Interesting data from the 2023 stocktake.

• 54.0% female
• 0.1% non-binary
• 46.9% male
• 66.9% European
• 27.5% Maori
• 7.0% Pacific
• 6.1% Pacific

The scary thing is the total number of Ministerial appointees – a total of 2,790!

I watched the 1st (and last) US Presidential debate and it was awful. Biden looked like a corpse. For lengths of 30 seconds or more he would be unmoving and unblinking.

Biden did get some hits away in the second half, but the impressions from the first half will be what people remember. Trump by contrast looked strong and vigorous (of course he lied non stop) and ironically the debate format with no interjections actually made him look more reasonable.

The debate will now be about whether they replace Biden as candidate. I’ve watched a lot of US presidential debates and never have I seen such a bad performance.

1 News reports:

A branded van, used by Te Pāti Māori candidate Takutai Kemp last year, has raised fresh questions amid concerns over allegations relating to Manurewa Marae.

The late-model, 12-seater van was used by Kemp in her bid for the Tāmaki Makaurau seat last year. The vehicle was wrapped in the candidate’s branding and featured prominently in Kemp’s marketing campaign as a mobile billboard.

Subsequent registration checks of the vehicle show that it is owned by the Manurewa Marae Trust Board. Kemp was the chief executive of the marae before the election.

That may be a problem for the marae as it is a registered charity. Charities are restricted in what political activities they can engage in. 

Charities Services, which is part of Internal Affairs, told Q+A “registered charities must not support or oppose particular parties or candidates.”

Yet they do, and they keep getting away with it, with barely a wet bus ticket slap.

You can spend $500,000 on a political campaign, and then all you have to do to escape action is pay your CEO a higher salary, so he can then repay the “loan”. Where’s the incentive not to do it in the first place?

Simon Wilson writes:

Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden occupy positions 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 on the UN’s inequality-adjusted Human Development Index. New Zealand is a mere 17th. Those same countries also hold five of the top seven places on the World Happiness Index. They’re doing pretty well.

Are there things we could learn from them?

I am sure there are. Here’s some of them:

• Sweden has lifted its ban on uranium mining and reversing the decision to phase out nuclear power with 10 new nuclear reactors
• A planned 10 billion kronor tax cut in Sweden
• A national ban on begging in Sweden
• Increasing defence spending to 2% of GDP
• Norway cut fuel tax
• Norway is 5th largest oil exporter in the world
• Denmark announced a US-Danish defense cooperation agreement, that allows for U.S. soldiers and military equipment to be based in Denmark
• Denmark is tripling military spending
• Denmark has forced 37-hours-per-week labour for immigrants in exchange for benefits
• Finland has cut €6 billion in the state budget
• Finland has tightened up benefit eligibility
• Iceland has a corporate tax rate of 20%

All good policies!

Shane Reti and David Seymour announced:

The coalition Government is delivering up to 26 cancer treatments as part of an overall package of up to 54 more new medicines, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti and Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today.

“Pharmac estimates that around 175,000 people will benefit from the additional treatments in just the first year,” Dr Reti says.

Excellent news. What matters more – that the announcement was delayed four weeks, or that 175,000 people will benefit from the new drugs!

The Herald reports:

Her once-promising political career now in tatters, former Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman endured another blow this afternoon as she stood in an Auckland courtroom to be sentenced for shoplifting nearly $9000 worth of retail items from high-end stores.

Judge June Jelas denied the 43-year-old former barrister’s request for a discharge without conviction, decreasing her odds of being allowed to revive her legal career after a seven-year hiatus prompted by her ascension to Parliament.

Ghahraman, who was allowed to sit in the courtroom gallery rather than the dock, lowered her eyes and looked towards a supporter as the decision was announced.

The judge imposed fines totalling $1600 and court costs of $260. Supervision was not imposed.

This seems appropriate – a minor fine and a conviction. Now that the justice process has reached a conclusion, Ghahraman should be allowed to get on with her life in private and like any other criminal be wished well in her rehabilitation.

Macron’s decision to call a snap election looks to be backfiring badly. The latest polls are:

• National Rally (right) 36%
• New Popular Front (left) 29%
• Together (centre) 21%
• Republicans (centre-right) 7%

So his faction looks to get barely 20% and the hard right and hard left will get over 60% between them meaning the new Government will need one of them in it.

The next Prime Minister could be Jordan Bardella, who is only 28 years old.

The bad:

The Government has introduced a Bill today to restore the Three Strikes sentencing law, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee says.

“New Zealanders are rightly concerned about violent crime. We are delivering on our commitment to introduce a revised Three Strikes law as one of our key law and order priorities. 

This law would be better called a zero strikes law. It does two things:

• Wipes out every current strike offence from current offenders. Over 10,000 serious offenders get their warnings removed, and they get reset to zero strikes. Appalling
• Makes it much harder to get a strike. The old law provided certainty that if you commit a serious crime, you get a strike. This law will reduce the numbers who get a strike by around 75% as no strike will be gained if the judge gives them a light sentence of under two years (which will encourage lighter sentences)

This law is window dressing that is next to useless. It is so water down the Green Party could happily vote for it.

However other sentencing changes are more worthwhile:

• Capping the sentence discounts that judges can apply at 40%
• Preventing repeat discounts for youth (18 to 25) and remorse, which had allowed for “lenient sentences”.
• Introducing a new aggravating factor to address offences against sole charge workers and those whose home and business are interconnected
• Encouraging the use of cumulative sentencing for offences committed while on bail, in custody, or on parole.
• Implementing a sliding scale for early guilty pleas with a maximum sentence discount of 25%, reducing to a maximum of 5% for a guilty plea entered during the trial.
• Amending the principles of sentencing so a judge has to take into account the victims’ interests.

Hopefully the Government will listen to reason at select committee and strengthen the Three Strikes law. Otherwise they would be better not to even pass it, as it is so toothless.

1 News reports:

The Government’s independent advisory group has recommended brand new Cook Strait ferries, similar in size to the current fleet, 1News understands. 

Last week, Ministers received a report from the group in which it’s understood options were laid out for the specifications of the new ferries and when they could arrive. 

The group has recommended that the ferries be smaller than the proposed iRex ferries and not rail-enabled, although rail would still be able to be shunted onto the vessels as often happened now.

In other words, ferries that would not require $2 billion to be spent on new ports, would not be banned from the Tory Channel as being too big, and would have the same capacity as present.

doesn’t seem like rocket science.

CNN reports:

Bolivia’s President Luis Arce called on the country to “organize and mobilize against the coup d’état, in favor of democracy” as soldiers and armored military vehicles positioned themselves around governmental buildings in La Paz on Wednesday.

“We cannot allow coup attempts to take Bolivian lives once again. We want to urge everyone to defend democracy,” Arce said from the presidential residence, Casa Grande.

According to footage from the scene, armed soldiers were seen gathering around Murillo Plaza, a main square in La Paz where the national executive and legislative offices are located. It is unclear why military units are in Murillo Plaza and how many there are.

CNN is trying to contact Bolivia’s government for comment.

Armored vehicles were seen ramming into the doors of Bolivia’s government palace, according to Associated Press, as the country’s former President Evo Morales, who, like the incumbent, is in Bolivia’s Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, said on X that a “coup d’état is brewing.”

Bad Governments should be removed by votes, not guns.

Sadly this is normal in Bolivia which has had 150 coups since 1825. The last was in 1982 so it was hoped these were in the past.

The Post reports:

Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has delivered a slap-down to Wellington’s regional council as it weighs up buying the city council’s shares in the capital’s airport.

The Post revealed on Thursday that regional councillors had met behind closed doors to discuss options to retain public ownership of Wellington City Council’s 34% stake in the asset.

Do they not think 20% rates increases are enough? Do they want them even higher?

Stuff reports:

While Abel’s early activism was divisive and performative, his approach to being an MP has been quite the opposite.

Throughout multiple interviews and conversations leading to this profile, Abel repeatedly talks about his dream of bolstering the wool industry – and his alliance with NZ First’s Mark Patterson to try to make that happen.

He also has an unlikely friendship, of sorts, with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. It started back in 2020, when Luxon was first elected to Parliament. Abel attended the MP induction sessions that year, as there was a chance he would make it once the final vote count came through.

During MP training, Luxon and Abel had lunch together and have remained on good terms since. “We had quite a constructive conversation about environment stuff,” Abel recalls.

“He’s a guy you can have a conversation with. We talk about various things, but I won’t tell you what we talked about on that night,” says Abel.

Connection remains a key focus for the new MP. After we meet over lunch for the initial interview for this story, Abel asks to talk again about the theme of inter-party relationships. He’s been thinking about it a lot, and has a few more thoughts about why he’s as comfortable talking with National and NZ First MPs as he is those on the political Left.

“The world is becoming far more divisive,” he says.

“But we have a responsibility to be civil, to have dialogue, even if we disagree fiercely. It allows for an understanding of where another person is coming from.”

It is really good to see an MP saying this, because we do not want to go down the US route where more and more people see the opposing side as having bad intentions. It is vitally important that people can disagree and still have civility and dialogue.

1 News reports:

Whangārei Mayor Vince Cocurullo is being slammed by five of his councillors for refusing to allow council debate on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict next week.

Mayor Cocurullo said he had turned down both representations under the Local Government Act because the matter was not related to the council’s role or function.

He said his position to refuse the quintet’s notice of motion and the petition was not an affront to democracy.

It was in contrast protecting democracy to ensure an overall dispassionate view, rather than the position of one group of people dictating to others, Cocurullo said

Finally a Mayor who understands what the job of Council is. It isn’t foreign policy.

Radio NZ report:

Wellington city council officers say the $180 million Tākina convention centre has made “lower-than-expected revenue” in its first year of operation.

The multi-level 1280 square metre CBD site was opened just over a year ago, with Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau saying after it was complete that the building would be “the first step in the rebirth of Wellington.”

But one year on the results did not look to be quite as rosy.

This is absolutely unsurprising. Business cases done for organisations who don’t have to wear the cost of failure, almost always are far too optimistic.

Let’s consider you work for a Big 4 consultancy firm and a Council comes to you saying we want a business case for a convention centre. Then of course you deliver them a business case that shows it can be profitable, because that is what the client wants. You just have to make the right assumptions.

But let’s say you are a hotel chain owner, and you are considering building say a hotel and convention centre in Wellington. You’ll do a business plan, and the last thing you’ll want in there are optimistic assumptions. You’ll take a cynical approach to the development, because if it ends up loss making, you’ll probably lose your job, and the company’s owners (who appoint the board) will lose money. So you look very carefully at any assumptions, the evidence behind them, and what it will mean if they end up wrong.

When the Council is paying for it, then the price to pay for getting it wrong ids basically zero. The staff do not get impacted. The CE does not get impacted. And the current Council can blame it on the former Council who authorised it. The loser are the ratepayers.

Under the convention centre’s operating model Te Papa was appointed to run the business side of the building (its operating costs and revenue related activities) and the council would contribute to its building costs.

The centre’s financial issues prompted council officers to conduct a review into its operating model.

That report found in three options for the centre’s operating model that the council has been asked to consider.

They were maintaining the status quo, adjusting the existing model, or changing the arrangements between the existing parties (Te Papa and the council).

The agenda stated neither the council nor Te Papa supported maintaining the status quo, while Te Papa were not confident, they could adjust the existing model to make it achievable for them.

This is code for that Te Papa can see no way at all to make the convention centre profitable (and they don’t even have to cover capital costs) which means inevitably the Council will take on the losses.

And we wonder why rates are going up almost 20%.

In case people here may want to use it, I have started archiving links to all NZ polls on Parliament or policy issues at Curia’s website. You can browse by date, company or issue.

I had never heard of the Aotearoa Educators’ Collective, until they were quoted at length in this Newsroom article, criticising the Government’s curriculum refresh. I looked up their website and found this is their policy platform:

• The primary responsibility for schooling is to create critical creative citizens invested in participatory democracy with capacity to combat social injustice.
• Education should address long seated inequities and injustice through curriculum design.
• Success at school cannot be reduced to achievement in literacy and numeracy

So they want schools focus on giving students the capacity to be social justice activists, and to deprioritise literacy and numeracy.

If they are unhappy with what the Government is doing, this can only be a very good thing.

The topics for Day 2 were:

• “Grain and Waves: Odesa Emerges as the World’s Major Port”
• “A Dive in the Black Sea for Trump: Post-Election Speculations and Implications
• Wartime challenges for the Black Sea states
• “The Black Sea: A Crucial NATO Asset – Rectifying Missteps from the Bucharest Summit”
• “Charting the Path to Resolve the Transnistrian Conundrum”
• “From the Varangians to the Greeks: The Revival of the Baltic-Black Sea Union”
• “HOW could we STOP the RUSSIAN influence on the elections IN MOLDOVA?”

Panelists included:

• Taras Vysotskyi, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine
• Brooks Newmark, former British MP, former Minister of Civil Society
• Rémi Duflo,Charge d’Affaires, EU Delegation to Ukraine
• Ambassador Cindy McCain, Executive Director of World Food Programme
• Michael C. Ryan, former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy
• James O’Brien, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
• Ambassador Kurt Volker, former Special Representative for Ukraine of the US
• Michał Kamiński, Deputy Speaker of the Senate of the Republic of Poland
• Francois Hollande, former President of France
• Jeanne Shaheen, U.S. Senator
• Mihai Popșoi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Moldova
• Pavlo Klimkin, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine
• Margareta Cederfelt, Swedish Member of Parliament,
• Kira Rudik, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Leader of Party “Golos”,
• Indrek Saar, former Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Estonia
• Alexandru Balan former deputy director of SIS Moldova
• Radu Burduja, former Deputy Minister of Defense and Military Representative of Moldova to NATO and the EU

I list them just to get across that these were not garden variety pundits (like me). These were very senior and experienced politicians and officials from not just Ukraine, but also Moldova, Sweden, Estonia, Poland, France, the US and UK.

One (semi) amusing thing I learnt is that when there are foreign dignitaries in Ukraine, they actually increase missile and bombing activity, to send a message to pother countries to stay away. The reason I call this semi-amusing is because I had assumed the opposite. When deciding whether to attend, I reasoned that Russia would be more restrained and do less bombings as they wouldn’t want to kill a former President of France. But as it turns out, it was the opposite!

My notes are not as detailed as Day 1, as I was too busy listening to write as much, but some salient points:

• 20% of grain to other countries through World Food Programme comes from Ukraine, and much of it through Odesa and Black Sea. The conflict there has huge impact on food security
• Port of Odesa has annual traffic capacity of 40 million tonnes
• Ukrainian farmers have been targeted as well as soldiers. Russia has bombed tractors.
• Both sea mines and land mines are big challenge to food security
• Crimea is strategically vital, and if it remains with Russia, there will never be security in the Black Sea
• There was a UN negotiated grain corridor, but it lapsed a year or so ago, yet Ukraine has managed to unilaterally manage a corridor by sinking so many Russian ships
• A fascinating discussion on turning Odessa into a free trade zone like Hong Kong, once the conflict is over
• Lots of discussion on what a Trump win will mean for the conflict.
• One Trump supporters said that you need to make an economic case to Trump – Ukrainian victory is cheaper than alternative
• Also highlighted that Trump likes to back a winner and take credit for it. So the better Ukraine can do in the next six months, the more likely he will continue support
• Was stressed that who Trump appoints as NSA and in key staff roles will be key
• Moldova has little domestic energy capacity – used to import almost everything from Russia, giving Russia huge influence and even control
• Since the invasion of Ukraine, Moldova has now freed itself from Russian gas supplies but is still dependent on electricity from a province controlled by Russia.
• There have been a total of 10 wars since the collapse of USSR in this region – all involving Russia

The final point was the most salient one – that the biggest threat to Russian security is the Kremlin.

Putin has pushed Sweden and Finland into NATO

He has turned Ukraine towards Europe forever.

He has sent Moldova towards energy independence from Russia

NATO isn’t expanding because of NATO. NATO is expanding because all of Russia’s neighbours have seen that they need protection against Putin.

I spent a lot of time in Ukraine chatting to locals. I would always ask them what their reaction was when Russia invaded. Did they think it would happen? And most of them said that despite all the warnings it was coming, it was still a huge shock that Putin was trying to take over their country. Crimea had always been an area of dispute, but to actually have a fully fledged invasion was unthinkable.

The reason it was is that Ukrainians and Russians are like New Zealanders and Australians. They are friends and relatives. Many Ukrainians have Russian ancestry. They do not bear any ill well against ordinary Russians, just against Putin.

Yahoo News reports:

Madison Wells will produce a documentary focusing on the public and private life of Jacinda Ardern, the trailblazing Prime Minister of New Zealand who helped introduce strict gun laws following the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. She also led her country through the Covid pandemic and grappled with issues such as child poverty and climate change.

She did grapple with them. A careful choice of words.

The feature-length film is currently untitled. It follows Ardern from the moment she receives the Labour Party nomination to the birth of her child to her resignation in 2023, when she was at the height of her power and popularity. 

This statements suggests the so called documentary will not be based in the real world.

Here is a chart I previously published on her popularity.

Hard for their statement to be more wrong. Ardern’s popularity peak was +72%. When she resigned from office it had plummeted to -1%.

Stuff reports:

Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana told a migrant worker he was able to work in her husband’s bike shop on a seasonal work visa – despite that visa clearly stating he could only work in horticulture and viticulture jobs.

The worker also claims Tana advised him to keep working in the shop during lockdown as it was essential work.

Previously the allegations were only around breaches of employment law. Now we also have breaches of immigration law and Covid-19 laws to add in.

And while just allegations, the article cites many messages from the MP or her husband as proof.

The Herald reports:

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says heads must roll at Transpower after the grid provider revealed the collapse of a transmission tower and the resulting power outage in Northland was due to too many nuts on the pylon being removed.

Transpower chief executive Alison Andrew today confirmed a maintenance crew had removed the nuts of three legs of the pylon last Thursday. She said the proper maintenance procedures were not followed and called the improper work “unprecedented and inconceivable”.

It’s almost comical, apart from the impact. Hey lets remove all the nuts at the same time from three of the four four legs of this really tall tower, as that is quicker than cleaning them one at a time!