Listen to The Country online: Professor Alan Renwick on the future of land use
Today on The Country radio show, host Jamie Mackay catches up with Professor Alan Renwick, of Lincoln University, to learn more about his report, The Future Use of Land and How to Fund It.
On with the show:
Damien O'Connor:
We find Labour's trade spokesman at the E Tipu conference in Palmerston North, but is it a woke talk fest?
We also preview tomorrow's 'Love in' with Federated Farmers in Masterton, but is it a waste of time?
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NZ Herald
6 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Te Pāti Māori haka sanctions debate continues in Parliament today
The debate on whether Te Pāti Māori co-leaders will face the toughest Parliamentary sanctions ever dished out continues today after it was abruptly adjourned last month to give way to the Budget. The debate is set to begin around 3pm. It will be livestreamed at the top of this article. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Labour and the Greens MPs are expected to push fiercely for a weaker punishment while National is not expected to budge. Parliament's Privileges Committee has recommended suspending Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer for 21 days and MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke for seven days after a controversial haka in the House last year. The longest suspension in Parliament's 171-year history is three sitting days. The committee's recommendations will be put to the House for debate and likely pass. Labour's shadow leader of the House Kieran McAnulty said Labour believed Te Pāti Māori had overstepped and that they should be sanctioned but that 21 days was disproportionate. 'Our contributions to the debate will be focused on that and not trying to defend their actions.' National minister and Leader of the House Chris Bishop said he was keen to get the matter sorted. Last month, Bishop had unexpectedly called for the debate to be adjourned. Bishop's justification was that if the Te Pāti Māori MPs were suspended from Parliament that particular week, they would miss the debate on the Budget. He also believed delaying the debate would bring the temperature 'down a notch' after recent heated commentary. 'My strong preference would be for Parliament to deal with it, deal with it once, have a big debate about it and then finish it,' he told reporters on Wednesday. 'It's before Parliament, we've had the report, frankly New Zealanders expect us to get on with the business of governing. This is a distraction from the major issues as to why we were elected to this Parliament.' The haka at the centre of the matter happened during the first reading of the controversial Treaty Principles Bill, which was eventually voted down at second reading. The haka has since gone viral globally, amassing hundreds of millions of views on social media. Maipi-Clarke, Parliament's youngest MP, brought Parliament to a standstill when she began the haka while ripping up a copy of the Treaty Principles Bill, a proposal from Act leader David Seymour to replace the many Treaty principles developed over time by experts and the court with three new ones. Many perceived the bill as a threat to Māori and detrimental to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It was a catalyst of the massive hīkoi protest to Parliament in November last year. Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer stood up and joined Maipi-Clarke in the haka, moving from their seats towards the Act party benches. Labour's Peeni Henare also moved away from his seat to perform. Henare later apologised to the Judith Collins-led Privileges Committee for knowingly breaking the rules by stepping away from his seat, but said he stood by his haka and would do it again. The trio from Te Pāti Māori were referred to the Privileges Committee but ignored the initial summons to appear in person, arguing they had been denied legal representation and the ability to appear together. At the time, they promised to hold a separate 'independent' hearing. Te Pāti Māori have been defiant in their defence of the haka. Waititi told reporters on Wednesday afternoon it was not clear exactly what the trio were being punished for. 'Some of the House found it intimidating, some of the House found it exhilarating because half of House stood up. We don't know what the reasons are for the 21 days sanctions.' Waititi spoke with The Hui soon after the committee's unprecedented recommendations were released. He said he was thinking about the people who had entrusted him to 'represent them the best way I know'. 'And that is to be unapologetic, that is to be authentic and honest and respectful of who we are. We should be able to do that without fear or favour and be able to do that without being ashamed of being Māori,' Waititi told The Hui host Julian Wilcox. 'What I feel is that we are being punished for being Māori. The country loves my haka, the world loves my haka, but it feels like they don't love me.'
Scoop
12 hours ago
- Scoop
Timid Tariff Response Fails New Zealanders
The Government is failing New Zealanders by ' being comfortable ' with a 10 percent tariff on all goods going into the US. 'The Prime Minister's timid view undermines the work of New Zealand governments over decades to support a trading system that offers security for exporters, importers and consumers,' Labour trade spokesperson Damien O'Connor said. 'The Government should not give up on getting a better deal for our hard-working exporters, or the rules-based system that New Zealand relies on. 'It's not just disappointing that the Government hasn't been able to negotiate lower tariffs given the very low level of tariffs we impose on goods and services from the US, it could mean greater costs for all of New Zealanders. 'Not only will there be a $900 million hit on our exports, we also have to consider how the ripple effect of tariffs on our trading partners such as China will affect prices on goods coming to New Zealand,' Damien O'Connor said.
The Spinoff
13 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Echo Chamber: Emergency housing, climate targets and the art of not saying sorry
'I was wrong' isn't always as easy as saying 'what I would just say to you …' Echo Chamber is The Spinoff's dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus. Question time in the House on Wednesday was another bog-standard affair. Straight into it, probing from Labour leader Chris Hipkins to prime minister Christopher Luxon over emergency housing had MPs across the benches going rogue, like how one might act after consuming too many drinks at an awards ceremony. The issue has been a question time hot topic all year, after the government 'tighten[ed] the gateway into emergency housing' last August, making eligibility criteria stricter. Since then, the number of families in emergency housing has dropped by 75%, five years earlier than anticipated, but 20% of those who have left emergency housing remain unaccounted for – while homelessness is at an all-time high. When he's been questioned on where those one in five might be in recent months, Luxon typically starts with the same line: 'I would just say to that member …' What he'd say is that actually, 'on all four dimensions of housing', there have been 'improved outcomes'. What he'd say is that when he thinks of the 'abject failure' of the previous government, he feels 'incredibly proud' of his record. What he'd say is, kids are out of motels, rates and housing prices look stable, 'and interest rates are coming down'. But voices from the opposition side already had their own narrative: 'they're on the street!', 'they're homeless!', 'people are leaving [the country]!' National MP Tom Rutherford had a retort for them: 'Cheer up!' And, like clockwork, the barracking became enough for speaker Gerry Brownlee to threaten to throw everybody out, as he does in most question time sessions. It was NZ First minister Shane Jones who was the voice of reason. 'Sir,' he told the speaker, 'from this hitherto unknown perch we can't hear a thing the prime minister is saying. You really need to enforce your ruling to have some order and a better sense of decorum from that side of the House.' It wasn't just teething issues with the new seating chart put in place after the deputy prime minister switcheroo – the heckling truly was louder than the prime minister. Later, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi asked Luxon about comments made by new deputy prime minister David Seymour alleging 99.5% of submissions on a discussion document on the Regulatory Standards Bill were 'fake' and 'driven by bots'. Luxon said the DPM had 'clarified his comments'. Then, amazingly, Waititi was finally the first person in the House to mention minister Chris Bishop's music awards gaffe last week, asking Luxon why he had said he was 'comfortable' with it. The three ministers to Bishop's right – Erica Stanford, Paul Goldsmith and Louise Upston – all turned and grinned at him. 'As I've said publicly, I quite like country music, but a lot of people give me grief for that too and use similar language that Chris Bishop used,' Luxon said, to expected groans from the opposition. 'Can you give us an example?' Waititi asked. 'Sing us a song?' Earlier in the session, after fielding questions on pay equity from Labour's finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and pledging her appreciation to the care workers of the nation, finance minister Nicola Willis made a misquote that clearly haunted her. Asked about 'stripping' the $12.8bn contingency for pay equity claims, Willis said Edmonds should talk to her leader, who apparently had said the figure was an 'awfully big number that he doesn't understand'. So, after patsy time between National's Vanessa Weenink and Stanford, with her phone open on the relevant NZ Herald article, Willis now understood her paraphrasing was wrong. Now, 'out of an abundance of caution and wishing not to have misled the House', she wished to repeat the correct quote, but Brownlee wanted to know why she couldn't just say sorry, and get over it. 'If you said something that's wrong, apologise for saying it's wrong and move on,' Brownlee told her, but she persisted. And after more back and forth, Willis repeated Hipkins' direct quote: 'What National should do is release to the New Zealand public how they arrived at that figure because it is a very big number.' And all Brownlee had to say in response was 'well, that's good'. Elton John said it best: sorry seems to be the hardest word. When Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick had her turn to question the prime minister, she focused on an open letter penned by 26 climate scientists, urging our government not to adopt a 'no additional warming' method of measuring methane emissions, which they say would put Aotearoa's Paris Agreement targets at risk. Luxon was indifferent: 'I'd just say to the people who kindly wrote the letter that they should write it to 194 other countries before they send me a letter, and then I might read it.' Then something about farmers. It was clearly exasperating for Swarbrick, who had spent the whole session hearing her new neighbours from across the way, NZ First, call her a Marxist and communist. We could debate how good our farmers are till we're blue in the face – like, quite literally blue – she told Luxon, but what about our climate targets? The cheers from the government benches, and jeers from NZ First, seemed to throw the co-leader off. Once Luxon confirmed that no, he would not be 'heeding' the call of these scientists, she tried to get him to commit to something else, but ran into a grumpy old obstacle. 'Spit it out!' Winston Peters taunted, before Swarbrick gestured the speaker's attention towards Peters and Jones, leaned together in their seats and giggling like two schoolboys who had just been called out by the class tattletale. 'Hoax! Hoax!' Jones mocked her. 'We are back on track,' Luxon grinned over his methane targets. Maybe there's more than one person in this House who could learn when to admit that they're wrong.
