Question Time 31.5.2023

Team of 5 today: myself, Dakta and Gary + Michael Appleby and Christopher Coker from Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party. 🥝

Tip from Dakta Christ (aka Christopher Coker): Green Doctors medical marijuana card - that's another stoner essential for the middle-class and upper-class who can afford medical weed. I still have the NORML card which says what to do when the fuzz hassle you in my purse. - 1. Soft question - Labour to Labour. Spruiking the $5 prescriptions .. trying to make it a meme imo. This was also a theme during the budget debate, which we dropped in for after 4/20. - 2. Luxon to PM Plugging the UK FTA .. feels like a rerun of our post WW-II economic policies. Record earnings for exporters (apparently). Festive atmosphere in the House today; Gary said Tuesday was similar. Hipkins owned the rising crime statistics, which was a novel approach. - 3. Teanau to Parker About wastewater discharging in the sea. Affordable water reforms? Parker was stonewalling; felt like he was weaseling out. - 4. Financial question; totally boring. Grant was defending his Covid policies, and called out the Nats for not providing a Cyclone/flood repair budget. Yawned .. bo-ring. 2 TV cameras were filming. - 5. Eagle to Davis Māori education: $225 million for kura and kaupapa Māori. $135 million for building new classrooms and buying land. $40 million for learning support, targeting 25,000 ākonga.

Pūhoro STEM Academy?? - 6. Stanford v. Tinetti. Some schools are dropping NCEA level 1. - 7. Omer to Damien O'Connor FTA plug (again). 99.5% of exports will now enter the UK duty-free. 1 in 4 jobs depend on trade. That's the same as the last time Labour asked this question to themselves. 🤔 7 new/upgraded FTA's since 2017 [check that]. - 8. Mitchell to Andersen Nats heckled her like a pack of wolves. Rurawhe: 'it started before the minister opened her mouth.' - 9. Switched seats. No comment. We switched to the Speaker's Gallery and sat beside Russell Norman. - 10. Kanongata'a to Radhakrishnan $863.6 million of increased disability support. Removing the minimum wage exemption, to be replaced by a wage supplement. Kanongata'a said 'supplementary question' in Samoan. It's Samoan language week. - 11. Debbie to Chris H. Yay for taking him to task for not implementing the welfare expert advisory group recommendations. 👍 Debbie also wants Labour to remove benefit sanctions. Ricardo supplementary: raise the disability allowance. Hipkins didn't answer that part of the question... Debbie: food banks and the increasing use of food banks by 'normal' people [my inverted commas]. Hipkins: not removing GST on kai. 👎 - 12. Watts to Russell The census.. another botch job. Hopefully they counted all us 'theys' .. that's what I care about. - Bonus: we bumped into Anika Moa outside Parliament. We might end up on TV!