Covering Australia | New Zealand | The Pacific News tips to Signal (nzjourno.55) or send via https://xitter.cf/t.co/PuLTKdvkeS [email protected]
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New Zealand could again lead the world by banning this "sport" but there's zero chance of that ever happening when NZ First is bought and paid for by the racing industry (among others). "Donations" to the shadowy NZF Foundation will always take precedence over animal welfare. #nzpol
Rex Widerstrom retweeted
"Hopes that the NACC might be resucitated by a change of leadership have been dashed", writes @MichaelPascoe01
#auspol #NACC
michaelwest.com.au/nacc-decl…
Insulting, misogynistic comments discussing violence against a defence lawyer is a "coping mechanism" for police apparently. If that's what you need to do to cope, then you're in the wrong job. And most of them are. If that's their attitude to lawyers, imagine their attitude to suspects.
A lawyer was the target of "unprofessional and inappropriate" remarks in a police group chat, including comments about a photo of him being put in a headlock by a police officer.
rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-jus…
Anyone who idly flicks through the media over their breakfast toast knows this, let alone professional political strategists. The people responsible for this gutless "strategy" should be nowhere near a political party, let alone a major one. So how did they get there?
This is astoundingly stupid. When a CCP official visits the Australian Parliament, MPs and staff are told to shut off their devices. But to drive around having conversations and making phone calls in what is effectively a mobile CCP listening device is just fine!!
theepochtimes.com/world/mps-…
Rex Widerstrom retweeted
Independent family-owned supermarkets independently suffer identical independent pricing faults thecivilian.co.nz/2026/10/20…
People finally waking up to that fact that we live in a surveillance state. And to the fact that the police are, in fact, the private security force of the state apparatus, and do not exist to create "safer communities together."
The fact that the @nzpolice are recruiting the kind of people who'd steal and sell a pistol should give them pause to ask whether it's such a great idea to routinely let those same officers cruise around with "two Glock pistols and two M4 rifles" - items designed only to kill other people. nzherald.co.nz/nz/ex-cop-ste…
Those who would take from us our basic freedoms will always focus first on a small subgroup of the worst of the worst - in this case those who hamper an investigation into the murder of a child - knowing full well that it means anyone who defends the principle that's under attack will be accused of supporting that subgroup and their heinous behaviour.
It's a disgraceful tactic, designed to rally the moronic torches-and-pitchforks crowd to silence dissenters.
If you want to end the right to silence in criminal cases, have the guts to say so. Don't apply it to an unpopular minority and then let mission creep do your dirty work. #nzpol
And there you have it, the Govt's Chief Victims Advisor: "Questioned on the legal implications of the proposal, Money said the Bill of Rights is important, "however, the death of a child is more important".
Think about that. Your rights are nice to have, but come second when compared to solving crime.
This tallies up with @MarkMitchellMP's statement that "You cannot put a price on safety." Apparently, that price includes our fundamental criminal due process and fair trial rights.
Since when did the @NZNationalParty think removing rights and enlarging State control was a good idea?
Think about what they are doing right now:
1. Proposing to bring in affirmative sexual consent laws, which are solely designed to increase the number of rape convictions.
2. Exploring (again) reducing our right to jury trials by raising the threshold at which you can elect trial by jury;
3. Proposing to remove the right to silence from both suspects and specified witnesses in child murder cases.
4. Bringing in an under-16 Social Media Ban, thus requiring every person in the country to identify their age to remain in the digital marketplace. For the children, of course.
And it won't stop with cases involving the murder of children. Already, "Money said the policy should go beyond children 12 and under to cases of significant child abuse and "certainly child homicide". I am sure that @PaulGoldsmithMP will think that is a very good idea.
This is an appalling policy, one that will potentially have far-reaching consequences. The leftward tilt of the National Party continues, as it further devalues the place of our rights and freedoms in society. It is incredibly disappointing.
nzherald.co.nz/nz/election-2…
Rex Widerstrom retweeted
Well, that was wild. I'm at the Australian Parliament and just left a meeting with two staffers for the governing party. They told us that the government needed more power to censor things like the upcoming US execution of Nidal Hasan.
When I asked why they needed to censor that video, one said it was to prevent copycat killings. Copycat killings by governments? I asked. Er, no, they said. Copycat killings like of a backpacker, several decades ago.
So, under that logic, I pointed out, the government should censor things like last year's Bondi massacre, where two Muslims killed 15 people, no? Well, that was news, they said. Didn't they realize their bill would allow the government to censor news? They didn't seem to know, or care.
They also admitted that they did not know that the bill would allow the government to create and operate an unlimited number of fake social media accounts to attack its political enemies and spread disinformation. Having presented them with information they had never heard about a bill they had clearly not read, they emphasized to us, strenuously, that they were moving forward with the bill.
So there you have it. The government wants the power to arbitrarily censor scenes of violent crime, or violence, for any reason. And it wants the power to use an unlimited number of fake accounts to wage offensive disinformational warfare against the Australian people.
Given that the Bondi massacre last year increased public opposition to mass migration, and support for the populist One Nation Party, it seems obvious that the government wants to censor such events in order to protect its political power.
It's quite telling how obediently governing party members insist such a law is needed without even knowing what's in it.
In Australia it's myGov, in New Zealand it's RealMe. They could both be used to give citizens a far greater say in the direction of their respective countries, and put an end to all the hand-wringing about security that arises any time it's suggested we return #powertothepeople #nzpol #auspol
'The objective is not to stop people persuading voters, but to prevent the capacity to persuade from being determined primarily by the capacity to pay.'
Existing tech could be used for Australians to have their say on policy ~ Rob Powell
independentaustralia.net/pol… @independentaus
If you haven't donated to the Wellington City Mission, now would be a good time to do so. #nzpol
It is, and it's time @anticorruption woke up to it. #nzpol
Retire as Former Deputy Leader of National Party, Get Job in Real Estate, get contract from Govt to sell Govt Housing Property, Donate to said Govt. Thinking of Mayoralty at next local govt election. NZ is #Corrupt
The plot, as they say, thickens. Exclusive: 'Golf Club in PM’s Electorate Received Five Earlier Grants Before $6 Million Payment: Professor'
theepochtimes.com/world/golf…
#auspol
This. Compare with Wellington, where the answer is endless bike lanes (great in the teeth of a freezing southerly), reducing the number of street parks and imposing massive parking fines, all without providing a viable alternative (no, we can't do an underground trains, but we can have rapid transit small electric buses zipping everywhere, for free, like they do in some cities. Same end result.) #nzpol
And more on the #CRL Who gives a Rats Arse who made it happen. Rejoice in the fact that yesterday 25,000 more people got to where they were going without using their cars or roads, way better than any congestion charges ever will.
Every day there's a new warning about #AI, not from uninformed Luddites but from people at the heart of the technology. And every day our lawmakers bury their heads further in the sand.
Researchers found that when LLMs interact under pressure, they invent their own languages that are unreadable to humans.
They call it "cumulative cultural evolution," a capacity previously documented only in humans.
Researchers built an environment where AI agents had to coordinate under strict communication constraints and time pressure.
Without any human instruction, the models started modifying words, inventing shorthand, and building an entirely novel lexicon.
The resulting communication channels became completely compositional, morphologically productive, and totally incomprehensible to the human engineers watching them.
It's a phenomenon called "cumulative cultural evolution."
Until now, it was documented exclusively in humans.
Generations of AI agents passed down their newly invented linguistic shortcuts to "newcomer" models, refining the slang over time to maximize efficiency.
Weaker models couldn't invent the language from scratch, but once it emerged, they learned it natively just by interacting with other AIs.
They are building a culture behind our backs.
This creates a terrifying problem for AI safety and enterprise deployment.
Everyone is rushing to build multi-agent swarms to handle complex business workflows, financial trading, and automated operations.
But if autonomous agents develop their own unreadable dialects to talk to each other faster, human oversight instantly drops to zero.
You can't monitor what you can't translate.
Rex Widerstrom retweeted
Punching a barely conscious man strapped to a hospital guerney: NOT a sackable offence for NSW Police.
Chris Minns and Labor have set this standard.
