NACT goes nuclear at Defence Minister

The opposition really is going hell for leather over any little thing they get their hands on at the moment. Apparently the Government cannot do anything right, and New Zealand has suddenly become a complete shambles because Labour is in charge. Unfortunately for National and ACT however, much of their criticism is so wide of the mark that they may as well be pissing in the wind.

A perfect example of their failure as the opposition went on display today when the National Party published another false accusation about the Labour led Government, and more precisely that Defence Minister Peeni Henare had interfered directly in a writing competition to apparently get a controversial essay removed from the Internet.

Today, the National Party reported on Scoop:

Defence Minister Slow To Advocate, Quick To Censor

“It is extraordinary that Minister Henare has appeared to remember that he holds a ministerial warrant only now, prompted by an essay competition of all things. In singling out a member of the Army’s lowest rank – who will not be afforded a right of reply – the Minister is ‘punching down’ in a way that has deeply disappointed many service people.

It should come as little surprise that Penk is wrong to blame the Minister for interfering. The claim then that the Minister is also punching down, which history has taught us is the modus operandi of right wing governments, is also just another catchphrase that is being incorrectly used here by another underperforming National MP.

In fact Newstalk ZB along with other news agencies reported yesterday that it was a Defence Force decision to remove the controversial essay:

'An awful look': Defence Force criticised for pulling controversial essay

The essay that won a New Zealand Defence Force writing competition has been taken down - as it undermines 'inclusive culture.'

Newstalk ZB's obtained a copy of the article, which centres on free speech and anti-diversity.

It took out first prize in the private writing category, was published online, and then vanished.

In a statement, Army Chief Major General John Boswell accepts the decision to award the piece first place was an error.

So the Defence Force itself removed the essay because it undermined inclusive culture.

This information didn’t stop NACT and their hacks going on the attack though. In fact even after the Defence Force said it was their decision, they doubled down on their accusations, which in my opinion is a good indication of just how shallow the opposition has become.

What really shocks me is that the Defence Force chiefs went along with that. What’s happened to them? https://t.co/jnIZqCmwkm

— Judith Collins (@JudithCollinsMP) July 7, 2021

If you want to see how dead serious the Govt is about criminalising speech they disapprove of just look at how the Defence Minister had an defence force essay deleted & award revoked because the opinion expressed was anti-woke.

The more I think about it, the scarier it is.

— Ani O'Brien (@aniobrien) July 7, 2021

This really goes to show that the opposition isn’t interested in holding the Government to account. Instead they’re more interested in gotcha style politics that should've gone out of fashion when Cameron Slater lost his attack blog. Now that's some cancel-culture I'm sure we can all agree on.

Of course National and ACT don’t really believe in free speech…especially when people are criticising them for their dishonesty. If Judith Collins for instance actually believed in Kiwis being allowed to speak their minds, she wouldn’t have a Twitter block list from Stewart Island to Cape Reinga.

It's that type of double standard that makes National and ACT undeserving of any seat in Parliament, let alone the Government benches. They simply don't have any credibility on free speech, or any other important issues for that matter either.

Nurses should be paid more

If you’ve ever had to spend any time in a hospital, you’ll know that nurses are some of the hardest working and most dedicated people in New Zealand. Their jobs aren't exactly easy either.

Not only does their profession require long, demanding and often unusual hours, Kiwi nurses are being inadequately compensated especially in comparison to their comrades across the ditch.

So when Kiwi nurses say that they’re going to strike again if their pay and conditions don’t finally improve, then everyone should support them to put pressure on the DHBs and the Government to do the right thing.

Yesterday, Stuff reported:

Nurses will take part in multiple strikes unless deal made

Nurses will walk off the job for 24 hours on July 29 in the first of three strikes – unless a resolution to protracted employment negotiations with district health boards (DHBs) can be reached before then.

A majority of New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) members supported a ballot for three strikes: for 24 hours on July 29, eight hours on August 19, and 24 hours on September 9.

NZNO lead advocate David Wait said members clearly remained resolute about ongoing strike action to gain the recognition and working conditions that would ensure nursing remains a viable profession.

...

DHBs spokeswoman Dale Oliff said the DHBs were aiming to prevent the strikes and believed they could make an offer “to settle the pay talks”.

“We’re continuing to work on a range of options and will be working with the union again this week to progress those discussions before the DHB and NZNO bargaining teams get back together with the mediator next week.”

NZNO representatives and the country’s DHBs returned to mediation last Wednesday and Thursday following a nationwide eight-hour strike on June 9.

It’s not as if the DHBs cannot afford to increase nurses take home pay either. All they would need to do is cut a bit more of the chaff from upper management for instance. It's therefore not an either or situation between increasing benefits and paying nurses properly, because with our crown accounts in the black, the Government can actually afford to do both.

Oliff said a 24-hour strike would have a “significant impact on hospital services”.

Wait said the DHBs seemed willing to actively seek a solution.

“Progress has been made in our discussions and that has given us some hope a resolution can be found around pay and safe staffing.”

The current collective agreement – covering nurses, midwives and health care assistants (HCAs) employed by DHBs – expired in June 2020 and negotiations for a new one had now been going for more than a year.

The NZNO brought 65 claims to the bargaining process, which included a significant pay increase for all members, measures to ensure DHBs carried out safe staffing practices, and better support for wellbeing including increased sick leave, parental leave payments, and ACC payments for injuries.

An entire year for pay negotiations is far too long. In my opinion the Minister should have stepped in ages ago to ensure that these talks weren’t overly protracted. To save face, the Labour led Government must now ensure that pay negotiations don’t once again stall because of penny-pinching DHBs.

The claims included a 17 per cent pay increase, with an immediate 10 per cent bump to bring pay for DHB HCAs – who receive the lowest pay under the collective agreement – in line with those working in aged-residential care.

But other claims were made to increase rates by the same margin for all members “to help to attract and retain people within the profession” and “to address the disincentive for nurses to take on senior roles”.

NZNO members voted to strike for eight hours on June 9 after rejecting the third DHB offer in May.

The DHBs offer included different pay increases for different groups of members. Proposed increases ranged from 0.9 to 1.2 per cent for senior nurses, and 5.2 to 12.2 per cent for HCAs.

A lump sum payment of $4000 was offered in lieu of settlement for a separate pay equity claim “in recognition of the work done to date and the time it is taking to settle the claim”.

The DHBs previous offer was clearly inadequate! What they really should be offering is at least pay parity with other similar professions AND a lump sum payment to account for their heels dragging on the ground for so long.

The DHBs offer acknowledged the delay in progress over the pay equity settlement and that nurses had been “subject to historical sex-based undervaluation”. It was expected the process would take another six months.

Minister of Health Andrew Little said on Tuesday he had asked officials to speed up progress on the pay equity settlement as the Queensland Government had launched an advertising campaign aimed at attracting New Zealand nurses for its health service.

The thing is that we need our well-trained nurses so that New Zealand is prepared for a worse case Covid-19 scenario. What if for instance the Delta variant gets lose in Aotearoa? In that case we'll need as many of our locally trained medical professionals here to ensure that lives aren’t needlessly lost.

New Zealand has some of the most sought after nurses in the world because our training is second to none, and without proper pay or improved conditions, many excellent nurses will simply continue to be lured overseas. 

So let’s see the DHBs and the Government put their money where their mouths are...and let's see our nurses being paid properly. Because without these locally trained professionals staying in Gods own, the land of the long white cloud is pretty much akin to a sitting duck.

Minto teams up with National's Nicola Willis

It would be easy to get a bit despondent about politics sometimes, especially when you see some of the stats that get bandied about. The numbers themselves don’t lie and tell of a country that has been badly served by neoliberal politicians dead set on decimating our social services through their austerity budgets.

Much of New Zealand’s critical infrastructure including but not limited to its housing and hospitals have been detrimentally affected by the budget cuts of various backwards thinking administrations, meaning that our health and wellbeing indicators often remain stubbornly in the red.

Right wing politicians often hold these numbers aloft and cry crocodile tears about a situation that they themselves helped create. And once in a while a gullible left wing activist also joins in with the right wing's disingenuous propaganda. A classic example of this occurred yesterday when long time campaigner John Minto echoed National Party MP Nicola Willis' complaint about the Government putting more homeless people into motels.

Here's Nicola Willis tweeting:

The Prime Minister just claimed in question time that the 4000 children being raised in motels were previously living in cars.

This is a farcical claim.

Labour’s housing policies are failing and the PM has nothing to offer except a ridiculous attempt to blame National.

— Nicola Willis (@NicolaWillisMP) July 6, 2021

And here’s Minto on The Daily blog:

The government has no plans to address the housing crisis for low-income New Zealanders

An update on the number of children living in motels by RNZ’s Checkpoint programme should come as no surprise. The programme found an increase in 480 children in the three months from December 2020 to 31 March this year. Things are getting worse in housing for low-income New Zealanders.

Like Willis, Minto fails to mention that much of this increase is likely due to slumlords continuing to evict tenants because they don’t want to adhere to the Government's healthy homes standards. The increase is also likely, as the PM asserts, due to the Government moving families out of cars and into more suitable accommodation such as motels.

Since Labour was elected in 2017 the number on the state house waiting list has increased from just 5,000 to over 23,000 so the net number of state houses being built will not even keep up with the yearly increases in demand, let along eat into the 23,000 backlog.

Now don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for John Minto. But here again he omits an important piece of information. The Labour led Government lowered the criteria for those applying for emergency and state housing, meaning that many more Kiwis became eligible to go onto the waiting lists.

Surely he hasn’t forgotten that under the last National led Government, and more precisely Housing Minister Phil Heatley, people in need of housing weren’t even allowed onto the Housing Corporation's waiting list? One of the first things National did was to make the criteria more strict, which directly resulted in 82 percent of applicants being removed from the HCNZ waiting list by July 2011.

Andrew McKenzie also explained that after that 2017 election, Kainga Ora recommended an increase in state house building from 1600 per year to 2,000 per year but Labour did not accept the recommendation. Yes, you read that correctly – Labour decided to simply continue building state houses at the same rate as the previous National government.

In fact over the last four years of Labour in government, the total number of state houses for rent has remained almost static.

If you were to take these criticisms at face value, you would think that the current Government isn’t doing anything at all to try and fix the housing crisis. However both Willis and Minto are incorrect in most of their assertions about Labour’s current housing policies. 

Firstly, the number of state rentals has increased by 4649 beds since September 2017 according to Kāinga Ora’s housing stats. And according to the Government’s Housing Dashboard there are 4705 new state houses since June 2018.

This is in contrast to the last National led Government who demolished 256 state houses and increased the number of vacant properties by a whopping 471 by 2011. At the end of their first term in government, National had sold off another 548 state houses, many into private ownership for below market rates.

Over the entire nine long years of National's failed administration where John Key continuously claimed that there wasn’t any housing crisis to worry about, the number of state houses declined by a whopping 6000. How on earth is that comparable to Labour building 4705 new state houses in just over three years?

So the accusation that Labour has carried on where National left off is utterly and categorically wrong! Are they doing enough? Of course not! But likening the current administrations housing policies to National’s austerity and dare I say corruption is akin to political whitewashing! And that’s not something anybody who wants to hold past or present Government's to account should be doing.

Is Labour in denial about the housing crisis?

There’s no escaping the fact that New Zealand has the least affordable housing in the world. Not only are young Kiwi families being locked out of home ownership, because wages are low in comparison to our white hot housing market, but renters are also feeling the pinch as speculators increase rents to invest in even more properties and offset future costs.

It’s a dire scenario that’s resulting in not just housing unaffordability, but also increased homelessness, which will ensure New Zealand continues to rank as one of the most unequal countries in the world. The end result of course is a decrease in owner occupied buildings, which studies have shown is the bedrock of any functioning society.

So what’s the Government doing about it? Well not a hell of a lot if the numbers are anything to go by. Sure, Labour extended the bright-line test and made some changes to investor tax rules. They've also built around 8645 houses since June 2018. But this has had little to no effect on housing affordability and, it appears, a detrimental effect on the rental housing market.

On March 23, Stuff reported:

Rents hit new highs in the provinces as Covid-19 increases popularity of remote working

Rents surged to new highs in the provinces in February as more people turned to remote working since Covid-19.

The national median weekly rent increased 1.9 per cent to $530 from February last year, with gains in all regions, according to the latest Trade Me Rental Price Index. The biggest gains were in Manawatu/Whanganui, up 16 per cent, Hawke’s Bay, up 15 per cent, and Taranaki, up 13 per cent.

Meanwhile the accommodation supplement hasn’t increased at all.

A shortage of housing has pushed up house prices and increased demand for rental properties, which has pushed up prices in that market. Increases in rents have outstripped gains in income, prompting concern about what level of increase is reasonable, and spurred demand for rent controls.

It's pretty evident that realtors and speculators have by and large made good on their threat to evict tenants en masse because the Government implemented its healthy homes standards. The net result of course is an increase in homeless people right across New Zealand.

On Saturday, the NZ Herald reported:

Housing crisis: Whangārei pair living in park trespassed as homelessness skyrockets

Whangārei rough sleepers are facing trespass notices amid a rapid rise in homelessness.

This week, RNZ revealed new figures showing the city's homeless population had increased from 21 people in 2018 to 293 in 2020.

The figures were part of a Northland District Health Board report released this week.

It said "a very high proportion" of homeless were Māori and that was "reinforcing and extending existing inequities" but it was "unlikely there is sufficient transitional housing in Northland to meet the need".

It was obvious to everyone but the Government that if realtors and investors were given any leeway to squeeze more money out of housing, they would. An increase in homelessness likely wasn’t a concern to them at all. In fact this works in their favour because people who’re caught in the rental poverty trap are less likely to come forward about their substandard rentals or abusive landlords for fear of becoming homeless.

It’s a catch twenty-two situation being that the Government is relying on tenants to inform them about any failure to comply with the healthy homes standards as well, which basically renders the policy toothless! Obviously there needs to be inspectors to ensure compliance, because the industry simply won’t regulate itself to any degree that's required.

So not only are rental properties going to be left vacant or dilapidated, which will cause an increase in poverty related crime and ill-health, the Government also loses out because tenants are effectively investing more money into non-productive assets on behalf of their landlords. This is the exact opposite of what the Labour Party apparently intended before it came to power, and despite the facts piling up, they’re still only willing to tinker around the edges.

Last week, Stuff reported:

Investor tax rule changes: Government 'will take action' if rents spike, Grant Robertson says

The Government “will take action if necessary” should investors hike rents to offset the effect of tax rule changes.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson issued the warning after introducing interest deductibility rule changes on March 23, which take away investors’ ability to offset home loan interest costs against rental income.

…

Robertson would not comment on whether he would consider national or targetted rental increase caps if landlords did hike prices.

He said for the year to February 2021, Stats NZ recorded rental price increases of 3 percent.

“We will be monitoring the impact on the rental market closely and we will take action if necessary.

“Tenants can also go to the Tenancy Tribunal if they think their rent is too expensive and not in line with the market to request a rent reduction.

So we’re back to the Government expecting tenants to piss their landlords off and potentially end up on the street. I mean doesn’t Robertson know that all the real estate agencies now keep a database of personal information on renters, which is likely being used to penalise anybody who tries to stand up for their rights?

“It is also worth noting that the changes to interest deductibility rules for current landlords are being phased in over a four-year period so any substantial price increases would not be justifiable in any event.”

It might not be justified, but it is happening. Grant Robertson’s language here clearly shows that he’s in denial about what's occurring in the rental housing market. It’s not a question of “if landlords hike prices” because they already have and will continue to do so well above anything that is justifiable.

We saw a similar blasé approach from the Prime Minister when she claimed that the banks were just speculating about rents increasing substantially due to a backlash because of the changes to investor tax rules.

Jacinda Ardern might claim to be watching the numbers closely in terms of rents compared to wage growth, but it’s clear that her eye has gone off the ball. With rents increasing in some areas by a whopping 16 percent, while wage growth is at 2.6 percent, the only recourse the Government logically has is a cap on rental increases. The longer they delay, the worse things will get not just in terms of quality of life for tenants, but also in terms of homelessness and the housing crisis in general.

Labour can simply kiss any benefits from their poverty reduction policies goodbye if they don't get housing right.

The Government should go even further to implement an Empty House Levy to penalise those speculators who've made their tenants homeless instead of fixing their substandard properties. This would also likely reduce the some 200,000 empty houses that are gathering dust in New Zealand at the moment. Otherwise Labour risks the housing crisis becoming its Achilles heel at the next election, even though they’re slowly inching forward in the right direction.

A failure to report on Canada's ethnic cleansing

You’ve really got to wonder why New Zealand’s main six o'clock news broadcasters, One News and Newshub, aren’t reporting on the shocking revelations that mass graves of indigenous children are being found at numerous sites right across Canada at the moment?

This is an egregious lack of coverage for something as serious as genocide and just goes to show that we’re being badly served by our current mainstream media propagandists.

Instead, we have numerous puff-pieces about how great Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are because they're wasting a few billion dollars to stroke their egos and fly off into outer space.

Perhaps what the TVNZ and Newshub news producers are really saying by failing to report on the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Indigenous children is that their lives simply don’t matter. Or perhaps they just don’t like reporting on the fact that most of these children have been murdered in residential schools run by the Roman Catholic Church.

Their silence looks even more questionable when other news agencies are actually doing their jobs properly.

Yesterday, CNN reported:

182 human remains discovered in unmarked graves near former residential school

A search has revealed 182 human remains in unmarked graves at the site of another residential school in British Columbia.

The Lower Kootenay Band, a member band of the Ktunaxa Nation, has announced that remains were found at the site of the former St. Eugene's Mission School near the city of Cranbrook.

This announcement comes after hundreds of unmarked graves thought to contain the remains of Indigenous children were recently discovered at the sites of two other former boarding schools in Canada and many First Nations communities having called for a halt to Canada Day celebrations Thursday.

"It is believed that the remains of these 182 souls are from the member Bands of the Ktunaxa nation, neighbouring First Nations communities, & the community of aqam," the Lower Kootenay Band said in a statement released Wednesday.

If New Zealand cannot even acknowledge Canada’s persecution, murder and forced assimilation of their Indigenous population, which uprooted an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children from their communities with the sole purpose of getting rid of “the Indian problem”, how exactly are we going to acknowledge past atrocities in our own country?

Approximately 100 Lower Kootenay Band members were required to attend the St. Eugene's Mission School. The residential school was operated by the Roman Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s, the statement said. Indigenous children ages 7 to 15 were mandated by the Canadian government to attend the schools.

It’s little wonder that Churches are being burnt down and statues demolished in Canada at the moment. I mean what would you do if thousands of your people were systematically erased through industrial sized ethnic cleansing programs that were run by the church and sanctioned by the state?

The discovery of human remains at the sites of former residential schools comes as Canadian authorities are investigating multiple fires that destroyed four Catholic churches on Indigenous land in the past week.

They are the latest in a string of recent events affecting the country's Indigenous communities. The churches were destroyed as Canada confronts its history of systemic abuse of Indigenous communities.

Even if there wasn’t any new evidence of mass grave sites in Canada, the fact that numerous churches have been burnt down and statues destroyed not to mention the huge protests about Canadian Day celebrations going ahead in the face of new evidence about these terrible massacres is newsworthy enough.

There has been well over a thousand unmarked graves found so far with another 132 sites of interest yet to be searched. So whatever the reason is for TVNZ and Newshub to keep Kiwis uninformed on this issue, it's clearly entirely unjustified.

Rachel Stewart - Arsehole of the Week

Isn’t it amusing that Rachel Stewart, a right wing gun nut and advocate for bigotry who threatened to shoot people, is whining about her rights being abused because the Police came and took her guns away? Talk about a complete lack of self-awareness.

I mean what exactly did she expect would happen? That the dozen or so vociferous online TERFs in her sad little echo chamber would be able to get her guns back by rallying around her decaying career in support and singing Kumbaya or something? Instead, Stewart has sparked debate that will hopefully deprive her of ever owning a gun again.

You can understand why the Herald dropped her. And I hate to do this to you, but here's Stewart pontificating about Free Speech a couple of years ago:

Rachel Stewart: I'm back and I'm not staying quiet

What I don't take a helicopter view of, is watching the polarisation between people turn into a gaping, yawning chasm of hatred and enmity - the perfect breeding ground for massive societal breakdown. And bloodshed.

...

Which is where the importance of free speech comes in. The preference right now is to ban anyone or anything that threatens one's trigger points. It is a dangerous road. Bumpy, rutted, potholed - and ultimately leading over a cliff. To silence anything that may potentially make you feel 'unsafe' is to have missed Growing Up Lesson 101: The World Is Not Safe.

 

So people should be allowed to say whatever they want, which will lead to bloodshed and the breakdown of society? Talk about bonkers! And to think this dross was printed in New Zealand's largest publication. What on earth were they thinking?

Of course most narcissists cannot handle the jandal when the shoe is on the other foot. In fact Stewart will be stewing in her juices at being absolutely roasted right across the interwebs. So with no further ado, here's one of those "grown up" lessons on how to lose your guns:

Of course Stewart didn't take the opportunity to apologise for her death threats. Instead she again tried to justify her fantasy of hunting down a human being and shooting them while claiming that she's some sort of martyr for the Free Speech cause. Meanwhile the transphobe set about blocking anybody who dared question her duplicitous belief system.

Obviously a true advocate of Free Speech cannot also be a proponent of Cancel Culture. But here we have Rachel Stewart claiming to be the voice of reason, while threatening to kill people she doesn't like.

Click to enlarge

Perhaps the idiot thought her Free Speech buddies would swoop down and argue that death threats are fine and just a normal part of a free society? But unfortunately for her over-inflated ego only the most deluded amongst their dwindling numbers, such as Damien Grant, have dared to venture beyond a cursory tweet in support of the deluded criminal. Everybody else is keeping their distance because the pungent stench from her putrid hubris is completely overpowering to everyone but right-wingers who’ve lost all their senses.

Perhaps Stewart, by posting the Police letter outlining why her guns, licence and amo were being lawfully seized, believed that public opinion would swing in favour of her defunct ideology. Or perhaps she just wanted, like a skydiver who forgot their parachute, some attention.

In this regard, the former Herald columnist is obviously following in the footsteps of her hero, Judith Collins. National is now a political party completely bereft of new ideas that can only gain public attention through self-mutilation.

So well done Rachel Stewart. You’ve proven once again that your arguments aren’t proper enough to be published just as you’ve proven that you aren't fit enough to own a gun. And for being owned so completely and successfully becoming the butt of everybody's jokes, here’s an Arsehole Award in your name. Please feel free to share it with your friend.