Curia political poll is grim news for the Nats – but its measure of enthusiasm for “Aotearoa” will be vexing for Maori Party, too

The New Zealand Herald was not alone in reporting on the discomforting results for National in the latest Curia opinion poll and the petition mounted by Maori Party leaders to have the name of this country officially changed to Aotearoa.

The first matter was headlined The National Party’s polling company has the party crashing to within six points of Act

The writer of the report beneath this headline seemed to delight in noting who had conducted this poll.  

The National Party’s historic pollster has the party’s support crashing to historic lows, while Act is on the verge of overtaking it.

A Curia poll, conducted for the Taxpayer’s Union, has National on just 21.2 per cent, with Act close behind on 14.9 per cent.

The result is only a whisker above National’s worst-ever election result, 20.93 per cent in 2002. It is the closest National and Act have ever been in the poll.

Labour is at 45.9 per cent with the Greens on 9.6. Te Paati Māori is on 1.2 per cent.

At Kiwiblog you can find an article on free speech which Stuff and Newshub have not published

Stuff columnist Donna Miles-Mojab laid down a challenge to ACT leader David Seymour in a column headed: Why not rebut Ghahraman’s arguments, rather than label her a menace?

The column, prompted by Seymour’s saying “Golriz Ghahraman is a real menace to freedom in this country”, asked:

Why not offer a rebuttal to her arguments instead of accusing her of being “a real menace to freedom in this country”?  

She might now ask of Stuff: when will they publish the 700 or so words which Seymour submitted on the controversy around his remarks?

An email from Seymour says:

A carbon tax – an issue on which top economists and James Shaw find common ground

No sooner had the dust settled after the government decided against introducing a capital gains tax than a visiting big-wig from the United Nations was advising our government to introduce another form of tax.

According to the New Zealand Herald, the head of the UN, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, has challenged the Government to slap a tax on pollution.

But he was not urging the total tax take be increased.  Instead …

“Shift taxes from salaries, to carbon. We must tax pollution, not people,” he said.

This means reducing income tax as a tax on carbon is applied, Guterres explained.

“We need to make sure that when we adopt measures that increase costs, that we reduce costs in other aspects of the economy.”

Population growth may not be threatening – but does govt fostering of fecundity make Green sense?

David Farrar, at Kiwiblog, brings comfort to his readers today with an item which advises against becoming over-population alarmists.

Reproduced from HumanProgress.org, a project of the Cato Institute, the item says unwarranted panic about overpopulation is a big problem that has led to human rights abuses and much pointless suffering.

It invites us to consider the long history of overpopulation alarmism and how the doomsayers’ fears have failed to materialise again and again.

Inevitably, we are reminded that – two centuries ago – Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population warned that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources and bring about widespread famine.

Northland is doing nicely, thank you, from project funding announced by Shane Jones

Kiwiblog’s David Farrar had no problem answering the question he posed in a headline on a recent post: So who is benefiting from the pork barrel fund?

He referenced a TVNZ 1 News report which said

 … the Ngati Hine Forestry Trust will profit hugely from the taxpayer investment and critics argue that it’s not a good look.

The trust will be receiving $8 million from the government to plant trees and create 60 jobs for the people of Northland.

The trust’s website shows its acting chief executive and a trustee is Pita Paraone, recently retired NZ First MP.