Chris Hipkins has announced that the law requiring people to self-isolate for seven days if they test positive for Covid-19 will remain for at least two more months. All this will do is mean fewer people will report their tests.

If people get the flu, or pneumonia, or some other virus they self-manage their sickness. You decide when you feel well enough to go back to work etc.

Covid-19 has been endemic in New Zealand for well over a year. We will never not have it. It should now be managed the same as any other infectious virus.

England dropped mandatory isolation 14 months ago and Australia six months ago. The vast majority of EU members states and US states have dropped mandatory isolation. We are an outlier.

Very impressed how he just keeps going while the cat climbs all over him.

Peter Murrell, the husband of former Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was arrested a few days ago.

He was the CE of the SNP, but resigned during the leadership election over giving out false information regarding the number of members the party had.

The arrest though is over what happened to $600,000 donated to help with a new independence referendum.

If this damages the SNP, as is likely, this will help UK Labour get a majority in the next election.

Stuff reports:

There were two words conspicuously missing from Jacinda Ardern’s final speech in Parliament: Winston Peters.

Ardern in her valedictory speech delivered in the House on Wednesday afternoon provided an account of her time as an aspiring politician, MP, and prime minister. She canvassed policies, crises, and colleagues including her “brilliant” former Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson.

Her other deputy prime minister, Peters, and Labour’s coalition with his party New Zealand First from 2017 to 2020 went entirely unmentioned. 

This is pretty rude considering that Peters is the person who near unilaterally made her Prime Minister. If Winston had not chosen her, she would probably be in her third term as Leader of the Opposition.

Newsroom reports:

On Friday last week, Stats NZ trumpeted in a press statement that four million people had returned their individual forms. “We didn’t hit this milestone until April 30 in the 2018 Census,” deputy government statistician Simon Mason said.

(Given the debacle five years ago, that’s not a surprise.)

Still, one-in-five people haven’t completed their forms this year. For people of Māori and Pacific descent, that figure is two-in-five.

I really hope the low return rate is a timing issue, but really four weeks after the census you should have more forms returned for a spend of $300 million.

Here’s the return rates for the last few censuses:

• 996: 95.6%
• 2001: 95%
• 2006: 94.8%
• 2013: 92.9%
• 2018: 83.3%
• 2023: 78.1% so far

Anything under 90% is basically unacceptable.

The NY Daily News reports:

The civil case brought by writer E. Jean Car­roll claiming that Trump raped and sub­se­quent­ly de­famed her is scheduled for a jury tri­al on April 25. Un­like the in­dict­ment that could take a long time to reach a jury, this tri­al could re­sult in a block­buster jury ver­dict as ear­ly as May find­ing that Trump is guilty of rape.

Yes the criminal trial next hearing is December, so at best reaches a conclusion in 2024. But this civil case could be decided next month.

Mak­ing mat­ters worse for Trump’s de­fense, Ka­plan ruled that Car­roll can intro­duce into ev­i­dence Trump’s state­ments on the “Ac­cess Hol­ly­wood” tape. Kaplan found that “in this case, a jury could rea­son­ably find, even from the ‘Ac­cess Hol­ly­wood’ tape alone, that Mr. Trump ad­mit­ted . . . that he in fact has had con­tact with women’s gen­i­talia in the past with­out their con­sent, or that he at­tempt­ed to do so.”

So Trump will have three women testifying he sexually assaulted them plus his own boasting that he likes to grab women by the p***y.

As the ev­i­dence now stands, this is not the clas­sic case of “he said, she said.” Rather, it is a case of “he said, she said, she said, she said,” all sup­port­ed by Trump’s own “Access Hollywood” words and Car­roll’s witnesses. Trump ap­pears to be left with no witnesses to call to rebut these charges oth­er than himself.

Trump is faced with a conundrum — the only way he can rebut Car­roll’s case is to testify in his own de­fense. That will sub­ject him to a blistering cross examination concern­ing his predatory history. That cou­pled with his propen­si­ty to lie puts him in a real bind. Trump’s own for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al re­cent­ly com­ment­ed, it would be a “partic­u­lar­ly bad idea” for Trump to ap­pear on the stand be­cause “he lacks all self-con­trol,” “and it would be very dif­fi­cult to pre­pare him and keep him tes­ti­fy­ing in a pru­dent fash­ion.”

How­ev­er, Trump can­not hide be­hind the Fifth Amend­ment priv­i­lege with­out suffer­ing the dire con­se­quences that in a civ­il case, un­like a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, his refusal to take the wit­ness stand or to as­sert his Fifth Amend­ment priv­i­lege can be used by the jury to con­clude that Trump raped Car­roll and there­fore de­famed her.

It will be fascinating to see whether Trump testifies. It seems he almost certainly loses if he does not, and if he does testify – well that could get interesting.

Having said that, even if Trump loses I doubt his most hardcore supporters will care.

Radio NZ reports:

Cabinet Minister Kiri Allan has made a public apology after criticising RNZ’s culture and treatment of Māori staff during a farewell event for her fiancée, Māni Dunlop.

Allan says while she was there in the capacity as Dunlop’s partner, she accepts there is “not such a delineation in terms of public perception” and also that it could have been been interpreted as “me telling RNZ how to manage their staff or company”.

“That was not my intent and it is certainly not my job,” Allan said in a statement.

The Cabinet manual makes it clear “ministers must conduct themselves at all times in the knowledge that their role is a public one”, and the expectation that they “exercise a professional approach and good judgement in their interactions with the public and officials, and in all their communications, personal and professional”.

Speaking at her farewell in RNZ’s boardroom on Friday afternoon, Allan took aim at RNZ’s treatment of Māori reporters and urged the public broadcaster to have a look at its culture.

Allan prefaced her comments by saying the speech was off the record and delivered in her capacity as Dunlop’s partner, not as a minister.

This was incredibly bad judgment. Allan should have declined to speak at all, let alone deliver a speech which basically blames Radio NZ for her partner not getting the Morning Report job, and puts it down to racism.

Radio NZ is funded by the Government. Allan sits in Cabinet where they decide how much money Radio NZ gets, and what it can be spent on. Her words would have massively more impact than by some anonymous partner.

So far in 2023, National has been releasing a new policy every couple of weeks and Labour has been having a Cabinet Minister break the rules every couple of days.

Chris Lynch reports:

The New Zealand Government’s plan to teach maths for social justice has come under criticism by the Act Party.

The plan, developed by the Ministry of Education, advocates for a “critical maths pedagogical approach” that aims to use maths as a tool for developing critical awareness about wider social, environmental, political, ideological, and economic issues.

The plan encourages students to interrogate dominant discourses and assumptions, including that maths is benign, neutral, and culture-free, and to address issues of power, social justice, and equity in the community and the wider world.

Act Education spokesperson and former teacher, Chris Baillie called the plan “completely nuts” and a prime example of why New Zealand is falling behind, stating that the government is indulging in ideological experiments while failing to prioritise the basics.

This madness needs to end. Is there any subject they don’t want to politicise and degrade?

Dr Taonui tweets that allowing free speech is what leads to the Nazis. Now such a moronic tweet shouldn’t even need responding to, but I thought people might be interested in the true history of the Weimar Republic with speech.

Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff write:

Weimar Germany had laws banning hateful speech (particularly hateful speech directed at Jews), and top Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher actually were sentenced to prison time for violating them. The efforts of the Weimar Republic to suppress the speech of the Nazis are so well known in academic circles that one professor has described the idea that speech restrictions would have stopped the Nazis as “the Weimar Fallacy.” 

A 1922 law passed in response to violent political agitators such as the Nazis permitted Weimar authorities to censor press criticism of the government and advocacy of violence. This was followed by a number of emergency decrees expanding the power to censor newspapers. The Weimar Republic not only shut down hundreds of Nazi newspapers — in a two-year period, they shut down 99 in Prussia alone — but they accelerated that crackdown on speech as the Nazis ascended to power. Hitler himself was banned from speaking in several German states from 1925 until 1927.

So the historical record is the exact opposite of what was asserted. Germany took extreme measures to suppress the speech of Hitler and the Nazis. And all it did, was make him stronger.

Far from being an impediment to the spread of National Socialist ideology, Hitler and the Nazis used the attempts to suppress their speech as public relations coups. 

Rosie Parker (and no I am not equating her with the Nazis) has had a global boost in followers and significance thanks to the idiots who used violence against her. The photo of her covered with a red liquid has become iconic to her followers.

Restrictions on speech failed to stop the Nazis and ultimately proved to be strong weapons in their hands. Ultimately, it was a permissive attitude towards violence and the degradation of the rule of law that led to the greatest atrocity in history.

Hopefully a lesson to be remembered.

I blogged previously on the weird attempt by the former Mayor’s comms person to “out” the new Mayor, 23 year old Ben Bell.

Since then we have had a total breakdown in the relationship between the Mayor and the CE that they will no longer meet with each other, and also had a Councillor resign.

I am not close enough to Gore to know what are the drivers here, in terms of who is to blame. I guess there are three scenarios.

1. The new Mayor is enthusiastic but inexperienced and won’t take advice and simply can’t manage relationships sucessfully
2. The old guard can’t accept a 23 year old newbie to the area beat out the long-standing Mayor, and are doing everything they can to frustrate him
3. A mixture of (1) and (2)

I was leaning more towards (1) than (2) but then I saw this article by Radio NZ:

One of the men at the centre of the stand-off at Gore District Council was given a two-year contract extension just two days before the new council was elected.

Chief executive Stephen Parry is no longer on speaking terms with new mayor Ben Bell and both are now in place until 2025, when the next elections will be held.

During a behind-closed-doors session of an extraordinary meeting of the council on 6 October, the previous term’s councillors granted the maximum two-year extension to Parry’s contract.

Multiple sources told RNZ his contract as chief executive was due to expire in September this year.

I regard that decision as being done in very poor faith. No elected body should be appointing a CE two days before an election. There might be mitigating circumstances if the contract was due to expire within a couple of months, but in fact there was still 11 months to go. It is hard to not conclude this was done because of the possibility of a change of Mayor.

Hicks today defended the decision to extend Parry’s contract.

“As someone that’s been around local government for a long time, I’m aware of the complexities that are coming at councils headlong at the moment and having some stability there, in my view, is very important,” Hicks said.

This was not a decision for Hicks, when he was just hours out from an election. It sounds like he was deliberately trying to tie the hands of the next Mayor and Council.

Parry had been the council’s chief executive since 2001.

This is the part that rang even larger warning bells. Basically you have had the same Mayor and CE for almost 20 years, and the question has to be asked if the CE refusing to work with the new Mayor, because he had the temerity to beat the old Mayor, and he knows there is nothing the new Mayor can do because he had his contract extended?

As a matter of principle, I don’t think an organisation should keep the same CE for 20 years. It is healthy to have change.

Now again I don’t have any inside knowledge here, but the reappointment two days before the election reeks of bad faith.

Lindsay Mitchell blogs on immunisation. She shows what happened after National made it a national health target.

So the overall immunisation rate went from the high 70s to the low 90s. But the massive change from Maori infants that went from just over 65% to almost 90%. The benefits of that will be massive. But sadly, it has now reversed.

The moment the Government changed and Labour abolished the BPS targets and health targets, and the Maori rate for two year olds dropped from around 92% to 85% and since then has plummeted to just over 65%.

Public health people often say the barriers to vaccination are poverty and racism. But National showed that a competent Government can make a massive difference to immunisation rates. The Maori rate went up 20 percentage points and the decile 9/10 rate up round 15 percentage points.

Vincent Lloyd writes at Compact:

I am a black professor, I directed my university’s black-studies program, I lead anti-racism and transformative-justice workshops, and I have published books on anti-black racism and prison abolition. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood of Philadelphia, my daughter went to an Afrocentric school, and I am on the board of our local black cultural organization.

Like others on the left, I had been dismissive of criticisms of the current discourse on race in the United States. But now my thoughts turned to that moment in the 1970s when leftist organizations imploded, the need to match and raise the militancy of one’s comrades leading to a toxic culture filled with dogmatism and disillusion. How did this happen to a group of bright-eyed high school students?

Read the entire article. It shows how the zealots could fit in Pol Pot’s regime. Anyone not sufficiently committed to their ideology must be taught the error of their ways. No one is exempt, but even a black professor who specialises in racism. His crime was to not be pure enough.

This graph of the Official Cash Rate shows the OCR is at the highest level since 2008. Also noteworthy is the rate of increase – up 5% in around 18 months. This compares to a 3% increase over around four years from 2003 to 2007.

Readers may be interested in this breakdown of who makes the money from tobacco. Based on the cheapest packet at $31.90, here is how much goes to the three parties involved:

1. The manufacturer – $1.24 or 4%
2. The retailer – $2.94 or 9%
3. The Government $27.72 or 87%

So Big Tobacco gets 4% of the revenue, retailers such as dairies get 9% and The Government gets 87%.

Mark Mitchell points out:

New data obtained by National shows the number of people being granted bail despite opposition from Police has more than doubled since 2018, National’s Police spokesperson Mark Mitchell says.

“In 2018, bail was granted despite Police opposition 2,061 times. By 2022, that number had skyrocketed to 5,084 – an increase of 147 per cent.

“Unsurprisingly, these figures coincide with a 97 per cent increase in the number of people absconding from electronically monitored bail.

“The data couldn’t be clearer. There is an obvious link between the courts increasingly ignoring Police opposition to bail and the number of people absconding from monitored bail.

This is partly why the violent crime rate is up 33% since 2017. The Government has said it wants fewer people in prisons, including those on bail, and Judges are ignoring warnings from Police that those arrested with a history of serious offending should not be given bail.

Roger Partridge writes:

This month, Environment Minister David Parker’s Resource Management Act reforms will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Provided, that is, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is listening.

Three extraordinary interventions during March point to the reform’s inevitable demise. 

The first occurred at the start of the month. Chief Justice Helen Winkelman took the highly unusual step of publicly warning, in a submission to the Environment Select Committee, that Parker’s reforms would disrupt the courts.

It is very rare for the judiciary to submit on a bill. Why did they?

Submitters before the environment select committee, including the New Zealand Initiative, repeatedly pointed to the vague language, the lack of coherence and the unworkability of Parker’s Resource Management Act (RMA) reform proposals.

The high threshold required for the chief justice’s intervention means the judiciary shares those concerns. And that they are so serious they will adversely affect the administration of justice. Strike one against Parker’s reforms.

The new law has so many competing objectives that any major project will probably get tied up in ten years of litigation as judges try to work out how the law would work.

Strike two came from environment commissioner Simon Upton.

Upton is well versed in planning law bungles. After all, it was Upton who, as the Bolger government’s environment minister, delivered the RMA into law in 1991. 

But even Upton sees the perils of Parker’s proposals. Indeed, his submission to the select committee says the reforms are so flawed the environment might be better off if they were scrapped. Parker’s reforms, he said, “weld a wide range of unprioritised outcomes into what is supposed to be the basis for environmental law”.

Even if the proposals are substantively amended, Upton questioned whether they could deliver an enduring framework. “As they stand, they substitute the uncertainty of new law with novel definitions and complex ambitions for the relative certainty of amending the existing legislation,” he said. Upton concluded that a better approach would be achieved through a comprehensive amendment of the RMA.

So the PCE is saying this new law will make for worse environmental outcomes, and it should be scrapped.

Just in case the prime minister had not got the message, last week the select committee chairperson, Green MP Eugenie Sage, delivered strike three. 

Speaking at the Environmental Defence Society conference in Auckland, Sage said she wanted Parker’s reform proposals sent back for more public consultation. The select committee process was moving too fast. Too many changes were needed to the 859-clause bill to do the reform process justice.

Even the Greens have worked out this new law is a dog. The renewable energy sector have said it will mean no new renewable energy project will get consented for ten years.

Since taking over as Prime Minister, Hipkins has shown a ruthless determination to dispatch anything in the way of his Government being re-elected. So far, this has resulted in two so-called policy bonfires. 

While these have largely involved dumb ideas being deferred, it would take a brave punter to bet against Parker’s reforms being struck out.

Hopefully Hipkins does the right thing and over-rules Parker.

Radio NZ report:

Green Party MP Elizabeth Kerekere has been chastised by party leadership after calling colleague Chlöe Swarbrick a “crybaby” in a text message sent to other MPs in error. …

The text was sent to a group chat of Green staff and MPs while Swarbrick was speaking in the House on her Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill on Wednesday night, which failed at first reading.

A screenshot of the message leaked to RNZ shows Kerekere’s text: “Sucks that her bill goes through during list ranking! Please Universe, pick my bill tomorrow.”

She went on to add “omg what a crybaby”.

Imagine if a National MP called Chloe a crybaby. They would be denounced as being sexist and ageist and there would be a 10,000 signature petition within hours demanding they resign.

When contacted by RNZ, she denied calling Swarbrick a crybaby.

“I didn’t call Chlöe a crybaby, and I don’t think I can comment on it, but I didn’t call her that,” she said.

Umm, you are denying screenshots showing you did.

RNZ understands Swarbrick and Kerekere have not had a good relationship for some time.

I presume there is jealously here. Chloe has actually won an electorate seat, ran a major referendum campaign and often features up to 5% in Preferred PM polls. While Kerekere is most well known for resigning as the Greens Health and Covid-19 spokesperson after breaking self-isolation rules. 99.9% of the country were unaware she even was their spokesperson until she resigned!

Also of interest is that someone has given these screenshots to the media – a message that only went to Green MPs and senior staff. I doubt a staffer would give this to the media without permission, so this implies the hatred is so bad within the caucus that one of their ten MPs leaked it to damage Kerekere.