The NZ Initiative has a short report on the Fair Digital News Bargaining bill. Key aspects include:

• News companies wishing to block search engine indexation can do so easily. A simple robots.txt file stops search engines from indexing sites. Paywalls can prevent those who have not paid from viewing a site’s content. Blocking platforms’ access is relatively simple. Why have news publishers not done so?
• International research showing that digital platforms, overall, do more to benefit news firms by increasing their reach than they might do to harm news firms when some platform users substitute platforms’ snippets of news rather than paying for the newspaper.
• When those who want news decide which outlets to support with their subscription dollars, news outlets face a market test. If the test instead depends on a political or bureaucratic allocation process, worse outcomes may be obtained
• As in Canada, small and independent outlets are likely to be most harmed if Meta blocked links to news rather than be subject to compelled bargaining
• Entrenching existing players and business models by throttling smaller independent outlets would stifle innovation and new entrants in the media market
• Forcing payments for links and snippets undermines the open nature of the web
• If there is a public interest case for supporting journalism, it would be more transparent and economically efficient to do so through direct subsidies rather than forced transfers from one sector to another.

It’s a bad bill that should not be progressed.

Stuff reports:

A professor in population health has told Stuff’s daily podcast Newsable the government is “ignoring the facts” when it comes to policies that could tackle the country’s shocking obesity rates.

“New Zealand is falling behind,” Boyd Swinburn, from the University of Auckland, said, pointing to Latin America as a leading example.

“They have [a] sugary drinks tax, they have junk food taxes, they have marketing restrictions to children – they’re taking the problem seriously. We just don’t care about it. If you look at our policies, we’re doing nothing.”

But has the policies in Mexico for example worked? Sure they reduce the product being taxed, but do people just substitute? The public health activists cite models of reduced obesity but almost never refer at actual real obesity data. So I checked the OECD data.

What a huge success. Gone from a 34% obesity rate to 45%.

Simeon Brown announced:

Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has concluded the Future for Local Government Review and confirmed that the Coalition Government will not be responding to the review’s recommendations.

Good. The Nannie Mahuta hand picked review team managed to come up with an appalling set of recommendations. They included:

• mana whenua appointments to Councils to “supplement” elected members
• Pay rises for Councillors
• Forcing STV on all Councils even where residents have overwhelmingly voted against it
• To force Councils to adopt tikanga standing orders binding on Councillors
• embed social/progressive procurement and supplier diversity
• lower voting age to 16

So basically they wanted to end equality of suffrage in NZ. It is good the Government has binned the report.

As the United States reels from an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, the focus in on the need for those involved in politics to be more moderate in their discourse.

The same weekend, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said on Q+A:

We’ve got a Government that is genocidal, ecocide, we know that they are white supremacists

(If they’re a genocidal government) There’s no if, they are.

This is violent extremist language and it is time for media (huge credit to Jack Tame for pushing back on it) to scrutinise TPM to the same degree any other party saying such stuff would be. If the co-leader of a centre right political party accused the previous Government of waging genocide against whites, then it would be the lead story for days, with demands that such extremism be condemned.

And this is extremism, that promotes violence. If you keep telling 20% of the population that the Government wants to commit genocide and exterminate them, then of course that will lead to extremism and violence. It is beyond the realm of acceptable discourse from an MP, let alone a co-leader. It is far more extreme than anything Trump or the most left representative in the US says.

Ultimately Labour and the Greens need to step up, to stop this. This is not the type of language that you can just say “I wouldn’t express it like this” in response to. Labour and Greens should rule out Te Pati Maori playing any role in a future Government, unless they drop their violent extremist language.

If they don’t, then NZ will follow the US down its current trajectory. You will encourage more politicians on both the left and right to use violent extremist language as a way to build support, and it will end with someone wounded or dead.

Radio NZ reports:

Burt said the investigation took longer than anticipated due to a broadened scope, the late arrival of extensive evidence from a complainant and the “lengthy and often unclear” evidence from Tana and her husband Christian Hoff-Nielsen.

“The owner of the business did not provide a coherent or consistent verbal account and his evidence both oral and documentary tended to obfuscate rather than elucidate,” Burt wrote of Hoff-Nielsen.

“The respondent’s evidence shifted over the investigation with different explanations as to why that was so, requiring significant cross referencing to earlier accounts and documentation to come to findings,” Burt wrote of Tana.

This is a polite lawyerly way of saying they lied.

“Christian set out responses to me that were plainly wrong and not corroborated by evidence. Throughout our interview he also changed or adjusted his answers and so lacked consistency of account, meaning I found him unreliable.

“Darleen’s credibility was significantly compromised too, because she initially told me she had nothing to do with Green Wheels Blenheim Limited and it was purely Christian’s business and quite separate from E Cycles.

“When I asked her if she had been a director she responded, no. However, eventually when I noted the Companies Office data, she conceded she had been a director, but it was only for a short time, and she was not operationally involved.”

They didn’t just lie, they lied badly.

Burt wrote Tana’s evidence in connection with this case was “particularly inconsistent and often shown to be factually incorrect.”

So the Greens have managed to select bullies, shoplifters and liars all in one go!

Grant Duncan writes:

University management should take note of that, as there have been unrealistic efforts to force poorly defined “Treaty obligations” into teaching and research. For example, one university is now telling its academic staff that all curricula should, as a high priority, be “designed, developed and delivered in authentic partnerships with Māori [and] uphold provisions of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. It’s not clear how so many authentic partnerships can be achieved across all disciplines, from chemistry to ancient history. The 1840 text of te Tiriti gives no guidance on advanced learning in the twenty-first century. A parochial requirement to “honour the Treaty as a partnership between iwi and the Crown” has little relevance to, or recognition in, the competitive international world of academic disciplines. 

These top-down Tiriti-led strategies have lost any emancipatory or decolonising effect and instead they’re now having an oppressive and chilling effect on academic freedom, not least within law schools, as the learned judge may be aware.

It would be good to be able to have a nuanced debate on this, but sadly it is near impossible.

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump is going to be one of those moments where decades later you can remember what you were doing when you heard the news. I was at the Southern Cross bar with the kids and followed it almost in real time on Twitter where initial reports were hazy as to what had happened.

All attempted assassinations are poignant. I recall Reagan’s shooting. But there is something about a bullet that clips an ear that makes you realise how a minute difference in wind or aim could have resulted in a JFK type assasination.

There is still uncertainty over the shooter’s motives. Not that he wanted to kill Trump, but why? The reports of him being bullied at school, might make this a case where he just wanted to be (in)famous, and if not Trump, then maybe a school. Or it may be Occam’s razor – he wanted to stop Trump.

I have reflected on the what if scenario, if Trump had been killed. It would have deprived tens of millions of Americans from their democratic right to vote for him. You defeat politicians with votes, not bullets.

If Trump had been killed, then my best guess is Donald Trump Jr would have replaced him on the ticker, rather than Trump’s yet unannounced VP pick. Trump Jr would probably run a much darker campaign based on vengeance for his father.

Would Biden still stand? I suspect not, as he says he is only in it to stop Trump. He is also probably unelectable. So if he went, then Gavin Newsom is as likely as anyone else to have become the Democratic nominee.

That would be a rather bizarre what if scenario, as Newsom’s ex wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, is now engaged to Donald Trump Jr. Newsom was cheating on her with the wife of his campaign manager, which seems very ungracious thing to do!

But fortunately Trump was not killed. I remain someone who does not want him to win the presidency, but it will be fascinating to see what he does in his second term.

The NZ Initiative has a report concluding:

1. The report proposes a new “Smart Road User Charges” (Smart RUC) system to replace the current fuel excise duty.
2. Under Smart RUC, all vehicles would be charged based on actual road usage, time of day, and vehicle type.
3. The proposed system aims to reduce congestion, improve road maintenance, and ensure a fairer distribution of costs.
4. A five-year implementation plan is outlined, allowing for a gradual transition.

The benefits are:

Smart RUC implements variable pricing based on time of day and location. This reduces traffic in urban areas during peak hours. Commuters save time, and decreased traffic leads to lower emissions and improved air quality.

For road maintenance, Smart RUC provides a stable and sustainable funding source. Charges are directly linked to road use, generating revenue for infrastructure improvements. This allows for timely and effective road maintenance. As a result, road quality is preserved and long-term maintenance costs are reduced.

It’s definitely the way to go. The major challenge is dealing with the privacy issues.

Interesting data in UK exit poll.

• Brits with degrees voted 66% left and 26% right
• Brits with just GCSE voted 41% left and 54% right
• High social class voted 57% left and 36% right
• Low social class voted 50% left and 43% right
• Students voted 78% left and 13% right
• Retired voted 37% left and 57% right
• Top income quintile voted 62% left and 32% right
• Bottom income quintile voted 52% left and 41% right
• 25% of 2019 Conservative voters voted Reform

Like in NZ the left does worse with the working class!

If you want the Government to ditch Willie Jackson’s bill to steal money from tech companies to give to media companies, you can use the Taxpayer’s Union site to e-mail Ministers.

it appears shots were fired at Trump at a rally. He is bloodied but okay.

Unless the shooter turns out to be Melania, this will deliver at least two more swing states to him.

Last week I blogged a speech from Simon Upton, highlighting five inconvenient truths he highlighted to the Environmental Defence Society. A reader has suggested I also cover the rest of his speech, which also had good food for thought.

We need innovation and a focus on increasing value, not producing more. 

Economies can grow by ‘working harder’. This has been the main driver of growth in New Zealand over recent decades – importing more people, working longer hours, using land more intensively. We know the outcome.

Another option is working smarter. In other words, seeking productivity growth. Here our record is dismal to say the least. Yet this is where something closer to what we can call ‘green growth’ happens.

Very much agree that productivity growth is essential. Working harder is good, but has a limit. Productivity growth is the key.

Resources are limited. Time is limited. But our capacity for innovation is unlimited. This is where we need to focus.

Resources are limited in that there is for example a finite amount oil on the planet. However as we found out with peak oil, our estimate of when we reach those limits proved to be highly inaccurate due to new technology. The reality is we will never come close to reaching the hard limits of resources, but we will come against the soft limits, which is where it becomes too costly to extract them. And of course we need to consider the environmental impact of any extractive industries.

Unlike most small advanced economies, New Zealand has no companies in the Forbes 2000 list of top global firms. These tend to be firms that support much higher research and development spending, create and export value-added products, and ultimately support prosperous domestic economies. These large companies act as anchors for successful local industries.

I didn’t realise we had none. Australia by comparison has 31.

One way to do that is to focus on services that make little call on natural resources. For example, the potential for a global software-as-a-service company like Xero to grow in a global market is essentially unlimited. But as a nation, we haven’t seized the opportunity to ply businesses like this with as many skilled workers as we can muster. Xero, like others before it, has progressively shifted its operations overseas in search of the skills and capital it needs to grow.

Xero has been our biggest success story, but unfortunately yes it is now an Australian company.

We need to ensure the value of the environment is recognised and not drowned out by the narrative of traditional economic value. To do that, environmental value and economic value need to be brought onto the same playing field. In Going with the grain, I suggested increasing payments to landowners for ecosystem services over time. Biodiversity credits are a good example, provided they can be made to work. The big question is where the money should come from. The logical answer is by increasing levels of environmental taxation over time.

If environmental taxes aren’t used to increase the overall tax burden, but are used to either reduce other taxes, or initiatives like biodiversity credits, then I think they can play a useful role.

 Congestion charging now looks to be on the cards with cross-party support. Road user charges that reflect the true capital and maintenance cost of heavy freight on our roads would help mode shift.

As readers will know, I am a big fan of congestion charging.

Tama Potaka announced:

New Zealanders will get to enjoy more of our country’s natural beauty including at Cathedral Cove – Mautohe thanks to a $25 million boost for conservation, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka announced today. …

Coromandel’s Cathedral Cove will receive $5m to plan, build, reopen and maintain an overland track as part of continued recovery work from Cyclone Gabrielle damage.

Great that the Minister has delivered on reopening Cathedral Cove. It shows the difference a good Minister can make with a recalcitrant agency.

This is fascinating. It is not unheard of for MPs to lease office space from an associated entity. But it is unheard of that their taxpayer funded office is a secret that isn’t listed as an office for them. And it seems it is a secret from the public also.

I’m interrupting my series on the Trump lawfare to cover this topic. One of the most frequent refrains from President Donald Trump is that the 2020 US Presidential election was stolen by electoral fraud perpetrated by the Democrats. The Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans, RINOs and almost all of the media wholeheartedly reject the claim and call Trump (and his supporters and a section of conservative media) perpetrators of “The Great Lie” about the 2020 election. Elite opinion overwhelmingly is of the view that Joe Biden was legitimately elected in 2020. Trump’s adamant belief in the stolen election became the focal underpinning of the massive protests on January 6, 2021 where a small number of unruly elements in the crowd broke into the US Capitol during the House of Representatives’ process of certifying the votes from the Electoral College, the last step in the complex process of certifying the 2020 Presidential election. The Democrats held a special Congressional hearing about January 6^th where they accused Trump of fomenting an insurrection after the then Democrat controlled House impeached him a second time for what they said was his attempt at usurpation of the election just before his term was up.

An extensive amount of research on the subject of the alleged electoral fraud has been published. The object of this Post is not to go over the specific allegations of fraud at this time. Regular readers of this Blog will know that I opined at length on this subject across 4 posts in January 2021 here, here, here and here. Since then, there has been significantly more work done in various states on the subject, most of which, in my opinion, has advanced the case for 2020 election fraud. There also have been some well-meaning attempts at exposing aspects of the fraud that have fallen short of what their proponents claim to be able to show.

Perhaps the most frequent comment made by politicians, commentators and media (and their so-called ‘fact checkers’) as the strongest proof that the 2020 election result was legitimate is because, if the electoral fraud accusation was true, then Trump and Republicans would have been able to prove their case in court and, to them, proof of the flimsiness of the fraud allegations comes from the fact (so the narrative goes) that none of the allegations have stood up in court and that, in case after case that heard the matter, the courts ruled against Trump. End of story!! The debate is over! Trump is a sore loser! And anyone who believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump is a conspiracy theorist! These mantras have been heard thousands of times since January 2021. Indeed, our esteemed host and blog owner has echoed this sentiment on many occasions and doubtless is one of the various reasons why he holds such a low opinion of Trump.

As we are learning, the mainstream media have long since graduated from merely reporting political matters through a left-wing lens and giving liberal progressive slants to perpetrating outright lies. A number of these hoaxes (and the breathless MSM reporting of them) were summarised in this Post. There are however different categories of media lies, from the inconsequential and minor to the huge and game changing (e.g. the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation or the lie that Donald Trump was elected thanks to Russian collusion). The media line that Trump’s election fraud claims were thrown out of every court where he (and his allies) tried to allege fraud is an outright falsehood and this Post will dissect why that is the truth.

There is a most comprehensive analysis of all 88 of the 2020 election fraud cases brought by Donald Trump (and his campaign) and by state Republican party litigants found here, published by a consortium of concerned conservatives and it goes over every single one of the 88 election integrity cases filed with links to all the actual court documents, filings and findings.

The headline finding is this:

Of the 88 cases filed, only 28 (or 31%) were decided on the merits of the cases. By merits I mean that the evidence being litigated was actually heard, presented and cross examined in court. For the majority of cases, they were dismissed WITHOUT A SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE EVER BEING PRESENTED IN COURT. Of the 28 cases where the evidence WAS able to be presented, 75% found in favour of Trump or the GOP litigant! Of the filed cases, 80% were filed in the battleground states that Biden only narrowly won: Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvanis, Arizona and Nevada.

Overwhelmingly, the cases that were dismissed without hearing a single piece of evidence were rejected for so-called lack of standing. This is a time-honoured way for a partisan Democrat controlled court to appear to be doing their job but in reality, they did not want to see Trump’s lawyers bringing forth any evidence of voter fraud. Other prominent reasons were “Dismissed: Moot” which is legalese for events have overtaken your case (i.e. Congress has already certified Biden) and so your allegations are moot or no longer worth hearing. Laches (a legal term for lack of timeliness) was the third most common reason for dismissal. It is ironic that many of the cases dismissed for laches were attempted to be filed earlier and court clerks told the attorneys that you’re trying to file too soon!

It is important to note that the biggest and most comprehensive fraud allegations were amongst the cases where courts refused to hear evidence. So, it is utterly dishonest for anyone to dismiss Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud by hiding behind the “he had his day in court and his spurious claims were thrown out” line because he never had his full day in court. The cases that were decided in his favour have seen certain modifications to vote counting and ballot management procedures in a few states that certainly will somewhat improve election integrity but the blockbuster claims, the vast array of affidavits filed by thousands of ballot counters, scrutineers and poll watchers, the massively researched and thoroughly documented cases were never presented in evidence in any court especially one where a proper remedy could be ruled.

There have been a number of small, localised election integrity cases that have been brought to local courts where, upon viewing the evidence of fraud, a judge has ruled an election invalid and has either vacated a result or most usually, ordered a fresh election. None of the major 2020 fraud cases that produced vast amounts of evidence ever got to see the light of day in a court. Say what you want about Trump, but the truth is, when it comes to his allegation of a stolen election, he has yet to have his full day in court no matter how many times his political opponents, the media and never Trumpers on the centre right say that the 2020 election was clean and properly conducted and that Joe Biden was legitimately elected. If current polling holds until November, Trump will finally get his proper day in court as there is no doubt that very public hearings on what happened in the 2020 election will be held and all the evidence of fraud will finally be fully presented.

If you are interested in the very many comprehensive reports that have been published on the 2020 election fraud, they can be found here. I challenge any person who is skeptical about the fraud allegations to read even just the three Peter Navaro reports and come onto this blog and argue Joe Biden was legitimately elected!

The Herald reports:

A four-year investigation into the legality of the Waipareira Trust’s provision of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to political campaigns linked to its chief executive John Tamihere has finally concluded, with the case referred for determination by peak regulator, the Charities Registration Board.

It shouldn’t have taken this long.

The development marks a key milestone in and signals an imminent conclusion to the long-running case, which began looking at $100,000 provided to Tamihere’s unsuccessful run for Auckland Mayor in 2019 but was later widened to scrutinise finance and in-kind support provided to Te Pāti Māori’s general election campaigns in 2020 and 2023.

Tamihere was a candidate for Te Pāti Māori in the 2020 election, and has been the party’s president since 2022.

At issue is long-established case law forbidding charities from supporting or funding political parties or candidates, with regulator Charities Services advising on its website: “Charities may support the policies of a political party where they’re consistent with its charitable purposes; however, they have to ensure that they’re independent and don’t provide support or funding to a political party.”

They have broken this prohibition many times. They think the law doesn’t apply to them.

Subsequent annual reports filed by Waipareia for the 2023 financial year record the related-party loan was repaid in May 2023, but also state the trust’s executives – of whom Tamihere is the most senior – that year also received a pay increase of 77% to each earn an average of $510,679.

So it is quite possible the Trust merely increased massively the salaries of key staff, so that the staff could then repay the loan.

The board, comprised of lawyers Gwendoline Keel and Loretta Lovell, and consultant Dr Bev Gatenby, typically meets monthly.

Keel, the board chair, stood down from her role last year after standing as a candidate for the Labour Party in the Port Waikato electorate. She ultimately lost that race, and Charities Services said following the election that she had since resumed her chairing duties.

Not ideal. A candidate should not be on the board of the regulator who decides if charities are breaching rules on political neutrality.

The electoral pact between the centrist and left candidates succeeded massively. The National Front were beaten into third place due to 200 candidates withdrawing to stop vote splitting.

This is not a bad thing. I am no fan of the National Front, but will admit their current leadership is more palatable than the old one.

But let’s look at the leader of the left bloc, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He could also be described as an extremist – far left. His stances include:

• A 100% income tax on incomes over 360,000 Euros
• A 100% inheritance tax on assets over 12 million Euros
• Withdrawal from NATO
• To remove private ownership as a constitutional right
• Supported the Russian annexation of Crimea
• Supported Russian intervention in Syria
• Blamed Jeremy Corbyn’s loss in 2019 on the Israeli Likud party
• Attacks journalists as fascists and spies
• A history of anti-semitism

100% tax rates, support for Putin, abolishing a right to private ownership – tis is loony extremism.

It would be nice if the media critiqued the far left as vigorously as they do the far right.

Enter your captions below – as always funny. not nasty.

George Clooney writes:

I’m a lifelong Democrat; I make no apologies for that. I’m proud of what my party represents and what it stands for. As part of my participation in the democratic process and in support of my chosen candidate, I have led some of the biggest fund-raisers in my party’s history. Barack Obama in 2012. Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden in 2020. Last month I co-hosted the single largest fund-raisersupporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden’s re-election. I say all of this only to express how much I believe in this process and how profound I think this moment is.

I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.

But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.

This is speaking truth to power. He is saying the Joe Biden on the debate wasn’t an aberration. It is the Joe Biden who is now 81, and wants to stay President until he is 86.

Clooney is one of their most prolific fundraisers and of course an iconic screen star. His op ed is having far more impact than a mere member of Congress or Senator would have.

But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, whom we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question.

A strategy of gaslighting 51 million people won’t work.

We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.

I think it is a matter of when, not if, Biden withdraws.