Posts by linger
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Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to Neil,
You’re confusing two very different things there. Cutting immigration does not entail accepting fewer refugees. To put things in perspective: as of 2016, NZ had accepted only 33000 refugees in total since World War 2, but had had more than that number of immigrants in the past year alone.
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pointless corporate-style rebranding efforts, aka flag-wa(i)ving …
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Hosking has either demonstrated a profound lack of knowledge about the NZ electoral system, or else he has deliberately spread misinformation to suit his political bias. Either should disqualify him from any role moderating a political debate.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to simon g,
nothing-to-do-with-National person inside MSD is […] not real
Certainly, the amount of spin Joyce delivered this morning can only mean he believes the (ultimate) source is a National minister.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Neil,
there is no evidence of who leaked and why
But if it wasn’t some inappropriately-briefed and unethically-minded National staffer, then we have even bigger problems with MSD’s lack of political neutrality and lack of respect for client confidentiality, wouldn’t you say?
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What gets me is the constant MSM reference to the “no surprises policy” as if that excused privacy violation.
Joyce in particular has been quick to claim that everyone was following the rules, even though admitting “we should have a look” at those rules. Joyce also suggested (on NatRad, 7:45 this morning) that once ministers get that information, it’s hard for them to hold on to it in the face of media questioning.
Bollocks to all of that.
(i) The time for “re-examining” policy around releasing details of individual cases was back when Bennett got caught doing it. That National simply ignored the issue strongly suggests they intended to keep indulging in Muldoonist character assassination.
(ii) The solution is simple enough (and if the policy doesn’t already state it, it should): ministries might on occasion have to tell a minister that a particular case meets some unusual criteria that pose a problem for government policy, but there is no possible reason relating to government policy for passing along any individual’s name.
(iii) In turn, there is no excuse for any minister passing along information on a ministry case that identifies an individual by name. -
Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Rob Stowell,
While it’s nice to think Brownlee could be ousted, it can’t be done through strategic voting. He’s ranked 5th on National’s list, so he'll be in Parliament regardless. Better for Labour and the Greens to focus on the party vote. If they can agree to support one non-Brownlee candidate in Ilam as well, that’s a bonus, but not something that drastically changes the outcome at a national level.
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I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but Jane Bowron has lost even more credibility with today’s hatchet job on the Greens ( Dominion Post 28/8/2017, p7, “All bets are off as agreement tossed aside” — online title “Greens agreement turns out to be worthless”). This time out her groundless flights of fancy are:
(i) Greens fielding a candidate in Ohariu to chase the party vote represents an end to the memorandum of understanding between Greens and Labour. Actually, it does nothing of the sort: the Greens are explicitly not chasing the electorate vote, and Ohariu voters have had more practice than most in tactical splitting of party and electorate votes, and are unlikely to be confused.
(ii) Greens could instead form a coalition with National.
Yeah, right. Where does Bowron get off peddling this nonsense? -
Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to Farmer Green,
grasslands that we now have , co-evolved with ruminants
Well, no. These particular ruminants are not exactly the product of evolution aimed at efficient use of natural grasslands, either: rather, they, and the particular grasslands they inhabit in this country, represent the end result of thousands of years of selection by and management by (and ultimately, codependence with) humans. As you yourself know, they do not form a sustainable permanent system; they require continuous management and maintenance (though less so under some farming methods than others, and much can be done to make that work less intensive). Rather than a purely biological evolutionary process, we’re looking more at a process of cultural and technological development; and of course that’s where any future development of our land use will come from too.
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Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to Farmer Green,
But then it would also be true to say that NZ ecosystems have not evolved with any ruminants. NZ is the last landmass (other than Antarctica) to have been settled and changed by humans, which makes your question
how far do we want to go in reducing the human footprint, and who decides when enough is enough
even more pointed. There’s a Radiolab episode, Wild Things, that explores some of the resulting dilemmas: (i) what it means, and whether it’s even possible, to preserve wild animals in a natural habitat; and (ii) an interesting take on hunting vs. conservation.