NewstalkZB reports:

A reduction in funding for the Waikato to Auckland commuter train Te Huia, which was less than expected, may still spell its demise. 

Waikato Regional Council and Te Huia supporters have welcomed news Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) will continue to fund the service at a reduced rate. 

It would do this by progressively reducing its contribution to the funding assistance rate (FAR) from 75.5 per cent to 60 percent, starting on 1 July. 

Supporters are claiming the outcome as a victory, but Waikato Regional Councillor Angela Strange would not be drawn on whether it could ensure the survival of the service. 

That is because the council has to go through its long-term plan budget in the next fortnight and work out where it can find the 5.5 percent in FAR that NZTA will drop next year. 

Strange said the announcement was good news but she did not want to pre-empt the long-term plan outcome and could not conclusively say that Te Huia would continue. 

NZTA’s contribution had been expected to drop immediately to 51 percent by those fighting for the train service’s survival. 

Around 97% of each trip is paid for by taxpayers and ratepayers, and 3% by passengers. This is ridiculous and NZTA funding for Te Huia should be no more than any other public transport service.

The Guardian reported:

Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has been killed in a helicopter crash near Iran’s border with Azerbaijan. Search and rescue teams have recovered bodies from the wreckage, and said there were no survivors. 

I have mixed feelings on this. The Iranian regime is a repressive one, but that doesn’t make the tragedy of a helicopter crash a good thing. At the end of the day they were human beings with families.

President Raise was a hardliner who won a dubious election in 2021. He was considered a likely successor to the Supreme Leader. He was a key player in the 1988 purges or executions of political opponents.

The Acting President is now Mohammad Mokhber. He has two PhDs but not that much is known on him.

AP reports:

President Joe Biden slapped major new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment on Tuesday, taking potshots at Donald Trump along the way as he embraced a strategy that’s increasing friction between the world’s two largest economies.

These tariffs are massive. They include:

• EVs 102.5%
• Solar cells 50%
• Computer chips 50%
• Steel and aluminium products 25%
• Lithium-ion batteries 25%
• Minerals 25%
• Ship-to-shore cranes 25%
• Medical Products Syringes and needles 50%
• Personal protective equipment (PPE) 25%

It is beyond disappointing to see the US retreat away from free trade in favour of protectionism of inefficient local industries. It is bad for the US economy and bad for US consumers.

The worst impact may be on the environment. Every environmental group in the world should be up in arms that Biden for all his rhetoric on climate is massively increasing the cost of electric vehicles, batteries and solar cells.

The Taxpayers Union released:

Around the country there are some elected officials who are on the ratepayers’ side: asking the tough questions of officials, and determined to deliver rate increases no higher than is absolutely necessary.

One of those centre-right councillors is our former Grassroots and Engagement Coordinator, Grace Ayling.

After leaving the Taxpayers’ Union to become a mum, Grace stood for her local Wairarapa council, in Carterton.

Grace was elected to the Council on a platform of stopping wasteful spending, such as the huge amounts the small rural council was pumping into cycleways that barely anyone was using. As a young family just starting off on the housing ladder, Grace wants her local council to focus on delivering core services and basic infrastructure well (don’t we all!).

Not only was Grace elected, she walked the talk! Grace is known for respectfully challenging Council officials on spending, rates, (and, yes, cycle ways).

Earlier this month, Grace even made a submission on the Council’s Long Term Plan (10-year budget). You can read her submission here – it is totally consistent with her election platform to seek value for money for ratepayers.

It turns out, officials do not like being challenged by a councillor. Instead of allowing Grace to advocate her well known views (and fulfil on her election promises to advocate for prudent spending) the Council CEO and officials have mounted a campaign to exclude Grace from the council hearings that consider the Long Term Plan/10-year Budget.

The officials claim that a councillor who had expressed views on rates is no longer ‘independent’ and has a conflict of interest in terms of decisions about rates and spending.

Yesterday, on the basis of “informal advice” from Local Government New Zealand, the Council kicked Grace out of the hearings committee (which every councillor usually sits on) because, in the Chair’s view, Grace might not be able to accept other views with an open mind and is therefor ‘conflicted’.

It wasn’t even voted on by councillors (in and of itself a breach of the Council’s standing orders). Officials just ‘determined’ that Grace had to leave. 

This is just ridiculous, and an act of censorship.

Deciding the budget is a political process, not a judicial process. Trying to remove voting rights from a Councillor because they have expressed their view that rates are too high is nuts. It’s like saying that a Councillor who wants to stop a library being closed can no longer vote on whether that library closes.

The Post reports:

An accidentally released memo has revealed at least $5.2 million of “must do” pipework lies beneath $55m worth of new Thorndon Quay bus lanes and cycleways – which could be ripped up if regular leaks persist.

For business owners, who had a new water leak on Tuesday and have seen dramatic pipe failures erupt drinking water on to the street, it is a further blow as they endure months of disruption while a $54.8m bus and cycleway gets put down the stretch.

This is just incompetence. The Council should have a checklist for any roadworks that includes digging, of how to notify so they can take advantage of the work. This would include the water company, lines company, broadband companies etc. You can save tens of millions by just having left and right hands talk to each other.

The Post reports:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s new “delivery unit” is not just designed to monitor the public sector’s performance, but also his own Cabinet ministers.

Briefings to Luxon, obtained under the Official Information Act, show how the new unit is expected to help the Government hit nine targets across health, education, crime, welfare, and climate, that were announced last month. …

Meeting targets would be the responsibility of a Cabinet minister and department chief executive — such as Health Minister Dr Shane Reti and Director-General of Health Dr Diana Sarfati for meeting targets on reducing emergency departments and elective surgery wait times.

The agencies responsible for targets would have until the end of June to produce “delivery plans”, to be approved by their minister. The delivery unit will then brief Luxon on whether the plans are sufficient.

Ministers will then provide quarterly reports on the target to the Cabinet Strategy Committee, which is made up of Luxon and 15 high-ranking ministers — the first being due at July’s end.

The delivery unit would provide “independent commentary” alongside this about whether the target is being reached — and immediate advice directly to Luxon if targets are not tracking well.

If a target is “high-risk”, Luxon will hold quarterly “performance meetings” with the minister responsible. If the target is tracking well, the meetings will be held every six months.

So the Luxon approach is:

• Have clear targets
• Make a Minister and CE accountable for achieving them
• Require delivery plans on how the targets will be achieved
• Have independent assessment of the delivery plan
• Have quarterly reports on progress towards the targets
• Hold six monthly performance meetings with Ministers if on track, and three monthly if not yet on track

Now this isn’t rocket science, but my God think what a difference it would have made if the last Government had done this.

A guest post by a reader:

We know someone who is a consultant addiction psychiatrist in the state medical system.  He has been looking at how AI can help him. There is apparently a specialised medical AI product. I guess In fact there are several.

He tells us a normal consult is 30-40 minutes and he spends almost as much on paperwork writing up notes on the consult.  With this AI product he fires up the laptop, activates the bot and it does a transcript of the entire episode.  Does a real good job even though it has never heard the patient before.

At the end of the consult he asks the bot to summarise the session. Basically it writes up the same sort of notes that he normally does. He only has to polish this output – It’s pretty good when it comes out. Normally he spends about as much time writing up the notes as he spent talking to the patient. He reckons it saves him 20% of the total  time spent on that consult.  Or to put it another way it would enable him to see 25% more patients …

Given that psychiatrists are not – and unlikely to become – in surplus …. he reckons that TWO should have a look at the various medical AI providers, get a bulk licence and encourage widespread use of the technology.  He is using the free version and a licence cost $US100 or so per month. This would have the same effect as creating 10-15% more psychiatrists which otherwise would take 10-odd years. 

 The system takes care of patient confidentiality issues. It can (optionally) be trained to learn his quirks.  I guess it is some distance away from actually doing the consult – it’s hard to imagine addicts relating to a bot rather than a person across the desk. As it should be.

Some of us have dealt with medics who type the session into the computer as it is happening – personally I find this moderately disconcerting and of course not all medics can touch type. I assume they are sort of summarising it as they go or something like that. I haven’t asked.

A more common approach is for the medic to dictate some notes at the of the session and send them off to be typed up.  Maybe use Word dictate … Our psych friend says the problem with that dictation is an acquired skill and he has never been very good at it.

One does wonder if AI used in this fashion might also improve the throughput of GPs by cutting down on paperwork time. Again – as the skills required are in hugely short supply an unlikely to be resolved anytime soon – anything that gets more bang for buck has to be worth 

Waikato University announced:

Children in Aotearoa New Zealand are being targeted by significant amounts of junk food and drink advertising. A new study shows that children who live and go to school in less well-off neighbourhoods have far greater exposure to advertising, than their peers in more affluent neighbourhoods.  

So what are these terrible ads?

Terrible. Not inly does the dairy have ice cream ads on its wall, but the deliver truck also shows an ice cream!

It is obvious both the diary and the truck must be covered up. Perhaps allow them to have plain black or blue walls.

If we do this, NZ will have fewer overweight people. Honestly.

David Seymour announced:

The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today.

$153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state schools to charter schools in 2025 and 2026 depending on demand and suitability. 

Hipkins was going to spend $400 million just to merge two schools together in Marlborough. For less than half that amount, the Government will deliver up to 50 charter schools!

Stuff reports:

Internal Affairs warned the Government that new Māori wards legislation could conflict with the Bill of Rights Act

So DIA says that giving voters the right to decide whether or not to change their electoral system to have race based wards, may breach the Bill of Rights Act!

Never thought I would see an agency argue that giving people the vote is against the Bill of Rights Act!

Tom Hunt at The Post writes:

Already, with almost half the current council term still to run, Chung is confirming he is running for mayor in 2025. This time it is serious and he stands a good chance with the left on council partly to thank – or blame – for it.

Many Wellingtonians, even lifelong liberals, are increasingly frustrated with a council that appears not to be listening. ,,,

It was also last week revealed that government ministers Simeon Brown and Chris Bishop wrote to Whanau in what appears to be extreme frustration in her saying one thing to them – that the council would consult with businesses affected by Golden Mile changes – then her council telling businesses this would not happen … just three days later.

There is a perception, partly founded, that in a city awash with leaking pipes the council is focused on the wrong things. …

Councillors – and the council – need to show they are actually listening. They need to leave their party affiliations at the door when they walk into the council chamber. They need to vote for their communities, not political parties.

They need to stop saying their are listening to people when they only hear the people they agree with.

And they need to find some drastic ways to cut back on rates increases (at the current projected rates increases, a ratepayer charged $4000 in rates last year will face a $11,035 bill within a decade).

Because, if they don’t, a Chung-led council will find some drastic cuts – and they won’t be where the left like.

There is definitely a mood for change in Wellington.

The Herald reports:

KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later.

Not what most people regard as worst case.

It’s no wonder Ministry of Transport officials have raised the question of KiwiRail’s suitability to run the Interislander business in the medium to long term.

I think that is the real question.

But officials are already investigating how the market might respond to the hypothetical exit of KiwiRail, including whether rival operator Bluebridge could provide more capacity across Cook Strait.

They have mulled over whether the Interislander business could be separated into another SOE or sold via a trade sale.

The ripples of this failed project are already being felt beyond Cook Strait.

It is no longer only a question of what will replace the Interislander fleet but also whether KiwiRail should have anything to do with running the business.

The answer must be no. Ferries over Cook Strat is a competitive enterprise. It is not a natural monopoly like train lines. There is no reason taxpayers need to be paying out billions of dollars for one ferry service, when there are others that actually are profitable.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and French President Emmanuel Macron have announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.  

Jacinda Ardern will remain part of the initiative, as Patron of the Call.

New Zealand taxpayer funding for the Christchurch Call will end on June 30, as support functions transfer to the new Secretariat, funded by the new Foundation. The new Secretariat will be up and running under the Foundation from July 1. 

The Christchurch Call Foundation has already attracted pledges from members of the Call Community and philanthropic donors.

This looks to be a very good compromise.

1. The Call is no longer taxpayer funded
2. Ardern is Patron, but no longer represents the NZ Government on it
3. The Call can continue, but will have to prove value to donors

The Post reports:

Te Papa has not yet decided whether to cancel an event described as “hostile to trans people”, but the organiser believes the event is going ahead.

The group, Inflection Point NZ, is holding an event on Saturday at Wellington’s Tākina conference centre that it’s describing as a “summit” to stop the Government “gender indoctrination and medicalisation of our children”.

After a meeting with Tākina manager Andrew Dorrington this afternoon, event organiser Rhys Williams said he was “very confident” the event would be going ahead.

The group would 100% have taken Tākina to court if the event was called off. “And I think Tākina took that on board,” Williams said.

A spokesperson for Te Papa, which runs Tākina bookings, said nothing had changed since the meeting and cancellation was still possible.

“We are aware a protest is planned against the event, because of concerns that its content and speakers are hostile to trans people.

“We are actively monitoring the situation and reviewing the health and safety and security arrangements to assess whether the event can occur safely.”

Jonathan Ayling, the leader of the Free Speech Union, said he had attended this afternoon’s meeting to remind Tākina of their duties under the law. “We have received a commitment from them that the event will proceed.”

Inflection Point NZ describes itself as a “group for middle NZ that has become ‘the oppressed majority’”. It sees itself as countering “radical progressivism, amplifying the voice, principles and liberty at NZ’s core”.

Speakers include Brian Tamaki, whose Destiny Church members painted over rainbow crossings in Auckland and Gisborne, as well as Bob McCroskie from Family First, journalist Jennifer Bilek and Ro Edge from Save Women’s Sport Australasia.

Wellington City councillor Nīkau Wi Neera became aware of the booking on Monday for the council-owned Tākina centre and posted on social media that he had spent the day trying to “shut it down if we possibly can”.

So a Green City Councillor is trying to use his position to shut down a conference, because he doesn’t agree with them.

The ironic thing is that this attempt to close down the conference will probably lead to a huge boost in profile and attendance for it.

The Herald reports:

Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year.

Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a backdated pay increase recommended by the Remuneration Authority, like all other MPs.

Tana has been suspended from the party since March 14, pending an investigation into allegations made about her husband’s e-bike business.

There is no way the investigation will have taken nine weeks. The Uffindell investigation took only five weeks to complete, and that was dealing with events from 20 years ago where witnesses had to be tracked down.

Almost certainly the Green leadership have the report, and have had it for some time. They don’t need to release the report, but they do need to tell us whether it substantiated the claims against Tana, and what the outcome will be.

Euronews reports:

Slovakian media has identified the shooter as 71-year-old Juraj Cintula, a self-described writer who previously worked as a security guard and is allegedly linked to pro-Russian group Slovački branci.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico is currently in hospital following a shooting that occurred following his cabinet’s away-from-home session in the town of Handlova. 

Slovakian outlets have identified the shooter as the 71-year-old Juraj Cintula.

According to the daily newspaper Dennik N, the suspected perpetrator is a self-described writer from the small western town of Levice and a founding member of the Rainbow Literary Club. 

Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi has unearthed Facebook posts reportedly showing Cintula as a sympathiser and supporter of the pro-Russian paramilitary group Slovenskí Branci, known for its links to the Kremlin. 

Slovenskí Branci has been accused of attempting to recruit young men across Slovakia for its paramilitary organisation. In a post from January 2016, Cintula is seen holding a speech next to members of the group wearing camouflage.

The shooting is a deplorable act. The motivation is rather strange as the PM he shot is very pro-Russia himself. I guess we’ll know more in time.

The JNS reports:

More than half (57.5%) of Muslim American respondents to a new survey agreed that Hamas was at least somewhat justified in attacking Israel “as part of their struggle for a Palestinian state.”

And in Egypt, views of Hamas went from 23% positive in 2020 to 75% positive in late 2023. 94% of Egyptians do not believe Hamas killed any civilians on 7 October and 86% disagree that Hamas should stop seeking Israel’s destruction.

And in the UK, 45% of UK Muslims back Hamas and only 25% believe they murdered people on 7 October.

Only 16% of Saudi want Hamas to drop its aim to destroy Israel.

The Herald reports:

Coster, speaking to media today, said police know gang members commit a large amount of the crime in New Zealand – 8 per cent of all violence and 18 per cent of serious violence.

That’s an astonishing level of violence from a group that is less than 0.2% of the population. They are over-represented in violent crimes by 4000% and in serious violent crimes by 9000%.

Yet Labour chose to fund them!

The National Gang Unit would be a dedicated, specialised gang unit of 25-30 people with ring-fenced staff of up to seven staff in every police district across the country.

If it reduces violent offending from gang members, it will be a success.