Founded by Max Farndale 1947 - 2018
Today The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Boston released their latest Digital Evolution Index which, again, puts New Zealand as a standout nation. The report identifies New Zealand as among the digital elites characterised by high levels of digital development and a fast rate of digital evolution.
"I am delighted to see that New Zealand is, for the second time, at the top of the world when it comes to the outstanding progress we have achieved in providing government services to our citizens via digital platforms.
“The Digital Evolution Index reflects the hard work we’ve been doing over the past few years on government’s digital transformation, and in creating an enabling environment that fosters innovation and active collaboration between agencies and the private sector to provide better public and private services for New Zealanders.
“Our appetite for innovation has resulted in digital solutions that benefit people from all walks of life. It raises the bar for providing New Zealanders with services – both from government and the private sector – that are available digitally and on demand," says Minister for Internal Affairs Peter Dunne.
The report also reinforces New Zealand’s position as a digital leader. Along with other D5 nations the United Kingdom, Estonia and Israel, New Zealand has been named in the report’s “digital entrepôt” standout group.
This group is described as ‘among the best positioned to compete by establishing a self-reinforcing ecosystem, fostering smart societies of the future, attracting global investments and talent, creating a demonstration effect for the rest of the world as to what the future might look like, and exporting their digital innovations around the world’.
“It’s great to know that our efforts to deliver better public services through digital transformation are being acknowledged as among the best in the world by esteemed international bodies and researchers.
“We’ve made great progress in our digital journey by making it easier for New Zealanders to access services when and where they need it, but we must not rest on our laurels.
“We must continue to innovate and harness the power of digital solutions to build on our gains and deliver even better services to New Zealanders," Mr Dunne said.
The Fletcher School at Tufts University latest Digital Evolution Index report can be found here: https://sites.tufts.edu/digitalplanet/files/2017/05/Digital_Planet_2017_FINAL.pdf
Peter Dunne -Internal Affairs
| A Beehive release || July 13, 2017 |||
New changes to update kiwifruit regulations and help future-proof the industry will come into force on 1 August 2017, Minister for Primary Industries Nathan Guy has announced today.
“These changes were announced last year and will help ensure the industry is best structured for future growth,” says Mr Guy.
New amendments to the Kiwifruit Export Regulations will:
“These changes will give Zespri more options for promoting the ownership of its shares by active kiwifruit growers.
“They will give Zespri greater certainty for investing in activities such as research and development and in the marketing of New Zealand-grown kiwifruit, and ensuring that Kiwifruit New Zealand has the skill sets it needs to robustly consider collaborative marketing applications.
“These amendments won’t change the industry’s ‘single desk’ export framework, but will provide more certainty for Zespri’s shareholders and growers.
“These regulatory updates are the Government’s response to the industry’s self-review of its performance through the Kiwifruit Industry Strategy Project.”
Kiwifruit sales from New Zealand have reached record levels with 137.7 million trays sold in the year to March 2017, worth over $2 billion in export revenue. Global sales revenues are forecast to reach $4.5 billion by 2025.
| A Beehive release || July 11, 2017 |||
Microsoft Scam Artists Have Revealed the Cause of this inevitable bias
The accelerating reduction of the domestic land line in favour of the exclusive use of mobiles will tend to favour in polling for this year’s general election the political parties that traditionally appeal to the older generation, the demographic which literally holds onto its landlines.
This will favour the National Party and also Winston Peters’ New Zealand First Party.
It will work against the parties that rely on the younger protest or ideological following such as the Greens or the new Gareth Morgan-led Opportunities Party.
This whole phenomenon has only just been identified and it was discovered due to the plague of scam callers from around the world barraging New Zealand households to the effect that their Microsoft-driven computers are a liability and that only the caller, claiming to be an "accredited" Microsoft specialist ,could fix the “problem.”
Nobody could fathom out why these scam artists were and still are laying siege to an older demographic unlikely to be dependent on Microsoft?
It was now that the obvious explanation was realised and it was that the older generation tends to be the one that hangs onto its landlines
It is thus accessible to the international scamsters who rely on scrolling through the Spark (formerly Telecom) white pages.
The incredibly shrinking printed White Pages phone books are further proof of this phenomenon.
It is now a serious issue in polling that the political class, for once, is reticent to talk about.
No wonder. It means that a growing majority of households are excluded from polling.
It means that all flatters, the one group that the parties are determined to target this year, are eliminated from polls.
Since cell-only people tend to be mostly young people, the pollsters intentionally overweight the 18-30 year olds to compensate for this effect, but as more middle aged people also drop their landlines, it is becoming a serious issue.
A baffling element of the fake Microsoft scamsters plague is why the same households, the ones still with their landlines, were targeted time after time in the same confidence trick call, sometimes in the same evening.
The reason was and is that the fraudsters' automated phone diallers are programmed on a household probability to make a defined number of phone calls. Not finding the required pre-programmed quantity of landline numbers , the system then reverses on itself and goes back over its old numbers.
Occam’s Razor holds that in any mystery at all the revealing explanation will always be the obvious one.
The foreign phone scammers have demonstrated the nature of the flaw in the polling for the general election.
It’s an ill wind………
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Friday 7 July, 2017 |||
Health threat changes its form
The National Government sensibly is de-fanging the dog issue by having its Internal Affairs Department sponsor advertisements seeking to encourage owners of attack dogs, or as the advertisement describes them “menacing by breed,” dogs castrated.
Local government authorities meanwhile are being encouraged to advertise to “proud owners” of all animals their obligation to get their dogs registered.
Why the gentle persuasion, instead of tough pressure on the owners of the animals?
There is strong evidence to demonstrate that dog owners are single-issue voters on the lines of love me, love my dog.
The dog threat is a highly visible one.
The late local body politician Brett Ambler saw his region becoming overrun with threatening dogs and he noted publicly that their owners clearly delighted in the stand-over status that the animal bestowed on them.
The urban dog problem has accelerated with the success over many years of the anti-hydatids programme.
While hydatids remained a threat the parasite dissuaded urban dog ownership simply because the zoonotic parasite easily jumped from animals to humans, notably young children at the crawling stage.
Early steps to contain the dog problem centred on pavement fouling and local authorities enjoyed success in engendering a community-led scooping solution.
The arrival of the “menace by breed” animals then took the problem to another level.
All political parties are anxious to avoid what they regard as the no-win issue and hope that various kinds of dissuasion instead of legislation will staunch the developing public menace.
The New Zealand Veterinary Association points out that “dog aggression is responsible for a significant public health problem.”
There are five dog breeds which automatically receive menacing dog status: Brazilian Fila, Dogo Argentino, Japanese Tosa, Perro de Presa Canario and (pictured) American Pit Bull Terrier.
There is a ban on importing these dogs, but no ban on owning or breeding them.
In 2002 the Ministry of Health declared New Zealand “provisionally” free of hydatids.
| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk || Thursday 6 July 2017 |||
Foreign Minister Knew that It is the Putting Right That Counts
New Zealand’s foreign minister Gerry Brownlee’s deft handling of the small country’s Middle East posture was timed and executed to perfection.
The former school wood working instructor demonstrated in his new post the understated flair in this realpolitik that has been a characteristic of his long Parliamentary career.
From the outset he understood that in a favoured New Zealand mercantile jingle that it is the “putting right that counts.”
His backtracking on the New Zealand security council participation in the censoring of Israel demanded that he de-fuse the issue, and do so without appearing to snub the rulers of any real or potential trading markets in the region’s Gulf States.
This was accomplished by delivering an apology that was not an apology.
Mr Brownlee had from the start sensed the danger of the UN resolution being allowed to swing unmodified in the always volatile Middle East diplomatic atmosphere.
He had to tread carefully in order to be seen as treating the issue as a high-minded moral milestone instead of the positioning being seen for what it was---a calculated trade-off to appease what was then an unqualified official belief that the Obama presidency would seamlessly make the transition to a Clinton one.
In order to sustain this robe-touching exercise he also had to skitter carefully around some other matters, notably keeping on side with the Gulf traders who much earlier had been told they could go ahead with receiving live sheep shipments and also with the Green lobby which remains determined to making sure that they do not..
The live sheep trade and its banning is a symbolic touchstone of the Greens
Mr Brownlee’s instrument was the apology that was an apology or not an apology, depending on the angle that you examined it from.
The product of the diplomatic soft shoe shuffle in three dimensional terms was the resumption of diplomatic exchanges with Israel.
Meanwhile Mr Brownlee’s government continues to plug away with the equipping of the Gulf processing depot which is the visible-yet-invisible reparation due to the live sheep importing lobby as compensation for the reneging on the original undertaking to supply them with the live shipments.
Mr Brownlee saw the danger to his government of the whole seraglio left as it was dangling unsecured in the lead up to the general election this year. It had to be dealt with before it intruded on the rather more fevered atmosphere of the campaign.
More importantly, by taking the issue substantially out of play he has smoothed relations with the Trump administration, the one that the professional diplomats failed to see coming.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Monday 3 July 2017 |||
National & Labour Know They Must Ditch Fuddy Duddy Images. But How?
New Zealand’s two major political parties have been revealed in the same day to each have bungled their separate strategies to turn a youthful face to the electorate.
The first was when a very young National Party Member of Parliament did what party officials who sought to block his original selection said he would do which was fall out with the same electoral officials, an incident spiced up by the now seemingly mandatory secret taping sub plot.
The second incident involving the Labour Party followed hard on the heels of the National Party episode.
Nearly 100 electioneering “interns” mainly from the United States were brought to Auckland to assist in campaigning for the Labour Party and along the way to receive lectures from luminaries of the party.
All this at a time when the Labour Party, the equivalent of the US Democrats, was itself campaigning against people from overseas taking the jobs of New Zealanders and in so doing forcing up the price of accommodation.
Fired up by the notion of a Bernie Sanders type of youth crusade the Labour Party Auckland operatives had forgotten to consider that people from the United States insist on a high standard of accommodation in New Zealand.
Indeed, it was the failure of the New Zealand premium hotel sector to provide things that Americans like, such as air conditioning, that was such a problem prior to the arrival of the United States franchise hotels in order to provide its citizens with their home comforts in the South Seas.
The United States interns were less than impressed by the sparseness of their billets.
They were similarly underwhelmed by their failure to meet the high level Labour Party figures who, in the event, seem not to have realised that they were supposed to have met the interns in the first place.
In electioneering strategic terms however both these episodes demonstrated how both the main parties are turning themselves inside out to demonstrate their regard for youth values meaning the youth vote.
The two very recent European elections, the one in the UK and the one in France indicate that their attention is justified.
In election wining terms in New Zealand for Labour and National this means stopping the youth vote sliding into the Green Party.
The Greens embody all the conventional middle class ideological values on things like climate and refugees.
Neither was the mood of the main party strategists improved last month when they surveyed the cover of the house magazine of this voting bloc North & South (pictured) which channeled Vanity Fair with a tableau of idealised Green candidates.
The National and Labour election schemers saw before them the embodiment of the yearnings of this whole sector which is bounded at the younger end by career-friendly university types still in touch with their capping mag days, and at the older end by Guardian Weekly subscribers.
Why?
Because National and Labour share something else too.
It is an indelible musty-fusty sectarian aura redolent of times gone by.
This understanding haunts the high command of both the main parties.
It is the reason the National Party forced on an entirely rural and safe farming electorate a perma-grinning disco type in their early 20s whose short career in the real world was notable for a stint with Big Tobacco.
It is the reason that the Labour Party turned a blind eye on a semi-freelance operation to whip up a US-style youth storm in Auckland.
Result?
Both the two main political parties will now start once again to heed their once powerful local organisations at electorate and divisional level.
These representation committees will tell them that twisting and turning to meet fashionable media-driven yearnings is one thing.
Also that meeting grass roots expectations requires a fixed and determined longer term direction.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Tuesday 27 June 2017 |||
Trade Minister Todd McClay says he believes the time is right to launch trade talks with Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia as part of the Government’s push for better access in Latin America.
Mr McClay leaves tomorrow to attend the Pacific Alliance Leaders Summit where a trade deal will be top of his agenda.
“We’ve been talking to the four Pacific Alliance countries about better access for Kiwi exporters for the last two years. With direct flights to South America there is increasing opportunity for New Zealanders to do more in these growing markets,” Mr McClay says.
“New Zealand currently has more than $1.1 billion dollars of two-way trade with the countries of the Alliance. But our exporters face high tariffs rates on many products, including dairy, which is currently our largest export.”
“A high-quality free trade agreement with Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru as part of the Pacific Alliance trading bloc presents a huge opportunity for New Zealand companies exporting to this fast-growing region because there is so much room for growth.”
Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru are home to 221 million consumers and have a huge combined GDP of US$3.85 trillion. The Pacific Alliance is a regional integration and trading bloc.
“Under Trade Agenda 2030, the Government’s new trade strategy, we have set the ambitious target of covering 90 per cent of our goods trade under FTAs and the Pacific Alliance is an important part of reaching that goal,” Mr McClay says.
| A Beehive release || June 26, 2017 |||
Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee will today travel to Cuba to meet with his counterpart before attending the Pacific Alliance Summit in Colombia.
On June 27, Mr Brownlee will visit Cuba to meet Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
“This visit will help to strengthen New Zealand’s interests in the Latin American region, which is home to about 625 million people,” Mr Brownlee says.
“New Zealand works with Cuba on a number of important issues, including agriculture, international development, and regional cooperation.
“Both nations provide support to Small Island Developing States in the Pacific and Caribbean regions. Cuba is an important player in the Caribbean and the visit is a valuable opportunity to engage with one of our larger partners in the region,” Mr Brownlee says.
Mr Brownlee will then attend the Pacific Alliance Summit in Cali, Colombia on June 29 and 30. Trade Minister Todd McClay is also attending.
The Alliance is a regional organisation, established in 2011 by Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico. New Zealand has observer nation status with the Pacific Alliance.
“The Alliance is looking to begin trade negotiations with some observer countries as a pathway to offering Associate Membership of the group,” Mr Brownlee says.
“New Zealand already has long-standing relationships with the Alliance and each of its constituent nations.
“Pacific Alliance is a growing force for political and economic stability in Latin America, so it’s important for New Zealand to be a voice at the table,” Mr Brownlee says.
| A Beehive release || June 26, 2017 |||
Has taken Napoleon’s Advice: Do not Interrupt your enemies while they are making a mistake
New Zealand First Party leader WInston Peters MP has re-drawn the map of the pending general election so that all roads lead to his own central issue which is immigration
Like the maestro his adherents believe him to be WInston Peters MP has choreographed the pending general election around this single issue.
No matter which route his competitors in campaigning actually wish to take, he has wired the general election so that they must converge on and arrive at immigration
All the other issues converge on the single theme of immigration and do so regardless of any face value variant. Here are the usual main ones that now end up at the immigration destination:-
This quartet of traditional issues has been boiled down to immigration.
Mr Peters’ focus on immigration now puts pressure on the area most affected by the influx which is the Auckland isthmus which the Labour Party regards as its electoral territory.
Having set the order of the election battle to chime with his own agenda Mr Peters gives the impression of heeding the advice of Napoleon who recommended that enemies should never be interrupted while they are making a mistake.
He has boxed in the Labour Party to the extent that it can only tinker with policy surrounding the language schools and their uncertain backdoor contribution to the inflow.
The Greens meanwhile are doctrinally obliged to call for the accommodation of more and still more refugees.
Then there is the National Party.
It has long seen a direct parallel with an immigration influx and industrial growth.
The extent to which it has been check-mated was revealed when New Zealand Business, nowadays the main industrial lobby, tried to refocus the issue on seasonal migrants on farms which has nothing to do with the type of immigration that Mr Peters is talking about.
Then there is Britain now so vividly portrayed in terms of the grotesque high rise, intensive, and now demonstrably unsafe accommodation required to house the recent arrivals.
Neither is this flood of experience in Europe likely to abate before the general election.
Mr Peters’ skill as a politician has been to define issues worrying to the electorate at large. He strips away the confusing ideological or doctrinal or simply fashionable camouflage that disguises them.
As the conductor now of his own electoral orchestra he is there on the rostrum in a position to direct his general election symphony without any distracting variants.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Wednesday 21 June 2017 |||
Youth Minister Nikki Kaye tonight announced details of the $6 million investment over four years under Budget 2017 to fund more youth enterprise initiatives.
Ms Kaye made the announcement at Victoria University’s Rutherford Building in Wellington, where eight teams of young people had gathered to take part in the Greater Wellington Region finals of a ‘Dragons' Den’ competition, pitching their ideas for innovative companies to a panel of local business leaders for a share of $5000 of prize money.
“Youth enterprise funding is about supporting young people to develop entrepreneurial skills through a range of youth-focused business and enterprise initiatives,” says Ms Kaye.
“It was great to announce details of the funding at an event where the ingenuity and business acumen of young people was on show for all to see.
“In a rapidly changing global economy, young people with entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and aptitude are more likely to succeed in all areas of life, so this is about inspiring our next generation of potential leaders and innovators.”
The funding announced as part of Budget 2017 will include the following investments:
“Young Kiwi entrepreneurs are already developing new and exciting businesses that are succeeding here in New Zealand and overseas, some already worth millions of dollars,” says Ms Kaye.
“This funding is about inspiring and supporting more of our young people to develop the skills and confidence they need to take their innovative ideas to the next stage and turn them into reality.
“Through the initiatives the funding will support, young people will develop a range of transferable skills such as problem solving, communication, decision making, team work, financial acumen and leadership.
“I expect around 5,000 new opportunities will be created through this funding.
“The next big company to make waves on the international stage could be born out of one of the initiatives that will be supported, just as it could emerge from the young finalists gathered in Wellington tonight.”
| A Beehive release || June 20, 2017 |||
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
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