Stuff reports:

Suspended transport minister Michael Wood was asked several times about his shares in Auckland Airport, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says.

When asked later about how many times the Cabinet office had checked whether Wood had divested the shares, Hipkins said, “probably somewhere around half a dozen”.

This is beyond weird. He told the Cabinet Office in 2020 he would sell the shares and two and a half years later he hasn’t, despite six reminders from them. When I worked in the PMs Office, the word of the Cabinet Office was akin to holy scripture. If they said something needed doing, you did it promptly. I could understand he took a month to do it, or even three months. But ignoring the Cabinet Office for 2.5 years really calls his credibility into question.

I can’t fathom how you can be the Minister of Transport, pushing a $29 billion light rail project to Auckland Airport, and not get around to selling the shares despite promising the Cabinet Office you would over a period of two and a half years.

Here’s the timeframe, as I understand it.

• 1998: Auckland Airport is partially privatised by National and 17 year Young Labour member (and future President) Michael Wood buys shares in it while marching in the Hikoi of Hope against inequality!
• Dec 2016: Wood elected to Parliament
• Feb 2017: Wood submits 2016/17 Pecuniary Interest Declaration and doesn’t list shares
• Feb 2018: Wood submits 2016/17 Pecuniary Interest Declaration and doesn’t list shares
• Feb 2019: Wood submits 2016/17 Pecuniary Interest Declaration and doesn’t list shares
• Feb 2020: Wood submits 2016/17 Pecuniary Interest Declaration and doesn’t list shares
• Nov 2020: Wood becomes Minister of Transport and tells Cabinet Office about the shares and promises to sell them
• Feb 2021: Wood submits 2016/17 Pecuniary Interest Declaration and doesn’t list shares
• Feb 2022: Wood submits 2016/17 Pecuniary Interest Declaration and finally lists shares
• May 2023: Wood still hasn’t sold shares despite Cabinet Office six times reminding him about it

One key aspect is that he knew he owned the shares in November 2020 as he told the Cabinet Office about them, yet three months later he again files a declaration that omits mention of the shares.

The Herald reports:

Transport Minister Michael Wood did not immediately declare shares he owned in Auckland Airport when he became an MP or when he later took up the transport portfolio, despite his responsibility for the light rail line the Government promised to build to the airport and his then role as the minister overseeing aviation regulation.

A legal expert believes it could mean Wood is hauled before Parliament’s Privileges Committee facing a charge of contempt – the second senior Labour minister to come before the committee in as many weeks.

Wood has owned the shares since he was a teenager, but only began declaring them in the MPs’ register of pecuniary interests, the public list of MPs’ financial interests, in January 2022.

Now MPs do sometimes make mistakes in their declarations, but they are expected to amend them as soon as they become aware of the error. This “mistake” wasn’t picked up for five years, and even then it was never corrected.

Hipkins did not say whether he would sack Wood.

Hipkins said he would speak with Wood about the Auckland Airport shares today and give an update about Wood at his post-Cabinet press conference.

Hipkins said he was under the impression that Wood did not know he had to declare the shares in such detail.

This excuse could apply to a rookie MP who isn’t very knowledgable about Standing Orders. But Wood has served both as Government Chief Whip and Deputy Leader of the House. Both roles require you to have expert knowledge of Standing Orders. In fact the only people I would expect to have a greater knowledge of Standing Orders would be The Speaker and the Clerk of the House.

The spokesperson said Wood had not initially declared the shares because he believed they were owned inside a trust. He began declaring them properly in January 2022 after he became aware they were held directly.

This is very curious because, like Michael, I also own shares in a number of companies. And you know what – they send me very regular information on the shares – either annually for the tax year, and/or when they pay dividends. And they always list the exact name the shares are under.

So this means Michael never read the dividend or tax statements from the company.

A spokesperson for Wood confirmed Wood “owns shares in Auckland Airport and Contact Energy which he purchased as a teenager in the 1990s”, the spokesperson said.

I have to say it warms the cockles of my heart that young Michael Wood was investing in the sharemarket while at school. More kids should invest their pocket money in the sharemarket. Of course just a short time later he was President of Young Labour. Did his colleagues know what a budding capitalist he was? 🙂

Wood’s lack of declaration is also a potential breach of the Cabinet Manual because of the potential perceived conflict of interest between his ownership of shares in an airport while he was the minister responsible for the aviation sector.

I’d say it was a definite breach.

Now for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t think Wood’s $13,000 of shares is why he wants to spend $29 billion on light rail to the airport. But imagine this was a National Party Minister of Transport who had shares in Auckland Airport and had failed to disclose them. Wood would probably be the first to scream that it is corruption.

Again I don’t think Wood’s motives were malign. I suspect the real motivation is he didn’t want to disclose publicly that he is a little capitalist with shareholding in various companies that he opposed ever being made private.

Now Standing Orders are quite clear on this. Once he became aware his shares were owned directly by him, he should have immediately filed amendments to all the returns already filed – 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 etc. Instead he just listed them in the 2022 return, which means no one would ever know he was a shareholder during the 2017 to 2021 period.

He also has issues with the Cabinet Manual. There is no doubt he should have disclosed these whenever Cabinet was discussing policies or laws that could affect the worth of Auckland Airport. Arguably he also should have sought advice as to whether or not he should recuse himself from any discussions or voting, and delegate portfolio responsibilities for Transport to an Associate.

So the Speaker will decide if he is referred to the Privileges Committee for the Register returns and the PM will decide if he gets as many get out of jail cards for Cabinet Manual breaches as Stuart Nash did.

UPDATE:

Will be interesting to compare this to the 2008 story about John Key’s shareholding in TranzRail being larger than previously disclosed. Labour pursued this as a corruption angle, with quotes being:

• Labour has accused National leader John Key of lying over his ownership of Tranz Rail shares
• The shareholding was first raised by Prime Minister Helen Clark in July, when she accused Mr Key of having a conflict of interest
• “John Key lied because he had something to hide,” Dr Cullen said. 
• Labour will now use the non-disclosure as a major platform of attack against Mr Key. 

So the equivalent story in 2008 had Labour doing a full frontal attack with the PM and Deputy PM attacking Key, calling him a liar etc etc.

UPDATE2: Hipkins has stood Wood down as Transport Minister while this is investigated. Wood remains a Cabinet Minister on full pay and perks. He just has less work to do for a while.

Later this year Australia will vote in a referendum on a constitutional amendment to recognise a “voice” for indigenous Australians. I don’t intend to get into the arguments for and against in this post, but the change in polling has been quite dramatic. Here is the margin yes has had over no in the Newspoll polls.

• Feb +19%
• Mar +15%
• Apr +14%
• June +3%

To pass they need not just a majority overall, but a majority in at least four of the six states. I’d say NSW, VIC, SA likely to vote yes at this stage and QLD and WA no, so how Tasmania votes may end up important.

The Damehood to Jacinda Ardern is entirely appropriate, and normal. For those interested here is what other PMs have got after they left office.

• Bill English KNZM
• John Key GNZM
• Helen Clark ONZ
• Jenny Shipley DNZN
• Jim Bolger ONZ
• Mike Moore ONZ
• Geoffrey Palmer KCMG
• David Lange ONZ
• Robert Muldoon GCMG
• Bill Rowling KCMG
• Jack Marshall GBE CH
• Keith Holyoake KG GCMG CH

If you take the honours in terms of the order they are worn, the highest down is:

• Knight of the Garter – Holyoake
• Order of NZ – Lange, Moore, Bolger, Clark
• GNZM – Key, Ardern
• GCMG – Muldoon
• GBE – Marshall
• KNZM/DNZM – Shipley, English
• KCMG – Rowling, Palmer

Tracy Watkins writes:

Personal, nasty, grubby – Labour’s attack on National leader Christopher Luxon over women’s access to contraception tells you everything you need to know about the ground on which the election campaign will be fought.

Stupidly, I was hoping that with so many big issues for us to grapple with this election the campaign would be a fair fight on real issues – the economy, immigration policy (suddenly at never-before-seen record levels), infrastructure, education, hospital and cancer waiting lists to name a few.

But in just two social media posts, Labour blew me out of the water.

The first was by Labour’s campaign chair Megan Woods – so a pretty clear steer on the type of campaign she intends running – likening National’s stance on prescription charges to the dystopian Margaret Atwood novel​ The Handmaid’s Tale​, in which women are forced to bear children for the nation of Gilead​.

Woods was called out for dirty politics. But that didn’t deter Andrew Little, who took it to even more ridiculous heights, claming in an Instagram post: “Labour decriminalised abortion; National want to stop women’s access to contraception. Disgusting.”

In those two sentences, Little sought to plumb the depths of the culture wars consuming the US and elsewhere, and drag New Zealand politics down to its basest level.

These are not posts by junior staffers. This is senior Labour Cabinet Ministers bringing out the smear machine because they know that is all they have left.

Education Minister Jan Tinetti will be appearing before the Privileges Committee this week in relation to misleading Parliament over the release of attendance statistics for schools.

Generally this data is released by the end of each term, for the previous term. So the Term 3 2022 data should have been released in December 2022. Here is a timeline of key events:

• 7 Dec – MOE Deputy Secretary says to select committee “I’m really keen to get it (attendance data) out this side of Christmas, so I’m expecting that any day now”
• 9 Dec – MOE tells journalist “hoping to release Term 3 attendance data prior to Christmas.”
• 14 Dec – Term 3 data is provided to Minister and ready for release.
• 23 Dec – MOE tells journalist the data has been delayed because the Minister has requested additional information
• 26 Jan – MOE asks Minister’s office to provide a date they can release it
• 30 Jan – PMs Office advised by Tinetti’s office they have delayed release
• 9 Feb – Tinetti’s office replies to MOE saying maybe release data next week
• 14 Feb – MOE again asks Minister’s office for a date for release and Minister’s office tells Ministry they want data released after they release attendance package
• 20 Feb – MOE again asks for a date they can release data
• 21 Feb – Govt announces attendance package. Tinetti on AM Show when asked why data wasn’t released in December says “It’s not my data to release, it’s the Ministry of Education’s”
• 22 Feb – Attendance data finally released
• 22 Feb – Tinetti said in the House “I can categorically tell that member that the Ministry of Education is responsible for the data. I have no say over that.” and in response to “Can the Minister categorically state here in the House today that she played no part in the delay of the release of the information when it was made available to her on 20 December?” responded “I already have. It is a decision for the Ministry of Education.”
• 22 Feb – Tinetti claims that only after speaking in the House that day did she become aware her office arranged the delay in the attendance stats
• 20 Apr – Stanford writes to Speaker asserting Tinetti has breached privilege by not correcting her answer as soon as she became aware it was incorrect
• 2 May – Tinetti corrects her answer
• 30 May – Speaker refers Tinetti to Privileges Committee

Now the question before the Privileges Committee is whether Tinetti is in contempt as she took over two months to correct her answer.

This is a seperate issue, to whether one believes Tinetti honestly didn’t know when she spoke in the House on 22 February. To believe Tinetti’s version of events her office arranged the delay with the Ministry without ever telling her. They told the PMs Office, but not their own Minister. Tinetti never ever wondered about why the data was delayed until the day after her announcement.

Further the question from Stanford to Tinetti on 22 February was a primary question (On what date was she provided with the term 3 2022 attendance data by the Ministry of Education, and why was the data not released publicly until just yesterday?) which she would have received three hours before question time. Ministers don’t just wonder into question time unprepared. The practice their answers with their staff. Are we really to believe that even after this question was set down for answer, Tinetti’s staff still didn’t tell her they they were involved in delaying the release?

So this is bad either way for Tinetti. Even if you accept everything she said is true, her only defence to the Privileges Committee is that both she and her staff are so incompetent they didn’t realise that the Minister needs to correct the record after misleading the House.

A interesting aspect is that for some of this time, Tinetti was only the Associate Minister of Education. The Minister was Hipkins up until he became PM. While Tinetti had delegated authority, is it possible that it was in fact Hipkins who had his staff instruct Tinetti’s staff to delay the release. By mid December he would have known he was about to become Prime Minister in January, and he may not have wanted the data out showing a huge drop in attendance while he was Minister. That could explain why Tinetti was in the dark (if you believe she was) – her staff were doing what Hipkins office had instructed?

The other aspect to this which hasn’t been covered is that the delay of the data actually impacts schools negatively in terms of their planning. You see it is only after the national tables for attendance are released that the Ministry can release data on each school back to that school. This is important information to them for planning purposes – much of which occurs over the December/January break. So schools actually wanted that data in December, not in late February. They were inconvenienced to try and make the Government look good.

Stuff reports:

Associate Education Minister Jo Luxton is reportedly looking into the possibility of an independent review of early childhood education funding and the sector’s concerns about the Government’s $1.2 billion expansion to 20-hours-free childcare.

It comes after almost the entire ECE sector signed a letter to Luxton and Education Minister Jan Tinetti, saying Budget 2023′s flagship policy to extend 20-hours free childcare per week to 2-year-olds is completely unworkable and will degrade the quality of childcare, limit the stock of educators and increase the hundreds of services shutting up shop in recent years.

Luxton hosted nine ECE providers at Parliament yesterday and heard from each about their concerns about the policy. Tinetti was supposed to attend but didn’t. It was understood another engagement ran late and she could not make the meeting.

The sector’s problems with the policy centred around the funding for the 20-hours-free being based on a 1:10 teacher to child ratio. Many childcare centres operate at ratios between 1:4 to 1:8

It’s a real cluster**k. The intent of the policy is good, but they rushed the policy as they were desperate to counter National’s policy, and didn’t do any sector consultation, or consider critical details such as the funding ratio.

The Herald reports:

A poll conducted for the Herald by Dynata from May 25-29 asked 1000 respondents if they were more or less concerned about being the victim of a crime today than five years ago.

Sixty-seven per cent were more concerned, 28 per cent felt about the same and 5 per cent were less concerned. Concern in Auckland was higher than the national average.

Police data shows the number of victimisations has increased from 240,000 in 2017 to 353,000 last year and so far in 2023 looking to hit 380,000. The more useful stat is violent offending which went from 45,000 in 2017 to 71,000 last year and in 2023 is on track for around 77,000.

Survey respondents were asked which single measure, from a list of seven, was most important to improving their safety. The options included punitive measures – such as harsher prison sentences – as well as increasing wellbeing support services.

The most common answers were harsher prison sentences (34 per cent) and more police (27 per cent).

Labour and Greens recently changed the law so that repeat serious violent and sexual offenders would get shorter sentences and parole eligiblity.

A very perceptive column by Steven Joyce about university funding, as Victoria and Otago are looking as mass redundancies:

Take international revenue. According to published figures from the Tertiary Education Commission, fees paid to universities by international students dropped by 22 per cent from 2019 to 2021, a loss of $110 million in annual income across the sector. The 2022 figures haven’t been collated yet, but they are likely to include a further drop, especially given what is known as the pipeline effect. Each year the borders were closed, there were fewer international students returning.

The universities have not received any compensation for that revenue loss. It must have been galling to see all the money ladled out to the likes of bungee jumping operations in Queenstown while they were ignored.

A huge revenue loss due to Government decisions around Covid-19, and no compensation. Also as they are public entities they were not even eligible for the wage subsidies.

The Government’s only new funding for universities in its first term was the first year fees-free money, which from the university perspective only replaced one form of funding (student fees) with taxpayers’ money. 

A total waste of money. It mainly went to students from well off families, and didn’t increase tertiary participation at all. Rather than invest the hundreds of millions in properly funding universities, they spent it on buying votes from students.

In 2021, ministers increased tuition subsidies by a miserly 1.2 per cent against inflation that year of 5.9 per cent, while in 2022 it was a 2.75 per cent increase, well behind inflation of 7.2 per cent. In this year’s Budget, the Government tried to trumpet a 5 per cent increase in tuition subsidies, but that too is likely to be behind this year’s inflation figure, so in real terms university incomes per student have been going backwards for six years.

So the redundancies are not just because student numbers have fallen. It is because funding has been cut in real terms by Labour.

All this must be quite discombobulating for the Tertiary Education Union. They are the most loyal of the teacher unions to the Labour Party, and in return expect to be looked after. What they have been given by this Government amounts to a cold shoulder. They are left railing at university leaders for all the redundancy plans, and yet still can’t bring themselves to criticise their political soulmates as the root cause of the problem.

The PM and Finance Minister are both former VUWSA Presidents, yet it is their policies that have caused much of the problem.

There are also immediate skills problems for the country which are going begging for lack of funding and a lack of government ambition. The big problem in the health sector is a lack of health professionals and especially doctors, yet we refuse to invest any money to train more. We have just two medical schools while a proposal for a third is left to wither on the vine. Australia has 21 medical schools for a population just five times our size. If we were serious, we would be adding two medical schools, not just one.

NSW has seven medical schools for a population of 8 million. Queensland has four for our population., Western Australia has three with half our population.

You might think all this is a bit rich coming from someone who rails against the excesses of too much government spending. But it is also about what you choose to spend money on, and in this case you don’t have to look far to find pots of money being wasted.

In the tertiary sector alone, Chris Hipkins’ baby, the Te Pūkenga polytech merger, leads a charmed life, despite something like a 20 per cent decline in domestic enrolments over the last two years. $200m has been wasted on that merger so far, and another $220m was advanced in the Budget this year. To try to help Te Pūkenga look better, the Government has hiked up subsidy rates for its courses excessively, in sharp contrast to the universities.

Think if the hundreds of millions spent on the merger instead went to funding universities!

A guest post by PaulL.

I see this article in the Herald, in which Tory Whanau says that criticism of her not attending some meetings is “gendered”.

I saw a lot of criticism of Wayne Brown for not being available enough, not turning up to meetings, not being around during a cyclone and suggesting he might play tennis on a Saturday morning instead of work (sure, during a cyclone, but it was Saturday). I think that criticism was definitely coming from one side of the political spectrum, but it was also somewhat fair.

Tory says that she “thinks the focus on her attendance is undue, and largely because people don’t like what she represents as a young Māori woman in council.” And “[The criticism is] gendered. And I know that people are going to be uncomfortable with hearing that but let’s be real here.”

“Saturday night should I be in the office? Well no, that’s just silly. I’m entitled to a private life. I’m entitled to have a little fun with my mates and there are some people who take issue with that.”

She was also heckled at a resident’s association meeting. “…what it felt like to me is that like many other women, I was just being shouted down by a group of men.”

Is it perhaps possible that any mayor would face questions if their attendance is a bit short? Wayne Brown certainly did. And that there will be people who disagree with you and heckle? Certainly Wayne Brown gets that too.

I always find it interesting when the go to explanation is sexism or racism, when an alternative explanation is that pretty much everyone in politics will face people who disagree with them. It’s part of how politics works. I personally think people should be able to disagree without shouting others down. But the left are usually the worst offenders, so it’s a bit rich for her to be saying it’s rude, or claiming that it’s because of her gender or race.

The Jaz brothers have been convicted for sexual violations and indecent assaults on over 20 women. The case has been sickening as one reads about the shattered lives of victims, but also their total lack of remorse and how calculated their offending was where they boasted in private chat channels about drugging and raping women.

The maximum term for sexual violation or rape is 20 years. The courts never give out the maximum sentence, but surely in this case the circumstances dictate (at least for the brother with 15 convictions) a sentence close to the maximum – say 18 years or so, and a non parole period of at least two thirds of that?

The defence will argue that the rapes didn’t involve violence, which is what normally gets a more severe sentence. But they didn’t involve violence, because they drugged the victims to be semi-conscious so they couldn’t resist. I’m not sure you should get credit for that.

I note the Jaz brothers were born in Australia, and only moved to New Zealand as adults. If they never gained NZ citizenship, then we should deport them back to Australia after they get released from prison.

News.com.au reported:

Decorated war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith has lost his defamation case against Nine newspapers.

The 44-year-old did not front the Federal Court on Thursday as Justice Anthony Besanko found imputations put forward across six articles by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times were found to be substantially true. …

There was silence across the courtroom as Justice Besanko found the decorated veteran was a murderer and a war criminal in his conclusions.

He’s gone from a war hero and VC winner to having been found judicially to have murdered unarmed people. He now faces losing his medals and even criminal charges over his actions.

The hubris to launch a defamation claim against media, when you basically know that what they reported was truthful, has bitten him big time. He has taken unverified allegations and now had a Judge confirm them.

Matthew Hooton writes:

Until now, it has been assumed that for sheer, unadulterated incompetence, no Government could ever beat Jacinda Ardern’s ministry for KiwiBuild.

Full credit, then, to Chris Hipkins’ Beehive for proving everyone wrong. It turns out that the centrepiece of its election-year Budget – giving 2-year-olds 20 hours of free early-childhood education (ECE) – will more likely force centres to close.

Combined with the Government’s own ECE regulations, the new policy seems to require ECE workers to be paid below the minimum wage, something you’d have expected at least one minister to have been able to work out on a napkin.

Ultimately responsible is Education Minister Jan Tinetti, who also has her primary and secondary teachers on strike, her universities and polytechnics going broke, and who has become the first MP to be referred to Parliament’s privileges committee for contempt of Parliament since Winston Peters after 2008′s secret-donations scandal.

We should have an annual award, maybe called the Twyford award, and Tinetti would be a contender for the 2023 award.

Jonathan Ayling of the Free speech Union writes:

The Department of Internal Affairs’ public consultation documentproposes a new law establishing a “regulator” to oversee the modern content landscape. The Classifications Act will be gone, along with the Broadcasting Standards Authority and other industry groups.

While Parliament would establish the regulator, outlining its remit, it would be the regulator itself that decides how these powers are used.

A series of codes will be drafted to outline what content is acceptable and what content is prohibited. These codes will be written by industry, with the regulator ultimately approving them and having veto powers if they don’t go far enough.

What’s in scope? Pretty much everything. Media outlets (TV, print, radio) of course, but also some Substack accounts and personal blogs (if you’ve got a strong following). Heck, the Free Speech Union, with 80,000 supporters nationwide, would be regulated.

Kiwiblog would come under this new regime. I currently voluntarily subscribe to the NZ Media Council Code of Ethics, but that is my decision. This proposed regime would make it compulsory for Kiwiblog to regulated by a regulator.

The proposed structure of a regulator, with a code drafted away from Parliament and political accountability, is a censor’s greatest dream and will ultimately be weaponised to suppress unpopular or disliked perspectives and opinions.

Call this cynical, or call it a clear reading of history. Both are probably true.

These codes will apply to all platforms, whether or not they sign up – gone are voluntary opinions.

And remember, the speech and content that will be regulated is all legal.

Illegal contact is already dealt with and is illegal. This regime is about regulating legal speech.

This is about “harmful” ideas that make individuals “feel unsafe”. This is about silencing certain perspectives, views or beliefs.

Secondly, why do we think this will work, and what will the unintended consequences be?

While the intention to address “safety” and online “harm” is arguably laudable, the cure is worse than the disease. This is an inelegant solution to the “lawful but awful” category of speech, which is best addressed through counter-speech.

I assume the FSU will set up a submission tool which will make it easy for people to submit on these proposals. When they do, I will encourage readers to take the time to submit.

The Waikato Times reports:

A 5-year-old boy was cornered in the toilets of his Waikato school by two older pupils who allegedly pinned him down, beat him and sexually assaulted him.

The shocked parents of the young victim have now pulled him out of the school because – to their further astonishment – the two alleged perpetrators of the abuse have not been expelled or even suspended.

The couple say they believe the school’s principal is not taking their son’s situation seriously because the parents of the alleged abusers are involved in the school community.

The poor poor kid. And here is what the school has done:

• “working through a sensitive matter involving young children”.
• met with ministry staff to develop a safety plan for their son and other pupils attending the school
• planned “to make some significant changes to the way we manage the way our toilets are used.
• “We are confident that our school is a safe space for all students,”
• We have also liaised with the families
• “We requested and received additional funding for this from the Ministry of Education.”
• The school’s staff and board had booked a workshop with Child Matters “to further review our child protection policy to ensure it is as strong as possible” and had brought forward a “Keeping Ourselves Safe” child abuse prevention programme initially scheduled for later in the year.

So they have had lots of meetings, have reviewed policies, have gained more money from the Ministry etc etc etc. But what they haven’t done is take any actual action in terms of consequences for those who allegedly sexually assaulted a five year old.

Radio NZ reports:

Eight months before the Loafers Lodge fire, the building regulator told Wellington City Council it was doing six-to-10 times too few safety checks on buildings, and to do more.

The regulator MBIE told it that riskier buildings, such as boarding houses, were even more in need of the better on-site checks.

Overall, the council was running at under 4 percent of buildings audited a year, when it should be at 20-33 percent.

“This number is well below what we would expect for an effective auditing regime,” MBIE said last September in a 2022 assessment it gave the council.

It also was doing too little enforcement when it found faults, the ministry found.

The council released the MBIE assessment on Tuesday in response to RNZ questions for over a week.

At the same time, it admitted last auditing Loafers in 2018 – when it found blockages at fire exits and smokestop doors wedged open, and a non-compliant card-access system – and 2012.

Think if the Council focused more on core functions such as building safety, water infrastructure and the like and less on recognising Palestine and painting rainbow crossings!

I have no issue with politicians changing parties, on a matter of principle. Most famously Winston Churchill is thought to have said “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.” in reference to leaving the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904 and then back to the Conservatives in 1924.

Few would doubt Tariana Turia left Labour on a matter of principle. The recent defection of Meka Whaitiri to the Māori Party seemed to be more about not getting back into Cabinet than any matter of principle.

The Herald reports:

Former National MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar will stand for Act in the coming election and will contest the Pakuranga electorate in Auckland where she lives.

Parmar, who spent two terms in Parliament with National, has made the move after she was unsuccessful in securing the candidacy for Upper Harbour, Maungakiekie or Mt Roskill – with National.

To swap to another party just weeks or months after you have three times tried to be selected for National, doesn’t suggest it is an issue of principle.

The Platform has applied for their producer, Ben Espiner, to be an accredited member of the Press Gallery. The Gallery recently changed their rules as seen below:

This is an interesting new criteria. First of all you can’t join the BSA. You are either covered or not covered by it. The Platform is not as they do not transmit to people who use a “broadcasting receiving apparatus” – they are solely available through the Internet.

So for non-broadcasters, the criteria now is you must be a member of the Media Council to become a member of the press gallery. Kiwiblog is a member of the Media Council so this should mean any application from me will be approved!

But have a look at the current members of the press gallery. As far as I can tell none of these organisations are covered by the BSA or the Media Council, so I presume they all lose accreditation:

• AFP
• AP
• AAP
• Bloomberg
• The Guardian
• Interest.co.nz
• Listener
• NZ Newswire
• Reuters
• Synapsis
• Xinhua

If this new rule wasn’t just designed to keep The Platform out, then it should be applied to existing members. They say it only applies to domestic media, but why? Are they saying that if The Platform was owned by an Australian, it would qualify?