Numbers, quotas and ratios have been high in ministerial considerations over the past 24 hours or so.
Export revenue to the EU will grow by up to $1.8 billion annually on full implementation of the trade deal being ballyhooed by the PM and her Trade Minister.
More than 57,000 light-electric and Non Plug-in Hybrid vehicles were registered in the first year of operation of the Government’s Clean Car Discount Scheme, the most on record, Transport Minister Michael Wood brayed.
Seventy new constables heading for the frontline after Police wing 355 graduated in Porirua brought the total number of new officers since Labour took office to 3,303, Police Minister Chris Hipkins boasted.
The state is flexing its muscle in the building and supermarket industries.
In the building industry the intervention can be criticised as long overdue and unlikely to do much good any time soon to remedy a crippling shortage of plasterboard.
A Ministerial taskforce has been set up to look at what more can be done to ease the shortage, including the potential for legislative or regulatory change.
The Commerce Commission will be enabled to require supermarkets to hand over information regarding contracts, arrangements and land covenants which make it difficult for competing retailers to set up shop.
Rwanda is back in the headlines, not only for the role it is playing in the British Government’s highly controversial plans for ridding their country of asylum seekers (the first deportation flight was cancelled after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights, which decided there was “a real risk of irreversible harm’’ to the asylum seekers involved).
The Central African country is also embroiled in a dispute with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, each country accusing the other of firing rockets across their shared border.
According to Al Jazeera,
“This seems to have been triggered by fighting between the M23 rebel group and state forces in the country’s east.
New Zealand’s biggest company by capitalisation on the NZX, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare which sells its products in 120 countries, has supplied $880 million of hospital hardware over the past two years. That’s the equivalent of about 10 years’ hardware sales before COVID-19.
This remarkable performance deserves the plaudits of all New Zealanders.
And as a company which spends nearly 10% of its revenue on research it has new products coming on the market.
CEO Lewis Gradon (surely he deserves a knighthood) says the growing body of evidence supporting the use of nasal high flow and other respiratory therapies shows that its products have a clear role to play in improving care and outcomes beyond COVID-19 patients.
Our ministers have been variously focused on issues involving New Zealand’s foreign relationships – a rebuke for Russia, Covid vaccines for poorer countries and the pursuit of a trade dispute with Canada – and the regulation of activities in space.
Coming back to earth in the high country, legislation has been passed to overhaul the management of 1.2 million hectares of Crown pastoral land.
On the Covid front, the government is providing an updated My Vaccine Pass from 24 May, has released data on Government funding dished out to support organisations, jobs and livelihoods in the arts and culture sector, and is updating its Care in the Community response as the number of households needing support to safely self-isolate with COVID-19 reduces.
As Land Information Minister, Damien O’Connor can expect criticism from high country farmers after the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill passed its third reading (visit the Parliament website).
The Nats say they will repeal the changes effected by the new law in its next term of government, maintaining they effectively end a decades-old relationship between the Crown and high country pastoral leaseholders.
Leaseholders who have been effective custodians of this land for generations will be subjected to a punitive regime devoid of any knowledge of practical implementation, the Nats say. Environmental outcomes worsen rather than improve.
As Trade and Export Growth Minister, on the other hand, O’Connor is behind New Zealand’s initiation of dispute settlement proceedings against Canada regarding its implementation of dairy tariff rate quotas (TRQs) under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
New Zealand considers Canada’s dairy TRQs to be inconsistent with its obligations under CPTPP, impeding New Zealand exporters from fully benefiting from the market access that was negotiated under the agreement.
New legislation to modernise the management of 1.2 million hectares of Crown pastoral land primarily in the South Island high country was passed in Parliament today.
Aotearoa New Zealand strongly condemns the campaign of destructive cyber activity by Russia against Ukraine, alongside the EU and international partners, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced today.
The Government has released a review of the operation and effectiveness of the law controlling commercial space activities, and signalled a separate study on wider issues of space policy will begin later this year.
New Zealand has initiated dispute settlement proceedings against Canada regarding its implementation of dairy tariff rate quotas (TRQs) under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
The Government is updating its Care in the Community (CiC) response as the number of households needing support to safely self-isolate with COVID-19 reduces.
The Government has today released data for three key Government support funds which were designed to support organisations, jobs and peoples livelihoods in the arts and culture sector.
Now that it has set about implementing a de-colonialising curriculum on subjects such as science and history, the government is determined to get more kids into classes to lap up the new doctrine.
It has declared a commitment to improving student attendance at school and “kura” (which is a school) in a pre-Budget announcement from Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti.
The declaration was among several ministerial statements posted on the Beehive website over the past few days, including a speech by the PM to a business audience.
Hipkins said a regional response fund of $40 million over four years is being established to meet local education needs, with a strong initial focus on ensuring students are going to school and are engaged in their learning.
Perhaps parents should go back to school, too, to grapple with the jargon of the Ardern government ideologues in their promotion of separatism or partnership, depending on your doctrinal inclinations.
Funds will be provided through “Te Mahau”, which (said Hipkins)
“… works closely with the sector and communities, as well as hapū and iwi to ensure frontline support is getting where it needs to in the way it needs to.”
Thus hapū and iwi are separated from the school sector and communities.
Te Mahau is a comparatively recent addition to the English-Te Reo hybrid language that has become the Ardern government’s argot. A ministry explanation says:
Te Mahau is the new name for what has previously been referred to as an Education Service Agency (ESA).
And what’s the problem with Education Service Agency? A teeny minority of the population might not know what it means or what it might do.
It may be that parents also have to go back to school to learn the American spelling that Hipkins and Tinetti have adopted in their press statement. It says Budget 2022 also will provide $18.9 million
“.. to fund a refresh and enhancement of Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) delivery to ensure the programis incorporating the most up to date research and is tailored to the New Zealand context.”
Mind you, “program” does become “programme” in five other uses of the word. Perhaps Hipkins and Tinetti each contributed their own spellings.
Oh – and it seems the modern learning of Mangled English will teach us to abandon the hyphens that once were required in compound adjectives such as up-to-date research.
The Government is committed to improving student attendance at school and kura, Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti said in a pre-Budget announcement today.
Essential workers sent a clear message today that they no longer want to see their pay and conditions set through a race to the bottom, and that they support fair, good faith bargaining with employers through Fair Pay Agreements.
The Government is partnering with Air New Zealand to trial an innovative new COVID-19 testing solution that uses Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) technology.
A warmer winter is on the horizon for over 1 million New Zealanders receiving either a main benefit or New Zealand Superannuation as the Winter Energy Payment begins today.
Tax Minister David Parker’s speech about his quest for better information about who is paying how much in taxes and the development of tax principles can now be found on the Beehive website.
The speech (yet to be posted when Point of Order reported yesterday) mentions “an important stage of the project”, which will be wide public consultation on the proposed principles and reporting framework. It’s a shame Parker couldn’t persuade his Cabinet colleagues to take the same principled approach to
Parker wants the tax principles enacted in a Bill before the end of the current Parliamentary term, resulting in the Tax Principles Act taking its place alongside the Tax Administration Act and other revenue Acts “to create the tax system that New Zealanders can understand and be proud of”.
The speech was posted alongside news of exemption cards becoming available – no, not an exemption from having to pay taxes. The card attests to an exemption from having to wear a mask.
And Energy Minister Megan Woods brings news of Auckland harbour ferries being set to get quieter, cleaner and greener, thanks to two new fully-electric ferries for commuters and sightseers to travel on.
The project is a collaboration between the Government, Auckland Transport, EV Maritime and boat builders McMullen & Wing.
Auckland Transport receives a $27 million grant funding from the Government to pay around 75% of the costs of constructing two new electric ferries.
The funding comes from the Infrastructure Reference Group’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund.
Wetlands expert and advocate Dr Beverley Clarkson was today presented with New Zealand’s most prestigious conservation award, the Loder Cup by Minister of Conservation Kiri Allan.
Those coming here expecting announcements of new tax policy will be disappointed. None are being made. We have no secret plan to introduce a CGT nor a wealth tax or a deemed income tax, nor others.
Auckland harbour ferries are set to get quieter, cleaner and greener, thanks to two new fully-electric ferries for commuters and sightseers to travel on.
So what’s happened to the widely admired crisis management skills that elevated Jacinda Ardern so far above other New Zealand politicians and won her re-election in 2020 with a 50-year record result for Labour?
She sounded almost forlorn as she spoke on Monday of how Covid will increase “and rapidly” and conceded “there will be disruption and pressure from Omicron”.
Just as 2019 was to be the “year of delivery” and 2021 the “year of the vaccine”, this is to be the “year of moving forward”. But moving forward to what?
Well, once Covid reaches its peak and starts to come down, she says
“… we can start to move towards a life that feels a little more like a new normal that we can all live with”.
Oh dear.
Ardern says her primary goal is to manage Covid with few restrictions and accelerate the economic recovery while continuing to ensure that lives and livelihoods are protected.
More health announcements – concerning state support for farmers and growers affected by Covid-19 and “free” flu vaccinations – have flowed from the Beehive.
More ominously, Oceans and Fisheries Minister David Parker has drawn attention to the threat to the health of the oceans – and to fish stocks – posed by climate warming.
He didn’t announce anything in particular to counter this threat. Rather, he mentioned measures he intends to take, such as overhauling the highly contentious Resource Management Act.
His statement was prompted by an announcement to the Stock Exchange by New Zealand King Salmon: the warming of the sea has been killing the company ‘s salmon stocks enough to cause a significant downwards revision in earnings expectations.
The company has reduced its forecast earnings for the 2022 year by $4 to $5 million. The higher salmon losses have been recorded most notably in the company’s Pelorus Sound operations.
Latest opinion polling suggests the political mood is still coloured by the pandemic, with support for the Prime Minister and her party remaining strong.
Yet uncertainty about economic trends points to the risks that will have to be navigated through the next 12 months. Will inflation burn out of control? How will the tourist industry recover? Will the surge in house prices flatten out? May the trend in growing inequality reverse?
Through all the uncertainty, the faith in the Prime Minister remains unshakable. Any regular reader of the “letters to the editor” columns in newspapers will be familiar with how any criticism of Jacinda Ardern is met with a volley of responses from those who ascribe to her the power of defeating Covid in its different variants, and preventing New Zealanders from suffering the rate of fatalities experienced in the UK, Australia or the US. Continue reading “Ardern and her team will be tested as NZ adjusts to new economic realities in the wake of Covid”→
Point of Order 