The Herald reports:

Te Whatu Ora Health NZ says it has “reset” its expectations with ambulance services after it was not informed National Party health spokesman Dr Shane Reti would visit emergency departments while an observer during several ride-alongs.

An aspiring Health Minister who wanted to get first hand experience of how the health system is doing on the frontline. This is a good thing. The fact he is a trained and registered doctor, also meant he was sometimes consulted by the ambulance crews.

ut Peter Alsop, chief of staff for the office of Te Whatu Ora’s chief executive, said the authority should have been told of visitors to emergency departments. …

It told the Herald last week it was “generally accepted practice” when an MP goes to one of its facilities that it is made aware of their plans, for safety and privacy reasons, and it has “reset expectations with providers” and is putting “clearer procedures in place” for future visits by politicians.

This makes me laugh because when Tony Ryall (the best post WWII Health Minister) was Minister of Health, he would often be visiting a city and if there was a spare half hour in his schedule, pop in unannounced to EDs and just sit in the waiting room chatting to patients about their experiences. This is part of what made him such a good Minister – he didn’t just rely on papers from the ministry. He made sure he knew what was happening at the front line. He did this for well over a year, and never publicised he did this. It only came to public attention when a medical union complained publicly about it – claiming the Minister was spying on them. It made him more popular than ever.

The Herald reports:

A ‘‘prolific’’ thief with more than 50 previous convictions has avoided being sent back to jail despite her latest shoplifting spree reaping more than $2500 worth of stolen goods from five Rotorua stores.

The sentence has disappointed a Rotorua security expert who believes thieves will continue to rip off retailers unless harsher sentences are given.

It is clear she will not stop stealing. So the choice is to either protect retailers from her, or allow her to carry on.

This was despite Tonihi reading the court a letter of remorse saying she was “truly sorry” for her actions. She said at the time: “I beg you to find it in your heart to forgive me. I do want to change not just for myself but for my babies.”

You know what would be a good piece of investigative journalism (but would need a change to OIA laws) would be to get the transcripts of all 50 of her court appearances. And summarise for each one what she said, which no doubt would be similar lines of remorse. You could also summarise what the Judge said each time, including no doubt variations along “I believe you can change, and will give you a chance”.

I’d love to see a future National-led Government change the law, so that all court records are online (subject to clean slate law) and searchable.

Watchdog Security managing director Brett Wilson said he and his staff had dealt with Tonihi several times before.

Wilson said, in his opinion, this case was an example of an offender mocking the system.

He said, generally speaking, offenders who were before the courts often learned from an early age if they said sorry and expressed remorse they could have their sentences reduced.

In his view: “There is a focus on the offenders and their tough upbringings but a the end of the day, when are we going to take into account the harm that comes to the victims? It is simply not happening.”

Exactly.

Tova O’Brien writes:

In politics nothing quite says “buggered” like a leaky caucus. 

Caucus confidentiality like cabinet confidentiality should be sacrosanct. 

And leaky caucuses are almost always the reserve of opposition parties. 

So a damning leak to The Post from within Labour’s caucus spells serious trouble for Chris Hipkins. Leaks tend to beget other leaks.

Minister and former party whip – the role tasked with keeping MPs in line – Kieran McAnulty was right to lament the gravity of this week’s leak, telling reporters in parliament on Wednesday, “I’m very surprised to hear that… It’s actually quite a serious thing and I’m disappointed to hear that it’s happened.”

Because leaking is a true hallmark of opposition and weakened leadership. 

Not of a unified single-party majority government confident in their leadership.

It is a very bad sign, especially just before the list ranking is done. How much worse might it be when sitting MPs get unwindable list places?

Stuff reports:

“I don’t think we are going to get there on our current trajectory,” said Kimpton on the aim to halve driving by 2030.

Kimpton said not only was funding insufficient, but the scale of how Aucklanders would need to change their lives was a conversation that needed to be led by politicians.

The job of Auckland Transport should be to facilitate Aucklanders moving around Auckland, using the mode that best works for them.

A target to halve driving is Stalinist and bad policy. It also will never ever happen by 2030, unless they start shooting motorists (as Bob Jones suggested in the 1980s, as an alternative policy to carless days).

If your aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then as transport is in the ETS all you need to do is allow the price signals of the ETS to work.

One of our two cars is an electric car. As petrol inevitably will cost more and more, people will transition to electric cars. Who is Auckland Council and Transport punishing people for getting electric cars by trying to make driving as difficult as possible?

The notion that everyone can use public transport is an elitist view pushed by people out of touch with reality.

Take my family as an example:

• I can’t use public transport when picking up around ten bags of groceries twice a week
• Even if I lived in a suburb (we have a lifestyle block), talking public transport to drop kids off and pick them up would take an extra five hours or more out of my week.
• Getting the kids to swimming, gym, Keas, or Kung Fu doesn’t work with public transport, With the evening activities you would be getting back past their bedtime
• I work from home, but once or twice a week need to meet people and if I used public transport I would spend longer getting to the meeting than meeting.
• At weekends, using public transport would mean having to keep a three year old sitting quietly on the bus or train for a couple of hours at a time, when going to various activities.

I do use public transport from time to time, when it is practical. I even use e-scooters. But being able to drive a car is not a matter of choice for me, or many families. And having government entities intent of forcing people to stop using cars just angers them.

This is old news now, but still worth pointing out.

Stuff reported:

David Parker says it was “untenable” for him to remain revenue minister, after he showed clear disagreement with the Government’s direction on tax.

Actually in a normal Government it would be untenable for him to remain in Cabinet.

Every Minister in the last 30 years has had to defend policy that didn’t vote for, or support. It is part of the job of Cabinet collective responsibility.

To have both the Minister of Finance and Revenue publicly disagree with the PM on not a minor policy issue, but arguably the biggest policy issue any Government faces – tax policy – is conceited and ill disciplined.

Parker could have stayed quiet for the next three months and then move out of revenue after the election. He chose not to.

Asked if he made the request of his disagreement with Hipkins over the wealth tax, Parker replied: “Look, you know, my views on those things. I thought it was untenable for me to continue, so I suggested to Chris that it was in the best interest of him and the party that someone else take that role.”

It’s interesting he refers to Hipkins as “Chris”, not as “The Prime Minister”. Indicates a lack of respect. Possibly not surprising as he was a Minister in the Clark Government when Hipkins was a staffer.

Mike Hosking writes:

The joke story of the weekend was the revelation that DOC, as in the Department of Conservation, is handing out money it doesn’t have to reward people for learning to speak Māori .

I say money it doesn’t have because DOC has a multi-million dollar operating shortfall.

What makes the story a tragic tale of our times is that there is no actual requirement in any of the jobs they do for there to be Māori spoken. Tasks are not getting done because they are short of Māori speakers.

This is the insidious Māori fication of the country that has so many upset. There is nothing wrong with the Māori language. Learn it all you want.

But it is not up to the taxpayer, for no specific or particular reason outside of a bandwagon, to foot the bill to pursue a woke ideology.

DOC is going to need a bailout because of its operating deficit. Rather than restrain spending, they are offering $3,500 extra salary per year to staff who learn Te Reo – despite to not being needed for their jobs.

No one would complain about higher salaries for jobs where specialist skills (such as language) are needed. But this is not the case here.

Andrea Vance reports:

Just hours before former Justice Minister Kiri Allan quit politics for good, an emotional Labour MP spoke out about her conduct, chiding the party for turning a blind eye. …

During the meeting, a first-term MP was reportedly visibly emotional, telling colleagues: “We can’t pretend that we haven’t known about this for two years.”

The MP told the meeting they had been “bullied and yelled at” by Allan but thought it “was the price to pay to get decent policy through.” They did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday night.

The substance of what the Labour MP said about being bullied by Allan isn’t what I find most interesting, but the fact that at least one Labour MP is leaking to the media details of private conversations with their colleagues.

We’ve seen this before with National, prior to Luxon taking over. It is toxic and corrosive when MPs can’t trust their colleagues not to report what they said privately to the media. The fact it is happening within Labour is a very bad sign for them.

Labour has to rank their list their weekend. It will be very challenging for them.

Last elections they won 65 seats. On current polling they look like they will get 41 seats, so that is 24 fewer MPs. There are a few retirements, but that is still a lot of MPs who look to lose their job.

A key factor is how many electorates they win. Last election they won 46 electorates. If they only lose five electorates, then they get no List MPs. They lose Robertson, Parker, Little, Verrall, Tinetti etc.

So they have the irony that senior Ministers will be hoping that they lose more than five electorates. I think there is a good chance they lose 10 – 12. So that means they may have only five to seven list spots to protect current MPs, get a more diverse caucus (they don’t want to have no Asian MPs) and bring in new talent.

If their party vote drops further than its current polling, then what happens may depend on who they lose votes to. If they lose votes to National, then they may also lose further electorate seats. But if they lose votes to Greens and Māori Party, then those voters might still vote for the Labour candidate and they won’t lose any further electorate seats.

I don’t normally give free advice to Labour, but here is what I would do if I was ranking their list. I am leaving off MPs in safe electorate seats as really doesn’t matter where they are:

1. ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance)
2. LITTLE (former leader)
3. VERRAL (Minister of Health)
4. TINETTI (Minister of Education)
5. JACKSON (Maori Caucus Chair)
6. BELICH (potential star)
7. RURAWHE (Speaker)
8. CHEN (only Chinese MP)
9. RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister, Indian)
10. WALTERS (in marginal seat, Sri Lankan)
11. PARKER (not going to stick around long anyway)
12. PRIME (Minister, marginal seat)
13. LUXTON (Minister, marginal seat)

Stuff reports:

National Party finance spokesperson Nicola Willis says she’s been leaked details of a Labour Party election tax policy to wipe GST from fresh fruit and vegetables.

But Prime Minister Chris Hipkins would not confirm nor deny the plans. GST is the 15% tax on goods and services, which is applied to most purchases in New Zealand.

“I’m not announcing our tax policy today,” he said on Thursday.

Nicola has good sources. She said for many months the Government had been looking at asset taxes, and she was proven right. I suspect she is dead right on this also.

On her way into question time on Thursday, Willis said she understood this was Labour’s tax policy, and that Finance Minister Grant Robertson had raised “serious concerns” about it.

“Despite the serious concerns having been raised, Chris Hipkins is no longer taking his finance minister seriously, and intends to announce this policy despite the serious concerns,” she said.

Our GST is the envy of most of the world as it is so simple. Keeping GST simple has been bipartisan policy for the last 30 years, but it looks like a desperate Hipkins is about to change that.

He ruled it out just three months ago incidentially:

Chris Hipkins has ruled out cutting GST from fresh food as New Zealand continues grappling with a cost of living crisis.

“Don’t expect to see anything in that space between now and the election.”

Hipkins’ comments were in response to questions from Bridge, who pointed to emails from AM viewers calling for the change.

The Māori Party has long-called for the change to remove GST from healthy food.

But despite those calls, Hipkins said it wasn’t something the Government was working on.

So Hipkins will have lied if it turns out this is something they are announcing.

But in May, before the Budget, Robertson said it would be too difficult to exempt food from GST.

“It’s a very, very challenging thing to administer,” he said, adding that he thought supermarkets would likely benefit more than consumers.

On this, Grant is right. But looks like he has been over-ruled.

The reasons this is a terrible idea are:

• Benefits supermarkets more than consumers
• Bastardises a clear Get system
• Leads to huge legal cases about hat qualifies for no GST. Are mushrooms a fruit or a vegetable? Technically neither as they are a fungi. But expect a huge boon for tax lawyers
• Generally any sort of removing GST on food benefits wealthier families more than poor ones
• Is very untargeted

The problem in NZ isn’t that we have GST on fruit and vegetables. It is that thanks to the Government we have had 18% inflation in the last three years.

The BBC report:

The boss of NatWest has admitted a “serious error” in talking about Nigel Farage’s relationship with its private banking arm Coutts.

Dame Alison Rose said she was wrong to respond to questions from the BBC about Mr Farage’s account being closed.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has “significant concerns” about the conduct of Dame Alison, BBC News has been told. 

She has faced calls to resign from Mr Farage and several Tory MPs including former cabinet minister David Davis.

The ex-UKIP leader had demanded NatWest explain how his financial information was made public as the row over his bank account closure escalated.

NatWest said it still had full confidence in Dame Alison at the helm.

Dame Alison’s apology comes after the BBC apologised on Monday for its inaccurate report earlier this month which said Mr Farage’s account was closed because he no longer met the wealth threshold for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter. 

Mr Farage later secured a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered.

The banking group has been under mounting pressure to explain how information about Mr Farage’s account closure had been disclosed.

In her first admission that she had been involved, Dame Alison said in conversations with BBC business editor Simon Jack “she had confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and he had been offered a NatWest bank account”.

This is both scary and scandalous.

Farage was leader of the pro-Brexit UKIP. His bank decided to dump him as a customer because they didn’t like his political views on several issues.

Access to banking services is pretty essential in society. The thought that banks can refuse to allow you to bank with them, because they don’t agree with your politics is horrifying. Allowing you to have a bank account is not endorsing you. It is allowing you to bank.

Farage is controversial, but within the mainstream. Numerous polls have shown around 20% to 25% of Brits approve of him – a higher percentage than approved of Jeremy Corbyn.

Imagine the outrage if banks dumped Jeremy Cornyn as a customer because they don;’t like his views on the Middle East?

Not only did the bank close his account for political reasons, they lied to the BBC and briefed them off the record that it was nothing to do with politics, but he simply wasn’t wealthy enough anymore.

So they made a political decision, they lied about it, and then they leaked his personal banking information to the BBC to discredit his claims. We only know this because the bank’s internal notes were leaked.

Think about where this could end up. How would you feel if your electricity supplier decided they would no longer supply you electricity because they dislike your political views?

hopefully Dame Alison will be looking for a new job soon.

The Māori Party have released their tax plan. Its aim appears to be to encourage as many New Zealanders as possible to leave NZ. It includes:

• Two new income tax rates of 42% and 48%
• An asset tax of up to 8% per annum
• Increase company tax rate to 28%
• A 2% financial transfer tax on overseas transfers
• A 33% tax on undeveloped land
• A 33% tax on rental houses without tenants

They claim this will allow everyone else yo pay no tax on their first $30,000 of income. The actual impact will be so many fewer people living in NZ, that the poor buggers remaining will face increased taxes.

It is worth noting that no poll has shown Labour can form a Government without the Māori Party. They will have to agree to at least some of their policies to form a Government.

Stuff reports:

Police dogs were used to track Labour MP Kiri Allan’s movements after she was found about 500 metres from her crashed car on Sunday evening, The Post understands.

So the Minister of Justice drove over the limit, hit a parked car, did a runner from the scene leaving her car abandoned. Incredible.

The following things can all be true, and are not contradictory:

• You can admire Kiri Allan greatly as a person, her friendliness, her sense of humour, her open style, her battle with cancer, her down to earth nature.
• You can have great empathy for her mental health issues, admire she is open about them, and understand how hard that can make life.
• You can also accept that there have been so many reports of bullying type behaviour (three different agencies raising concern, a backbench Labour MP, and VIP Transport) that how she deals with people is sub-optimal. This doesn’t negate the first two. I know several former National Ministers whose treatment of staff was also sub-optimal, but I also regard them as friends and good people. No-one is perfect.
• While having empathy for the mental health challenges, it is legitimate to point out that poor judgment in areas (speech at RNZ, not disclosing as a conflict a donation from an official who reports to her, treatment of others) probably contributes to the already high stress you are under. It can lead to a vicious circle where the more under pressure you are, the worse your judgment becomes.
• No amount of poor mental health excuses any MP, let alone the Minister of Justice, from fleeing the scene of a crash. This is an issue of huge public interest, and that doesn’t just stop with the resignation. Of course Parliament debated what happened. How could they not?

Gareth Hughes has written an excellent piece on the pressures of being an MP. The long hours, the late nights, the time away from family and the pressure from the media and the public. He also points out “One of the hardest things for me was that while politics is a team sport, often it’s your colleagues who you are in competition with”.

I worked in Parliament for eight years. I was only a staffer, but even at that level the job wasn’t great for mental (or physical) health due to the pressures of work. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the job and it was a privilege, but I am a much happier person now.

There is still a lot not known about the crash and the arrest. Again, despite the resignation, it is still a matter of legitimate interest about the circumstances around the then Minister of Justice being arrested. In my opinion it would be far better for Kiri Allan if a full statement was made about what happened. Otherwise, there will just continue to be story after story as details get drip-fed out.

Louis Holbrooke writes:

New data from KPMG suggests organised crime will the biggest winner from new measures targeting cash-strapped smokers.

The share of tobacco consumption sourced from New Zealand’s black market has increased to 12.1%, up from 9.2% in 2017, according to KMPG’s latest regular inquiry into illicit tobacco consumption in New Zealand.

While the total size of the black market has shrunk in kilogram terms, this is in line with wider reductions in the smoking rate as savvy smokers switch to vaping.

The worrying sign here is that among those Kiwis who continue to smoke, the black market is normalised as a source of affordable durries.

A taxed and regulated pack of Marlboros now costs $43, and the vast majority of that is tax. With smokers being disproportionately lower-income it’s little surprise that they’re jumping at the opportunity to buy homegrown tobacco leaf or cigarettes smuggled from China and Korea.

Artificially high legal tobacco prices create massive profit margins for illicit importers and growers of tobacco — profits that can be used to fund further criminal activities.

The obvious risk is that with an illicit market already thriving, new measures to make legal cigarettes less appealing and proposed crackdowns on vaping products will only fuel illegal activity. We need only look at Australia, where vapes are effectively prohibited and a study estimates a massive 23.5% of tobacco consumption comes from the illicit market.

Customs are concerned, telling the NZ Herald they’ve seen a “significant increase in the smuggling of tobacco products over recent years. . .The illicit tobacco market in NZ is already substantial and Customs expects demand for illicit tobacco to increase.”

Right now, smokers pay more than enough tax to cover associated health system costs. But if Labour follows through with plans to slash nicotine content and availability of legal cigarettes, or if National pursue a signalled vaping crackdown, the tobacco black market will boom, cratering tax revenues and normalising crime.

Louis Houlbrooke is the Taxpayers’ Union‘s spokesperson for lifestyle economics issues.

That a staggering amount of staff.

I’m sceptical of the effectiveness of the Maori Health Authority, but willing to be persuaded. If they genuinely can improve health outcomes for Maori, that would be great.

But I just can’t imagine what 400 staff are going to do. That nearly three times as many as Pharmac.

The number of two year old Maori children that are not fully vaccinated has increased from 7% (in 2017) to 35%. This is a potential disaster. Is the Maori Health Authority going to turn this around?

National managed to lift the rate for Maori children from 73% to 93% without an MHA.

What will be the metrics on which we will judge if the MHA is doing a good job with 400 staff?

(Sorry – tried to embed the link but couldn’t get it to work. Please click on below).

https://rcrrealtalk.podbean.com/e/alwyn-poole-on-what-is-happening-in-education-who-is-ultimately-responsible-what-parents-grandparents-can-do-20-jul-2023/

One News reports:

The question in the latest poll asked: “Do you believe race relations are getting worse or better or staying about the same in New Zealand?”

Only 14% say it’s getting better, 35% believe it’s about the same, and 47% say race relations are getting worse. 

I’m surprised as many as 14% said it is getting better. The Government is pushing through radical policies without a mandate, and gaslights New Zealanders about them.

NewstalkZB reports:

New Zealand First is promising to adjust income tax brackets to inflation, as well as offering tax incentives.

This means National, Greens and NZ First have all come out in favour of indexing tax brackets to inflation. We only need Labour, Maori Party and ACT to agree to have it unamious.

Doing so will be a simple to legislate. Basically all you need is a bill along the lines of:

• The Chief Statistician will sign a certificate by 31 January every year stating what the inflation rate was for the last calendar year
• The Commissioner of Inland Revenue will by 28 February every year apply that inflation rate to the existing thresholds and publish a statement saying what the new thresholds for each bracket will be, from 1 April.

If in 2010 you were earning $55,000 a year, then your tax would have been $9,520 or 17.3% effective rate.

If your income had stayed the same in real term, it would be $74,713 today and your tax would be $15,575 or 20.8% effective tax rate. So you have had a 3.5% increase in tax, purely due to inflation.

If the law required the brackets to move with inflation, then your tax bill today would be $12,925 only and you would be $2,650 a year better off.

Benefits get increased in line with inflation, and it is mad that tax brackets do not. You get penalised for earning income, and the higher inflation is, the worse off you are and the better off the Government is.

So pressure Labour, Act and the Maori Party to join National, Greens and NZ First in supporting this.

A year ago, these were the Labour Ministers and what has happened since

1. Jacinda Ardern – resigned
2. Grant Robertson – still there but no longer Deputy PM
3. Michael Wood – sacked
4. David Parker – still there but resigned Revenue in a huff
5. Poto Williams – retired
6. Kris Faafoi – resigned to become a lobbyist
7. David Clark – retired
8. Kiri Allan – sacked
9. Meka Whaitiri – defected
10. Phil Twyford – retired
11. Stuart Nash – sacked
12. William Sio – retired
13. Carmel Sepuloni – still there
14. Peeni Henare – still there
15. Damien O’Connor – still there
16. Megan Woods – still there
17. Willie Jackson – still there
18. Jan Tinetti – still there
19. Priyanca Radhakrishnan – still there
20. Kelvin Davis – still there
21. Ayesha Verrall – still there
22. Andrew Little – still there
23. Nanaia Mahuta – still there
24. Kieran McAnulty – still there
25. Chris Hipkins – still there

So in just 12 months, of their 25 Ministers we have had:

• Three sacked (would have been sacked if not resigned)
• Two resignations from Parliament
• One defection
• Four retirements
• A new Deputy PM (and PM)
• A senior Minister who quit Revenue because the PM over-ruled him

That is a huge amount of change in just 12 months.

Stuff reports:

A teen Mongrel Mob member who broke into the home of a pregnant woman and indecently assaulted her in the bed she was sharing with her child has been sentenced to 12 months home detention.

Napier man Stevie Taunoa, 19, thanked Judge Gordon Matenga after receiving the sentence on Thursday morning then walked from the dock into the police cells and yelled “Cracked it”.

He seems genuinely remorseful doesn’t he. I am sure he will never reoffend, eh.