Digital image credit: Technomage

Golriz Ghahraman is the best example of why MMP has been a complete failure for New Zealand as a system. She is the poster girl for list MPs on massive salaries who would not be taken seriously in the real world. In the real world, she would have been fired at least twice already for her lack of honesty. In the real world, she would not have been able to afford a QC to intimidate an Australian Immigration lawyer into removing his article and messages on social media that challenge her ‘refugee’ backstory.

In the real world, she would not be invited by mainstream media to write opinion pieces. In the real world no one would pay the slightest bit of attention to her ridiculous claim on One news that the free speech of Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux is a threat to the safety of New Zealanders and Chelsea Manning (who spilled state secrets and put the lives of undercover people’s lives at risk) in contrast is perfectly fine and is a hero whistleblower.

[…] the question when deciding whether to approve Ms Manning’s visa isn’t her criminal history, Ms Ghahraman told TVNZ1’s Breakfast today. It is whether she would pose a threat to New Zealand, she said.

[…]But Ms Ghahraman hasn’t been an advocate to opening our borders to all speakers.
Recently, she was among the prominent voices calling for far-right Canadian speakers Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux to be denied entry. Those two didn’t have felony convictions, Breakfast host Jack Tame pointed out.

“I suppose some people would look at it and say you’re happy for the rules to be relaxed for a message that you want to hear, but you want different rules to apply in another circumstance for a message you don’t want to hear,” Mr Tame said.
But the situations are starkly different when weighing the risk to New Zealand, Ms Ghahraman responded.

“We have a right to protect ourselves against hate speech, which is defined in New Zealand law,” she said.[…] end quote.

Hate speech is NOT defined in New Zealand law at all. Does this woman never get tired of making stuff up? We have legal speech and illegal speech and that is all. There is no legal definition of hate speech anywhere in New Zealand law.

Out of all the politicians in the Beehive Golriz is the one that pushes all of my buttons. She simply should not be there. Having someone of such a low calibre sucking on the public tit offends me on every level. To paraphrase Blackadder…

• Her brain is so minute that if a hungry cannibal cracked her head open, there wouldn’t be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
• She is wetter than a haddock’s bathing costume.
• Most of New Zealand thinks she’s a prat. Ask them who they’d rather meet, Green party list MP Golriz Ghahraman or the man who cleans out the public toilets in Aberdeen, and they’d go for Wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop every time.
• There hasn’t been a person doing this badly since Olaf the hairy, King of all the Vikings, ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside.
• Golriz wouldn’t recognise a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing “subtle plans are here again”
• In the Amazonian rain forests there are tribes of Indians as yet untouched by civilisation who have developed more convincing MP impressions than Golly G’s
• Her head is as empty as a eunuch’s underpants.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Housing Minister Phil Twyford ignored Treasury advice on HNZ debt. Credit, Stuff

In a sterling effort to avoid Steven Joyce being proved correct, Housing New Zealand has borrowed off-book to keep the debt out of the Crown accounts.

Well done Henry Cooke from Stuff for holding the Government to account on this fiddle.Quote.

The Government allowed Housing New Zealand to borrow billions of dollars to build new state houses despite advice from Treasury that such debt would be expensive and risky.

In May, the Government announced it would be building 6400 new state homes over four years.

The funding for this came principally from $2.9b Housing New Zealand was allowed to borrow independently, instead of through regular Government borrowing.Just $234m of new money was allocated to the crown agency.

Documents released by Treasury on Thursday reveal the agency repeatedly warned the Government against allowing HNZ to borrow money this way in the lead-up to the Budget, suggesting instead that the money should come out of normal Crown debt.

This money would have likely come with cheaper interest rates but would vastly increase the amount of core crown debt. That would likely stop the Government achieve its key Budget Responsibility Rules target of getting core crown debt below 20 per cent of G.D.P. in five years.

The advice echoed similar words given by Treasury when the National-led Government decided to allow Housing New Zealand to borrow over $1b in the last Budget.

In a February briefing, Treasury analysts wrote that borrowing directly through the crown would save $11 million per year. This was based on a plan to borrow $1.75b instead of $2.9b. A later analysis estimated an additional $3m-$6m in annual interest costs for every $1b borrowed by Housing New Zealand.

Treasury analysts said letting independent agencies borrow money of their own accord made sense with properly independent state-owned enterprises like Solid Energy, but not bodies that delivered “essential services” and would obviously be bailed out by the Government if something went wrong like Housing New Zealand.

“This is because failure to deliver these services will be unacceptable to the public and Ministers (and rightly so), meaning that further public funding will be made available to continue service provision should it become necessary,” the analysts wrote in a February paper.

In essence, overseas credit rating agencies would not see this debt as separate from Crown debt given the agency delivered such a core service, and thus would just factor it into their decisions about New Zealand anyway.

Because of this it risked the credibility of the Government’s Budget Responsibility Rules – as it was essentially a loophole through them.

“Decentralised borrowing could undermine the fiscal management approach, weakening fiscal control, the ability to manage total levels of debt to prudent levels, the prioritisation process that the Budget applies to spending proposals and the credibility of the fiscal strategy,” the analysts wrote. […] End of quote.

There’s nothing like a good bit of creative accounting when those pesky pre-election slogans come home to roost.  Watch carefully now, which thimble is the pea under …?

Kelvin Davis reckons his cuzzies in Ngapuhi are the most incarcerated tribe in the world: Quote:

Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says his Ngāpuhi iwi is probably the most incarcerated tribe in the world and he has a goal to change that.

Tonight, the government’s criminal justice summit kicks off at Parliament, before running for two days in Porirua, north of Wellington.

It will bring together all interested parties across justice, Corrections and police to talk about the government’s plan for reform in the system, and how best to achieve it.

Mr Davis said Māori make up over 50 percent of the prison population, and he wants that number reduced.

“Of that 50 percent, half again, are from Ngāpuhi, my own tribe, so this is personal.

“My tribe of Ngāpuhi is probably the most incarcerated tribe in the world, per head of population, so we really have to look at what we’re going to do differently as a country, to turn these figures around.”

Mr Davis said Māori must be included in the conversation, and is pleased half of the justice advisory group, set up by the Justice Minister Andrew Little and headed by the former National MP Chester Burrows, are Māori.

“If Māori make up more than 50 percent of the prison population, we should actually be talking to Māori about what the solutions are too.”

One of the big issues is institutional racism, and Mr Davis said he had been impressed with Police Commissioner Mike Bush’s actions, in particular, in acknowledging unconscious bias in the police force.

“The question then becomes, ‘so, what do we do about it?’

“Because if it’s not unconscious bias, well then it’s conscious bias and we’ve got to make changes to make sure that Māori aren’t particularly picked on, or seen as the ones that are committing all the crime.” End quote.

How do we do it? If Ngapuhi don’t want to keep getting locked up them perhaps they should stop committing crimes. It is quite simply really, but obviously beyond the feeble mind of Kelvin Davis.

There is a problem with his claims too, Lindsay Mitchell proves Davis was making it up: Quote:

At June 2015 only half of Maori inmates expressed an affiliation.

Of these 24% are Ngapuhi.

At the 1999 prison census Ngapuhi made up 17% of sentenced prisoners and 20% of rendered prisoners. So the percentage is rising.But not fast enough to be at half in 2018.

There may be many more prisoners who express an affiliation with Ngapuhi but not as their primary. Also many who have an affiliation but clearly aren’t expressing it.

But what does Mr Davis know that the rest of us don’t? End quote.

Maybe Davis means 50% of 50%, or he’s just dumb?

In any case the government is looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. The answer isn’t to stop sending Maori to prison, the answer is to get Maori to stop committing crime. Same as the solution to bashed children. Good luck trying to stop Maori bashing kids and stop committing crime with this soft on crime government.

At some point responsibility has to be sheeted home to iwi.

Let’s count up the benefits of the coalition shall we?

It is now nearly 12 months since the election and we are seeing the benefits of the Coalition of Losers starting to come through.

What you say! What benefits?

Well… I believe that what we are seeing is of benefit to us. Yes it is going to involve some pain, and yes it may cost some of us our livelihoods – however in the longer term, the prospective for democracy in New Zealand has a rosy tint to it that I haven’t seen in a very long time.

I admit it. After the election, I was very grumpy with Cam and believe his tacit endorsement of Winston (he will NEVER go with the Greens!) may well have swung the election to the CoL. I saw that as a bad thing.

With the dint of hindsight, I can now look at the last election as the necessary pain that an adolescent (our green tinged millennial electorate) must go through in those awkward learning years. If the Nats had won, the pain from 2020 onwards would be deep and the patient (our system of democracy) may not have survived.

Now at least we have a chance. Our economy will crash and it will happen sooner rather than later. The signs are there for all to see and the seeds of the crash were planted well before the CoL took office. Unsustainable immigration, unaffordable welfare and a decreasing tax take are but some of the issues that we face. Perception in markets is everything and once confidence is dented (as it is now) a recession is all but inevitable. On top of our own fragile condition, any sneeze in the World’s economy will send us into free-fall.

Why is this a good thing? Well to quote a famous meme “Socialism is a great ideal – until you run out of other peoples money” (and another) “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” The CoL (and lets be honest, the last Nat government!) are driving the country towards socialism – ignoring all the history behind that utterly failed experiment. A nephew living in London who lived through the 87 crash and the 90’s pain commented that his younger sister (now in her early 40’s) had never experienced “going without” and had not lived through a recession. Unfortunately for her and her fellow travellers, that is about to change! They won’t like the medicine but it may cure the disease!

I am awed by Cam’s prescience in understanding the need for the CoL to win to ensure that the coming bloodbath would happen. As a famous man once wrote “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” Blood must be spilled for New Zealand to become “well” again, with a purge of both major parties and the utter decimation of the Green blob and Winstonfirst.

Unfortunately, we must all suffer some pain before this can happen which reflects another truism: there is no gain without the pain!

by Rosco

Lauren Southern and Tommy Robinson

When a government attacks a personal belief that we consider to be a fundamental part of our existence, and removes our freedom of choice or worse, we can feel that they are personally attacking us.  They are not. They are simply pursuing their own social agenda and we happened to get in the way. Credit for this thought belongs to Dinesh D’Souza in his book  Death of a Nation.

D’Souza points out that Abraham Lincoln predicted the future in his Lyceum address of the great American nation when he said  quote

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” End of quote.

Lincoln said the threat to American freedom would come from their very own people. Likewise in New Zealand, we might identify the threat of a culture alien to our own, such as Islam, but fail to recognize the more familiar but equally dangerous threat springing up amongst us.

Donald Trump was voted in to step into the breach precisely to arrest the loss of individual freedom and rights encapsulated in the American constitution.

Americans didn’t need to be told they had lost their freedom, they knew it from Obama’s tanking economy and the businesses that had closed effecting loss of income and homes, unemployment, rising debt and lowering social values. The country’s defence force was severely weakened and the United States international profile suffered in the wake of the Iran agreement and other very poor international decisions including ignoring illegal migration which contributed to a rising crime rate.

Americans gathered around the one person promising to restore individual rights. “America first” was the battle cry that drew the grassroots vote, while the movement threatening to destroy America used the media, Hollywood and large chunks of academia in their attempts to bring Trump down.

They failed in America and they will fail here, provided sufficient numbers of us wake up in time to stop them and we can elect leaders who recognise and will address the issues around loss of freedom.

We were shaken awake when we realised our freedom of speech had just gone up in a puff of smoke when Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneaux were prevented from speaking in Auckland. Quote.

Caolan Robertson, understood to be an agent for Ms Southern, told Newshub that quote “powerful forces” were opposed to the event.” End of quote.

When you are told to close your mouth because you are spouting “hate speech”, you certainly recognise that you have indeed lost your freedom to speak. The nebulous term “hate speech” was used by the media and the ignorant to shut down Southern and Molyneaux and is preventing intelligent discussion particularly on biculturalism, multiculturalism, indigenous rights and immigration.

Surely if hate was on Southern and Molyneaux’s agendas it would be evidenced by violence in their previous public appearances? There is none that I can find. The only violence that might have occurred in Auckland, had these two spoken, could possibly come from agitated protestors.  But Southern explained that she welcomed the opportunity to peacefully speak with protestors, as she has done many times in the past. Quote.

“Lauren Southern has frequently put herself in crowds of people whose views are fundamentally at odds with her own. She’s made a habit of parachuting into spaces where visible minorities are speaking out about their rights and demanding they explain their political positions and teach her why she’s wrong.” End of quote.

If any of us want to discuss sensitive subjects with those who are affected, surely we are free to do so?

Hateful actions are not tolerated and all of us are subject to laws that protect and prevent us from using physical violence.

“Hate speech” as it is currently used often includes the word racism even where there is no mention of race at all.  So let me define hate speech as I see it: “hate speech” is used by the real haters to prevent a discussion they don’t want to have, it is simply a ploy to avoid a conversation.

So now that we know they have stolen our freedom of speech by using the term “hate speech” what else are they doing?

They have taken, and are continuing to take away our individual choices and replacing them with “collective choice”. In other words, they make decisions that we are told are for the collective good, sometimes despite evidence to the contrary. An example of this is the closure of Charter schools where the authorities argue that children attending charter schools are disadvantaged. This argument flies in the face of parental and educational evidence. No matter, the Minister of Education is in charge and the collective, or communist, argument applies.

The battlefield of education is a vital one to win because the indoctrinating of our children’s minds will heavily influence their future. We are particularly vulnerable through our children which is why it is so important that parents notice what their children are learning outside the home.

Our kids have already been trained to enforce political correctness.

We thought it sweet when a seven-year-old wrote to the head of the New Zealand Transport Agency complaining that it was not fair that women could not be road workersbecause the signs say “Men Working”.

If this notion had been planted in the child’s head by that child’s teacher, the teacher would be on thin ice with parents who don’t want their girls aspiring to be road workers.  And what about the children from families who believe a woman’s place is solely in the home, not working outside of it at all?  In the interest of fairness, is the teacher also going to espouse that limited point of view?

The real question though, is why do this government and its teachers have the right to decide on the values our children are taught?  Surely that is up to the parents, even when we disagree with them.  This is called freedom and we have already lost far too much of it.

In the words of Ronald Regan “It is not that they are ignorant, it is just that they know so much about what isn’t so”.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

The visit to New Zealand by Canadian speakers Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux has caused significant debate in our small country.  They have been accused of hate speech.

Our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern said on Saturday ‘I think you’ll see from the reaction they’ve had from New Zealanders that their views are not those shared by this country.  And I’m quite proud of that.’

So let me ask you Ms Ardern, are you proud of this?

Petty name calling.

Threatening to put a stake through the heart.

Bomb threats.

Another bomb threat.

Arson threats.

More arson threats.

Gloating about the bomb hoax.

(Alison Mau, ‘journalist’, retweeted this vile rant.)

Maybe Madeleine could read a book and learn to string a sentence together without profanities.

Subtle.

Not so subtle.

You can’t have any kind of reasoned debate with profanity and threats of violence.

Credit: Nige for suggesting this post.