Snippets: Backs Turn on Seymour, The USA Coup continues & Employment Falls by the Highest Rates since the GFC
Plus the Gherkin Slug
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A lot is happening both here and around the world - so I want to provide a snippets perspective to try to fit in more.
Here we go -
Atlas Network makes it into the Australian Parliament Hansard
Former barrister and Australian MP Senator David Shoebridge has issued a formal fossil fuel / climate disinformation warning.
Shoebridge calls out the “coal-billionaire funded disinformation engine” from Atlas Network partners this week.
Dr Jeremy Walker, a researcher who has done a lot of work looking into the organisation, shares the info:
Pretty big news.
And yes the bottom two icons showing A/NZ Atlas Network partners are NZ Taxpayers Union and NZ Initiative.
Backs turned as David Seymour and Shane Jones during their speeches at Waitangi
Backs turned, and Seymour’s microphone was also removed, and later returned by Ngāti Hine leader Waihoroi Shortland.
Seymour had been requested by his hapū to not attend Waitangi day events this year, but ignored their request.
He has now been escorted from the grounds, as he “chuckled” while some told him to “go home”.
Meanwhile Luxon said he “didn’t regret” not attending Waitangi as Hipkins laying into the Prime Minister for “not doing his job”.
Chris Hipkins promised he would always attend Waitangi Day.
And earlier ruled out Pāti Māori’s proposal for a Te Tiriti Commissioner with veto rights on parliamentary decisions.
In the US, the accelerated takeover of the US government continues
Elon Musk’s team is reportedly 95% of their way through modifying the US Government Treasury system. That will allow Musk to unilaterally cut off access, and basically take it over.
As noted by DaveP in the comments yesterday (“NZ Mirrors the US in significant ways”) the group tasked with doing so are are a bunch of non-security cleared 19-24 year olds.
And the employees of Musk’s new Ministry - the Department of Governmental Efficiency (“DOGE”) - include a 19 year old popcorn business heir, recent high school graduate, and a Substack writer cum AI employee who posts about the “deep state”.
Wired profiled them in The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover
After their names were posted on X, Elon Musk threatened the user with retaliation, saying he had “committed a crime”.
In the US, most federal employees' identities and salaries are publicly searchable, and have been for years.
Musk also went at a popular Reddit community called r/WhitePeopleTwitter - in response, Reddit temporarily banned that subreddit. He’d also criticized Reddit last week as some subreddits started banning links to X.
Headlines are now starting to use the word “coup” and Democrats and citizens alike are alarmed.
These pictures show protests outside Treasury today.
Extraordinarily, multiple Congress members were denied access into the government building.
And Democrats have vowed to introduce legislation to stop this “coup”.
But from my side I just feel extraordinary sadness.
The coup was done on election day.
You can’t stop fascism without huge conflict.
US Government promises to protect Elon Musk and DOGE employeees.
Employment Slumps Again - To Nobody’s Surprise
5.1% unemployment rate, highest in 5 years - up from 4.8% in the Sep quarter
Employment fell in Aotearoa at its fastest rate since the GFC (Craig Renney)
156,000 people unemployed - that’s 7000 more in a single quarter
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said “the data underscored the need for strong economic management to build a growing economy” as Luxon lectures jobseekers - many of whom are trying hard.
(In a prior press conference, Luxon and Upston admitted those who don’t comply are between 2 %to 5% - yet they persist in painting beneficiaries as delinquent)
From Tom Pullar-Strecker / The Post:
Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said a rise in unemployment of 33,000 over the year meant the Government should take immediate action to stabilise the jobs market and reverse public service cuts.
While the Government had promised a better economy, “all we’ve seen is an economic downturn, rising unemployment, and the sharpest recession, excluding Covid-19, in 30 years — all of which happened under National’s watch,” she said.
Significantly, NZ is losing huge numbers of Kiwis, around 128,000 to November 2024 - and without that very negative news, the unemployment rate would be much higher.
Chris Bishop’s ‘Ambitious’ Housing Plan is + 400 new homes a year - state housing peaking in 2026 - while he allows developers to buy up land in expensive suburbs
Yesterday, Bishop1 announced his “turnaround” plan so I was curious to look at the particulars.
In his announcement, Bishop mentioned the infamous Bill English report, where English and his team were allocated $500,000 from emergency housing funds to do a review that echoed Bishop’s concerns - without having to speak to Kainga Ora if they didn’t want to.
Now Bernard Hickey once made the excellent point that Kainga Ora could be seen as a “stonking financial success” - but the Government appears to be using English’s report as a pretext to cut deeply into state housing and our state capabilities.
Dwell Housing Trust chief executive Elizabeth Lester says the plan is insufficient:
"A net increase of 400 homes per year plus the 750 they've promised to community housing providers is not going to make much of a dent in that waiting list”
Indeed, last year, Bishop told RNZ:
“There are 25,000 people on the social housing waitlist, right? They are in urgent and severe need of a state house.”
He later claimed 1000 of those could afford private rentals, leaving 24,000 in desperate need.
So how does this maths work?
Existing state houses/land will also be sold to developers.
These include 200 homes in Auckland - part of the 900 state houses they plans to sell off annually
Green Party’s Tamatha Paul said:
“In the past, our country’s leaders made a conscious decision to house everybody and grow public housing stock at scale.
“We can make that decision again and we must resist the sale of public housing at all costs because it will have consequences for generations to come.”
“Public housing is a crucial part of ensuring we don’t have gentrified, segregated communities, and that our neighbourhoods reflect the make-up of our wider society, culturally and economically.”"
And Labour’s McAnulty:
“If the best that he can come up with is the number of overall homes won’t go backwards, then it shows their priority is cutting spending, not housing people.”
“He says a lot of words about how the private sector will step in, yet figures out today from Statistics New Zealand shows overall building consents for new homes are down nearly 10% for 2024. Chris Bishop completely missed out the words that matter – a commitment to building more public houses."
This is against a backdrop of a deteriorating economy, jobseekers continue to spiral, unemployment increases, GDP falls etc.
As McAnulty called it:
“Chris Bishop's full of it ... it's all PR”
“Labour delivered over 14,000 additional public homes since 2017, more homes than any government since the 1950s.”
Guess times have changed again, and Bishop’s ambition to become PM is shrouded with PR intentions and gloss -
Trump says he will “take Gaza”
In a joint press meeting with Netanyahu, Trump proposes the USA “takes Gaza” and all 2 million Palestinians be relocated
“Countries of interest with humanitarian hearts” can take them, he said out loud.
Meanwhile, Trump seemed excited by the prospect that said he could turn Gaza into the “riviera of the Middle East” and confirmed he had backing of the “highest of leadership” in the region.
Presumably, he means leaders like Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince, de factor ruler of Saudi Arabia, and friend to Jarod Kushner.
U.S. intelligence alreaedy determined that a team of 15 Saudi agents had flown to Istanbul to carry out a "capture or kill" operation approved by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).
Last week, Trump called MBS a “great guy” as Saudia Arabia promised $600bn of trade with the US.
[Here’s another leader of a supposedly democratic country salivating about Middle Eastern money - only this one’s bald.]
Regardless, and I emphasise - as heartbreaking as things are, none of these things are a surprise unfortunately.
And I do reserve some criticism for those on the “left” who attacked Biden and the Democrats for not being good enough, and encouraged others not to vote for them.
If we care about the people - and we all do - the best thing to my mind is to support that which will bring least harm to them.
Is it not?
Last year I wrote “In NZ… our fate was sealed the minute National-ACT-NZ First got into power.”
It’s a free market government - echoing the thesis of folks like Peter Thiel - whose influence is global.
We still have time to fight, but I hope that some of us on this side consider our need for indignant criticism at times too …
Context, context is king - and that includes options and the many who don’t share the same levels of political knowledge.
On that solemn note - here’s a few pictures and quotes:
QUICK TAKES
CARTOONS
NZ BUG OF THE YEAR 2025 IS OPEN
Here’s one of the contenders!
It’s overwhelmingly terrifying in a way with all that is happening in the world. You wonder how we came to this? In NZ it was definitely the lure of tax cuts, and the anything but Labour post Covid brigade. In the US, it was the promise to lower the cost of living and protect American borders, and so on. Are Americans really on board with Trump wanting to take over the Panama Canal, Greenland, and now Gaza? You wonder how much more crazy it can get and then it does! I do worry how the world is becoming more polarised. We used to talk about supporting parties, now it’s a clearly defined left and right divide. We see Trump firing decent people, locking them out of their jobs and calling them “Radical leftist lunatics”. Do Republican Americans really see their neighbours in that way? And then we have our own politicians stoking the fires, throwing around ‘woke’ and other Trumpism catch phrases. Putin invaded Ukraine to ‘denazify’ it and the world decries this, yet there is Elon openly supporting Germany’s most far right party. I keep thinking I need a break from politics and world news, but you can’t get away from because it affects us so completely. Sheer greed and love of power is driving our world at the moment. The James Bond villains are out in force.
Don't be down Tui. I know it can be overwhelming some days. We need you. xx