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.

Let’s wait for the goodies that flow from a $638,000 Marsden Fund investment in study of 19th century music in Vienna

We are surprised it has taken so long.

The PM named her ministers on November 3.  We have had to wait since then for her eager new team to announce a new trough, although the government calls it a fund.

It’s a $70 million fund intended to “allow” business and industries to access financial support to switch away from boilers run on coal and gas, to cleaner electricity and biomass options.

A much more modest sum – $100,000 – is being contributed to a Mayoral Relief Fund to support those most affected by the recent severe weather in Napier.

On the other hand, a greater sum – $84.7 million – has been announced “to support research in science”.

 In this case, a press statement in the name of Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods says the Government is investing the $84.7 million in innovative research projects “including those focussed on health, climate change, astronomy and the impact of Big Data on social equality”.

Let’s see how much money ministers can dispense before Covid-19 calls for a tougher govt response

Latest from the Beehive –

The PM provided a disquieting heads-up on what the government will do if a new case of community transmission of COVID-19 is found in New Zealand.  She outlined the cabinet-approved framework designed to give the public and business community as much certainty as can be given on what to expect if new cases inside our borders are found.

Some of her ministers, meanwhile, were getting on with the business of winning public approval by redistributing the money collected by the IRD,