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Jacinda Arden quoted in the UK Express saying that she expects New Zealand will become a republic in her lifetime. Crude timing, Ardern. She also says that no one has raised this with her directly, that she can recall. What’s she on about then ?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/474704/kawerau-paper-mill-owners-pull-legal-action-against-workers
The Pulp and Paper Workers’ Union at Kawerau is to consider a pay offer from the mill owner.
Essity has made the offer after several days of Employment Relations Authority facilitated negotiations.
Union secretary Tane Phillips said its members would discuss the deal tomorrow morning.
There have been 145 workers locked out without pay since 9 August.
The Swedish owned company hopes to resume production at the mill on Thursday.
It has withdrawn all legal claims against the union.
Now we will see, if there can be agreement suitable for both.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/474662/covid-19-travellers-likely-to-become-main-driver-of-pandemic-in-new-zealand-says-michael-baker
Baker told Morning Report that as community cases in the country dropped, travellers were likely to become the main driver of spread of the virus.
“If you have at the moment maybe 100 people a day arriving with this virus, and potentially seeding across the country, that actually becomes one of the factors that sustains transmission in New Zealand and obviously the source of new variants,” Baker said.
“I think we need to look at whether we should have a vaccination requirement for travellers, whether we should use testing technology, which is now getting very effective, as part of the arrival process into New Zealand,” he said.
“There’s a lot of things we can do, and I think we shouldn’t just abandon all controls at the borders….
“The whole genome sequencing now is a great tool, but it does depend on the ability to sample people who are infected and that has now dropped, that ability, because there will be fewer testing of people in New Zealand because of the loosening of testing requirements.”
Baker believed there needed to be a successor to the traffic light and alert level systems in preparation for the current pandemic’s next challenges and because “the evidence is that pandemics, unfortunately, are becoming more common at the moment”.
“We should be planning for having a potential rise in cases at some point in the next six months.
“And so that’s why my main concern with the change is that we’re not retaining some kind of way of categorising the level of risk and having a proportional response….
…All government vaccine mandates are set to end in two weeks on 26 September – any vaccine requirements would be at the discretion of employers.
Baker said this was a problematic area for the health system in particular and its workers.
“It’s an occupational health and safety requirement that we should look after all our workers, and we know health care workers have been very vulnerable during the pandemic,” he said.