Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to David Hood,
perhaps some Cake
Could they have it, or eat it? And would you let them eat it?
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Keir Leslie,
From Fendalton
Yeah, I heard rumours that he was going to use his powers of dictat to order the suburb's name changed to Fendahlton, so that the plebes would have no excuse for mispronunciation ;)
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
I don’t think Brown-kingcoal-lee deliberately meant to overlook the Eastern suburbs. I think that the Eastern suburbs were never on his radar at all
But he apparently has visited the Eastern suburbs many times over the last few days. And he's an MP from Christchurch! I wouldn't expect Rodders, or Nikki Kaye, or even Murray McCully to know intimately the concerns of the residents of deepest, darkest South Auckland's electorates, but I would expect them to recognise, if visiting immediately following a major earthquake and vested with near-absolute power to facilitate rebuilding, that the people in those electorates are more vulnerable than the people in their own electorates. Brownlee is the walking exemplification of the saying "there are none so blind, as those who cannot see."
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Why did it take a blogger to make everyone notice? What were journalists doing?
One assumes they were doing the easy stories that have nicely-packaged narratives and compelling imagery, along with being in easily-accessible locations within Shower and Rescue Cities. Refugee City sounds like it's somewhat hard to get at, at least in places, and the circumstances don't lend themselves to easy explanations in 20-second sound-bites. Plus, there's nothing compelling about streets full of cracks and silt, because you can see it everywhere. USAR teams aren't present in force, carrying out heavy rescue work, and we've seen our fill of damaged residential premises after September. The CBD pictures aren't worn out from repetition, yet.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
I think Russell's comment was a directly sarcastic response to discussions about how the market is failing to work in Christchurch because if it were functioning rationally petrol would be $4/L.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
I have to note that sprawling suburban design is actually very disaster friendly.
As with anything, you say tomato I say tomato. Sprawl requires more infrastructure to support, and the more infrastructure you have the more infrastructure there is to damage. Density needs less support, so there's less to damage and it's easier to rehabilitate. Auckland, even with its horrendous sprawl, would still be utterly fucked if a major quake were to strike because we're so completely reliant on our massive network of roads and all the subterranean services that support our Pavlova Paradise suburbs. Were the CBD full of buildings that were adequately constructed, it would be far quicker and easier to get it back into action than to remediate damage to the 'burbs. Look at many of the suburbs of Christchurch - itself a fairly sprawled city relative to population - that are still without any reticulated services, or even any temporary ones, and tell me you still believe that sprawl is good.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Jason Le Vaillant,
6(1) is very general:
The Governor-General may from time to time, by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the relevant Minister, make any provision reasonably necessary or expedient for the purpose of this Act.
The fact that there is anything more to the Act gives a lot of context to the intent. If the intent had been to let Brownlee do anything he wanted, they'd have stopped there because everything else would be superfluous. As I said, you have to read it as a whole (and judges are required to do so when interpreting) before trying to work out just how far Gerry can go.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Jason Le Vaillant,
However, read as a whole the Act does not intend to make Gerry Brownlee into Parliament. Which is why the bit about existing provisions is important, since the overall import of the Act is to allow him to relax existing statutory limitations to assist with the reconstruction. Even a National government is leery about giving over its legislative powers to someone who's not Parliament.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Jason Le Vaillant,
S6(4) says "an exemption from, or modify, or extend any provision of any enactment".
That's what limits his power. Yes he can extend or modify provisions, but the provisions must already exist. He cannot create new provisions. -
Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to B Jones,
there might be rules about what the PM can endorse for pay
Pretty sure the Cabinet Manual has strict rules on Ministers even appearing to endorse products, never mind actually doing so for financial gain. For one thing, if certain events transpired that could end up being classified as corruption of an elected official.