I’ve (in order) been arrested, started a business and have had kids so somewhere between libertarian and conservative!

Katharine Moody writes:

Not good enough, Simon Court.  In a recent article, the Undersecretary for Resource Management Act (RMA) reform warned Councils that picking extreme climate scenarios in the conduct of regulatory decision-making “risks lawsuits by requiring developers to design and build to overly stringent climate warming models”.

By pulling out a yellow card, Simon Court assumes it will prevent further ‘screwing the scrum’ by over-zealous local experts and those local authorities who follow their guidance.  In my experience as a consultant planner, it won’t be enough.  

For years, I have observed a small group of local experts pushing the worst-case emission scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on businesses and home owners across New Zealand.

And yes, councils have already been taken to court on this matter; and yes, the use of these extreme scenarios have already been found to lack scientific rigour on merit review. 

The RCP 8.5 scenario is an extreme one. It assumes both that no country on earth implements any policy at all to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and that the impact is at the 90th percentile (ie the most pessimistic 10%).

Yet, her recommendations were largely ignored by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) two years later in publishing its update to the Coastal hazards and climate change guidance for local government. This updated guidance recommended not only the use of the ‘high end’ RCP8.5 scenario, but additionally a ‘high end’ extreme of that extreme scenario, which they refer to as RCP8.5H+.  The Ministry has further updatedthat guidance this year, still persisting with the recommended use of the ‘high end’ RCP8.5 scenario in coastal hazard planning.

RCP8.5 is the climate scenario that Professor Dave Frame, an IPCC lead author, describes in the article as “a scenario that nobody really believes in” ̶  except for, it seems, a small cohort of experts who appear to have secured undue influence on MFE.

To my mind, there is no remedy aside from expunging all reference to RCP8.5 from local government guidance and hence, from current planning practice.  The cost to individuals, business entities and communities of ratepayers has been more than enormous already. 

If Governments force developers to plan for a scenario that has no real possibility of occurring, the cost can run into the billions.

Nate Silver has data on how Americans have voted by their income levels over time. He says the divide is now on culture, not income.

The proportion of the lowest income group that votes Republican has been:

• 2008: 26%
• 2012: 36%
• 2016: 43%
• 2020: 43%
• 2024: 52% (polls)

We see similar patterns here, but less pronounced with more blue collar workers voting National than Labour.

The 52% in just a polling average at the moment, so it will be interesting to see the actual results in November.

A US research company asked Americans how many unarmed black men are killed by the Police each year. The actual number is around 10 a year (which is of course still too high) but they asked people if the number was 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 or more than 10,000. So each is different by an exponent.

So how many Americans thought the actual number of annual shootings of unarmed black men by Police was 1,000 or more. They break it down by political orientation.

• Very liberal: 40%
• Liberal: 28%
• Moderate: 25%
• Conservative: 18%
• Very conservative: 16%

Now this is the proportion who over-estimate deaths by a factor of 100!

The Canterbury Socialist Society are launching a campaign to justify the slaughter, rapes and torture of Jewish men, women and children on 7 October. They claim it is resistance, not terrorism.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Palestinian revolutionary Marxist group. It has been designated a terrorist organisation by the EU, Japan, Canada and the US. It used to be part of the PLO but left when the PLO abandoned its goal of destroying Israel. They do not support any two state solution.

The woman pictured on their pamphlet is Leila Khaled. She has taken part in two aircraft hijackings and has been banned from entering many countries.

Now personally I wouldn’t ban the CSS from having their pro-terrorism meeting. It isn’t against the law. But considering that Massey University tried to ban Don Brash from a public event on the basis he was too extreme, and two Canadian provocateurs had venues cancel on them after political pressure, do you think we will hear a peep from any of the usual suspects that a public meeting to justify terrorism isn’t a great idea?

AUT have published their 5th annual trust in news report and the results are devastating. Rather than blame their woes on Google and Meta, every media organisation in NZ should be critically self-reflective on how they have contributed to this distrust, and what they could do differently to improve things.

Some key data:

• NZers who trust the news has fallen from 53% in 2020 to 33% in 2024
• The drop just in the last 12 months was 9%
• This is not due to international trends. In 2020 NZ was 11% above the global average of 42% and in 2024 NZ was 7% below the global average of 40%. This is about NZ media.
• Trust in news is significantly lower than Australia and Canada
• NZ has the highest proportion (75%) of people who actively avoid the news or selected media
• The only news brand with a (just) positive score is ODT on 5/10
• Radio NZ has gone from 7.0 to 4.9
• TVNZ from 6.8 to 4.8
• NZ Herald from 6.3 to 4.7
• Stuff from 6.1 to 4.6
• 87% of those who distrust news think the news is biased and not balanced
• 82% think news too much reflects the political leanings of newsrooms
• 59% think Government support for the media means you can’t trust media to hold Govt to account

In any normal industry this would be seen as a crisis. When so many think you are biased and not balanced, your number one priority should be how to fix it, rather than deny it.

Amusingly one journalist in a fit of irony tweeted that the 20% drop was all due to the Atlas Network. You couldn’t be funnier if you tried.

Here’s some things media could to restore trust:

• Welcome diversity of political views amongst staff (and by that I don’t just mean diversity between hard left and centre left) so centre-right people would feel welcome in your organisation
• Abolish corporate policies that forbid people to have conservative views on issues such as whether men can get pregnant
• Don’t have topics where you don’t allow debate such as on the Treaty, trans issues, preferred climate change response etc
• Ensure you have some journalists who don’t automatically think equality of outcome is desirable, as opposed to equality of opportunity
• Have more journalists who understand economics
• Have more journalists who will as aggressively interview Te Pati Maori and Green MPs as they do ACT and NZ First MPs

Or you can ignore all off the above and conclude the public, like me, are the ones who are wrong and there is no need to change anything – you just need more money from taxpayers or social media companies.

The free speech debate over Rainbow story time is somewhat different to the free speech debate over allowing guest speakers to speak at a venue, but the principles are similar.

First my personal view on Rainbow story time is that in NZ it is pretty harmless. My kids have been to a couple of them, and they enjoyed them. They were totally non-sexual and they are more akin to children’s pantomimes where leading female characters are often played by men for humorous effect.

But I understand that some people are worried about them. In the US there are instances of highly inappropriate drag shows and the like which are highly sexualised in front of children. But don’t assume that what happens in the US is the same as what is done in NZ. In fact anyone who did perform a sexualised show in front of children could face prosecution under our laws.

Now if you don’t like Rainbow story times in public libraries, you should have the right to lobby against them. There is a difference between these and a controversial guest speaker at a public venue.

If a public venue is being used just as a commercial venue for an outside organisation to host someone that people want to hear from, it is wrong to say that Councils should determine who can use their meeting halls on the basis of their personal preferences.

Rainbow storytime is slightly different. This is the Council hosting the activity directly. It is organised by Council staff and presumably any costs are met by the Council. People who think it is an inappropriate activity for a Council to organise and host should be able to lobby Councillors and ask for a different policy.

But if a Council has approved a Rainbow story time, then even if you disagree with their decision, you do not have the right to disrupt it and prevent it occurring, That prevents parents who do wish to have their kids attend what they see as harmless fun doing so. Conservatives should be very wary of deciding they know better than parents what their kids can attend.

If a Rainbow story-time was inappropriately sexualised, then it could potentially break the law and the correct response is to gather evidence and present it to the authorities. If you think the law is not strict enough, then you can lobby to change the law. But don’t use the thug’s veto to close down these events.

Lucy Rogers has done a two part post (Part 1, Part 2)on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

I don’t agree with all of Lucy’s takes, but it is a rare example of an article that doesn’t try to portray one side as blameless.

Personally I am very supportive of Israel’s right to respond to the October 7 attacks. But I am concerned about the humanitarian toll, and whether there is an end game that can allow civilians to try and rebuild their lives.

Don Brash writes:

Successive New Zealand governments, as governments in many other countries, have adopted policies designed to discourage the emission of greenhouse gases, or to encourage measures which would absorb such gases. By far the most logical of these measures is the Emissions Trading System (ETS). Other policies, such as subsidies for electric vehicles, have no logic at all: if switching to electric vehicles were the lowest cost way of reducing emissions, the ETS would already be encouraging that switching without subsidies. And if it isn’t, the subsidies push us into higher cost ways of getting to Net Zero.

Yep, the ETS should be our major vehicle to reduce emissions.

But what of the greenhouse gases which banks themselves generate?  With effect from this year, banks must report publicly on the greenhouse gases which their own operations generate – how much petrol they use, how much electricity, how many plane flights, how many car journeys, and so on.  Well, calculating that is apparently not terribly hard, whatever you might think of the value of doing the calculation, and the small (in New Zealand) bank that I chair has just paid a consultancy some thousands of dollars to make that estimate for us.

Silly, but not to hard to do.

But as of next year we will need to report also the emissions which our lending activities create or make possible.  And we paid the same consultancy some more thousands to do a rough estimate of that figure for a recent year.

This is absolutely nuts, and the sooner the new Government does away with the crazy law which requires such a meaningless calculation the better.

Meaningless?  Well, how does one estimate the greenhouse gases involved in, say, a loan to help build a new motorway?  I suppose it is possible (if meaningless) to estimate the greenhouse gases emitted in the construction of the motorway, but what about the effect of the traffic on the motorway?  Is there more traffic created because the road makes travel much faster?  Does the new route actually reduce the greenhouse gases generated by the traffic, perhaps because there is less stop-start traffic or a smoother gradient than on the older road which the motorway replaces?

Requiring banks to do this will just make money for consultants and produce meaningless data. Does anyone sane actually think the way to fight global warming is to have banks lend less money for people to buy houses etc?

The Serious Fraud Office said:

The SFO welcomes the Court of Appeal’s decision today which corrected the High Court findings in its New Zealand First Foundation (NZFF) case and reinforced the importance of transparency around political donations in a democratic system. 

Following the NZFF trial in 2022 the High Court found “if the money is ‘party donations’, there is comprehensive evidence [the accused] deployed the dishonest scheme in order to deceive the party and party secretary as to their better claims to the money…”.  

However, the Judge concluded that because the nearly $750,000 of funds were not deposited into the party’s account, they were not party “donations” under the Electoral Act, despite the clear intention of donors.  

The Crown argued that this finding was wrong and today the Court of Appeal agreed that the Judge erred in finding the donations were not party “donations” under the Electoral Act. 

It is very good that the Court of Appeal over-ruled the High Court that a donation for a party is somehow not a party donation if the party redirects it to another entity.

Ultimately, the appeal was dismissed on the basis of the second ground of appeal regarding claim of right. Due to “an unfortunate lacuna in the [High Court] Judge’s reasoning”, despite the finding that the respondents had acted dishonestly, the Court held that Crown was not in a position to advance an argument of error of law on this point.  

Which means the respondents were again found not guilty.

In my opinion the SFO made an error by trying to turn what was a simple electoral law case into a more complex fraud conspiracy case. If they had merely charged people with breaches of the Electoral Act, then the outcome may have been quite different.

This shows very clearly how our problem is too much spending, rather than not enough tax. Labour and Greens in 2000 pledged to keep spending to below 30% of GDP. You do this by not increasing spending faster than the rate the entire economy is growing. The more economic growth you have, the more you can spend.

If they had kept their word, then we would be facing a large budget surplus with tax revenues well in excess of spending.

ACT MP Todd Stephenson writes:

Last year, protestors at Albert Park assaulted women attending a speech on gender issues, and effectively chased the controversial speaker off stage.

And recently in Wellington, a US diplomat was forced to abandon a talk on international security due to disruption from pro-Palestine protestors.

Activists have celebrated these cancellations, but ACT has warned time and time again that the same tactics could easily be turned against the political left.

And now it’s happening.

Destiny Church, who oppose rainbow story time events, have successfully shut down two events with the threat of protest, and even vandalised a public crossing. Hastings District Council said they could no longer guarantee the safety of attendees.

It is sad, but no surprise, that Destiny Church has adopted the tactics of the left to shut down events they disapprove of.

We need a more principled approach that respects the freedoms of left and right, conservative and progressive.

If the “woke” left wants to stop reactionary speakers, they ought to prove those speakers are breaking laws – such as by inciting violence.

If conservatives want to stop rainbow events, they ought to prove that children are being put at risk – and take those concerns to police.

If protestors on either side of politics believe current laws are inadequate at protecting the rights of the vulnerable, they need to propose specific law changes that can be scrutinised and discussed.

I agree, of course.

Stuff reports:

Is it possible to have too much wealth? To be too rich? And should we therefore have a cap on wealth?

Dutch political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns believes the answer to those questions are: yes, yes and yes! …

Robeyns has written a book arguing that we’d have a vastly better world if we had a hard limit on the wealth that any one person can accumulate – a cap on the rich. She calls the concept Limitarianism – and she’s willing to put a number on it.

She says the idea of people being below the poverty line is morally unacceptable and wants an upper threshold too.

This is like arguing that as it is unacceptable some people die at a young age, it should be unacceptable some people live to an old age!

What Robeyns promotes is basically Marxism – the notion that all wealth belongs to the state, and you can only keep what it allocates to you.

Imagine her $14 million limit in real life. Rod Drury made more than that from Aftermail. So under this worldview, any surplus wealth would have been confiscated. So how likely is it Drury would go on to create Xero, if every cent he made from it gets taken by the Government? Almost zero – he’d just go surfing instead.

So under this system, we would not have a Xero. Thousands of jobs would not have been created, and the world’s best accounting software would not have been created making life so much better for millions of small businesses.

You might think the name “School Strike 4 Climate” would suggest an organisation is focused on galvanising students on the issue of climate change. But alas, they have morphed into just another hard left activist group.

No doubt soon they will also demand massive tax increases, abolishing prisons etc.

The Herald reports:

If you were one of the people to hold the role of New Zealand prime minister since 1984, one of the more unusual parts of your calendar would have been pencilling time to speak to an oral historian from the Alexander Turnbull Library’s Political Diaries project.

This routine, described by former prime minister John Key as “cathartic”, will become a thing of the past thanks to the library deciding to wrap the project up following the 2023 election.

Interviews for the project could last just a few minutes, or go for much, much longer. Prime ministers would unburden themselves of the day-to-day challenges of governing. But there was a catch. Unlike interviews with news media, destined for immediate consumption and the rapid metabolism of the 24-hour news cycle, Political Diaries interviews have never been released – at least not without significant restriction.

Not a second of the 1500 hours of interviews with 115 different participants, including prime ministers, party leaders, and significant MPs over 40 years has been made available to the wider public.

These interviews are a treasure trove for future historians. They’ll all be released eventually and will form a priceless unique commentary on major political events.

It is a real shame they are no longer seen as a priority by the National Library.

I blogged in 2018:

The WTO dispute resolution system is vital. It is what allows global trade agreements to be enforced. What the US is doing doesn’t just affect countries trading with the US, but every WTO member.

If the US cripples the appellate body, then (for example) Australia could once again start blocking our apples on spurious grounds. And it would be impossible for us to get a binding ruling preventing them from doing so.

This was in response to Trump refusing to allow the US to vote for more members of the appellate body, which means it would be inquorate and there could be no final determinations. What the USG was doing was especially bad as it harms the entire rules based system.

I assume that Biden would have returned the WTO appeals board to a quorum, but alas it seems he is just as protectionist as Trump and is continuing to cripple the WTO. Basically the US wants to be exempt from adverse decisions, so long as they claim what they are doing is justified on national security grounds.

So it is rather depressing that it is now the bipartisan policy of the United States that the WTO and the rules based trade system should be crippled. Time to set up a new WTO without them!

Haimona Gray writes:

This is how I feel about Māori media – if Māori were only informed by Māori media they would be intellectually starved to the point of mind rot.  

They would also have to listen to a lot of white men telling them what’s good for Maori. For them, but really for ’them’.

These shows exist to make left-wing pakeha feel good about themselves for tuning in. They do this by pitching shows directly at an audience that wants loud voices who will play the notes they expect to hear. 

In a ‘Te Ao with Moana’ panel debate on “who sets the election narrative”, the panel of four people was half pakeha men. 

This week’s ‘Te Ao’ episode covered the Treaty Principles Bill. To discuss it they brought on former Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson (pakeha man, but hugely respected in Māoridom), Matthew Hooton (pakeha man), Max Harris (pakeha man), and Heather Came (pakeha woman).  

This is a show on Māori Television, which receives public funding to produce Māori focused content. This is also a show where host Moana Maniapoto asked (pakeha) NZ Herald senior writer Simon Wilson “is the media just talking to itself?”

I would answer with a resounding “yes, you are, and you’re choosing to do so by prioritising ideology over Māori voices you or your audience might not agree with.”

They are not alone there.

Re: News – the most recent of Radio NZ’s expensive failed experiments in youth news – announced it was partnering with M9 for a Māori TED-style series. This would include nine Māori leaders discussing the role of Te Tiriti in the future of Aotearoa. 

These nine guests included a current Māori Party MP, a former Māori Party MP, the son of a current Māori Party MP, a former head of Greenpeace who was forced to resign as Human Rights Commissioner for disparaging Police, and an anti-dairy farming activist. 

Do you see a pattern? More specifically, do you see how this contributes to a racist idea of Māori as a hivemind? 

While I’ll never condone celebrating people losing their jobs, I’m not sure we as taxpayer dollars were getting any value from a media outlet so aggressively slanted and one which sees this as a balanced coverage of Māori thought.

An argument given to me by the hosts and producers of these shows is “well we can’t find different voices” and “there aren’t a lot of Māori who can speak eloquently about politics who aren’t affiliated to a political party on the left – we must have you on!” 

Spoiler alert: they never do. 

Diversity in everything except thought!

While James’ maiden speech was correctly lauded for its eloquence, his most powerful message was that there isn’t just one way to be Māori. 

He talked about how he is from “simple straightforward people”, and that his father had never set foot on the North Island. 

This is the real reason why James, who was long known about and rated highly by political dorks like myself – He is not the son of a current Māori Party MP. Not the heir to a Māori political dynasty like the Henare’s or Harawira’s or Jackson’s. 

He does not owe his place in life to whānau connections, and therefore he is not on the radar of those who gate keep these shows and use their influence to advocate for their own politics and a Māoridom weighed down by nepotism. 

In his speech James said, “members opposite do not own Māori.”

This is the issue facing Māori media – they have become so narrowly focused, so beholden to nepotistic practices, so ‘jobs for the bros’ it doesn’t matter if the bros aren’t Māori and/or if the show is publicly funded to be. 

They can’t see how this is hurting Māoridom, that we are metaphorically starving our youth while feeding others to the point of creating a slovenly elite that’s so out of touch it would rather hear pakeha voices in Māori spaces than Māori who may challenge them. 

Just because most Māori vote centre-left doesn’t mean all Māori do. And the current Cabinet is over one third Māori.

This is the issue – who gets to be Māori in the media is so deeply gate kept that the Māori experience is filtered through a lens so coloured by political bias and privilege that it bears no resemblance to the real views of many Māori. 

This wouldn’t be a problem if there was a diversity of opinions shown, but the regularity of Simon Wilson or Martyn Bradbury appearances highlight the sad reality that these are media pitching a singular point of view. One that is not Māori, just aristocratic. 

That’s the way these gatekeepers want to keep it. 

A challenge for the Māori media.

Anthony Albanese has appointed Samantha Mostyn as Governor-General.

Mostyn has a credible track record in business and the community but she is also a former Labor staffer.

She has worked for Labor MPs Paul Keating, Michael Lee and Bob Collins. To my mind that is not very compatible with the role of Governor-General.

Nicola Willis announced:

Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. 

Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital Strategic Advisors, replaces Peter Harris who retires from the MPC at the end of March. 

Professor Gai, the Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Auckland and Head of the Departments of Economics, Accounting & Finance, and Property, replaces Caroline Saunders who is retiring at the end of June. 

Nicola Willis says Carl Hansen and Professor Gai are both highly-qualified and have been appointed on the recommendation of the Reserve Bank’s board on the basis of their professional knowledge, skills and experience, including in the areas of economics and monetary policy.

Two excellent appointments. I don’t know Professor Gai but he has excellent pedigree – a PhD from Oxford, 13 years at the Bank of England, a stint Advising the Bank of Canada and a monetary policy reviewer for the RBNZ.

I do know Carl Hansen. He was a very highly regarded Chief Executive of the Electricity Authority, but also has previously worked for the Reserve Bank for six years, where he worked on liquidity management policy and macroeconomic modelling.

It might seem a no brainer to be appointing people with monetary policy experience to the Monetary Policy Committee, but this has not been the case in the past.

Radio NZ report:

Sir John Key’s dream of a vast ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands has finally died, with work on legislation scrapped by the coalition government.

The proposal was announced in 2015 by the then-prime minister to great international fanfare but quickly ran into opposition. A backlash from fishing companies and iwi bodies saw it put on ice and ongoing opposition from the Māori Party and New Zealand First also prevented progress.

In a statement on Thursday, Fisheries Minister and NZ First MP Shane Jones said all work on the proposal would be stopped and the legislation removed from Parliament’s to-do list.

This is very disappointing. The legislation for this was supported by all 120 MPs at first reading. But then Te Pati Maori objected to it, and it stalled as they tried to get agreement. Then at the 2017 election, NZ First went with Labour partly because they would promise not to push through the sanctuary.

And now it is officially dead.

The proposed sanctuary would have been one of the largest in the world. It wouldn’t actually have negatively impacted fishing as marine sanctuaries allow fish populations to grow, and they move into non sanctuary areas. Also the level of commercial fishing in the Kermadecs was minuscule – an average of $109,000 a year.

If it was put to a vote in Parliament there would be over 100 MPs in favour. But both Te Pati Māori and NZ First have successfully blocked it and now killed it.