Stuff reports:

Tea and scones might be off the menu for MPs as inflation eats into Parliament’s budget.

Parliament’s Clerk of the House, David Wilson, told MPs on Wednesday he was considering spending cuts as he grappled with rising costs. Services that could be slashed included AM radio broadcasts of the House, tea trolleys for MPs sitting on committees, and education trips overseas for MPs.

“We can no longer meet the cost of all of our operations in supporting Parliament. We’ve done what we can to keep our costs down, but we’re a small agency, with a limited budget, and facing rising costs,” he told Parliament’s Governance and Administration Committee.

Wilson said one of the few “big ticket” items the clerk’s office spends on was broadcasting sittings of Parliament across AM frequencies. The $1.3 million contract for the broadcast service was up for review, and was “close to the amount we need to save”.

That’s easy then. Scrap it.

“I realise it is a big move, we’ve been broadcasting on radio since 1935. It’s not something I want to rush into.

It is now 2023.

Damien Venuto writes at NZ Herald:

In November last year, 54 per cent of respondents to a poll from the Taxpayers’ Union and Curia said they were opposed to the state broadcaster merging. In contrast, a follow-up poll conducted by Research NZ on behalf of the Better Public Media Trust in December found that only 29 per cent of respondents did not support it.

The difference here lay in the way the questions were asked to the public.

The Research NZ poll asked: “The government is planning to merge TVNZ and RNZ into a new state-owned public media service, with an extra $109 million per year, which equals to $22 per person per year. If this organisation provided new content for niche, minority and regional audiences while keeping the current TV, radio and online services as well, would you support it?”

The Taxpayers’ Union poll did not provide that framing, which ostensibly contributed to higher levels of opposition.

This is incredible. The Curia-TU poll asked a simple non-leading questions – Do you support or oppose the proposed merger of TVNZ and RNZ.

The poll by the Better Public Media Trust uses a hypothetical scenario to engineer higher support and the journalist basically complains that the Curia-TU poll didn’t!

The Minister of Education (Hipkins) who drove attendance in NZ off the cliff was planning to make a big ANNOUNCEMENT this week on how to cure the disease he has significant responsibility for causing.

The announcement has been delayed.

From Mike Hosking this morning

“The real crime here, though, is the cynicism of the announcement.

Hipkins, as well as overseeing an education system that is badly wanting if not embarrassingly poor, especially when you read the testing around numeracy and literacy, has overseen the growth of truancy.

The major problem with being in government for two terms is you have a record, a record in this case of abject failure.”

Also of significant interest has been the apparent collusion between the Ministry and Hipkins/Tinetti. The Select Committee held an “investigation” into attendance. Just 8 schools submitted and no deeper research was done. On that basis Hipkins/Tinetti spent $88million and told us in the House – that Term Two 2022 would be better. It was significantly worse. The Ministry has kept the Term Three figures hidden for over four months. They were due to come out this week. If they don’t come out this week – it can only be because they are shielding the new Prime Minister.

The graph below gives just a small clue as to how this government is robbing children of a future and Hipkins has been THE central player. Last time anyone could check – less then half of all students fully attending and only 20% of decile 1 students. If Hipkins is this incompetent with one portfolio – that he had nine years to prepare for – what real prospects as PM.

Nice campaign video from Nikki Haley, launching her presidential campaign. Somewhat Reaganesque.

I’ve been a fan of Haley since she was South Carolina Governor. Did a very good job at UN Ambassador for Trump also.

Hard to see her winning the nomination, but if she did, I think she would beat Biden.

Politico has a useful 55 facts on her.

Alex Penk writes:

What do Climate Karanga, Podiatry NZ, and the Free Store Wellington have in common? Probably very little, apart from their common commitment to co-governance. They are among 50+ NGOs who signed an open letter, duly and dutifully amplified by media, urging the government to continue its work to implement the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights after Minister Willie Jackson signalled this work might be paused. It represents the emergence of a phenomenon known as the Blob—a gelatinous agglomeration of elite opinion that suffocates and skews public debate.

The Blob takes its name from a 1958 sci-fi movie about a “carnivorous amoeboidal alien” that absorbs everything in its path. In the UK, the term refers to the mutual embrace of civil servants, quangos, NGOs, and vested interests. In the US, it refers to a foreign policy establishment that tends hawkish and interventionist. In both cases, the Blob maintains and advances a very particular view of the world, often at odds with public opinion and even political will. The open letter looks distinctly Blobby—NGOs, unions, academics, supportive media reporting, all lined up in favour of a position that is, at best, highly controversial. But what’s wrong with the Blob? Isn’t this just a group of public-spirited citizens and community-minded organisations sharing their sincere views on a matter of public importance? Isn’t this simply Democratic Deliberation and therefore an uncontrovertibly Good Thing? No. No, it isn’t.

The Blob is neither democratic nor deliberative. It creates a false consensus that sucks the oxygen out of dissenting opinions, overpowering them with the weight of apparent institutional authority. Take, for example, RNZ’s uncritical reporting of the open letter: “More than 60 organisations”, we’re told, have signed the open letter (I make it 53, plus 10 individuals), including “major organisations” like the Mental Health Foundation. The article doesn’t explain why the Foundation has any particular expertise in co-governance or UNDRIP, nor does it include any contrary viewpoints.

The Blob also skews the debate: here and in the UK, the Blob tends left. Can you imagine 50+ NGOs signing a right-leaning position on co-governance, or the media amplifying this uncritically? (Come to that, can you imagine 50+ right-leaning NGOs?) Some members of the Blob are also “sock puppets”. These are organisations that receive government funding and in turn lobby the government, for example the Citizens Advice Bureau, also named by RNZ as a “major” signatory to the open letter. Nor is the Blob representative. No-one selected these people to take a public position on co-governance; instead, they wield cultural power beyond their numbers, influence without accountability.

This would all be much less of a problem if the signatories had some kind of relevant expertise on the subject, as when a (much smaller) group of constitutional law academics signed an open letter against the Three Waters entrenchment provision. But the open letter is signed by organisations like Podiatry NZ, which is unsurprisingly expert in podiatry, Barbarian Productions, a Wellington theatre company, the NZ Society of Authors, which represents writers and promotes literary culture, Free Store Wellington, a retail food waste distributor, and Climate Karanga, which is focused on climate education in Marlborough. I could go on, but none of these organisations have any obvious qualifications that entitle them to pronounce on progressing UNDRIP implementation, or that suggest the rest of us should listen to them.

It’s tempting to treat this as a bit of a joke, but this is how we end up with an elite consensus disconnected from, and dismissive of, the majority of us. To be clear, the key problem with the Blob isn’t that NGOs have a view—they’re fully entitled to do so and to express it. The issue is agglomeration amounting to groupthink and ideological capture of a series of society-shaping institutions and debates. By contrast, a single actor or handful of individuals or organisations can’t stifle or skew debate.

Our immediate response should be to see the Blob for what it is, and discount its influence accordingly. The second thing we should do is diversify the Blob, and this is much harder. This means doing the long, slow work of introducing a range of perspectives into civil society and giving them all a fair hearing. Effectively this means de-Blobbing the Blob because, as astute readers will realise, a diverse Blob is no longer truly a Blob. If we can do this and drain the Blob of its threat, perhaps then we’ll restore the public square to what it should be—not the monolithic imposition of a consensus position, but a genuine conversation among equals.

An excellent post on the danger of the blob.

The NY Post reports:

Hunter Biden slipped his legal assistant thousands of dollars under the table while the two were in a sexual relationship over several months in 2018 and 2019, text messages recovered from the first son’s laptop show.

After sending her another $1,500, Hunter offered her an arrangement: “I will bake [sic] up for back pay. You have to make up for back work.

“By [FaceTime]ing me and/or going to our next-club party,” he added. 

Two days later, on the morning of March 9, Hunter sent his assistant $500 and told her: “If we [FaceTime] the rule has to be no talk of anything but sex and we must be naked and we have to do whatever the other person asks within reason.”

Okay imagine if the son of a Republican President was found to not only be having a sexual relationship with their assistant, but was not paying her on time, and only agreeing to do back pay if she agreed to do video sex sessions with him.

This would be the lead story in all the legacy media.

This is not a fully consensual relationship. He is her boss, and holding back wages until she has video sex with him. This is the sort of thing the left normally jump on and condemn. But hardly a whisper.

The Herald reported:

An unrepentant social media manager has defended sharing private photographs of Gore mayor Ben Bell amid accusations of dirty politics.

Natasha Chadwick, who was paid $9200 by incumbent mayor Tracy Hicks to run his social media as part of his $14,000 campaign, shared the photos of Bell with media outlets after the election, saying “what he (Bell) does socially is absolutely the people’s business”.

Hicks yesterday said Chadwick approached him during his campaign about using the photos but he declined saying it was not his style.

However, he stood by Chadwick, who says she waited until after the election before sharing the pictures with media, calling her an “absolute professional” who was a pleasure to work with.

I’m sorry but if someone who worked for my campaign was shopping around photos in an attempt to out someone’s private life, I would not then refer to them as an absolute professional.

In an email to councillor Bret Highsted, released to the Otago Daily Times, Bell addressed the issue, saying “unless you get directly from me, it’s simply rumours”.

Highsted replied saying he was not aware of any “explicit” photos of Bell being circulated.

“I have seen a relatively harmless photo of you being kissed on the cheek at what looks like a festival.

“My response … is the next generation would think nothing of it,” Highsted said.

Chadwick, who lives in Tapanui, said she did not share the photos or rumours during the campaign, although she had tried to get the media to pick up on them after her contract with Hicks had ended.

She was unrepentant about spreading the photos.

“To me, if you’re going to run in a public office and you’re going to be in a public space I think you need to present authentically,” she said.

This is pretty disgusting. There’s a photo of Bell being kissed on the cheek by another guy, and this woman is trying to ship it to the media. Is she still living in the 1950s?

I have no idea if Bell is gay or not. Who cares. It seems his real crime is beating her client who seemed to think he was Mayor for life.

Stats NZ reports:

• grocery food prices increased by 11 percent
• restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food increased by 8.3 percent
• fruit and vegetable prices increased by 16 percent
• meat, poultry, and fish prices increased by 9.2 percent
• non-alcoholic beverage prices increased by 7.1 percent.

Food prices overall are 16.8% higher than two years ago.

Stuff reports:

A national state of emergency has been declared, after a night of extreme weather which left towns cut off across the North Island.

Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty declared a national state of emergency at 8.43am on Tuesday.

It was only the third time a New Zealand Government had declared a national state of emergency. The previous declarations came for the Christchurch earthquakes and Covid-19 pandemic.

He said the declaration would apply to the six regions that had declared a local state of emergency: Northland, Auckland, Tairāwhiti, Bay of Plenty, Waikato, and Hawke’s Bay.

So it is more a multi-regional state of emergency.

Hope everyone is okay in the most badly affected areas. Where we are it is cold and strong winds but not particularly bad.

Gareth Hughes writes:

Green strategists must be champing at the bit now that Grant Robertson won’t be standing again in Wellington Central, and Jacinda Ardern, Paul Eagle and David Clark are retiring from their Mount Albert, Rongotai, and Dunedin electorates.

Those are four of the Greens’ highest-performing five seats. The other is currently held by Chlöe Swarbrick, opening up a unique opportunity in October for the Greens to ditch a decades-old strategy that shuns seriously standing in electorates.

Hughes thinks the Greens have a real chance of winning both Wellington Central and Rongotai. Both seats will be very interesting to follow.

In fact this election, there will be a record number of seats which could potentially switch hands.

Northland
Whangārei
Maungakiekie
Tukituki
Upper Harbour
Northcote
New Plymouth
Hamilton East
Otaki
Ilam
Hutt South
Rangitata
Nelson
Napier
West Coast Tasman
East Coast
Wairarapa
Takanini
Whanganui
Ohariu
Rongotai
Wellington Central
Te Tai Hauāuru
Tāmaki Makaurau
Waiariki 

So that’s 25 out of 72 electorates which could be in play.

As I did in 2020, I plan to analyse the race in each of the 72 electorates on my Patreon page later this year. I’ll start the series once the major parties have completed candidate selection.

Andrea Vance writes:

A couple of weeks ago, a document dropped in my inbox. Wellington City Council wants feedback on its goal to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

The brochure itself is gorgeous, cheerfully yellow, quixotic photographs of children tending a cabbage patch, or dragging rubbish from a beach, and full of stupefying jargon like “designing out waste.”

Certainly, the comms team have been busy with it. (Too pre-occupied to tell locals about the faulty 15kg street lamps, threatening to brain them from a great height).

But it runs to 80 pages. And honestly, life is too short. Even for me, and I get paid to read consultation papers.

This is the first sign that something is fake consultation. As Andrea says, only the most masochistic would read an 80 page document. If you really wanted lots of people to read and respond you would have a one to four page document.

The pertinent information for busy people, juggling households, families, careers and an already unreliable waste collection service doesn’t come until page 61.

The carrot: a proposed introduction of food and organic waste collection. The stick: the $17 bin bags will be collected fortnightly or monthly. Suck that down with your cup of 12.8% rates rise.

So a true consultation would lead with something along the lines of “Would you support or oppose introducing organic waste collection if it cost you $17 a fortnight”. Not have it buried in Page 61.

The NY Times reports:

His pronouncements could hardly sound more drastic.

In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.

“I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” he said during one online news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was a code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.

As you can imagine, his comments have caused an uproar in Japan – partially because he has actually become a bit of a hero to some young Japanese who resent that age and seniority stand in their way.

It reminds me of when I was a National staffer in the early 2000s. I was asked to do some modelling for the Caucus Economics Committee on potential changes to NZ Superannuation to show how they would impact the long-term cost. So I had a dozen slides showing the impact of means testing, inflation rather than median wage indexing, changes to rates etc etc. The final slide showed the largest decline in cost – reaching zero dollars within ten years. This slide was titled “Logan’s Run policy”.

Most got the joke, but afterwards a fairly worked upon Senior Citizens spokesperson told me in no uncertain tone to delete that slide and never use it again. She explained that she attends around 100 Grey Power events a year and doesn’t want to ever have to explain my sense of humour to them. So alas the slide was euthanised!

The Herald reports:

The ministry last month released a proposal for public consultation on how it plans to reduce tobacco retailers from 6000 to 600 by July next year and has released maps indicating how many retailers should be operating in different regions across the country.

The proposal relates to the world-first reform to the sale of tobacco in New Zealand introduced by now Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall, which included the significant reduction of retailers and the inability for anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, to buy smoked tobacco products.

Despite having roughly a third of the national population, the Auckland region would have only 33 tobacco retailers – the fourth-lowest out of the 12 regions identified.

This is so crazy. They are going to have 33 outlets for 150,000 smokers in Auckland. The black market will not just explode but it will explode exponentially.

Stuff reports:

New Zealanders would pay up to almost $6000 less tax a year if tax brackets had been adjusted with inflation, data shows.

That is per year. If tax brackets were automatically indexed every year to inflation, the cumulative impact on someone’s take-home pay would end up being well over $100,000.

The adjustment of the minimum wage in April to $22.70 an hour is equivalent to a salary of about $45,000 a year, meaning even those earning the least are approaching the middle tax band.

If thresholds had moved in line with inflation over that period, the current thresholds would be up to $21,259 at 10.5%, $21,260 to $72,890 at 17.5%, $72,891 to $106,298 at 30% and $106,299 to $199,616 at 33%.

Someone on the minimum wage who works 41 hours a week will now be taxed at the 30% marginal rate.

If tax brackets were inflation indexed then your earnings between $48,000 and $73,000 would be taxed at 17.5% instead of 30%.

An average earner on $60,000 would save just over $2000 in tax. Someone earning between $70,000 would save $3258, or 23%.

This is earners being punished for inflation. The Government inflation indexes welfare payments and Superannuation to ensure their after tax income remains constant, but by not indexing tax brackets it means someone who stays on the same real wage gets less and less in the hand every year. It’s wrong, and all parties in Parliament should be voting to stop it.

Stuff reports:

‘Woeful’ is how a leading doctor is describing her own unconscious bias in prescribing contraceptives, amid the launch of a world-first cultural safety plan imploring clinicians to turn a mirror on themselves.

Dr Samantha Murton, chairperson of the Council of Medical Colleges, ran the numbers on 987 patients who identify as female from her Wellington practice. “My question to myself is do I prescribe contraception fairly and safely for all populations that I look after?” 

The answer was a resounding no: a total of 17.3% are prescribed contraception, but for Māori, that figure drops to 12.2% and for Pasifika, 5.8%.

“This is woeful. What am I doing differently for this population? What am I not doing that is creating this discrepancy? I will need to explore further,” she said.

It is a good thing to have a doctor look at an area such as contraception, to see if there is a difference by ethnicity.

But upon finding there is, I don’t understand the self-flagellation that it must be due to some sort of racism on the part of the doctor – ie it is what they are doing or not doing.

First of all, contraception is the choice of patients. Some patients do want to get pregnant. Some are too old to get pregnant. Some are not having sex. Some may not like contraception. Some may have religious beliefs about contraception.

There may be differences in the age composition of the patients. If one ethnic group is much younger that may explain why they use less contraception. There could be confounding variables.

Now it might be that there is some implicit bias on the part of the doctor – that they doesn’t push contraception to Maori and Pasifika patients as much as they do to Europeans.

But it also might be they see certain patients less often, and hence don’t get the chance to discuss contraception as often. Or it might be that European women are more confident in asking for contraception.

Having found that there is a discrepancy by ethnicity, I would have thought the next step would to try and use data to work out why, rather than jump to conclusions it is the fault of the doctor. What you really want to find out is whether women of particular ethnic groups are not accessing contraception, that they would like to access. Would make for an interesting research project – so long as the researchers genuinely wanted to find out the answer, as opposed to have an ideological answer decided at the outset.

Andrea Vance sums up the state of our transport systems:

• Commuter services (buses, trains and ferries) in our towns and cities are under huge strain, making life a misery for anyone trying to get to work or children to school. 
• The road network is collapsing.
• At the minor end of the scale, the country’s road surfaces are in desperate shape. No need for the Government to officially lower speed limits, the potholes are bone-shakingly effective judder bars.
• More scary is that arterial routes are regularly compromised by slips and subsidence in severe weather.
• The problems don’t exist just on land. The Cook Strait ferry mayday had terrifying echoes of the Wahine disaster. As the Kaitaki drifted, powerless towards rocks in heavy swells, it underlined that the fleet is ageing and raised questions about the capability of Wellington’s tugs.
• The aviation network is also under-performing. Delays, disruption and cancellations are now common place. Aviation Security is under-resourced, leading to long lines, and allowing a convicted rapist to bypass screening.
• The scenes of Auckland Airport, a critical piece of national infrastructure overwhelmed with floodwater, with passengers trapped upstairs were shocking. 
• Likewise, the stories of passengers stranded overseas worried about no option to return for days or even weeks.

Vance also points out:

Waka Kotahi, the land transport agency for which Wood is responsible, is currently one of the Government’s most problematic departments.

It is under fire because the road network is in a mess, and it can’t seem to deliver major projects on time or on budget. Even the ones it finishes have to be redone.

The agency also has a deserved reputation for being wasteful. From the $51 million squandered on the abandoned cycling and walking bridge project across Auckland’s Waitematā harbour, to the $70m-plus spent on the doomed light rail project. 

Let’s Get Wellington Moving (which WK oversees with the local authorities) has spent $83 million – $47m on consultants – and delivered only a pedestrian crossing. In EIGHT YEARS. And the walkway cost an eye-watering $2.4m.

Yep eight years and $83 million to deliver a $2.4 million pedestrian crossing!

And what has happened to the Minister in charge? He has been promoted to the front bench!

Richard Prebble writes:

Where Chris Hipkins is right is when he says there is considerable confusion over co-governance. Government delegates powers all the time, not just to Maori. Government should do more de-centralizing of decision making. In this form of “co-governance” the government retains the ultimate power.

What is concerning is co-government, the idea that government itself is a partnership.

Co-government arises from Labour’s decision to put a radical revisionist version of the treaty at the heart of all its decisions. The revisionists claim the treaty is an agreement between Queen Victoria and 500 or so native chiefs to govern in partnership forever.

To meet this revisionist treaty Labour is establishing co-government with unelected, unaccountable, self- selected, hereditary tribal elites. It is the opposite of everything Labour use to stand for.

This view of the Treaty as a permanent power-sharing partnership is embedded in Wellington – in the Government, the public service, academia and NGOs.

New Zealand has been since 1853 a Westminster parliamentary democracy. Those who rule us are under the rule of law and accountable to us, the electorate. 

Parliamentary democracy is fundamentally at odds with being governed in partnership by hereditary tribal leaders. It does not matter whether the Prime Minister calls it a partnership, co-governance or mahi tahi,(working together); it is incompatible with democracy.

New Zealand is not a democracy when one partner is accountable to the electorate and the other partner is not. 

Even if the revisionists are right and some chiefs misunderstood the treaty they were signing, it is not a reason to abandon 170 years of parliamentary democracy. 

The treaty granted rights not just to the chiefs but to all Maori. Article three of the treaty grants Maori full citizenship rights. Maori have had voting rights from the first election in 1853. To reinterpret the treaty as a partnership is to reduce everyone’s citizenship rights, including the citizenship rights granted to Maori.

No doubt it was galling to some chiefs to discover that the treaty means every Maori has an equal vote. The treaty is why no New Zealand court has ever upheld slavery. While it did not happen immediately, the treaty freed Maori who were slaves and gave them full citizenship including the right to vote. 

The Treaty was about equality.

A guest post by John Wren:

The 2022 New Zealand Honours acknowledged and recognised around 200 citizens who had made meaningful contributions to the well-being of our country. 

On reading, I could only identify two or three names who had contributed directly to creating the wealth which fuels our society’s ability to address well-being. 

The list lacked diversity.

New Zealand as an entity is no different than the corner dairy. Its survival and growth depend upon customers purchasing products and services that more or less fall within the general categories of Food, Fibre, or Fun (tourism). New Zealand produces these products and services very well and, in many cases, we lead the world in design, quality, sustainability and reliability.

A typical dairy needs customers to purchase and continue to purchase its products – just like our country. If the customer stops purchasing, the dairy goes out of business. Customers usually stop purchasing because the price is too high, the business is unreliable, or the quality is poor. On the other hand, any business that does these things well is profitable.

So just like the corner dairy, it is only the profit from “New Zealand Inc” that can possibly create the rewards we need to fuel what we refer to as “well-being”.  The government and their supporting bureaucrats appear to be blind to how fundamental this is – as we can clearly see in their selection of the heroes who were honoured at the New Year.

The heroes we should recognise are those, who through their commitment, passion and personal risk, have built businesses that contribute to enhancing the well-being of every New Zealander.

Unfortunately, this government and its advisers don’t understand that diversity must be all-encompassing – recognising not only social, ethnic and gender but also productive wealth creation.

May we never again see an honours list that lacks diversity in its recognition   of New Zealand’s heroes. Let us see farmers, winemakers, manufacturers flower growers, game designers, hoteliers and restaurateurs represented amongst the heroes who have contributed to the well-being of all of us.

Those who deserve to be honoured are those building the foundations for our future, by creating and managing entities that produce the wealth on which we will build a vibrant New Zealand.

Stuff reports:

The battle to demolish one of Wellington’s most visible buildings continues, with the university trying to remove heritage protection from the Gordon Wilson Flats.

For years, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington has been trying to demolish the flats and construct Te Huanui, a new – section of the university campus with teaching and research facilities.

There’s one major obstacle: the flats are on the Wellington City Council’s heritage list, meaning the university needs a resource consent to knock them down.

This year independent commissioners will hear submissions on the council’s proposed district plan and one submission is from the university, asking the council to remove the heritage listing.

They are an ugly eyesore with no redeeming features and the block should be demolished by way of a low level nuke.

Councillor Iona Pannett – well-known for her support of heritage and character protections – said the building should be restored.

“I know a lot of people find it ugly, but heritage doesn’t have to be pretty to deserve its status,” she said.

She flatted in the building for a brief period and believed “it would go for so much money” if it was properly done up. The rooms were big and sunny, and featured a unique “maisonette” structure where the apartments are two storeys.

If Iona is right, then she should set up a consortium to buy the building, renovate it and make so much money from it.