Two panels of a strip cartoon by First Dog On The Moon

 

The Reserve Bank of Australia has made an ad, and its surprisingly honest and informative. #Budget2023 #auspol pic.twitter.com/Ar6FQIWLP2

theJuiceMedia (@thejuicemedia) May 6, 2023

 

Europe is joining a number of other regions on the planet in suffering a prolonged water crisis; and it is one that shows little sign of abating. To this can be added the near catastrophic conditions that exist in other parts of the globe, where ready and secure access to water supplies is more aspiration

The post Aqueous Matters: Europes Water Crisis appeared first on The AIM Network.

 

A TALE OF TWO MURDOCHS
 

The two Murdoch Lords 

Of near all they surveyed,

In the media landscape

Must now be afraid!

'cause their empire is crumbling 

The edges now frayed, 

As the strings of their puppets 

Around them cascade.

 

Many years, they've been busily 

Pulling the strings,

Of corrupt politicians 

They have paid well to sing.

In praise of old fossils,

Coal, oil and fracked gas,

Guaranteeing climatic destruction 

En masse!

 

But the winds are now changing 

For Murdoch and son,

Their political puppets

Unelected and done.

And the public's no longer 

Deceived by their lies, 

AKA propaganda,

Thinly veiled, bare disguised.

 

And to Rupert's surprise 

A mistake did arise 

From their bid to upend that Election.

'twas to blame the machines 

Of smart men with the means 

Of objecting to gross defamation!

 

Murdoch settled, of course,

'twas their only recourse,

But the truth had escaped 

By due process.

Now fresh lawsuits are raining,

With sharp lawyers now claiming

Many billions more dollars

In redress.

 

But the cult they created 

Refuse to be sated 

By the truth or bald facts,

Our time there is wasted.

Instead they insist 

In a Freudian twist,

That the Lord of All Lies 

Be forthwith reinstated! 

 

This was not in their plans 

When they aided Trump's scams, 

Murdoch's object was wealth uninhibited.

But enabling a tyrant's revenge

Will be dammed! 

And should end with indictments unlimited!

 

Ann Meharg loves the English language (which is just as well because she can speak no other), loves to make people laugh and loves writing verse when inspired.

The draft electoral boundaries for the next ACT Legislative Assembly election were released this morning. You can find the report here, and the map of the boundaries here.

Two of the five electorates were left untouched, while a population in the deficit in the southern seat of Brindabella caused a knock-on effect throughout three electorates.

The redistribution has strengthened the Liberal Party in Murrumbidgee but weakened their position in their weakest electorate of Kurrajong.

In this post I have included an interactive map comparing the two sets of boundaries, and Ive calculated estimates of the vote for the three main parties for the new boundaries.

This map shows the changes to the electoral boundaries: 2024 boundaries in blue and 2020 boundaries in red. You can download this map as a Google Earth map file from my maps page, along with every ACT electoral map since the first electorates in 1995.

The southern electorate of Brindabella was projected to fall 5.6% below the quota by October 2024. All electorates are required to fall within 5% of the quota. Thus Brindabella was required to bring in population from its only neighbour Murrumbidgee, which itself was slightly under quota. Thus it was necessary for Murrumbidgee to take in some of the inner city electorate of Kurrajong, which is projected to experience the most population growth between now and October 2024.

They have done this by moving the remainder of Kambah from Murrumbidgee to Brindabella, and moving the suburbs of Forrest and Red Hill immediately to the south of Capital Hill into Murrumbidgee.

This is the second redistribution in a row which has seen this trend of these three seats creeping closer to the city. The current 5-electorate structure was first adopted in 2016, but in the 2019 redistribution Murrumbidgee lost the other parts of Kambah to Brindabella and gained Yarralumla and Deakin from Kurrajong.

At the 2016 election, the entirety of South Canberra was contained in Kurrajong while northern Tuggeranong was split between Murrumbidgee and Brindabella. As of these boundaries, almost half of South Canberra is in Murrumbidgee, while Brindabella now takes in the entire Tuggeranong district.

Forrest and Red Hill...

The excessive wealth of the British royal family would be better spent to remedy poverty and homelessness than on archaic rituals, writes Dr William Briggs.

THE TIME-HONOURED right to protest in Britain has come to an abrupt end. The Home Office, on the eve of the coronation, announced that the new Public Order Act would give police the powers to prevent disruption at major sporting and cultural events taking place this summer in England and Wales. The coronation saw police arresting anti-royalist demonstrators. The ink was barely dry before the first arrests were made.

Graham Smith, the leader of the protests against the coronation declared that the police should hang their heads in shame and that they showed no judgment, no common sense and no basic decency.

He also made the point that:

King Charles has said nothing about these arrests. Rather than defend our liberty and values, he is content celebrating his anointment as monarch while citizens are locked up.

Why were they protesting? The obvious answer is that growing numbers of UK citizens are ready for a republic. The monarchy fuels the fire.

The coronation was seen by many as an unaffordable extravagance. It was unaffordable because the people had to foot the bill. In Australian dollar terms, this bill was $187 million (all future figures in Australian dollars). Currently, there are 14.4 million people living in poverty and 2...

 

There's a jingle in Mark David's pockets!

Sounds a lot like surplus. 

Mark David is IA's resident cartoonist. You can see more cartoons from Mark on his website Mark David Cartoons, or follow him on Twitter @mdavidcartoons.

As I started to put my mind to the upcoming Voice referendum, I realised there was a surprising absence of data on the results of previous referendums. A number of people were trying to track down electorate-level results for the 1967 referendum (although as the referendum with the highest Yes vote, its not the most interesting to analyse) and it just wasnt available on the internet.

Then I unearthed a CD-ROM published after the 1999 referendums which included electorate-level results for every constitutional referendum as well as the two conscription referendums. The CD also includes booth-level results for the 1999 referendums.

The CD data unfortunately wasnt in a particularly useful format. Each referendum was in a separate file, and the data generally isnt in a tidy format.

But after a bit of work, Ive now finished compiling all these datasets into tidy formats. Ive published results nationally, by state and by electorate. In the case of the 1999 referendums, it also includes results at the polling place level, and a list of addresses for the polling places. I havent added latitudes and longitudes but its all in the right format to add that at some point.

I had originally intended to just include the 44 constitutional referendums, but found that the AEC CD included the 1916 and 1917 conscription referendums. It doesnt include the National Song Poll held in 1977 alongside a number of referendums. I decided to also add in the electorate-level results from the 2017 marriage survey, so thats also included. So the dataset includes the results from the 47 different yes-no votes held at a federal level since 1901.

This dataset has been published as part of the free section of my data repository. The free repository includes the last election for each state and territory in Australia, along with some by-election results. If youd like to access earlier election results, they are available for those who...

By Alasdair Black   Peter Dutton is so full of it, saying oblivious to his shining hypocrisy that Labor created a hollowed-out poorer middle-class. Huh? The middle-class has been impoverished by the previous nine years of the hyper Libertarian Coalition Government, favouring wealthy elites, billionaires, corporate CEOs and multi-nationals, which has increased the gap

The post Peter Dutton: the epitome of entitlement appeared first on The AIM Network.

Former disgraced Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis has died along with him, the truth about top-tier officials and the high-stakes criminal regime they allegedly oversaw, writes Steve Bishop.

IT IS AN understatement to describe former Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis, who died recently aged 95, as merely corrupt. He was alleged to be a member of a board of directors with an interest in the drugs trade, which had compromised Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

And so, if this was true, who held the reins of power in Queensland between 1976  when Bjelke-Petersen promoted corrupt junior inspector Lewis to be assistant commissioner and then commissioner  and 1987, when Lewis was stood down as a result of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption?

This was one of many questions I put to Lewis in January 2017. He never responded. Now he has died, it is unlikely we will ever know.

Tapes alleging Lewis was part of a criminal organisation were played to Federal Minister Wal Fife in September 1979.

Federal Narcotics Bureau head Harvey Bates sent a secret minute to Fife about a confession by major heroin importer John Milligan in which he identified a group of senior police officers and an ex-police officer in Brisbane as being i...

 

The wag that offered an (urgent) injection of funds in the Crikey story (paywall) about an anti-vaxxer group going bankrupt stole the pond's heart.

Well there was no way that the pond was going to start off with the blithering idiocy of CNN. More than enough has already been said about it, and the pond noted that they tried to troll everybody on YouTube and that was with their own teams denouncing their own stupidity.

Wajahat Ali in the Daily Beast (paywall) discovered a new form of Catholicism and cilice wearing or perhaps it was just straight out BDSM ... without a safe word:

...According to NPR, CNNs current CEO Chris Licht told his staff they are re-establishing the channels original identity. After witnessing this embarrassing town hall, one could not be faulted for assuming Licht believes that identity is one of masochism and self-immolation. These are apparently the character traits that are needed to gain ratings, money, and access to GOP power. When CNN anchor and moderator Kaitlin Collins attempted to interject with actual facts, Trump simply doubled down on his bullshit and gave red meat in the form of rage, lies, and conspiracies, which the audience and his MAGA base heartily ate up. An hour into the circus, Trump called Collins a nasty personsimply because she stood her ground and asked follow-up questions.

The MAGA audience loved it.

So CNN wanted to become Faux Noise and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, but at least the pond could start with an immortal Rowe ...

CNN was more than ready to fondle ... and the pond could back that up with a winsome Wilcox ...

The Echo, 11 May 2023:

Development site at 60 Tringa Street, Tweed Heads, on Cobaki Creek.

Both the Tweed District Residents Association (TDRA) and Kingscliff Ratepayers and Progress Association (KRPA) have recently called for a moratorium on existing legacy or zombie development approvals (DAs) on floodplains. The state government continues to say that councils have the ability to deal with these problematic DAs, but the evidence seems to say otherwise.

The failure of current legislation to stop legacy DAs is of particular concern to the TDRA which has been seeking stop work orders on the recent activity by MAAS Group Holdings at Tweed on Cobaki Creek. MAAS bought the property, with a 27-year-old legacy development approval on it, last year for $20M+ and have started clearing the sensitive site. The Tweed Council have asked MAAS to cease work, but MAAS have declined leaving both Council and locals frustrated with their inability to stop the work an...

I am puzzled by an attitude I have encountered on the part of some in Ireland towards those of us who are Irish in Britain.

There are some who seem to see us as traitors, and I was reminded of this when I read comments on the Irish Independent Facebook page about the actress Jessie Buckley, a native of Killarney resident in Norfolk.

The young woman, who also works at times in the USA, expressed doubts whether she would ever return to Ireland, but that she would never lose her sense of Irishness.

A comment made, admittedly by one individual, that she had lost it already when you turned your back on it and left is not unique. Its not typical of Irish opinion but there is a certain element who think that way.

That antagonism doesnt seem to be as intense towards Irish in USA or Australia or other parts of the world, and I cant help thinking that it is because we live in the old enemy that we are seen as traitors.

It also manifests itself in those who object to RT or other Irish media outlets reporting on British news, but they never complain about news from, say, Australia.

It is ironic, given that during the Troubles the Irish in England were suspected by a minority of English people of being sympathetic to the IRA. While I was living in Ireland at the time, I have a vivid memory of visiting London in 1997 and seeing Irish get out of England graffiti at the underground station in Finchley, and of being asked on another occasion whether I was carrying a bomb.

Older people remember the days of the No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish signs, but nowadays the Irish here are seen as a very successful community, albeit the number of Irish-born has declined significantly with fewer coming and the inevitable passing of the older generation.

Nonetheless, I am constantly struck here by the number of British-born people who are keen to tell me of their Irish family ties.

Some in Ireland seem to forget that in days gone by, when Ireland was a poorer country, money sent back from England and Scotland played a vital role in many households. I am old enough to remember, as a schoolboy studying economics, being struck by the emigrants remittances reference in the national accounts.

Comments like the one quoted about Jessie Buckley show an ignorance of the fact that for people in careers like hers, London offers opportunities largely absent in Ireland or, indeed, in the English regions. The same can be said of some other careers, such as journalism.

There is also a failure to comprehend that for many who migrated down the years, economics was not the only reason to move. Britain afforded privacy and anonymity, the chance to...

From relieving the backlog of visa processing to maintaining integrity of the migration system, the 2023 Budget seeks to repair the mistakes of the Coalition. Dr Abul Rizvi reports.

THE BIG NEWS in the 2023 Budget is that for financial year 2022-23, the Government is suddenly forecasting a surplus after forecasting a massive deficit for the same financial year just in October 2022. The Coalition was forecasting an even bigger deficit in 2022-23 in March 2022.

While the Treasurer talks only about commodity prices and employment growth as the factors that brought about this change, the fact is the rapid employment growth could not have occurred without record net migration. But not since Bob Hawke have politicians been prepared to say this to the public. Howard/Costello were also reluctant to mention rapid growth in net migration being a key factor in the surpluses they delivered.

It is ironic the Coalitions Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor says the drovers dog could have delivered a surplus in 2022-23, but then the Coalition is also happy to decry the record net migration in 2022-23 that enabled the surplus. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton may well take the same line in his budget reply speech.

Whether record net migration in 2022-23 was good policy or not (and it would have occurred whoever was in power) is another matter. But it...

Refugee Action Coalition Media Release A 46-year-old Iranian refugee doused himself, and an office, in petrol yesterday morning (Wednesday 10 May) threatening to set himself alight. Abolfath Gheitasi, had gone to the offices of Chatswood at Waigani in Port Moresby, the supposed service provider for refugees in PNG company around 9.15am Wednesday morning, carrying petrol

The post Desperate PNG refugee attempts self-immolation after years of neglect appeared first on The AIM Network.

In November last year, sparked by Newsroom revealing systematic police racism in its taking of DNA samples, I asked the police for some basic information on their compliance with the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995. As usual, they ghosted me; then, after intervention from the Ombudsman, they finally responded saying that they didn't know. In other words, they had no procedure for removing profiles, and no statistics on whether they were complying with the Act or not.

Today, I'm glad to say that they lied. After further intervention by the Ombudsman (sparked by ESR saying that there were policies and procedures), the police have finally admitted that they do have procedures, and even specially-designed software (though it can't generate full compliance statistics). This is comforting to know - the police might be obeying the law after all - but at the same time, deeply discomforting. Because it means that their initial response to my request was incorrect. And when the person responsible for the request is the acting manager of national forensic services, who can be expected to be fully aware of the existence of those procedures and software, its difficult to view it as anything other than a deliberate, blatant lie.

This isn't the first time the police have done this. In June 2022 the Ombudsman caught them forging documents in an OIA response to hide numbers they didn't want released. There's also the case where they lied to the public about carbon-neutrality, then lied about needing "consultations" to extend an OIA timeline so they could create documents to hide that lie. And there will no doubt be other cases. The overall impression is of an organisation which is deeply hostile to transparency, believes that the public has no right to know, and will lie and commit fraud to cover up even the most trivial details. And that's a problem. Firstly, because the entire OIA regime is predicated on truth, and simply does not work if agencies lie. And secondly, because this is the police, an agency utterly dependent on public trust in order to function effectively. Every time they lie to us, that trust is broken.

We deserve better than this. We deserve a government, and a police force, we can trust. Sadly, we're not...

It looks like 2008 all over again. Economic and financial mismanagement feature in scorching, consuming brilliance. The culpable, bungling banksters, have returned with their customary, venal incompetence. In the customary script, they habitually seek the role of the public purse to socialise their losses. Along the way, they will avoid richly deserved prison sentences, lie

The post A Certain Form of Thieving: The US Banksters Strike Again appeared first on The AIM Network.

Renewable energy has entered a new phase of even faster growth thanks to its energy security benefits. Now is the time to leverage this momentum and turn it into a revolutionary moment, writes Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana.

THE LATEST synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes for grim reading: every fraction of a degree of warming comes with escalated threats, from deadly heatwaves to severe hurricanes and droughts, affecting all economies and communities.

It is a reality that the people of Asia and the Pacific know only too well. The 'worst April heatwave in Asian history' last month was just a taste of the worsening climate impacts we will continue to face in the years to come.

ESCAP's (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) latest report highlights that the sea level is creeping up in parts of the region at a slightly higher rate than the global mean, leaving low-lying atolls under existential threat.

Annual socioeconomic loss due to climate change is mounting and likely to double in the worst-case climate scenario. Inequity is yet another threat as climate change sweeps across the region. Asia and the Pacific already account for more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions  and the share is growing.

But there is another picture of hope in our region: 39 countries have committed to carbon neutrality and net zero between 2050 and 2060. The cost of renewable energy is falling almost everywhere, with installed capacity growing more than three-fold in the past decade. Electric vehicles are entering the market en masse as countries such...

A ballot for a single member's bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn:

• Family Proceedings (Dissolution for Family Violence) Amendment Bill (Angie Warren-Clark)

There were 68 bills in the ballot today.

 

Another day, another bombing of the gulag by Israel; another day, another bombing by Vlad the impaler in Ukraine; another day, and another dismal performance by the lizards of Oz, though to be fair, the lack of decent loonacy is possibly a relief up against the first two options ...

The immoral Rowe has been on a roll of late and said all that needs to be said about the likes of Vlad ...

That lead-in is all by way of explaining a difficult, unjustifiable and completely indefensible decision by the pond ...

Confronted by this Sophie's choice ...

... what to do, what to do?

The pond had already decided it had no interest in the latest attempt by the rep...

The 2023 Budget offers cost-of-living relief and goes some way towards tackling entrenched poverty but is it enough? Michelle Pini and Dave Donovan report.

THERE IS NO DOUBT that we expect more from Labor governments. This, of course, means that since the bar is set higher, the propensity for failure is greater.

It took almost ten long years of gross mismanagement, including many broken promises of budget surpluses, unprecedented erosion of public trust, callous disregard for the suffering of vulnerable Australians and internal party unrest leading to three changes of leader before Australia finally voted out the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison (ATM) Coalition Government. 

When contrasted with the previous Labor Administration, when the economy was well managed (as international accolades attest) and many progressive steps taken (albeit tentatively) to tackle entrenched inequality and climate change, for example, it becomes clear that it only took the three changes of leader part for the last ALP Government to be thrown out of office for a decade.

So, it comes as no surprise that the Albanese Government, reliant as it is on that elusive electoral centre, must maintain a balance between its traditional values of social equity and the hard realities of fiscal management, particularly during a period of economic unease. 

Given that the Coalition was unable to provide one, Chalmers projected small budget surplus may, as Laura Tingle suggested, finally put an end to the Labor-are-bad-economic-managers trope, which IA has been debunking over many years.

And, if the AFRs report on Budget winners and losers is any indication, it would appear that a large portion of that middle-class cent...

<p> </p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span><span face= "Arial, sans-serif"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Only eight of the following nine opinions might be said to have been offered in good faith. I leave it to the reader to decide which one is lacking that element ......</span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style= "color: navy;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><u><br></u></b></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style= "color: navy;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><u>FIRST</u> </b>- <b>Leader of the Opposition & Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton, interview transcript excerpt & <i>Twitter</i> post, 10 May 2023:</span></span></span></p> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br></span> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i><b>Well, Tom, I think youre better off to look to the independent commentary thats taken place. Chris Richardson, for arguments sake, a highly respected economist, he said that he thought the Reserve Bank Governor was done with the baseball bat, and he thinks that this budget will incline the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates again.</b></i></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i><b>So, under this budget, at the very least, we know that interest rates will be higher and for longer, which is going to be a double whammy for Australian families. Theyre already $25,000 worse off under this government. There was nothing for them in the budget last night.</b></i></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p> <p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style= "font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i><b>This energy crisis, and this cost of living crisis, thats been created by Mr Albanese and the Labor Party they, you know, its ok for the Prime Minister he doesnt feel the impact of this but for families, they are struggling at the moment big time and theres nothing at all for them in this budget.</b></i>&lt...

The recently announced May Budget for 2023 in Australia has made various commitments to support the growth of critical technologies and industries.

The Government has allocated $101 million towards supporting critical technologies, including quantum and artificial intelligence. While this amount has been criticised by the tech community as being insufficient to encourage meaningful development, the budget also includes $392.4 million for the Industry Growth Program to support small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups to commercialise their ideas and grow their operations.

The program will provide advice and matched grant funding to startups and SMEs from $50,000 to $5 million with the aim of creating a pipeline of quality, investment-ready projects for the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund to consider.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers second budget also includes a small business cyber security program with $23.4 million in funding. The program will support small businesses to build resilience to cyber threats, which is important as small and medium-sized businesses are the target of 60 per cent of cybercrime in Australia, which is now costing more than $33.0 billion in reported losses annually.

In addition, it includes commitments to lock Australia into strategic supply chains, including critical minerals that will underpin future growth industries. This includes batteries that will drive the global energy transition and their innumerable uses in electronics.

The Government has also committed to the design and construction of a new...

By Denis Bright   Supportive coverage by the Illawarra Mercury (1 May 2023) of the Federal Treasurers forthcoming budget preparations were already part of a groundswell of new support for the Albanese Government during the pre-budget period. There is a strong consensus from commentators that Australia cannot afford another round of neoliberal policies. In difficult times,

The post Budget 2023: Let the Responsible Economic and Strategic Mentoring Continue appeared first on The AIM Network.

Despite a promise not to close regional branches, the Commonwealth Bank is bending the rules on the definition of 'regional' and closing yet another branch. Dale Webster reports.

THE COMMONWEALTH BANK (CBA) is closing a branch in an area it has itself labelled one of Australias most popular destinations for regional migration, breaking its pledge not to shut any regional branches while a senate inquiry into the impact of bank closures is in progress.

CBA will close its Nerang branch on the Gold Coast on 26 May after receiving positive publicity in February for being the only major bank to agree in full to the Senate Committees request for a moratorium on regional closures until it reports in December.

CBA is claiming the branch is not regional despite declaring the Gold Coast a hotspot for people moving from metropolitan to regional areas in its latest Regional Movers Index report, which it publishes quarterly in partnership with the Regional Australia Institute.

The report states that Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) classifications are used to determine capital city and regional boundaries in the data, but the Commonwealth has chosen to use a different interpretation in its Nerang decision.

A spokeswoman said:

CBA has not broken its pledge to pause closures in regional Australia while the Senate Inquiry is underway.

 

Per the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia, which is the leading indicator of remoteness in Australia used by the ABS, Nerang, Queensland is classified as a major metropolitan location (speci...

Back in 2021, RNZ exposed the systematic police practice of coercing "voluntary" photographs from young Mori on the street, leading to a joint IPCA / Privacy Commission report exposing illegality, systematic racism, and widespread ignorance among police officers of the limits on their behaviour, and a formal compliance notice to force them to stop. But while they may have stopped photographing kids, they still claim to be able to photograph adults going about their lawful business on public streets, with no investigatory purpose, just because they might need it one day. The basis for this claim is what government agencies call the "third source" - basicly, that ordinary people are allowed to do it, and there's no law saying they can't. But in a ruling yesterday, the Court of Appeal demolished that.

The case Tamiefuna v R is an appeal against a burglary conviction which was ultimately based on just such evidence: a photograph at a roadside traffic stop, which was not taken for any investigative purpose, but for an "intelligence noting": that a cop thought it might be useful sometime. And the Court is crystal clear that this was a "search" in terms of the BORA, and that "there is a reasonable expectation that a persons photograph will not be deliberately taken and retained for identification purposes by police without a good law enforcement reason" (a "search" in Aotearoa now includes surveillance where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy). They were also clear that it was illegal:

The police did not act with legal authorisation when they took Mr Tamiefunas photograph. Their conduct did not accord with statutory provisions in the Policing Act 2008 and Search and Surveillance Act 2012 in which Parliament has conferred power on the police to take photographs. This specific conferral of powers to take and retain photographs is inconsistent with any suggestion that the police may photograph persons and retain their images without bringing any charge and without any obligation to destroy the images.

[...]

[T]he police could not rely on the third source doctrine in the circumstances: cases in which the third source doctrine had been relied on could be taken as examples of police activity that was lawful because the actions were incidental to ongoing and bona fide police investigations; there was no such investigation underway when Mr Tamiefunas photograph was taken. Further, the third source doctrine cannot be relied on and a specific power should be found when a public authority imposes a liability or detriment on a citizen or interferes with a citize...

All this year National Party leader Chrisopher Luxon has been teasing the prospect of running a Brash-style racist campaign against Mori this election. And today he finally came out and said it:

National leader Christopher Luxon has officially ruled out forming a coalition with the Mori Party.

He did so in a news conference and written statement issued Wednesday morning, where he hit out at Te Pti Mori for wanting New Zealand to ditch the monarchy. He also made unprompted comments about one standard citizenship, one person, one vote, and separatism.

Ruling out working with Te Pti Mori due to incompatible policy positions and values is one thing. But the "unprompted comments" here make it clear what is really going on. This isn't a dogwhistle so much as a dog-horn. "One standard of citizenship" is white for the elimination of Mori culture (indeed, all non-white culture) from public life. "One person, one vote" is weird, given that we all have two votes in MMP elections, but its clearly a claim that Mori have disproportionate electoral power, which is simply false. But these are white supremacist talking points, and that's who Luxon is trying to appeal to: he's going to fight ACT for the radical racist vote.

(Its also ironic for a man with seven houses, who therefore enjoys multiple votes in local body elections, to be talking about "one person, one vote". Yes, that would be nice to have, so lets get rid of the landlord vote and have some real democracy...)

If this sounds a lot like Don Brash's racist 2005 campaign, its because it is. National can't seem to help itself. But then, "making the rich richer" and "destroying the planet" aren't things that sell well. So they need racism to cover for it. And so they always go back to it.

The problem for National is twofold. In the short-term, all the polling is currently consistently showing Te Pti Mori holding the balance of power, so ruling them out and alienating them like this is a promise to be in opposition (and a promise to deny your front-bench cabinet salaries and perks). In the long-term, the trend is clearly for a greater acceptance of Mori culture and greater recognition of the Treaty relationship. National thus risks being left on the wrong side of history with a dying demographic of aging racists.

A reformed democratic system that favours fair representation in Parliament for all voters is gaining popularity in the UK, writes Dr Klaas Woldring.

ANYONE WHO HAS seen the many humorous videos of John Cleese on proportional representation (PR), can hardly believe that it has taken this long for PR to finally be rapidly gaining approval in the UK. But it has, without question. It is expected the that British Labour Party will soon adopt it. 

The 2016 Alliance Building Conference (ABC) in Westminster kickstarted a cross-party movement for real democracy. In October 2017 a second ABC was held, where activists and allies made plans in the wake of that years General Election. Fifty attendees gathered in the Jubilee room in Parliament including MPs, peers, local and national group leaders, and allied organisations.

The campaign adopted the name Make Votes Matter. MVM facilitators told the conference about the campaign's priorities for achieving PR in the House of Commons. They aim to bring together all the parties, organisations and public figures who want fair votes, to work together in the PR Alliance.

Thats what the ABC is all about and the decisions they make should inform and support the work of the movement for fair votes. The aim is for at least one of the major parties to fully commit to genuine electoral reform. The good news is there is widespread support for PR across Labour MPs.

In July 2019, the Alliance launched the Good Systems Agreement which is described as an unprecedented cross-party agreement about what goo...

Today is a Member's Day, and first up is the first reading of Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill. The bill would ban an enormously destructive form of mining before it gets started, which is consistent with the government's international position, but for some reason chickenshit Labour doesn't want to vote for it, so they've contrived their own, separate select committee inquiry to pretend they're doing something, while really doing nothing. The bill does have problems - it immediately guillotines all existing offshore oil and gas mining permits, and while those permits need to be cancelled quickly, I'm not sure that an overnight guillotine rather than a five-year sunset is the best way to do it. But that is the sort of thing which can be resolved by a select committee. Sadly, chickenshit Labour isn't going to give them the chance.

Once that's out of the way, there's the second reading of the New Plymouth District Council (Perpetual Investment Fund) Bill, and the first reading of the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill. They should go quickly, which means the House should get on to the third reading of Marja Lubeck's Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill, and probably Ian McKelvie's Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for Race Meetings) Amendment Bill. If it moves really fast, it might even make a start on the second reading of Camilla Belich's Companies (Directors Duties) Amendment Bill, but I don't think it will get any further. There will be a ballot for one bill tomorrow.

Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll, must pay her $5 million, jury says

NEW YORK, May 9 (Reuters) Donald Trump must pay $5 million in damages for sexually abusing magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defaming her by branding her a liar, a jury decided on Tuesday.

Today, the world finally knows the truth, Carroll said in a statement. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.

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A not so super budget

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NBN Co is once again facing an uphill battle as the ACCC has rejected its proposal for pricing over the coming decades, writes Paul Budde.

THE AUSTRALIAN Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been working with the Government, NBN Co and retail service providers (RSPs) to establish price and service standards that will govern the NBN's operation, known as Special Access Undertaking (SAU).

The current process has been ongoing since early 2021, with the latest draft decision set to reject NBN Co's proposed price and non-price terms for the NBN's operation. However, ever since the NBN has been in operation, there has never been a fully accepted SAU regime. Basically, the industry had muddled on with the regime, without even coming to a fully accepted regulatory regime.

In the meantime, NBN Co has indicated that it will try again in June with a new SAU proposal and also mentioned it keeps committed to key reforms.

The NBN has faced ongoing criticism for its pricing and service standards, with some customers reporting poor speeds and connectivity issues. As we have argued before, we need better prices and services for the NBN Co to stay competitive.

The SAU is the regulatory document that outlines the price and non-price terms that will govern the NBN's operation. The latest proposed SAU was lodged by NBN Co in November 2022 and has been under consideration by the ACCC since then.

The ACCC's draft decision to reject the latest SAU proposal won't come as a surprise to NBN Co, as it has been expecting this outcome since at least March...

 

Well that was an unfortunate headline and a most regrettable story ...

The pond can only explain this ratings aberration as a deep state conspiracy involving a massive amount of 'leets donning cardigans and dropping in for a squiz ...

Meanwhile, speaking of flogging a dead horse without sauce, indefatigable Sophie was at it again today, and was given a handsome splash for her pains ...

What valiant warrior she is,  and the pond can boast it helped the reptile cause by not watching the ABC ... but at the time, the pond didn't watch any of the FTAs, so what use is the pond?

Luckily, there's no need for the pond to go there or brood about Sophie's crusade, because reptile projection is so routine it's hardly worth mentioning ...

As for the rest, the pond almost felt like declaring an 'anything but the reptiles' reading day, or more particularly anything but the reptiles on the budget day ...

There was a Marina Hyde to read, pouring a healthy dose of excrement on the Met in Yes, the Met police threw royal protesters into cells for no good reason but at least they regret it.

And while the Tuckyo saga is rapidly fading from sight, the pond st...