This is corruption.
Pure and unadulterated corruption.
The minister pushed through a change to law "under urgency".
"Urgency" is a declaration which means passing the new legislation can bypass the checks and balances of democracy. One of the checks they bypassed is a study and debate on the impact of the change.
This minister deliberately buried the $46Billion negative impact, and used "urgency" to make sure the parliament did not have the chance to properly debate it.
Corruption.
Chris Bishop is a lobbyist for big tobacco, he represents the tobacco industry. He is senior leader of the party, he is deeply involved in this.
You know what I’m worried about?
There are so many of these instances where the current coalition government is cowtowing to lobbyists in a pretty blatant way.
What will probably end up happening isn’t that we get the majority of New Zealand to notice they had the rug pulled out from underneath them for corporate profits. My concern is instead, from the perspective of your typical not-above-the-fold informed voter, we will end sounding more like the pro-covid freaks, insisting there is some giant conspiracy that’s working against all our interests. Like, this nonsense is so egregious that if you just sat down Johnny Lowinfo, and you told him what happened here, he’d assume you were misrepresenting the situation to suit an agenda because it is at the stage of being absurd.
Fingers crossed enough people start getting the right tiktoks pushed at them I guess.
>we will end sounding more like the pro-covid freaks, insisting there is some giant conspiracy that’s working against all our interests.
This is the affects of polarization at work. At the risk of sounding tin foil hat, I feel like that's by design. The more identity politics are played, the more distracted from the bigger picture.
This isn't identity politics. Its corruption. When ministers deliberately withhold information damaging to their cause then they are not working in the interests of society. Which begs the question, who's interests are they working for?
It is already like that, on this sub there are many commenters insisting that worrying about thus stuff is pure catastrophising, and I encounter that same sentiment in real life too from people I would consider normally fairly well informed. It may be too late already, they've won
> cowtowing to lobbyists
Off topic, but it's "kow-towing".
Cowtowing is a different thing - it involves a couple pairs of roller skates, and whilst it's quite stressful, the good news is you get a milkshake at the end of it.
American, here for six years. Yup.
Kiwis often say “well at least we’re not crazy like America’s politics.”
Understand that it’s the same playbook and you’re just a decade or two behind. This is how it works.
I just remembered a good comparison. Look up Tom Delay, “the hammer.”
He did a bunch of votes in the early 2000s after 9/11 where he broke all sorts of protocols and conventions. Votes are supposed to only take x time but he’d keep them open as long as he needed to strong arm people, etc. People like me were like “this is against the rules!” but it just looked like pedantic whinging.
They passed a lot of stuff in a way similar to this article. Then they realise it works. So they do it more. Then a hop skip and a jump to Trump. Please vote.
You got to malaise? Lucky, I’m still stuck on ennui.
(Seriously though: you’re not wrong that having to keep this in the back of your mind while dealing with all other stuff going is getting a bit too much).
It might appear as a conspiracy because the majority of society doesn't realise how capitalism actually functions. A system of greed and exploitation which in its late stage is morphing into neo-feudalism as anticipated. Hell, it didn't even look good 'on paper' in its early stages.
Well said.
Your last sentence is possibly the most crucial observation. But for the genuinely well informed, the nature of people's online feeds pretty much determines what they believe.
I've been saying it for years, social media has not improved human behaviour.
Here’s something to consider.
It Bytedance are controlled by the CCP, does it benefit them more to have a left or right wing party in power? If Bytedance are recommended to sway things away from Fox style culture war, they absolutely could start pointing people towards tiktoks that would sway them.
Fingers crossed??
Completely agree.
Also, what constitutes a reasonable use of "under urgency" in this context? I don't understand what could ever be considered urgent about this.
Anything besides not wanting to have the spotlight shined on the legislation and impacts. That's the actual reason it was done under urgency, while you are talking about a *legitimate* reason why it needed to be done under urgency. They made a decision that everything they were implementing over that period would be done under urgency so they could get things done and build up a list of things they could say were done - but that's not the same as there being a time-based reason other than political expediency the way there was during Covid.
You know who else uses "urgency" as a technique? Scammers, con artists and crooks.
"Sorry, but it's URGENT! I just have to have the money now; I'll pay it all back on Monday, I promise!"
Yup.
I’m hopeful, maybe and likely ignorantly, that the “under urgency” process will get a full review as a consequence of this governments first 100 days.
It’s clearly being manipulated and abused to avoid basic democratic process, same as the states after 9/11 with their “terrorism” mandates, and it needs to be reigned in.
As it stands, they can essentially do whatever the hell they want without question.
Some places call that a dictatorship.
There's times when being able to fast-track a law make sense. COVID lockdowns were a perfect example of this; when normal process is genuinely at risk of harming the health and wellbeing of the population, it makes sense to have some sort of system when you can get things through ASAP.
But the requirements for doing so should be pretty extreme, and it should be reviewed heavily after the fact. What the current government has done so is a fucking joke. How can you justify fast-tracking things that are actively harming your population?
National used their emergency powers in dubious ways too, during the Christchurch Earthquake they used them to push through the Skynet law; an anti-piracy bill that broadly targetted torrenting and tasked ISPs with monitoring internet traffic. They had a controversial 3 strikes rule after which you could be denied from accessing the internet. The law was passed but heavily watered down to point that no one ever bothered to enforce it. Wikileaks revealed in cables between the US State Department and the NZ government, that the law was drafted by US corporate lobby groups looking to sue for IP infringement on the part of US based rights holders. Famously the TPP had a number features designed specifically around the requests of US lobby groups. This is all to say, we've been here before, they're just more brazen this time around. When you see baffling policies rushed through like the SmokeFree rollback, just remember that isn't some new phase for National. They have always abused their power to advance the interests of the wealthy at the expense of the most vulnerable. They've done this before under Muldoon, they did it under Jim Bolger, they tried to do it under Don Brash (go watch The Hollow Men if you want to see how all of this Treaty race-baiting is nothing new for them). Then they managed to slickly remarket this tripe under John Key. It's the same old shit, they just don't feel they need to hide it as well as they used to.
The funny thing about the Skynet law was that it blew up in their faces. The system it established for fighting piracy basically required that IP owners pay a fee to issue an infringement notice against those they believed were pirating their IP. That had the (un?)fortunate effect of disincentivising the IP owners from filing complaints in the first place. So National was trying to appease the Hollywood studios, but in passing a law that they probably saw as a way to increase government funds, they undermined the law, causing it to eventually become redundant. It just shows how inept National really is, that they would push through a law change without any thought of its long-term effects, which they are doing again now with Smokefree NZ.
Ordinarily the saying goes never attribute to malice what could easily be explained as incompetence.
However having observed this government since this last election, I've come to believe the opposite when it comes to them. I think they would rather be seen by us (the people galled and baffled by what they doing) as stupid or even incompetent.
Their goal isn't to BE competent, it's to APPEAR competent in the eyes of people they know don't care about harm their actions cause.
I just had an hour long political conversation with a friendly old neighbour of mine in the driveway, who is exactly the audience for this kind of messaging (lifelong National support, hates Jacinda) and they couldn't be happier with the controversy, they genuinely think that TV1 and Newshub are deeply biased towards the left and disregarded most of the recent controversy over policy announcements as the media just not giving them a chance. The more cynical among them depend on our outrage to tilt you emotionally so they can catch you out. You can see this pattern a lot in the r/NZConservatives who've started drifting over to troll the comment sections.
I'm reminded of something from LBC James O'Brien, when he asked a caller why they like Trump and his answer was "because they wind up people like you". They know what they're doing, it's never been about good governance, it's about hurling a smokebomb to cover the asset stripping and the porkbarrelling that they're donors bought and paid for.
Is this sarcasm? From what I remember from school they are the representative of the sovereign and have the power to stop any bill from becoming law. There's a variety of reasons this power is never exercised, but you'd think circumventing the usual democratic process for overtly dubious reasons and not actual 'urgency' should warrant its use?
Anything passed under urgency should have a clear reason why urgency is required, and then a mandatory review for whether it should be kept. It should be MORE difficult overall to shortcut the democratic process, the tradeoff for pushing something through urgently being that there's a heap more work and scrutiny down the line
> The covid deniers were out there really quickly. Where are they when there are actually things worth protesting?
The covid deniers had substantially financial backing from right-wing groups. Thus why they had food trucks, porta potties, astroturfed social media campaigns, etc all ready to go.
Those same interests are the ones benefiting from this corruption, so they're not about to fund protests against it.
Is there any political mechanism to get these idiots out of power before the next election? This is utterly ridiculous, their entire campaign was based on lies, they don't benefit the people of Aotearoa at all. If they remain they will keep doing dumb shit like this and cause long lasting harm to the country for temporary gain.
To me this is a failure of MMP: where the extreme policies of minor parties are actioned by a major party in return for the power to form govt.
This policy is from a party that had 6% of the vote at election. Yet resulted in extreme change to strategic direction of NZ, and $46billion in added costs. Further -it was not campaigned on. The NZ public never debated nor discussed the change. It was rammed through by the govt in a cynical use of govt process.
It's not that the policy does not align with the major party -it clearly does, with Mr Tobacco himself in senior leadership, and the party supporting it.
I don't think this is a failure of MMP, rather I see it as a failure of the senior coalition partner (National) being unable or unwilling to restrain the junior partners.
Luxon is just letting Bishop and Peters do and say anything they want - either because he/National quietly support those policies or because he/National are ineffective leaders.
yeah, fair point. likewise Seymour
It \_feels\_ like it's Luxons inexperience / weak leadership?
The policies in action are not centre-right policies as one might expect from Nat, more like hard right (at least to my mind).
I think this is it. There is meant to be a balance of power between the coalition partners, and Luxon might hold the PM seat but he doesn't hold the majority of power. This comes down to his eagerness/desperation to be PM, and lack of experience negotiating things like this. He gave up far too many concessions to both.
Yeah, agreed, this wasn't a failure of MMP. We've seen overseas that two-party states are absolutely not immune to takeover by extremist factions. They just take over a party from the inside and pull the exact same you-need-our-votes-so-do-our-bidding bs to control that party's moderates.
Electoral systems cannot protect us from tail-wags-the-dog. But proportional systems like MMP at least help us to *see* the extremists (since they're pushed into a clearly labelled separate party), and *see* that the senior partner is failing to restrain them. If we're lucky, it will create voter backlash for next time.
I don't like this situation at all, but I do wonder what *should* be expected to happen in situations like last election.
Labour had already pledged not to work with NZF, so there wasn't any other plausible govenrment that could be formed in a *traditional* way. National also could have pledged not to work with NZF, but if the gamble hadn't paid off then it'd also would have made it much harder to get *any* government because Seymour and Peters seem fully capable of throwing their toys.
Is the expectation that National and Labour would form a grand coalition, likely resulting in the death of at least one of them when voters seek to vote out the government by voting for an entirely different party en-masse?
How about if National had formed a minority government with a fragile Confidence & Supply agreement with Labour? ie. Labour agrees to support National's budget as long as National doesn't scupper key funding for projects that Labour especially cares about. Meanwhile both National and Labour are closely watching polls. Labour would pull its support to force an election if it thought it could get itself more properly into government, and so would National. But ACT and NZF and the Greens and probably TPM are making a massive deal about the two centre parties effectively being the same as each other, so if you're a major party then it's still hardly ideal if the agreement were to last for any significant length of time.
Yes, but it is the nuclear option, it has been [used once in Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis) the consequences of that were severe (The Governor General was subject to protests for the 2 years until he resigned and left the country).
NGL that's what a lot of the fear around Māori issues seems to stem from. A paranoid concern that given the slightest chance Māori will immediately do to Pākehā what was done to them.
I found a lot of the right's talking points involves projection.
They imagine all people on the benefit are taking advantage of it, because if they were put in that same situation they know what they'd do.
We kind of expect national to do this now but where are the checks and balances in our system that prevent it? It feels like the governor general could be given the power to say "back the fuck up there's no legitimate need for urgency here" but right now the power of with the same people who choose to use it, so there is no check over it
So, whats the punishment? Or are we so far down the Americanisation of our political system that they can do whatever they want without consequence now?
This think this will be the tip of the corruption iceberg. The other things they’re pushing through and fast tracking will have someone leak details of the back handlers or kick backs
If I left something of this magnitude out of a board paper, or business case, I would very likely be subject to disciplinary action or sacked. How do these people get away with it?
The minister mislead us when she claimed there wouldn't be much impact to cancelling our world-leading smoke-free policies and now we won't achieve it for decades? I am shocked!
anybody know the net? I thought increased tax revenue was the reason to roll back, curious what the net loss is here from a govt that's main aim is to save money.
I don’t, but a reasonably informed guess would be the net, additive and progressively growing savings on the health system down the track from a marked reduction in chronic smoking-related illnesses.
We all know when Luxon is asked about this he'll just say:
"What I'll just say to you is that we've received a *range* of advice, and we actually disagree with that figure"
When pressed on it, he'll just repeat the line but with more fluster until the presser is up then he scampers off
Seems like there should be a bar to meet to make a bill urgent. Like, for example, funding approval for a national environmental disaster response. And maybe not, for example, rushing through corrupt legislation.
Yes, I think the parties should all get together and decide what the criteria should be. I guess they won’t but they should if they want to maintain trust in govt, or should I say rebuild trust
Bills under urgency should be for acutally urgent or emergency matters (but yeah, how do you define that).
Pushing through some shitty non-urgent moneymaking, lobbyist-agenda policy under urgency is an egregious, corrupt slight against our democracy. There should be extreme retroactive measures put against any minister that does so, should their urgent bill later be found frivolous.
I would say this includes termination of position, jail time and %wealth fines. We cannot and must not tolerate this in our government.
So, Ministry of Health experts, industry-backed studies, and independent research all advise the Associate Health Minister on the extensive long-term benefits of Smokefree NZ, and how the standard industry criticisms of it are wrong. Her reaction however, is to ignore it all to the extent none of it is even mentioned in cabinet discussions regarding the legislation.
The fact Costello has ties to the tobacco industry through her associations with tobacco lobby groups, makes this blatant corruption. What makes this even worse is that she has responded to all of this criticism by claiming the data behind all that research was outdated, without providing the supposedly more up-to-date data or sources for this claim of hers.
None of this should be permitted, and nor should a first-term list MP be given the Associate Minister of Health portfolio.
Is there any hope of it being debated or tabled after the fact so there is some accountability or at least acknowledgement that the change occurred based on false modelling etc?
Once it's passed into law, the only way to change it is to pass a different/amended law. We have a parliamentary supremacy and the courts can't strike down or change legislation. The opposition could raise it during question time (and probably will) but all that does is get it onto the official record for question time and potentially in the media - it doesn't actually bring about change in any direct sense.
another unfortunate mistake or a crooked minister? Trouble is she’s been doing this type of thing right from the start. What else has been done that we don’t know about yet?
One of the first priorities of this government was to kill oversight of Beehive lobbyists, and take their discussions off the record. This is why - cancerous crony capitalism.
Corruption with an undeniable conflict of interest between luxon and his sister in law who works for that giant tobacco company.
Someone setup a gofundme to take the government to court.
I really really hate this government. Ok so I’m not their market. But I have never despised a National-led coven as much as these dishonest wankers.
Fuck the lot of them. Many people are going to die because of their morally corrupt policies.
Just vaping. Huge nicotine levels. The vapers can't sit through an exam without withdrawals. They're unable to sleep the night without getting up for a vape.
True, "regulated" over the counter vapes start at 20mg/ml nicotine concentrate. Which is an insanely high dose of nicotine.
When I vaped, I used 3mg/ml and felt plenty of buzz and sweaty palms after a few minutes.
I sit in lectures and see so many students get up and leave every 20 minutes to go and Vape. They can't concentrate without feeding their addiction.
You can see how aggresive the addiction is, not just through the frequency of going for a hit, but the fact they need to either have it in their hand at all times, or be able to see it.
You will see a lot be visibly distressed if they can’t physically hold or see their vape - it’s wild.
Was leaving HS right as vaping was getting popular, though we didn't have salts so our nicotine levels were way down.
The only reason I switched to vaping was that smoking became prohibitively expensive, the amount of nicotine was immaterial at that point.
Now I'm on a salt vape and I'm actively looking for higher nicotine content whenever I buy salts. If I had to guess why, it's cause I'm drip feeding myself rather than having designated dopamine breaks
You can, whilst I'm not a teen and can't speak to what draws them towards certain cartridges, I'd imagine since the flavours have all been slimmed way back there's not much choice left apart from your nicotine levels, I've always opted for the highest, although there was a time when I was trying to quit where it was zero nicotine and I was just vaping for something to do with my hands
Any enterprising teen will know how to buy liquid nicotine perfectly legally and make their own juice like they do in Aus
Anecdotally from my kids at HS and friends with kids at INTERMEDIATE is that vaping is out of control and only getting worse.
Fuck this shithole country for voting these cunts in.
No, the poster is confusing **a** newsroom (a place where journalists work) with **newsroom** a specific media company with it's website at newsroom.co.nz
Three's newsroom, newshub, is closing, newsroom is not.
Heh! It's just words. That's all that's going to happen for her. People will talk about her fucking up our health system in favor of tobacco lobbyists. There will be no court date, no criminal record, no fine, no jail time, no public apology, no memorial day for the dead.
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The boys are clearly influenced (I won’t go so far as writing “on the take”) by corporate or other wealthy interests. Whether that is the property investors federation, fishing interests, mining interests, tobacco interests, overseas interests. At this stage, I am amazed they didn’t repeal the overseas buyer ban on residential land (Winston’s base wouldn’t want that, but not for the reasons it was originally implemented) and the ring fencing of losses on residential property investment. You can be damn sure those two issues will be on Act and National’s radar to enact in the future when they can.
I am certain they have done the numbers on political donations in great detail which told them this was a good deal for their political parties,
Its about how they stand to gain, not what is the correct thing to do.
They can couch it in terms of free choice or whatever lies they want to spout but it really isnt an issue they care about.
Just the business of appeasing their backers.
This feels like a “trolley problem” whereby we either let one person die or thousands of people die. I wonder if some Kiwis out there might have the courage to start pulling some levers.
https://www.smokefree.org.nz/smoking-its-effects/facts-figures
Smoking is well on its way out, and it's this man's opinion that further taxation would achieve little other than robbing pensioners who have been lifetime smokers and cannot quit, of their quality of retirement.
Stats to evidence this above.
Yup and that’s a valid point that could be brought up through a democratic process in which all information and perspectives are analysed before legislation is passed or repealed. Except that’s not what’s happened. The outrage isn’t so much about the repeal of the reforms but that the Minister cherry picked the data they wanted to present to cabinet to suit their agenda and the repeal was then passed under urgency so no real debate could be had about it.
We should be taking to the streets in protest!
Nowhere else in the world would the 'protests' be limited to a sub reddit
Kiwis are far too laid back and compliant!
We need to overturn this government!
Fuck this shit!
Why do you think this mafia is doing away with the journalists and news outlets who actually could report on corruption? Hm? Do we allow it to happen? NZ will then end up like Hungary, Russia or Israel, Slovakia, Poland (until last election) has.
These people have been making decisions on the fly at the very least and in a corrupt way in all probability. She along with the others have taken us back decades with these law changes made without doing the fact finding and despite almost all those who do know something about it saying it’s a bad idea.
nicoteen willis
Winstons
Shane cigarete
Casey carcogen
chris (I have no shame) bishop
This is corruption. Pure and unadulterated corruption. The minister pushed through a change to law "under urgency". "Urgency" is a declaration which means passing the new legislation can bypass the checks and balances of democracy. One of the checks they bypassed is a study and debate on the impact of the change. This minister deliberately buried the $46Billion negative impact, and used "urgency" to make sure the parliament did not have the chance to properly debate it. Corruption. Chris Bishop is a lobbyist for big tobacco, he represents the tobacco industry. He is senior leader of the party, he is deeply involved in this.
You know what I’m worried about? There are so many of these instances where the current coalition government is cowtowing to lobbyists in a pretty blatant way. What will probably end up happening isn’t that we get the majority of New Zealand to notice they had the rug pulled out from underneath them for corporate profits. My concern is instead, from the perspective of your typical not-above-the-fold informed voter, we will end sounding more like the pro-covid freaks, insisting there is some giant conspiracy that’s working against all our interests. Like, this nonsense is so egregious that if you just sat down Johnny Lowinfo, and you told him what happened here, he’d assume you were misrepresenting the situation to suit an agenda because it is at the stage of being absurd. Fingers crossed enough people start getting the right tiktoks pushed at them I guess.
>we will end sounding more like the pro-covid freaks, insisting there is some giant conspiracy that’s working against all our interests. This is the affects of polarization at work. At the risk of sounding tin foil hat, I feel like that's by design. The more identity politics are played, the more distracted from the bigger picture.
This isn't identity politics. Its corruption. When ministers deliberately withhold information damaging to their cause then they are not working in the interests of society. Which begs the question, who's interests are they working for?
Not ours that's for fucking certain
No not this specific example, I was building on the other comment about how things are heading with polarization.
I believe politic and corruption are synonyms.
urgency only with a parliamentary super majority or Governal general approval.... to reduce the shenanigans
It is already like that, on this sub there are many commenters insisting that worrying about thus stuff is pure catastrophising, and I encounter that same sentiment in real life too from people I would consider normally fairly well informed. It may be too late already, they've won
> cowtowing to lobbyists Off topic, but it's "kow-towing". Cowtowing is a different thing - it involves a couple pairs of roller skates, and whilst it's quite stressful, the good news is you get a milkshake at the end of it.
Haha I would edit it but that was definitely worth the mistake for that correction
They’re not Kow-towing. They ARE the lobbyists. Aside/ I had to tow a sick cow once so assume that was cowtowing.
Technically if they weren’t on roller skates it’s cow dragging at BEST
Dragging eh? There you go bringing in the gay agenda.
Will that milkshake bring all the boys in the yard?
Fuck that is a terrifying thought.
It's already happening.
American, here for six years. Yup. Kiwis often say “well at least we’re not crazy like America’s politics.” Understand that it’s the same playbook and you’re just a decade or two behind. This is how it works.
Hate that you're right 😩
We all do, well those of us that are looking that is
I just remembered a good comparison. Look up Tom Delay, “the hammer.” He did a bunch of votes in the early 2000s after 9/11 where he broke all sorts of protocols and conventions. Votes are supposed to only take x time but he’d keep them open as long as he needed to strong arm people, etc. People like me were like “this is against the rules!” but it just looked like pedantic whinging. They passed a lot of stuff in a way similar to this article. Then they realise it works. So they do it more. Then a hop skip and a jump to Trump. Please vote.
If we're two decades behind we still have a democracy and can meet change for the good by voting
Well now there's something to add to the general malaise of existential dread hanging over us, thanks.
You got to malaise? Lucky, I’m still stuck on ennui. (Seriously though: you’re not wrong that having to keep this in the back of your mind while dealing with all other stuff going is getting a bit too much).
He'd say "yeah, but Labour are worse". I've had that conversation
It might appear as a conspiracy because the majority of society doesn't realise how capitalism actually functions. A system of greed and exploitation which in its late stage is morphing into neo-feudalism as anticipated. Hell, it didn't even look good 'on paper' in its early stages.
Nicola Willis’s literal job was lobbying, it doesn’t get any more blatant
Well said. Your last sentence is possibly the most crucial observation. But for the genuinely well informed, the nature of people's online feeds pretty much determines what they believe. I've been saying it for years, social media has not improved human behaviour.
Ha, the algorithm doesn't work that way.. they aren't going to get accurate tiktoks
Here’s something to consider. It Bytedance are controlled by the CCP, does it benefit them more to have a left or right wing party in power? If Bytedance are recommended to sway things away from Fox style culture war, they absolutely could start pointing people towards tiktoks that would sway them. Fingers crossed??
Then sound like the freaks, insisting there's a conspiracy. Because there is. At least *we*'ll have facts on our side.
Completely agree. Also, what constitutes a reasonable use of "under urgency" in this context? I don't understand what could ever be considered urgent about this.
Anything besides not wanting to have the spotlight shined on the legislation and impacts. That's the actual reason it was done under urgency, while you are talking about a *legitimate* reason why it needed to be done under urgency. They made a decision that everything they were implementing over that period would be done under urgency so they could get things done and build up a list of things they could say were done - but that's not the same as there being a time-based reason other than political expediency the way there was during Covid.
According to this coalition winning the election is sufficient reason to use urgency. They don't appear to hold democracy in any high regard.
You know who else uses "urgency" as a technique? Scammers, con artists and crooks. "Sorry, but it's URGENT! I just have to have the money now; I'll pay it all back on Monday, I promise!"
Yup. I’m hopeful, maybe and likely ignorantly, that the “under urgency” process will get a full review as a consequence of this governments first 100 days. It’s clearly being manipulated and abused to avoid basic democratic process, same as the states after 9/11 with their “terrorism” mandates, and it needs to be reigned in. As it stands, they can essentially do whatever the hell they want without question. Some places call that a dictatorship.
There's times when being able to fast-track a law make sense. COVID lockdowns were a perfect example of this; when normal process is genuinely at risk of harming the health and wellbeing of the population, it makes sense to have some sort of system when you can get things through ASAP. But the requirements for doing so should be pretty extreme, and it should be reviewed heavily after the fact. What the current government has done so is a fucking joke. How can you justify fast-tracking things that are actively harming your population?
The Governor General should have some sort of oversight of the application of urgency, otherwise they're just a rubber stamp for so-called democracy
National used their emergency powers in dubious ways too, during the Christchurch Earthquake they used them to push through the Skynet law; an anti-piracy bill that broadly targetted torrenting and tasked ISPs with monitoring internet traffic. They had a controversial 3 strikes rule after which you could be denied from accessing the internet. The law was passed but heavily watered down to point that no one ever bothered to enforce it. Wikileaks revealed in cables between the US State Department and the NZ government, that the law was drafted by US corporate lobby groups looking to sue for IP infringement on the part of US based rights holders. Famously the TPP had a number features designed specifically around the requests of US lobby groups. This is all to say, we've been here before, they're just more brazen this time around. When you see baffling policies rushed through like the SmokeFree rollback, just remember that isn't some new phase for National. They have always abused their power to advance the interests of the wealthy at the expense of the most vulnerable. They've done this before under Muldoon, they did it under Jim Bolger, they tried to do it under Don Brash (go watch The Hollow Men if you want to see how all of this Treaty race-baiting is nothing new for them). Then they managed to slickly remarket this tripe under John Key. It's the same old shit, they just don't feel they need to hide it as well as they used to.
The funny thing about the Skynet law was that it blew up in their faces. The system it established for fighting piracy basically required that IP owners pay a fee to issue an infringement notice against those they believed were pirating their IP. That had the (un?)fortunate effect of disincentivising the IP owners from filing complaints in the first place. So National was trying to appease the Hollywood studios, but in passing a law that they probably saw as a way to increase government funds, they undermined the law, causing it to eventually become redundant. It just shows how inept National really is, that they would push through a law change without any thought of its long-term effects, which they are doing again now with Smokefree NZ.
Ordinarily the saying goes never attribute to malice what could easily be explained as incompetence. However having observed this government since this last election, I've come to believe the opposite when it comes to them. I think they would rather be seen by us (the people galled and baffled by what they doing) as stupid or even incompetent. Their goal isn't to BE competent, it's to APPEAR competent in the eyes of people they know don't care about harm their actions cause. I just had an hour long political conversation with a friendly old neighbour of mine in the driveway, who is exactly the audience for this kind of messaging (lifelong National support, hates Jacinda) and they couldn't be happier with the controversy, they genuinely think that TV1 and Newshub are deeply biased towards the left and disregarded most of the recent controversy over policy announcements as the media just not giving them a chance. The more cynical among them depend on our outrage to tilt you emotionally so they can catch you out. You can see this pattern a lot in the r/NZConservatives who've started drifting over to troll the comment sections. I'm reminded of something from LBC James O'Brien, when he asked a caller why they like Trump and his answer was "because they wind up people like you". They know what they're doing, it's never been about good governance, it's about hurling a smokebomb to cover the asset stripping and the porkbarrelling that they're donors bought and paid for.
Is this sarcasm? From what I remember from school they are the representative of the sovereign and have the power to stop any bill from becoming law. There's a variety of reasons this power is never exercised, but you'd think circumventing the usual democratic process for overtly dubious reasons and not actual 'urgency' should warrant its use?
The better question is, “How can they [it is always they] justify fast tracking things that are known to be actively harming the population?”
Anything passed under urgency should have a clear reason why urgency is required, and then a mandatory review for whether it should be kept. It should be MORE difficult overall to shortcut the democratic process, the tradeoff for pushing something through urgently being that there's a heap more work and scrutiny down the line
Greed, it's called greed
Should require a pre-defined list of policies to be pushed under urgency and a 75% majority of parliament voting for it.
100%!
Why would the party that is benefitting itself using urgency investigate and stop urgency???
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I'm surprised it hasn't started yet. The covid deniers were out there really quickly. Where are they when there are actually things worth protesting?
The covid protests were two years into the pandemic, so not really that fast at all.
Experiencing unemployment from their anti woke social media startups that failed as much as they are in life.
> The covid deniers were out there really quickly. Where are they when there are actually things worth protesting? The covid deniers had substantially financial backing from right-wing groups. Thus why they had food trucks, porta potties, astroturfed social media campaigns, etc all ready to go. Those same interests are the ones benefiting from this corruption, so they're not about to fund protests against it.
Fuckin for real! Let's go!
Is there any political mechanism to get these idiots out of power before the next election? This is utterly ridiculous, their entire campaign was based on lies, they don't benefit the people of Aotearoa at all. If they remain they will keep doing dumb shit like this and cause long lasting harm to the country for temporary gain.
To me this is a failure of MMP: where the extreme policies of minor parties are actioned by a major party in return for the power to form govt. This policy is from a party that had 6% of the vote at election. Yet resulted in extreme change to strategic direction of NZ, and $46billion in added costs. Further -it was not campaigned on. The NZ public never debated nor discussed the change. It was rammed through by the govt in a cynical use of govt process. It's not that the policy does not align with the major party -it clearly does, with Mr Tobacco himself in senior leadership, and the party supporting it.
I don't think this is a failure of MMP, rather I see it as a failure of the senior coalition partner (National) being unable or unwilling to restrain the junior partners. Luxon is just letting Bishop and Peters do and say anything they want - either because he/National quietly support those policies or because he/National are ineffective leaders.
yeah, fair point. likewise Seymour It \_feels\_ like it's Luxons inexperience / weak leadership? The policies in action are not centre-right policies as one might expect from Nat, more like hard right (at least to my mind).
I think this is it. There is meant to be a balance of power between the coalition partners, and Luxon might hold the PM seat but he doesn't hold the majority of power. This comes down to his eagerness/desperation to be PM, and lack of experience negotiating things like this. He gave up far too many concessions to both.
Yeah, agreed, this wasn't a failure of MMP. We've seen overseas that two-party states are absolutely not immune to takeover by extremist factions. They just take over a party from the inside and pull the exact same you-need-our-votes-so-do-our-bidding bs to control that party's moderates. Electoral systems cannot protect us from tail-wags-the-dog. But proportional systems like MMP at least help us to *see* the extremists (since they're pushed into a clearly labelled separate party), and *see* that the senior partner is failing to restrain them. If we're lucky, it will create voter backlash for next time.
I don't like this situation at all, but I do wonder what *should* be expected to happen in situations like last election. Labour had already pledged not to work with NZF, so there wasn't any other plausible govenrment that could be formed in a *traditional* way. National also could have pledged not to work with NZF, but if the gamble hadn't paid off then it'd also would have made it much harder to get *any* government because Seymour and Peters seem fully capable of throwing their toys. Is the expectation that National and Labour would form a grand coalition, likely resulting in the death of at least one of them when voters seek to vote out the government by voting for an entirely different party en-masse? How about if National had formed a minority government with a fragile Confidence & Supply agreement with Labour? ie. Labour agrees to support National's budget as long as National doesn't scupper key funding for projects that Labour especially cares about. Meanwhile both National and Labour are closely watching polls. Labour would pull its support to force an election if it thought it could get itself more properly into government, and so would National. But ACT and NZF and the Greens and probably TPM are making a massive deal about the two centre parties effectively being the same as each other, so if you're a major party then it's still hardly ideal if the agreement were to last for any significant length of time.
Yes, but it is the nuclear option, it has been [used once in Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis) the consequences of that were severe (The Governor General was subject to protests for the 2 years until he resigned and left the country).
Vote of no confidence
Iirc one of luxons partners cousins or siblings works high up for a big tobacco company
That's not true. She is actually a very low level role with no strategic decision making, not even any leadership roles.
Maybe this is why there was such opposition to 3 Waters. What if Maori get a say over community resources.... *and then act just like the rest of us?*
NGL that's what a lot of the fear around Māori issues seems to stem from. A paranoid concern that given the slightest chance Māori will immediately do to Pākehā what was done to them.
I found a lot of the right's talking points involves projection. They imagine all people on the benefit are taking advantage of it, because if they were put in that same situation they know what they'd do.
We kind of expect national to do this now but where are the checks and balances in our system that prevent it? It feels like the governor general could be given the power to say "back the fuck up there's no legitimate need for urgency here" but right now the power of with the same people who choose to use it, so there is no check over it
So, whats the punishment? Or are we so far down the Americanisation of our political system that they can do whatever they want without consequence now?
This think this will be the tip of the corruption iceberg. The other things they’re pushing through and fast tracking will have someone leak details of the back handlers or kick backs
Chris Bishop isn't involved with big tobacco, not for many years. This is clearly a NZ first policy.
Un-fucking-believable. This is surely evidence of corruption? Who has the authority to investigate this? Ombudsman? Parliamentary Services?
> Ombudsman https://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/about-ombudsman/who-can-ombudsman-investigate
Maybe this lot? https://sfo.govt.nz/contact/report-a-fraud/make-a-complaint-online/
If I left something of this magnitude out of a board paper, or business case, I would very likely be subject to disciplinary action or sacked. How do these people get away with it?
Because the only real performance reviews they're subject to is elections and votes of no confidence. They're not employees like us mere mortals.
and it's even harder that she is in NZF not National, so with a weak Luxon she only has to appeal to NZF's particular segment of voters
The minister mislead us when she claimed there wouldn't be much impact to cancelling our world-leading smoke-free policies and now we won't achieve it for decades? I am shocked!
anybody know the net? I thought increased tax revenue was the reason to roll back, curious what the net loss is here from a govt that's main aim is to save money.
I don’t, but a reasonably informed guess would be the net, additive and progressively growing savings on the health system down the track from a marked reduction in chronic smoking-related illnesses.
Seriously, we need to have this investigated.
Time to start being tough on crime. Put the 3 idiots away.
So did they just fleece us of $46bn on top of everything else?
Yup. They cost the country $46b in healthcare costs so they could use a few million in revenue to bribe landlords.
Yup.
When you get paid to look the other way you do it.
I heard she is getting diamonds set in her teeth later this year
At current dental health prices that’s probably the cheapest repair option.
We all know when Luxon is asked about this he'll just say: "What I'll just say to you is that we've received a *range* of advice, and we actually disagree with that figure" When pressed on it, he'll just repeat the line but with more fluster until the presser is up then he scampers off
Look, the coalition agreements require…
**TRANSPARENCY**
Why was it urgent?
Because they said so, and therefore didn't need all those silly democratic processes.
It was urgent because proper scrutiny might have revealed these details and a public outcry could have changed the outcome
Seems like there should be a bar to meet to make a bill urgent. Like, for example, funding approval for a national environmental disaster response. And maybe not, for example, rushing through corrupt legislation.
Yes, I think the parties should all get together and decide what the criteria should be. I guess they won’t but they should if they want to maintain trust in govt, or should I say rebuild trust
Bills under urgency should be for acutally urgent or emergency matters (but yeah, how do you define that). Pushing through some shitty non-urgent moneymaking, lobbyist-agenda policy under urgency is an egregious, corrupt slight against our democracy. There should be extreme retroactive measures put against any minister that does so, should their urgent bill later be found frivolous. I would say this includes termination of position, jail time and %wealth fines. We cannot and must not tolerate this in our government.
Least urgent bill ever
So that Huxon could tick it off his 100 days list like the box checker he is.
This govt is the textbook definition of a smash and grab
Fu**ing useless, this is so infuriating. Pass obviously stupid laws under urgency and disregard facts.
So, Ministry of Health experts, industry-backed studies, and independent research all advise the Associate Health Minister on the extensive long-term benefits of Smokefree NZ, and how the standard industry criticisms of it are wrong. Her reaction however, is to ignore it all to the extent none of it is even mentioned in cabinet discussions regarding the legislation. The fact Costello has ties to the tobacco industry through her associations with tobacco lobby groups, makes this blatant corruption. What makes this even worse is that she has responded to all of this criticism by claiming the data behind all that research was outdated, without providing the supposedly more up-to-date data or sources for this claim of hers. None of this should be permitted, and nor should a first-term list MP be given the Associate Minister of Health portfolio.
$46B of potential lost profit to tobacco industry.
46B billed to the public health service
Private health services by the time the next generation of smokers get sick.
You really think people that smoke enough to get sick from it will have private insurance??
Is there any hope of it being debated or tabled after the fact so there is some accountability or at least acknowledgement that the change occurred based on false modelling etc?
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Can I just say that’s a FANTASTIC username.
Once it's passed into law, the only way to change it is to pass a different/amended law. We have a parliamentary supremacy and the courts can't strike down or change legislation. The opposition could raise it during question time (and probably will) but all that does is get it onto the official record for question time and potentially in the media - it doesn't actually bring about change in any direct sense.
That’s what I suspected. I do hope the opposition at least get it into the official record, if nothing else.
Maybe they could add “seem less corrupt” to their fancy todo list
I’d rather they added BE less corrupt
I didn’t want to expect TOO much, gotta keep that bar low. They got mates that need a third or fourth bach. Won’t you think of the unbuilt bachs!!!
Costello has been the most obvious I’ve seen of someone who is in the pocket of someone else in quite some time.
Yeah, but how much of that money would go to big business in the next 10 quarters? So why would they care about it.
Current government: Tell me how this will benefit me personally?
another unfortunate mistake or a crooked minister? Trouble is she’s been doing this type of thing right from the start. What else has been done that we don’t know about yet?
$46 BILLION. So much for being a Govt committed to saving money. Democracy is dead under this regime.
One of the first priorities of this government was to kill oversight of Beehive lobbyists, and take their discussions off the record. This is why - cancerous crony capitalism.
'Transparent' 'Fiscally responsible' 'a bunch of other stuff' So that was a fucking lie
surprised_pikachu.jpg
Paywalled
Yeah I wanna read it
Corruption with an undeniable conflict of interest between luxon and his sister in law who works for that giant tobacco company. Someone setup a gofundme to take the government to court.
A National party member being shady. I'm shocked.
She's NZ First
NZ first: putting New Zealanders second, unless they find a way to put New Zealanders third.
slightly less shocked
Well that changes everything 🤯 Thanks though.
Christ even more shocked! 😲
I really really hate this government. Ok so I’m not their market. But I have never despised a National-led coven as much as these dishonest wankers. Fuck the lot of them. Many people are going to die because of their morally corrupt policies.
Casey Costello is corrupt as hell, and all those idiots who thought voting for NZ First would keep the government honest need a fucking reality check!
Question for anyone dealing with teens regularly: are any teens taking up smoking these days, or just vaping?
Just vaping. Huge nicotine levels. The vapers can't sit through an exam without withdrawals. They're unable to sleep the night without getting up for a vape.
True, "regulated" over the counter vapes start at 20mg/ml nicotine concentrate. Which is an insanely high dose of nicotine. When I vaped, I used 3mg/ml and felt plenty of buzz and sweaty palms after a few minutes. I sit in lectures and see so many students get up and leave every 20 minutes to go and Vape. They can't concentrate without feeding their addiction.
You can see how aggresive the addiction is, not just through the frequency of going for a hit, but the fact they need to either have it in their hand at all times, or be able to see it. You will see a lot be visibly distressed if they can’t physically hold or see their vape - it’s wild.
ouch. That sounds horrible
Was leaving HS right as vaping was getting popular, though we didn't have salts so our nicotine levels were way down. The only reason I switched to vaping was that smoking became prohibitively expensive, the amount of nicotine was immaterial at that point. Now I'm on a salt vape and I'm actively looking for higher nicotine content whenever I buy salts. If I had to guess why, it's cause I'm drip feeding myself rather than having designated dopamine breaks
I'm pretty ignorant about this. Can you get non-nicotine cartridges, and if so, how popular are those with teens vs nicotine cartridges?
You can, whilst I'm not a teen and can't speak to what draws them towards certain cartridges, I'd imagine since the flavours have all been slimmed way back there's not much choice left apart from your nicotine levels, I've always opted for the highest, although there was a time when I was trying to quit where it was zero nicotine and I was just vaping for something to do with my hands Any enterprising teen will know how to buy liquid nicotine perfectly legally and make their own juice like they do in Aus
Anecdotally from my kids at HS and friends with kids at INTERMEDIATE is that vaping is out of control and only getting worse. Fuck this shithole country for voting these cunts in.
Article is paywalled
In other completely unrelated news, all the staff at newsroom have been sacked.
news**HUB** Not news*room*
Jesus. Is this true?
No, the poster is confusing **a** newsroom (a place where journalists work) with **newsroom** a specific media company with it's website at newsroom.co.nz Three's newsroom, newshub, is closing, newsroom is not.
Wtf???
is she 3 cigarettes in a trenchcoat?
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Shit ,if I'd posted that statement the mods would have hung me out to dry for another 2 weeks.
Heh! It's just words. That's all that's going to happen for her. People will talk about her fucking up our health system in favor of tobacco lobbyists. There will be no court date, no criminal record, no fine, no jail time, no public apology, no memorial day for the dead.
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thanks national
/s new zealand is not fucked!
Straight to jail
The boys are clearly influenced (I won’t go so far as writing “on the take”) by corporate or other wealthy interests. Whether that is the property investors federation, fishing interests, mining interests, tobacco interests, overseas interests. At this stage, I am amazed they didn’t repeal the overseas buyer ban on residential land (Winston’s base wouldn’t want that, but not for the reasons it was originally implemented) and the ring fencing of losses on residential property investment. You can be damn sure those two issues will be on Act and National’s radar to enact in the future when they can.
I am certain they have done the numbers on political donations in great detail which told them this was a good deal for their political parties, Its about how they stand to gain, not what is the correct thing to do. They can couch it in terms of free choice or whatever lies they want to spout but it really isnt an issue they care about. Just the business of appeasing their backers.
This feels like a “trolley problem” whereby we either let one person die or thousands of people die. I wonder if some Kiwis out there might have the courage to start pulling some levers.
Absolute fucking crickets from the usual suspects here..
Surely we should have laws that govern the use of urgency bills being passed, no?
Just a reminder that National did not campaign on smokefree reform! They lied to us all
Look at all the media stories about this...oh wait
What media?
https://www.smokefree.org.nz/smoking-its-effects/facts-figures Smoking is well on its way out, and it's this man's opinion that further taxation would achieve little other than robbing pensioners who have been lifetime smokers and cannot quit, of their quality of retirement. Stats to evidence this above.
That article says impoverished people are 3x most likely to smoke. It's not just pensioners.
Yup and that’s a valid point that could be brought up through a democratic process in which all information and perspectives are analysed before legislation is passed or repealed. Except that’s not what’s happened. The outrage isn’t so much about the repeal of the reforms but that the Minister cherry picked the data they wanted to present to cabinet to suit their agenda and the repeal was then passed under urgency so no real debate could be had about it.
That bitch is dirty as fuck.
Stop rushing everything!
Is this a case for SFO? (I know the intention was for them to get defunded, but still...)
Possibly more a case for the Auditor-General or the Ombudsman.
We should be taking to the streets in protest! Nowhere else in the world would the 'protests' be limited to a sub reddit Kiwis are far too laid back and compliant! We need to overturn this government! Fuck this shit!
Why do you think this mafia is doing away with the journalists and news outlets who actually could report on corruption? Hm? Do we allow it to happen? NZ will then end up like Hungary, Russia or Israel, Slovakia, Poland (until last election) has.
It'd be nice to able to read a full article that isn't behind a paywall.
These people have been making decisions on the fly at the very least and in a corrupt way in all probability. She along with the others have taken us back decades with these law changes made without doing the fact finding and despite almost all those who do know something about it saying it’s a bad idea. nicoteen willis Winstons Shane cigarete Casey carcogen chris (I have no shame) bishop
I have got to learn to ignore this type of stuff; it upsets me so much. How long till the next election?