated that 100 percent of their staff working in MIQ had been vaccinated, and none had their employment terminated.
The CAA was working on its policy for how to respond when staff were unable to be vaccinated.
But employment law advocate Ashleigh Fechney who was representing some of the Customs staff who have lost their jobs, said she had been contacted by other Government employees who told her they were being pressured into being vaccinated.
“They feel that they had no other option to get the vaccine otherwise they would have their employment terminated,” Fechney said.
“I know there are a lot of other agencies out there trying to say that they’ve done this perfectly and everyone’s vaccinated.
“But you’ve got to ask yourself, how many of those people actually begrudgingly did it? Irrespective of your views on whether someone should or shouldn’t get vaccinated, was that done in good faith?”
April 24, 2021
NEW ZEALAND IS A PILOT FOR THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM’S AI PROJECT
Read the WEF document HERE
This was written before the onset of covid-19 and the Great Reset, which has seen a great acceleration in this.
DID YOU KNOW NZ IS A LEADER IN GOVERNMENTAL USE OF AI?… THERE’S BEEN A CALL FOR AN INDEPENDENT REGULATOR HERE TO MONITOR & ADDRESS THE ASSOCIATED RISKS OF THE TECH?
6 December, 2019
From theconversation.com
New Zealand is a leader in government use of artificial intelligence (AI). It is part of a global network of countries that use predictive algorithms in government decision making, for anything from the optimal scheduling of public hospital beds to whether an offender should be released from prison, based on their likelihood of reoffending, or the efficient processing of simple insurance claims.
But the official use of AI algorithms in government has been in the spotlight in recent years. On the plus side, AI can enhance the accuracy, efficiency and fairness of day-to-day decision making. But concerns have also been expressed regarding transparency, meaningful human control, data protection and bias.
In a report released today, we recommend New Zealand establish a new independent regulator to monitor and address the risks associated with these digital technologies
AI and transparency
There are three important issues regarding transparency.
One relates to the inspectability of algorithms. Some aspects of New Zealand government practice are reassuring. Unlike some countries that use commercial AI products, New Zealand has tended to build government AI tools in-house. This means that we know how the tools work.
But intelligibility is another issue. Knowing how an AI system works doesn’t guarantee the decisions it reaches will be understood by the people affected. The best performing AI systems are often extremely complex.
To make explanations intelligible, additional technology is required. A decision-making system can be supplemented with an “explanation system”. These are additional algorithms “bolted on” to the main algorithm we seek to understand. Their job is to construct simpler models of how the underlying algorithms work – simple enough to be understandable to people. We believe explanation systems will be increasingly important as AI technology advances.
A final type of transparency relates to public access to information about the AI systems used in government. The public should know what AI systems their government uses as well as how well they perform. Systems should be regularly evaluated and summary results made available to the public in a systematic format.
New Zealand’s law and transparency
Our report takes a detailed look at how well New Zealand law currently handles these transparency issues.
New Zealand doesn’t have laws specifically tailored towards algorithms, but some are relevant in this context. For instance, New Zealand’s Official Information Act (OIA) provides a right to reasons for decisions by official agencies, and this is likely to apply to algorithmic decisions just as much as human ones. This is in notable contrast to Australia, which doesn’t impose a general duty on public officials to provide reasons for their decisions.
But even the OIA would come up short where decisions are made or supported by opaque decision systems. That is why we recommend that predictive algorithms used by government, whether developed commercially or in-house, must feature in a public register, must be publicly inspectable, and (if necessary) must be supplemented with explanation systems.
Human control and data protection
Another issue relates to human control. Some of the concerns around algorithmic decision-making are best addressed by making sure there is a “human in the loop,” with a human having final sign off on any important decision. However, we don’t think this is likely to be an adequate solution in the most important cases.
A persistent theme of research in industrial psychology is that humans become overly trusting and uncritical of automated systems, especially when those systems are reliable most of the time. Just adding a human “in the loop” will not always produce better outcomes. Indeed in certain contexts, human collaboration will offer false reassurance, rendering AI-assisted decisions less accurate.
With respect to data protection, we flag the problem of “inferred data”. This is data inferred about people rather than supplied by them directly (just as when Amazon infers that you might like a certain book on the basis of books it knows you have purchased). Among other recommendations, our report calls for New Zealand to consider the legal status of inferred data, and whether it should be treated the same way as primary data.
Bias and discrimination
A final area of concern is bias. Computer systems might look unbiased, but if they are relying on “dirty data” from previous decisions, they could have the effect of “baking in” discriminatory assumptions and practices. New Zealand’s anti-discrimination laws are likely to apply to algorithmic decisions, but making sure discrimination doesn’t creep back in will require ongoing monitoring.
The report also notes that while “individual rights” — for example, against discrimination — are important, we can’t entirely rely on them to guard against all of these risks. For one thing, affected people will often be those with the least economic or political power. So while they may have the “right” not to be discriminated against, it will be cold comfort to them if they have no way of enforcing it.
There is also the danger that they won’t be able to see the whole picture, to know whether an algorithm’s decisions are affecting different sections of the community differently. To enable a broader discussion about bias, public evaluation of AI tools should arguably include results for specific sub-populations, as well as for the whole population.
A new independent body will be essential if New Zealand wants to harness the benefits of algorithmic tools while avoiding or minimising their risks to the public.
Alistair Knott, James Maclaurin and Joy Liddicoat, collaborators on the AI and Law in New Zealand project, have contributed to the writing of this piece.
SOURCE
Image by Computerizer from Pixabay
Meet Ella: New Zealand Police unveil first artificial intelligence officer
The police have unveiled their first AI officer, with hopes she’ll soon be smiling and blinking out of screens in stations all around New Zealand.
Ella, the artificial intelligence cop at the centre of the police’s new digital services, was revealed at the police national headquarters in Wellington this morning.
Ella, which stands for Electronic Lifelike Assistant, is part of two new digital kiosks police have designed to help reduce queues in stations and to provide a modern way to connect with the public.
June 29, 2021
“A WRONG TYPE OF GREEN”; FROM COVID LOCKDOWNS TO ‘CLIMATE LOCKDOWNS’
Geopolitics & Empire: Terry Wolfe: From Covid Lockdowns to Climate LockdownsAvoiding a climate lockdown
https://seemorerocks.is/from-covid-lo…
https://www.wbcsd.org/Overview/Panora…
Is a “Climate Lockdown” on the horizon?
https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/10/i...
November 7, 2021
TRUTH FROM 100 YEARS AGO: RUDOLF STEINER ON VACCINES
This is what worries me most about the jab.
This was the account by a French healer of what she experienced with a patient who had been given the “covid vaccine”.
She described treating the patient who later returned after having, without the healer’s knowledge, two doses of the ‘covid vaccine’
“I noticed immediately the change, very heavy energy emanating from [the] subtle bodies. The scariest thing was when I was working on the heart chakra, I connected with her soul: it was detached from the physical body, it had no contact and was, as if it was floating in a state of total confusion: a damage to the consciousness that loses contact with the physical body, i.e. with our biological machine, there is no longer any communication between them.
I continued the treatment by sending light to the heart chakra, the soul of the person, but it seemed that the soul could no longer receive any light, frequency or energy. It was a very powerful experience for me. Then I understood that this substance is indeed used to detach consciousness so this consciousness can no longer interact through this body that it possesses in life, where there is no longer any contact, no frequency, no light, no more energetic balance or mind.”
It is interesting to see what this healer said in the light of the prediction of Rudolf Steiner more than a hundred years ago.
” In the future, we will eliminate the soul with medicine. Under the pretext of a ‘healthy point of view’, there will be a vaccine by which the human body will be treated as soon as possible directly at birth, so that the human being cannot develop the thought of the existence of soul and Spirit.
To materialistic doctors, will be entrusted with the task of removing the soul of humanity. As today, people are vaccine against this disease or disease, so in the future, children will be vaccinated with a substance that can be produced precisely in such a way that people, thanks to this vaccination, will be immune to being subjected to the “madness” of spiritual life. He would be extremely smart, but he would not develop a conscience, and that is the true goal of some materialistic circles.
With such a vaccine, you can easily make the etheric body loose in the physical body. Once the etheric body is detached, the relationship between the universe and the etheric body would become extremely unstable, and man would become an automaton, for the physical body of man must be polished on this Earth by spiritual will. So, the vaccine becomes a kind of arymanique force; man can no longer get rid of a given materialistic feeling. He becomes materialistic of constitution and can no longer rise to the spiritual “.
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
Elsewhere:
“As today people are vaccinated against this disease or that disease, so in the future, children will be vaccinated with a substance that be produced precisely n such a way that people, thanks to this vaccination will be immune to being subjected to the ‘madness” of spiritual life. Hw would be extremely smart, but he would not develop a conscience, and that is the true goal of some materialistic circles.”
June 9, 2022
NEW ZEALAND WANTS TO TAX LIVESTOCK BURPS
The timing is immaculate given the worldwide attack on agriculture and the production of food.
For context, let’s first see what New Zealand’s contribution to global methane emissions are (from just one day):
This is what expert on Arctic ice, Peter Wadhams had to say about a previous report
PETER WADHAMS: “I FELT MY HEART SINK WHEN I SAW THIS WORTHLESS REPORT.”
“The two bizarre aspects of this are:
1. The politicians talk about taking big bold actions (in a New Zealand context). But compared with what China is doing to destroy the world, even the biggest boldest action by New Zealand will have an infinitesimal impact.
2. IPCC are doing what they have always done – willed the result without describing the means of getting there.
They talk only of reducing emissions – real climate scientists are well beyond that dead-end and into CO2 removal methods like direct air capture – nothing else can stop us from continuing to heat up.
I felt my heart sink when I saw this worthless report.”
Given the timing this has more to do with WEF/UN agendas than anything
Gas tax: New Zealand proposes plan to charge farmers for livestock burps
Farmers in New Zealand might have a beef with their local government’s latest climate change-related tax proposal.
The New Zealand government has unveiled a draft plan to tax farmers for sheep and cattle burps in hopes of countering one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gas. If passed, the plan would make New Zealand the first country to have farmers pay for livestock emissions.
“There is no question that we need to cut the amount of methane we are putting into the atmosphere, and an effective emissions pricing system for agriculture will play a key part in how we achieve that,” Climate Change Minister James Shaw said in a statement.
New Zealand has a heavily agriculture-focused economy. Over 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep live in New Zealand as of 2019, according to Stats NZ. This means that nearly half of its greenhouse emissions come from cattle and sheep, but livestock have been exempted from the country’s emissions trading scheme.
The proposed draft plan was recommended by He Waka Eke Noa, a partnership between farming leaders and the government, according to the Guardian. While select agricultural leaders support the bill, it is expected that such a proposal could create tension between the leaders and grassroots farmers, who have protested implementing environmental regulations in recent years.
The plan would also include economic incentives for farmers to reduce their emissions through changes to the animals’ diets, such as feeding them seaweed.
If passed, this draft plan would have farmers pay for gas emissions by 2025. The measures would also help the country move toward its goal of cutting agriculture-related methane emissions by 24% to 27% by 2050. The New Zealand government is expected to make a final decision on the plan by December.
Wednesday, 8 June 2022
Government Welcomes Progress On Agricultural Climate Action
The Government has welcomed a report from the He Waka Eke Noa – Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership as a milestone in New Zealand tackling emissions across all sectors of its economy.
He Waka Eke Noa has delivered its recommendations to ministers on its preferred system to price greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor and Climate Change Minister James Shaw have thanked the partners for their work, which has been under way since the Government, farming leaders and Māori agreed to a world-first partnership to reduce primary sector emissions in 2019.
“We will take time to carefully consider the report along with the upcoming advice from the Climate Change Commission on the proposals. The sector and the wider public will have the opportunity to provide their view before Cabinet makes final decisions towards the end of the year on how to effectively price emissions,” Damien O’Connor said.
“We are all committed to pricing agricultural emissions to ensure their reduction from 2025, and reiterate that commitment today.
“It’s really important that we get this right. Customers around the world are demanding higher levels of sustainability in the products they buy, so there is the potential for real competitive advantage here if we can get this right and continue moving to sustainable farming systems that are ready to respond to a warming world.
“The Government committed almost $380 million over four years in Budget 2022 to accelerate efforts to lower agricultural emissions.
“It sees us establishing the new Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions as a joint venture with business to accelerate the product development of tools for farmers to reduce emissions.
“We’re also developing specialised climate-focused extension services and expanding our support for Māori agribusinesses,” Damien O’Connor said.
Climate Change Minister James Shaw said the agriculture sector has a crucial role to play in meeting the recently set emissions budgets.
“We need to urgently cut emissions across all sectors of the economy – and that includes agriculture.
“There is no question that we need to cut the amount of methane we are putting into the atmosphere, and an effective emissions pricing system for agriculture will play a key part in how we achieve that,” James Shaw said.
The He Waka Eke Noa partnership has recommended the introduction of a farm-level levy system from 2025 with separate prices for short and long-lived gases, and a shared governance approach to recommending levy rates.
“My priority as Minister of Climate Change is always effective emissions reduction policies to meet our legislated targets,” James Shaw said.
“The Emissions Reduction Plan ensures everyone does their bit to reduce emissions. Farmers and growers are key partners in these efforts, and we will continue working with the sector as we consider the sector partnership’s recommendations.”
June 25, 2022
JACINDA ADERN’S MADCAP VISION FOR NEW ZEALAND’S “GREEN” FUTURE
I am reposting this item from August, 2021 as it relates to a piece I am researching and writing right now.
Everything speaks to moral bankruptcy and unacknowledged economic collapse
This was back in June
Ardern says climate crisis is ‘life or death’ as New Zealand landmark report calls for sweeping changes
Climate Commission recommends shift to electric cars, large-scale agricultural reform and an end to reliance on gas in homes
New Zealand has been handed a new vision for dramatic reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions – including reduced animal numbers on farms, no new household gas connections by 2025, and a dramatic shift to electric cars in the next decade.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the climate crisis was a matter of “life or death” as she spoke at the release of a new roadmap for the government’s response to global heating.
The Climate Commission, an independent body set up to advise the government, released its final advice on Wednesday – a sweeping document outlining what New Zealand must do if it wants to meet its target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and reducing biogenic methane emissions by 24%-47%.
Back in November, 2019 the government passed the Zero Carbon Bill, which looks at moving to electric cars and electric everything.
Zero Carbon Bill passes with near-unanimous support, setting climate change targets into law
The Government’s Zero Carbon Bill passed with near-unanimous support on Thursday, after National agreed to support the climate change law.
‘The Government will not hold back’: Jacinda Ardern on how NZ could go zero carbon
By 2032, new homes won’t have gas connections, we’ll be cycling twice as much, and you won’t be able to import a petrol car, under a blueprint for making the whole country carbon neutral.
What we would get under the plan is lower household energy bills (for most people), better health, quieter streets, cleaner water and better biodiversity, because swathes of land will have been planted in government-subsidised native trees.
The Climate Change Commission has released its draft plan for slashing New Zealand’s emissions, warning we must move faster if we’re to do our share internationally and get carbon neutral by 2050.
This is Green Party leader and Minister of Climate Change, James Shaw, who unlike his predecessors does not come from a background of environmental activism but from the corporate sector. It shows, as in this message from the climate change talks in Paris.
In recent days the IPCC has come out with the most dire report about the climate:
Climate change: What the new IPCC report says is in store for New Zealand
The latest report from the UN’s climate change body is being described as “frank and blunt”, “sobering and authoritative” and “nothing but bad news” by Kiwi scientists who have read it.
One even said they felt “a little sick” at times, and that it was time for politicians to “do their job” and fix it.
The epic AR6 Climate Change 2021 – Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is nearly 4000 pages, bringing together years of research from climate scientists from around the world
New Zealand climate change response criticism ‘unfair’ – Ardern
Prime Minister, Jacinda Adern who earlier called climate change ‘life or death’ was defensive and stated:
“It would be unfair to judge New Zealand based on what essentially were targets that were set some time ago when we are now undertaking an incredibly heavy piece of work to lift our ambition and lift our emissions reductions.”
“We already have made tough and big decisions. The Zero Carbon Act. The decision we have made to bring agriculture [into the Emissions Trading Scheme] – no other country in the world has done that, but by doing that we maintain our position as being world-leading and trying to tackle some of the by-products from food production.”
The Greens want to go even faster and say the report is a “wake-up call”:
“I do think that we could go further faster … we will be coming out to the public in the next couple of months and talking to them about the plans that we’ve got.
“I do hope that last night’s report helps to galvanise those members of the public who are concerned about climate change because you can see there is also some resistance out there.”
By contrast, National Party leader Judith Collins, when asked about the IPCC report, used it as an example to continue to criticise the government over its handling of energy supply problems.
“I thought that it showed just how badly this government’s handled it. The IPCC for instance and the Climate Change Commissioner have been very clear that natural gas is a transition fuel, it is also very important to New Zealand,” she said.
“Our renewables have gone down while our coal burning has gone up.”
Although the National Party is at its heart only reluctantly embracing climate change and reducing everything to Business-as Usual (something that is increasingly difficult under international pressure the Labour Party is playing a game of “let’s pretend we’re moving” while either doing nothing or actually moving to destroy the entire fabric of New Zealand society after a generation of neo-liberal policies that have been massively destructive.
Despite their overall political position they are absolutely correct in much of their critique. Firstly, Labour and the Greens want to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles and have us all driving electric vehicles as well as phase out clean-burning natural gas and move to all-electric.
New Zealand has had sustainable sources of electricity in the form of hydroelectric power (albeit with large ecological cost) for as long as I have been alive. Despite various crises with hydroelectric power generation due to weather events, we have always had enough with some level of coal generation in the North Island.
You do not have to be a specialist in the field to realise that without the government’s new ‘go electric’ policies we already have a problem; there is a high likelihood that because of the very thing they claim to be fighting, there is going to be less snow in the future to fill the hydro lakes. Just as we have the government touting electric we have this stark reality
New Zealand imported more than a million tonnes of ‘dirty’ coal last year
and
Climate change: New Zealand burns most coal for electricity in nearly a decade
New Zealand burned more coal for electricity production in the first quarter of this year than any quarter in nearly a decade.
The revelation comes the day after a “transformational” climate change report that slated successive governments for its inaction on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that continue to rise.
The latest New Zealand Energy Quarterly for the period January-March 2021, released today, showed the amount of coal burned for electricity production had more than doubled from the previous quarter to nearly 430,000 tonnes.
This was the highest burned in a quarter since 2012, and helped bring the overall share of renewable energy down to 79 per cent, three percentage points lower than this time last year.
The government rejects the obvious truth of what the Nats are saying the Government was stockpiling coal as a result of the drier La Niña weather pattern New Zealand is currently experiencing.
NZ’s coal imports highest in 14 years, but Energy Minister berates ACT’s ‘utterly false’ suggestion why
In other words, they are blaming the situation on….climate change!
“It’s utterly false to try and suggest that the current stockpiling of coal by electricity companies to manage the country’s dry year storage problem and production decline of an existing gas field, has anything to do with the ban on future exploration of oil and gas,” she said.
“This idea was debunked at the election campaign when the National Party suggested it, and it’s still false. It is a market response to current conditions.”
She then goes into a convoluted argument that there are “specific factors” that have led to:
“a small decrease in the share of electricity generated from renewable sources, with the electricity market responding by utilising thermal generation (including coal) to help conserve water in hydro lakes and manage supply security ahead of winter. increases.”
A kind of “the dog ate my breakfast” sort of argument.
The people who administer the electricity market blame “low hydro lake storage levels and less wind.”
“With below-normal rainfall, hydro generation was down 9 per cent on the back of lower hydro lake storage levels and generators preparing for a drier than usual winter.
This factor, coupled with a tight gas supply which saw an 18 per cent drop in the past year, saw higher coal imports to meet demand for electricity generation.”
If this is the case how are things going to be when they have everyone driving electric cars? It is clear that it will collapse the energy infrastructure.
While we have lower lake levels, an 18 % drop in the gas market leading to more burning of dirty coal, the very thing, if we are serious about “combatting climate change” a cold patch in the country has led to crisis:
National demand for electricity reaches all-time high, cities plunged into darkness to reduce load
Cities and towns across the North Island were plunged into darkness on one of the coldest nights of the year, after nationwide demand for electricity reached an all-time high.
Power generation failed to meet demand across New Zealand on Monday evening. Tens of thousands of households were affected by mass power cuts as a result.
The national grid operator Transpower declared a “grid emergency” at 7pm and asked local distribution companies to reduce load on their networks, a spokeswoman for the organisation, Deborah Gray, said.
Widespread power outage in the middle of winter – thousands affected
Electricity authorities announced that demand for power had reached “an all-time high”, and they did not have enough generation in the system to maintain that demand.
Up to 20,000 households were plunged into darkness and, in some cases, left without heating after high winds brought down power lines and cold weather saw power use surge beyond generation capacity.
In the midst of all of this PM Jacinda Adern wants to give rebates for the importation of electric cars and to impose penalties on utes, used by farmers who are the backbone of the New Zealand economy as it is. Just about every farmer and every tradesman uses utes.
Jacinda Ardern considered exemption for utes in electric car incentive scheme but ruled it out
In a bid to increase the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs), the Government will give rebates or discounts of up to $8625 for newly imported electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles from July 1. Used EVs will fetch discounts of up to $3450.
The discounts will only apply to vehicles below $80,000 and the vehicle must have a three-star safety rating. The second-hand market will not be affected.
Toyota NZ shuts down PM’s claim company is ‘talking about bringing in EV utes’
The Government has come under fire from farmers and tradies who say the incentive scheme is an unfair tax on them as no electric alternatives are available for their work vehicles.
“We gave them really strong consideration and we’re very genuine in that, because we recognise that there wasn’t an alternative in the market right now,” Ardern told reporters on Wednesday.
But Ardern confirmed she’s ruling out exemptions for utes.
And then we have the question of natural gas. Not only Judith Collins is saying it but a friend of ours who is perhaps the country’s foremost spokesperson and activist on energy affairs, says natural gas is a very good form of energy, especially in a transition period.
Yet this is what the government wants.
Choosing gas for new homes could be money down the drain, says Consumer NZ
For housing, there would be no new natural gas connections to the network or bottled LPG connections after 2025. Ageing gas heating and hot water systems would have to switch to electricity or biomass when they are replaced.
Existing natural gas supplies in buildings would be phased out by 2050.
If Jacinda Adern and her friends have their way there are two possibilities:
we will be forced to burn coal to make up the shortfall caused by banning gas, or.
the entire energy infrastructure will implode, almost, it seems, by design.
And yet what we have is a globalist, if not communistic “solution” imposed on us all on top of a generation-long neo-liberal agenda which has seen (and continues to see, because that is the goal of the globalists) a transfer away from national ownership which destroys both the resilience and independence of both the nation as a whole and of communities.
Refining NZ shareholders vote to close Marsden Point refinery, transition to import-only fuel terminal
Shareholders of the New Zealand Refining Company have voted almost unanimously in favour of approving the company’s transition to becoming an import-only fuel terminal.
Refining NZ has been New Zealand’s only oil refinery since it was established in 1961, but after a decline in refining margins the company initiated a strategic review of the business in April 2020.
Shareholders voted on Friday to determine the future business model and capital structure, with CEO Naomi James confirming the results this afternoon.
I am not the only one to see the consequence of this:.
Marsden Point closure: Shutting New Zealand’s only oil refinery could expose country to fuel security risks – report
Plans for a $250m shutdown of the country’s only refinery are already well advanced. Photo credit: File Image
The government has been warned that closing down the country’s only oil refinery could expose New Zealand to fuel security risks.
The Energy Minister said these risks are not significant, but a consultant’s report to the government says the opposite.
The risks centre on reconfigured supply chain, meaning the country would hold significantly less fuel because it held no crude awaiting processing.
Officials have sought a review of the risks to a reconfigured supply chain from a pandemic, natural disaster or regional war.
After a generation of privatisation and neglect, a polluting paper mill is closing, further adding to the destruction of resilience
Kawerau Tasman paper mill closes amid questions on contamination
Kawerau’s Tasman paper mill has closed amid questions about what contamination it leaves behind.
Freshwater campaigner Tipene Marr, of Ngāti Rangitihi, said owner Norske Skog should have to produce an environmental audit before it leaves.
And another timber mill has gone:
Coronavirus, Carter Holt Harvey Whangārei mill closure ‘couldn’t be worse’ for industry
Workers at Carter Holt Harvey’s Whangārei mill are “disappointed” with the company’s announcement confirming the mill’s closure, union representatives say.
On Monday, CHH Timber chief executive Clayton Harris confirmed a final decision had been made to close the mill, with the loss of 111 jobs, after consultation started in January.
The closure was disappointing and a “double-whammy” for the industry which is already under stress from coronavirus, said Northern Amalgamated Workers Union secretary Maurice Davis.
And Maori attempts to fight a water bottling plant by a Chinese company have failed.
Not only was this allowed to happen it was encouraged:
Chinese water giant Nongfu Spring was courted by Government officials as public opposition grew
Government officials aggressively pursued a Chinese water bottling giant to invest in New Zealand, even while public opposition grew. Now, multiple legal challenges hope to stem the rapidly growing industry. Charlie Mitchell reports.
One of China’s wealthiest men was being welcomed onto a marae in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
Shanshan Zhong had plans for a small kiwifruit orchard 10 minutes away, in Otakiri, a rural area outside Whakatāne.
After the powhiri, Zhong met with kaumātua of the local iwi, Ngāti Awa, and told them his company would be good for the community – and mana whenua would be offered jobs first.
It marked another stop on what had been a short but swift effort to expand his gigantic business outside of China, a plan that had brought him to this unlikely place.
All of this has been to ignore Agenda-21 and Agenda 2030 which the government is following to the letter while for the public it is treated (like the WEF’s Great Reset) by the government as a conspiracy theory.
Here is a piece I wrote some weeks ago.
HOW THE NEW ZEALAND LOCAL AND NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS ARE IMPLEMENTING THE UN AGENDA 2030 GOVERNMENT
I would like to finish with the words of Guy McPherson which remain true although I learn that after rejecting tech-fixes for years has now embraced one in the form of a system of mirrors to reflect light back into space.
All of this talk about “rethinking the world economy” and reducing greenhouse emissions is just fantasy and Prof.McPherson explains why.
THE WINTERTIME MELTING OF SNOW IN THE SOUTHERN ALPS AND OTHER REFLECTIONS
July 18, 2022
Unless you are talking about electric cars and windmills you are a climate change denier
I am returning to the theme of weather as its relates to climate change and how it is reflected in government policies and media statements.
Let me start with New Zealand
New Zealand
This rose-tinted article from Radio New Zealand appeared this morning.
Never mind the fact that New Zealand is burning coal as if there was no tomorrow to keep the lights on (that’s even before we put a whole fleet of electric vehicles on the road!)
Future of New Zealand energy set to look very different
The country’s shift to renewable energy is unlikely to see the lights go out more often.
New Zealand is going through its own extreme weather at the moment.
Weather: ‘Extreme caution’ advised as heavy rain, strong winds forecast for South Island
Waka Kotahi is urging South Island motorists to be extremely careful today with heavy rain and strong winds forecasted.
Heavy rain and strong winds are lashing most of the South Island, with at least one road closed because of the avalanche risk.
Overnight, 113 millilitres of rain fell at Milford Sound Airport.
MetService says the wet weather is just getting started as a storm makes its way up the South Island.
It has issued an orange warning and says an active front from the Tasman Sea is moving north east over the island today and tomorrow, bringing heavy rain to the western and central parts of the South Island, and severe gales to the east.
***
But there is something that should stand out.
Weather: 190kph gusts in parts of South Island, 3000 lightning strikes recorded
Gusts of up to 190kph have been recorded in the South Island, with more than 3000 lightning strikes lighting up the sky along the mountain ranges.
MetService issued heavy rain and strong wind warnings for many regions across the South Island, with Canterbury lakes and Westland, south of Otira, likely to be lashed with up to 450mm of rain.
It is THIS!
An extra warning that, combined with snow melt, the rain in the Canterbury lakes area could cause significant spillover.
Snow melt from the Southern Alps in winter!!!
What happens when the snow pack disappears and there is nothing to feed the hydro lakes, which are at a record low.?
But it would be very hard to find that, in addition to this 2014 report by our foremost climate, Jim Sallinger, researcher (previously sacked by the John Key government from his job at NIWA for speaking out without permission), that is so obscure one would have to be actively looking to find it.
New Zealand’s Southern Alps have lost a third of their ice
Just about everything we see from government or media is social engineering.
Climate reporting (as with the RNZ item above) is now reporting on alternative energy, electric cars and the like; it is nothing to do with the climate.
The rest is climate change denial,,,
Unless it has something to do with sea level rise.
For most of the 10 years I have been doing this blog has been a struggle against Radio New Zealand and the media for totally failing to tell the full truth about rapid climate change.
Nothing has changed.
The weather forecasts are bland and fail to make any connections.
There is nothing about anything that matters.
Take the issue of snow on the Southern Alps.
Apart from the above-cited article (which evaded my attention until a few minutes ago), the only items I have seen discussing this have been an item from the New York Times and a write-up by scientists that was published in an AUSTRALIAN publication, the Conversation (and reposted in the New Zealand Herald).
Now, let’s shift over to Europe and the United Kingdom
THE UNITED KINGDOM
For a while now, there have been headlines about a lingering heatwave and wildfires in Europe and stories like this:
Tomorrow Met Office predict mercury could climb to 107F (41C) making Britain hotter than the Sahara Desert
The Met Office has issued the UK’s first ever red weather warning for heat with records expected to be broken
Rail bosses and the AA have issued dire warnings to commuters and motorists about the impact of the heat
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said people should be resilient enough to be able to ‘enjoy the sunshine’
And dire warnings such as this…
Yesterday, I looked up temperatures on the internet and there were predictions of 40C on Sunday.
One of the first things I did when I woke up this morning and there were no signs of any terribly high temperatures anywhere.
I saw Alexander Mercouris reporting from from his room that I wouldn’t mind betting is not air-conditioned. and there were no signs of distress, no beads of sweat.
I have seen nothing on social media saying how bad things are.
We all know how the Brits like to talk about the weather!
Here is a report of what is Britain’s hottest temperatures reported in 2003 (unless that record is broken tomorrow)
My experience has told me not to believe forecasts or what the media writes. Unless it affects my safety I don’t take weather forecasts seriously any more.
I do not even take the reported temperatures on Google, Metservice etc. since I learned (from the horse’s mouth) that these are not actual temperatures but are based on A MODEL, on what they expect to see
EXTREME WEATHER
For several years I religiously reported extreme weather events in the hope that the sheer volume of events from all over the globe would persuade people that we have rapid climate change.
Of course, those who chose to DISbelieve were not swayed.
Those people would never be swayed by any evidence…ever. There is no doubt that we are experiencing weather chaos all over the world as demonstrated by the following items.
Europe
China
Australia
State of emergency declared in American Samoa due to severe weather conditions
The full impact of huge sea swells across American Samoa and the Cook Islands is only starting to come to light.
I gave up on the weather reporting and determined to only reproduce items that were based on WHAT IS, rather than speculative items about what might happen if we do not follow Agenda 2030, the Great Reset etc. and immediately bring down greenhouse gas levels even if it means destroying the lives of people while the elite continue to fly around the globe in private jets.
There are the people that are total deniers who tell us nonsense like the Arctic ice is at record levels.
Then there are the people on the other side.
Almost without exception, these people are on the other side of the fence when it comes of just about ANYTHING that is of importance and I wouldn’t mind betting that a greater proportion of these people have had the jab than the general population. How can I take these people at face value?
How can I take anyone at face value?
I have to take things on a case-by-case and evaluate what they say according to many factors such as the language used and my own knowledge on the subject.
I have become more open-minded.
In that spirit, in the dirth of anything else of value decided to listen to what Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist, well -known climate change skeptic and brother of Jeremy Corbyn.
Man is trivial compared to nature and cannot change climate – astrophysicist
For reasons that should be obvious there are few (or no) peer-reviewed papers on the subject that I can see.
What researcher who wants to maintain their funding (and their tenure) is going to put their name to such a paper? So we have to go by internet articles such as the following that tends to compromise their credibility in the minds of most.
Essay: Solar cycle wave frequency linked to jet stream change
It’s not the heat It’s the humidity
At the very least, I reject the very idea that the likes of Piers Corbyn or the late David Bellamy, being cancelled and their livelihoods ruined by the likes of the BBC which lies for a living about just about everything.
I have rejected the dualistic, ‘either-or’ mind that drives much of the climate change agenda and there is so much that could destroy our civilisation and wipe humans off the earth that I am not going to opt for a “one size fits all” that in its mainstream version (not the reality of the world) goes with an agenda that is likely to end with you and I being slaves (at least, those of us that survive).
In the meantime, I wonder why, when I think we know the truth the mainstream has to LIE to us – about everything.
***
August 5, 2022
UNREPORTED: EXTREME WEATHER IN NZ AND A VOLCANO OFF TONGA HEATING THE ATMOSPHERE
This morning at 3 am, my partner Pam caught the mountain weather forecast and in it they were warning that their would be significant snow melt in the Southern Alps.
That is in early August (the equivalent of early February in the Northern Hemisphere
But there has been nothing, but NOTHING to reflect this in the NZ lamestream media.
This is all I could find.
MetService is warning of a front moving northeast over New Zealand that will bring heavy downpours and northwest gales to the South Island and lower North Island.
“Over 200mm of rain could fall in the ranges which could cause rivers that are already running high to rise further,” MetService meteorologist Stephen Glassey said.
Then this bit of news appeared on a radio item but has not been reflected in any of the print media
https://niwa.co.nz/climate/monthly/climate-summary-for-july-2022
In fact, there is absolutely ZERO about ANYTHING of consequence in the NZ media. I have never known, in the midst of earthshattering events for the news to be so venal and inconsequential.
This but of news of something in our backyard about something that could not be more important appeared in international media.
Never mind the further heating of the world’s atmosphere – we have much more important things to talk about such as tax policy and village politics.
Tonga’s volcano sent tons of water into the stratosphere. That could warm the Earth
When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent the equivalent of more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth of water into the stratosphere, researchers say.
Tonga Geological Services
The violent eruption of Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano injected an unprecedented amount of water directly into the stratosphere — and the vapor will stay there for years, likely affecting the Earth’s climate patterns, NASA scientists say.
The massive amount of water vapor is roughly 10% of the normal amount of vapor found in the stratosphere, equaling more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said atmospheric scientist Luis Millán, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Millán led a study of the water the volcano sent into the sky; the team’s research was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
The volcano sent vapor and gases to a record height
The Jan. 15 eruption came from a volcano that’s more than 12 miles wide, with a caldera sitting roughly 500 feet below sea level. One day earlier, Tongan officials reported the volcano was in a continuous eruption, sending a 3-mile-wide plume of steam and ash into the sky. Then the big blast came, sending ash, gases and vapor as high as 35 miles — a record in the satellite era — into the atmosphere.
One day after an intense eruption by the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, an astronaut on the International Space Station took this photograph of the gargantuan plume.
NASA
Drone aircraft and other video from that day show the dramatic scale of the blast, as the volcano launched an incredibly wide plume into the sky. The intense eruption sent a pressure wave circling around the Earth and caused a sonic boom heard as far away as Alaska.
The huge amount of water will likely raise temperatures
Earlier large volcanic eruptions have affected climate, but they usually cool temperatures, because they send light-scattering aerosols into the stratosphere. Those aerosols act as a sort of massive layer of sunscreen. But since water vapor traps heat, the Tongan eruption could temporarily raise temperatures a bit, the researchers said.
It normally takes around 2-3 years for sulfate aerosols from volcanoes to fall out of the stratosphere. But the water from the Jan. 15 eruption could take 5-10 years to fully dissipate.
Given that timeframe and the extraordinary amount of water involved, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai “may be the first volcanic eruption observed to impact climate not through surface cooling caused by volcanic sulfate aerosols, but rather through surface warming,” the researchers said in their paper.
NASA says the data for the study came from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on its Aura satellite, which measures water vapor, ozone, aerosols and gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
The volcano interrupted the ‘heartbeat’ of water in the stratosphere
The Jan. 15 eruption emphatically disrupted annual water patterns in the stratosphere (which also holds most of the atmosphere’s ozone).
The normal mechanism by which water risesinto the stratosphere is so reliable that researchers refer to it as a sort of tape recorder, marking annual temperature cycles through alternating bands of dry and moist air rising from the tropics.
January is normally the middle of the dry period in that seasonal cycle — but then the Tongan volcano erupted in the South Pacific Ocean, suddenly injecting a huge amount of water high in the atmosphere.
“By short-circuiting the pathway through the cold point, [Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai] has disrupted this ‘heartbeat’ signal” in the planet’s normal atmospheric water pattern, the researchers said.
They recommend closely monitoring the water from the volcanic eruption, both to predict its impact in the near term and to better understand how future eruptions might affect the planet’s climate.
The NZ media has nothing to say about this. On looking, I found one outlet had a story – this.
Remotely piloted underwater vessel returns from surveillance mission to Tongan eruption site
An unmanned, remotely piloted underwater surveillance vessel sent to observe the impact of the Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha’apai eruption in Tonga has returned with evidence of ongoing volcanic activity inside the crater.
Sea-Kit International’s “uncrewed surface vessel” USV Maxlimer was dispatched in June, and has brought home a plethora of data and photos to fill important gaps in our understanding of the site and surrounding ocean.
“Early data shows ongoing activity within the caldera, though it is too early to tell if it is due to continuing eruption but at a reduced intensity, or hydrothermal venting driven by cooling lava, or both,” said oceanographer Sharon Walker, from the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
****
October 20, 2022
NZ FARMING IS UNDER ATTACK
All this is because New Zealand is responsible for 0.2% of global methane emissions.
For that our agriculture sector, admittedly based on monoculture and highly polluting has to be destroyed.
NZ Farming Is Under Attack. Support the Groundswell Protests and Support Farmers.
https://www.groundswellnz.co.nz/campaigns/were-not-going-to-take-it
This is discussed by Neil McCoy-Ward
NZ Farmers Are At Breaking Point!
New Zealand farmers protest world’s first livestock ‘burp tax’
Farmyard vehicles disrupted traffic in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and other cities to protest emissions tax
Travelling in convoys of tractors and pickup trucks, farmers in New Zealand have gathered in cities and towns across the country to protest against the government’s plan to be the first country in the world to tax emissions from farm animals.
Lines of tractors and other farmyard vehicles disrupted traffic in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and other cities on Thursday, with the protesting farmers demanding that the country’s centre-left government back away from the so-called “burp and fart” tax.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern unveiled plans last week for the world’s first levy on agricultural gases and biogenic methane, which mainly comes from burps produced by New Zealand’s estimated six million cows and 26 million sheep.
Ardern has argued that the tax is needed to slow global warming and could even benefit farmers if they can command a higher price for more climate-friendly meat.
However, New Zealand’s farmers are up in arms, with thousands of agricultural workers joining Thursday’s protest, called “We’re not going to take it”.
Bryce McKenzie, cofounder of Groundswell New Zealand, which organised the protest, said the tax threatened the viability of local farmers.
“The government’s ideological commitment to punitive and counterproductive emissions taxes on food production is an existential threat to rural communities,” McKenzie said.
While the government hopes the tax will reduce livestock emissions by 20 percent, McKenzie argues that any “reductions will be replaced by less efficient foreign farmers”.
Methane is less abundant and does not linger as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but it is a much more potent warming agent. Scientists believe methane is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global rise in temperatures despite being a fraction of the greenhouse gas mix.
Local farmer Mark Chandler told state broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ) that the level of compliance related to the proposed livestock emissions levy was punitive.
“There’s a whole raft of things that are coming in that are just making life impossible,” he told RNZ.
“For a small-to-medium farmer you’re going to have to do weeks and weeks of administration and compliance, and it just doesn’t work — we didn’t get into this game to do that.”
A counterprotest was also held in Wellington on Thursday by locals who said the agricultural sector needed to do its part to address climate change.
Valerie Morse told RNZ that people are tired of subsidising destructive and polluting agricultural methods and that farmers needed to be part of the solution to climate change by adopting sustainable production methods.
Environmentalists also said that farmers needed to adapt.
“This country’s rural and agricultural sector has been hard hit by floods, intense storms and droughts this year alone,” said Emily Bailey of Climate Justice Taranaki.
“It’s only getting worse,” she said.
“Farmers can either adapt and rapidly bring down their emissions or they, and everyone else, will suffer more.”
***
January 18, 2023
MEDIA, ‘DISINFORMATION EXPERTS’ CAUGHT SPREADING LIE TO BAN MAGAZINE IN NEW ZEALAND
Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
Listen to “Episode #450 – ‘Banned in New Zealand'” on Spreaker.
No sooner did the new year ring in, did the corporate state’s cancel culture machine kick into high gear, finding a fresh new target.
Not satisfied with regulating speech on the web, the establishment in New Zealand has set its sights on canceling print publications as well, this time for the alleged crime of spreading ‘dangerous conspiracies.’ The gears of censorship have a problem though. As tired epithets like ‘conspiracy’ continue to lose their potency, the cancelation machine is now having to resort to openly lying about content they seek to ban.
In their bid to protect the public from “harmful” speech, leading the charge was mainstream media outlet Stuff.co.nz, who dutifully alerted the public on January 3rd that they might be exposed to some dangerous text found in the periodical section of one of the country’s leading retail chains.
In his article,”Whitcoulls stocks magazine peddling mosque terror attack conspiracy,” senior reporter, Geraden Cann, explained how during a routine counter-disinformation reconnaissance mission to a local newsagent, either himself or a colleague (it’s not clear which), spied the offending publication: the latest issue of New Dawn Magazine, now targeted for removal from the store’s shelves.
According to Stuff, the article in question is a short piece located in the back of the magazine on page 70, entitled, “The Strange Story of Brenton Tarrant,” by writer T.J. Coles (see PDF of full article below), which Cann claims is “peddling a number of anti-vax conspiracies and insinuating the Christchurch mosque terror attack was a false flag operation.” The key word here is insinuating, which, according to Stuff, meets their fluid criteria for a nationwide ban.
Interestingly, the T.J. Coles article is not listed on the cover of the issue, so it’s possible what may have first triggered Stuff was the cover – an image poking fun at masks and jabs, and the well-worn “Trust The Science” mantra; or, maybe the mention of an interview with antipodean bête noire, Australian celebrity chef and “antivaxxer” and “conspiracy theorist,” Pete Evans (also targeted for cancelation by both the Australian and New Zealand media). It’s difficult to say, but the answer probably depends on which talking point garners more political outrage.
Stuff’s intrepid reporter didn’t stop there, and proceeded to travel around the city to check if any other stores had dared to stock the controversial publication. Cann was appalled to discover that, “Lambton Quay store in Wellington had copies of two issues of New Dawn magazine for sale this week. It was also spotted in another Wellington store, Johnsonville, and at New Lynn in West Auckland.”
It’s now clear that Cann’s article was the catalyst for initiating a much wider and highly organised public mobbing campaign – which was meant to target all bookstores and newsagents in New Zealand, beginning with one of the nation’s largest such retailer, Whitcoulls. This was then followed by the usual reflexive activist swarming and ‘brigading‘ on social media, first by disseminating Stuff’s hit-piece, followed by a wave of outrage from various activist accounts in New Zealand. Note the numerous replies in the Twitter thread (below), including vitriol specifically targeting Whitcoulls’ corporate PR department.
Once the Whitcoulls cancelation campaign was fully under way, activists expanded their brigading by targeting other print retailers, including another leading national chain Paper Plus, pressuring them to remove New Dawn from their stores (see tweet below).
Less than a day later on January 4th, Stuff then began taking a victory lap in a follow-up piece, again by Geraden Cann, informing the world that the “Magazine peddling mosque attack conspiracy disappears from Whitcoulls shelves,” clearly indicating they, along with their online brigade, had indeed put sufficient pressure on the bookstore chain, and as Twitter threads clearly show, berating corporate officials and branch managers for not moving fast enough to cancel New Dawn.
To complete the public mobbing circle, Stuff seems to have drafted the help of Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand and its spokesperson Abdur Razzaq who, after likely not having read the magazine, derided New Dawn, saying that it “had no meaningful information, except to confuse and raise conspiracies.”
Razzaq then went on to assure Stuff’s readership that cancelation was imminent, stating, “We have sent communications to Whitcoulls on this matter and expect them to play their part in promoting social good as an iconic New Zealand company.”
Feigning forbearance, Stuff’s Geraden Cann seemed content that even though Whitcoulls had not responded to his request for comment, that the bookstore still did ‘the right thing’ by removing all copies of the magazine:
“the magazines had in fact been removed from the shelves a Stuff reporter had visited Lambton Quay and Cuba St stores in Wellington last Tuesday…. A staff member in Johnsonville said: “That magazine was stocked by us in the past, it is no longer stocked by us and we have no further comment on that.”
Mission accomplished. A successful modern day book burning.
The Big Lie
Unfortunately, the damage was not limited to celebratory book burning. Stuff felt the need to employ some extremely underhanded tactics to ensure their conquest was successful. Outlets engaging in defamation is not uncommon in mainstream media, especially where politics are concerned, and Stuff is no exception.
In order to destroy the reputation of New Dawn Magazine, an incredible lie was conjured up.
The level of speed and coordination in this operation is nothing short of breathtaking.
Initially, Stuff‘s Geraden Cann, along with academic Kate Hannah from the Disinformation Project, pushed out the fanciful claim that the magazine’s contents could cause readers to fall foul of the law in New Zealand:
“Kate Hannah, director of The Disinformation Project, a research group monitoring Covid-19 disinformation, said some of the commentary in New Dawn was borderline in legality.”
She said some of the commentary in New Dawn was borderline in legality, because it described the content of livestreamed video of the Christchurch shootings, as well where it had been published, which could encourage people to seek it out.
Mainstream Kiwi outlets like Bay of Plenty Times and News Talk ZB then ran with the Stuff’s fabrication, “Magazine sold in Whitcoulls could get readers in legal trouble,” and claimed that the article contained details about where to view the video of the mass shooting:
“A claim an article in a conspiracy magazine sold in Whitcoulls could cause readers to run afoul of the law. The book chain is stocking a copy of New Dawn, a magazine with anti-vax conspiracies and an article insinuating that the Christchurch Mosque attack was a false flag operation. A claim an article in a conspiracy magazine sold in Whitcoulls could cause readers to run afoul of the law. The book chain is stocking a copy of New Dawn, a magazine with anti-vax conspiracies and an article insinuating that the Christchurch Mosque attack was a false flag operation. Disinformation Project Director Kate Hannah says that while some of the articles will be harmless, the one about the mosque attack details where to find the banned livestream of the attack. She says a naive reader may choose to look it up, which would be illegal.”
This last point was in fact a lie, as no such details appear in the article.
Indeed, the New Zealand government went so far as to deem it illegal to watch or possess the livestream video of the shooting, and internet service providers even blocked access to websites showing the video.
This begs the question: did Cann or Hannah actually read the article? If they had, then they should have concluded that, “The Strange Story of Brenton Tarrant,” by T.J. Coles (PDF below) does not contain any details about where to find the location of the livestream of the 2019 Christchurch Mosque attack. The article mentions how at the time of the shooting video links were posted on forums like 8chan, but for Stuff or Kate Hannah to claim this is ‘illegal’ is laughable, not least of all because the entire global mainstream media have all reported how those links were posted on 8Chan and the like – a well-known fact is already part of the historical record. How any ‘fact-checker’ or qualified journalist would claim that by merely mentioning this fact of history, New Dawn Magazine and its writer T.J. Coles have engaged in some kind of unlawful or dangerous act, is incredible. While it may be ridiculous on their part, it is by no means accidental. Their big lie was intended to inflict maximum damage on the magazine’s brand, and see it banned nationwide, and beyond. As Australian independent journalists Ethan Nash from TOTT News aptly points out, the information in T.J. Coles Christchurch Shooting article in New Dawn is the same information which appears on the Christchurch Shooting’s official Wikipedia page.
If Cann and Hannah’s logic were correct, then millions of Wikipedia readers would be in trouble with the law in New Zealand. Of course they aren’t, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about state-sponsored media and third sector organizations like the Disinformation Project waging targeted campaigns against selected dissident voices whose crime is simply daring to ask questions and challenge the official narrative on any given story or state policy.
Checking the ‘Fact-Checkers’
Another common tactic by Establishment outlets like Stuff is to claim that independent media must be canceled, or at least regulated by state-approved agencies, is because they lack the necessary ‘fact checking’ controls which are somehow necessary for preventing potential “harm” (a completely arbitrary term) emotional or otherwise, at any point in the future. That is the core of their argument. They claim that mainstream media outlets already meet this ethical and professional standard, and have rigorous fact checking in place. But that delusional assumption does not square with reality, and everyone knows it. There are volumes of books and academic studies detailing mainstream media lies and propaganda over the ages. Many wars have been started as a result of their lies. However, after reviewing the article in question, “The Strange Story of Brenton Tarrant,” by T.J. Coles, it’s clear that the article in question does not need any “fact checking” – because all historical references are footnoted, and it merely offers a critical analysis which includes some theory, but does not posit any conclusions. It merely asks a few pertinent questions about the many known anomalies present in this mass shooting event story. The same cannot be said for those pointing the finger at New Dawn, as it’s now clear that Stuff and its senior reporter Geraden Cann did not even bother to ‘fact-check’ their own work as it pertains to this story.
Still, the New Zealand establishment and its frontline infantry at Stuff and the Disinformation Project, seem determined to shut down any basic (and legal) critical discourse on this topic, and feel justified in doing so. This pervasive lack of self-awareness by the mainstream media and academia is not a strong indicator of a healthy democracy. History dictates it’s quite the opposite.
If this is how the state and the media are going to operate, then we have arrived at Fahrenheit 451, the 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It was meant to be a warning, not a handbook.
Forbidden Speech: False Flags
Even more interesting though, is the knee-jerk reaction by the state and its private-public media partners at the mere mention of false flag events. It is a historical fact that many wars and high-profile ‘terror attacks’ have featured the hidden hand of intelligence services, military, and government agencies. Such revelations often come after the fact, showing the use of deception and the misattribution of blame, by way of covert state involvement in order to control and steer what the public would normally perceive as an ‘extremist’ terrorist attack – and always to affect some political or geopolitical outcome.
One of the best examples of was the 1993 World Trade Center bombing which is widely attributed to home-grown Muslim extremists, when in fact it was the FBI who groomed and managed a ‘terror cell’ – one of their many ‘sting’ operations gone awry. Despite the FBI debacle being documented by the New York Times and others, most politicians and mainstream media routinely ignore the facts and stick to the popular “al Qaeda” narrative. In fact, most so-called ‘terror busts’ during the War on Terror era featured paid FBI informants, some of whom were the ringleaders of the radical groups. This uncomfortable truth has been documented by American author Trevor Aaronson in his best-selling book, Terror Factory, The: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. Certainly, Operation GLADIO falls squarely into this genre of western state-sponsored terrorism. These are but a few examples. Does that mean that the 2019 Christchurch Shooting in New Zealand was also a false flag? No, it does not. That is a question for a special government inquiry, and for investigative journalists to interrogate, and it’s a process which requires questioning the official narrative of any incident or event in history. That is the essence of freedom of speech and the free press. In a truly democratic society, these should be nonnegotiables. In almost every case, revelations of actual false flag events are discovered after the fact, and only then due to the brave testimony of whistleblowers and investigative journalists – and almost never from ruling governments and their state-sponsored narrative gatekeepers. Therefore, journalists, writers, and academics must be allowed to probe these historic incidents in order to discover the truth, including writer T.J. Coles and New Dawn Magazine. This speech must be protected by our society and governments, even if those uncomfortable questions happen to offend someone. It is the legal and constitutional right of writers like T.J. Coles to objectively interrogate historic events, without fear of reprisals by the corporate state. Claims by Stuff, Kate Hannah or the government, that doing so is somehow “harmful” seems more like the mark of a very insecure and thin-skinned establishment that’s increasingly obsessed with narrative management. The visceral reaction by the New Zealand establishment to this New Dawn issue certainly looks as if they are not comfortable with people asking questions, and that maybe, just maybe, they may not be telling the whole story.
It’s understandable how Stuff and Hannah might feel confident in advancing this totalitarian approach to speech control, especially after PM Jacinda Ardern had openly declared at last year’s UN General Assembly that free speech online should be regarded as a “weapons of war,” and therefore regulated by the corporate state to prevent ‘potential harm.’ There’s that word again, harm. For the new authoritarian caste and disinformation mavens, anything goes in the righteous pursuit of harm reduction. Ardern was rightly admonished by critics for her remarks at the UN, but it would be a mistake to think that her connotation merely misunderstood. No, she was firing a salvo on behalf of a globalist technocracy which is authoritarian by nature; antithetical to constitutional rights and civil liberties, and which proven without a shadow of a doubt through the actions and words of its adherents during the ‘global pandemic’ moment. The likes of Stuff, Kate Hannah and the Disinformation Project are merely foot soldiers that globalist technocracy.
One of the world’s leading academics on the subject of state propaganda is British academic Dr. Piers Robinson, who recently reacted to this story on social media. He warned that, “Censorship and de-platforming continues to corrode our public sphere; see recent events with New Dawn Magazine, Unless we stand our ground and defend the critical right freedom of expression, democracy will be eclipsed.”
Who is Kate Hannah? What is the Disinformation Project?
The long-established mainstream media practice of parroting actual misinformation and outright falsehoods is nothing new, and these establishment outlets rarely, if ever, pay a price for regularly spreading untruths on an almost daily basis. Of course, none of these mainstream outlets are ever taken to task by the new legion of fact-checkers and disinformation/misinformation’ experts and agencies.
How about the so-called ‘disinformation/misinformation’ officials? It seems that in her haste to stir-up public outrage intended to get the magazine banned, ‘Disinformation Project‘ director Kate Hannah used her state-approved platform to spread the lie that the New Dawn article contained the details of the location of Tarrant’s livestream video of the mosque attack and could land readers in legal trouble. How could such an accomplished academic make such a fatal error? It’s worth asking: did she actually read the article, or was she simply going off of second and third hand information about the magazine contained in mainstream media reporting and posts on social media?
Failing that, you could just write this off as incompetence on the part of Hannah. If that is indeed the case, then this is really a good example as any of a how inept this new breed of self-styled ‘disinformation’ experts truly are. Still, they receive regular rounds of state funding, and are given a public profile to act as de facto judge, jury and executioner when policing speech and media content, but are reckless when it comes to applying basic journalistic standards themselves and their media partners. At present, no one seems to want to hold them to account.
Regardless, the big lie was amplified by Kate Hannah, which then led to the magazine effectively being pulled from the shelves across New Zealand – shelves which New Dawn Magazine has been on for decades.
Who is Kate Hannah, and is she really qualified to adjudicate free speech and public discourse? One would expect that New Zealand’s top authority for policing speech and ‘disinformation’ would have at least some experience in journalism, broadcasting, or media? Only, it turns out that Hannah, a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland, has no such experience. According to her university bio, she has MA in “19th Century American Literary Culture”, and her principal research area is the “historiography of the history of science, with a focus on the cultures and subcultures of science, gender in science history, and narrative and complexity” and “investigating novel hybrid methodologies for the history of science.” Lots of academic theory and social sciences, but nothing remotely resembling real world or industry experience in the very sector she is in charge of policing (presumably on behalf of the ruling Ardern government).
One of the recent jobs completed by Kate Hannah and the Disinformation Project was to scrape data and use web analytic tools like CrowdTangle to track and identify dissident users online, and then draw-up extensive lists of supposed undesirable accounts on social media. Hannah recently named “The Disinformation Dozen,” in almost mirror fashion to the Biden Administration’s censorship campaign with the same name – a list of social media users marked as a priority for censorship and deplatforming – supposedly for committing the crime of Covid or vaccine ‘misinformation/disinformation.’ Recent revelations from the Twitter Files from the United States show how these similar academic working groups and fact-checking organisations are actively coordinating with Big Tech firms and Government in order to dox, target, and ultimately deny peoples’ right to free speech and access to major social media platforms, namely Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.
As of today, the Disinformation Project (founded in February 2020, fortuitously, just a month before the Covid crisis) does not appear to list their source of funding on their website, or at least easily searchable on their site. So one can only assume it’s being funded through some form of public money or research grant, most likely through from Te Pūnaha Matatini (TPM), a technocracy think tank hosted by the University of Auckland, and funded through the Tertiary Education Commission. TPM describes itself as the county’s “Centre of Research Excellence for complex systems,” with “different disciplines, ways of thought, methods, and crucially, people – to define, and then solve, society’s thorny interconnected problems.” Early on in the Covid hysteria in 2020, TPM was New Zealand’s version of Imperial College, using Neil Ferguson-style computer modeling to erroneously “predict” that 83,500 residents would die without heavy-handed ‘public health’ intervention measures, like severe lockdowns. As with Ferguson, TPM’s doomsday death toll turned out to be pure science fiction. Not surprisingly, they now claim that their recommended lockdown saved all those lives. It’s important to note how governments relied on otherwise credible academic institutions, such as Imperial College and Te Pūnaha Matatini/University of Auckland, to help wage a campaign of fear against the public in order to usher in non-science-based ‘mitigation’ policies like lockdowns, mandatory masks, social distancing, medical apartheid (vaccine passports), as well as Jacinda Ardern’s ludicrous “Zero Covid” policy, when the PM ordered a national lockdown after just one positive PCR ‘case’ appeared on the state’s bio-surveillance radar. For helping to spin-up the fear, TPM was later given a $6 million dollar award by the government.
Stuff – A Private-Public Partnership
It’s important to point out that Stuff.co.nz receives large tranches of funding from the government of New Zealand, as well as tech giants like Google.
Recently, Stuff secured a large tranche of funding, supposedly “to fight misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccination” in partnership with Māori TV and the Pacific Media Network – funded through the Google News Initiative for support from its Covid-19 Vaccine Counter Misinformation Open Fund.
In addition, Stuff raked in at least $2.37 million in a New Zealand government self-described “media bailout.”
Aside from all this, like so many other media outlets, Stuff is probably surviving off of government advertising money for “public information campaigns” in support of Jacinda Ardern’s COVID-19 policies – another way in which governments have been able to control editorial shape of mainstream media outlets during the Covid pseudo pandemic.
With money comes strings, along with promises of future rounds of funding. Considering how closely the state has partnered with Big Pharma and Big Tech during the COVID crisis, the conflicts of interest should be glaringly obvious by now. For any media outlet being subsidized by this sea of public-private partnership cash, it would be impossible to not continually defend the government’s policies and its public health institutions, and in the case of Stuff – attack its critics.
Hence, any government funding for Kate Hannah’s Disinformation Project and state-funded Stuff.co.nz, should be viewed for what it really is: money to quell any public opposition to the government’s pandemic policies by monitoring, attacking and marginalising any skeptics and dissenters on social media, independent media, or ‘rogue’ medical professionals.
Hannah also worked closely with New Zealand state-funded media Stuff.co.nz with an article and video entitled, “Covid-19: ‘Multiple complaints’ over anti-vaccine doctors,” a hit-piece attacking any medical professionals in New Zealand who were asking for informed consent with the experimental mRNA vaccines, or who challenge the Ardern government’s “single source of truth” on Covid-19 and vaccine policies. Hannah and Stuff reserved their most severe attacks for popular New Zealand doctor and broadcaster, Dr.Sam Bailey, and her fellow medical colleagues at NZDSOS, who dared to question the efficacy of government’s Covid measures and for raising concerns about vaccine safety for children.
Finally, Kate Hannah claims that, “People who see and/or consume such content must understand that there are larger and more dark agendas present, particularly the Russian connections, which aim to destabilise liberal democracy.”
Well, of course. It’s those dastardly Russians, again. Hell-bent on undermining our ever so fragile democracy.
This is the definition of gaslighting, and a tragic example of how twisted the establishment’s disinformation strawman has become. They rely on a low-attention span public to take the media’s lies at face value and then parrot them to make those lies go viral, thereby fueling cancelation and censorship. That’s how this machine works.
If there is any dark agenda here, then it has to be the one which Hannah and her media partners at Stuff are working so feverishly to obfuscate: the tens of millions of people worldwide who experienced serious loss, injury or death – as a direct consequence of governments’ pandemic mitigation measures. That includes the countless thousands worldwide who have suffered adverse reactions or deaths following their mRNA injection.
Who is going to hold government, Big Pharma, and mainstream media to account for their role in imposing this debate on societies worldwide? Certainly not government, Pharma, or the mainstream media.
Which leaves us with citizen journalists and the independent media – as liberal democracy’s last line of defense against this Orwellian juggernaut.
And the mainstream media are invited to join us, if they can summon the courage.
Google: Operation Gladio
***
Below is a copy of “The Strange Story of Brenton Tarrant” by writer T.J. Coles which appeared in the special edition of New Dawn Magazine, Vol 16, No 6, pages 70-71 :
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Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer, accredited journalist, global affairs analyst, co-founder and executive editor of 21st Century Wire, host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show and the Patrick Henningsen Show on TNT Radio International, as well as co-host of the popular UK Column News TV program. He is also a featured writer at New Dawn Magazine. His work has appeared in a number of international publications and on TV channels globally, and over the last decade he has worked on the ground covering politics and global affairs in North America and Europe, as well as work in conflict zones in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Patrick has an MA in International Relations from the University of Plymouth in the UK.
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February 2, 2023
NZ BANKS MAY PUNISH NON-COMPLIANT FARMERS
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/11/new-zealand-farmers-may-pay-for-greenhouse-gas-emissions-under-world-first-plans
NZ Banks may turn off finance tap for non-compliant farmers
Resistance Kiwi has been reliably informed that New Zealand’s leading banking institutions are considering options to “de-bank” farmers who fail to comply with environmental targets.
At least one of New Zealand’s banks has emailed staff regarding plans to ‘off-board’ farmers not meeting environmental goals.
While the staff member who blew the whistle on this action is reluctant to come forward publicly because they don’t want to risk losing their job, we can reliably vouch for this person’s current employment.
As most Resistance Kiwis will know, our erstwhile Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern along with Green Party leader James Shaw and the Agriculture Minister, Labour’s Damien O’Connor, in December announced proposed farming restrictions that will cut our agriculture production by up to a quarter. (Ironically, they “sold” the policy to the public that the government wants to “protect future export growth”).
It’s unknown whether such targets would relate to government legislation or be set by the banks. Either way, we believe this would be a very dangerous path to be heading down when a citizen or organisation may be punished not only by the legal system for a perceived breach of a law, but also by their banking institution.
Maybe this is an example of how Big Government, Big Finance and Big Tech could collude with one another to shut down dissent so they can meet the human-crippling, utopian goals of unelected global institutions. Nah – that’s probably just a nutty conspiracy theory, right?
It does raise a number of important questions though.
How would such a policy be implemented?
Is this just a private sector, non-government institution’s attempt to solicit ideas from staff on how to incentivise farmers to meet environmental obligations?
Who in the bank would determine if the allegations are actually true, and how would they do that?
How would the bank know that a farmer wasn’t meeting environmental expectations or complying?
Who would set the minimum environmental goals – the bank, the government or an environmental NGO?
Who would be the arbiter of such claims and would there be a right of appeal and to what agency or organisation?
Perhaps it merely relates to farmers who publicly oppose the government’s climate change ideology?
What would happen if activists decided to take action and picketed outside a farmer’s property over unsubstantiated allegations of environmental non-compliance and subsequently began promoting such allegations on social media and demanding the banks take action?
We urge bank staff who are aware of this development to contact us with copies of emails and letters so that we may alert the public and keep Kiwis informed on this disturbing development.
***
April 9, 2023
WHY NEW ZEALAND HAS SUCH A HIGH INFLATION RATE
April 9, 2023
With New Zealand’s debt at 153,253 million and inflation through the roof I think you ought to save these two articles because they reveal what the media is trying to conceal.
Why do they not tell the truth?
This may explain part of the reason.
Reserve Bank repeatedly warned Government money printing would lead to house price inflation
Feb 05 2021
Grant Robertson and the Government were warned in January 2020 that there was a ‘significant’ risk Reserve Bank money printing would push up house prices and deepen inequality. Despite calls from the Reserve Bank that the Government would need to act to blunt the effects of this, nearly 13 months later, nothing has been done.
In November last year, when the national median house price hit $749,000 – up by more than $100,000 on the year before – Grant Robertson sent a now famous letter to Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr.
Since March, the Reserve Bank had been printing tens of billions of dollars and pumping it into the economy using something called LSAP (Large-Scale Asset Purchases). The LSAP worked; New Zealand’s unemployment rate of 4.9 per cent is well below where economists feared it might be.
But the LSAP has had some negative side effects too. Asset purchases have pushed interest rates down, unleashing a wave of cheap lending that has sent the housing market rocket to record highs in the midst of a global recession.
Robertson had initially been sceptical of the link between the Bank’s money printing and high house prices, but the Reserve Bank letter marked the point at which Robertson officially acknowledged that not only was the Bank’s money printing having an effect on the housing market, but that he and the Bank should work together and do something about it.
He took a long time to reach that conclusion. Earlier in the year, he’d been sceptical that there was a strong connection between the Reserve Bank’s money printing and out-of-control house price inflation.
In June, Robertson was asked by Interest.co.nz whether he would use his fiscal tools – like taxing and spending – to balance the effects of the Reserve Bank’s money printing.
“It’s not really the way I am thinking about it, our fiscal response has been to respond to the crisis and its effects,” Robertson said.
“But all of those issues, particularly in terms of how it will roll out in the housing market are still to come,” he said.
However, the Reserve Bank warned Robertson in January of nearly all the adverse consequences of money printing on housing and inequality in Aotearoa.
Policy advice released to Stuff and others under the series of OIA requests warned that an LSAP programme would lift asset prices like housing, deepen inequality and require some kind of intervention.
The Reserve Bank even warned that some kind of new governing arrangement for the Bank would be needed if it used tools like LSAP. This is because those tools step so far beyond the Bank’s traditional role in setting interest rates and into areas typically controlled by the Government.
Back in 2019, the Bank said that it would be looking at “unconventional” policy tools that it could use if its main tool – the Official Cash Rate or OCR – became ineffective.
The Bank thought there was a small but not inconceivable chance of this happening given interest rates over the world were fast approaching zero so, on January 29, 2020, it sent Robertson advice on what it was doing.
The Reserve Bank and Treasury should begin work on institutional and governance arrangements for what to do if the Reserve Bank started using tools like LSAP. This somewhat compromised the traditionally strict independence of the Bank and Treasury.
“With interest rates at historic lows, there is a risk that monetary policy could become constrained if interest rates fall towards zero.
“In such a situation, we consider it prudent that the Reserve Bank has alternative tools available to stabilise the economy and that the governance arrangements relating to the use of alternative tools are clear, comprehensive and effective.
It said that the Bank did “not think there was a case” for using these tools “in the near future,” but said that it would look to develop the tools and governance arrangements over the next six months to make sure they were ready if they were needed.
The Bank called these tools UMP, or Unconventional Monetary Policy. It includes things like negative interest rates, forward guidance, term lending to banks, and LSAP.
The advice came with several warnings, saying the “magnitude of the macroeconomic stabilisation benefits is highly uncertain”.
Reserve Bank warns Government about asset price inflation in January by Thomas Coughlan on Scribd
It also warned that there were significant trade-offs to each tool being used, including unfairly distributing winners and losers in the economy. The bank said that these were “externalities” and warned that they were “outside the Reserve Bank’s current mandate”.
Because those externalities were outside of the mandate of the Bank, it advised Robertson that it might be a good idea to look at how the governance of the UMP tools would work in practice; this would make sure that some of the unintended consequences in areas like the housing market could be managed.
Those risks were severe. The Bank developed a traffic light system for the severity of the effects of the new monetary policy tools. Green ones had “benign” trade-offs, while red trade-offs were the “most significant”.
Of the five kinds of UMP that the bank considered, LSAP was the only one considered to be rated “red” for its effects on inequality and fairness – the other tool the bank used this year, a form of term-lending, was rated orange, while all the other tools were given a green rating.
The Bank warned money printing might not have a neutral impact across society.
“It may increase wealth inequality by more than conventional monetary policy by raising asset prices more directly.
However, the Bank struck a note of optimism: by propping up the economy, LSAP could help people who might otherwise have lost their jobs.
The paper went on, “[c]onventional monetary policy has distributional impacts, such as on savers versus borrowers, wealthy versus less wealthy individuals, and importers versus exporters.
Whose problem?
The problem with these “distributional” impacts is that it’s not the Reserve Bank’s job to look after them. It’s job is to look after inflation, employment and the financial system. The social impacts of monetary policy are the Government’s problem.
With that in mind, the Bank warned the Government that both the Bank and Treasury needed to start thinking about ways of how to manage these new tools.
“At present, the remit requires the [Monetary Policy Committee] to seek to avoid unnecessary instability in output, interest rates and the exchange rate, but does not mention the impact of fiscal risk to the Crown or the distributional impacts of monetary policy,” the Bank warned.
“While conventional monetary policy has fiscal and distributional impacts, UMP could potentially have impacts that are more significant. Further work is required to consider whether and how these matters should be considered by the MPC or the Reserve Bank when using UMP,” it said.
The Bank sketched out some ideas for how to manage those distributional problems. One idea was from the Bank for International Settlements – effectively a central bank for central banks – to make sure that other parts of the Government responded to those externalities.
“The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) notes that some externalities can only be addressed by other policy areas, particularly fiscal policy.
“The BIS recommends central banks have a clear mandate, and communicate clearly and transparently about the use of UMP tools and their expected benefits, so that other policy-makers can effectively respond to externalities,” the paper said.
While the Government has said that it wanted fiscal and monetary policy to work together, Robertson’s comments in June are the direct opposite of what the Bank recommended in January, which is that the Government’s fiscal policy should target the unintended distributional consequences of the Bank’s monetary policy.
Adrian Orr speech by Thomas Coughlan on Scribd
The paper warned that it would be a good idea to answer some of these questions in advance of any of the tools being needed. Robertson agreed to let the Bank and Treasury do some policy work and required them to report back in July.
A little over a month later, on March 9, Robertson received another paper, this time from Treasury, the Government’s economic policy shop. This was to brief him on a speech Orr was about to give on new monetary policy tools.
This paper warned that while the Government still wasn’t in a position where it would need to use LSAP, however Covid-19 had “increased” the chance of needing to use those tools.
Treasury also said that work was coming along with the Bank on some of the institutional settings that would be needed if unconventional monetary policy was to be used.
In the next week, everything changed.
Enter Covid-19
In another paper, delivered to Robertson on March 16, the Reserve Bank had gone from thinking that it was unlikely it would use any of the UMP tools to briefing Robertson on which tools it planned to use.
That morning the Bank had cut the OCR to just 0.25. The bank told the public that instead of cutting further, it would use LSAP to print money and inject it into the economy.
Treasury explained technical details of how the asset purchases would work, advising Robertson that he might shortly be called on to provide an indemnity for the Government debt the Bank planned to buy with all the printed money.
The paper also repeated the warning from January, that money printing could “raise asset prices more directly than conventional monetary policy, creating wealth inequality”.
By March 23, a week later, the Reserve Bank announced it would begin printing money to buy up Government bonds. It would eventually commit to buying as much as $100 billion. As of February, just over half of that money has been printed and injected into the economy.
Initially, Robertson and other members of the Government appeared blindsided by the effects of the money printing on house prices.
A couple of months after his comments in June, Robertson was asked on his way into the House, whether he was “worried” by the effect the money printing was having on house prices.
“I wouldn’t say it worried me, it is one of the conundrums of the situation that we find ourselves in – the housing market had held up significantly more than people forecast it would in these circumstances.
“We clearly keep an eye on asset prices and the last thing I want is for New Zealand to go through what it has in the past,” Robertson said.
Housing Minister Megan Woods was asked by Intererst.co.nz in October, after the median house price had risen by more than $100,000 in 12 months, whether she’d received any briefings on the effects of the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy on house prices.
Despite the fact the Reserve Bank had warned about asset price inflation, Woods admitted she didn’t get briefed by the Bank.
Reserve Bank gets ready to print money by Thomas Coughlan on Scribd
By the end of the year, however, the Government and Opposition both conceded that the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy was having an effect on asset prices. National’s shadow Treasurer Andrew Bayly wanted Robertson to send a letter of expectation to the bank, asking it to direct new monetary policy tools away from residential housing.
Robertson wrote a letter of his own, which acknowledged that monetary policy, among other things, was having an effect on high house prices. Robertson called on the Bank to help him with a policy response.
The Reserve Bank’s reply, when it came, was a subtle rebuke, noting, as it did nearly 11 months earlier, that house prices were affected by monetary policy, but also that it was the Finance Minister’s job to ensure that the social consequences of any monetary policy changes weren’t unfairly carried by one group in society.
The Bank called for a coordinated response from across government, potentially overseen by a new agency.
As of February 2021, there has been no fiscal response targeted at mitigating the effects of unconventional monetary policy on wealth inequality.
Don’t let the Reserve Bank just give the Government money, Treasury warns
Last May, Finance Minister Grant Robertson asked policy wonks at Treasury for advice on whether he should let the Reserve Bank Labour needs to throw conservative spending plans out the window
A Treasury paper, released to Stuff under the Official Information Act shows Robertson asked for advice on whether the Bank should be allowed to buy up billions of dollars of Government debt on the primary market.
Treasury thought it was a bad idea, warning the move would risk long term damage to the reputation of New Zealand’s public finances, creating the “perception that New Zealand’s strong institutional frameworks have been undermined”. This bad reputation could make it difficult for the Government to borrow in the future
Robertson took Treasury’s advice, and the Reserve Bank continued buying debt on the secondary market.
But the advice is itself interesting, as it gives an insight into Treasury’s thinking on one of the most interesting areas of fiscal and monetary policy: whether the Reserve Bank should just print money and give it to Treasury to spend.
This was only theoretical a year ago, but as Stuff has previously reported, it’s become something Treasury and the Reserve Bank have contemplated this year.
The paper, released to Stuff, doesn’t go so far as to contemplate Robertson being able to call up Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr and ask him to print money. It simply gives Treasury’s advice on what some would say is the first step in that direction.
Why does the Government-owned Reserve Bank buy bonds from the Government?
Purchasing debt (issued in the form of bonds) on the primary market means that instead of purchasing bonds from third parties like banks and investors, the Reserve Bank would buy the bonds directly from Treasury itself. One part of the Government would buy bonds issued by another part of the Government, cutting out the middleman.
It’s a big move.
Since the 1990s, the Reserve Bank has been strictly independent of the control of the finance minister and Treasury.
The Bank uses the setting of interest rates to make sure that prices remain stable and employment remains at its maximum sustainable level. The Bank’s independence means that finance ministers aren’t allowed to use the Bank’s arsenal of tools to their own advantage, for example by lowering interest rates close to an election.
Crossing the Rubicon
But in the age of Covid-19 this has come under strain. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Reserve Bank fretted that it was losing its ability to control interest rates; they were rising when the Bank wanted them to be falling.
As a solution, it started to purchase billions of dollars worth of Government bonds from banks and investors. This enormous demand for bonds pushed interest rates back down to where the Reserve Bank wanted them. The Bank at that point promised only to purchase them on the secondary market, not directly from Treasury itself.
This is important. The bank is buying bonds to make sure interest rates are low, it’s not buying bonds to help keep borrowing costs low as a favour to the Government, that’s just a helpful side effect. The Bank’s independence means it isn’t there to help out the Government when it gets into an expensive pickle.
Buying up Government bonds on the secondary market, although fairly common internationally, already inches the Reserve Bank into awkward territory when it comes to its independence. If it were to suddenly stop purchasing the bonds, Government borrowing rates would rise, much to the ire of the Government which would like to keep them low.
Buying bonds on the secondary market as opposed to straight from Treasury is a helpful barrier against Treasury and the Reserve Bank getting too comfortable.
What does Treasury think?
Back in May last year, when New Zealand was still in the thick of a serious economic contraction, the Reserve Bank asked Robertson to indemnify another round of bond purchases.
According to the paper, Robertson said he’d take the proposal to a Cabinet committee and asked Treasury whether the Bank should start purchasing the bonds directly from the Government.
The strongest reason for the Reserve Bank buying bond directly from the Treasury is to avoid having to pay a transaction cost when buying from a third party seller.
“[W]hen purchasing NZGBs [bond] in the secondary market, the Bank may pay a premium compared to the primary issuance price of the bond.
“In this sense, an intermediary ‘clips the ticket’ between the Treasury issuing the bond and the Bank acquiring it,” the advice said.
But saving the Crown money wasn’t enough to sway Treasury’s opinion, this is because the goal of the Reserve Bank’s bond-buying (known as LSAP) is to lower interest rates, not save the Government money. The best way to do this was by buying bonds on the secondary market, said Treasury.
“Transaction costs are very difficult to quantify, and depend on differences in the timing and composition of NZGB issuance and LSAP purchases.
“Furthermore, the Crown incurring such fiscal costs is consistent with the objective of LSAPs. By supporting prices in the secondary NZGB market, LSAPs help to lower private sector bond yield,” the advice said.
Another objection was that the Government might not issue enough debt for the Reserve Bank to buy if it wanted to lower rates.
Getting a bad reputation
But Treasury’s biggest concern was that skipping the secondary market would give New Zealand a bad reputation as it would look like the Reserve Bank was simply printing money for the Government to spend.
This would make New Zealand’s debt less valuable, meaning that in the future we’d have to pay people more to buy it, which would increase the cost of borrowing for the Government.
Treasury thought this was a serious concern.
“Market participants and commentators may interpret that LSAPs are being directed foremost to support Crown borrowing requirements, and that monetary policy objectives have been made a secondary consideration.
“These reputational risks are likely to be greater for non-market purchases, where there is less transparency,” the advice said.
And Treasury noted that, ironically, if buying debt on the primary market pushed up borrowing costs it would undermine the whole purpose of what the bank was trying to do anyway, which was to reduce interest rates.
“In turn, reputational risks jeopardise the effectiveness of monetary policy. Primary purchases would reduce the supply of bonds available in the market, which would normally reduce government bond yields.
“However, investors’ concerns about institutional reputation could cause yields to increase, increasing interest rates in New Zealand more broadly,” Treasury warned.
“A perception that New Zealand’s strong institutional frameworks have been undermined could impact on New Zealand’s credit rating and inflation expectations, which could increase the cost of borrowing more generally,” Treasury said.
Perhaps most severely, Treasury warned that these negative effects would be long-lasting, as it would take some time for New Zealand to build back a reputation for good institutions if it was lost.
“Potential negative impacts arising from institutional reputation, transparency, investor demand, market function and liquidity are likely to have impacts on borrowing costs that last much longer than any shorter-term impacts on net debt and/or leakage to the private sector.
“This is because it will take time after any LSAP programme is completed to rebuild confidence in institutions and market infrastructure. Borrowing costs may remain elevated until this occurs,” Treasury said.
The idea was hovering in the air in May, when senior Treasury and Reserve Bank officials prepared advice for Robertson on the implications of doing exactly what Treasury warned against: just printing money to pay for the Government’s borrowing. Once again, officials cautioned against it and the Government heeded their advice
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April 21, 2023
NEW ZEALAND’S FAILING ECONOMY: FACTS AND FICTION
Every time we go out for even a short drive we are faced by endless roadworks and orange cones.
This can be a sign of fixing infrastructure.
It is also a sign of public works designed to hide the true situation. This started in NZ after the 2008 crash and is now on steroids.
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This next article is a close to honesty that you will ever find in New Zealand.
A new research paper suggests the Government and the Reserve Bank are responsible for half of inflation, as ASB economists forecast a deeper recession as a result
An economics professor and some Treasury staff believe the government and Reserve Bank of NZ should shoulder more responsibility for the inflation crisis, which will likely end in recession.
by Dan Brunskill
19th Apr 23
There has been much debate about who and what to blame for the runaway inflation—expected to still be at 7.2% in Thursday’s consumer price index—and the engineered recession required to shut it down.
Pandemic-related shortages, government spending, monetary policy, the war in Ukraine, tight labor markets, and corporate greed have all been identified as suspects.
The Reserve Bank and the Labour government both prefer to emphasize the supply shock and downplay the importance of fiscal and monetary stimulus.
However, a fresh piece of research written by unnamed Treasury staff found both factors had contributed to inflation in roughly equal amounts.
“The surge in inflation from 2021 was initially demand driven by stimulatory monetary and fiscal policy, and rapidly increasing house prices which fuelled economic activity. However, from the second half of 2021, supply-side factors drove the continued acceleration in inflation,” it said.
This paper was written by staff members at Treasury and reflects the view of those employees, but not the agency itself.
Some staff research is published to “inform and encourage public debate” but is not considered policy advice or an official opinion of the Treasury.
The authors of the paper said the pandemic disrupted the labour market, which created production bottlenecks, and which the war in Ukraine exacerbated.
However, demand recovered as economies adapted to the new environment while macroeconomic policy boosted demand and helped inflation to broaden into the services sector.
Supply shocks appear to have contributed less to inflation than in the United States and Australia. This may be because NZ was more insulated from energy price shocks and did more economic stimulus than many other countries.
About one-third of inflation was unable to be attributed to either supply or demand by the researchers. The authors also noted that using alternative price data in the model suggested supply shocks were responsible for as much as 60% of inflation.
A snatching defeat
Robert MacCulloch, a professor at the University of Auckland, said New Zealand had “snatched economic defeat from the jaws of covid victory” in a blog post on Monday.
He said NZ was “the envy of the world” in the first two years of the pandemic; we had eliminated covid and were out and about enjoying life.
“As a direct consequence, we enjoyed one of the smallest economic declines of any nation – only 0.7% for the year ended 31 March 2021.
“The UK, by contrast, suffered a decline of over 11% of GDP that year and its virus death toll ended up at nearly quarter of a million.”
But policymakers failed to recognise the rebound and kept pumping cheap money into the economy.
Finance minister Grant Robertson set aside almost 20% of gross domestic product for covid relief funding, while the Reserve Bank printed another $53 billion buying bonds.
The great minor depression
These were policies designed to stave off a second Great Depression but they were still in place long after the country had brought the virus under control.
“We now face recession when most nations that did far poorer than us during the pandemic do not,” MacCulloch wrote.
ASB Bank economists updated their economic forecasts on Tuesday to predict a deeper recession than previously thought.
Nick Tuffley, the bank’s chief economist, said the economy was experiencing a hangover from excess stimulus during the pandemic.
“It is a year of paying for the central bank and government punchbowl being more potent than anticipated at juicing up the economy,”” he said in a note.
The bank has predicted gross domestic product will have declined 2% by early 2024, which would be roughly half the size of the 2008 recession.
Inflation was expected to remain “stubbornly high” at over 7% year-on-year, even though the economy was stalling, and may not fall back into the target range until 2025.
“We expect the RBNZ will be in a position to start gradually pulling interest rates down to a more neutral level in the first half of 2024, the equivalent of monetary rehydration.”
At its half-year economic and fiscal update, the Treasury forecast CPI inflation had peaked in late 2022 and will gradually decline over the coming years.
This was due to supply-side disruptions being resolved and resulting in lower freight costs and reduced pressures on commodity prices. While higher interest rates were reducing consumer demand for goods and services.
Instead, the media comes up with this.
CPI reaction: NZ’s inflation comes in cooler than expected – but Opposition brands Govt ‘disconnected from realities of working’ Kiwis
New Zealand consumer prices fell in the year to March despite the cost of food skyrocketing, but surprisingly lower fuel costs helped to cool underlying inflation.
The consumer price index (CPI) climbed 6.7 percent annually in March after advancing 7.2 percent in the 12 months to December, Statistics NZ said on Thursday. Quarter-by-quarter, the CPI increased 1.2 percent – a smaller three-month gain than expected.
All this nonsense is given the lie by the following
Budgeting services’ funding cuts amid cost-of-living crisis
Free budgeting services are bracing for a drop in funding right as the cost-of-living crisis hits and a recession knocks on our door.
The Ministry of Social Development funds 131 budget advisor services, but that will drop by $20 a session for the next financial year (July 2023-24).
Demand has surged as people seek help to make ends meet, and some advisors worry they will have to reduce staff when they need to hire more.
There’s a two-week wait for people in financial strife to see an advisor at Auckland Central Budgeting, where there has been a surge in demand.
Medical laboratory workforce facing ‘tsunami’ of staff resignations, fears grow for delays in services
Experts are sounding the alarm over the state of New Zealand’s medical laboratory workforce, describing it as “perilous”.
The New Zealand Institute is warning if nothing changes, it could result in delays or fewer services for Kiwis.
Lab technicians and scientists are an essential part of New Zealand’s healthcare system, running more than 200,000 tests a day.
But that could soon be about to change.
“The state of the workforce is perilous,” said Terry Taylor, the New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science president.
Staff numbers are dwindling, too.
“It’s facing a tsunami of experienced senior scientists that are retiring and leaving,” APEX Union advocacy lead David Munro said.
Several hundred jobs to go at University of Otago as student numbers plunge
Several hundred staff will lose their jobs at the University of Otago after falling student numbers means it needs to slash around $60 million from its budget.
Applications for voluntary redundancies open on Monday and close on June 2, staff were told after 2pm on Thursday. Both academic and backroom roles are on the chopping block, though what subjects and areas will be affected is yet to be determined.
A further round of redundancies is expected to follow, with “several hundred” roles expected to be affected, the university said.
The university’s cost-cutting will also affect capital projects, and future paper and programme offerings. Asset sales are also on the cards.
Staff have been left “distraught” and shocked by the news.
This is from Australian media.
The economy is in collapse but they argue whether the world is headed for “recession”.
You will never see headlines like this in NZ’s government and controlled media
Experts reveal alarming ‘early sign’ major global recession is approaching
Experts have revealed the alarming early warning sign that a global recession is fast approaching – and it has insiders on high alert.
Experts have revealed one glaring sign that a global recession is fast approaching, with a “big question mark” now hanging over us all.
The demand for diesel fuel has long been considered a significant clue regarding the health of the world’s economy, given it is used to power major industries across the planet, including trucking and construction.
But demand for the crucial fuel has been dropping in major economies in recent months, leaving insiders increasingly nervous.
Our problems couldn’t have anything to do with the following, could they?
New Zealand’s debt
If you click on the link you can see the clock turn over
https://www.debtclock.nz/
$116 million of taxpayers money spent on covid advertising over 2.5 years in New Zealand.
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May 10, 2023
NZ TO HAVE THE WORST CURRENT ACCOUNT DEFICIT OUT OF EVERY SINGLE ADVANCED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THIS YEAR, 2023.
“Had I been a journalist at Newshub, Stuff, or Herald, I would’ve written about how the IMF says an extraordinary thing about NZ. It states we are projected to have the worst current account deficit out of every single advanced country in the world this year, 2023. That’s 40 countries! …NZ’s current account balance is reported as -8.6 % of GDP, worse than Greece’s at -8.0 %, in 2023. That means we’re not paying our way. Imports hugely outweigh exports. It also means that NZ has become dependent on foreign debt to finance our investments”
Just a reminder…
https://www.debtclock.nz/
New Zealand printed $71 BILLION during the pandemic (for context the estimated GDP is $154 billion)
This is what happened to NZ GDP, according to official figures
https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/gross-domestic-product-gdp
Reserve Bank’s $71b of money printing equivalent to 90-point OCR cut
A rare bit of context
Explainer: why the government can’t simply cancel its pandemic debt by printing more money
So, what does happen when the government wants to spend more than it raises in tax revenue? It needs to borrow money (known as deficit financing), and so instructs the Treasury to issue debt
The government was warned
Reserve Bank repeatedly warned Government money printing would lead to house price inflation
Grant Robertson and the Government were warned in January 2020 that there was a ‘significant’ risk Reserve Bank money printing would push up house prices and deepen inequality. Despite calls from the Reserve Bank that the Government would need to act to blunt the effects of this, nearly 13 months later, nothing has been done.
In November last year, when the national median house price hit $749,000 – up by more than $100,000 on the year before – Grant Robertson sent a now famous letter to Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr.
Since March, the Reserve Bank had been printing tens of billions of dollars and pumping it into the economy using something called LSAP (Large-Scale Asset Purchases). The LSAP worked; New Zealand’s unemployment rate of 4.9 per cent is well below where economists feared it might be.
But the LSAP has had some negative side effects too. Asset purchases have pushed interest rates down, unleashing a wave of cheap lending that has sent the housing market rocket to record highs in the midst of a global recession.
Robertson had initially been sceptical of the link between the Bank’s money printing and high house prices, but the Reserve Bank letter marked the point at which Robertson officially acknowledged that not only was the Bank’s money printing having an effect on the housing market, but that he and the Bank should work together and do something about it.
* Don’t let the Reserve Bank just give the Government money, Treasury warns
He took a long time to reach that conclusion. Earlier in the year, he’d been sceptical that there was a strong connection between the Reserve Bank’s money printing and out-of-control house price inflation.
In June, Robertson was asked by Interest.co.nz whether he would use his fiscal tools – like taxing and spending – to balance the effects of the Reserve Bank’s money printing.
“It’s not really the way I am thinking about it, our fiscal response has been to respond to the crisis and its effects,” Robertson said.
“But all of those issues, particularly in terms of how it will roll out in the housing market are still to come,” he said.
However, the Reserve Bank warned Robertson in January of nearly all the adverse consequences of money printing on housing and inequality in Aotearoa.
Policy advice released to Stuff and others under the series of OIA requests warned that an LSAP programme would lift asset prices like housing, deepen inequality and require some kind of intervention.
The Reserve Bank even warned that some kind of new governing arrangement for the Bank would be needed if it used tools like LSAP. This is because those tools step so far beyond the Bank’s traditional role in setting interest rates and into areas typically controlled by the Government.
Back in 2019, the Bank said that it would be looking at “unconventional” policy tools that it could use if its main tool – the Official Cash Rate or OCR – became ineffective.
The Bank thought there was a small but not inconceivable chance of this happening given interest rates over the world were fast approaching zero so, on January 29, 2020, it sent Robertson advice on what it was doing.
The Reserve Bank and Treasury should begin work on institutional and governance arrangements for what to do if the Reserve Bank started using tools like LSAP. This somewhat compromised the traditionally strict independence of the Bank and Treasury.
“With interest rates at historic lows, there is a risk that monetary policy could become constrained if interest rates fall towards zero.
“In such a situation, we consider it prudent that the Reserve Bank has alternative tools available to stabilise the economy and that the governance arrangements relating to the use of alternative tools are clear, comprehensive and effective.
It said that the Bank did “not think there was a case” for using these tools “in the near future,” but said that it would look to develop the tools and governance arrangements over the next six months to make sure they were ready if they were needed.
The Bank called these tools UMP, or Unconventional Monetary Policy. It includes things like negative interest rates, forward guidance, term lending to banks, and LSAP.
The advice came with several warnings, saying the “magnitude of the macroeconomic stabilisation benefits is highly uncertain”
But now let’s all play pretend and blame it all on bad weather.
New Zealand’s finances worsen, budget deficit looms
As Australia banks its first surplus in 15 years, New Zealand’s pathway back to black appears to have been washed away by storms.
Treasury posted updated financial statements on Tuesday that show a worsening fiscal outlook.
In the nine months to March, Treasury has recorded a deficit of $3.4 billion, almost $2.5 billion worse than predicted in December.
Revenue has fallen away, with a $2.3 billion shortfall in GST revenue and business and income tax.
The Government must also grapple with repairs following two huge weather events over summer: flooding in Auckland and Cyclone Gabrielle, which come with a multi-billion dollar price tag.
At the last budgetary update in December, NZ was in touching distance of a surplus, with a projected deficit of just $461 million in 2024.
That could be as close as it comes to a surplus, which would have boosted the Government in an election year.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson wouldn’t be drawn on the budget’s bottom line so close its delivery on May 18.
“Clearly, economic activity based on the Treasury statements is slowing. We can see that,” he said from Parliament.
“We’ve been forecasting and predicting that for some time. On top of that, we have to deal with the North Island weather events with the cyclone and the and the flooding.
“All of those will be impacting on the Government’s books, but I’ll have more to say about that soon.”
National leader Christopher Luxon called the crown accounts “alarming”, drawing a contrast with the expected $4.2 billion surplus to be booked by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Tuesday night.
“Seeing a softening of the New Zealand economy at a time when we actually see some strength building in Australia with their budget day,” he said.
Robertson, usually fond of healthy trans-Tasman fiscal rivalry, said “not going to turn (the budget) into that kind of competition”.
“Both New Zealand and Australia have done well over recent years and getting through Covid and being able to continue with a resilient economy and resilient government set of books,” he said.
“It’s inevitable that the Government’s books will be affected as the economy cools. We are doing our bit to restrain spending and responsibly manage our finances.
“The upcoming budget has required tough choices as we respond to the deteriorating economic conditions.”
In brighter news, NZ’s net debt has fallen to $72.8 billion, or 19.1% of GDP.
The shrinking debt has been attributed to “favourable movements in the fair value of financial assets and liabilities”, including the NZ Super Fund.
Behind a paywall.
This will be somewhat closer to the truth but still fall short
Carbon credit ‘mistake’ could cost Government $1.3 billion if left unfixed
A slump in the value of carbon credits is the result of the Government getting itself in a tangle and undermining confidence in the Emissions Trading Scheme, the National Party’s energy spokesperson Stuart Smith says.
Climate Change Minister James Shaw responded by saying that was “a bit rich coming from the party that neutered the Emissions Trading Scheme for a decade and drove carbon prices to less than a dollar”.
Salt Funds Management carbon fund manager Paul Harrison said the price of carbon credits dropped to $54.50 last week, before recovering to $58 on Wednesday, which was down from a peak $88.50 late last year.
There is speculation the size of the price drop took the Government by surprise, and that it may take the opportunity presented by a new Climate Change Commission report to try to shore up confidence in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) later this month.
Climate Change Minister taken to court over emissions trading scheme Cabinet decision
A group of lawyers is taking the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw to court over a Cabinet decision about the emissions trading scheme.
The Lawyers for Climate Action (LCANZI) today filed for a judicial review in the High Court.
The group argues the scheme’s current settings are not consistent with New Zealand’s emissions reduction targets.
It stems from a Cabinet decision late last year to reject advice from the Climate Change Commission that would allow the carbon price to rise, citing the cost of living.
Since then the carbon price has tanked, causing a $1.2 billion hit to government revenue.
The group said the decision also makes available at low prices an additional 35 million units over the next five years.
That was more than one year’s worth of emissions for sectors within the ETS.
“By law the settings must be in accordance with our emissions budgets, our [international pledges] … and the 2050 net zero target,” the group said.
“LCANZI’s judicial review claims that in overriding the recommendations from the Commission and the minister, Cabinet failed to address whether the settings were in accordance with the emissions budgets and the [international pledges].
“Instead the decision was driven by concerns that rising ETS unit prices would flow through to households.
“LCANZI seeks a declaration from the court that the regulations are inconsistent with the Climate Change Response Act, and an order that the regulations be remade.”
While Shaw was not part of Cabinet, and had recommended Cabinet follow the Commission’s advice, the group said it was taking action against the minister as he was ultimately responsible.
The group has previously taken unsuccessful legal action against the Climate Change Commission.
Shaw said via a statement: “I am aware of the claim filed by Lawyers For Climate Action. As the matter is before the courts, I can’t comment further, but it is important that citizens have the right to be heard”.
Major bank bucks trend, reports profit fall
Westpac NZ has bucked the trend of the big Australian-owned banks posting surging profit rises, reporting a fall in half-year net profit.
In the six months to March 31, it posted a net profit of $426 million.
That is down 19% in the previous six-month period, and a fall of 33% when comparing it to the same period last year when the bank’s net profit was $640m.
Last year’s profit was swelled by the sale of life insurance arm Westpac Life.
The bank had also been hit by needing to put aside more money for bad loans.
Chief executive Catherine McGrath said the bank had grown mortgage lending by 5%, business lending by 4% and deposits by 2%.
Lies,lies…and statistics
NZ in a worse inflation position than other countries: Infometrics
New Zealand is under more continued inflation pressure than many other countries, one economist says, and there is little evidence that is starting to ease.
Infometrics has released its latest economic forecasts, which predict inflation will still be at 6.6% by the end of this year and 3.8% by the end of next year.
The Reserve Bank targets a 1% to 3% range but Infometrics said it might not get inflation back to that level until mid-2025.
Chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said the after-effects of Cyclone Gabrielle were showing up in produce prices, and rents and building costs were also likely to be pushed up in areas that were affected by the weather events.
The IMF says NZ has the worst Current Account Deficit out of all 40 “Advanced Nations” in the world
Sometimes one does think the Kiwi media are really trying hard to play games with the news. The International Monetary Fund just produced its ‘World Economic Outloook”. Stuff News said it “has painted a grim picture of the outlook for the global economy over the next few years”. The purpose of Stuff’s article seems to be to convince the Kiwi public that although our economy is doing badly, so is everyone else’s.
That’s not the tone of the IMF report, as I read it. It says, “On the surface, the global economy appears poised for a gradual recovery .. China is rebounding strongly following the reopening of its economy. Supply-chain disruptions are unwinding while the dislocations to energy & food markets caused by the [Ukraine] war are receding .. the massive & synchronous tightening of monetary policy by most central banks should start to bear fruit, with inflation moving back toward its targets … Below the surface, however, turbulence is building & the situation is quite fragile, as the recent bout of banking instability reminded us”. That’s not exactly “grim”. The word “grim” is never used by the IMF.
Had I been a journalist at Newshub, Stuff, or Herald, I would’ve written about how the IMF says an extraordinary thing about NZ. It states we are projected to have the worst current account deficit out of every single advanced country in the world this year, 2023. That’s 40 countries! Take a look at the table below – NZ’s current account balance is reported as -8.6 % of GDP, worse than Greece’s at -8.0 %, in 2023. That means we’re not paying our way. Imports hugely outweigh exports. It also means that NZ has become dependent on foreign debt to finance our investments.
Sources:
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2023/04/11/world-economic-outlook-april-2023
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