NewstalkZB reports:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has cut the amount ministers can spend on taxpayer-funded cars and will not get one for himself as the focus goes on the Government’s cost-saving demands across the public sector.

Luxon’s office said he had cut the cap on ministers’ self-drive cars from $85,000 to $70,000, but had otherwise not changed the criteria for ministers who take up the entitlement to a car. A spokesman confirmed Luxon would not be taking the entitlement himself.

A smart move politically. The savings are very small (maximum $450,000) but it is important not to be seen as demanding your own areas are exempt from saving money.

As I commented on four months ago, Grant Robertson succeeded in his application to be Vice-Chancellor of Otago University.

It is in one sense an unusual appointment. Normally VCs come from academia and have been Professors. Almost all the other VCs have PhDs:

• AUT – PhD (Oxford)
• Massey – PhD (Murdock)
• Lincoln – DPhil (Oxford)
• Auckland – PhD (Nottingham)
• Canterbury – MA cum laude (Natal)
• Otago (acting) – MD (Bristol)
• VUW – PhD in Biomedical Engineering (Auckland)
• Waikato – PhD (Toronto)

Grant has a BA from Otago. Now that is more than I achieved there, but it does remind me of the wag who wrote above the toilet roll holder in the union common room “BA degrees – please take one” 🙂

But Grant has a huge passion for Otago University, second only perhaps to rugby, and having been Minister of Finance is probably good prep for such a role – especially as Otago University is also running a deficit 🙂

The new Finance Spokeperson for Labour is Barbara Edmonds, which was expected. She is well regarded and was a former IRD secondee to both Judith Collins and Stuart Nash who rate her. However while good on policy, it is too early to know how she will go at being able to sell Labour’s economic credentials.

Robertson will be replaced as a List MP by former New Plymouth MP Glen Bennett.

So 86% of Americans think Biden is too old including 73% of Democrats and 91% of Independents!!!

The Democrats look doomed unless they change nominees.

• 2025: Have Local Body elections
• 2025: Pass law to move local body elections to four year terms from 2031
• 2026: Have CG elections. Referendum on moving parliamentary term to four year from 2029
• 2028 LB elections
• 2029 CG elections
• 2031 LB elections
• 2033 CG elections
• 2035 LB elections

You then continue with every second year being a local election year or a central election year.

The NY Post reports:

Embattled former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani says the Trump 2020 campaign and the Republican National Committee still owe him $2 million in legal fees for challenging the former president’s election loss.

Giuliani, 79, said during a bankruptcy court hearingWednesday that the former president asked him to spearhead legal matters for the campaign in November 2020 — the same month Trump lost to President Biden.

“Once I took over, it was my understanding that I would be paid by the campaign for my legal work and my expenses to be paid,” he told the Manhattan federal bankruptcy trustee overseeing his case from December, according to a report by Mediaite.

Poor Rudy. How was he to know that Trump stiffs almost all his lawyers. The smart ones demand payment in advance.

The Daily Mail reports:

A football fan has been banned from matches until 2026 after Premier Leagueconducted a ‘secretive’ four-month ‘Stasi’ probe into her social media posts that criticised transgender ideology.

Linzi Smith, a Newcastle United supporter, was investigated by a special unit set up to expose racism in the game, after she expressed strong views on trans ideology on the social media platform ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter.

The 34-year-old, who is gay and champions lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, was later presented with a 11-page dossier — compiled by the Premiere League — which included details of where she lives, works and even where she walked her dog. 

This wasn’t about anything she had done at a game. This is them investigating her views on social media, and on that basis deciding she must be banned.

In October, Newcastle United emailed Ms Smith to inform her that she was being investigated by Northumbria Police for a possible hate crime offence and that her membership had been suspended.

It is understood that Ms Smith had not done anything to offend anyone during a match, inside the stadium or involving the club.

Days after, Ms Smith was visited by two police officers at her home and she agreed to be interviewed under caution about her tweets for 25 minutes.

Two hours later, she received a call from police to inform her that no further action would be taken as she had not committed any offence.

Ms Smith appealed her ban but was told on January 26 that it had been upheld because her tweets ‘constitute harassment’ and go against the club’s Equality Policy. 

Imagine if a football club banned someone because they tweeted pro-Marxist views!

A guest post by Kiwhig:

A common “progressive” put-down of ordinary people in this country is to scold us for being confident and not self-effacing in situations involving non-white people. “Check your privilege” is the sharp reproof, followed by a moralizing criticism of the relevant aspect of our normal way of life. 

Jacinda Ardern said that the term “white privilege” was not mentioned in the school curriculum, but it is included in the instructional materials prepared under the curriculum – probably under the $42 million Te Hurihanganui program introduced in 2019 to “address racism”, and by the Teaching Council to “unteach racism”.

Peggy McIntosh an American feminist and radical activist scholar invented (she said discovered) white privilege in 1988. The following year she published an article about how every white person carries a metaphorical invisible “knapsack” of an invisible kit of unearned assets – maps passports credit cards tools clothes codebooks and other things – that gives them an invisible unearned and unfair continual advantage throughout life over non-white people. In one place she lists 26 of these advantages from everyday life. The list is mostly unlikely – many advantages she lists relate more to her own Ivy-League-brahmin life or are market economy related in a country in which most people are white. Even so, I think it is fair to say that in the USA and New Zealand, being white skinned does give you a slight head start in life and in any interaction with people you do not know. A slight inside track or step ahead you might say.

But these small advantages of a white skin while unearned by their lucky holders (us), are not privileges, they are part of our intangible cultural inheritance, and were earned by our forbears and gifted to us. And explicitly so.

The ancestors of the majority, mostly from the British Isles, came to this country in the 19^th century, and by agreement with the earlier settlers set up their systems of formal government and laws and institutions here. Infused as they were with their habits and thoughts acquired over centuries including the scientific method and Christianity. Subsequent generations continued nation-building.

Readers who are baby boomers will have actual memory of this. When Progress was spelled with a capital “P”; our fathers and grandfathers built the post war civic institutions – many of them as war memorials; when we had to sit through long windy speeches with elaborate protocol as to order of precedence – your Excellency …. worship …. etc…ladies and gentlemen boys and girls. How we squirmed while waiting for a dignitary’s wife to cut the ribbon. How we longed to go and play.

These interminable speeches were about tons of concrete and steel …. etc, and thanks to the Ministry of Works. About tangible materials, raising the money, and the instrumental people. And always building for future generations – the only nod to the likes of us – to drive over, or read the books in, or swim in, or whatever.  

These speeches were in physical measurable terms. They did not mention cultural capital – tangible or intangible, although “raising the standard of living” might be said. But that is part of what they meant. A better life for us and further generations. Which is why people have always come to this country.

We should not hesitate to claim our collective inheritance – physical and intangible. It is not a “privilege” it is our property. And by all means welcome in those who wish to join us – both the descendants of the earlier migrants and those coming in more recently. And even go to some trouble to fit them in, as our forbears amended institutions to suit the earlier settlers from Polynesia, and we acculturate refugees at considerable expense. (It cost $100,000 per refugee last time I saw, but it would be a lot more than that now). But it is New Zealand they are being welcomed into, not anything else.White privilege is part of the subset of “privilege” slurs made by people who do not believe in property or inheritance – cultural or physical. I suggest readers tell their children and grandchildren not to accept any such remarks and why not.

The ABC reports that 3.5 billion will vote in 70 elections this year – a record number. But how many of them are free votes?

Not a lot of orange countries voting this year.

There was a great trend from 1980 to 2010, but we should all be concerned by the recent trend.

Matt Ridley has some fascinating polls which compares views amongst the top 1% of American earners, Ivy League graduates and all Americans. It shows that the top 1% are in fact very left wing with elitist views that the public can’t be trusted.

So 47% of the elite 1% think there is too much individual freedom as do 55% of Ivy League graduates. This compares to 16% for all Americans.

An astonishing 77% of the elite 1% favour rationing of gas, meat and electricity!

They love lawyers, unions leaders, journalists etc.

A whopping 84% of the elite 1% approve e of Joe Biden, despite the fact he appears to have died.

The elite and the Ivy Leaguers love banning things.

The Herald reports:

Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died on Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia’s prison agency said. He was 47.

The stunning news — less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power — brought renewed criticism and outrage directed at the Kremlin leader who has cracked down on all opposition at home.

A very brave man who was so threatening to Putin, he had him jailed and killed.

The Herald reports:

It’s a Green backlash in Wellington this afternoon as locals have voted in self-described centrist Karl Tiefenbacher in the city council byelection – replacing former Green councillor Tamatha Paul.

Wellington was out of step with the National-led Government in last year’s general election when Paul and Julie Anne Genter turned two safe Labour electorates Green.

Paul previously won the Pukehīnau/ Lambton ward for a second term in 2022, with the highest majority of any Wellington City Councillor.

Not only did the Greens top the vote last election, they didn’t even have a Labour candidate in this election splitting the left vote.

This is a clear message to the WCC that people are sick of huge expensive projects and massive rates increases. Hopefully the result will mean one fewer Councillor in favour of the $32 million corporate welfare deal to Reading Cinemas.

Yahoo News reports:

Donald Trump’s return to the White House could bring about seismic changes to US trade policy, as the Republican frontrunner proposed setting up a universal tariff on imports entering the country.

He also proposed a “matching tax” on certain countries that would be equivalent to high tariffs on US products.

While Trump laid out the idea of a universal tariff months earlier, he appeared to get more specific last week.

“I think when companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay automatically, let’s say a 10% tax,” he told Fox News on Thursday. “That money would be used to pay off the debt. It’s a massive amount of money.”

He later added, “I do like the 10% for everybody.”

Tariffs are a tax on consumers. They don’t get paid by the foreign companies – they get paid by consumers.

It has also been shown that tariffs do not help local industries. They incentivise them to be inefficient by protecting them from competition.

In NZ the wine industry used to compete on price as tariffs meant no one else could sell cheap wine in NZ. The tariffs went, and the wine industry diversified and now is a major export earner for it.

The FSU released:

Thousands have signed a petition calling on Christopher Luxon to keep the Christchurch Call focused on its original intent of eliminating terrorist and violent extremist content, not censorship of unpopular opinions, says Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union. 

“Documents released by the DPMC show The Christchurch Call has expanded its focus from violent extremism, and is now specifically looking at gender-based ‘hatred’ (including anti-LGBTQIA+ speech) as one of its core functions. This could mean the Christchurch Call seeks to oppose and suppress the free expression of opinions – such as the view that individuals can change their sex.

“It is curious to us that there is a policy advisor with the Christchurch Call responsible for ‘gender issues’. However, there are no advisors specifically delegated for either extremist violence or terrorism. Free speech is not violence; disagreeing is not terrorism. 

“In less than 72 hours, thousands of Kiwis have echoed our concerns.

“This expanded focus of The Call is inconsistent with New Zealanders’ rights to freedom of expression online. The Government must direct the Christchurch Call to refocus on its core mission of eliminating violent and extremist content.” 

Sign our petition at https://www.fsu.nz/stop_christchurch_call_from_silencing_kiwis

The original intent of the Christchurch Call is laudable. But it looks like it is turning into a global version of the biased Disinformation Project who only seek to label speech from the right as disinformation.

A guest post from a reader:

This question has been debated a lot and on the Right the answer is invariably, yes.

Having followed the media carefully since the election it is my view that it is extremely hard to deny that assertion.  Let me share some insight as to how this has occurred.

I am not going to discuss Winston Peters and how his comments are reported.  This is newsworthy and would be so irrespective of the political backdrop in my view.  Although as always the blending of news and opinion is irritating.  There is a world of difference between a politician actually having lost control and a journalistic assertion that he has.  If the PM has agreements in place about what his colleagues can and cannot say then by definition he has not lost control when they are followed.  Actually journalists I do not give a shot for your deduced conclusions when you have interviewed only your keyboard to reach them.

TV ONE Policy Reporting

For the past month TV One has on a regular basis run stories that follow the same trite formula:

1. Pick a new government policy.

2. Find a perceived loser under the policy.

3. Get them to moan or do it for them.

The bias in this simplistic nonsense is the level of analysis which occurs.  The Right believes in prudence.  By definition it likes to save and spend carefully rather than borrow and spray.

What journalism does is that it treats the funding of anything as neutral or irrelevant and discusses only the impacts arising from that spending.  This inherently favours the Left of politics.

Let me express it this way.  Have you ever seen an item which takes a proposal from say a government like the last one which involves copious amounts of borrowed spending and analyses it in terms of the impact of future borrowing, the crimping of the private sector, the impact on tax rates, inflation and so on?

Similarly, have you ever seen reporting on proposals from the new government which sets them in the context of running balanced books, paying down debt and avoiding some of the problems mentioned above?

You just won’t see it.  All that will be reported is that some group or another is advantaged or not by the end result of what is spent. 

Katie Bradford why not actually use your talents to get under the hood?

Journalists Don’t Do Logic

In a similar way journalists appear  incapable of placing any proposal in the context of wider philosophical principles or values, and have no grasp of logic.

Look at the proposal to remove the smoking ban which doesn’t exist yet.

The Right generally places greater emphasis on individual choice and responsibility.  That is not nothing.  It matters.  

It is self-evident that a right-of-centre government will draw the line between paternalistic prohibition of society’s evils and freedom to make mistakes in a different place than a left-of-centre government.  That is a perfectly reasonable and debateable set of values.

Have you heard anything in the media that implicitly or explicitly acknowledges the right to differ in that way?

Rather in the same way that TV One can’t get below the trite and superficial in policy matters the whole sector lacks the wit to see or acknowledge that different perspectives result in different policies and different boundaries.  It once again focuses on the immediate, calls it harm and uses it to bludgeon the government.

The clincher here though is the utter unwillingness to see this reversal against the larger backdrop of every policy choice around harm that a government can make.

My point is best explained thus:

1. Government could ban cars and save many lives.

2. Government could shut down the internet and stop scammers and hate-crime and improve mental health.

3. Government could require all buildings to survive a force 9.5 earthquake and save lives.

4. Government could put centre barriers on every road in the country and save lives.

When one thinks about that one realises the choice of the new government is but one of an infinite range of choices it could make of fundamentally the same type which reflect its values and philosophies.

As such the journalistic outrage is banal, infantile and I suspect deliberate.

Special mention to Lisa Owen here who in interviewing Dr Shane Reti adopted such a vile tone she should in my view have been invited to express her questions more civilly before he answered.  

Hyperbole is Only Wrong if Coming from the Right

I leave you with one last thought.

Imagine the journalistic hysteria if a member of the current government asserted that teaching young people about homosexuality represents the systemic rape and perversion of our children.

Set that alongside the total non-response to Debbie Ngarew-Packer accusing the current government of deliberate systemic genocide of Maori.

Star-date: Last Thursday at 8pm.

I left Cambridge with 157k to travel to the North Shore of Auckland. I was aware that I had the use of the 110km Waikato Expressway and the Auckland Motorway. Both my leaving point and destination were close to on/off ramps. I estimated 1hour 40mins for the trip – without troubling the speed cameras.

I was incredibly impressed that Waka Konetahi managed to get this trip to take me 3 hours … an average of just over 50kmph. On the way there were three major detours. There were also three other road-works sets and one 70kmph one that went for 5kms with no sign at all of a pot-hole mission. One of the re-directions had a detour within a detour. The detour through Papakura managed to create complete gridlock with hundreds of truckies looking more frustrated than David Tua trying to land an owesome punch on Lennox Lewis. The city detour took traffic right down the water front and then to Victoria Park and to a situation where it was one lane to the top of the Harbour Bridge.

I assume someone is in charge but they are clearly a mercurial genious.

Then there are the CONES.

We have heard the term Cone-ageddon. It is worse as my next trip was to and from the Bay of Islands. I believe it is now right to call New Zealand Orangeatearoa – “the land of the tall orange cone”.

I believe that we have been softened up right back to when Jeremy Coney was involved in NZ cricket.

I understand that Sam Cone is a potential captain for Scott Robertson’s first All Black Squad.

There are rumours that the cones are about to organise politically and form an “Orange Party”. This may confuse our Dutch community but we have a Green party already. I understand the the member for Rimutaka is considering defecting and leading the Orange Conies.

With the explosion of the Auckland sewage system and denigration of the city’s beaches … with all of the allocated cones in the area do we now have a “Sewer’s Conal”?

Could we name another waterway after the great couple … Pamela Stephenson and Billy Connelly and call it the “Pamela Conal”?

Are they breeding or C(l)oning?

If you accidentally sit on a clone do you need to get a “cone-aloscopy”? If the cone has to be surgically removed is that an “cone-o-dectomy”?

Are we planning University qualifications in coning? The geometry of cones? The history of cones? Clone-al spacial awareness? The manufacturing technology of cones? Health and safety distribution of cones including the logistics of transport?

New Zealand used to be the country of 3 million people and 20 million sheep? What is the current ratio of people to cones?

Truck-loads of cones are heading north, south, east and west. I have also seen cones dying in their duty to our nation.

It has taken me a week to realise the genius in this for the military/strategic protection of our nation. Here it is:

Should we be invaded – and let’s assume Tauranga as the landing point.

The invaders need to be coned and detoured through – Matamata, Te Awamutu, (it is too cruel to send them through Morrinsville), Otorohanga, Te Kuiti, Taumaranui, National Park, across to Turangi, then Waiouru, Taihape, Hunterville, Marton, Whanganui and then Palmerston North (to be greeted by John Cleese). This will not only demoralise all soldiers but many will simpy die of boredom. If any invaders are left alive at that point they can be mobbed by cones and Waka Konetahi bureaucrats and sent to the Shannon gulags.

Like many NZers I regret not having invented, manufactured and invested in the ubiquitous cone. But I do appreciate the travel and strategic safety.

Please share your cone stories and safety. In a multi-cultural society we must show kind-ness to our orange brothers from other mothers.

None of us would celebrate the cone-death shown below (viewer discretion needed) in the second picture.

Lindsay Mitchell blogs:

When did you last read a headline in MSM about more children being raised on welfare? Yet latest Ministry of Social Development benefit statistics show at the end of 2023 the number reached a new high of 222,500.

So they dropped to 2017,. but since then has increased by 50,000 or so.

Look at the stats for Northland: lowest regular school attendance at just over a third (34.2%) and highest dependence on a single parent or jobseeker benefit (14.5% of working-age population). Christchurch has the highest regular attendance at almost half (49.4%) and second lowest reliance on the same benefits (6.4%). Mere coincidence?

There is a wealth of evidence that being raised in a household where no one works is correlated strongly with bad outcomes in later life.

A fascinating article about the growing difference between men and women’s politics.

So women have always been slightly more left than men, but with younger generations, the gap is huge. The big challenge for the CR is how to talk to younger women.

Gerald Hensley has died aged 88. He was the head of the PM’s Department to both Muldoon and Lange, then was Co-ordinator of Domestic and External Security and finally Secretary of Defence. A very patriotic public servant.

You can read some of his interactions with Muldoon here.

Hensley wrote a book about serving various PMs, and one of my favourite was when he wrote about the attempt to save ANZUS. Basically a deal had been done with the US that they would send a ship that clearly wasn’t nuclear armed or powered and that Cabinet would allow it to visit, even though the US would not publicly state it was non-nuclear.

The officials had Lange all prepped to take it to Cabinet and were dismayed when he came back and told them Cabinet had vetoed the visit. Hensley and co were aghast at how the PM could have failed to get it through his own Cabinet. Lange responded that they didn’t understand that in Cabinet he was in a minority of one on this issue.

Hensley in his book truly noted that Lange’s predecessor would have regarded that as a comfortable working majority 🙂

The other strong memory I have is when he took part in a TV show, game playing how NZ would respond to a potential terrorist attack. The scenario was that radical Australian Aboriginal activists have taken over an Australia boat in NZ waters by force.

Hensley talked about how the SAS would be dispatched to retake the ship, rather than let the Australians do it. The host then turned to a Maori activist (I can’t recall her name) and asked her what she would say if her son was in the SAS and called her as he felt conflicted about the mission.

She replied that she would tell him that the Aboriginal activists were his brother and cousins and in no way should he or other Maori members of the SAS take part.

The host then turned to Hensley, seeing this as a potential trump card or huge issue, and asked how he would respond.

His response was along the lines of:

“In my experience, members of the SAS don’t call mummy about their deployments”

It was the highlight of the (interesting) show.

A guest post by Lucy Rogers:

As some readers may recall, I was arrested last November for holding a sign saying “SELECTIVE CONDEMNATION OF GENOCIDE IS EVIL” at a pro-Palestine protest on Queen Street.

There was a lot of interest in my case at the time, so I thought readers might appreciate an update. The Free Speech Union has this afternoon announced via email dispatch that we are going to file a lawsuit against the police officers who arrested me. The wheels of justice turn slowly and it will be some time before the case is heard in court. A press release will be issued closer to the time and no doubt will receive media attention.

I would like to take the opportunity while I may to respond to one of my detractors. Following my arrest I have continued to counter-protest weekly at the pro-Palestine demonstrations on Queen Street. On one of those occasions Greg Presland (whom I understand is a local politician) took a photo of me holding a sign saying “WHY ARE YOU NOT ALSO PROTESTING HAMAS?” and posted it on Twitter, expressing scepticism about my claim that on the date of my arrest I had just happened to run into a pro-Palestine protest on a smoko break and engage in an impromptu protest.

My reply is thus: yes, I have continued to protest subsequent to my arrest. In fact I have done so every week since mid-December without fail. Although I would probably not have bothered otherwise, I decided that it was important to do so in order to maintain the right to protest in this country. That does not remotely disprove that my actions on the date that I was arrested were on the spur of the moment, and nor would it matter even if I had planned it in advance.

By the way, a number of people asked where I was able to purchase an A2 piece of paper in Auckland CBD for my sign. It was purchased from the Look Sharp store on Victoria Street East.

If you would like to donate to my legal costs, your support is appreciated: https://www.fsu.nz/donation