Category: imported_weekly
If there’s one thing that unites New Zealanders it is a love of nature and our natural environment. It explains why hundreds of thousands of Kiwis spend so much time and money planting trees, flowers and shrubs to create habitats for native birds.
Last week a fifteen year old schoolgirl created an uproar in the education sector when she dared to publicly criticise the teaching profession. Asked to “write a persuasive speech” about something year 10 students had strong opinions on, Anela Pritchard of Napier Girls’ High School wrote about the school system and teachers.
There is no doubt at all that international free trade creates global wealth and raises living standards for all countries involved. It allows nations to benefit from the natural advantages and skills of others, and it allows consumers to enjoy a greater choice of goods and services at lower prices.
At a time when leaders around the world are increasingly concerned about the dangers of social division caused by radical separatism and extremist ideologies, our governments have created and continue to support a privileged tribal elite. This elite lives like royalty on the proceeds of taxpayers’ funding, while disadvantaged members of their wider tribal groups struggle in the country’s worst social statistics.
Last Thursday, the Governor of the Reserve Bank Graeme Wheeler lowered the Official Cash Rate by 25 base points from 3.5 percent to 3.25 percent. With New Zealand’s inflation rate running close to zero, factors influencing his decision included a 55 percent decline in the oil price from June last year, and a 55 percent drop in dairy prices.
The Human Rights Commission has been a strong defender of the public’s right to the freedom of expression in New Zealand. It is therefore ironic that it has now created a permanent register which “names and shames” anyone who speaks out on the thorny issue of race relations, whose published opinions they deem to be negative.
New Zealand’s Director of the Security Intelligence Service, Rebecca Kitteridge, agrees that the use of social media by the Islamic State to reach out to disaffected people in the West, not just to travel to Syria and Iraq to fight, but also to carry out attacks in their own countries, is a major concern.
Islamic State and al Qa’ida have been competing violently on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria over the last couple of years. However a much more insidious aspect of their enmity involves the competing outreach programmes they have both carefully constructed.
Prime Minister John Key described his 2015 Budget as ‘compassionate conservatism’. Some have called it a legacy Budget. Certainly it delivered on his long standing commitment to protect the most vulnerable in society.
Twice a year the Reserve Bank publishes a Financial Stability Report to assess the soundness of New Zealand’s financial sector. A key concern in the Bank’s May report is the impact on the economy of falling dairy prices: “Approximately 25 percent of farmers are estimated to have negative cash flow".
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