The Herald reports:

One of the country’s top corporate communications, public relations and lobbying firms is closing its New Zealand operation.

SenateSHJ will close tomorrow after 21 years of operation in New Zealand, saying trading conditions have become too tough to continue. It says a reduction in public sector consulting and contracting spend has been a factor.

The closure has caused shockwaves through the PR industry – one established player told the Herald it was an “earthquake”; another said it was huge news.

I was stunned when I heard of this. Senate is/was an institution and I have known many of their directors and staff over the years. Their annual function was always a who’s who’s of Wellington.

Thoughts are with the affected staff.

Before the Olympics there were multiple stories about how Russia will be behind attempts to disrupt the Olympics. Then the trains were struck disrupting a million people, and Russia was fingered.

But I was sceptical. Not that Russia ia a malign actor, but disrupting transport links tends to be the modus operandi of left and environmental groups. And are enough it is reported:

French police arrested an “ultra-Left activist” at a railway site on Sunday (local time) after “coordinated” sabotage attacks caused chaos and disruption ahead of Friday’s Olympics opening ceremony.

The man arrested in Oissel near Rouen, northern France, had in his vehicle “access keys to (state rail operator) SNCF technical premises”, “wire cutters”, a “set of universal keys” and other items, as well as literature with links to the ultra-Left, a police source told Le Parisien.

He was also found carrying “ultra-Left literature” with him and a book by Romain Huët called The Vertigo of the Riot: from the Zad to the Yellow Vests.

Zad, or “zones à défendre” (zones to defend) are sites occupied by eco-warriors to prevent what they consider environmentally harmful development projects from being carried out.

This is not a surprise.

Stuff reports:

Venezuela’s opposition and President Nicolas Maduro’s government are locked in a high-stakes stand-off after each side claimed victory in a presidential vote that millions in the long-suffering nation saw as their best shot to end 25 years of single-party rule.

Several foreign governments, including the U.S., held off recognising the results of Sunday’s election, and officials delayed the release of detailed vote tallies after proclaiming Maduro the winner with 51% of the vote, to 44% for retired diplomat Edmundo González.

Reputable polls had Gonzalez ahead by 30% or more. But Maduro appoints the Electoral Commission who decreed him the winner. The fact they have been unable to release any vote count, either nationally, or by polling place, shows that they have just invented a result. No doubt after a few days they will backfill enough data to justify it.

It would be interesting to do a left/right breakdown of governments that were initially elected into power, but then corrupted the electoral process to stay in power.

Stuff reports:

A transphobic post on social media, racist taunts, and a slogan from New Zealand’s largest neo-Nazi group are among a number of scenarios in police’s hate crime training. …

Some examples of hate speech used as part of the training include racist remarks, a transphobic post on social media as well as a poster for New Zealand’s largest neo-Nazi group Action Zealandia which reads “Kiwi not iwi”.

So Police are using a slogan used in 2005 by National against Labour’s Foreshore and Seabed Act as an example of hate speech!!

I understand the other example of hate speech is saying “There are only two genders”.

And people wonder why so many are opposed to giving the Police more powers over speech!

David Seymour points out:

Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet.

“Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led to urgent calls from the sector to conduct a review. The review is currently underway and taking public submissions.

“Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have united with the unions to vow to stop any changes, no matter what they are. They are essentially saying they want to stop the Government from making it easier and cheaper for parents to access childcare.

Submissions have not even closed on the review. After they you do a summary of submissions and then draft proposals which you consult on. But the unions and their proxies have decided that they are against any change, no matter what it is.

This is predictable because the reality is the unions hate the early childhood sector because they don’t control it, and it has private providers. Their worst nightmare is that one days parents will say “Hey I got to choose from 10 local ECEs for my pre-school, so why I don’t get any choice for my school”. They also hate that providers can set up anywhere they like, rather than where the Government dictates.

Their ultimate aim is to turn ECE into the school sector – you get no choice, and no flexibility.

As a rule I will try and use someone’s preferred pronouns, especially for friends or acquaintances who are non-binary or trans etc. People who genuinely have a different gender identity to their biological sex should not be stigmatised.

But one can take sensitivity to ridiculous degrees, as Darlene Tana has done. On 23 July Stuff reported:

“My pronouns are they/them, I never walk alone, in fact,” Tana told reporters.

(This was the first time Tana has publicly used the pronoun they/them. During the campaign, Tana was introduced by the Green Party with the pronoun she/her. Stuff asked Tana for clarity if it was best to use the they/them pronoun, Tana responded: “Because I never walk alone. Thank you.”)

You almost have to laugh at the sensitivity here. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Darlene Tana no longer identifies as a woman. She herself said she wants to use the pronouns they/them to signify she is not alone. In this case I don’t think anyone should feel obliged to use her preferred pronouns.

But a week later the Herald reports:

Swarbrick and co-leader Marama Davidson said they had written to Tana asking them to stand down.

So now it seems one can just assert any pronouns as your preferred ones, and the media will feel obliged to use them regardless of whether they are related to your gender identity.

A but of common sense would be helpful.

Radio NZ reports:

The Law Society says Frazer Barton will take a leave of absence from his position as president of the organisation while a complaint against him is addressed.

A formal complaint has been laid against Barton after the Royal Commission of Inquiry report indicated he had advised a church group to destroy records for children in its care. …

The background is reported by the Herald:

According to the Royal Commission of Inquiry abuse in care final report, records were destroyed because a senior staff member at Presbyterian Support Otago (PSO) decided they were “too much of a risk”.

Between 2017 and 2018, the former chief executive of PSO, Gillian Bremner, instructed a staff member to destroy all records belonging to children and young people who had stayed in its residential homes. …

The report reveals the former CEO sought advice from lawyer Frazer Barton, who was a PSO board member at the time, about the wholesale destruction of all records.

According to the commission’s report, Barton, who is now the president of the New Zealand Law Society, told Bremner she was legally obliged to provide the documents requested by the survivor, but that all other documents could be destroyed.

According to information in the commission’s report, Benton told Bremner she could destroy the documents, “but at an appropriate milestone or anniversary”.

It is unclear from the reports about the state of mind of those who advised on and made the decision. If it was to protect the institution from repetitional damage or a future inquiry, then they clearly acted wrongly.

A benign interpretation is that Benton merely advised that you should have a written policy to retain records for x years, and then records older than that can be disposed of.

Another interpretation is that they wanted an excuse to destroy the records, and the advise was along the lines of you can’t do it ad hoc, but can do it based on a time based policy. That would be legally correct but morally wrong.

At the end of the day, you have to wonder why you would need to destroy these records.

Federated Farmers states:

This week, Federated Farmers have written to Otago councils calling for urgent transparency on new policy aiming to protect the mana of water, known as Te Mana o Te Wai.

You may have seen this in the media, as it’s been picked up far and wide. 

Councils were required to give effect to the principle of Te Mana o Te Wai under the previous Government’s freshwater policies. 

While the new Government has announced it will review the direction requiring this, their review is not yet complete. 

It’s staggering that, despite the review, Otago Regional Council (ORC) is charging on and aiming to give legal effect to Te Mana o Te Wai this year. 

We understand the council has reached a view that protecting the mana of water means no treated urban wastewater will be able to be discharged to waterways.

If this rule is implemented, it will no doubt mean billions of dollars of additional cost for Otago ratepayers, including farmers.

This is the problem when you start to try and have rules that water has a life-force which must be respected. Instead of a sensible cost0-benefit analysis, you end up with rules that may cost ratepayers billions of dollars.

We also understand that, under the council’s definition of Te Mana o Te Wai, water from one river can’t mix with water from another. 

If such a rule is implemented, it would cause major issues for irrigation schemes where water is stored and irrigated in an area where it may eventually enter a different catchment.

Oh goodness, we can’t have water from the Smiths going into the water from the Jones. They’re just the wrong sort of water to mix with us good water.

Again, none of this is to do with the scientific view of freshwater quality; it’s simply aiming to give effect to Te Mana o Te Wai.

Maybe we shouldn’t legislate for concepts such as water having a life-force.

A guest post by John Stringer:

In three earlier posts explaining the US presidential election process to readers  not that familiar with how it works, it was said the ‘lawfare’ results v Trump, and the debates still to come, could change everything. No one could have predicted the outcome of that first – and last – debate Trump v Biden. It changed everything.

Trump has been consistently high in the polls since March, and growing his leads. That evolving lead was clearly the motivation for Obama and co. (The Democratic ‘Elite’ as they are called: Obamas, Clintons, Schumer, Pelosi, et al) to force Joe out (which is obviously what this was, a ‘Chicago-style’ palace coup). Assuming Kamala Harris is the Dem. contender, perhaps the most un-democratically elected nominee ever (she was LAST among the earlier presidential Democratic party nominees at 4.6%) what are the polls saying now on a Trump v Harris race?

It’s difficult to gather any real data of measurable significance (one has to grasp at single short-term polls in the wake of events); Harris is in a honeymoon period with a fawning media; and being a ‘change election’ this change from Biden to Harris (man to woman; age to ‘youth’; White to Black) has excited the Left base.  But there are some critical results that indicate where the race is at.

• ECONOMY (where this election will be won/lost) Trump has a 51% favour rating. Harris only 41%. That’s a ten point lead, and in such a close race, that’s probably unassailable. It’s how most Americans will decide their vote.

• OVERALL FAVOURABILITY RATING (doesn’t decide who wins the Presidency). NY Times is reporting an average of various polls: Trump 48%, Harris 46% (compared to Trump 49%, Biden 41% early July). That justifies the coup.

• OVERALL ACROSS 5 BATTLEGROUND STATES one poll has favourability at Trump 44%, Harris 41%.

• ARIZONA: Trump 49%, Harris 44%

• GEORGIA: Trump 48%, Harris 44%

• MICHIGAN: Trump 46%, Harris 45%

• PENNSYV: Trump 48%, Harris 46%

• WISCONSIN: Tied 47%

What this means is that Harris has to cut into Trump’s leads in ALL the battleground states. That’s an uphill battle. She is also untested, and Trump is a very good campaigner, whereas she has not won many races at all, in fact she did not poll well in her own Democratic primary among supporters ostensibly on her side. They didn’t like her then. Obama has been slow to endorse, and at time of writing hasn’t done so.

She is still No.2 in the Biden White House, so has Biden’s failures like albatrosses around her neck, she still his VP!! Baggage. She can’t now try and instance herself from this Administration failures and they are many. She will live or die on Joe’s record, and its not pretty.

She is extremely vulnerable on a key election issue, BORDER and IMMIGRATION. Trump will hammer her on this (Harris was the so-called ‘Border Czar’) and she’ll suffer some king hits there, which further hurts her ability to eat in to Trump’s battleground state leads. Narrowing the lead or winning one or two states (like Wisconsin) means Trump will be President.

Newsweek have just published 24 July, a YouGuv poll reporting Trump +15 points ahead of Harris on immigration and the border.https://www.newsweek.com/trump-harris-immigration-poll-compared-1928887
or herehttps://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50144-harris-vs-trump-americans-evaluate-personality-and-policy

A certain victory as was inevitable under a Trump v Biden matchup is not now certain, due to this political ‘switcheroo.’ And we have to allow space for Harris to perform well against Trump in their debate/debates which could shift the dial.

If there is a pre-November ceasefire in Gaza and hostages get returned on the Biden watch, Harris might get some brownie points for that. But I would expect Trump’s NY Street savvy, working with Netanyahu, to steal that glory.  Don’t put it past Trump to secretly go to Jerusalem and broker a deal (Trump loves deals) in exchange for promises to Netanyahu for American backing in later conflicts (such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and against Iran). Netanyahu prefers Trump and is more likely to toss any electoral crumbs his way rather than Biden/Harris. Did you see the body language Netanyahu/Harris after their meeting 26 July?

If this is the best poll ‘bump’ Harris can muster then she’s done. But there’s still the debates, the DNC convention, attack ads, and international crises to factor in. In politics anything can happen. But at this stage, the race is Trump’s to lose, and Harris has only 4 months to erode Trump’s consistent lead over the last year or so (and she’s still not technically even the Candidate)..

Summary Trump v Harris Race, late July 2024.

1. 51-41% Favourability on the economy (Trump)
2. 48-46% Overal Favourability (Trump)
3. 44-41% Favourability across 5 Battleground states (Trump)
4. 49-44% ARIZONA (Trump)
5. 48-44% GEORGIA (Trump)
6. 46-45% MICHIGAN (Trump)
7. 48-46% PENNSYV (Trump)
8. 47-47% WISCONSIN (Trump/Harris).

• https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/05/guest_post_who_will_win_president.html

• https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/06/guest_post_7_true_battleground_states_for_us_president_2024.html
• https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/06/guest_post_which_states_will_decide_the_us_election.html

The Herald reports:

An independent report reveals Wellington Water staff took four months to tell the region’s councils about an error in budgeting advice that has left the councils with a bill of $51 million over three years.

The report was scathing about the organisation, saying it was immature, with inadequate systems and processes and a dysfunctional culture.

Something like this should have been escalated to the SLT, then CEO and Board within days.

ps – taken 5 weeks to get this far.

Steven Joyce writes:

Former Health Minister Andrew Little’s lament this week that reform shouldn’t be this hard underlines how little he knew about the ill-starred task he was taking on. As a merger it was of gargantuan scale for New Zealand, and overly complex in world terms. Merging 20 separate organisations with 80,000 odd staff in one big bang restructure was courageous, as they say. Or more aptly, ridiculous. …

As I observed in this column three years ago, the new entity is four times the size of Fonterra, our largest company. Fonterra itself was the product of consolidation of the dairy sector from tens of constituent organisations which took place progressively over decades. Even then the end result took a couple of decades to shake down.

Joyce’s point is not just that the timing was bad with the pandemic, but that the whole idea of merging 80,000 staff into one entity was ill-conceived.

Joyce suggests three key changes going forward, being:

1. Flatten the structure, eliminate the layers of bureaucracy and bring the management back close to the frontline with a chief executive for each hospital who can walk the wards, speak with the doctors and nurses, see what’s happening, and respond as required. Over time, the hospitals could be run as trusts, owned by the Government but reporting to their local community.
2.  Separate the health funding decisions from the operating decisions to get a better balance between primary care and hospital care. Slim Health NZ into a comparatively tiny health funding organisation with no ownership responsibilities, like the Tertiary Education Commission in the tertiary sector. 
3. Train a lot more doctors more cost-effectively, and that means breaking the fat and happy university duopoly that is Auckland and Otago Medical Schools. 

The first suggestion is fascinating. Rather than merge everything centrally, it would be having each hospital run by its own trust and CE. But they would not be a funder, just a provider.

The second is basically to bring back a funder/provider split. Having the one entity both run the hospitals and also decide how much money goes to hospitals vs GPs etc is a bad idea. I would note though that the description of the TEC as tiny may be optimistic. Before we had a TEC, tertiary funding was done by a team of around 12 officials in the Department of Education. Today TEC has around 400 staff!

It will be interesting to see what the Government does.

ABC reports:

There are calls for better regulation of zero-alcohol beverages following new research suggesting they condition teenagers into a “harmful” drinking culture. 

The Australian study, commissioned by the Cancer Council, echoes concerns raised by the World Health Organisation about a lack of policy and regulation on the sale of these drinks.

Ugh, good god. Having teenagers drinking zero alcohol beverages is a good thing, not a problem.

“More than a third had tried zero-alcohol products, and we found that they were really quite attractive to a large proportion of adolescents,” Dr Booth said. 

Newsflash: People like to have drinks that are pleasant to taste!

Next they’ll come for wine gums on the basis they normalise wine!

These are the net approval ratings of US Presidents after three and a half years in office.

1. Dwight Eisenhower +51%
2. Richard Nixon +27%
3. Bill Clinton +20%
4. Ronald Reagan +19%
5. Lyndon Johnson +7%
6. Barack Obama +2%
7. George W Bush +1%
8. Harry Truman -7%
9. Donald Trump -16%
10. Joe Biden -17%
11. Jimmy Carter -21%
12. George HW Bush -25%

Those in bold won a second term. The bottom four did not.

Paul Goldsmith announced:

The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says.

“Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied an area from 1840 to the present day, without substantial interruption.

“However, last year the Court of Appeal in Re Edwards made a ruling which changed the nature of the test and materially reduced the threshold.

Basically the Court decided exclusive doesn’t mean exclusive, but means could be exclusive if they wanted it to be, plus other strange findings.

The effect would have been to massively expand eligible areas for CMT from discrete areas to most of the coastline.

The Government is:

• Inserting a declaratory statement that overturns the reasoning of the Court of Appeal and High Court in Re Edwards, and the reasoning of all High Court decisions since the High Court in Re Edwards, where they relate to the test for CMT.
• Adding text to section 58 to define and clarify the terms ‘exclusive use and occupation’ and ‘substantial interruption’.
• Amending the ‘burden of proof’ section of the Act (section 106) to clarify that applicant groups are required to prove exclusive use and occupation from 1840 to the present day.
• Making clearer the relationship between the framing sections of the Act (the preamble, purpose, and Treaty of Waitangi sections) and section 58 in a way that allows section 58 to operate more in line with its literal wording.

This is how it should be,. The Court has reached an interpretation that is not what Parliament intended, so Parliament amends the law to make it clearer.

The Miami Herald reports:

A stunning 10% of Cuba’s population — more than a million people — left the island between 2022 and 2023, the head of the country’s national statistics office said during a National Assembly session Friday, the largest migration wave in Cuban history.

Isn’t it such a weird coincidence that the queue of people wanting to leave communist countries is always 10 to 100 times greater than those wanting to live in one!

Alexis Rodríguez Pérez, a senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture, said the country produced 15,200 tons of beef in the first six months of this year. As a comparison, Cuba produced 172,300 tons of beef in 2022, already down 40% from 289,100 in 1989.

Pork production fared even worse. The country produced barely 3,800 tons in the first six months of this year, compared to 149,000 tons in all of 2018. Almost every other sector reported losses and failed production goals.

Again, more success.

Chris Luxon announced shocking data from 2023:

• Only 22% of students are at the expected standard for maths at year 8
• 3 out of 5 are more than a year behind
• 8% of kids in our lowest decile schools are at curriculum in maths at year 8 and 79 per cent are more than a year behind
• For Māori, just 12 per cent are at curriculum in year 8 and 76 per cent are more than a year behind

So changes are being made as the status quo is damning. He announced:

• A new maths curriculum will be introduced a year early, from Term 1 2025, with resources available to support teachers.
• Resources, including teacher and student workbooks will be provided into every primary and intermediate school.
• $20 million for professional development in structured maths for teachers.
• Teaching Council agreed to lift maths entry requirements for new teachers so they must have at least NCEA Level 2 in Maths
• Twice yearly assessments for maths in primary schools from the start of 2025. 
• Small group interventions to support students who have fallen significantly behind.

Great changes.

Rob MacCulloch writes:

Let’s take a look at the Royal Commission report. It turns out that the Commission never estimated the number who’ve suffered abuse to be 200,000. That number was featured in Chapter 5 of its report, called “The Extent of Abuse and Neglect in State Care”. It contains little original research & instead “largely relies on research by private Wellington consultants Martin Jenkins (MJ)” in 2020. The Commission states Martin Jenkins “provided low & high estimates of 114,000 and 256,000, respectively, for how many people may have been abused or neglected”. However, the MJ report does not state that 114,000 is their low estimate. …

Using ‘top down’, the number of abused ranges from a low of 114,000 to a high of 256,000. As these numbers are so abjectly unreliable, MJ use another approach, called ‘bottom up’, that takes actual reports of abuse (which are low, averaging less than 1% from 1950 to 2019) and multiplies them by a factor of up to 10 based on international crime surveys, as well as NZ surveys (taking a view that under-reporting is of this magnitude). Who knows what is the true factor? Why use overseas studies?

Using ‘bottom up’, the new estimate ranges from a low of 36,000 to a high of 65,000. (See Figure 15 on page 46 for a summary). The numbers calculated using these two different approaches are wildly different. So MJ did not report a “low estimate” of 114,000, as claimed yesterday by the Commission. It was 36,000.

14k to 256K with 36,000 is still a horrendously high figure, but of course far less than 200,000. What we have is a range of 36k to 65k using one method and another. And of course both are based on assumptions that are contestable.

This should not be used to minimise the impact on those abused, but is is a caution about not just taking a headline number as meaningful.

Radio NZ reports:

Doctors at Hutt Hospital are being asked to make beds and clean medical equipment, on top of a busy patient workload.

An email sent to all ED staff and seen by RNZ lays out which cleaning tasks are expected of clinical staff, and which are to be done by cleaners.

Clinical staff are expected to clean, among other things, commodes, hoists and patient washbowls, as well as beds, lockers, soap dispensers, sluice sinks and biohazard bags.

Now the clear implication of the story is that this was something that has just been ordered, presumably because the nasty new Government is cutting funding (in reality it has increased it by more than Labour planned to).

Here’s the reality, provided by Health NZ in a statement:

• There has been no change to the Hutt ED cleaning arrangements or funding
• The practice of clinical staff cleaning certain items and areas has been in place for around 30 years (as confirmed by Hutt’s Head of In-House Services, who has held the role in various forms throughout that time)
• While HCAs generally do most of this work, and then nurses, there has always been the expectation that doctors help where they can
• Where a printer or photocopier malfunctions, an automated message goes to Ricoh and a technician is sent as soon as possible (usually immediately) to repair it – we have no idea why a doctor would have taken it upon themselves to do it
• In terms of a patient trying to get out of bed unassisted, it may have been that they tried to do this themselves without requesting assistance just as the doctor was passing – however we are not aware of this particular instance
• The expectation in busy EDs, including Hutt, is that everyone pulls together where needed – and we would point out that there have been many occasions where cleaners have actually performed tasks that they are not expected to (such as making beds) to help out when ED has been particularly busy.

Radio NZ have now updated the story somewhat but hundreds of thousands of people would have been left with the impression that what was reported was something new, rather than standard practice of the last 30 years.

Audrey Young rates the Cabinet Ministers out of 10 for their performance. Her ratings are:

• 9/10 – Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown, Erica Stanford
• 8/10: Chris Luxon, Winston Peters, Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith, David Seymour, Karen Chhour
• 7/10 – Shane Reti, Judith Collins, Mark Mitchell, Todd McClay, Simon Watts, Chris Penk, Andrew Bayly, Brooke van Velden, Nicole McKee, Shane Jones
• 6/10 – Louise Upston, Tama Potaka, Matt Doocey, Andrew Hoggard
• 5/10 – Nicola Grigg, Casey Costello, Mark Patterson
• 4/10 – Penny Simmonds
• 3/10 – Melissa Lee

I look forward to her ratings of the Shadow Cabinet!