Local Government code of conduct complaints have turned into a monster
3 May, 2021 05:00 PM
5 minutes to read
Local Government New Zealand president Stuart Crosby. Photo / George Novak
Wellington issues reporter, NZ Heraldgeorgina.campbell@nzme.co.nz
A law expert says the local government code of conduct complaints process is a well-intentioned idea that has grown into a monster.
In the Wellington Region alone complaints have ranged from whether it was accurate to refer to councillors eating a lavish buffet of roast chicken, to claims of being attacked on Facebook.
Yesterday the Herald revealed Wellington City Council was made to release a complaint against councillor Simon Woolf, alleging he caused staff considerable distress and failed to consider his duty of care to them.
The basics of earthquake forecasting Earthquake forecasting is a little like weather forecasting. It’s based on maths, knowledge of what’s happened in the past, and a dollop of human scientific judgment. Think of an earthquake forecast as a completed puzzle or jigsaw. Every puzzle is made up of small pieces. And there are all sorts of puzzle pieces that inform these forecasts. To give you an example, one piece is a concept called Omori’s Law – which helps define how the rate of aftershocks decays, or drops off, over time. This concept, along with, say, knowledge about a particular fault, could be used to build up a picture of how many aftershocks are expected after an earthquake.
Tune into the real world but the science comes first, says research entrepreneur.
Professor Jim Johnston from the Victoria University of Wellington has taken out the top prize at the 2020 KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards.
Johnston is a world-renowned inorganic and materials chemist,
Choose your best value subscription option here.
Already have an account? Login Related news
All of this pedestrian versus parking talk is predictable but what’s missing from this whole debate is the role of cities as engines of economic growth and the question of why ours aren’t following through on this promise. Infometrics has been collating numbers on productivity in different city regions. Wellington is our most productive, then Auckland. Our second-largest city, Christchurch, is even less productive than New Zealand as a whole. Yet all of these cities are not as productive as their Australasian counterparts or others further afield, according to a report by Koi Tū: the centre for informed futures, released late last year.
New Delhi: Professor Martha Savage from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington ‘s School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences (SGEES) has been awarded the 2020 Marsden Medal by the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) for her pathbreaking research in the fields of seismology, plate tectonics, and volcanology.
The medal was presented at the University’s Staff Excellence Awards by Dr Craig Stevens (pictured left with Professor Savage), a past president of the NZAS, and the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Grant Guilford (pictured right).
Professor Savage was surprised and delighted to hear she had been awarded the medal. “It’s a great honour to be recognised by the New Zealand Association of Scientists and to know the work I’ve been doing over the past 35 years has been valuable. I would not be where I am today without the hard work of the many mentors and colleagues I’ve had over the years,” she said.