Posts by Hilary Stace
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Just went to a packed public meeting in Wellington to hear Nicky Hager.
He spoke and answered questions for one and a half hours. At the end he got a standing ovation. He says he is not surprised that the revelations in the book have not changed public opinion or tarnished John Key yet. John Key's denials will convince his loyalists and the public for a while. But as the man at the head of the party and the head of the government he is accountable for the attack politics coordinated from his office, including the manipulation of National Party selections. The implication is that history will not treat him kindly.
He says we have many good journalists. Just need to invest in the public good media, and also help make it safe for public servants and academics to speak up as there is a bit of a culture of fear at the moment. It's about ethics and democracy and we can reclaim it back.
A woman in the audience is doing just that with a rally for Clean Politics at parliament at midday tomorrow.
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Speaker: Vote for Water, in reply to izogi,
He's also been called 'the academic Green Taliban' by an unpleasant oily thing in the news recently.
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Rivers clean themselves if they are allowed to flow free and the pollution sources are stopped. Stopping pollution and who pays to do that are political decisions. But can be done. I fear that fencing and planting of waterways is only a small part the solution when soils are overloaded and fragile, large quantities of water are diverted for irrigation, and businesses are allowed to use waterways as drains.
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And this from Bernard Hickey on the environment/economy thing.
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Dame Anne Salmond says it so much better than I could in the Herald today.
Also I see Internet Mana have a good clean water policy now too.
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to Kumara Republic,
There were enough finance company collapses and people lost a lot of money that way. Large numbers of mortgagee sales from about 2008-11 too.
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Every so often there is a an event which moves our understanding of ethics on in a major way. The process takes a long time and is painful. There is a lot of fightback against the messenger and the evidence from a minority of the population. The last one in NZ was probably the Cartwright Inquiry of 1988 which was a result of several years of investigation into unethical behaviour. It led to significant changes for patient rights, informed consent, and privacy etc over the next two decades, although is still subject to revisionism from time to time. I think we are dealing with something similar with Dirty Politics. I think its effects will be long lived and profound, and it has only just started, although many will remain in the denial stage, possibly for a long time.
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I wish the rest of NZ would get angry about the removal of local democracy in Canterbury. We have little enough democracy in NZ as it is, but for the Government to just remove an elected body - Environment Canterbury - and show no signs of giving control back to the people, is shocking. Regional Councils have a lot of power to make decisions about what happens in their regions yet the Government only allows its appointees make those decisions for Canterbury. Unjust.
By the way, we felt those main earthquakes quite strongly in Wellington. That first one was strong enough to wake people up but finding out that it was centred on Christchurch was unexpected. I remember that Kim Hill was soon on duty providing excellent information over our public radio. And then there was David Hayward.
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Hard News: Show some decency, in reply to Russell Brown,
Katherine Rich was on Nigel Latta's investigation into sugar on TV1 last night. Familiar lines now - attack the international academic expert, and then put it all down to individual responsibility and choice.
(It was the first of the Latta series I have seen and I was quite impressed although perhaps too many rotten teeth extractions from 2 year olds and amputated limbs in the dialysis unit. )
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Hard News: Why we thought what we thought, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
This may have all been speculation – there was no verification any of it. The police did an investigation but no charges resulted. There was reference to an anonymous letter that had been sent to many media outlets. One of the W/O journalist associates led the story. Darren stood down because of the media interest and later resigned – it also damaged Goff who had apparently also doubted the story so hadn’t acted immediately. He protested his innocence the whole time. Anonymous letters and a fabricated media storm. It all sounds very suspicious. NZ’s loss but the UK’s gain.