Avsnitt
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One of our reader community recently sent me a link to The Dark Times Academy, so I looked it up.
https://darktimesacademy.co.nz
It is jointly owned by Mandy Henk and Byron Clark, and is a community education project that puts teachers and students of all ages together with courses designed to build, they say, “the kinds of communities that help us get through hard times.”
Well that sounded interesting, so I called Mandy and our chat not only covered why she and Byron started The Dark Times Academy, what it is and what it does, but, because Mandy is American, we wandered off into talking about how it was that Trump got elected for a second term and what that portends for the future of the USA and the World.
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Blake Forbes has a disability. He has spastic cerebral palsy with mild autism and ADHD, but that hasn’t stopped him running a very effective interview podcast called BFG (short for Blake Forbes Gentle) which he produces with co-host Paul Barlow.
Paul has a media background and, in addition to working with Blake, runs his own podcast show wittily entitled Paul The Other One, for reasons I’ll let him explain.
Blake has become an effective advocate for people with disabilities and at the moment is rightly concerned about the loss of respite funding for care givers.
Kia kaha Blake and Paul .Thank you for a very enjoyable and informative conversation.
If you want to check out Blake’s Channel you can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/@thebfgpodcast
Paul’s personal channel Paul The Other One is here:
https://www.youtube.com/@Paul...theotherone
He is a former political commentator with a background in media studies and pop culture, and has over 35000 followers of his content from across Aotearoa.
This content is also available in video formats on Tik Tok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram as well as audio versions from wherever you get your Podcasts.
Thanks to the generosity of my paid subscribers who help fund my Head2Head interviews are free to access. Please consider supporting my public journalism work by becoming a paid subscriber for $9 a month (including GST) as only paid subscribers can comment in the chat room.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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I read a Tax Justice Network online report recently that stated New Zealand was one of 8 Countries that had refused to sign up to the United Nations Tax Convention . I thought, What’s that? Why haven’t I heard more about it through our mainstream media ? and Who are the Tax Justice Network anyway?
So I did a bit of research and late one night last week I ended up talking with Sergio Chaparro who is the international policy and advocacy lead for the Tax Justice Network and is based in Chile.
Our conversation ended up being quite detailed so let me give you what I took to be the key points.
The United Nations Tax Convention is largely an attempt to stop Multinational Corporations cheating on their taxes in the countries in which they operate.
The Tax Justice Network is a non- profit organisation that aims to make tax systems work of people and the planet. They believe that taxation is a social superpower that can create a fair and just society.
In its latest report The Tax Justice Network estimates that countries are losing US$492 billion in tax a year to multinational corporations and wealthy individuals who are using tax havens to underpay tax.
Nearly half these losses (43%), they say, are enabled by the eight countries that remain opposed to a UN tax convention: Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the UK and the USA.
Ironically the biggest enablers of global tax abuse are also some of the biggest losers: US$177 billion was lost last year by the 8 countries that recently voted against UN tax convention terms.
They estimate New Zealand lost US$1 billion in tax avoidance and evasion last year!
We are being told we have to pull our economic belt in, and cut back on this or that, while the wealthy hide their money .
Just imagine what we could do with $NZ1.75 Billion? A couple of years of collecting that amount of money from the tax cheats could pay for that new Dunedin Hospital or for those two large interisland ferries with all the associated infrastructure that Nicola Willis said we couldn’t afford and cancelled.
So why didn’t New Zealand sign up? Well the UN Tax Convention is being championed by African and poorer nations. The wealthier OECD countries, of which New Zealand is a member, have come up with what they call the Two Pillar solution to tax cheating.
It's a softer approach to the issue and it’s not working .The Trump administration doesn’t want a bar of it and the UK, who are the worst offenders, certainly don’t want us voting for the UN Tax Convention.
Given our current government’s right wing determination to pander to the wealthy, then I think you can understand why our government voted against what would deliver a fairer distribution of wealth both nationally and internationally.
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PS. Just as an aside I asked Sergio about Capital Gains Tax in Chile and Colombia. Chile has Capital Gains on house sales and Colombia, in addition, has a Wealth Tax.
If they can do it- so can we.
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Bryan Bruce and Emergency Doctor Gary Payinda talk about life and death issues- the challenges he faces in trying to preserve life in our hospital system plus his work in assisted day and why the law needs to modified because the current rules are not practical.
Thanks to the generosity of my paid subscribers this podcast is made possible for everyone to listen to. Please consider supporting my public journalism work by becoming a paid subscriber for $9 a month (including GST) to read a wide range of articles, watch some of my documents and join a chat group of intelligent New Zelanders deeply concerned about the economic and political
Dr Payinda’s substack is well worth following.
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Imagine an economy designed to serve people and planet rather than the other way around. Are there better, more sustainable, ways to run our economy? What kind of counrty do you want to live in? What’s an economy for anyway? These are kind of questions Dr Katherine Trebeck challenges us to ask if we are to have any hope of changing the entrenched neoliberal ideology that is exploiting both our people, our country and our planet in the name of greed.
The economy isn’t something that is fixed and unchangeable. It’s a human creation so we humans can change it if we want to.
That’s why Katherine, political economist,writer and advocate for economic change co-founded The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WeALL for short) which you can find more about here:
https://weall.org
You can also find our more about Katherine, her work here:
https://katherinetrebeck.com
Her most recent book The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a Grown Up Economy(co-authored with Jeremy Williams and published by Policy Press) was published in January 2019 and her major report Being Bold: Budgeting for Children’s Wellbeingwas launched in March 2021. Her two Tedx talks are about ‘Why the future economy has to be a wellbeing economy’ and ‘a new definition of wealth and prosperity’.
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This interview was made possible by the generosity of my paid subscribers without whom my public journalism work would be impossible . Please consider joining them.The subscription is $NZ9 a month .The more membership the more I can film stories that need to be told. Thanks
Please consider giving a subscription to a friend or someone in your whanau.
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In the wake of Treasury’s Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update, Associate Professor Susan St John gives her assessement of the government’s unnecessarily hard neoliberal economic austerity measures and how the Luxon/Willis administration has not learned the lessons of the 1990’s and the misery caused by the austerity measures of then National Finance Minister Ruth Richardson.
We discuss a wide range of consequences, including the way rising unemployment and increasing levels of poverty are causing our children to suffer from third world diseases, and the government’s complete lack of empathy in reducing support for foodbanks at the very time when people need it most.
So what can we do to have a fairer society?
Susan St John’s down- to -earth analysis is always enlightening.
It’s thanks to my Paid Subscribers that I can continue to do my public journalism work, speaking truth to power and giving a voice to those who have none . For just $9 a month you can join (and chat with ) this great group of supportive people , plus get access to my podcasts and documentaries… and me :)
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A couple of days ago I read a very interesting Substack article about a piece of trojan horse, David Seymour, legislation currently before parliament that had managed to slip completely under my radar and perhaps yours too.
It was about the Regulatory Standards Bill and written by Melanie Nelson who laid out the far- reaching powers this Bill would give to the right-wing in our country.
You can find her excellent article here:
So I contacted Melanie and I am delighted she agreed to be interviewed for Head 2 Head because I learned a lot about how this mundane sounding Bill could undermine what a many of us still think Aotearoa New Zealand should still be about - a fair go for everyone and protecting our communities and environment from the self-serving agendas of wealthy individuals and overseas companies.
You can provide a submission:
• through the engagement hub on the Ministryʼs website https://www.regulation.govt.nz/our-work/regulatory-standards-bill/
• emailing your submission to [email protected], or
• mailing your submission to Ministry for Regulation, P O Box 577, Wellington 6140
Make no mistake, this Bill is a device designed to enhance the ME and undermine what is left of the WE society that once characterised life in Aotearoa New Zealand. Please don’t miss the chance to have your say. RSB consultation ending on 13 January
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Dr Melody Nixon is a writer, editor, academic and artist living between the Bay Area, California, and Aotearoa New Zealand. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD, with emphases in Literature and Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies, from the History of Consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Having spent over a decade in the USA she has a keen understanding of the the social and political undercurrents that saw Donald Trump re-elected and warns against the similar disturbing trends she sees developing here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $9 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts,
To my paid subscribers, please know your support is much appreciated. Please restack posts you like and share the links to friends and whanau as it all helps to build readership. With the Christmas soon upon us,you may also wish to consider giving a year’s access to Bryan Bruce Investigates as a present to someone . Thank you.
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Last week a group of economists wrote to Prime Minister Luxon and Minister of Finance Willis to express their concern at the Government’s approach to fiscal policy, and their alarm at the consequences for the people and communities of New Zealand.
In this episode of Head2Head I talk with the group’s lead spokesperson Dr Ganesh Nana.
Here is the letter in full.
Tēnā koe e Pirimia,
re: Your Government’s fiscal policy
We write to express our heightening concern at your Government’s approach to fiscal policy, and our alarm at the consequences for the people and communities of New Zealand.
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss in more detail, more directly with you as soon as possible, the immediate and long-lasting harm that your Government’s approach to fiscal policy is creating.
We summarise our concerns below under four headings.
* Reduced current and projected spending is needlessly exacerbating the current recession
* A focus on government debt is far too narrow, as it ignores the impacts on private sector debt and external debt
* The accumulating harm risks a long-lasting hollowing-out of business capacity and capability
* Fiscal policy is in direct conflict with the Government’s stated export target
Fiscal policy is needlessly exacerbating the current recession
Current and projected reductions in government spending appear to be central to the Government’s fiscal policy. The economic rationale for this approach is unclear. Rather, there appear to be few considerations outside the short-term impacts. For example, your Government’s cancellation of key infrastructure projects and sinking-lid cuts to the public service are powerful contributors to the current severe and prolonged recession. This is substantially worsening the contractionary effects on the economy of the Reserve Bank’s use of the Official Cash Rate to contain inflation.
It is important to recognise that even prior to cutting back expenditure, government consumption spending was close to 20% of GDP. This covered spending on health, education, defence, administration, justice, transport, and culture. In addition, deferrals and reductions in projected infrastructure spending has further reduced employment and intensified the economic recession.
There is ample evidence that government spending, including the necessary infrastructure and allied networks, has for many years fallen well short of that required for population growth and demographic changes. The Infrastructure Commission has stated that New Zealand has a $104 billion infrastructure gap at present – and that this picture will significantly worsen given current spending projections.
These accumulating shortfalls put the nation in a poor position to improve its long-run economic resilience and to prepare for future challenges. If nothing is changed now, this under-funding simply passes the burden of adjustments, and investment spending, to future generations.
Failure to correct this course will lead to higher economic scarring, with the costs borne by those with the least ability to pay, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in New Zealand’s history. It will also undermine the resilience of the private sector – particularly exporters – and will continue to constrain the capability of firms to scale up.
A focus on government debt ignores impacts on private sector debt and external debt
Similarly, the fiscal policy focus on reducing government debt lacks a clear economic rationale. Irrespective of the debt measure adopted, international comparisons of government debt in comparison to GDP remain in New Zealand’s favour. Credit rating agencies continue to view the government’s debt situation without concern.
Bluntly, there is no government (or public) debt crisis in New Zealand.
The New Zealand economy’s ongoing problem is private sector debt. Importantly, private sector debt is being driven upwards by your Government’s fiscal policy in pursuit of surpluses for itself and its aim of rapidly reducing public debt.
Standard economics shows the relationship between public and private sector financial balances. When total domestic saving (both public and private) is insufficient for domestic investment (both private and public), the gap needs to be filled by drawing on foreign funds. The overall current account (or external) deficit is a measure of this gap and requires overseas borrowing or asset sales to foreigners to finance such a deficit. With the banks acting as intermediaries, the resulting increase in liabilities is reflected on both the private and public sectors’ balance sheets.
These connections – in particular, between the Government’s fiscal stance, the size of the current account deficit, and the consequent size of the nation’s external debt – are glaringly missing in documents describing the economic impact of fiscal policy. There is little explanation of how fiscal policy focussed on reducing government spending would reduce New Zealand’s external deficit and total external debt. Consequently, fiscal policy is adding to the vulnerability of economic activity and exposing New Zealand to inevitable global shocks.
The accumulating harm risks a long-lasting hollowing-out of business capacity and capability
There appear to be further spending reductions accelerating at this stage of the economic cycle. The negative impact risks undermining retail, hospitality, home improvement sectors, and challenges the heart of rural economies and communities across the nation. Prolonging the current cyclical downturn in this manner means that these costs result from a policy choice, rather than being an economic outcome.
In addition, increasingly worrying is the harm imposed on those households on low or casual wage income or dependent on benefits. The erosion of the already low psychological and financial reserves of the poorest will be hard – and socially and fiscally costly – to repair. We note that the consequent erosion of the tax base will also impair the government’s balance sheet.
This long-lasting harm is further evident in the increasing numbers of trained and skilled New Zealanders migrating abroad in search of hope. This is creating skills shortages across the country, particularly in health and education.
The loss of this capacity and capability – in terms of workforce skills, knowledge and expertise alongside investor/owner appetite for equipment, machinery, technology upgrades and expansions – becomes increasingly permanent the longer the downturn is prolonged.
This form of hollowing-out is currently clearly visible in the construction sector, where once again the boom-bust cycle is seeing harm that will impact on the development of the sector for years to come and further undermine critical efforts to expand the housing stock. This will (again) be likely reflected with future infrastructure and housing developments experiencing difficulties in attracting sub-contractors back to the building and construction sector.
The hollowing-out of business capacity and capability includes small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) across the economy. Many SMEs across regional and metropolitan New Zealand continue to be financed through mortgages on family homes and other informal community networks. The accumulating impact on household sector balance sheets will add unnecessary stress on an already stressed sector of the nation.
Arising from this situation is the long-lasting scar of the loss of entrepreneurial aspiration in our communities as the cyclical downturn is unnecessarily prolonged.
Fiscal policy is in direct conflict with the Government’s stated export target
A successful fiscal policy is one that has an economic justification consistent with a clear aspiration. Such aspiration would set the direction to an improvement in New Zealand’s external position, and so underpin its ability to confront the climatic, social, and demographic challenges, as well as increasing our ability to withstand global economic shocks.
The Government’s stated objective to double the value of exports over the next decade potentially provides direction. However, a focus on lifting export quality and unit values – making clear the target is not simply about increasing quantities – is required. Further, a goal directly targeting net exports (i.e. exports minus imports) would be more consistent with this aspiration, placing value on import competing activities as well as on export expansion.
Importantly though, there is a direct conflict between the current fiscal policy stance and the aspirational export goal. New Zealand’s historical reliance on volume-driven commodity growth and mainly low-value exports requires significant structural shifts for the returns from exports to be doubled. Without investment in key infrastructure, resilience building, business capacity and capability, human capital, and entrepreneurial endeavour, the necessary structural shifts will not occur. The current fiscal policy settings undermine the required investments to facilitate such shifts.
Consequently, your Government’s aspiration for the export sector will itself continue to be an aspiration due to a short-sighted fiscal policy stance, rather than the attainable goal it could become.
Our request
To reiterate, given the concerns set out above, we would like the opportunity to urgently discuss these matters directly with you.
In the interim, given the urgency of the situation, we request that
* your Government immediately suspend all directions for further reductions to departmental and agency spending and/or further delays in infrastructure spending.
* your Government request further advice from officials, including convening private and community sector advisors, to ensure that Budget 2025 provides a clear economic rationale for fiscal policy that will assist
* growth in the scale and resilience of the business sector
* reductions in private sector debt
* investing in infrastructure
* strong employment growth in good jobs
so that the New Zealand economy can be fit for the future needs of the people and communities of New Zealand.
We look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Ngā mihi nui
Signed:
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Why is borrowing to give tax breaks stupid? How could we use some of our superannuation fund to build housing? What’s an economy for anyway?
Shamubeel Eaqub has the gift of making economics understandable and often gives voice to common sense solutions for some of the problems that beset us today.
He has worked as an economist in leading international banks and consultancy in Wellington, Melbourne and Auckland and he is now the Chief Economist at Simplicity KiwiSaver.
He is a columnist, media commentator and a thought leading public speaker and author who has published three books: Generation Rent (2015), co-authored with Selena Eaqub; Growing Apart: Regional Prosperity in NZ (2014); and The NZ Economy: An Introduction (2011), co-authored with Dr Ralph Lattimore.
If you are a Free Subscriber please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none.
And thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated and has allowed this podcast to now become freely available. Please restack the item if you like it and recommend bryanbruce.substack.com to your friends and whanau.
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Gareth was a Green MP for 10 years and is now the Director of The Well Being Economy Alliance of Aotearoa which not only examines the neoliberal status quo that drives our current economy but looks a the many alternative economic models we could adopt to have a fairer society.
WeAll have an upcoming conference : Economics in the Public Good ( see details below)
He is is the author of A Gentle Radical, a biography of the late Greens leader Jeanette Fitzsimons which was published two years after her death in 2022.
If you are a Paid subscriber please know that your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated. If today’s post reaches 50 likes from you, I will make it free for everyone to read.
If you are a Free Subscribers please consder upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none. Thank you.
It’s time to redesign our economy to deliver wellbeing for nature and all our people.Join us at the Economy for Public Good Conference in Pōneke Wellington, we’ll weave a shared purpose for moving beyond a broken ‘business as usual’ economy.If you’d like to build bonds and share ideas with people inspired to create an economy where people and nature thrive, this one day hui is for you.The conference will feature Dr Katherine Trebeck as international keynote speaker, thought leaders discussing the big ideas for Aotearoa 2040, practitioners sharing stories of the new economy in action, and in-depth interactive training and breakout sessions.Tickets for this in person conference are set at only $100 and numbers are limited.https://www.weall.org.nz/economyforpublicgood#EconomyForPublicGood#TimeToRedesign
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Peter Newport has had a long and distinguished journalistic career including becoming European Correspondent and Bureau Chief for Channel 9 , Deputy News Editor BBC TV News and a documentary producer with the Discovery Channel before returning to work in NZ with Mediaworks as a producer on their current affairs programme 3rd Degree.
When he moved to Queenstown he decided to start Crux, a local digital media outlet featuring stories and events in the Southern Lakes and Dunedin districts where he applied his talent for public interest journalism.
His channel got a significant following reaching almost 2/3rds of the population. However after almost 7 years of first rate journalism the funding for Crux has fallen because local business and councils had largely pulled their support and the government’s public journalism fund has been axed.
In this interview I talk with Peter about his new approach which is to publish via Substack as I also have been forced to do because neither of us intend to be silenced.
Thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated. Please share and restack this article if you like it and recommend bryanbruce.substack.com to your friends and whanau.
If you are a Free Subscriber please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
John Quiggin is a professor of Economics at The University of Queensland, Australia and I first met him 10 years ago when I was making my documentary Mind The Gap . He had not long published his book Zombie Economics about how the dead economic ideas of neoliberalism such as “the market knows best”, deregulation, privatisation and “trickle down” theory, still manage to haunt the corridors of power in our country.
In this interview we discuss how Australian political parties on both left and right have managed to kill off some of these zombie ideas (such as how public hospitals would be run more cost effectively if they were privatised) yet in the New Zealand graveyard of economics such dangerous ideas still walk among us.
And in the wake of Trump’s victory in the American Presidential race last week, John gives his take on what impact it might have on the economies of both Australia and New Zealand and on the geopolitics of the Pacific.
Thank you to my Paid Subscribers. Your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated.As agreed, if today’s post reaches 50 likes from you, I will make it free for everyone.
If you are a Free Subscribers please consider upgrading to Paid. The current government has cut all funding for public interest journalism and the broadscasters are showing little interest in supporting independent investigative documentaries which is why I started this Substack.
Your $9 per month subscription will help me keep working as public interest writer, podcaster and film maker- to speak truth to power and give a public voice to those who have none. Thank you.
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Rebecca is an extraordinary person.
Back in 2011 she saw two problems in her Palmerston North community. A lot of food waste going to tghe dump or feed pigs and a lot of hungry people. So she decided to do something about it - rescue the food and feed those who need it
So she created Just Zilch in a free store, and today she had a full time team of 5 and 100 volunteers who distribute surplus food, and fresh, locally grown produce to people in need - without conditions.
Everyday the Just Ziltch team feed give food to around 350 people a day≥
In this interview Rebecca talks about how the demand is growing and why it is getting harder to meet it..
Head2Head is made possible thanks to the generosity of my paid subscribers To help me continue with my public journalism work please consider becoming a supporter by taking out a $9 per month subscription. Thank you.
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What must you believe to be a Christian? In 1967 New Zealand Presbyterian Minister and Theologican Sir Lloyd Geering faced charges of heresy for teaching that the Biblical record of Jesus' death and resurrection is not true.
For the making of my of my documentary Jesus The Cold Case - Who Killed Jesus And Why? - I interviewed Sir Lloyd who was then aged 90 . (At the time of posting 30/6/24 he is 106).
Bryan Bruce Investigates is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a $5 a month paid subscriber.
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Worried about the calls to privatise our public health system?
Concerned about falling numbers of doctors and nurses and the increasing difficulty of getting access to medical care when you need it?
Dr Gary Payinda MD MA DDU FACEP FACEM is an Emergency Medical Doctor in Te Tai Tokerau Northland. He is at the frontline of our health care system and he spoke to me frankly about what has gone wrong with our hospitals, what we need to to do to fix them, and why we need to do it .
While the mainstream media tend to uncritically carry the government’s message that cuts to our health system are necessary because the budget is “blowing out”, the fact of the matter is that we have been seriously underfunding the public health service for the last 30 years.
A case in point - “In the 1970’s” Gary told me” there were 12 hospital beds for every 1000 New Zealanders. Today there are 2.5.”
Instead of calls for privatising our hospitals we need to expand our taxation base by making the wealthy top 1% pay their fair share, so that we we can all have free medical care when we need it.
If you are a Paid subscriber please know that your support for my public journalism work is much appreciated.
If you are a Free Subscribers who may be thinking of upgrading to Paid , you may wish to act now as the current fee of $5 a month will be going up to $9 per month starting on the 1st of November.
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There’s avery good chance you have heard of Ruud, the Dutch-New Zealand naturalist whose passion for insects saw him start a talkback radio show (Ruud's Awakening) in in 1987 in which which he offered environmentally friendly tips to gardeners.
It earned him the name of “the bugman” which he carried to the NZTV series Maggie’s Garden Show from 1992 until December 2003.
This led to successful international series for Animal Planet called Buggin with Ruud.
For services to entomology, conservation and entertainment Ruud was appointed an honorary Member of the NZ Order of Merit in 2018.
In this episode I catch up with Ruud and find he is as passionate about communicating the importance of respecting nature as when I met and worked with him on a documentary I directed back called The Bug House in 2001 about the insects that live in our houses which is available under the documentaries tab on my Substack byanbruce.substack.com
Today Ruud is working with teachers and school children as part of his ongoing work to educating us about the importance of nature and why , in his words, we “need to be gentle with it”.
If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. It’s a good idea not get in now because the cost of subscription will be going up to $9 at the end of this month to meet rising costs.
To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going. Your support is much appreciated.
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Michael Belgrave is Professor Emeritus of History at Massey University. He was research manager of the Waitangi Tribunal and has continued to work on Treaty of Waitangi research and settlements. published widely on Treaty and Māori history. His 2017 Dancing with the King, an exploration of diplomacy and peace-making in the decades between the Waikato War and the opening of the King Country, was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and won the Ernest Scott Prize. He has worked in advisory groups supporting the implementation of the new national history curriculum.
In this interview we discuss his new, and very readable book, Becoming Aotearoa- A New History of New Zealand.
If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. It’s a good idea not get in now because the cost of subscription will be going up to $9 at the end of this month to meet rising costs.
To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.Your support is much appreciated.
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Yesterday I decided to interview the Chat Bot Chat GPT (the GPT part is an abbreviation of Generative Pre-trained Transformer - I’ll let you look that up :).
First of all,let me admit that I have come very late to this particular party which hundreds of millions of users have already been enjoying, because…well, to be honest, I saw it as a gimmicky young person’s thing and not for oldies like me.
I couldn’t have been more wrong!
Frankly I was stunned by ChatGPT’s speed of response to my questiions and the human- like quality of them, and while I’ll admit to trying it out as a bit of fun, the implications of this new technology are as serious as they are scary.
By the end of our brief chat, during which I raised some very light ethical questions, I found the ChatGPT’s constant response that it was there to serve me and I had nothing to fear from it, less assuring each time we touched on an ethical issue.
Now there’s a lot I don’t understand about AI, but I do understand a bit about human behaviour, and I know that whatever we create reflects our unspoken (and often unconscious) personal biases.
So, I wondered, “Who owns and controls Chat GPT?” and no, I didn’t ask the Bot, but resorted instead to old fashioned deep dive research.
And what a frightening rabbit hole that simple question has led me down.
But I’ll save what I have been discovering for another day, because the ethical and moral issues are so complex I’ll need to unpack them over a series of posts from time to time.
For the moment please have a listen to my 9 minute chat with Chat GPT and tell me what you think.
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe -
Susan St John Bsc, MA, PhD, QSO, CNZM, is an honorary Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland . With Auckland accounting tax expert Terry Baucher she has been publishing papers on what they term a Fair Economic Return Tax (FER)as a much better solution than either Capital Gains Tax or Land Tax as a way of getting the wealthy to pay their fair share towards the upkeep and future of the society we all share.
What is it? How would it work? These are the question I was keen to ask Susan .
Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media sites. If you are a free subscriber, please consider becoming a $5 per month paid subscriber which will also give you access to premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus the comment and chat facility. To those of you who are already paid subscribers - thank you for helping me to keep going.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bryanbruce.substack.com/subscribe - Visa fler
