When does history become “ancient”, on Tinetti’s watch as Minister of Education – and what of the compound adjective?

Buzz from the Beehive

Auckland was wiped off the map, when Education Minister Jan Tinetti delivered her speech of welcome as host of the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers “here in Tāmaki Makaurau”.

But – fair to say – a reference was made later in the speech to a project

“… which supported 60 learners and their families in South Auckland to stay engaged with their education”. 

Tinetti proceeded to say in her opening remarks:

“Aotearoa is delighted to be hosting you all.”

She opted for Aotearoa on 22 occasions, including–

“I know that, standing here before you, in my first international engagement as Aotearoa Minister of Education that I have a lot of work to do.  

The speech is among the latest posts on the Beehive website:

More Māori words make it into the OED, and polytech boss (with rules on words like “students”) is promoting the use of others

Buzz from the Beehive 

 New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti is hosting the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers for three days from today, welcoming Education Ministers and senior officials from 18 Pacific Island countries and territories, and from Australia.

Here’s hoping they have brought translators with them – or packed the latest edition of the OED.  The publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary last week announced the OED has deepened its coverage of New Zealand English by adding 47 new entries.

The new words include Kiwiness (1967), a noun signifying the quality or fact of being from New Zealand and to characteristics regarded as typical of New Zealand or New Zealanders.

However, most of the words in this latest update are borrowings from Māori – or te reo – one of New Zealand’s official languages. The Māori renaissance that began in the 1970s has seen Māori language and culture moving from the margins to the centre of national life in New Zealand, and this is reflected in the substantial number of Māori words that have become part of the vocabulary of both Māori and Pakeha (non-Māori) speakers of English, several of which are now making it into the OED for the first time.

Financial capability services are being bucked up, but Stuart Nash shouldn’t have to see if they can help him (not yet)

Buzz from the Beehive 

The building of financial capability was brought into our considerations when Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced she had dipped into the government’s coffers for $3 million for “providers” to help people and families access community-based Building Financial Capability services.

That wording suggests some Building Financial Capability services are not community-based and are not being helped with government funding.

The ministerial press statement further suggests someone should sort out which initial letters in words should be capitalised and which should not – or, even better, why any of them should be capitalised.

In the headline and the first paragraph, the initial letters of Building Financial Capability are capitalised, but not the initial word of services.

But then the minister says:

“Demand for Financial Capability Services is growing as people face cost of living pressures. Those pressures are increasing further in areas affected by flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle.”

“We’re reprioritising an additional $3 million to invest in MSD-funded Building Financial Capability services to support demand.”

Greens don’t shy from promoting a candidate’s queerness but are quiet about govt announcement on clean energy

There was a time when a political party’s publicity people would counsel against promoting a candidate as queer.

No matter which of two dictionary meanings the voting public might choose to apply – the old meaning of odd, strange, weird, or aberrant, or the more recent meaning of gay, homosexual or LGBT – “queer” would be regarded as a dubious attribute to promote for winning popular support.

Nowadays, clearly, the word is no longer shunned for vote-winning purposes and the Green Party today has injected an element of gay pride into its news that:

Green Party Announces Gina Dao-McLay As Candidate For Mana Electorate

The Green Party is proud to announce Gina Dao-McLay as their candidate for Mana. Gina is a queer young person living in Porirua, the Co-Convenor of the nationwide Young Greens network and the former Co-Director of  of Make It 16, the campaign to lower the voting age which won their case against the Government in the Supreme Court.

Mind you, geography probably plays a part in the extent to which queerness should be promoted on the hustings.

According to Time magazine, Republican lawmakers in Florida appear likely to expand provisions in the Parental Rights in Education Act, or so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law, with a host of new restrictions on what teachers can and cannot say in their classrooms about gender, sex, and sexual orientation.

Latest BoP figures show NZ sinking deeper into the red, but O’Connor is doing his bit to put things right with CPTPP talks

Buzz from the Beehive

The bothersome economic news today is that New Zealand’s GDP fell by 0.6% in the December quarter, weaker than market forecasts of a fall of around 0.2% and much weaker than the Reserve Bank’s assumption of a 0.7% rise.

This followed the even-more-bothersome news yesterday that the country’s current account deficit has blown out sharply over the past two years to hit 8.9% of GDP by the end of 2022, the biggest deficit as a share of GDP since the mid-1970s.

As Westpac economists pointed out, the current account deficit is a symptom of a country that is living beyond its means.

Monetary and fiscal stimulus in response to the Covid shock has left the economy overheated, as demonstrated by the extremely tight labour market and the surge in inflation. Essentially, we haven’t adjusted our spending patterns to reflect either the shortfall in our export income or the rise in the cost of living. 

Westpac gave us much to muse on, as we consider our options for getting the books into better shape:

Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: Stuart Nash’s resignation shows our leaders need a lesson in civics

* Dr Bryce Edwards writes –
I teach a first-year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we have recently witnessed with Rob Campbell – and that government ministers aren’t allowed to interfere in some functions of the state, such as telling the Police where to make prosecutions.

It’s essentially a civics course about how our political system works, and hopefully the 1300 students who take the course each year will go off to work in government departments, businesses and other careers understanding the rules of our political system.

Politicians are fond of complaining about a lack of this type of political education amongst the voting public but, as we’ve seen in the last few weeks, so many of our leaders are themselves unaware of basic political rules.

As with Rob Campbell and other wayward senior public servant appointees like Steve Maharey and Ruth Dyson, Nash has pleaded it was just a mistake and, in defending his actions, he showed his ignorance of the rules. But shouldn’t we expect our leaders to have a much better understanding of the political rules about integrity? After all, Nash is no newbie – he’s been a minister since 2017, and an MP for 15 years.

While climate change policies are tossed on to Hipkins’ bonfire, the Greens claim victory with fringe benefit tax changes

Buzz from the Beehive

Exempting bikes, electric bikes and scooters from fringe benefit tax looked like something of a sop for a Green Party that had good grounds to grumble after a bunch of climate change measures was tossed on to the PM’s policy bonfire.

The combustibles included the clean car upgrade scheme, public transport improvement (to be applied in five main centres rather than nationwide), the policy to lease clean cars to low-income families, and work on the proposed container return scheme (deferred rather than dumped).

As things turned out, the Greens seized on the fringe benefit tax announcement as  a political triumph.  Their press statement was headed Greens Secure Win For Clean Transport – and their transport spokesperson, Julie Anne Genter, crowed:

“This is a huge Green win that we have been pushing for many years. It will finally rebalance the tax law to make it easier for people to access e-bikes for commuting to and from work, as well as public transport.”

The Māori Party was not so readily mollified, declaring it was “extremely concerned” with the government’s culling of certain environmental policies, and calling on the climate change minister to stand down because he had failed “dismally”.

This would be Climate Change Minister and Green co-leader James Shaw, who expressed his own disappointment “with some of the choices that were made in terms of the so-called policy bonfire”.

Hipkins shows his quality as PM in securing a bounce for Labour, but now comes the hard part

Chris  Hipkins has surprised even  some of his  closest  friends  and  backers with the  bounce he has  secured  for Labour  in  public polls  since  he  became Prime Minister. He  has  been put to the test since  he  took  over  from Jacinda  Ardern  in the  top job, and has  shown a  quality that  was  well hidden in  his  previous  portfolios.

It’s  not  just the long  hours  he is  putting into  the  job, but  projecting the human touch  to those  hard hit by Cyclone Gabrielle, or the other disasters of recent weeks as well. Then this week he  was steering the  government in decisions which, as  he  said, will  enable pensioners to start seeing a bit extra in their bank accounts from next month.

For couples over 65, their superannuation payments will now be higher by an extra $102.84 per fortnight between them, while single people living alone will receive an extra $66.86 each payment.

Hipkins  said the package of “bread and butter support” would help people who were “really feeling the bite from the rise in the cost of living”.

More policies are stopped or slowed to help save $1bn for bread-and-butter spending – but RMA “reforms” escape the cull

Buzz from the Beehive

It was a big day for the stopping or slowing of a second tranche of government programmes, an exercise which  Beehive publicists are pitching as measures to allow the Government to focus more time, energy and resources on “the bread and butter issues” facing New Zealanders.

This affirms, of course, that since the 2020 general election, the bread- and-butter issues facing New Zealanders had been lowered (or forgotten?) in the Government’s priorities.

Hence the Government’s popularity had wilted, its poll support had shrunk and Jacinda Ardern – remember her ? – had bailed out as Prime Minister when it looked like the Nats and ACT were on course to win the election this year.

But her successor, Chris Hipkins, has not thrown all the rubbish overboard – or swept it under the carpet until after election day.  He is persisting with one programme which the state-subsidised mainstream media have not too well explained to the public – the legislation that will replace the Resource Management Act.

A strong hint that it deserves much more critical analysis can be found in an article by New Zealand Initiative chairman Roger Partridge headed Submissions expose horrors of David Parker’s RMS reform proposals.

Govt’s plan for lifting productivity and wages entails a $30m investment and a role for the state as a partner

Buzz from the Beehive

One economic measure which Ministers of Finance can’t brag about is productivity growth.  It has been an issue of concern for decades.

In the 2022 IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, New Zealand suffered the biggest drop in rankings among 63 nations compared on measures which include business productivity.

New Zealand dropped in all competitiveness rankings. We ranked 46th for technological infrastructure and 27th for scientific infrastructure, while our track record on productivity and efficiency landed us in 48th place.

A Stuff report in August last year was headed It’s no laughing matter; poor productivity affects all New Zealanders.

It referenced OECD figures which showed New Zealand is 11th out of 34 countries for average hours worked, but its productivity is below the OECD average, when measured in GDP per hour worked.

Michael Bealing, an economist with the NZ Institute of Economic Research, told Stuff increasing productivity in the long run was fundamental to improving well-being.