MP for Southland, LLB(Hons). Authorised by J Mooney, Parliament Buildings, New Zealand. Views are my own. RT’s not necessarily an endorsement.
Joined September 2020
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Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
Right now, the future of New Zealand is in your hands. Voting is now open.
Before the last election inflation hit 7.3%, debt soared, crime exploded and education results were in decline.
And now, three years later, our economy is growing faster than Australia and the UK, inflation is down, kids are back in school learning the basics, and there are fewer victims of crime.
The choice this election is clear: keep going with National’s plan for a stronger economy and a more secure future, or go back to Labour’s reckless spending and high taxes.
Let’s not leave the job half done. Party Vote National today.
Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
Chief information security officer @ anthropic btw
Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
An hour a day of maths was a key recommendation of the 2021 Royal Society Maths Report that was commissioned BY HIPKINS. He sat on that report for 2 years and did nothing. We implemented an hour a day in our first 100 days and used the rest of the recommendations as a blueprint for our 2024 Maths Action Plan. We now have 6% more students at curriculum expectations in maths at year 6. Hipkins sat and watched maths results tank while ignoring the answers right in front of him and he is still refusing to keep an hour a day in tonight’s debate. National listened to the experts and early results are improving for the first time in many years as a result. Our kids deserve a world-leading education and National are delivering it.
Big moment today with the Otago Central Lakes regional deal being signed in person by Minister @cjsbishop, Queenstown Lakes District Council Mayor John Glover and Central Otago Mayor Tamah Alley.
I instigated this over two years ago with then QLDC Mayor Glyn Lewers and then CODC Mayor Tim Cadogan, and a lot of work has been done since by many people to get it to this point, and I want to thank the current and previous Mayors, Chair and Councillors of Queenstown-Lakes District Council, Central Otago District Council and Otago Regional Council; Minister Chris Bishop and Minister Simon Watts who have led this on the Crown side, as well as the many others who have worked on this over the last 2 or so years to make it happen.
Today was the end of the beginning, and the beginning is that it establishes a framework to ensure growth works better for Otago Central Lakes communities by bringing together central and local government, mana whenua and the private sector to work together to support and respond to that growth.
This is the only regional deal in the South Island, and one of only three in New Zealand (the other two being Auckland and Western Bay of Plenty).
The deal will support growth through a resilient, connected and future-ready transport system that is easier, safer and more reliable for residents and visitors.
It will also expand access to healthcare, increase affordable housing choices, strengthen energy resilience, and support better local jobs by growing and diversifying the regional economy.
The goal of the deal is to create a more affordable, connected, resilient and economically diverse region, while protecting the quality of life that makes it a great place to live, work and visit.
There’s a lot in this deal - I’ll post a link to it below.
Minister Bishop also announced a 30-year strategic plan that was released today by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) which will help focus ongoing investment in Queenstown’s transport infrastructure into the right areas, at the right time and help keep people moving.
This is only the second such strategic network plan that has been done by NZTA in New Zealand - the other one was for Auckland’s motorways, and highlights the importance of this region.
The Queenstown Strategic Network Plan provides a long-term strategic direction that can feed into regional and national land transport funding decisions, as well as the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s recently established Mayoral Transport Taskforce.
Otago Central Lakes Deal
beehive.govt.nz/release/otag…
Queenstown Strategic Network Plan
beehive.govt.nz/release/stra…
Excellent news today that the extreme wet and cold conditions across Southland and the Clutha District have been declared as a medium-scale adverse event by the Government.
Up to $50,000 will go to the Southland and Otago Rural Support Trusts to provide more help on the ground, including recovery and wellbeing events.
The classification also unlocks tax relief, including more flexible timing of tax payments. It enables the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to consider Rural Assistance Payments for farmers who can't meet essential living costs.
Southland has had its wettest winter since 1980.
This is the third spring in a row that Southland and Clutha farmers have faced tough weather.
beehive.govt.nz/release/gove…
Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
After Chris Hipkins and Barbara Edmonds were unable to answer questions about their $18.8 billion hidden bill today, a senior Labour MP has tonight revealed an extension of the party’s planned Capital Gains Tax.
After months of Labour claiming their Capital Gains Tax exempts farms, Agriculture Spokesperson Jo Luxton has appeared to confirm that farms with accommodation on them, alongside commercially owned farms will in fact be subject to Labour’s Capital Gains Tax.
Farms up and down New Zealand are legally required to provide worker accommodation, alongside many remote farms that are not able to operate without providing accommodation.
For some farms the economic reality of hiring workers means they must provide accommodation as part of that agreement.
On top of that, many farms are owned through commercial co-operative agreements.
Jo Luxton has just confirmed that all of those farms will be hit by Labour’s Capital Gains Tax.
Of course, it’s no surprise that Labour now appears to be widening the pool of assets subject to their Capital Gains Tax. With an $18.8 billion funding gap to fill, Labour will be desperate to find new ways to take more money from hard working New Zealanders.
Chris Hipkins and Barbara Edmonds need to explain why they have told New Zealanders farms are exempt from their Capital Gains Tax, when that is clearly not the case.
Kiwis have a clear choice on November 7. It’s either no new taxes with National, or nine new taxes and counting under a Labour-Greens-Te Pati Māori-Opportunity Party coalition.
Great to have @chrisluxonmp in Queenstown today with an excellent announcement to support our incredibly important tourism and hospitality sector.
A re-elected National Government will work with Australia to trial seamless travel for Australian and New Zealand citizens travelling between the two countries.
The 2028 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup will be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand from 21 October to 19 November that year. National will work to introduce a trial prior to the T20.
This would look like a fully digital trans-Tasman travel experience, where eligible travellers can rely on a smartphone, digital credentials and biometric technology through more of the airport journey.
This would mean no paper passport required at the gate and faster movement through airports, while maintaining the security and integrity of New Zealand’s border.
Growing New Zealand’s tourism industry is a critical part of National’s plan to fix the basics and build the future.
Tourism is New Zealand’s second-largest export earner supporting around one in nine jobs, and is a very important part of our region’s success.
Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
You simply can't trust Labour on tax.
In 2020, Labour said the only new tax they would introduce after the election was a 39% tax rate on income over $180k.
But after the election they not only put in place a higher tax rate but also made these changes.
➡️ Put in place a Ute Tax
➡️ Extended the bright line tax
➡️ Removed interest deductibility
Three new taxes they didn't campaign on, despite having a Labour majority in Parliament and not needing to do any deals with other parties.
But it doesn't stop there. In 2023, Chris Hipkins said he wouldn't campaign on a Capital Gains Tax, but now he's done a flip-flop and is campaigning on one.
This week Labour is once again making promises, saying they won't remove interest deductibility if they win the election.
But how can you believe them? How can you trust them not to say one thing and then do something else? This is particularly so given that if Labour wins, they won't win by themselves like they did in 2020. They will need the Greens, Opportunity and Te Pāti Māori, who are all campaigning for new taxes they want to inflict on New Zealanders.
The reality is that it doesn't matter what Labour says. You can't trust them.
They say one thing, then after the election they do something different.
If you want to stop Labour's taxes, the only way to do that is to give your Party Vote to National.
#Breaking Bills to replace the Resource Management Act have passed their third reading in Parliament this evening, marking the most significant overhaul of New Zealand’s planning system in more than three decades.
Here with three of the New Zealand National Party’s Environment Select Committee Members who did a huge job working on this, including Chair Catherine Wedd, Grant McCallum, and Ryan Hamilton.
Congratulations to Minister @cjsbishop and Parliamentary Undersecretary @SimonCourtACT.
More information: beehive.govt.nz/release/rma-…
Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
Acquiring @IridiumComm will be one of the most transformative deals in the space industry, making Rocket Lab a fully-integrated, self-launching, tier-1 space power that delivers critical communications capability to millions of users worldwide.
Rocket Lab CEO @Peter_J_Beck breaks the entire space industry into 3 simple layers, from rockets to the services we use every day:
"I probably shouldn't have called it Rocket Lab. I should have called it Space Lab. The rocket always steals the show because it's this big roaring stick in the sky."
"Rockets, that's about a $10 or $20 billion industry. Spacecraft, the tools in space to provide services, 20 to $30 billion. And then the reason why you do all of those things are applications in space."
"Space is kinda weird that it's hidden infrastructure. You don't drive past it every day, so you don't see it. But everybody interfaces with space every single day, whether you realize it or not."
"We build rockets, we build satellites, and with our acquisition of Iridium, we're also a services company from space."
@RocketLab
Renewables are being developed 25% faster than during New Zealand’s ‘Think Big’ era of large scale hydroelectric developments in the 1970s.
Source: Boston Consulting Group’s “Energy to Grow Report”. (Page 43).
web-assets.bcg.com/27/08/7fc…
Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
Mark Zuckerberg: “Meta delayed shipping Muse for several months to focus on safety and security. We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would. We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us.”
Last month I wrote about how we can build a positive and safe future for everyone: meta.com/thefutureisforevery…
Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens.
The reality is:
- People won't want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don't do what they ask, so labs have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned.
There is a lot of debate about slowing progress on capabilities until alignment catches up. My view is that trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models. Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind.
- Labs face significant liability if their models cause harm, so they have a strong incentive to prevent this as well.
Meta delayed shipping Muse for several months to focus on safety and security. We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would. We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us. I'm proud of the security foundations we've built.
- Engaging independent evaluators and advisors is industry best practice. MSL already does this today in several areas because it helps produce better work. Other labs can just do this too. In general, it would be helpful for there to be a larger and more diverse ecosystem of evaluators.
- Committing the significant majority of compute towards serving people rather than racing towards recursive self-improvement is one of the best ways to ensure we develop this technology safely. Meta has made this commitment and other labs can do this as well.
I believe the key to building a positive future for everyone is maintaining the right balance of power. This is within our power to do.
Quite significant
Saudi Arabia STOPS oil shipments to Europe after Houthi attacks as Britain weighs up military intervention
gbnews.com/news/world/saudi-…
Joseph Mooney MP retweeted
Any pursuit of superintelligence has to be grounded in the core principle that if the AI we build is not helping humanity and under human control, it's not worth pursuing.
We also need to accelerate and spread the benefits of AI, such that they are diffused broadly across countries, communities, and companies. This requires a frontier ecosystem in which both closed and open-source models can thrive.
And for firms, it’s imperative that they retain full control over their unique and tacit knowledge. Every organization should be able to build its own continuous learning loop/hill climbing machine, without becoming dependent on any one model provider, and have the ability to embed its own knowledge into models and weights they control.
So, in this context, we welcome the research, focus, and deliberate pacing needed to get alignment right as the design goal. We also welcome ideas like "embedded evaluators" and the broader efforts to develop the mechanisms to make this more than just talk.
The key is that this cannot be controlled by a handful of entities, but must have broad representation across the ecosystem, countries, and fields, including academia.
This is the approach we are taking: broad access and choice at every layer of the AI stack; enterprise control of learning loops and models; and the “Code of Conduct” that underlies our own first party MAI models that we’ll publish tomorrow for public consultation.
Fascinating take from the White House’s AI Czar - he points out that Dario Amodei from Anthropic and Sam Altman from ChatGPT run the companies with the worlds leading AI frontier models - David Sacks says they don’t need anyone else’s permission to slow down and build more intelligent models, they can just decide to do that themselves as it’s their own technology.
“The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.”
Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.
You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.
I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.
But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.
Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.
Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.
So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.
If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.