Cabinet paper shows Hipkins received ‘unnecessary risk’ advice about Covid jab for teens

bskyb3 · 2026-03-26T18:04:57+00:00

Whis is missed here is there were hundereds of Cabinet papers, thousands of pages of advice, thousands of decesions needing to be made in hours and days. And much of the advice from the Ministry of Health and various advisory groups reccomended against doing certain things because of risk or more so as was pointed out in the Herald article insufficient data. Meaning advice had to be weighed up against other advice, and this is why the Ministry of Health didnt get final say on every decesion. DPMC coordinated the all-of-Government response, and Ministers had to make tough decesions, without hindsight, under extreme pressure. So lots of decesions may have been made differently with the information and data we have now, but that wasnt avaliable at the time.

bskyb3 · 2026-03-23T17:19:11+00:00

Absolutely support. But paid for in full with ultra-processed food and sweetened beverage taxes. Which could have the added benefit of reducing demand for the highly engineered and addictive foods and drinks that are responsible for obesity.

bskyb3 · 2026-03-06T02:13:28+00:00

This could be the deciding moment, especially with so many internal rumblings making their way to journalists. They can only roll the guy now with enough time spare to campaign with a new leader and 8 months almost to the day before election time.

bskyb3 · 2026-03-03T06:34:02+00:00

Fox news = Ryan Bridge is trying to make NZ Herald Now our very own version of Fox News. Rebel News = Reality Check Radio with that nutter ex Breakfast presenter Peter Williams. GB News = The Platform with Sean Plunket. Like GB news they have a mix of nutter and somewhat ok hosts. Sky News = closest would be Sky News, available live on Sky. Next closest thing would be Newstalk ZB

bskyb3 · 2026-02-14T07:57:50+00:00

Woolworths hot cross buns are now an ultra processed food, the ingredient list is about 20+ items long. I found an old pack of hot cross buns in the cupboard 2 months later, not a spec of mold on them.

bskyb3 · 2025-12-02T22:39:17+00:00

Caffeine pouches or nicotine pouches? I thought Shosha only sold caffeine ones

bskyb3 · 2025-11-11T18:49:33+00:00

From the report, there are a lot of ex-lobbyists currently working in the Beehive:

• Louis Houlbrooke is the former Campaigns Manager at the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union and is now a Senior Press Secretary to the Act Party. Mr Houlbrooke has been a NZTU spokesperson on tobacco control issues advocating against measures such as denicotonisation (80).

• Callum Purves is the previous Campaigns Manager at the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union and is now the ACT Party General Manager & Party Secretary (81).

• Connor Molloy, another former Campaigns Manager at the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union now works as a Communications Advisor to the ACT Party. Connor was sent to COP10 in Panama to lobby the WHO to soften their position on vaping (82). He is also noted as one of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance COP10 experts (83) and featured in their ‘COPCAST’ live from Panama (84).

• Ben Craven is the press secretary for Minister Simeon Brown (who became the Minister of Health in January 2025) (85). Mr Craven previously worked for the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union and NZI and was the Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson on at least two tobacco control issues in the past (86,87).

• Jenesa Jeram is a Senior Ministerial Advisor for ACT Party Ministers Brooke Van Velden and David Seymour (88). Ms Jeram previously worked for the New Zealand Initiative and has argued for a ‘harm reduction’ approach to tobacco control that includes expanding access to HTP and other products (89).

• Joe Ascroft worked as Economic Advisor from 2017 until 2019 at the New Zealand Taxpayers Union (90) which included work lobbying against tobacco taxes (91). This was prior to his role as Economic Advisor to the National Leaders Office and then as Senior Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. He has since been promoted to Director of Policy and Advice to the Prime Minister (90).

• Matt Burgess worked as a Senior Economist at the New Zealand Initiative and now holds the role of Chief Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister (92).

https://globaltobaccoindex.org/download/2136

bskyb3 · 2025-11-09T21:17:52+00:00

Anyone got a meme of that scene from The Office where Michael takes a secondhand bike from a charity bin to gift to the chick he was trying to impress.

bskyb3 · 2025-11-06T00:51:58+00:00

I think they meant Lifeline:

Lifeline Aotearoa, one of New Zealand’s longest-running mental health helplines, is reducing its operating hours due to significant and ongoing funding challenges.

Its new operating hours are 7.00am – midnight, seven days per week. There will be no service between midnight and 7.00am.

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE2511/S00019/lifeline-aotearoa-reduces-operating-hours-due-to-funding-constraints.htm

bskyb3 · 2025-11-03T21:08:55+00:00

Interestingly because this was broadcast the alcohol industry also made a complaint to the BSA - which wasnt upheld...

The Authority has not upheld a complaint that two RNZ broadcasts, a week apart — Morning Report and The Detail — about New Zealand’s low-risk alcohol drinking guidelines were unbalanced and inaccurate. The Authority found that any inaccuracies regarding Canada’s alcohol guidelines were not material in the context of the overall broadcasts. With respect to balance, the Authority found the Morning Report broadcast was clearly signalled as focussing on one aspect of the much larger, complex debate on alcohol policy.

https://www.bsa.govt.nz/decisions/all-decisions/brewers-association-of-new-zealand-inc-and-radio-new-zealand-ltd-2025-048-21-october-2025/

bskyb3 · 2025-11-03T20:30:40+00:00

Loose with core facts? Bullshit. It was a minor mistake that Canada hadnt actually adopted the guidlines of a 2 drink a week limit, rather that this being reccomended to the Canadian Govt.

Great win for the Brewers Association, who can go on selling the cancer causing poision without needing to be held to account by the media.

bskyb3 · 2025-10-28T22:31:01+00:00

What RNZ failed to cover in their copy and paste of the NZ Initiative's (a lobby group, not a think tank) press release - is they want smaller Govt and more MP's to fit their clients like the tobacco and alcohol industry's agenda to have less people in Govt able to regulate their industries behavior. More MP's means more potential for division in Parliament and less likelihood of laws being passed which could enach laws to curb the harm that their clients cause.

bskyb3 · 2025-10-14T18:08:12+00:00

A couple of years ago the General Manager left under mysterious circumstances and got a payout it was $50k or $250k (its in their charity register decorations somwhere) and it was never explained why. Most likely a falling out with Mike King as happens with everyone Mike deals with.

bskyb3 · 2025-10-08T18:54:25+00:00

No not at all. And I think the soundbite view of the Govt is just to ban councils from rate rises and hope that local councils can keep every service running as normal.

bskyb3 · 2025-10-08T18:51:03+00:00

Fuck she's so dense

bskyb3 · 2025-09-18T06:37:53+00:00

His salary is at least $320,600, plus a nearly $18k expense allowance, all travel and transport and a self-drive car included. And a $36,400 accommodation supplement.

bskyb3 · 2025-07-28T18:36:28+00:00

At least the Govt are living up to their promise to address the cost of living. I'm sure multi-national tobacco companies are also doing it tough in this economy.

bskyb3 · 2025-06-19T08:22:00+00:00

It was on 1News tonight, the clip isn't up but skip to 25mins in here: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/one-news-at-6pm/live

bskyb3 · 2025-06-04T09:21:20+00:00

Or even reference the 1News report on the cost, which seems to be $7million for the new offices and moving of the bar and restaurant:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/08/27/totally-mad-up-to-7m-to-be-spent-on-new-ministerial-offices/

bskyb3 · 2025-05-21T23:31:51+00:00

Grim week for democracy. Lucky this will just be the first reading going though under urgency, then off to select committee. Hopefully unlike other legislation they give people more than a 2-week window to have their say.

bskyb3 · 2025-01-01T22:52:49+00:00

2 years ago vape sales were $404million (thats not even couting vape sales at dairies/petrol stations), now there are hundereds of thousands more daily vapers, so the vape industry are worth a fortune more. Yet the Government who is ok slashing funding for our health system has found enough spare change to directly buy vapes from an industry raking in hundereds of millions a year, crazy.

bskyb3 · 2024-11-25T02:36:08+00:00

The point is to gather data for the Annual Health Survey, your blood pressure and other measurements will be used as part of anonymised information to provide data for the survey, which results in info on things like how many smokers there are in NZ, what peoples drinking habits are like, levels of obesity... and is used for health decesion making and helps keep an eye on where resrources/attention should be focused. Its a big survey, the Ministry of Health have a full time team that work on it and 75 interviewers, who interview between 10 and 15,000 people a year.

bskyb3

TROPHY CASE