Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has conspicuously dropped the “Three Waters” label from the Government’s contentious water reforms, though he has promised to “get on with the job” of fixing water infrastructure.

Hipkins tabled a 24-page statement outlining his priorities in Parliament on Tuesday, as he delivered his first speech as prime minister in the House. In both the statement and the speech, he did not once mention Three Waters.

Stuff understands Hipkins’ Government has decided to stop talking about Three Waters – a politically charged title for the reform of fresh, waste, and storm water systems – and instead talk of the issues facing cash-strapped councils: unsafe drinking water, broken pipes, and inadequate infrastructure.

So rather than listen to the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who submitted against the Three Waters law, their cunning plan is to simply rename it!

Newsroom reports:

Some residents in Hawkes Bay are furious at the attitude of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today in which he said an incident involving firearms was unsubstantiated and insinuated the report was without basis.

In an extensive recorded interview with Newsroom on Sunday, Ryan Lawson, whose company East Coast Traffic is contracted to set up the necessary traffic management in the region, provided a detailed account of an incident on Pakowhai Road between Napier and Hastings in which firearms were used to threaten his staff.

“Two of my staff members were encountered with firearms being directly pointed at them while they were sending out temporary traffic management. Honestly for us it was a very, very scary moment and that crew just had to up and leave.”

Like many people here, Lawson and his staff don’t want the attention and are just getting on with the job. Lawson didn’t want to comment further, but plenty of other locals were angry and upset at the comments Hipkins made downplaying the extent of the issues they’re facing. …

The PM said on RNZ that many of the things being reported as facts in fact “aren’t facts.” And in the same breath used the story about traffic workers being threatened by firearms as an example.

“There’s been no substantiation to the allegations that people on checkpoints had had guns pulled on them. If anyone wants to report that that happened they should do so to the police,” said Hipkins.

“All police have got at the moment are third hand accounts that they haven’t been able to substantiate.”

The interviewer said: “So you’re saying that particular incident that was raised of someone pulling a gun on someone at a checkpoint didn’t happen – is that the one you’re referring to?

Hipkins: “So the feedback I had, as of this morning, is that the police have not been able to substantiate that.”

But locals in Hawkes Bay spoken to by Newsroom felt the PM was out of touch and didn’t understand what it’s like on the ground.

“Not everyone reports everything because the police are busy, and so is Civil Defence. It shows the force isn’t actually coping with the amount of crime that’s happening in the Bay,” said one Awatoto resident who lost everything in the flooding.

“There’s been people everywhere you go, making the most of the situation, stealing stuff.”

Checkpoints have been put up by locals at multiple spots, including tractors at Whirinaki up the coast and tree stumps blocking the entry to Waiohiki, which lost the bridge that connects it to Taradale.

In rural Puketapu, which resembles an apocalyptic war zone, residents are putting trucks across the road to keep looters and other opportunists out.

“Seventeen cars turned around about two or three hundred metres away and sped off on the first night we set up the roadblock,” said one couple, who had their fridge and washing machine – both of which they were hoping to salvage – taken early on. A neighbour had to board up their garage when they went off to work for the day, so thieves couldn’t see what they had inside.

So basically the PM is gaslighting the locals in Hawkes Bay, and telling them there is no gun use, no crime, no looting etc.I guess the locals are just setting up roadblocks because they are bored and have nothing else to do – is that the view of the Government?

This is straight from the Ministry of Education’s data arm (who are VERY good) – Education Counts.

What will be done about Tinetti’s admission that she sat on this data since December and refused all OIAs? It MUST be the first resignation of the Hipkin’s government.

The Herald reports:

The Government is open to raising taxes at the Budget in May to cover the cost of the Cyclone Gabrielle clean-up, potentially reversing a position taken earlier this month to stick to former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s revenue policy.

Their 2020 election policy was clear:

No new taxes, or further increases to income tax next term

Inflation is triple what it should be, families are struggling to cope, and Labour’s looking to break their election promise and decrease your take home pay.

One graph tells a major story.

Labour – under former Minister if Education Hipkins – have driven this off a cliff.

Jan Tinetti was unbelievably poor on the AM show this morning. She did a Sgt Shultz impression for some of it.

– She admitted she had the attendance Term 3 attendance data by Dec 22. There have been many OIA requests for it – all denied.

– She says she is not responsible for releasing it but then says it would have been cynical to release near Christmas.

– She doesn’t see it as cynical to have the data released later today after releasing a new policy at 5am this morning.

– We have 120,000 chronically absent, over 10,000 enrolled nowhere, she says average full attendance up to 46% – but their main policy is 84 more truancy officers. Nothing about improving schools, improving teaching standards.

When high decile State school students (low Equity Index Number in the new parlance) are not seeing the point of going to school as they are finding more efficient ways of learning – the system is shot. This is the best illustration of how Labour are going about it.

Radio NZ reports:

The government has confirmed it will establish 82 new attendance officer roles, plus additional further investment, for a total $74 million.

Education Minister Jan Tinetti said it would include a commitment to improved and standardised attendance data.

“We are going back to basics on attendance,” she said. “This $74 million package puts resources on the ground to support schools and students.”

She said the Attendance Service already worked with students with low or declining rates of attendance, and the funding would allow it to support another 3000 young people.

Just 3,000?

100,000 students are attending school less than 70% of the time, or missing 12 or more weeks a year.

210,000 students are attending school less than 80% of the time, or missing eight or more weeks a year.

440,000 students are attending school less than 90% of the time, or missing four or more weeks a year.

The Government should be collecting attendance data in real time from schools. Instead it takes six months to find out what the attendance rate is. We are in February 2023 and we don’t even have data on attendance for July to September 2022.

“We know that there are many reasons why a child might not show up to school, which is why we’re also continuing our initiatives that are focused on removing barriers to education such as free period products, free healthy school lunches, school donations, preventing bullying and redesigning our curriculum.”

All of these policies have been rolled out at a time which has seen attendance plummet. I think most parents just want their kids to be in school learning, regardless of whether they get period products from their school or not!

Sam Stubbs writes:

But let’s look at the numbers, especially in the light of the recent floods and cyclone, which highlight that we are going to face vast bills to fix, never mind future-proof, vital infrastructure across the North Island. …

Once again, let’s look at the maths. The line is estimated at 24km, 12 underground and 12 overground.

So assuming the current cost of the central rail link of $1b per km, that’s at least $12 billion spent on the underground section, before we get to the other 12km overground.

If we repeat the Central Rail Link experience, and double the original estimate, the proposed line could cost over $28 billion.

Think of the opportunity cost for that almost $30 billion. It could pay for a four lane motorway between Auckland and Wellington. Or say put $10 billion into local highways, $10 billion into water infrastructure and save $10 billion!

The Herald reports:

Critics are accusing the British publisher of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books of censorship after it removed colourful language from works such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factoryand Matilda to make them more acceptable to modern readers.

A review of new editions of Dahl’s books now available in bookstores shows that some passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race were altered. The changes made by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Random House, first were reported by Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Augustus Gloop, Charlie’s gluttonous antagonist in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which originally was published in 1964, is no longer “enormously fat”, just “enormous”. In the new edition of Witches, a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business” instead of as a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman.”

The word “black” was removed from the description of the terrible tractors in the 1970s The Fabulous Mr Fox. The machines are now simply “murderous, brutal-looking monsters”.

The worst part of this kind of revisionism is it insults the readers. It treats us as imbeciles who can’t deal with context. If a book has language that isn’t appropriate for today, then it is a teaching opportunity.

I recall a while back when my five year old started saying “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” and I was holding my breath, and enormously relieved when he used the “tiger” version. I presumed he picked it up from friends at school.

But if he had used the older version, then it would have been an opportunity for me to explain to him why that word should not be used.

Let’s not rewrite every book published before 1980.

David Seymour released:

“Police Minister Stuart Nash and Defence Minister Andrew Little need to start listening to the needs of local communities and send help,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“The first duty of Government is to keep people safe. People on the East Coast are terrified and their pleas for help should be listened to. As a local MP, Nash should understand that better than anyone.

“More than 6,200 Defence Personnel were involved in MIQ and yet the Napier Mayor told media this morning her requests for military assistance have been turned down. How can the government justify having the army available to stand at hotel doors but not out in a cyclone ravaged community?

“The Defence Minister needs to invoke Section 9 of the Defence Act. This means the military can assist the Police with civil powers. Looting gangsters might not think they’re so tough when they meet the NZDF.

“More than 600 Police were sent to the Parliament protest and yet only 100 have been sent to Hawke’s Bay.

Seems a no-brainer to do this. Puzzled as to why the Government has refused.

I started writing this post around three years ago when J.K. Rowling wrote a long piece on sex and gender issues, specifically around trans issues. Most of my posts I complete in a few minutes, or maybe a couple of days. The fact I have not finished this until February 2023, indicates how challenging the area can be. I have wanted to get the facts and the tone just right, which means I needed a decent spell of unbroken concentration.

These issues are very complex, despite those who prefer one line slogans.

So here is my fairly lengthy post explaining my views on these issues.

My starting point is I want a society where we maximise happiness. If people can live happier lives by living and identifying as a gender different to their biological sex, then we should be fully supportive of that as a society.

I can only imagine how hugely challenging it must be to not identify with your biological sex, and the mental health challenges involved with that. I absolutely support people being able to change their gender to reflect their sense of identity, and we should support and accept that both as a community and as individuals.

A good read is this blog post by a man whose partner transitioned from female to male.

But, and of course there is a but, there are some situations where biological sex needs to still be regarded as a factor, not just gender identity. I’m going to outline some of those areas below. Returning to my theme of maximising happiness, we should be fully supportive of allowing people to live and participate in their gender identity, unless doing so might reduce happiness to others. By that I don’t mean reduce happiness in the sense of personal disapproval, but in terms of substantive harm.

This is not an issue such as same sex marriage (which I actively campaigned for) where there was no real balancing of competing interests. Allowing same sex couple to marry doesn’t negatively impact anyone else, but (for example) the issues of trans participation in sports does bring in competing or clashing interests of inclusiveness vs fairness.

Now where things get difficult is that some (not all) trans people feel any discussion of these issues invalidates their identity, and marginalises them further. And I accept this can be the case. But I don’t think the solution is not to ban discussion and label any women who disagrees as a TERF. It is to try and have the discussion in a respectful way.

As a society I believe we need to recognise people have a biological sex and a gender identity. In most cases they are the same, not not all. Generally the gender identity is what should be determinative, but there are a few areas where biological sex is also a factor.

In terms of the science, this June 2021 article in Endocrine Reviews makes some good points.

The terms sex and gender should not be used interchangeably. Sex is dichotomous, with sex determination in the fertilized zygote stemming from unequal expression of sex chromosomal genes. By contrast, gender includes perception of the individual as male, female, or other, both by the individual and by society; both humans and animals have sex, but only humans have gender.

Now it is also worth nothing that while biological sex is for most people a binary issue – you are male XY or female XX, there are some who fall outside those two. Sarah Bickerton wrote an excellent article in Stuff on how she is intersex. Also another article on Sarah here.

The fact some people are intersex doesn’t change the fact that there are still biological differences between men and women. Humans are described as a bipedal species, even though some humans are born with a disability where they are not bipedal.

Politicians get in trouble trying to answer the question “What is a woman”, and my answer would be

“It depends on whether you mean biological sex or gender. In terms of biological sex it is an adult with no Y chromosomes, in terms of gender it is an adult who’s identifies as female”.

So what are the issues in this area, where there is contention between people?

Identity Documents

I support people being able to change their gender on their passport and their birth certificate.

The issue is should there be criteria, and what should they be.

It used to be that you could only change your birth certificate (so it matches your passport) by way of application to the Family Court. This was far too burdensome, I agree. But I do worry the current law (to take effect this year) of simple application by way of statutory declaration is open for abuse by the who are not genuinely trans. As an example, Lauren Southern used a similar process in Canada to change her legal gender to male. I’d be more comfortable with a simple medical certificate from a GP affirming the person genuinely identifies as a gender different to their biological sex.

Names and pronouns

If someone changes their name, you should call them by their new name. It’s the polite and decent thing to do. I don’t think you should be banned from social media for failing to do so, but I think deliberately misnaming someone is an arsehole thing to do. Appalling to read this story about how someone transitioned and some of her colleagues would not call her by her new name, and would refer to her as it. What an nasty thing to do.

The use of preferred pronouns in signatures can be useful in a lot of situations – someone may be trans, or they may have a name commonly used by both genders, or a non-English name which many would not know as male or female. I have found it useful on a number of occasions to find out my assumptions are wrong, due to people using their preferred pronouns.

But for many people there is no benefit in listing your pronouns. My name is David. I am biologically male and identify as male and have done so all my life. I don’t feel the need to state I am he/him in my e-mail signature. And God save me from woke mobs who insist that every single adult must now include preferred pronouns, to prove they are allies. Use them if they would be useful to you, or you want to – but also understand that bullying people into using them is wrong.

Another language issue is the drive to remove the word women from the language. Instead of pregnant women, we now have pregnant people. This is silly. If you want to be a man, great – go for it and transition. But if you want to be pregnant and have a baby, that is hardly consistent with wanting to be a man. Now on an individual level, you should respect what choices someone has made, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw out the word women from all literature.

Sports

This is one of the highest profile and most difficult areas. Most scientists have concluded that biological males who go through puberty as males have significant advantages in terms of strength and speed that persist, even if testosterone levels are decreased. A review of the latest science found adult male athletes have on average a 10-12% performance advantage over female competitors in swimming and running, 20% advantage in jumping and 35% in strength-based sports.

One should have sympathy for transgender athletes. They work and train hard to get to the top tier, and banning them from competing because they are transgender is harsh on them. And no, I don’t think anyone would go through hormone and/or surgery just so they can better comparative sporting results.

But you also have to have sympathy for the female athletes who are biologically female. They can train just as hard and be the best in the world, but then have someone who is not biologically a female beat them, and feel that nothing they can do will allow them to win.

The trade-off is inclusiveness vs fairness.

The difference between the sexes can be immense. The national women’s football teams from Australia, USA and Brazil were beaten comprehensively (7-0, 5-2, 6-0 respectively) by club teams of 14- and 15-year-old boys in practice matches.

I would divide sports into three levels – school age, adult and elite.

At school age sports I would prioritise inclusiveness over fairness. I think it would be incredibly damaging to a trans student to not be allowed to participate in sports in line with their gender identity. The mental health risks at this age are huge.

I despair at Republican state legislatures passing laws to ban transgender students from competing in school athletics etc in line with their gender identity. A former Chief Judge of the US District Court of the Southern District of West Virginia issued an injunction against one such law.

At the other end of the spectrum, at elite or professional level, I think you have to prioritise fairness. Elite athletes can spend thousands of hours training to be the best in the world at an event, and it isn’t fair if they have to compete against someone they literally have no chance of beating.

I think each sports bodies should make their own rules. In archery it might not matter if a biological male competes with biological women, but in swimming it does. Decisions should follow the science.

At adult non-elite level, I tend to favour inclusiveness over fairness, so long as it is safe. So in contact sports you may not allow a trans-woman to compete with biological women, but in table tennis you might. Leave it to each sport again.

Toilets

I just don’t get the hysteria about trans-women using women’s toilets. You have cubicles. If it were not for urinals, I’d have all toilets unisex anyway. The notion of toilets are a place where you are safe from people who may be sexually attracted to you is outdated. If someone behaves inappropriately, then deal with the behaviour. I absolutely support people using the toilet of the identified gender.

Changing Rooms

While concerns around toilets are, in my view, grossly overstated, changing rooms are a more challenging issue. In LA a transgender woman disrobed in a women’s changing room, displaying her penis. I can understand how women in a changing room don’t want to view a penis in there. But also trans people need to change somewhere, and having her change in the men’s changing room is also problematic. The solution is not a law, but good faith. On an individual basis, you just need to work out an acceptable solution. Maybe a third small changing room?

You need to allow any organisation with changing rooms to decide for themselves what the policy is.

The same goes for places like women’s refuge. The law should not dictate if a refuge or shelter for women goes off biological sex or gender identity. Each refuge should be able to decide for themselves what is appropriate.

Prisons

In California’s largest female prison, they are now introducing pregnancy resources because of the possibility a transwoman could get a ciswoman pregnant.

Nicola Sturgeon has just resigned as Scotland’s First Minister because her Government put a convicted double rapist into a women’s prison because they changed their gender.

This is again one of those situations where decisions need to be made on a case by case basis. Someone who is a trans-women who is in a male prison will face real danger. But putting a rapist into a women’s prison can put women prisoners at risk.

The law needs to allow prison authorities decide the best course of action taking into account the crimes committed, whether the prisoner has had surgery or hormone treatment, the security levels of the prisons involved etc.

Crime

This article details how media are routinely referring to some rapists as female. The general rule is refer to someone using their gender identity. But if an offender has a penis and has raped someone, then I think it can revictimise the victim to have their offender described as a woman in court documents and reporting. In this rare case, the rights of the victim should have precedence over the identity of the rapist.

Treatment for Children

I have read a huge amount in this area. It is complex, but let’s start with a basic statement.

I do think people aged under 18 who are firm about wanting to change their gender identity should generally be able to start treatment before they are 18, but decisions on individual cases should reflect the individual circumstances, and not just be treated as an automatic yes.

The two major factors are the age of the young person, and the severity of the treatment. The younger someone is, the more caution you should apply to starting treatment. A 12 year old is not the same as a 17 year old.

Also taking hormone blockers is different to having sex change surgery.

The concern over whether children are receiving appropriate treatment is widespread. In this article two prominent providers in the field of transgender medicine detail their concerns, and incidentally both are themselves transgender women.

This more recent article is by a former staffer in a paediatric gender clinic and details very worrying cases. The former staffer is not some right wing conservative but a queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a trans-man.

A report into the controversial Tavistock Clinic in the UK made a very salient point:

At primary, secondary and specialist level, there is a lack of agreement, and in many instances a lack of open discussion, about the extent to which gender incongruence in childhood and adolescence can be an inherent and immutable phenomenon for which transition is the best option for the individual, or a more fluid and temporal response to a range of developmental, social, and psychological factors. 

The key point is that one should not start with an assumption that transition is the answer to every child who has gender incongruence. It may be the correct course for the majority, but there is a legitimate concern that in some clinics, you are not allowed to argue against transition. There are concerns that some (not all) of the children wanting to transition may just have same sex attraction.

Just in the US there has been a 300% increase in gender dysphoria diagnosis in five years. It is not anti-trans to want to know what is causing this increase – is it just increased social acceptability and awareness, or is it that it is being diagnosed wrongly for some?

Two long-time feminists raise issues in this op ed about why gender confusion and transgender is not the same thing and caution is needed.

Now again I support there being services that will help youth transition. This is not a binary issue where you think there should be no support at all or you think there should be no criteria. In many cases transitioning as a young person is absolutely the right thing to do, and puberty blockers or hormone are an appropriate treatment. But clinicians must be able to assess each patient on their individual circumstances, and not be pressured to just affirm transitioning regardless of the specifics of a case.

Anyway so that is my take on the issues around trans, gender and sex. It is worth noting that these are mainly issues around the margin. The vast majority of trans people are not competing in the Olympics, in prison etc. The most important thing, in my view, is to treat people who are trans with kindness and respect for their gender identity. If you are a parent of young children, there is a chance your child may turn out to be trans, and I am sure you would want them to have a great life where they are adored for the unique individual they are.

CNN reports:

The director of a leading German ballet company is being investigated by police and has been fired for smearing dog feces on a critic’s face after taking offense to a review she wrote.

According to journalist Wiebke Hüster, Marco Goecke, the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, verbally attacked her during the intermission of a ballet premiere performance. The confrontation seems to have been spurred by a previous review that Hüster had written, Hüster said. 

“Goecke rubbed the dog feces hard and most brutally into my face,” Hüster told CNN Wednesday. “It was in an open dog plastic bag which usually is tied up with a knot,” the journalist added.

If this happened in NZ, the ballet director would probably get a grant from Creative NZ for creating a new artwork! 🙂

A great speech by Matthew Hooton to his old school of Auckland Grammar. Deserves a wider audience, so am blogging it.

Stuff reports:

The total amount owed in rent arrears by Kāinga Ora tenants has increased from $2 million to nearly $17m in three years.

The average rent arrears owed to Kāinga Ora by its tenants had increased from $483 in November 2019, to $1901 in November 2022, Housing Minister Megan Wood said in a reply to a written Parliamentary question from ACT housing spokesperson Brooke van Velden.

The total amount owed in rent arrears has increased from $2.32m in September 2019 to $17m in September 2022.

The largest sum owed by an individual was $41,371 as at November 30, 2022.

How can you let someone get that far behind with the rent?

And these are rents that are massively subsidised so they are never more than 25% of a tenant’s income. If the income drops, the rent drops.

Once again there seem to be few consequences if Kainga Ora is your landlord.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand needs to “get real” about its vulnerable roading network in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle and build roads 

I agree. But the problem we have is the Government now spends barely 50% of the revenue from petrol tax on roads. They waste tens of millions on a failed bridge project, hundreds of millions on a doomed light rail fantasy, and there is no money leftover for roads.

Stuff has a feature where every week they nominate a topic, and two MPs share their views on it – Stuart Smith from National and Arena Williams from Labour.

This week the topic was should we have a law which allows voters to recall a politician (my answer would be yes).

Stuart Smith addresses the issue and his entire column in on the issue, and about democracy is about voting people in and out etc.

Arena Williams just ignores the issue, says it is not a priority for the Government and spends 1,000 words or so on floods, petrol tax, public transport, inflation, IRD rebates etc.

If an MP is incapable of writing a column on the actual issue assigned, they should find a new MP to do it.

The Herald reports:

Scandal-prone National MP Harete Hipango is withdrawing from the contest to be selected as National’s candidate for the Whanganui electorate, a seat she once held but which is now represented by Labour’s Steph Lewis.

Instead she will seek selection in the the Māori seat of Te Tai Hauāuru, currently held by Labour but which is fiercely contested by Te Pāti Māor co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

The seat has not voted for National since the party was formed. In 1931, Western Māori, as it was then known, elected Taite Te Tomoa, an MP from the Reform party, one of the two parties that formed a coalition and later merged to become the National Party.

Hipango will almost certainly lose that electorate if she is selected as the candidate, meaning her only chance of re-entering Parliament is by securing a good position on the party list.

It is hard at this point to estimate how many List MPs National will get. On current polls they look like getting 15 or so more MPs, but if they win say 12 electorates then that would be only three more List MPs.

A very informative article by Chris Finlayson on co-governance. First he covers what he used it for:

Since the late 1990s, governments have agreed in some major Treaty of Waitangi settlements to create boards formed of local government and iwi representatives to manage significant environmental features. These were originally called “co-management agreements”.

The idea was to help resolve long-standing treaty grievances by providing a defined role for iwi to reconnect them with a lake or a river. If we want to get technical, we can go back to article 2 of the treaty, which guaranteed Māori rangatiratanga over their lands and taonga (treasured possessions). So there is a treaty-based reason for doing what we were doing. Environmental features are more often than not taonga to Māori.

So co-governance was used for distinct areas of the environment of importance to an Iwi, and was done as part of a full and final legislated Treaty settlement.

In hindsight, I think one major thing went wrong. The word “co-management” morphed into “co-governance”. I do not know why. It was never intended to mean anything different, but in hindsight, it was regrettable. The problem is that the word “governance” is too close to the word “government”. That creates alarm bells in some people’s heads, but no confusion was intended. Just like “co-management”, “co-governance” was meant to describe the agreements I have set out above, subject in nearly all cases to local authority control. No more, no less.

So it wasn’t about governance in the wider sense, but management of a distinct area of the environment, and generally subject to local authority control.

So, how have we got into the mess we are now in with co-governance? The first reason is that the Peters-Ardern-Hipkins Government has instituted a range of controversial policies that have been referred to as containing co-governance. This has had the effect of expanding and confusing the original concept, but also created fear about what the endpoint might be.

Take the new Te Aka Whai Ora – Māori Health Authority, for example. It doesn’t fit the traditional definition of co-governance set out above, but is it problematic? Yes. It splits out Māori health, which should be at the absolute core of the health system, into a separate bureaucracy. I have heard frustrations directly from a number of iwi leaders about the imposition of yet another layer of bureaucracy when all they need are new nurses on the ground. National Party leader Christopher Luxon was correct to point out at Rātana that we do not need any more Wellington-based bureaucracies like the Māori Health Authority. He committed to providing its money directly to iwi to fund services on the ground. That is excellent, and hopefully a sign of more to come.

So Labour has expanded it from what was management of discrete environmental resources into governance of the health system, of Three Waters and more.

Unfortunately, Waitangi Day this year proved yet again that many in the political class and media are simply unable to engage in debate on these matters rationally. The only party leader who was able to name the three articles of the treaty when asked was Luxon. (In fairness, Chris Hipkins named two, which was two more than Jacinda Ardern managed at Waitangi when she became Prime Minister.)

Luxon went on to set out an orthodox view that co-governance might be appropriate for some article 2 matters, but nothing more than that.

But he also made it clear it is essential for the government to partner with iwi to deliver services on the ground, and that he favours iwi providing leadership at a local level rather than being over-governed from Wellington.

He was upfront that National wants a return to authority being exercised at a community level, whether we’re talking about polytechnics, charter schools or local health organisations. And he was upfront that in many cases that will mean it is iwi providing services. Why? Because that’s how we can best hope to improve the lives of different groups of people.

So, what was the response? Hipkins accused Luxon of stoking fear (an accusation reported uncritically by most of the media) and told him to reflect on his behaviour. In contrast to Luxon, Hipkins has provided no detail about his view on co-governance, and wasn’t even asked to provide any. How depressingly predictable.

The fear is being generated by Labour as they obviously have a radical agenda, but refuse to ever talk about it!

When I first became attorney-general, my first task was to repeal the Labour Government’s Foreshore and Seabed Act and replace it with a new regime that restored and respected Māori property rights. The Foreshore and Seabed issue had been divisive and fraught, and the replacement legislation (the Marine and Coastal Area Takutai Moana Bill) was also very sensitive, particularly given the complexity of the issues involved.

One day, John Key took me aside and told me to get out there and explain what the Government was doing, and then explain it again and again. He told me not to be too lawyerly about it (he was always telling me not to speak like a lawyer). I ended up conducting a nationwide set of meetings to talk about the issue. Tensions often ran high and they were not always pleasant occasions. But they were important.

At one particularly fraught meeting in New Plymouth, I asked one elderly man how he would react if his right to go to court had been taken away, at which point he shrugged and said he supposed he agreed. It was little breakthroughs like this that would have never occurred had I not made the effort. The law passed and its tests are being routinely ignored by the courts, but that is an issue for another day.

So, why won’t the government do the same thing with the range of policies it is introducing?

When is the last time a Minister fronted a public meeting on an issue such as Three Waters?

The result is that the Hipkins Government will likely learn its lesson the hard way. In the meantime, co-governance – a limited, successful concept intended to address treaty grievances – has morphed into a source of genuine concern for some New Zealanders. ­­And they are owed an explanation by the government as to why it has allowed this situation to arise.

At the election, we will get a chance to explain out back to them.

As promised by Elon Musk upon his acquisition of Twitter, in early December 2022 thus began a gradual reveal of internal Twitter communications between senior staff and externally between key Twitter executives and government agencies on a variety of topics at the heart of the tumultuous political environment during and after Donald Trump’s Presidency. So far there have been 15 releases of Tweet threads dubbed the “Twitter Files”, many with embedded documents such as emails and internal Slack communications with the most recent beginning to examine files regarding Covid issues. You can find a link to each File release hyperlinked from the File number in the title of each section. Since Musk has promised to release so-called “Fauci Files” and, given the prominence of Covid (and responses to it) globally, plus given the depth of the releases on other matters to date, there will undoubtedly be a stream of Covid-related Twitter file releases over the coming weeks that I will attempt to summarise in a 3^rd Post once it looks like that subject has been exhausted. The bios of each of the contributors to the Twitter files are covered in Part 1.

File #1 and 1A – Hunter Biden Laptop – Matt Taibbi

The very first release concerned the highly controversial decision by Twitter to block the New York Post from disseminating its blockbuster stories regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop. As a refresher, around April 2019, then former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter left two laptops to be repaired with a computer repair shop owned John Paul Mac Isaac in Wilmington, Delaware. One of the laptops was never picked up and, after attempts by the repair shop owner to contact Hunter to pay for and retrieve the laptop, based on the repairer’s terms and conditions, the laptop became his property to dispose of to defray the costs of repair. Mr. Isaac extracted the hard drive, repaired it and began to view its contents and became alarmed by what he found. The contents were described as detailing Hunter’s seemingly corrupt business dealings in the Ukraine and China, the extent to which he traded off his famous father’s name for great financial advantage, the extent to which his father knew of and profited from such transactions and even more disturbingly, evidence of criminal sexual conduct with a minor within the extended Biden family. The implications of such material in the run up to the 2020 Presidential election contest between Joe Biden and incumbent President Trump were obvious. Mac Isaac gave a copy to the Delaware State Police and the FBI who both sat on the explosive information for over a year such that eventually, Isaac passed a copy of the hard drive to Rudi Giuliani, then one of Donald Trump’s private attorneys. The contents of the laptop made its way to the New York Post, one the oldest and largest conservative leaning newspapers in the US.

The New York Post published its findings in its print edition on October 14, 2020 and across its social media platforms, the most potent of which was Twitter. Very quickly the Biden campaign dismissed the contents of the laptop as hacked material as part of a supposed Russian disinformation campaign and pretty soon the mainstream media moved in lock step with this explanation. Twitter was persuaded to limit then block the dissemination of the New York Post’s article on its platform at first by de-emphasing the NYP’s Post and issuing a warning then limiting how it could be re-tweeted and commented on and then blocking the ability to direct message a link to the post (something normally Twitter only did in cases of child pornography) and finally deleting the post and blocking all mention of it across its entire platform by locking the accounts of anyone who mentioned it effectively helping kill the story. What this first Twitter file release shows is the decision to block the story was the subject of intense internal debate. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim this is part of the policy?” and that the ultimate decision to block was a tortuous interpretation of their “hacked material” policy and made without the authorization of then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Here was a reputable and venerable newspaper making claims of viewing material from the son of the man running for President (who was also partly implicated) of an explosive nature just 2 weeks before the election, an election that Biden won by an aggregate of the tiny margin of only 85,000 votes across 4 key battleground states and the world’s most politically influential social media company decides to throttle then kill all mention of the story!

Polling done by the Media Research Center has shown that some 16% of people who voted for Biden, had they known about the contents of Hunter’s laptop prior to the election, may have changed their vote. Here was a ‘October surprise’ of the type even bigger than that which almost cost George W Bush the 2000 election (the 11^th hour revelation of his DUI) that could be easily characterised as swinging the election. Of course since the election, not only has Hunter Biden’s laptop material been verified (and can be viewed in its entirety here via Marco Polo) but various Democrat friendly media outlets such as the NY Times and Washington Post have admitted the Russian disinformation story was a hoax and that the laptop is real. The 51 former intelligence officers who attested to the Russian disinformation cover story have proven to have been most economical with truth. Recently one has admitted he knew it was a false story all along but lied anyway, all undoubtedly to help Biden beat Trump.

In a supplemental entitled File 1A, Taibbi revealed how he was initially blocked from viewing critical internal communications by Twitter lead counsel Jim Baker, a well-known Washington swamp creature who was using his power as chief company attorney to block Taibbi’s access to the most sensitive material. When this was revealed, Musk publicly fired Baker thus paving the way for File #2.

File #2 – Twitter’s Secret Blacklists – Bari Weiss

This file reveals exactly how Twitter throttled high profile conservatives and lockdown skeptics. Weiss showed how Twitter used “visibility filtering” to emasculate the reach of top right-leaning account holders. Dan Bongino was subject to a search blacklist, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was subject to a “Trends Blacklist” and Charlie Kirk was hit with “Do Not Amplify”.

File #3 – The throttling of Donald Trump – Matt Taibbi

Twitter’s Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth not only met regularly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Also, Twitter was aggressively applying “visibility filtering” tools to Trump well before the election.

File #4 – Trump and the run up to January 6 – Michael Shellenberger

Shellenberger outlines how right after January 6, 2021 (the protests at the Capitol that ended in people entering the building and disrupting the 2020 election Electoral College certification process), Twitter staff were contorting themselves in knots trying to find ways to bend their policies to justify suspending President Donald Trump. Various employees questioned the wisdom of censoring such a prominent world leader.

File #5 – Removal of Donald Trump – Bari Weiss

Despite widespread loathing of Trump by most Twitter staff, saner heads were struggling to see how his famous Tweet on January 6 (see below) could be seen as incitement to violence, the reason given for Trump’s Twitter ban. A staff member originally from China says, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation”. Senior staff proceeded to find a way anyway, justifying the removal due to Trump’s “Banality of Evil”.

File #6 – Twitter and the FBI – Matt Taibbi

These files reveal the shocking extent to which the FBI surveilled ordinary Americans’ activity on Twitter and sent lists of ‘offending’ accounts for Twitter to take action against (throttle, suspend or ban). The FBI became a clearing house for other Federal Government agencies and entities who channeled a vast array of requests to “bounce” or moderate content including DHS (Department of Homeland Security) agency CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and the left leaning so-called Election Integrity Project. Twitter staff were processing such a massive volume of these requests that the FBI’s San Francisco office (where this surveillance activity was run from) sent a memo congratulating Twitter staff on successfully completing such a “monumental undertaking”.

File #7 – The FBI and Hunter Biden’s Laptop – Michael Shellenberger

These files focus specifically on the mode of communication between the FBI and Twitter over the NY Post revelations about Hunter Biden’s laptop and contains two shocking revelations: first, that the key FBI agent (Elvis Chan) overseeing the relationship with Twitter used the FBI’s special secured portal called Teleporter (used to transmit classified documents) to transmit moderation requests to Twitter’s Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth and secondly, that the FBI compensated Twitter for its time taken to action the FBI’s gagging requests to the tune of over $3 million!

File #8 – Twitter’s role in spreading Pentagon PsyOps – Lee Fang

This is the first appearance of Lee Fang as part of the journalist contingent examining Twitter’s files and he takes a detour into an entirely different but nonetheless illegal operation conducted by the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) based out of Qatar. This was to use social media to manipulate public opinion with respect the Arab world by amplifying over 50 fake accounts as directed by the Pentagon. Senior US military commanders testified dishonestly to Congress that no such operations existed.

File #9 – Twitter et al and other Government agencies – Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi reveals the involvement of Twitter (and other social media companies) with other Federal government agencies in joint suppression of free speech operations. CIA officials attended a conference on the subject at Twitter HQ in the summer of 2020. Regular industry briefings were held also with Facebook in conjunction with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI and the “Foreign Influence Task Force” met regularly “not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo, Twitch, Cloudfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia.”

Files #11 and 12 – How the FBI became the “Other Agency” coordinator into Twitter – Matt Taibbi

As the so-called Russia gate controversy mushroomed from August 2017, Twitter came under pressure from Congress then the State Department to moderate what were seen at the time as Russian driven social media accounts. The FBI agreed to become the focal portal for such requests with Special Agent Chan describing the FBI’s operations in this regard as the “belly button” for all requests from the US IC (Intelligence Community). The thread in File #12 shows how Twitter took in requests from everyone — Treasury, HHS (Health and Human Services), NSA (National Security Agency), FBI, DHS and more and, shockingly, also received personal requests from politicians like Democratic congressman Adam Schiff who asked Twitter to suspend journalist Paul Sperry, which they duly did! Paul Sperry’s crime was to publish and support the so-called Devin Nunes memo (the former Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until the GOP lost the House in 2018) about the whole Russia gate situation, a conclusion that, over time, proved to be correct and that Adam’s Schiff’s assertions that Trump was influenced by Russia were false.

File #14 – Russia gate Lies – Matt Taibbi

A unified Democrat (and sympathetic MSM) cry was that the 2016 election was unduly influenced by Russia and that this was done to benefit Trump. An influential liberal think tank called Hamilton 68 claimed that their investigations unearthed a myriad of Russian controlled bot accounts on Twitter that were talking up the Nunes Memo (that refuted all the Russian gate allegations that lay at the heart of the investigations by the Special Counsel Mueller and the subsequent first Trump impeachment). These allegations were amplified by senior Democrat politicians such as California Senator Dianne Feinstein, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff and were spread like wildfire across the entire mainstream media spectrum as well as many influential commentators and publications and even to so-called “Fact Checkers” such as PolitiFact and Snopes. Twitter’s staff reverse engineered these 600 odd supposed Russian influence/bot accounts and found that, with the exception of a small number of Russia Today accounts (RT is Russia’s primary English language media outlet in the West), all the remainder of these accounts belonged to ordinary Americans and even Brits merely giving private opinions on the Nunes memo and were never Russian controlled bots. All three Democrat politicians were told by Twitter staff that the Hamilton 68 files they were citing as evidence were NOT Russian bots and yet they persisted with the fiction anyway and allowed this misinformation to spread across the media landscape to help fuel a false narrative that Trump was supported by Russia.

In a supplemental to these files, Taibbi revealed that on ten occasions, Adam Schiff and his office demanded that Twitter ban or “deamplify” the accounts of anyone critical of him and his role as Intelligence Committee Chair, any criticism of the Steele dossier and of attempts to dox the whistleblower in the Ukrainian phone call issue that became the main reason for the first Trump impeachment.

Please note: Files #9, 10 and 13 are all Covid related and will be covered in Part 3 in the future.

Conclusion

For some time it was apparent to most on the right that social media platforms skewered in favour of left leaning parties and candidates and towards liberal and progressive causes and policies and tilted against parties and candidates on the right and the causes and policies of a conservative hew and most particularly against President Trump and the conservative media and commentators most supportive of him. The release of the Twitter files not only dramatically confirmed these biases but demonstrate the extent to which Twitter actively put its thumb on the scales of public opinion to achieve this end. For years its staff engaged in the systematic suppression of the posts of right leaning politicians, commentators and ordinary people in a way that most definitely infringed on the protections of free speech enshrined in the 1^st Amendment to the US Constitution. But far more insidious and dangerous was the revelation that major organs of the Federal Government were complicit in these activities devoting staff time and resources to the task of suppressing conservative voices and shockingly, that US taxpayers’ own money was used by the FBI to pay one of the world’s most influential social media platforms to muzzle the views of its own citizens expressing their First Amendment right of free speech!

In the specific case of the suppression of the New York Post and its attempts to advise the world of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, here was a supposed free speech platform doing the bidding of the supporters of a candidate for President in killing an explosive story detrimental to that candidate in the dying weeks of the 2020 Presidential Election campaign that, had the story had unrestricted dissemination, the nature of the allegations were such that they highly likely would’ve influenced the outcome of the election. Over 125 million Americans voted in the 2020 election and Biden’s aggregate winning margin in 4 key states was a measly 85,000 votes or 0.068%. The actions of Twitter, at the behest of senior supposedly neutral public servants in law enforcement and intelligence agencies, has not only stifled free speech but played a crucial role in the outcome of an election. Twitter’s lead role as the shaper of mainstream media and public opinion and narratives ensured that false narratives favourable to Democrats and detrimental to conservatives were able to dominate print and broadcast media and other social media in a way to move public opinion in favour of only one ideological side of the hotly contested political divide. We have not heard the end of this as the material revealed in the Twitter files was confirmed in recent hearings before the now Republican controlled House Oversight and Accountability Committee where former Twitter executives faced the wrath of Congresswomen who themselves had been censured or suspended. There likely will be some regulatory and even legal repercussions for Twitter’s actions going forward. The GOP controlled House has already issued subpoenas to Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta (parent to Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet (parent to Google and You Tube) for all documents on “collusion with the government to suppress free speech” The Twitter Files on just this subject alone has only just begun to open Pandora’s box and it’s not going to end well for the social media companies who engaged in this suppression.

As we move to another matter that became the subject of intense debate in most first world countries, that of the various responses to the Covid pandemic, it will be interesting to see how much Twitter again put their thumb on the scales of public discourse on the issue of lockdowns and C19 treatments. Watch this space!

In a somewhat surprising move Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has resigned. There are a number of factors in her resignation:

• Second referendum obsession. She was obsessed with holding a second referendum on independence, despite the 2014 referendum being billed as a once in a generation decision. The UK Supreme Court had ruled there could not be one, without the agreement of the UK Parliament.
• Her Government passed the Gender Recognition Reform bill by 86 votes to 39 with opponents saying it would conflict with the UK-wide Equality Act by, for example, making it more difficult for women-only spaces to exclude people who were born biologically male. In an unprecedented move the UK government blocked it from receiving royal assent, a move actually backed by the majority of Scots in opinion polls.
• Just after the law passed, it was revealed a double rapist, now called Isla Bryson, had been placed in a women’s prison.
• The most recent poll showed Sturgeon’s net approval had fallen 11% from +7% to -4%, support for independence fallen 6% to 47% and support for the SNP 6% to 44%
• The 44% SNP vote is critical as Sturgeon’s plan was to treat the next Socttish election as a de factor independence referendum, with a threshold being a 50% or greater vote for the SNP

So somewhat like Jacinda Ardern, she went because she had unpopular policies, and had become unpopular herself. We won’t know her successor for a while as it goes to a membership vote. Candidates must have 100 nominees from at least 20 branches. Nominations stay open for a huge 77 days and then voting starts 35 days and concludes after 21 days. So total time is 133 days or around four months, so expect a decision in June or July.