Utopia, you are standing in it!

There are 30 countries where you’ll find nearly 450 nuclear reactors currently operating – including the French, Americans, Canadians, Japanese and Chinese. Another 15 countries are currently building 60 reactors among them. Nuclear power output accounts for over 11% of global electricity production. But not a lick of it in Australia, thanks to an idiotic legislated ban put in place by a Liberal government back in 1998.

STT promotes nuclear power because it works: safe, affordable, reliable and the perfect foil for those worried about human-generated carbon dioxide gas – because it doesn’t generate any, while generating power on demand, irrespective of the weather – unlike the forever unreliables: wind and solar.

And we are not here to draw divisions on the basis of scale; large or small, nuclear plants that deliver power as and when it’s needed are the natural energy choice, in an energy-starved world.

At the smaller…

The attempt to entrench part of the Five Waters legislation was an abuse of power and an attempt to pervert democracy.

Hansard recorded the debate attempting to undo the mess.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise to speak on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 310. And isn’t it ironic that we’re back here in the House when only a few—or literally last week, or the week before, we were in here under urgency undertaking a debate in the committee of the whole House stage lasting nearly 10 hours and a debate that went well into the night and bright and early in the next morning. But the fact is, we’re here today because of, basically, a significant mistake that was made on that evening. And there should be lessons that are taken from what occurred at that point from the…

Once upon a time the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy was guided by a Policy Targets Agreement reached between the Governor and the Minister of Finance. These days things are different. As one of the more sensible aspects of the 2018 legislative overhaul, the new Monetary Policy Committee now works to a Remit (current one here) determined ultimately solely by the Minister of Finance. That is the way things should be: if officials are free to implement policy, the policy goals should be set by those whom we elect, in this case the Minister of Finance. At times, the Minister may put daft things in the Remit – as the current one did a couple of years back with the house price references – but that is how our system of government works (as it should).

Another sensible aspect of those reforms was a requirement that every five years or…

With power prices soaring out of control, it’s little wonder that thousands of British families can’t afford electricity. Every time Britain is hit with a bout of calm weather, wholesale power prices go through the roof.

In response to soaring wholesale power prices, the retail price cap that kept a lid on power bills over the last few years has been lifted (see above), such that power has now become a luxury item and forever out of reach for thousands of low-income households.

Add to that to the cost of the hundreds of £millions doled out in subsidies to wind power outfits to produce no power at all, and the tens of £billions they pocket, when they do, and Britain’s subsidised wind power-fixated energy policy looks positively obscene.

In the postwar period, British governments targeted policies that ensured that even the poorest households had access to reliable electricity, which came…

Just in case anyone has been living in a cave for the last 5 years, with their fingers in their ears and a blindfold on – race relations in New Zealand are somewhat strained right now.

Co-governance, having been initiated by National and taken to an unexpected extreme by Labour, is (to put it mildly) polarising poor old New Zealand right now. I don’t see the polarisation diminishing any time soon, nor do I see any type of sustainable consensus coming about.

Relevant to this is the following announcement: Rurawhe will not contest Te Tai Hauāuru, moves to Labour list:

Te Tai Hauāuru MP and Speaker of the House Adrian Rurawhe will not stand for the Māori electorate in October’s general election and will instead move to the Labour Party list.

Rurawhe contested and won Te Tai Hauāuru three times. He was elected as Speaker mid-term in August last…