News of visit by Chinese Premier is belatedly posted on Beehive website – now we await official post of banking inquiry

Buzz from the Beehive

Let the record show that the PM’s news about China’s Premier visiting New Zealand this week was posted on the government’s website yesterday, after Point of Order had published its June 11 Buzz report.

But RNZ reported his announcement the previous day-

Chinese Premier Li Qiang to visit New Zealand

4:00 pm on 10 June 2024

Perhaps the PM’s publicity staff are being overworked and had not officially posted news of this development in NZ relationship with China when Point of Order published its Buzz news yesterday.

And maybe Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ publicity staff are being overworked, too, because RNZ has reported –

New law strikes at snake oil peddling, but rongoā healers will be spared because regulators can’t define what they do

Buzz from the Beehive  

The Government claims to be delivering certainty to displaced homeowners affected by the recent North Island extreme weather events, providing an interim payment to support them when their insurance payments for temporary accommodation run out.

But certainty for taxpayers is missing from the press statement from the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Carmel Sepuloni.  It contains not one figure with a dollar sign. which means the sum being budgeted by the government for this initiative is a mystery.

We are told only that the interim payment will be available from 4 September,  made weekly and directly to homeowners, and set at 100 per cent of the average rent declared by Accommodation Supplement recipients in the recipients’ region.

Sepuloni’s announcement had been posted on the government’s official website (when we checked early this afternoon) along with news that the Therapeutic Products Bill has been enacted.  This was hailed by Health Minister Ayesha Verrall as “the most significant change to the regulation of medicines, medical devices and natural health products in nearly 40 years”.

This one is fascinating.  Some providers of healing services are largely being exempted from the regulations (guess what their ethnicity might be?) because they employ “traditional” practices and you have to be a Māori to know what they are doing.