Alternative Aotearoa LIVE STREAM

1. This guy doesn’t look lazy and drugged out… increasingly it looks like we were sold a pup of worker shortages, and we have the opposite too many local people can’t get work due to worker discrimination like age and minor disabilities being highly active in NZ.

   Farmworker takes novel approach to job hunting
   https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rural/2020/07/farmworker-takes-novel-approach-to-job-hunting.html

2. This morning has been riveting and deeply moving.
   It’s really at least a week’s worth of speakers packed into one day.

   • Are you there too @Kheala? I’ve had to pop out from time to time having just had some surgery, but bloody brilliant. Standouts Efeso Collins; Mike Treen and Anu Kaloti so far. (Nanna nap then a return).

     The feeling I get, not just from those at the Marae but in the surroundings is that people do not want BAU.

     • No I’m live-streaming, but can hardly move from the screen.
       (Had heaps to do too, so I thought, but … this overrides all and everything!)

3. Mike Treen is ON FIRE!

4. ‘Alternative Aotearoa’ aye?
   I see.
   But before we can have an alternative AO we must surely first have alternative AO/NZ’er’s.
   Our country is the sum of its parts and its parts are a bit fucked.
   Look around? What a dismal little dump, really. No. Really. Lets not pretend. AO/NZ’s entirely unimaginative. I mean, look at Rolleston for example? It used to be touted as the ‘Town of the Future’ until someone wisely chiseled the phrase off the head stone-esque thing at the gates into the compound. And like all good cancers, the Town of the Future’s metastasising cells have spread to all regions of AO/NZ. To the surrounding neighbourhoods, to Rangiora, Leeston, to Ashburton, Timaru, Oamaru, Queenstown! OMG Queenstown? Of a quiet evening one can hear the haemorrhoids rustling. Oceans of grey roofs and the ubiquitous stone fence with the rustic fucking gates leading into a stone clad faux rustic house where one of one of the many caveats to occupation is you can’t hang out your fucking washing. I doubt very much that one could dry off one’s dildo and arse plug on the sill of the designer triple glazed window placed to capitalise on the views either.
   ” That hill across the lake is Cecil Peak dahling. Wonnerful init? ( The gin’s seeking your brain stem.)
   N’ now? One long year later, it’s just an annoying fucking thing that gets in the way of a little more winter sun and then there’s that mortgage payment. That $5 k fortnightly mortgage payment!
   Lets start with our largest city, Auckland?
   It’s not much more than a church to money. Its pint sized attempts at high rise buildings give way to bleak streets only populated by P addict street walkers and homeless people after the shops close and lets face it, it’s allll about the shopping.
   Hamilton is the same thing.
   The best thing about Wellington is the tip shop and while the little frilly houses of Wellington’s suburbs are charming enough they’re also ‘worth’ millions so if one tries to live in one of them as a ‘home’, they’re really simply living in debt tombs and the only way the inhabitants will dodge the mortgage payments is when they die. And even then that might not work because how do we know God’s not got an email address?
   You’re dead. Whew! Finally. You got your harp, you got your cloud, you’re surrounded by the angel’s of your dead pets and a fucking email comes in threatening foreclosure from some bankster! Back you go… to get that hallowed job…
   Nelson? In the middle of nowhere and you’d be surrounded by old fat rich white curtain twitcher people.
   Christchurch. Poor old CH CH.
   Ch Ch had everything going for it. Mountains to the West, oceans to the East, a fantastic climate, the wonderful, funky little alternative Port town of Lyttelton, within a beautiful range of hills built by volcanos and fringed with bays and beaches and the post 1980’s nouveau riche neoliberals fucked it. Then, of course there was the small matter of more than 18,000 earthquakes but that wasn’t what fucked Ch Ch, the earthquakes simply made Ch Ch feel interesting again.
   What fucked Ch Ch was a general and mind dulling complacency quickly capitalised on by rich, cunning scunthorpes. We Ch Ch people rolled over on to our backs, happy to enjoy all that Ch Ch was and while we were dozing in the sun, the rats ran in and ate the Tuatara.
   RNZ
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/421917/rat-sneaks-in-kills-30-year-old-tuatara-at-southland-museum
   If one were to reasonably expect an ‘alternative’ AO/NZ? We, us AO/NZ’ers must first become ‘alternative’ and while the rats are eating the Tuatara without resistance that’s not happening.
   I think it’s time we Tuatara ate the rats.
   Before Alternative AO/NZ ? Mandatory voting. After Alternative AO/NZ? Mandatory voting.
   Oh! Oh! Speaking of rats… Future Man.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Man_(TV_series)
   Either Netflix or Lightbox which is now Neon. Can’t remember where or which.
   P.S.
   We don’t need a new political party. We already have too many of the useless fucking things, and they’re expensive. What we urgently require is for us to be forced, initially, to engage in our priceless democracy so the first thing we must [get] is mandatory voting. Then? We can make an already established bureaucracy work for us, not the other way around as we’re currently ‘enjoying’ although I must reluctantly admit, Labour seems to have remembered to take its med’s while national just keeps sucking on the glass barbi.

   • Shame you couldn’t have come @ Countryboy. It might have given you a bolster – and not in a hopey changey changey sort of way.
     You were definitely there in spirit though with the same sort of concerns you have being expressed
     “What we urgently require is for us to be forced, initially, to engage in our priceless democracy….” which is what most people there were trying to do. (It’s actually under threat if we keep doing what we’ve been doing)

   • They have mandatory voting in Australia .I was there last year at the election time. Wall to wall adverts in the paper paid for by a business man call Hancock A man who despite not paying his staff had $50 million to spend on adverts against labour. In the end he did not win one seat but he killed Labour and Morrison won who then allowed the mine venture owned by Hancock to go ahead. Be careful what you wish for.

5. My goodness I agree with you on one thing – and I am at pipitea marae listening to some stunning speakers.

   I want compulsory voting BUT we must have a no confidence option, otherwise people are going to be having to vote for shit mostly.

6. Mike Joy was the shinning truth of where we need to go. Great stuff Mike.

7. I was glued to the screen for 8 hours, so encouraged by the strong presentations, and the overall message. Both Maori and Pasifika young women were awesome. While it is important to look ahead we have to accept the challenge of how we get change while stuck in the democratic model we have. At least we have got MMP but we could make it work better than we do if only people would get past their entrenched loyalties to the Labour Party. Making plans to work outside the voting system is great but not an alternative to voting when we hear of those 1990s Acts which have to be repealed now. I believe the players in some ministries like MBI and MPI are the block, they have continuity even though the government changes. Thank uou John amd Bronewen and all thoose who contributed to the day. tis is a wonderful resource which I will be promoting when it comes on line.

   • Yes, Massive ‘Thank You’ to all who made this happen, and to all who were there.

8. Subtle, so subtle.

9. If it were possible to run this annually at around the time of Matariki, that would be so fantastic. It would be great over a full weekend, too. Maybe with local musos in the lunch breaks? It’s a Matariki celebration of minds and hearts, of insight and inspiration. And when it’s held regularly, it is like a heart beating again.

   • low crowd numbers and low duration can be put squarely down to corona. No gathering over a hundy, correct?

     • I’m not sure that we need bigger live crowds so much anyway. We can all ‘be there’ online. (Don’cha reckon?)

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