This is really cool. Thanks!

It gets worse:

The only public toilets in Te Anau used to be user-pays. The park next to them smelled like piss. They made it free to pee in 2023: https://southlandapp.nz/NewsStory/te-anau-public-toilet-now-free-to-pee/656122d903e891002871ccc9

TL;DR: Swarbrick seemed to have the strongest and most well thought-out responses. Q did alright but had much less speaking time. McAnulty was about as mum as you would be in his position 2 days before this election. Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke held her own; and only one old white guy interrupted her, at least that I noticed.

Jones was pretty quiet in general. Seymour was good at politics and you can tell he’s been fencing with Swarbrick. Nicola Willis evoked the most full-room laughs when she attempting to plainly state “facts” (at least here in this room).

I’ll just put it forward for the downvotes: What would a Green / Act party look like if National / Labour continue their downward trend? You next, over the next 10 years?

The opinion piece is correct on some things. The Dr Geoff Bertram interviews are really enlightening. At one point he talks about the law that prevented companies from charging unreasonable prices. That was undone during the “Rogernomics” neoliberal revolution and Bertram describes how economists tracked how prices soon grew to be unreasonable. I disagree that “competition” is a fundamental neoliberal policy.

Swarbrick has been focusing on “taxing wealth, not work” and was on Gary Stevenson’s show and then he was later on The Greens show. This is important because one of the main tenants of neoliberal policy has been preventing taxation on capital while instead taxing The Poors through things like income tax and GST. Gary seems to focused on Georgist policies and more evolutions of those policies like “All Taxes Come Out of Rent” (ATCOR). As a result, you can see the spirit of these ideas in Greens’ “A tax system for all of us”.

Opportunity has put forward their “Tax Reset” which is also a move towards taxing unproductive economic activity and alleviating the burden on working people. Their Land Value Tax and Citizens Income, a UBI, both come straight out of the late 19th century Georgism which seems to mirror some of the Māori ideals of stewardship over ownership; with a free market twist. This makes the ideas palatable even to classical Libertarians. Some countries believe that land is a public good and that private ownership of land is akin to slavery. This idea is called Land Value Capture (LVC).

ACT are not classical Libertarians, at least not in their current form. I’d venture to guess that Seymour was, at some point, a classical Libertarian. Unfortunately, their policies and positions present as an organisation that has received funding and guidance from “far right” organisations that have co-opted Libertarian movements around the world. Billionaires have noticed that, globally, neoliberal “centrist” parties are losing ground and have started funding the far-right. ACT now focus on divisive culture wars which is a direct departure from their otherwise single-focus of reducing government to an enforcement organ of contracts and private property (courts and jackboot thugs). ACT is not “Neoliberal” and they are not “Libertarian” in my view.

NZ First is not worth analysis. Peters is a peacock that will do anything to stay in power.

So, I would argue that Greens and Opportunity both have tax policies that directly attack the Neoliberal changes the article was referring to. I’d also say that the article is incorrect in linking competition to Neoliberalism. Competition is a fundamental tenant of Capitalism. Neoliberalism is based on the idea that “selfishness is good”. In an idea capitalist society, the state participates in “human rights” sectors: food, housing, clothing, and medicine; making these things universally available to people. The private sector can go above and beyond for people that have the money. This is the most successful model I have seen around the world. The state keeps the private sector in check by setting the baseline. The private sector keeps the state accountable by pushing the SoTA.

If you’ve got this far then please check out David Graeber, you can listen to his audio books on Spotify or listen to his talks on YouTube.

The YouTube video is published by Free Speech Union New Zealand and their website is https://fsu.nz/

From: https://fsu.nz/documents/cases/cath-simpson-hpdt-decision-2026-09-10.pdf

I can’t fucking believe Jacinda changed the law for late term abortion. The babies could live outside the womb but no if the mother wants that life killed she can have it killed….it’s pure evil

Original post:

My name is Roxy and I am a woman…

Simpson’s reply:

Nah you’re not. You never can be. You are an arrogant prick intent on inserting yourself into woman only places. That btw was an intentional turn of phrase. No fuck off and leave the womanhood alone.

On Pride Week Aotearoa

Ban this parade of hyper-sexualised, perversion from our streets

The statement to which Simpson responded:

LGBTQ pride founder arrested for pedophilia [sic]

Simpson’s response:

We are not surprised. We’re disgusted. Every single person who thinks “we should be kind” hang your heads in shame…. We all tried to warn you, but you blythly [sic] followed these monsters and gave them access to our children…you disgust me

The tribunal found that her posts brought the nursing profession into disrepute.

Now is a good time to thank you all for making this community what it is. I feel like I’m in dopamine rehab from giving up all those other platforms. Lemmy is just cool enough to keep me from going back to the other “algorithm” platforms. I am happier and healthier as a result.

Cheers

Shane Jones is a sellout. There were many forces at work for this bill but Shane Jones is consistently the person that sells our natural resources to private industry for personal gain and he does so with an irreverence that seems to be designed to invite violence.

MS has just fumbled the ball at every turn.

It has been intentional. They know what they are doing.

A bit exotic and flowery; but well put.

If we don’t attack it immediately the it could fester and grow into the heinous abomination they have in the USA.

I don’t understand how someone wakes up in the morning and decides this important. Is it a religious thing?

drugs, alcohol and speed.

That sounds like a party!

Reminds me of the 2015 film “The 5th Eye”

From imdb:

A priest, a teacher and a farmer breach the security of a NZ spy base in Waihopai and deflate a satellite dish dome to draw attention to NZ co-operation with illegal US wars. The extent and implications of mass government surveillance.

See the trailer at NZ On Screen.

Yeah, it’s all fallen out of patent and generics are available. Dr. John David Sinclair did a lot of research in the 80s and devised “The Sinclair Method”. I’ve seen it work to disrupt decades of entrenched behaviour. It might not be the silver bullet but it’s definitely a stepping stone in the right direction.

The winning point from my perspective is that the person is usually instructed to take the pill and continue to drink normally, which almost anyone is willing to try. Continued drinking is actually how the pill works, it dulls to “reward” which means that the drinking behaviour isn’t reinforced. Over time, the brain rewires itself to forget that “alcohol = good”. The drinking behaviour must continue to achieve the rewiring. Then over time, the person just stops caring about alcohol so much.

There’s a TEDx talk if you want to hear someone talking about their personal experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EghiY_s2ts

But in New Zealand, despite efforts by governments, councils and individuals, sustained increases in the use of alternative modes of transport remain elusive.

The article links to a 2023 Auckland census. Anecdotally, when I ask my Auckland friends if they ride to work, they share horror stories about riding in the city.

The article then goes on to showcase a success story in Christchurch where the council invested in cycle ways and better transit while the university also worked to encourage alternative modes of transportation.

Perhaps they the article should have said “Auckland” instead of “New Zealand” in that sentence.

The report is worth a read: https://www.covid19lessons.royalcommission.nz/reports-lessons-learned/main-report/

In Chapter 8, the report goes on to talk about how hurting their poor little feelings debased the authority of the government and the authors offer suggestions on how to do mandates better during the next pandemic.

From the report:

Contentious public health measures like vaccine mandates wore away at what had initially been a united wall of public support for the pandemic response; along with the rising tide of misinformation and disinformation, this created social fissures that have not entirely been repaired.

It’s only fair to mention that I took the bite out of the pizza. It didn’t come that way.

I am mostly just surprised at how few mushrooms there are.