Wow. Look at that, a trade war that was threatened weeks ago turns out to be true despite the excuses the Government deployed at the time of being asked questions about it…
Zespri supends all Kiwifruit shipments to China
In a move to “weather tighten” shipments of Kiwifruit to China, Zespri has temporarily halted all exports there.
It comes after Chinese authorities tightened its quarantine of Kiwifruit imports into the country, last week.
Chinese border control agency AQSIQ issued a risk notification saying shipments had been found carrying a fungus that could cause fruit to rot in storage.
…and more dodgy Chinese steel is turning up in our infrastructure…
Steel for Huntly bypass bridges fails testÂ
Sixteen hundred tonnes of steel from China has been found to be too weak for four bridges on the $450 million Huntly bypass that forms part of the $2 billion Waikato Expressway.
Contractors building the ‘Road of National Significance’ chose a very low bid for the steel tubes.
But the test certificates for them have turned out to be wrong, and now an expensive fix-up job is under way.
The contractors, Fulton Hogan and HEB Construction, have admitted to RNZ News the steel tubes were not good enough. They did not comply with standards for structural steel, which for bridges were very high as they must resist impacts, heavy loads and low temperatures.
It was only after a third lot of testing that the contractors found out. The first tests were done in China by the steel mill and the tube manufacturer; it is understood the second tests were done in New Zealand on samples sent here from China.
Both lots of tests said the steel met the New Zealand standard.
As for the third testing, there are two versions of events. The contractors and the New Zealand Transport Agency say that, following established quality control processes, they tested the tubes after they arrived and immediately found out the steel was no good.
But RNZ News has been told it was only when workers began pounding the tubes into the ground, and the steel ballooned on the ends, that tests were done by an accredited laboratory.
…so the Chinese lied about the steel and being the skint arses we are, we didn’t even know about this until the workers started building with it???
We have EVERY right to question this farce by the Chinese, yet for doing so they have started a trade war they threatened months ago.
The tensions from the top are impacting those who are at the very production point of these trade deals. The 5 Kiwifruit pickers who died on a road where the Government hasn’t invested in the infrastructure this new market demands helps highlight the interconnectedness of these trade deals with the lives of those who have to fulfil them.
NZ faces some very rough economic times if China decides to make an example of us for questioning the quality of their mass produced cheapest capitalism model exports they have dumped upon us, and the NZ public seems ill aware of the ramifications.
I’m still trying to figure out why our friends at the Herald won’t report on the dodgy unsafe steel in the Waterview Connection, Huntly Bypass etc.
How can this NOT be news for Auckland’s daily newspaper and associated website?
Their “reporting” of the trade threats from China have been no more informative than the National Party press statements they heavily resemble. In fact, with the escalation of this story, they have dug themselves a hole out of wilful nativity, and been forced to contort their coverage around their own obtuse denial.
So, who are the NZ Herald protecting here? The NZ Government? The Chinese Government? Both? Whoever they are working for, it’s perfectly clear they have abdicated any responsibility to the long suffering New Zealanders who read their publication.
Well put Neil.
Msm in general has abdicated its journalistic professionalism of acting as the proxy of the people. Protecting John Key and his dodgy government at all cost, regardless of the consequences, seems to be the sole purpose and raison d’etre of msm now.
The Key siblings flaunting themselves in the public arena, along with other useless fluff pieces, becomes msm’s main focus, when there are important issues which need to be addresses with honest answers.
Not much hope is there, when mainstream media has sold its soul to satisfy the devil (one JP Key)?
NZ Heralds main correspondent writer expert is Fran O’Sullivan.
Hardly impartial and hard hitting. She also comes across as Nationals sidekick on many P.M. visits to China, as someone loving the adulation of the P.M.
Do you really believe we will get any negative reports on trade between China and N.Z. from the N.Z. Herald.
The Nation is a hard watch with Fran on the panel.
Well, what is really “important” to the MSM?
Watch the TV news and we know:
The weather,
traffic jams or accidents,
the Olympics and sports generally,
celebrity gossip,
the Royals,
the newest app for i-phone, other smart phones or computers,
what is the newest fad in town,
who has said what (politicians), and who said the opposite,
market news (interest rates, dollar value, stocks up or down),
what Donald Trump tweeted and what Hillary tweeted back,
whether to allow some new food additive or not,
and lest we forget, the so important endless commercial ads and previews of programs to come later.
Investigative journalism, not easily found,
true news, limited to the above,
and for the rest, nothing really worth reporting.
Oh, I forgot to mention CRIME, one of the most “important” news these days, ensuring adrenaline rush and very emotive discussions to follow, and add the consequential court hearings revealing how nasty some people are. This always rates at the top.
The Herald is an Australian entity called APN News & Media , it’s major shareholder is Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited . APN News & Media Limited is an Australian and New Zealand[1] media company. Divisions include newspaper publishing, online publishing, broadcast radio and outdoor advertising in Australia and New Zealand. APN’s two largest shareholders are the Australian fund manager Allan Gray Australia[2] and Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APN_News_%26_Media
Wait till we have structures collapse as a result of dodgy steel. Then the shit will hit the fan.
Bad news if you are in the building when it collapses.
Cant sue , no redress, lots of hand wringing, and we-you were warned.
Will make the leaky buildings look like a sunday picnic.
Life insurance a must.
Now, I would not rush to conclusions, the fungus may have been there, and the Chinese may be right in taking some precautionary action. But what I heard on RNZ the other day (it may have been on their rural news, which hardly anybody here would listen to), it said, that the particular type of fungus was common, and found in various parts of the world.
So this is not a major incident, as it seems, and the Chinese authorities may well be over-reacting.
But let us be totally honest, this was a likely scenario to happen at any time anyway, as it so often does with trading nations. Especially large trading partners such as China will ALWAYS have the stronger arms and more clout, than a smallish trading nation like New Zealand.
This is why I always treat all the hyped up talk about the benefits of FTAs with a grain of salt and great caution. We are usually sold PROPAGANDA by the vested interest parties, who are desperate to make money, to sell stuff and make profits.
So they make all kinds of compromises, in human rights, in environmental standards, in labour laws and so forth, and simply look for that perk or benefit for themselves, which for business is the turnover growth and likely increased profits.
Nations have their certain, varying degrees of autonomy, their authorities, their own laws and vested interests also. Hence China looks after its interests, it is NOT compassionate with New Zealand, as it takes us only as an opportunity to expand trade and INFLUENCE, and to buy its way into our economy, which means, being able to flex a muscle when something that it cares about is not supported by us.
All else is just naive BS, or blatant dishonesty.
This scenario now with Zespri and kiwifruit was bound to happen, and more of it will happen, at any time, and it shows again how dependent our gold digger mentality opportunist business players and government have made us again. Once they criticised the dependence on the Motherland (after 1973) and told us we need to diversify, but with China they made the mistake of growing too much trade with that one nation, while we should look at doing trade with many other nations also, and never become overly reliant on exports and imports to and from one place.
“So they make all kinds of compromises, in human rights, in environmental standards, in labour laws and so forth, and simply look for that perk or benefit for themselves, which for business is the turnover growth and likely increased profits.”
If the neo-liberal coup was only about self-interest, it would be possible to convince them that real free trade protected by real democracy served their self-interest better than globalized corporate rule. The more intractable problem is the deep ideology of neo-liberalism, that set of philosophical contortions by which Any Rand et al convinced their followers that narrow selfishness is the best way to achieve the greater good of the greater number, and thus the highest moral code. No doubt there are a handful of sociopaths who will seek to profit from whatever happens, but most neo-liberals I’ve debated are as genuine in their belief in their ideology as neo-socialists, and ideology is stubbornly immune to being corrected by observable facts. Thus “there is no housing crisis” because its impossible, ideologically speaking, that one could insist where there is a free market in property and selfish speculation by investors.
“Done on the cheap eh?”
“When will they ever learn!”
“You cant get blood out of a stone”
“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well”
These were all my fathers saying when he was training me up to be a worker when I was 15 yr’s old heading into the world of a tradesman Electrician.
Pity today 57years later, the lesson was lost on those loose Bruce characters who run the Nactional regime today.
They are destroying our name;
*With dirty milk products, to much BPA (plastics) Infant formula.
*Bottled water shipment July 2016, (samples found in a shipment sent back recently from China when it found to high levels of phosphate) levels in it.
*Credulity to calves, and pigs, graphic video footage. All publically media circulated. Then caged chickens.
How much more can we allow to show we are not clean green here at all until we do the right thing and stop pushing for productivity over good practice. “No more cutting corners here please”.
Yes the Chinese are shrewd operators to and that makes the argument even stronger now, to offer a better cleaner, environmentally, socially, responsible best practice way of producing what we pride ourselves on, in the hope of again being globally respected as we were back in the 1960’s.
Oh I forgot
*The cattle pollution and spoiling the pristine southern lakes, and the cattle all owned by a well heeled Nactional insider to boot, with no reprimand?
“Loose Bruce” Luv it lol
This is not the first time China has “flexed” it’s economic muscle with us.
As I reported three years ago;
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/whats-the-beef-guv/
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/taiwan-fta-confirmation-by-tvnz-of-china-pressuring-the-beehive/
On that occassion, New Zealand was negotiating a free trade agreement with Taiwan – which Mainland China views as a “breakaway province”. Completing a FTA with Taiwan would, in effect, constitute a de facto recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state.
Hell would freeze over before mainland China permitted this to happen.
We are a small state with an export-focused economy, and thus highly vulnerable to super-power machinations.
We wouldn’t accept this politically from our American cuzzies (over a nuclear-free position), but it seems economically we have been bent over and well-lubed for a right rogering by our mates in Beijing. (Apologies for bad taste visuals – but it seems the most apt description.)
This is where our dependence on China has brought us.
It seems we learned nothing from our dependence on Mother England, after the UK joined the EEC in 1973, throwing us to the economic wilderness.
Excellent analysis there, Frank. Well spotted on those previous incidents!
Zespri needs to get Judith Collins on the case. One nudge and a wink to the AQSIQ bloke from her over “a cup of tea on the way to the airport” was all it took to fix the problem for Oravida…
Well, imo the Chinese officials may go as far as demand Judith Collins do a belly dance or whatever else, before they may change their minds. I would look forward to that happening, and the Instragram pics coming with it.
Collins is over-rated, she is presently only a back bench MP and has limited influence as a returned Minister.
She has been much more careful with her words and promises, and her links to Oravida we know, she will kowtow no matter what, to please her Chinese paymasters, as that is where the butter on her bread comes from.
Shocking and predictable outcomes both for the faked steel and trade being used in retaliatory action.
NZ needs to have a plan B to trade, start by having a diversified portfolio of exports and diversified trade partners.
Forget about free trade deals, they are just throwing exporters under the bus, with crippled and indebted farmers who were fed a tale about more cows = more money, dangerous infrastructure being built at a time when we have massive climatic shifts and using immigration and borrowing to pretend all is well. The ponzi free trade scheme have been revealed.
TPPA NO WAY.
+100 SAVE NZ
The sooner that NZ has NOTHING to do with the world’s largest dictatorshit the better. NOTHING. Zip. Zero. Zilch. The dictatorshit will ruin our country and colonise it.Already under way
The problem is, having allowed neolibtard ideology to almost totally dismantle our manufacturing sector we are almost utterly dependent upon China.
Sweatshop foreign labour and artificially low priced imported product keep us from seeing what we have become.
The housing crisis is the first plainly visible tip of a rising iceberg.
Very true that CASTRO 100%
+100 CASTRO
Bingo Castro. Hit-Nail-On-head there.
Conflating the deaths of Tongan kiwifruit indentured labourers with poor quality Chinese steel is not a good way to go. If the quality of Chinese steel is in doubt then that should be resolved by the affected parties who have to build highways to an acceptable NZ standard.
Kiwifruit should meet the Chinese import standards. If they do not then we will just have to find a more accommodating market. I know all sorts of trade chicanery goes on but demonizing the Chinese in this respect is unfair. What about Australian imports of NZ apples. After being totally defeated in the WTO they still manage to create conditions on NZ apples that make exports to Auistralia totally uneconomic. Oh yeah. The Australians look like us therefore its ok.
Thank you for your comment Ian.
I actually think the boom in trade with China that sees them dumping weak steel in NZ and requires us to pay indentured workers to cope with the demand in kiwifruit isn’t conflating the situation at all – they are interconnected. This Government has done bugger all to help urban infrastructure live up to the mass immigration policies (hence the housing crisis) and National have done bugger all to invest in regional infrastructure – that lack of vision has come at a cost.
The examples I make are of that cost.
As to your other points – China doesn’t want to admit or knowledge any problem with their steel because they have dumped a glut of this crap on global markets, and if NZs application to the WTO goes ahead, China loses face to a tiny Pacific Nation at a time they are wanting dominance over the Pacific. You are ignoring the geopolitical realities occurring in our neighbourhood to make your point. You are pretending that the Kiwifruit ban and the threat over the steel are not connected.
In terms of the fucking Australians. You are right, those pricks have stopped us having our apples in their country for years because their shitty apples can’t compete with our wonderful ones. Not only does Australia deny our apples access, they stop Air NZ from flying domestic in Australia and they deny our citizens welfare and they jail our citizens in their detention camps.
So fuck the Australians quite frankly Ian.
Quick smiley face 🙂
New Zealanders are one of the most skint arsed nationalities in the world. We’ve made a fine art out of always going for the lowest price rather than value for money. New Zealanders will spend $60 on petrol to save $10 on their groceries. Purchases have to be justified by the amazingly low price more than the product or service itself.
New Zealanders are one of the most skint arsed nationalities in the world.
Yes, I remember reading a newspaper article in Australia more than 28 years ago that said NZ companies had a reputation for sharp practice when tendering for projects. NZ was known for submitting low priced initial tenders and later loading them up after they were accepted.
We didn’t used to be like that. This is a modern post-1984 New Zealand where the important things in life are well………obviously not so important now. Things like family, quality of life, helping one another, equality and sticking up for the underdog, having enough food and somewhere warm to sleep at night.
Remember we were the small nation at the bottom of the world that defied the mighty USA and won international respect over nuclear ships, and the Americans still have not completely forgiven for that.
Seems such a long time ago, doesn’t it? The days when New Zealanders were proud of their country, proud of their essentially good natured outlook on everything and everyone.
Now we bring in foreign workers on dodgy visas because we don’t want to pay our own workers properly. We criticize the human rights records of the same countries that we clamour to sign trade deals with. We tell the rest of the world to stop producing so much carbon when our own carbon emissions rates keep on rising. We allow our closest neighbour and bosom buddy Australia to illegally ill-treat and imprison our citizens with barely a murmur of protest. We allow so many of our people to sleep in cold cars and garages and then tell them it is their fault they can’t do any better.
What a sad, f…d parody of a democratic state New Zealand has become.
Now I am sure I will be denounced as a traitor, like any New Zealander who says the truth about his country.
I don’t care. I will keep on saying it.
I still don’t understand this mass immigration into NZ especially Auckland when we do not have the housing or infrastructure to support the people coming into NZ?
I still don’t understand this mass immigration into NZ especially Auckland when we do not have the housing or infrastructure to support the people coming into NZ?
Well, maybe it is due to the government desperately trying to keep that growth mantra alive and “proved”, by having some sort of “growth”, no matter where it comes from? I was at least surprised to hear Steven (Goebbels) Joice admit to Corin Dann on Q+A this morning, that we did over the last year only have about 0.5 percent growth per capita, which is the growth that matters.
They often go on about growth in nominal numbers all over the place, but do not give us the true, per capita or inflation or otherwise adjusted figures.
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/jobs-wages-migrants-leadership-steven-joyce-video-6485554
As most immigrants prefer to move to Auckland, as there are communities they can relate to.
There is not all that much else happening, besides of tourism, education exports and some niche market exports, so without population growth we would have a stagnant or recession kind of economy.
Never mind the consequences seems to be the government’s view.
More consumers more profit for business more expenses for the infrastructure paid by the rest.
Economies with static population fare the best long term overall.
But Business NZ is largely a transnational mix with foreign control by investors who have no interest in NZ just profit.
Maybe Judith Collins could negotiate for us
Maybe Judith Collins could negotiate for us
Judith Collins? All I can say is…
Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!!!
If contributors on this site are fortunate enough to get Aljazeera on TV there is a great programme called “Listening Post” which deals with the media worldwide and the machinations that on go with it. How journalists have been culled out of MSM and how the truth is no longer the business of newspapers today. It is disheartening to watch it but worthy, just to be reminded of how the MSM is rubbish today and propaganda for the governments/big businesses of this world. It is left to the courage of the whistle blower and the journalists who are imprisoned world-wide for truth seeking.
NZ media Martyn? What’s that?
Mary A, I think we used to have one. Back in the pre-1980s. I used to peek at Dad’s back-issues of THE EVENING POST he kept under his bed. Wow! Those were the days of serious journalism!!
[…] Which is exactly what has just fucking happened to Zespri!!! […]
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