Three Waters

Some of you may be unaware of the nefarious attempts to destroy New Zealand democracy through a model of 50:50 cogovernance based on race. If you are unaware, you really need to check out Hobson’s Pledge, a group that has been maligned by the usual suspects as being racist for…..not being racist and wanting a true democracy where power is not based on one’s ethnic lineage.

Below I am republishing their latest email in full. I suggest getting on their newsletter list and supporting them.

The Three Waters $120B grab – what you’re not being told

The three waters are drinking water, wastewater and stormwater. The Three Waters Plan (that you may have seen advertisements for) is a tricky co-governance plan for central government to get control of our assets which are managed by our local councils. After more than 60 iwi-only meetings, the Government and tribal leaders have divided New Zealand into four massive, unwieldy zones. Each zone will take ownership and control of our water and water-related infrastructure.


Who will be in control?

Each zone will have a mega agency, managed 50:50 by tribal and council appointees on a 12-member board. For instance, the 20 local authorities in the South Island entity will have only six seats in total, despite contributing all infrastructure. One tribe there will have the other six seats. Those tribal representatives will, in effect, have a veto over what your community gets and pays as 75% of the board must agree on all decisions.

Is co-governance a fair structure?

Based on the performance of existing co-governance entities, no they’re not. The public representatives have nothing at stake, so choose an easy life, taking their pay while agreeing to whatever the tribal appointees demand. And demand they do, often in an intimidating way.

How does this affect you?

Each water agency will decide what services you get or not, how well pipes are maintained or not, how quickly repairs are done or not, and where new infrastructure will be built or not. Most importantly, they will decide how much you pay, whether you receive any benefit or not. Private landowners, businesses and farms will be vulnerable to tribal agendas and conflicts of interest.

Will the board be answerable to you?

No. Board members are not elected. There is no way to challenge them, to make them accountable, to avoid conflicts of interest, or to remedy poor decision-making or damage done.

Will councils be paid for assets we ratepayers funded?

No. The Government will borrow money to settle any Council debt on existing water infrastructure, but they won’t buy the asset. They’ll simply confiscate billions of dollars of value, paid for by generations of ratepayers. Councils will no longer have water infrastructure as an asset to use as security for borrowing. This will undermine council viability.


The Government claims improved water services. Is this credible?

No it’s not. Independent experts have reviewed government’s estimates of cost reductions and say the figures are “founded on unsound evidence and faulty analysis” (Castalia) and “should not be relied on to project actual expenditure, revenue and pricing outcomes” (Farrier).

Are councils in favour of Three Waters?
Councils have less than two weeks to decide. Many are saying “NO” to Three Waters, many are so far sitting on the fence, some are in favour. Cash-strapped councils are being pressured by financial inducements from central government to support the confiscation.

Do councils have to consult with their communities?

Councils are legally bound to consult ratepayers over major decisions on water. Unfortunately, the Government’s determination suggests they may pass special legislation to nullify this democratic requirement.

Why do some call this a silent ‘revolution’?

It fits.  The Government’s Three Waters proposal involves the dismantling of our democracy, the denial of access by individuals to decision-makers, and the loss of accountability to affected communities.

YOU CAN HELP –

  1. Demand a referendum. Please contact your councillor today or tomorrow and demand a right to vote on whether or not your community wants to give your three waters infrastructure to central government, to be managed by just six council representatives (from all the councils in your water zone) and six iwi appointees.
  2. Copy this page and deliver into letter boxes in your neighbourhood or email to others.

NOTE: Three Waters is part of the He Puapua plan to set up two governments for New Zealand, one by Maori for Maori, and the other, a fully bicultural government for everyone else. This system would be subject to a tribal monitoring committee.

From the Archives #2

Since we have so many new readers, we are going to bring out old posts from the archives to help you find your feet and get a feel for The Sojournal. Today, we encourage you to check out our imaginary conversation between a first-century Christian Jew and a modern Western Christian on the subject of Christian education: Levi and Mike Discuss Education.

The New Androgyny

Mary Eberstadt is a Catholic author and social commentator who has written a number of great books including Home Alone America, How the West Lost God and her latest book, Primal Screams. If you have never read any of her work before, I’d highly recommend you grab a book of hers from the library.

Primal Screams has the subtitle, “How the sexual revolution created identity politics”. It’s well worth a read. She makes a number of interesting points throughout, but her comments on a section looking at the new androgyny were particularly interesting.

“The bedrock fact is that today’s women are continually given the message that they must perform like men – that men are the standard by which women should be measured.” Obviously, this disadvantages most women, because. unsurprisingly, women are not as good at being men as men! Most women, she rightly points out, cannot compete with men on male terms – ‘sexually, athletically, professionally or otherwise’. She suggests that our view of a successful woman has become the kind of woman how behaves most like a man, and a ‘beta woman’ is one who does not. Women who act like men are rewarded, and those who persist in traditional female roles – ‘marrying, raising a family of size, devoting time and talent to what used to be called domestic arts‘ are viewed with disdain.

As Christians, we ought to celebrate the distinctive designs of men and women and a woman’s special role as nurturer. We ought to challenge the secular paradigm that only one sex is needed and that success for a woman ought to look like success for a man. This is patently untrue and is a denial of creation design. God created Eve because he wanted women in his world. As male and female mankind images God. It is good and right for a woman to attend to the domestic arts and create a haven for her family as a wife and mother. We should celebrate this, and present the superiority of God’s design for families in our joyous, fruitful and serene family life.

Welcome!

We’ve noticed increased traffic in recent months which suggests there are a few more regular readers. Welcome.

You can expect to see a new post every weekday, and often one on the weekends also.

This Thursday we are introducing another writer for Sojournal, Ethan Aloiai, the Maga hat wearing teacher who drove the New Zealand left into a frenzy after his appearance at a 2020 BLM protest. This led to an attempted cancellation by the ever tolerant and open-minded David Farrier (among others) who couldn’t handle people supporting Ethan on his blog site so he mass-banned them. Fair enough, his website and all. However, what is outrageous was the degree of his antagonism which was seen in his attempt to get Ethan censured by the Teaching Council. Apparently we cannot tolerate a man with different views to David teaching children at an independent school which people choose and pay money for because they don’t want the kind of schools David approves of. That’s the totaleftarians for you. They don’t have an argument. They only have cancellations and force.

This has been a spectacular example of an ‘own goal’. Because of the egregious attempts at destroying him, Ethan has now been featured on Talanoa Sa’o with excellent commentary on education in New Zealand. He is also becoming well-known in Christian education for his expertise in critical theory. Ethan Aloiai is arguably New Zealand’s foremost expert on critical theory and its dangers, and we are really excited to have him on board with Sojournal! Look out for his first post, highlighting his conversion therapy bill submission which will feature on Thursday at 9:00.

Blasphemy and the New god Tolerance

Cancel culture. Outrage. Twitter mob. Disinvited. Doxing. This is the world we now live in. One false move and you could be history. The mob could be unleashed and your family and workplace targeted. So what do you do? You shut up and make sure to the best of your ability you don’t say certain things out loud, or at least not outside of certain ‘safe’ acquaintances.

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay 

Blasphemy is not a common word these days. But amongst religious people, some knowledge of the concept still exists. When I was growing up, I was taught never to say, “Oh my God!” as an exclamation, and “Jesus Christ!” would have certainly been frowned upon. Not so much today.

What you can or can’t say tells you a lot about the faith of a people. Refusal to say God’s name in an irreverent manner, or to use Jesus as a swear word, indicates an acknowledgement of the worth and value of God and his Son Christ. It is to acknowledge that God exists and that He is special and deserving of reverence and awe. Further, it is an acknowledgement that God rules through his Son Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and that that Son will judge every human being for every idle word they have spoken.

Despite the word blasphemy having fallen from common use, we still have the concept in our modern world. We now use the term ‘hate speech’. This is speech that offends our modern sensibilities. What counts as blasphemy indicates the object of a society’s worship. Yes, modern though we be, our society still worships. So what do the new blasphemies tell us? They tell us we have replaced the Lord of all with a new false god whose name is Tolerance.

And the strange thing about this new god is that unlike the LORD God, Tolerance’s rules are endless and onerous. One thing we can no longer safely say is “men aren’t women“! This is modern blasphemy. Thou shalt not deny that gender is a social construct, for Tolerance thy god shall not hold him/her/zir/xer guiltless who denies this.

But Tolerance is a difficult god to serve. One can know where one stands with the LORD God. He at least is the same yesterday, today and forever. Tolerance, on the other hand, is fickle. Fifteen years ago, it was permissible, and even redundant to state ‘men aren’t women’. Today it is evil. And unfortunately for his/her/zirs/xyrs servants, Tolerance’s changes in morality are retroactively applied. Woe betide any servant of Tolerance whose past behaviour, despite being morally acceptable at the time, is found in the future to be sinful. They shall never enter his/her/zirs/xyrs rest. One cannot go to Tolerance’s throne of grace and apply for mercy because there is no throne of grace, only judgment in our time of need.

It’s a strange thing that our god Tolerance is not very patient with our failures. In fact, he/she/xe/ze seems rather intolerant.

Seven Myths About Education – Part 5

In recent posts we have been looking at Daisy Christodoulou’s book, Seven Myths About Education. In our previous post we looked at the myth that students can always just look up what they don’t know.

Myth 5: We should teach transferable skills

Today we are investigating the myth of transferable skills.

So what are transferable skills? As the name suggests, they are skills that can be transferred to different settings. And like the other myths, there is a certain attraction to this myth. What educator does not want students to develop skills that can be utilised in multiple areas?

Where do we see this myth?

So what does this myth look like? Christodoulou quotes Professor Gary Claxton, “…knowledge is changing so fast that we cannot give young people what they will need to know because we do not know what it will be. Instead we should be helping them develop supple and nimble minds, so that they will be able to learn whatever they need to.” This is a classic example of the myth of transferrable skills.

Today, teachers and educators seem to have bought this myth, Rote learning of facts is out, focus on skills is in. Project-based learning is in, as are theme-based approaches to learning rather than subject-based learning.

Why it’s a Myth

So what’s the problem? The issue is that skills are not as transferrable as we sometimes think. The way you analyse and problem solve in a maths problem differs to the way you would approach historical questions.

Once again, Dan Willingham, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia has a contribution to make to the debate. He points out that our brain is not like a calculator which can just perform the same function (say analysis) on different sets of data. Rather, “Critical thinking processes are tied to background knowledge.” The implication, he argues is that we need to ensure students acquire background knowledge parallel with practising critical thinking skills.

E.D. Hirsch argues that those who have and use 21st century skills effectively are those who have “domain knowledge in a wide range of domains.” Hirsch refers to a massive body of evidence that shows what we think of as transferrable skills are knowledge based. So, “Knowledge is skill: skill is knowledge.”

A great example of this is in the realm of chess. There is no evidence that chess masters demonstrate more than average competence intellectually. Their talents tend to be chess specific. Thus the acquisition of chess skills is built on recognition memory or stored knowledge.

A second example is in reading. The skill of comprehension in reading is associated with knowledge. So much so, that ‘low’ readers reading a text on baseball were found to comprehend that passage better than ‘good’ readers when those ‘low’ readers had a good knowledge of baseball and the ‘good’ readers did not.

Conclusion

So what we tend to think of as skill in experts is really a function of knowledge that experts have built up into their long-term memory and can retrieve as necessary. This means that if we focus on teaching skills at the exclusion of deep knowledge, we are actually working against the development of transferable skills.