Stuff reports:

Facebook owner Meta has refused to continue paying for news in Australia, announcing it will end its deals with local publishers when they expire this year in a decision that news companies say blatantly ignores the value of their journalism.

The government also blasted the move, describing it as “a dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media”.

The tech behemoth confirmed today it won’t renew its deals with news organisations in Australia and also said it will remove its Facebook News tab next month.

This should kill off the Willie Jackson bill in NZ to try and force tech firms to pay media simply for linking to them.

It has been a disaster in Canada, and now also in Australia. It sees tech giants restricting or downplaying links to new sites, which results in a far far bigger drop in income for the media than for the tech giants.

The whole rationale for the bill is bizarre anyway. Put simply it is:

1. Advertisers used to advertise solely with media
2. Now most advertisers advertise with Internet companies
3. The Internet companies have stolen the advertisers off the media, so they must pay them money for offering a better advertising product

The tech giants do not make significant money (estimated to be below 3%) from linking to news sites. People advertise with them because they provide more eyeballs, better targeted for lower cost. If they stopped linking to media sites, they’d would hardly notice it.

On the other hand, the media make a significant amount of money from social media companies like Meta linking to them. A story shared on Facebook can go viral and get hundreds and thousands of views. and hence advertising income for the media as people then come through to their site.

In Canada Meta blocked news on Facebook and some media outlets have reported a 30% drop in page views, which probably means a 30% drop in revenue.

The bill should die a quick death.

Stuff has the story of a young woman who was raped at knifepoint by a 17 year old in. a park. It is harrowing to read how it has shattered her life. Full of admiration for how she kept her cool, and tricked the rapist into walking through an area with security cameras so he could be identified.

The assailant received a sentence of only 26 months, which seems unbelievable for a violent rape. The victim calls it a pitiful response, which it is.

The unadjusted sentence was 11 years and one month which seems about right. But he then got discounts totalling 77% for various factors such as youth, assumed remorse etc.

The Government is going to change the Sentencing Act so that the maximum cumulative discount is 40%. In this case it would means a sentence of six years and eight months rather than two years and two months.

The opposition will of course oppose this law change.

Winston Peters writes:

Over the past four years the sign-up of media outlets to receive $55 million of public funding through the Public Interest Journalism Fund has cemented that mistrust from the public for obvious reasons – most of which, it seems, is lost on the very media outlets that received those funds.   

It is a plain fact that for media organisations to be eligible for funding they had to sign up to certain criteria and conditions – including forcing certain narratives of the Labour government at the time. …

One of those conditions is based on a purely political view that is not supported by many New Zealanders or many political parties.  It states that the media organisation must “actively promote the principles of partnership, participation and active protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”. And have a “commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.  

If they didn’t sign up to this condition, they wouldn’t get the money. 

How can a politically neutral and independent media organisation give balanced political commentary, analysis and in particular “opinions”, when this is the basis for the funds they receive for their very survival?  

This is the sinister incentivised seed that provides the platform for political bias. 

It is a preposterous state of self-denial when they cannot see that the contract they signed is a recipe for bias and corruption. 

It has created a media environment where certain leftwing political narratives and agendas have seeped into much of what the media presents to the public – where any opposing views are shutdown, cancelled and labelled as “far right” or “fringe”. 

This is spot on. The media should have refused funding which had Treaty partnership belief as a criteria for eligibility. If they had all stood firm, then the criteria would have gone, but they just took the money.

It is incredible that senior public servants tendered such advice. To state as a fact that “The right to be smoke free is entrenched in Te Tiriti o Waitangi” is beyond overwrought.

Professional sane advice could say something along the lines of “Some groups argue that the right to be smoke free ….” but to state a highly contentious interpretation as a fact just means that Ministers can’t actually rely on such advice.

Incidentally for those who like their history, Hone Hone cut down the flagpole to protest the Government’s new tax on various products, including tobacco which was one shilling per pound! And Hone was the first signatory to the Treaty!

Heke’s rebellion was successful in getting the Government to repeal the tax on tobacco, and instead introduce property rates.

So for the Ministry of Health to state as an uncontested fact that the Treaty entrenches the right for Maori to be smoke free, is not just wrong, but historically illiterate.

Stuff reports:

Hungary’s parliament voted Monday in favour of Sweden’s long-delayed bid to join Nato, clearing the final obstacle to a historic expansion of the military alliance and putting an end to an uncomfortable standoff between members.

With Budapest at last onboard, Sweden is set to become Nato’s 32nd member, possibly within the week, completing a process that began with Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and saw Finland join last year. The addition of the two Nordic countries will bolster the alliance’s capabilities, strengthening its position in the high north and the Baltic Sea – all while sending an important message to Moscow.

Putin achieved the near impossible – he shifted Sweden from neutrality.

Sweden adopted neutrality in 1812 and it lasted for 210 years until Putin invaded Ukraine.

Winston is really on form lately. Somehow the Rugby players thought their job was to share their views on the elected Government of NZ, rather than just play rugby. By doing so, their message to the 50% of NZers who voted for the Government is we hate you, and don’t want your support.

Could you imagine the outcry if a NZ sports team had made derogatory comments about Jacinda as part of their haka?

You can have a reasonable disagreement on whether boot camps are effective. But someone who states that the Government hates children and is a death cult is a bad faith extremist. They’re the equivalent of someone on the right who thinks Jacinda did vaccine mandates because she is paid by Pfizer. Crazy conspiracy theorists.

But Professor Kidman is not some random person. She is the co-director of He Whenua Taurikura, a supposed charity that is funded mainly by the Government. Their parent body’s postal address is the Dept of PM and Cabinet.

And what is He Whenua Taurikura? It is “New Zealand’s National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism”

Hmmm violent extremism. Wouldn’t calling the Government a death cult that hates children actually inspire violent extremism? I mean if you really thought that, then surely violence is warranted if the Government is akin to Pol Pot.

I think I’ve found another area where Nicola Willis can save some money.

Tova O’Brien writes:

As every single major political party has taught us while in opposition, you can only get elected or have any hope of convincing people you’re worthy of their votes, if your caucus is unified.

While Labour MPs – actually in the parliament – are holding it together by a thread, it’s former MPs who are starting to create fissures in the facade of unity and raise the spectre of another long stint in the wilderness of opposition for the left.

It’s Nash vs Kiri and Willie!

But this very public fight – debate warranted or not – feels distinctly like a harbinger of things to come.

More bad polls for Chris Hipkins and Labour could very well see the scrap boiling over from former MPs to current ones and what usually follows then, are questions over leadership.

That’s when the opposition death spiral truly begins.

The last Prime Minister to retain their leadership for the next election after losing was Mike Moore in 1990.

The Herald reports:

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has revealed the Government wants to exempt some trusts from paying the new 39 per cent trustee tax rate. …

However, the industry group Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand repeatedly made the point that most trusts earn less than $180,000 a year, so taxing them at the rate applied to individuals’ income above $180,000 would be unfair.

It noted that according to Inland Revenue, only 11 per cent of the trusts required to make disclosures in the 2022 tax year received taxable income above $180,000.

The group accepted it was “entirely fair” for these trusts to be taxed at 39 per cent, noting they earned a whopping 81 per cent of the income.

However, it believed applying the 39 per cent rate across the board would cause “significant collateral damage”.

Taxing all trusts at 39% would be unfair.

The best policy would be to drop the top tax rate to 33% of course. But until that happens, then a two their trust tax rate may be the best option.

This shows the latest data from Stats NZ. The amount of alcohol in New Zealand has not been increasing, in fact it decreases year after year. In fact it is 15% lower per adult than 13 years ago.

This is what happens when Google programs it AI to foster diversity. Google has now suspended this function.

Chris Bishop has released a paper on Housing he took to Cabinet. Some key extracts:

• My goal is to flood urban housing markets for Tier 1 and 2 Councils with land for development. Abundant zoned and serviced land within and at the edge of our cities for housing will moderate land prices and increase competition among land-owners to stop land banking
• Pricing should play a greater role in infrastructure funding. Growth bottlenecks have emerged precisely where prices do not reflect costs. Infrastructure should earn sufficient lifetime revenue from service charges to recover its whole-of-life costs.
• Communities are more likely to support housing growth if they share in its benefits. Under existing funding rules, water and roads infrastructure in developments may be partly funded by existing ratepayers. This acts as a disincentive for Councils to approve new subdivisions. I intend to report back on options to improve Council incentives for growth, including potentially sharing a portion of the GST from developments with Councils.
• Land protection can dramatically lower infrastructure costs by purchasing options to buy land years before developments begin. For example, a recent study by the Infrastructure Commission found land for the North-South Opaheke Arterial in Auckland would cost $78 million if purchased today, but would cost an estimated $1 billion if purchased immediately before the start of the development.

Looks like a great work programme.

An outrageous decision. A case could be made if generous for the discharge without conviction, but to grant name suppression is disgusting.

Heh, very clever.

You can donate to an appeal against this sentence here.

A fascinating article by John Gibson who reveals that the data reported widely in the media that NZ had negative excess mortality was in fact wrong, as it did not take into account population growth.

This graph shows the difference between what was reported, and how it looks adjusted for population. Still better than many countries but around equal to Denmark, Germany and Belgium and higher than Luxembourg, Canada, the Netherlands, Iceland, Israel and Australia.

Danyl McLauchlan writes:

Modern politics is riddled with principal-agent problems. When I talk to people about Let’s Get Wellington Moving – the doomed, now cancelled $7.4 billion mega infrastructure project that only delivered a pedestrian crossing while it spent $100,000 a week on consultants – they describe a very Jarndyce-like process. Endless rounds of consultation and engagement between the regional, city and central government and other stakeholders, all facilitated by private sector providers gorging themselves on those consulting fees. The principals were the ratepayers and taxpayers, who wanted their rates and taxes to go towards building stuff – but this wasn’t in the interests of the agents managing the rounds of consultation and planning. They benefited by keeping the Jarndyce loop rolling.

One of the reasons people on the left believe states outperform markets at allocating resources is that there’s lots of zero-sum competition in free market economies. Everyone is wasting money conducting marketing campaigns against one another, suing each other, new inventions can’t be shared because inventors want to protect their copyright. Under socialism the state can just put all its resources into creating value. But a classic right-wing critique of the state is that if a company in a free market makes bad decisions and destroys too much value they’ll fail and go out of business, whereas badly run public sector organisations can just fail, and fail in perpetuity – they always have the resources of the state to draw upon to fail some more. New Zealand seems to have found a way to combine both failure modes simultaneously: public sector organisations locked into zero-sum processes that destroy value – they spend a fortune on marketing! – but can’t ever go bankrupt.  

A rare achievement.

If you looked at the under-examined assumptions behind Ardernism I suspect a strong belief in the infallibility of state bureaucracies would lie at the heart of it: any problem can be solved if you give the experts running the relevant ministry more money and tell them to be kind. 

A good summary.

One of the reasons our neoliberal revolution failed to generate the wealth its advocates promised is that markets aren’t magical. They need regulation to function properly: otherwise, you just wind up with an economy dominated by monopolies and cartels, ie the New Zealand economy.

I agree regulation is often needed for markets, but the challenge is getting the degree of regulation right. Stopping vertically integrated monopolies is a good thing for example.

Radio NZ report:

Police now have two years worth of data on the types of hate incidents reported across New Zealand – including regional breakdowns and the demographics targeted – but it’s unclear when the country will make hate crimes a standalone offence, nearly five years on from the Christchurch terror attacks.

The number of hate incidents reported to police has increased by 12 percent between 2022 and 2023.

Race-motivated abuse made up 83 percent of all complaints over the past two years, followed by incidents targeting people’s sexual orientation (9.7 percent), and those targeting people of a certain faith (5.8 percent).

Of the 9351 hate incidents reported between January 2022 and January 2024, more than a third targeted people of Asian descent, followed by 8.9 percent aimed at people of colour and 7.2 percent targeting Maori.

Sad but not surprising that Asian New Zealanders get the most racial abuse.

Of interest is that 11.2% of incidents were targeted at Europeans. Of course they make up the largest share of the population.

Conservation Minister Tama Påtaka announced:

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka has made the reinstatement of the walking access to Coromandels Cathedral Cove/Te Whanganui-a-Hei before next summer a priority. 

Excellent. Prior to the Minister being involved, DOC were saying they wouldn’t even make a decision on restoring access until the end of 2024. Now a few weeks later, the Minister has obviously told them this is unacceptable, and it will be reopened.

This is just one of many benefits of a change of Government. The former Minister just let DOC spend 12 months deciding to do nothing.

“I expect to receive advice from officials by the end of June on the reinstatement options. Assuming there is a safe option for public walking access, I want to see the mahi procured and underway ahead of summer.

Of course there are safe options. Safe is not the same as risk free. If one allows any potential of risk to dictate access, then we would have no walking tracks anywhere!

So the battle isn’t won. Having the Minister make access a priority helps immensely, but the power of bureaucratic inertia should not be underestimated!

The Herald reports:

Stan Walker interviewed Ziggy Marley for Seven Sharp ahead of the release of One Love, but days later all traces of it were deleted from Walker’s and the show’s social media. TVNZ reveals the reason why to the New Zealand Herald.

The camera starts rolling. Stan Walker walks into a dark room. He grins ear to ear, sits down and admits he is “really nervous” to interview controversial musician Ziggy Marley, son of Bob Marley. On screen behind them is a movie poster with the famous Rastafarian colours, promoting the new Bob Marley biopic One Love.

Kicking things off with a Māori welcome, Walker tells a smiling Ziggy, “It is an honour and a privilege to be here to interview you.” The pair then engage in a relatively wholesome interview discussing the inspiration behind One Love, a movie produced by Ziggy that tells the story of his late father and his journey to becoming the most famous reggae musician in the world.

It was an interview conducted for TVNZ’s 7pm current affairs show Seven Sharp, with the full conversation between the two musicians airing on TV earlier this month. Clips of their conversation were shared on both the show and Walker’s social media accounts.

So it was an interview between two musicians.

Days later, all traces of it were scrubbed from the internet without explanation. Now, a TVNZ spokesperson tells the NZ Herald why.

Praising Walker, the spokesperson revealed that it wasn’t the interview that resulted in the surprise decision to remove all traces of it, but rather social commentary.

“Stan Walker conducted a fantastic interview with Ziggy Marley about the new film One Love for Seven Sharp, and the piece was a hit both on-air and online,” they said. However, once the piece was uploaded to social media, comments took away from the purpose of the interview, leaving TVNZ no choice but to remove it from the Seven Sharpsocial media accounts.

“Social media commentary moved away from what the interview was about and we decided to take the piece offline,” the spokesperson said.

What this means is that they gave into a woke mob. Why?

Though the content has since been deleted, “social media commentary” can be seen on other accounts, including @palestinian.youth.aotearoa, criticising Walker for interviewing Marley. There has also been a petition launched against Marley’s headlining the upcoming Womad NZ festival.

A collective of groups – Hala.aotearoa, Artists for Ceasefire and Aotearoa for Ceasefire – is petitioning Womad to drop Marley from its lineup after he helped to raise US$60 million for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in 2018.

Great example of cancel culture. This interview wasn’t about the Middle East or Gaza. It was about music and musicians. But because he has the wrong view on Israel, they have deleted the interview.

Worth checking out Sora, the Video AI from Open AI.

You can enter a prompt such as:

A stylish woman walks down a Tokyo street filled with warm glowing neon and animated city signage. She wears a black leather jacket, a long red dress, and black boots, and carries a black purse. She wears sunglasses and red lipstick. She walks confidently and casually. The street is damp and reflective, creating a mirror effect of the colorful lights. Many pedestrians walk about.

And it creates a 60 second video of it. The ability for any person to create a realistic video on demand is fantastic.

Robert MacCulloch writes:

Our Worst Finance Minister Ever Grant Robertson (the one who created the cost-of-living crisis) wrote on his Facebook Page that “Chippy (Labour Leader Chris Hipkins) is my mate first and foremost. I worked out the other day I have known him for nearly 25 years. I was best man at his wedding”. And what do mates do for one another? Here’s what: the government appoints four members to Otago University’s Council, which in turn chooses the Vice Chancellor. On 23 December 2021, then Labour Education Minister Chris “Chippy” Hipkins appointed former Labour Party Cabinet Minister, Clare Curran, to the University of Otago Council. Yesterday, on 20 February 2024, it was announced Chippy’s mate, Grant Robertson, had been chosen by that same Council to be the next Vice Chancellor (VC), on a salary of $629,000 – Otago’s first ever non-academic VC in its 155 year history.

Few Vice Chancellor’s in the world come from non-academic backgrounds – NZ has selected several in the past, including the VC of Waikato, former UK Labour Party politician, Bryan Gould, who once ran for the Leadership of that Party (he was brought up in NZ), and Steve Maharey, a former Labour Party Minister who was VC of Massey. Seems they’re all part of the Labour Party Extended Families Association which gets “mates rates” – which in Labour’s case means higher, not lower, rates paid by you, the tax-payer, to fund their own.

Politics is about the pursuit of power; business the pursuit of money; universities the pursuit of truth. It’s a shame Otago University, with its proud history, has rejected the truth in favor of power and money. There should be a judicial enquiry into this scandalous use of public funds used to support a retiring politician who doesn’t have the energy to go on in politics (in his own words, “doesn’t have much left”), but is taking a job that requires far more energy than being an Opposition MP, at least to do it properly. Let’s wish him a happy semi-retirement (as Vice Chancellor).

I think this is a bit harsh on Grant. You can not have the energy for carrying on in politics but definitely have the energy for a new challenge outside politics.

And while I disagree with Grant on policies, I do regard him as a very competent manager of people, and can see why the Otago Council thought he would be a good VC.

But Robert touches on an interesting point. The only three non-academics appointed to be NZ Vice-Chancellors have all been Labour Party politicians.

If it is thought that ministerial experience can make a good vice-chancellor then why have we not seen any former National Ministers as VCs?