rogerellis

Opinions are my own. Re-tweets not endorsements. Centrist for a fair, free and sustainable world.

[Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office @FCDOGovUK]

Joint statement from the foreign ministries of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom on Israel closing the investigation into strikes on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza on 1 April 2024 ⬇️

[The Redbaiter @TheRedbaiter]

The Maori Party wants all New Zealand prisons closed by 2040.

Leader Rawiri Waititi told Ryan Bridge that crime committed by Maori, even violent crime, is a result of colonisation and the policies of the current govt.

Mr Waititi claims it doesn't matter that his race is over represented in parliament and that there are more Maori in govt today than ever before.

Because those MPs are mainly whakaupapa (mainstream Maori) and not the needed kaupapa (tribal) Maori. Apparently only the latter are capable of "lifting Maori from under the bonnet of colonial violence".

If the Maori Party win all seven Maori seats Waititi says this will bring a further 13 kaupapa Maori into the parliament.

Rawiri Waititi's views are boilerplate separatist dogma. Driven by Marxist rhetoric he has probably learnt during visits to communist China (2025).

Its no coincidence that such views are shared by separatist Aboriginals in Australia. They've been to China too.

Last week the Security Intelligence Service voiced a serious warning about overseas influence in NZ politics. I hope they're keeping an eye on Te Pati Maori.

Might be time to bring back the sedition laws Helen Clarke abolished (2007) as well.

[Suit and tie @Suitandtie9999]

Qiulae Wong has finally admitted that the Opportunity Party intends to cut 2,000 jobs from MSD without repurposing them, and will revise its policy documents, which are currently misleading on this point.

Wong then doubled down, saying: “I don’t think that those are jobs that even those people really want to be doing.”

Notably, there has not been a peep from Fleur Fitzsimons or the PSA.

[Left Foot Media @WatchLFM]

It seems to me that several key policies of The Opportunity Party either outright violate or are antithetical to Catholic social teaching.

Firstly, what they are calling the ‘citizen’s income payment’ is actually just a welfare payment that would be administered to all citizens by the state.

This is different from typical welfare schemes, which are rightly established as a safety net targeted only to those in genuine need (like those without employment facing economic hardship, or those who cannot work because of serious illness or disability, etc.)

It is also different from taxation relief, or cost of living relief that is targeted to families or retirees, etc. Such schemes allow families and individuals to govern their own earnings with less taxation restriction or cost related burdens.

But the ‘citizen’s income payment’ is not either of these. It does not involve the state simply alleviating the conditions of those in need, instead it would turn the majority of the NZ population into state dependant welfare recipients.

Leaving aside the obvious question of who exactly will be funding this welfare payment, the bigger issue here is the clear threat to subsidiarity that this represents.

Dignified work is an essential good where the human person finds important meaning. For the state to insert itself into this fundamental aspect of the human experience without due cause is harmful in multiple ways.

Firstly, a welfare dependant is even more subservient to the whims of the state than a non recipient, because the state now exercises a substantial level of new control over their affairs through the mechanism of a sizeable ongoing welfare payment.

A substantial ongoing welfare payment provided by the state is also one that can be rescinded at any time by the state as a means of control if they so desire. It is far easier to find a new means of employment to provide you income than it is to find a new state to provide this for you.

In Catholic social teaching, the state is called upon to respect the self-leadership of families and individuals by not inserting itself into their governance affairs without just cause because the “initiative, freedom and responsibility [of families and individuals] must not be supplanted” (The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church #186).

Then there is TOP’s harmful punitive policy of imposing new taxation penalties on all landowners.

Although Catholic social teaching does not teach that private ownership is an absolute and untouchable right, it still considers the ownership of private property (as long as there is no violation of the common good involved) to be an essential principle and good that (according to the teachings of Vatican II): “assures a person a highly necessary sphere for the exercise of his personal and family autonomy and ought to be considered as an extension of human freedom ... stimulating exercise of responsibility, it constitutes one of the conditions for civil liberty”.

In his encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII is unflinching in teaching about the importance of private property, stating that: “The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the [economic] condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property”.

No matter how well intentioned they imagine it to be, any policy (quoting from today’s media reporting about The Opportunity Party’s tax policy) that would create a situation where: “66% of households who own a home will be worse off to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost value”, would represent an unjust punishment upon private ownership, as well as being a policy that is hostile to the wellbeing of families, and as such, it would clearly be antithetical the social teachings of the Church.

Their ardent support for abortion-up-to-birth (the current NZ law) is also obviously a grave violation of the first and most important doctrine of Catholic social teaching: that the right to life of every innocent human person must always be respected.

I have now lived enough years on God’s good earth to have learnt that there is no such thing as a free lunch (and I say this with the experience of someone who was raised in a poor welfare class family), and that markets and national economies are not simple things that can be subjected to radical social experimentation without major risk or harm.

The obvious question that everyone needs to consider is this: if what TOP is proposing really is as obvious and straightforward as they are claiming it to be, then why have no prior governments - on either the left or the right - seen and initiated such policies before now?

There are other ways to address the issue of housing affordability, the loss of financial mobility, and economy disparity, even through changes to current taxation policy, that do not require the sort of threats to Catholic social teaching that TOP wants to see wrought upon NZ families and individuals. #nzpol

[Sande Chin The Underinfluencer @SandeChin]

From Nicole McKee MP
Via Facebook

Not sure who else listened to the Opportunity Leader on Ryan Bridge’s show this morning, but I’m still trying to make sense of what I heard.
Qiulae’s party plans to extend the Youth Court to older offenders on the basis that their brains don’t fully mature until age 25. No doubt that means they’ll extend Youth Court jurisdiction to 25 from 18.
Ryan gave her an example: what happens when a 22-year-old commits a violent crime?
That was her chance to confirm that a 22-year-old who commits a serious violent offence will face the criminal courts and serious consequences, including prison. Instead, she talked about how some offenders need “additional support” “because they are young”.
Ministry of Justice figures show 15 per cent of rape offences are committed by people aged 20-24. Their brains may not be fully developed, but their threat level is.
And this is the same party that has campaigned to lower the voting age to 16. So at 16, you’re mature enough to help decide who governs the country, but at 22, 23 or 24, you should be treated differently when you violently offend?
Meanwhile there are 23 and 24-year-olds working as doctors, or running businesses, raising children, serving in our Defence Force. These are capable people trusted to make decisions with real stakes. With that comes responsibility for the choices they make.
I genuinely want to know how Opportunity cooked this policy up. Did they talk to a single victim of crime or just knock something together over a latte in five minutes?

[rogerellis @concisecomment]

Christopher Luxon suggests fuel excise tax rise, accommodation levy if National re-elected https://t.co/7oUQxRXyXF

[rogerellis @concisecomment]

Climate change is real. Good to see UK Conservative leader distance herself from the fringe elements in the Farage Reform Party, and set out policy alternatives. https://t.co/Wu7ZBodlD6

[rogerellis @concisecomment]

@winstonpeters Single Tranferable Vote (STV) would empower voters and end the unaccountable list MP problem. Alternatively, Preferential Voting would allow voters to rank their candidates/ parties in order of preference thereby voter control and no party list MPs.

[Barry Johns @barry_john35199]

A great summary on the Opportunities party by Bruce Cotterill.
It exposes just how unworkable this party is, and this is only one of their hair brained schemes.
https://t.co/YZPwinZXUo

[Suit and tie @Suitandtie9999]

Great to see the Sensible Sentencing Trust finally come out and torch the Opportunity Party’s soft on crime Youth Justice policy.

Also worth noting, TOP have now declined three interview requests from Chris Lynch to discuss this policy.

Rather ironic, from a party who says they have the courage to have difficult conversations.

[Suit and tie @Suitandtie9999]

A plan to spend a million dollars a year on massages for prisoners — what on earth were Corrections bosses thinking?

Good to see Minister Mark Mitchell, halt it within three hours of being made aware.

“Corrections expected 111 hours of the programme to be provided each week, at an hourly rate of $175. That works out at $19,400 a week, or just over a million dollars a year.”

The massages formed part of a $9 million plan to provide rongoā Māori healthcare in prisons — which Mitchell said didn’t meet his expectations — with the focus now shifting to practical skills for rehabilitation instead.

[Alasdair Thompson @ajthompson13]

Power prices are up 199% since 1999

That is almost 4 times higher

That feeds into the cost of all things and directly into the cost of living.

Likewise with Nz oil companies.

All earning ‘windfall or excess’ profits

[rogerellis @concisecomment]

Deborah Coddington is right. Housing the homeless and first home buyers should take priority over NIMBY consent objections. https://t.co/QOnoMleKYs

[rogerellis @concisecomment]

https://t.co/YqVtFXCxNy

[Ro Edge @rosey_nz]

The Opportunities Party wants to raise the youth court age to 25 bc “brains aren’t fully developed.” Yet they support kids u25 getting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones & surgeries that sterilise & permanently alter healthy bodies - b4 those same brains can grasp the lifelong consequences. Make that make sense!
https://t.co/J9EXb5h5zi

[NZ National Party @NZNationalParty]

You voted for the party of law and order.

We’re delivering on our promise to reduce crime, crack down on criminals, and make our communities safer.

[Simeon Brown @SimeonBrownMP]

On Saturday, Andrea Vance at The Post ran a big story pushing Labour's claim that National isn't hiring nurses. What she didn't tell her readers is that the facts and figures she had before she published said the exact opposite.

So here are the numbers The Post had in its hands and decided readers were better off not seeing.

When Labour left office, there were 2,632 nursing vacancies. Just two years later under National, there were 1,344. That is 1,288 fewer empty positions, a reduction of nearly 50%.

The nurse workforce has grown from 31,739 to 35,342. More nurses are on the wards, fewer are walking out the door, and there is no hiring freeze.

And the party shouting loudest about it today – the Labour Party – is the very party that owned every one of those worse numbers. They left the vacancy problem nearly twice as bad as it is now, and here they are calling the clean-up a scandal. You could not make it up.

Then there is Labour's favourite line of the whole story, that the Government "saved" $200 million by deliberately leaving health jobs empty. It sounds shocking, until you find out what that money actually was.

It was money already set aside to pay nurses and doctors the moment their new pay deals were signed. The deals had not been signed, so the money had not gone out the door. It was not saved and it was not pocketed. It was sitting there waiting to be paid, exactly as planned.

Calling that a "saving" is like pocketing an unpaid invoice. The money is committed, it just hasn't left the account yet.

We spelled all of this out for Andrea Vance before she published. She published Labour's disinformation anyway.

Then look at what Andrea Vance reported. Labour's framing led the story, right there in the headline where every reader's eye lands. The figures showing things are better under National, the ones handed over in writing, were left out altogether.

That cannot have been an accident. That was a choice.

Let me be clear about one thing. There are still vacancies to fill, and we even pointed Andrea Vance to my Letter of Expectations directing Health New Zealand to move faster to fill them. But leaving out the improvement and telling readers things are going backwards is not balanced reporting. It is the version Labour is selling, and The Post chose to run it.

New Zealanders deserve to know the healthcare system is improving. What they do not deserve is a scare story the facts do not support. Facts The Post had in front of it the whole time.

[Liberal Democrats @LibDems]

Today, we are calling for a bold new deal with Europe that will make Britain richer, safer, and stronger.

A Customs Union. Taking Britain back into the Single Market. Tearing down barriers to trade.

It’s time to end the chaos of the Conservative Brexit experiment, and put Britain back at the heart of Europe.

[rogerellis @concisecomment]

'A risk to life': Social workers called out for no-shows on keeping kids safe https://t.co/lMr5o7kO7p