Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.
Today’s content
Climate change
Stuff: Editorial – Declaration’s value will be measured by action
Bronwyn Hayward (Spinoff): NZ joins a groundswell in sounding the climate emergency alarm. Can it make any real difference?
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): What it will take for Govt to be carbon neutral by 2025?
Yvette McCullough (RNZ): Climate Change declaration: ‘It’s not just symbolic declaration’
Richard Harman: Climate Change Emergency; is it more than a PR stunt?
Melanie Carroll (Stuff): Aspirational goal but nothing concrete: Business reaction to climate emergency
Dan Satherley (Newshub): Labour’s climate emergency: Virtue signalling, or the start of real progress?
Phil Taylor (Guardian): New Zealand declares a climate change emergency
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Government declares climate emergency and looks to clean own house
Gavin Evans (Business Desk): Climate emergency: It didn’t have to be this way
Áine Kelly-Costello, Kaeden Watts & Adam Currie (Spinoff): Give power to Māori and marginalised communities and we’ll get through the climate emergency
Newstalk ZB: Climate change emergency: Minister admits not everything will be replaced by 2025
Anna Whyte (TVNZ): New Zealand climate emergency declared after Ardern tells House to ‘be on the right side of history’
Anna Bracewell-Worrall (Newshub): Jacinda Ardern declares climate emergency in New Zealand after decades of rising greenhouse gas emissions
Anna Whyte (TVNZ): Jacinda Ardern releases text of Government’s declaration of climate emergency
TVNZ: New Zealand climate emergency declared after Ardern tells House to ‘be on the right side of history’
Gavin Evans (Business Desk): Climate emergency sets emission targets for public sector
RNZ: Climate emergency declaration by New Zealand government includes commitment to 2025 targets
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Climate change is not the biggest emergency NZ is facing
Newstalk ZB: Judith Collins: Government’s climate emergency vote another ‘virtue signal’
RNZ: National Party opposes climate emergency declaration and festival drug check law
Audrey Young (Herald): National response to climate emergency rings hollow (paywalled)
David Farrar: LOL
David Farrar: If Labour says climate change is an emergency, how do they explain this?
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): If this meaningless climate emergency is our ‘nuclear moment’, then Lange has swallowed the Uranium on his breath
Jason Walls (Herald): All Govt departments now required to buy electric vehicles – Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
Zane Small (Newshub): Climate change emergency: How the Government plans to make public sector carbon neutral by 2025
Olivia Wannan (Stuff): Snugger Government buildings could move the whole office market
Damien O’Carroll (Stuff): Government commitment to EVs welcomed
NBR: Public sector to be carbon neutral by 2025
Yuki Fukuda Helen Hughes (Stuff): Transport and food two keys to reduce our carbon footprint
Olivia Wannan (Stuff): How staff learned to stop worrying and love the EV
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): Many of New Zealand’s coastal homes could have unaffordable insurance within 15 years – new report
Herald: Climate Crisis: Coastal Wellington homes could lose insurance as sea levels rise
No Right Turn: Climate Change: Hurry up and wait
No Right Turn: Climate Change: Wellington fails
China; International relations and trade
Thomas Manch and Luke Malpass (Stuff): Two MPs criticise China’s ‘coercive diplomacy’ amid widening Australia stoush
Jamie Ensor and Emma Cropper (Newshub): China ‘surprised’ New Zealand weighed into Australian soldier image debate
Alexander Gillespie (Stuff): NZ ideally placed to broker truce between China and the Five Eyes alliance
Derek Cheng (Herald): Jacinda Ardern says NZ not taking sides in China-Australia feud
RNZ: China ‘surprised’ NZ expressed concern over falsified photo of Australian soldier
RNZ: Ardern on raising concern with China: ‘It was a matter of principle’
Newstalk ZB: New Zealand warned to tread carefully in China-Australia spat
Ross Stitt (Newsroom): Beware the dragon: What the Australia-China trade war means for NZ
Rebecca Howard (BusinessDesk): China hits back at New Zealand (paywalled)
Matt Burrows (Newshub): Australia’s allies should follow NZ’s lead and speak up over China’s ‘bullying’ – Kiwi academic Anne Marie Brady
Point Of Order: Mahuta plugs the progress of Maori at powhiri for our big APEC year
David Zwartz (Stuff): NZ stance on Middle East should take account of changing realities
Poverty
Tumamao Harawira (Te Ao Māori News): We talk of a climate emergency but we have a child poverty emergency’
1News: ‘Deeply distressing’ – Child poverty emergency needs urgent action, Children’s Commissioner says
Dan Satherley (Newshub): Child poverty: How the latest statistics compare to last year’s report
Rosie Gordon (Newshub): The Porirua school where every student faces poverty
Andrew Becroft and Glenis Philip Barbara (Stuff): Children’s Commissioners: It’s not just about what the media reports, but what they choose to leave out
Joel Maxwell (Stuff): Cheeky question time for Jacinda Ardern after youth group member asks ‘is there a plan?’
John Anthony (Stuff): Extra $32 a week for 3600 low income families thanks to higher benefit
Sarah Robson (RNZ): Calls to budgeting helpline more than double and expected to rise
Housing
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): Evidence ‘inconclusive’ that lower interest rates are increasing inequality, says Adrian Orr
Stuff: With so many prospective tenants vying for so few properties, landlords hold the power
Dan Satherley (Newshub): ‘Every politician is scared’ of house prices falling – Don Brash
Thomas Coughlan (Stuff): Judith Collins open to taking GST off new builds to encourage building
Hayden Donnell (Spinoff): I finally solved the housing crisis. Ask me how
Anne Gibson (Herald): Appliance supply shortage hits house builders: ‘We have to wait months’ (paywalled)
Brent Edwards (NBR): Housing market has helped economy through Covid-19 downturn (paywalled)
Parliament, Government, and election
Chris Trotter (Daily Blog): The Last thing working-class New Zealanders need is “stability and certainty”
Alexander Campbell (The Big Q): What will campaign finance reform in New Zealand look like?
Claire Trevett (Herald): Sex, drugs and taxes as Labour ‘cracks on’ without NZ First (paywalled)
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): Phil Twyford takes leave from Parliament as wife diagnosed with cancer
Amelia Wade (Herald): ‘An ode to artists’: More Labour MPs give their maiden speeches
Derek Cheng (Herald): Jacinda Ardern receives Gleitsman International Activist Award, opens up about sexism, impostor syndrome
Martyn Bradbury (Waatea News): NZ – where we can talk about ties in Parliament but not have the Maori Party talk in Parliament?
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Ihumātao still haunting the government
Economy and work
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Film-maker James Cameron’s businesses takes $150,000 in wage subsidies
RNZ: Covid-19: Economic effects expected to endure in New Zealand
Herald: Editorial: Employers concerned over Government’s extension of sick leave
Melanie Carroll (Stuff): Covid-19 is putting the squeeze on Generation X’s retirement savings
John Gascoigne (Herald): Low wage economy stifles superannuation aspirations (paywalled)
Liam Dann (Herald): Market Watch: Vaccine news makes it harder to keep rates low (paywalled)
Jenée Tibshraeny (Interest): IRD wants trustee tax rate hiked to meet new top income tax rate
Priscilla Dickinson (Newshub): BNZ let off likely responsible lending breaches with warning
Mike Hosking (Herald): Our country needs to shake off its malaise
Geraden Cann (NBR): ACC levies likely to increase (paywalled)
RNZ: ACC records paper loss of $5.9 billion
Taxation
Thomas Coughlan (Stuff): Labour’s big new tax makes 0.2 percentage point dent in inequality
Pattrick Smellie (Business Desk): New top tax rate left open to avoidance, tax department warns (paywalled)
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Green Party won’t vote to support Government’s top tax rate change Bill
Jason Walls (Herald): The Green Party is refusing to support the Government’s new top tax rate legislation
Janaye Henry (Spinoff): One weird trick to make enormous profits without paying tax
Stuff’s apology to Māori
Leonie Hayden (Spinoff): Inside the Stuff apology to Māori
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Our Truth, Tā Mātou Pono: You can’t change the past but you can fix the future
Joel Maxwell (Stuff): Our Truth, Tā Mātou Pono: On being a Māori journalist in Stuff, you keep coming back to that moral choice
Anne Salmond (Newsroom): No downside in standing tall, together
Dita De Boni (NBR): Stuff apology a recognition of changing New Zealand (paywalled)
John Tamihere (Daily Blog): Stuff’s apology to Māori
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Stuff’s apology to Māori
Festival drug testing
Zane Small (Newshub): Chlöe Swarbrick accuses National of ‘high-horse moralising’ as Simon Bridges swipes at ‘woke anger’ in pill testing debate
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Pill testing legalised ahead of summer festival season after ‘woke anger’ debate between Simon Bridges and Chloe Swarbrick
Herald: Health Minister Andrew Little on drug testing at festivals
TVNZ: Judith Collins declines to reveal her own view on legal pill-testing, as National’s solidarity shows cracks
Amelia Wade (Herald): Pill-testing law passes in time for summer festivals with only the National Party opposed
Josephine Franks (Stuff): How new drug testing rules will change the summer for pill testers and festivals
Local government
Todd Niall (Stuff): Auckland Council’s climate change plans hit by Covid-19 cash shortfall
RNZ: Northland mayor says recent gun attacks legacy of neglect and deprivation
Joel Maxwell and Christina Persico (Stuff): ‘Fire is hitting the hāngī stones’ – petition ramps up pressure on Government to ease Māori wards
RNZ: Māori wards petition delivered to Parliament: ‘Not a case of if, but when’
Education
Laura Walters (Newsroom): Big private childcare company grows while teachers struggle
Ben Leahy (Herald): Education Minister Chris Hipkins takes aim at University of Auckland over $5m Parnell house
Troels Sommerville (Stuff): Auckland University broke own rules in purchase of $5m house for vice chancellor – Auditor General
Other
Gill Bonnett (RNZ): Managed isolation charges: Third of users not paid fee after three months
Jody O’Callaghan (Stuff): Cricketers ‘prioritised’ over reuniting international students with families
Anna Rawhiti-Connell (Newsroom): Our health system: a comedy of errors
Zane Small (Newshub): National MP Michael Woodhouse tells of ‘pain’ living with Crohn’s disease at tearful march to fund medication
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): Ministers at odds over need to further Whakaari / White Island investigation
Anuja Nadkarni and Debrin Foxcroft (Stuff): New lending rules to protect vulnerable borrowers from loan sharks
Damien Venuto (Herald): NZTA calls in second ad agency as it ramps up efforts to reduce road toll (paywalled)
Te Aorewa Rolleston (RNZ): Auckland park first to get bilingual signage in effort to celebrate te reo Māori
Ellen O’Dwyer (Stuff): Debate over Huntly’s name resurfaces through bilingual train platform sign
Samantha Motion (Herald): MPs Simon Bridges and Todd Muller slam construction delay on $933m Takitimu North Link (paywalled)
