#nzpols

[thorinsbeard]

The rainbow crossings that were painted over. It's a horrible hate crime but one thing stands out to me. The white made the rainbow brighter when they repainted it. The rain washed the water-based paint away to reveal the rainbow. And the voices of allies and lbgtqia+ people drowned out the hate. Because goodness knows our government won't do anything about it. We all know how they feel about queer people.

[saybiwithme]

I can’t believe we have a new pm that avoided answering if he thought dinosaurs were real

[sapphia]

USA please listen to me: the price of “teaching them a lesson” is too high. take it from New Zealand, who voted our Labour government out in the last election because they weren’t doing exactly what we wanted and got facism instead.

Trans rights are being attacked, public transport has been defunded, tax cuts issued for the wealthy, they've mass-defunded public services, cut and attacked the disability funding model, cut benefits, diverted transport funding to roads, cut all recent public transport subsidies, cancelled massive important infrastructure projects like damns and ferries (we are three ISLANDS), fast tracked mining, oil, and other massive environmentally detrimental projects and gave the power the to approve these projects singularly to three ministers who have been wined and dined by lobbyists of the companies that have put the bids in to approve them while one of the main minister infers he will not prioritise the protection of endangered species like the archeys frog over mining projects that do massive environmental harm. They have attacked indigenous rights in an attempt to negate the Treaty of Waitangi by “redefining it”; as a backup, they are also trying to remove all mentions of the treaty from legislation starting with our Child Protection laws no longer requiring social workers to consider the importance of Maori children’s culture when placing those children; when the Waitangi Tribunal who oversees indigenous matters sought to enquire about this, the Minister for Children blocked their enquiry in a breach of comity that was condemned in a ruling — too late to do anything — by our Supreme Court. They have repealed labour protections around pay and 90 day trials, reversed our smoking ban, cancelled our EV subsidy, cancelled our water infrastructure scheme that would have given Maori iwi a say in water asset management, cancelled our biggest city’s fuel tax, made our treasury and inland revenue departments less accountable, dispensed of our Productivity Commission, begun work on charter schools and military boot camps in an obvious push towards privatisation, cancelled grants for first home buyers, reduced access to emergency housing, allowed no cause evictions, cancelled our Maori health system that would have given Maori control over their own public medical care and funding, cut funding of services like budgeting advice and food banks, cancelled the consumer advocacy council, cancelled our medicine regulations, repealed free prescriptions, deferred multiple hospital builds, failed to deliver on pre-election medical promises, reversed a gun ban created in response to the mosque shootings, brought back three strikes = life sentence policy, increased minimum wage by half the recommended amount, cancelled fair pay for disabled workers, reduced wheelchair services, reversed our oil and gas exploration ban, cancelled our climate emergency fund, cut science research funding including climate research, removed limits on killing sea lions, cut funding for the climate change commission, weakened our methane targets, cancelled Significant National Areas protections, have begun reversing our ban on live exports. Much of this was passed under urgency.

It’s been six months.

[mucking-faori]

This stupid bitch is going to court over a 90 minute course

Also the course is specifically on maori world views in regards to land and working with iwi and maori clients, so it's not even like she's being taught about maori "religious" beliefs that could conflict with her own.

[batshit-auspol]

If you take nzpol there was that one time we threw a dildo at an mp candidate

This is quite possibly the greatest Wikipedia article in existence

[kittenwithabass]

In Aotearoa New Zealand a Jewish artwork was removed from a "celebration of diversity" display. Palestine Waikato called it "pertaining to a dangerous ideology of settler colonial expansion", "artwashing", and "offensive to Palestinians". The controversial artwork?

Please, enlighten me, how on earth is THIS dangerous in any way?

Claire van der Most of the Hamilton Multicultural Services Trust denies that this is antisemitic and says that it breaks the design brief by including religious symbols and country flags: "Doves, interpreted as a common religious symbol; and blue lines which were interpreted as being symbolic of the Israeli flag."

A Palestinian artwork was also removed, but I can't find any images or descriptions of it.

source 1 source 2

[sydneysageivashkov]

au 🤝 nz

having a bad fucking night

[queer-disability-aotearoa]

something to take heed of if you're a recreational drug user: since last year many street drugs have been increasingly cut with a compound known as nitizenes. nitizenes as a class of chemical are synthetic opioids 40-50 times stronger than fentanyl which is already causing issues. as far as i know they were never released as medications because the overdose risk was far too high.

if you take recreational drugs there are multiple agencies who will test them for you. anything can be easily pressed into a pill shape so fake pharmaceuticals are common.

benzos and fentanyl are already causing havoc in north america while europe is having everything cut with nitizenes. its pretty clear this is going to be a major issue. national will do everything in their power to make it worse and deaths of despair are going to rise. look after your mates and be sure you know what you're putting in your body.

[is-the-king-dead-yet]

Feb 5, 2024: ... wait for it

[catshinji]

Monday, April 15th — a day of global economic blockade

People all over the world have been calling for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza. We are emailing politicians, attending rallies and sit-ins, signing petitions and making our voices heard — but we need to do more.

The biggest impact we can have is through major economic disruption.

Coordinated by A15 Action, April 15th is a broad, decentralised collection of actions, based on the local capacity of everyone involved.

The proposal states that in each city, we will identify and blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact, as did the port shutdowns in recent months in Oakland, California and Melbourne, Australia, as just a few examples.

There is a sense in the streets in this recent and unprecedented movement for Palestine that escalation has become necessary: there is a need to shift from symbolic actions to those that cause pain to the economy.

As Yemen is bombed to secure global trade, and billions of dollars are sent to the Zionist war machine, we must recognize that the global economy is complicit in genocide and together we will coordinate to disrupt and blockade economic logistical hubs and the flow of capital."

A list of major cities that have pledged to join the A15 Action can be found here:

https://www.a15action.com

There are contact emails for each of these cities, so if you live in any of those locations, reach out directly to them to find out more.

Consider getting in touch with your local community action groups to see if you can get involved - there may a major picket line or blockade planned.

Don't underestimate your own impact as well. If your city is not on the list and you don't have a local org to connect with, see if you and your friends can organise something yourselves. The important point is for us all to take whatever actions we can at the same time to amplify our effectiveness, not to prescribe one way of taking action.

Get organised, stay safe, and engage with your communities. May we see a free Palestine in our lifetimes.

[thorinsbeard]

Kiwis. NACT is now attacking the Disabled community, even going as far as to get rid of their ministry and throw them like an afterthought into MSD. they are cutting job seeker benefits, sanctioning job seekers and what do you think happens when people have no money?? They are going to drive people towards crime. This is not how you solve poverty. I don't know how we can fight them(or even if we can) but hopefully there is a way to try. Not to mention how cruel it is to throw people in one basket for job seeker when there is a multitude of reasons people are on that benefit. Fuck NACT.

[saybiwithme]

This is fucking bullshit

[sapphia]

So for anyone who doesn’t keep up with nz politics, which i’m assuming is most of you, our new radical right government have decided one of their main aims of their term will be to re-interpret the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Treaty is an agreement between Maori and the Crown, now the NZ government. It is the founding document of new zealand and is recognised as a constitutional document today; it is the only treaty of its kind/time still honoured, and it is the steps we’ve taken through the Treaty to provide restitution and build an ongoing relationship with Maori and their iwi (tribes) that has allowed the relationship between Maori and the government to thrive where other indigenous groups have struggled to achieve recognition of their rights.

This is going to be entirely undone. Not only is this issue inflammatory and a threat to race relations in Aotearoa, leaked documents show the proposed “reinterpretation” wants to negate pretty much the entirety of the legal rights provided to Maori under the treaty. For example, the treaty article that guarantees land rights for Maori will be reinterpreted to guarantee land rights for “all New Zealanders”. Which means this article would be essentially meaningless for Maori.

By removing Maori from the context they are trying to put Maori on an “equal footing” with all New Zealanders; they are riding the idea that Maori have special rights and privileges above that of the average New Zealander. Obviously this is bullshit but it’s effective rhetoric and there’s a grain of truth to in that the extent of Maori rights hadn’t been clearly defined due to the ongoing nature of the process. So this has got a lot of people with a poor grasp of the issues very upset and baying for change.

There is a hui (meeting) being held today for all the iwi to begin discussions of how Maori will respond to this. New Zealand politics isn’t very interesting usually, but our progress on indigenous rights, until now, has been absolutely ahead of the field. If you care about indigenous rights globally, you should care about this, because in the same way Australia’s referendum loss has spurred on this action, the loss of rights here will spur other right wing governments to be similarly bold to their own indigenous groups.

Indigenous rights in New Zealand are under attack. They are meeting today to discuss it, and New Zealand will be listening, but I want the world to be listening. Because our government needs the shame of being called out by more than just the people who they’ve already decided don’t vote for them.

Maori have a long and proud history of fighting for their rights, and they’ll do it again here. And I’ll be on the pickets beside them, but there’ll be plenty of my own pickets to attend, because this government is radical in every sense of the word.

So please, even if you’re very far away, stand behind them in this. Keep your eyes on us. Amplify their voices. Don’t let the racism drown them out.

[mucking-faori]

Yeah, I'm sure this wasn't a racial attack at all even though it's almost all in the clearly marked maori section of the Urupā and they destroyed maori symbols and set the Graves on fire and-

Also pretty minimal fucking coverage, I gotta say.

Image description: A maori news article by Kevin Mcdonald, titled- ""disgusted": māori Graves targeted by vandals at new zealand's oldest cemetery". It is accompanied by a photo showing the grave of the late Cameron Duncan, its koru headstone smashed to pieces.

[batshit-auspol]

2015: New Zealand holds a vote to change their flag due to its similarity to Australia's, leading to the submission of the 'Lazer Kiwi' flag. Designer Lucy Gray said her inspiration was that "Australia has a lot of animals that can kill you, so New Zealand should get one too"

[sandumilfshou]

so i know that like fuck all people care about new zealand politics and the authoritarian right wing government that somehow just got elected but they are literally effectively getting rid of the suicide prevention office to pay for tax cuts for landlords. i cannot make this up