Mark Cameron says National 'out of touch' with farmers by sticking with Paris accord pledges; David Seymour downplays Cameron's comments, saying National is (happily) doing the bare minimum on climate
Like most ACTists, he's a Trumpist at heart. Sooner ACT are disestablished the better. Must be hard for other pollies to be in the same room as any of them.
It may be personal for Mark Cameron - he looks as if he and the weather hate each other. It blows my mind that so many people stupidly bet against the climate, What on earth lets someone do that?
wonder who is on the board that reviewed the wind farm. a conspiracy theorist might consider that the boards reasons for denying the application was pitched to cast shade on greenies when in fact their interests are rooted in extractive powered generation.
1. Why would they use Labours Fast-Track, why on earth would they do that? The only reason I can come up with here is, Labour bad - stopping decarbonisation. Labour hasn't been in Government for 18 months - switch lanes you plonkers, use the National fast track Bill, oops I mean legislation.
2. Why put the wind farm there, Contact would have known that this would have been an absolute no-go from a piece of Labour legislation, perhaps its all about the message that a few bats are stopping 250 jobs and putting a spoke in the works of decarbonisation.
I have a message for Contact Energy - don't be dicks, just put the windfarm somewhere else or give people a good reason why it has to be in that exact spot. Sounds like a dickhead move from them.
On one hand we talk climate and the importance of protecting ecological diversity and unique habitats, and then we allow an energy company to put forward a proposal to build a windfarm bang smack in the middle of a habitat with critically endangered endemic species.
As someone who has accompanied scientists into these kinds of habitats to survey their inhabitants from the soil up, I know the equation is very complex and the solution very simple - we either arrive at a place where we value these unique to Aotearoa New Zealand species, and decide to let them live, or we continue to destroy the possibility of their existence and our country's uniqueness.
Unique habitats are maternity wards. If you diminish their capacity you destroy the abundance of life that will be birthed there.
If these maternity wards are already teetering on the brink - any further disruption could trigger total collapse.
We need people sitting on boards who understand this - if there is any hope that our country will continue to boast of its unique inhabitants.
And in my opinion we need to stop blaming the underdog for problems created by and perpetuated by wealthy corporations.
Seems to me contact didn’t provide enough of a compelling reason to approve under this piece of legislation. That said these proposals shouldn’t really get to this stage where they get rejected, surely they workshop to get their application so that they are not blindsided by regional wildlife impacts?
I don't know enough about it, but I have to assume there's more to that wind farm being blocked than just "bats and lizards" - surely framing it like that just plays into the hands of the anti-woke, blanket-deregulation crowd? ... Isn't it true that several energy projects have been approved yet not built?
I doubt they "actively" campaigned for wind farms, as it would negatively impact their main rural voting base. However, they definitely push for "growth, growth, growth" and without more and cheaper energy, the growth plans will hit a big wall... for example:
New Energy Minister Simon Watts warned of risk of outages, business closures in challenging sector (17.03.2025)
Thank you. The rural National voters either ignored those points in the manifesto or didn't believe National would implement renewable energy projects in their electorate. Another example here:
North Canterbury residents oppose solar farm near homes (06.02.2025)
I didn't believe a single word around the "10,000 EV chargers". The Coalition deliberately(?) destroyed the new EV and (future) 2nd hand EV car market in NZ, through direct and indirect actions.
The 10,000 EV chargers have to be mainly funded and installed by private companies and no business is going to do it without demand for those chargers.
This probably slows down future uptake of EV, too, because people will hold back on EV, if they think chargers are not widespread available.
We now have half a century of libertarianism morphing into authoritarian populism. We've seen how it works. ACT is part of that.
We've seen how the political arena conceals money and its lobby industry. We've shaken our heads as demagoguery corrals voters to punch downward. How it seeks to shape the anger of insecurity, of atomisation and depression.
The metamorphosis of the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers into the trumpy ACT Party of today is itself a case in point. Radical right populism is a crisis in democracy everywhere. Dear old NZF persists as a home-grown variant of negative nationalism, with sulphurous fumeroles of trumpism. Alas they run rings around the unfortunate Luxon.
The Times are changin' but the wheels still in spin. So go Bernard & Team Kākā : continue the mahi to demystify and deshitify the public sphere.
Aotearoa-NZ's public sphere needs to build on the injection of positive, nation-building vision the Treaty Hikoi has surely prefigured. A proactive response is urgent to offset the overwhelm factor. Roll on TKP26/50
A historic shift demands a historic perspective to inform a resilient response. The unfolding terroristic US coup is a seismic rupture with tectonic roots in the libertarian corporatism. NZ embraces this anti collective action at the top of the list in the 20-nation 2006 Role of Government Survey. Were not immune from punitive variants of MAGA Contagion. Physician, know thyself.
Meanwhile..young American performing poet prodigy Jesse Welles sings "Red", like a fella with a red flag trying to warn the passengers in a train heading to a track washout.
The wind turbine thing is fascinating. Turns out they ARE bat-killers, but simple strategies can reduce the death rate by up to 95%, at the loss of around 5% of a wind farm's output.
On the face of it, this seems like a decent trade-off but obv the expert panel didn't see it that way.
That Cost of Being just proves how dysfunctional our approach to the economics of poverty is (as it is for all 'developed' [sic] countries). With respect to the subject of the piece, who benefits from a life like that? It is a tragic waste of a human being, with all their innate intuition, creativity, empathy, drive, and so on. Our economy doesn't grow on their back - even if that sad aspiration was all we should care about! And that's not even considering how much their individual experience could be improved by something as stupidly simple as a $50 note! Low wages and benefits, drip-fed out week-by-week, traps people no less than physical imprisonment does. What have they really done to deserve punishment like that? Been unlucky? Not hustled hard enough?...There was a reason Donald Trump signed his own name on the universal stimulus cheques the US Treasury distributed during COVID, because he intuited those $1000-odd boosts would have broken the chains for a hell of a lot of "his" people trapped by a dental need, a car repair, or a repayment to a friend who helped you see a doctor. We need to completely rethink our social welfare and minimal wages, or suffer eternally through both human wastage in our communities and human garbage in our politics.
...And maybe the Government should have worked out that if you cut thousands of policy analysts, etc, from ministries and departments, you end up paying them the Benefit (barely sufficient to live on), and lose the tax money you were taking on their wages. Without sufficient suitable vacancies in the private sector, they can't get reabsorbed into the workforce.
So approx. Benefit+loss of tax-take=their original wages (more or less) Government spend.
Don't tell me there were that many government employees goofing off. I came across the odd one or two, over two decades, but they were hardly going to rebalance the books - as we've seen with the current economic depression.
Yep, there sure have been some pretty disingenuous choices made, to lay off thousands of public servants on the basis of a handful of anecdotes about 'goofing off'
One serious shortcoming with this government is that it has zero understanding of real investment for the future - their policies are short term and based on knowing the cost of everything and value of nothing.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say this government has no interest in real investment for the future, short term profiteering for its donors is everything?
Morena Bernard! I'm sorry to bother but I can't find the Must read of the day regarding the deshittification of social media...I thought it was important enough to ask 😕 sorry if it's out there in oblivion, but I'd appreciate your guidance to find it! Ngā mihi!
The word culling comes to mind - and hopefully (the sooner the better) the next election will serve that purpose.
Mark Cameron seriously out of touch with reality, though to be fair this appears to be a membership condition with ACT.
It’s seriously negligent https://youtu.be/yhRYMwlFiRU?si=cqv1IXtNOBG54pJS
yes, that's it in a nutshell and on tv3 news tonight "The State of the Global Climate 2024 "
Was this the old dude that was on his tractor last night on the news? If so, he needs to FO, he's the reason boomers get such a bad rap.
Like most ACTists, he's a Trumpist at heart. Sooner ACT are disestablished the better. Must be hard for other pollies to be in the same room as any of them.
It may be personal for Mark Cameron - he looks as if he and the weather hate each other. It blows my mind that so many people stupidly bet against the climate, What on earth lets someone do that?
Genuine big time problem gamblers!
wonder who is on the board that reviewed the wind farm. a conspiracy theorist might consider that the boards reasons for denying the application was pitched to cast shade on greenies when in fact their interests are rooted in extractive powered generation.
Well I must be the conspiracy theorist.
1. Why would they use Labours Fast-Track, why on earth would they do that? The only reason I can come up with here is, Labour bad - stopping decarbonisation. Labour hasn't been in Government for 18 months - switch lanes you plonkers, use the National fast track Bill, oops I mean legislation.
2. Why put the wind farm there, Contact would have known that this would have been an absolute no-go from a piece of Labour legislation, perhaps its all about the message that a few bats are stopping 250 jobs and putting a spoke in the works of decarbonisation.
I have a message for Contact Energy - don't be dicks, just put the windfarm somewhere else or give people a good reason why it has to be in that exact spot. Sounds like a dickhead move from them.
I wouldn't call you a conspiracy theorist.
On one hand we talk climate and the importance of protecting ecological diversity and unique habitats, and then we allow an energy company to put forward a proposal to build a windfarm bang smack in the middle of a habitat with critically endangered endemic species.
As someone who has accompanied scientists into these kinds of habitats to survey their inhabitants from the soil up, I know the equation is very complex and the solution very simple - we either arrive at a place where we value these unique to Aotearoa New Zealand species, and decide to let them live, or we continue to destroy the possibility of their existence and our country's uniqueness.
Unique habitats are maternity wards. If you diminish their capacity you destroy the abundance of life that will be birthed there.
If these maternity wards are already teetering on the brink - any further disruption could trigger total collapse.
We need people sitting on boards who understand this - if there is any hope that our country will continue to boast of its unique inhabitants.
And in my opinion we need to stop blaming the underdog for problems created by and perpetuated by wealthy corporations.
Clare Lenihan
environmental and public law barrister
therefore mindset obvious
Gina Solomon
Chair of Nelson Marlborough Conservation Board and
Committee member of Nature Heritage Fund
therefore mindset obvious
Sharon McGarry
has been a commissioner on an extraordinarily large number of hearings all around New Zealand
possibly no fixed intractable mindset
Seems to me contact didn’t provide enough of a compelling reason to approve under this piece of legislation. That said these proposals shouldn’t really get to this stage where they get rejected, surely they workshop to get their application so that they are not blindsided by regional wildlife impacts?
I don't know enough about it, but I have to assume there's more to that wind farm being blocked than just "bats and lizards" - surely framing it like that just plays into the hands of the anti-woke, blanket-deregulation crowd? ... Isn't it true that several energy projects have been approved yet not built?
To give some perspective the bats are assessed as critically endangered.
Forgive me if I’m wrong but I thought National campaigned on wind farms?
They are committed to one in the Beehive
I doubt they "actively" campaigned for wind farms, as it would negatively impact their main rural voting base. However, they definitely push for "growth, growth, growth" and without more and cheaper energy, the growth plans will hit a big wall... for example:
New Energy Minister Simon Watts warned of risk of outages, business closures in challenging sector (17.03.2025)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/new-energy-minister-simon-watts-warned-of-risk-of-outages-business-closures-in-challenging-sector/N27BREOSQBF67GAQCTGW2MOI6Y/
I checked and it was in their manifesto. I think it was a watered down version of what Labour had planned to do https://www.national.org.nz/policies/electrify-nz
Thank you. The rural National voters either ignored those points in the manifesto or didn't believe National would implement renewable energy projects in their electorate. Another example here:
North Canterbury residents oppose solar farm near homes (06.02.2025)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/north-canterbury-residents-oppose-solar-farm-near-homes/J5F3WFHQ4BF4FENISKPAUJ6SC4/
They did campaign on EV chargers, they are as quiet on that now as an EV is on the road
I didn't believe a single word around the "10,000 EV chargers". The Coalition deliberately(?) destroyed the new EV and (future) 2nd hand EV car market in NZ, through direct and indirect actions.
The 10,000 EV chargers have to be mainly funded and installed by private companies and no business is going to do it without demand for those chargers.
This probably slows down future uptake of EV, too, because people will hold back on EV, if they think chargers are not widespread available.
Act is no longer a libertarian party, this has just become a front for an increasingly far right party
I think the word you are looking for is fascist!
Scratch a libertarian and a fascist bleeds
We now have half a century of libertarianism morphing into authoritarian populism. We've seen how it works. ACT is part of that.
We've seen how the political arena conceals money and its lobby industry. We've shaken our heads as demagoguery corrals voters to punch downward. How it seeks to shape the anger of insecurity, of atomisation and depression.
The metamorphosis of the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers into the trumpy ACT Party of today is itself a case in point. Radical right populism is a crisis in democracy everywhere. Dear old NZF persists as a home-grown variant of negative nationalism, with sulphurous fumeroles of trumpism. Alas they run rings around the unfortunate Luxon.
The Times are changin' but the wheels still in spin. So go Bernard & Team Kākā : continue the mahi to demystify and deshitify the public sphere.
Aotearoa-NZ's public sphere needs to build on the injection of positive, nation-building vision the Treaty Hikoi has surely prefigured. A proactive response is urgent to offset the overwhelm factor. Roll on TKP26/50
A historic shift demands a historic perspective to inform a resilient response. The unfolding terroristic US coup is a seismic rupture with tectonic roots in the libertarian corporatism. NZ embraces this anti collective action at the top of the list in the 20-nation 2006 Role of Government Survey. Were not immune from punitive variants of MAGA Contagion. Physician, know thyself.
Meanwhile..young American performing poet prodigy Jesse Welles sings "Red", like a fella with a red flag trying to warn the passengers in a train heading to a track washout.
The difference between a libertarian and the far right is....?
The wind turbine thing is fascinating. Turns out they ARE bat-killers, but simple strategies can reduce the death rate by up to 95%, at the loss of around 5% of a wind farm's output.
On the face of it, this seems like a decent trade-off but obv the expert panel didn't see it that way.
If you're interested, here's a link to an informative piece from the Aussie Ecological Society. https://www.ecolsoc.org.au/?hottopic-entry=wind-turbines-kill-bats-but-they-dont-have-to
Or didn't Contact agree to mitigation measures/see any issues?
And what works for other species of bats may not work for our (3) species of bats.
That Cost of Being just proves how dysfunctional our approach to the economics of poverty is (as it is for all 'developed' [sic] countries). With respect to the subject of the piece, who benefits from a life like that? It is a tragic waste of a human being, with all their innate intuition, creativity, empathy, drive, and so on. Our economy doesn't grow on their back - even if that sad aspiration was all we should care about! And that's not even considering how much their individual experience could be improved by something as stupidly simple as a $50 note! Low wages and benefits, drip-fed out week-by-week, traps people no less than physical imprisonment does. What have they really done to deserve punishment like that? Been unlucky? Not hustled hard enough?...There was a reason Donald Trump signed his own name on the universal stimulus cheques the US Treasury distributed during COVID, because he intuited those $1000-odd boosts would have broken the chains for a hell of a lot of "his" people trapped by a dental need, a car repair, or a repayment to a friend who helped you see a doctor. We need to completely rethink our social welfare and minimal wages, or suffer eternally through both human wastage in our communities and human garbage in our politics.
...And maybe the Government should have worked out that if you cut thousands of policy analysts, etc, from ministries and departments, you end up paying them the Benefit (barely sufficient to live on), and lose the tax money you were taking on their wages. Without sufficient suitable vacancies in the private sector, they can't get reabsorbed into the workforce.
So approx. Benefit+loss of tax-take=their original wages (more or less) Government spend.
Don't tell me there were that many government employees goofing off. I came across the odd one or two, over two decades, but they were hardly going to rebalance the books - as we've seen with the current economic depression.
Yep, there sure have been some pretty disingenuous choices made, to lay off thousands of public servants on the basis of a handful of anecdotes about 'goofing off'
One serious shortcoming with this government is that it has zero understanding of real investment for the future - their policies are short term and based on knowing the cost of everything and value of nothing.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say this government has no interest in real investment for the future, short term profiteering for its donors is everything?
Great choice of photo for today's story. It actually made me laugh, he's exactly as I pictured him.
To quote the thick of it, all he's doing is depriving a village somewhere of it's idiot.
Am I going blind or was there no link for "must-read of the day"?
Cameron is notorious locally for his negativity. He is a minority in a minority party of weird people who are divorced from reality.
Federated Farmers need Brain surgery to knock the Libertarian shit out of em!
Cameron’s FB posts are very enlightening.
They show just how many centuries his attitude and knowledge are behind current society.
Bigotry is blinding.
Mark Cameron is a side effect of MMP and doesn't reveal any in depth understanding of the issue. His views are not even of passing interest.
Mark Cameron is essentially an unelected blowhard. Perhaps he needs to revert to his original form and fly into a wind farm.
Morena Bernard! I'm sorry to bother but I can't find the Must read of the day regarding the deshittification of social media...I thought it was important enough to ask 😕 sorry if it's out there in oblivion, but I'd appreciate your guidance to find it! Ngā mihi!
I've got an idea for where to put a solar farm where there are no protected fauna
GOLF COURSES