"We're also competing against a lot of people in politics who come along and say... it's those rich people's fault, we'll just take even more money off them and give it to you."
This is the fundamental lie of neoliberal politics. A total inversion of the truth, which is that neoliberal parties say 'it's those poor people's fault, we'll just take the money off them and give it to you', and they do.
"...one of the biggest supporters of extra regulation is big business. If you're a big business, more regulations are a pain, but they're going to hurt and maybe wipe out your competitors and stop any upstarts coming and competing with you."
As I've mentioned before, there was a time when traditional newspapers being outcompeted into oblivion by network media would have seemed like good news to me. But that was when most network media were community-controlled and non-commercial. Locally-based, commercial outlets being driven out of business by corporate-owned propaganda machines, masquerading as neutral 'social media' platforms, was not the outcome I was hoping for.
The story of the diverse community media renaissance on Aotea (Great Barrier Island) suggests that media storytelling and representation might work better when produced at a local scale, even if it's more commercially profitable at the largest possible scale.
"[Current Affairs TV shows] still rate really well in Australia. They do hard reporting (but) they have a kind of tabloid magazine format. Morally, they go beyond the pale a lot of times. There's trickery involved in getting stories. They'll pay money, you know, as we've seen with Bruce Lehrmann. But ethically, they fall short at times and the networks get sued."
#NathanJolly, Deputy Editor, media news website Mumbrella
A few short weeks ago, some learned chaps were schooling me on all the reasons hydrogen isn't viable as an energy carrier for vehicles. They obviously forgot to communicate all this to the people actively developing hydrogen infrastructure in Aotearoa.
Those decrying cultural spaces on campus for Māori and Pacifica know very well that "segregation" is not what they are. Some of them were alive in the 1960s when real segregation policies still excluded Māori from many public spaces. Despite being staunchly anti-racist since high school, even I didn't know about these until the recent documentary about them.
"In a modern democracy... You have to have responsiveness and you have to have public involvement in the decisions all the time, not just the time of elections.
What happens in NZ is we tend to go to sleep between the elections and there isn't enough public involvement in the decision-making system. We need in this country much more deliberative democracy if we are not to go the way they've gone in the US or Britain ..."
RNZ's pips are changing - Can you hear the difference?
Probl;em is if you are streaming RNZ the pips are delayed because of the time lag. So setting your clocks by them will mean your a bit Kim Kardashian (all behind).
"But what is being lost [at DOC]... is science capacity, it's policy capacity, it's resource management space - that's losing heaps of people - and it's in line with the government's directive that we're going to prioritise short term economic goals over environment and sustainability. But in a time of biodiversity crisis I think this is seriously worrying."
#JoMonks, lecturer in ecology, University of Otago, 2024
#GuyonEspiner: "You'd hoped for a majority in 2002. The polls said it was possible."
#HelenClark: "I think with MMP it was probably never realistic. Whatever the polls said... kiwis in the end quite like the government not having it all it's own way, having to talk with others..."
"...we backtracked on our election pledge to remove the surtax on superannuation. Because morally I couldn't justify to myself that we would give a tax concession to the wealthy retirees - which removing the surtax would do - while we were taking some off those who were in much poorer circumstances."
"[Mike Moore] would eventually rise to lead the WTO - the highest international position ever held by a NZer - and a respected champion of globalisation."
Even in 2017, "respected champion of globalisation" was an oxymoron. I'd argue that even then, Helen Clark's tenure as head of the United Nations Development Programme was a more respectable position.
"These days innovating means following the audience and operating online. But those who do are not always rewarded with the required revenue.
Unless you can get enough online supporters or subscribers to pay, which also means trying to secure digital advertising - and the vast bulk of revenue from that goes offshore to the companies which have cornered that market."
I feel like my comments back in Sept last year, about TVNZ not being viable as a commercial entity, are being vindicated. If the new government are looking for suggestions, here are a few I made at the time;
This whole episode also exposes the short-sightedness of breaking up NZBC into TVNZ, RNZ etc. A unified public broadcaster, not subject to commercial imperatives, would have had a much easier time adapting to the digital transition.
A lot of public money was spent on those Rogernomics reforms. Now, if we want to save the public broadcasting infrastructure managed by TVNZ, we're going to need to spend more public money reversing those reforms.