Steven Joyce writes at NZ Herald:

The die is looking increasingly cast for this Government. In a range of crucial policy areas they have resolutely refused to change course in response to changed circumstances, despite people jumping up and down and telling them they are sailing on to the rocks. Now they are in the process of reaping the consequences of their intransigence. And at this late stage it seems there is precious little they can do about it.

The economy is a case in point. Grant Robertson’s refusal to alter his spending plans, his lack of interest in a more welcoming immigration policy to unstick the labour market, his failure to hold back his colleagues’ tsunami of increasing regulation, and his unwillingness to require discipline on government-mandated wage increases, have all contributed to a glum economic prognosis. He has sat on his hands blithely assuring everyone we are in good shape, and now can only watch as the Reserve Bank does what it must do to rein in runaway inflation.

Instead they have passed a law which will allow unions to demand industry wide national awards, so a small business in Invercargill has to pay the same as a multinational in Auckland.

I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the Media Council has not upheld my complaint about the bogus poll prominently pushed by the Dominion Post.

I respect the outcome, as a member myself of the Media Council.

The decision will be on their website.

Stuff reports a Media Council ruling:

In addressing Ms Hickson’s more general complaints that Stuff lacked balance on transgender issues, Stuff said it took the view that giving a voice to certain opinions on transgender issues amounted to giving a platform to prejudice and views that might cause harm. Stuff went on to say a similar issue arose in the reporting of climate change where it was not a requirement to include comments from climate change deniers for balance.

While the Media Council did not uphold the complaint under principle (1) it noted the debate about the treatment of gender dysphoria in children is slightly different from other transgender issues and it rejected Stuff’s argument it is analogous to climate change. In the case of climate change there is an overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion whereas on the issue of childhood gender dysphoria there appears to be a variety of genuinely held and differing opinions internationally. The Council hoped all media outlets would consider whether they are taking a balanced approach overall.

Quite extraordinary that Stuff has openly said we will not allow contrary views on the issue of treatment gender dysphoria in children, when you have had damning reports from overseas about treatment in the UK, including from a High Court judge.

The attendance data that Associate Minister of Education, Jan Tinetti, stated was the most important in terms of policy impact was the Term 2 data this year:

Full attendance is 90%.

Results for full attendance were:

Decile 1: 23%

Decile 2: 26%

Decile 3: 31%

Decile 4: 37%

Decile 5: 39%

Decile 6: 39%

Decile 7: 43%

Decile 8: 46%

Decile 9: 48%

Decile 10: 50%

All deciles were well down on previous years.

There were approximately 128,000 students “chronically” absent in that they missed 30% or more school days.
Going to school either matters or it doesn’t. Schools, teachers and the Ministry of Education says that it matters and data certainly supports that view. You would think then it would be all hands on deck to maximise students coming to school in these fractured times.
So – I have been somewhat stunned to hear from a range of families where schools have taken 12, or more teacher only days (TODs), this year. All children are marked present for these but it is, in effect, forced absenteeism. The TODs are also rarely coordinated so a working parent, with three children, could have had up to 36 days to revamp their lives for. I am hearing of working people who have used up all of their annual leave through the impact of TODs. Some schools retort that “they are not a baby-sitting service”. No one expects them to be – just that when schools are “open” and during term time that children should be able to go and be well taught.

Add to that the full-on round of paid union meetings at present …

Is it any wonder that so many children/families are seeing school as an option not an imperative?

The Herald reports:

Finance Minister Grant Robertson padded Budget 2022 with $2.05 billion from the remnants of the Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund contrary to his undertakings that the enormous pot of emergency money be limited to direct, pandemic-related spending and over the Treasury’s objections. …

Proactively released Treasury documents show the money was tipped directly into Budget 2022, against the Treasury’s advice, and uncounted in the Budget allowance and consequently obscured from New Zealanders as new spending. …

Former deputy chief economic adviser to the Treasury, Tony Burton, said the Government’s move was an “abuse of process” as it is laid out in the Public Finance Act and that it had effectively turned Covid-19 emergency funds into “an election slush fund that will force the Government after 2023 to either put up taxes, borrow or cut spending”.

This is terrible transparency from the Government, and is fiscally reckless.

They used the one-off Covid fund to fund non-Covid activities in the 2022 budget. That was bad enough, but what is worse is that they have made no allowance for future funding of them, so have created an unfunded liability.

Basically it is a poison pill for the next Government.

Graham Adams writes:

It takes a large dollop of brazenness — and perhaps desperation — to deny reality quite as readily as Jacinda Ardern was willing to do last Tuesday, but the Prime Minister did not resile from the task.

When Newstalk ZB’s Barry Soper asked her why the three waters (fresh water, storm water and waste water) had suddenly become five waters (with the late addition of coastal and geothermal water) in the amended Water Services Entities Bill, Ardern flatly denied that was the case.

Denying observable facts is typical of very young children before they understand that bending the truth beyond breaking point is an art that requires at least a modicum of plausibility to avoid ending up deeply and shamefully embarrassed.

Ardern’s denial reminded me of a three-year-old niece who, when asked why her name had appeared on the wall of her bedroom written in red crayon, claimed a visiting friend had done it — even while she was clutching a red crayon in her own hand. Her young friend had yet to learn to write.

While this might be seen as an amusingly naive ploy in a child anxious to avoid the consequences of being caught red-handed, such behaviour is plainly alarming in an adult — and especially when that adult happens to be the Prime Minister.

Ardern told Soper — in a strained voice: “The reference [to coastal and geothermal water] in the legislation does not change the scope of Three Waters. It’s only about the drinking water, waste water and storm water.”
Soper: “It extends into coastal and geothermal, if you read the legislation, which I’ve done this morning.”

Ardern replied, with such stilted diction it sounded as if she was reading from a press statement: “I have read the legislation. It does not change its scope… However, I can see, based on your questions, that it has caused, potentially, some confusion. So we’ll ask the drafters whether there’s a way to make it much clearer…”

“So you’re going to have it changed, are you?” Soper asked.

Ardern: “No, [I’m] just going to ask the question whether or not it could be drafted with more clarity because it’s obviously created some confusion.”

In fact, the clause Soper was referring to is perfectly clear. Confusion has only arisen because the Prime Minister decided to argue black was white.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time ….

Jamie Mackay writes at NZ Herald:

Fieldays 2022, Covid-postponed until summer for the first time in its more than 50-year history, will be a real litmus test for the Government and its often-fraught relationship with rural New Zealand.

I witnessed first-hand at AgFest in Greymouth, the only other rural field days to have got off the ground in 2022, the frustration and negativity that greeted O’Connor. And that was in his own home patch! But Damien, with his fiery Irish heritage, is nothing if not up for a scrap.

The reception Ardern gets, providing of course she’s there, will be interesting. Like Key, she’s a consummate performer in public. Regardless of your political leanings, there should always be respect for the office of Prime Minister. How much is shown at Mystery Creek will be intriguing.

I believe it is important to show respect to the office.

So I hope farmers show the same level of respect to the PM, as say the NZEI shows to a National Minister of Education when addressing an NZEI conference.

The Daily Mail reports:

Protesters calling for an end to the rule of President Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have clashed with police in violent scenes – as officers also assaulted a BBC journalist covering the demonstrations.

China is facing its largest anti-government protests since the Tiananmen Square massacre with protests erupting in at least seven cities over the country’s strict Covid rules – which many believe contributed to the deaths of ten people after a fire broke out in the city of Urumqi, capital of the western Xinjiang region.

The largest of the demonstrations has taken place in Shanghai – home to 26 million residents – with many also boldly demanding that President Xi resign.

China has a terrible problem.

Their Covid lockdowns are failing and generating huge hostility.

However their vaccine has been pretty rubbish compared to western ones, and if Covid spreads rapidily, their health system will collapse.

My pick is that they will persist with the lockdowns, but there will be more and more protests up until the point when they start mass killing of protesters.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Government will go to Parliament’s business committee to discuss its controversial clause in a Three Waters bill, deemed “dangerous” by constitutional law experts.

This is a welcome step, if it means that the bill will be sent back to Committee of the Whole to have the entrenchment clause removed.

I am glad the Government appears to have listened, in this case.

The Guardian reports:

Democrats, anti-racist groups and some Republicans have condemned Donald Trump for having a dinner with American white supremacist and anti-semite Nick Fuentes after details of their encounter at the former US president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida emerged. …

David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel, tweeted disapproval of the meeting with both Fuentes and Ye, who has also recently made antisemitic comments that have seen him lose a raft of valuable corporate endorsements.

“Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong,” Friedman tweeted.

Fuentes is a very nasty anti-semite. Some examples:

• Referred to Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh as “shabbos goy race traitor” because he works for Jews (Ben Shapiro)
• Denied the Holocaust and compared Jews burnt in concentration camps to cookies in an oven
• Said he doesn’t see Jews as Europeans or as part of Western civilization

Dairy owners across New Zealand have closed shops for two hours to highlight how unsafe it has become for them. Some quotes from a Stuff article:

• “We worry quite a bit because this year lots of dairies in Taranaki have been robbed. We were robbed. It is horrible.”
• A question to the crowd, asking who had been affected by crime in Wellington, saw most raise their hands. Some in the crowd said it was something they hoped not to see in Wellington.
• “That heinous crime is devastating. There has been a shift towards violence towards anyone on the frontline, from ED nurses and doctors, fire and police, teachers to [people] fronting retail and hospitality. Everybody is having to shield themselves from what is going on,” Bhana said.
• “Every day when you start working you hope that nothing goes wrong and you don’t want to feel like that. We are very exposed but we can’t do much about it. The Government can but we can’t,” Desai said.
• Sunny Kaushal, president of the Dairy and Business Owners Group, said Patel’s death happened because a culture of impunity for offenders exists.

That last point is a key one.

The Herald reports:

A group of the country’s top public law academics is urging the Government to change an entrenching provision in the controversial Three Waters legislation they say could set a “dangerous precedent”. …

The issue has sparked the attention of public law academics, who have today published an open letter (see the bottom of the article for a full letter).

Authors include Professor Janet McLean, Professor Paul Rishworth, Professor Andrew Geddis, Associate Professor Dean Knight, Associate Professor John Ip, Dr Eddie Clark, Dr Edward Willis and Dr Jane Norton.

Bravo to them for doing this. As it happens many of them are quite left leaning, but this is an issue beyond partisan politics. It is like letting the genie out of the bottle. Once you turn entrenchment into a partisan weapon (rather than a bipartisan protection), then you can never go back.

In fact if the Government doesn’t do a u-turn, I will run a series of polls on Kiwiblog where readers can vote on what law they would most like a future centre-right Government to entrench. There have already been dozens of suggestions with my favourite to date being a law to ban union deductions from pay packets.

A quote from the open letter:

We urge government to think about the dangerous precedent that this legislative action may set. It extends the use of entrenchment protection from a very limited range of matters fundamental to our constitutional system to a matter of contested social policy. Not only does this move invite similar attempts in the future, it also risks undermining the seriousness with which entrenchment is taken by Parliament and the public generally.

Spot on.

The Herald reports:

The Act Party is proposing on-the-spot fines, akin to speeding tickets, for parents of children deemed chronically absent from school.

The idea is part of its policy launched today to address what it calls the “Truancy Crisis”.

The National Party has also shown an interest in similar legislation, while the Government has said such punitive approaches had been tried in the past and failed.

Actually it is the status quo which has failed, as attendance rates have plummeted.

Act’s policy includes five ideas to get children back in the classroom regularly. This includes daily national attendance reporting, and whether any absence was justified or unjustified. The Ministry of Education would publish this daily attendance, building a national focus on the issue.

Act would also change the law to make it easier to fine parents for poor attendance from their children.

The party says that currently parents cannot be fined for student non-attendance without a court conviction, but they can be fined on the spot for speeding to school.

Act would change the Education and Training Act to allow the Ministry of Education to introduce an infringement notice regime for truancy. They would ensure police could work with schools on truants and take children they see out of school during school hours to either the school or home.

Act also proposed a traffic light system for unjustified attendance at schools. At the red setting, more than 30 per cent truant, the student would be referred to the Ministry of Education, which would decide whether to fine parents and/or refer the matter to police.

Schools would also receive funding to deal with poor attendance, weighted through the Equity Index so schools with more vulnerable student populations would receive more funding.

Seems a good mixture of carrot and stick.

On wider issues, including the massive inequities, Tinetti said their attendance strategy, launched this year, was designed to re-engage students, while the Government was on track to meet the first target of 70 per cent regular attendance by next year, and 75 per cent by 2026.

They are not on track. The regular attendance rate has dropped from 63% in 2017 to 40% in 2022.

Samira Taghavi writes in the NZ Herald:

My Iranian compatriots have been protesting against the brutal Iranian regime for some two months.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern however, now freed from the purported excuse of protecting “social-media-influencers”, has yet to do anything meaningful in the face of serial rape, torture, and murder in Iran. …

Taghavi proposes three things:

1. Add the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to our “terrorist entities list”.
2. Pass an Iranian sanctions bill
3. Expel the Iranian Ambassador

These all seem very reasonable to me.

One of my all time favourite shows. Can always rewatch it

When the actors all died is:

• Sergeant Schultz, 1973, aged 63
• Colonel Hogan, 1978, aged 49
• Major Hochstetter, 1993, aged 67 
• Colonel Klink, 2000, aged 80
• Sergeant Carter, 2003, aged 67
• General Burkhalter, 2005, aged 97
• Fraulein Hilda, 2007, aged 72
• Staff Sergeant Kinchloe, 2008, aged 76
• Corporal Newkirk, 2012, aged 79
• Fraulein Helga, 2014, aged 76
• Corporal LeBeau, 2022 aged 96
• Sergeant Baker, still alive, aged 76

What Labour and the Greens have done is massively concerning and repugnant. They are using a partisan majority to make future Parliaments unable to repeal part of the Three Waters Act.

There is only one current use of super-majorities at the moment, and that is in the Electoral Act. There are six sections (one actually in the Constitution Act) that need a 75% majority to amend. Note 75% majority, which means at a minimum both major parties have to agree that the clause should be entrenched. Labour and Greens are entrenching a clause in a partisan fashion, against the wishes of the opposition.

The six clauses currently entrenched are all what you would call basic constitutional clauses, which are highly desirable to not have the Government of the Day being able to amend with a basic majority. They are.

1. The Term of Parliament being a maximum three years. You don’t want a Government once elected to be able to delay the next election for a decade. This stops dictatorships.
2. The composition of the Representation Commission that sets parliamentary boundaries. Again you don’t want a Government once elected able to decide that boundaries will be set by (for example) myself and Matthew Hooton. This keeps the Representation Commission neutral and stops gerrymandering
3. The requirement for the Representation Commission to set electorate boundaries after each census based on specific criteria, to stop partisan gerrymandering
4. The requirement for the Representation Commission to set electorate boundaries so that electorates are of an equal size (within 5% tolerance). This stops a Government being able to create rotton boroughs with just a few hundred voters.
5. The definition of who is eligible to vote so a Government can’t disenfranchise groups of voters
6. The requirement that elections are by secret ballot, so you can’t be pressured as to how you vote

So these current six clauses are what you would call basic constitutional provisions, where Parliament has (off memory) unanimously agreed that a future Parliament shouldn’t be able to repeal them by a simple vote of say 61 to 59 to advantage themselves in future elections.

What Labour and Greens have done is vote for to entrench a clause relating to something which is merely a public policy issue, and have done so without bipartisan support. This is repugnant behaviour.

If they don’t backdown on this, and agree to repeal the super-majority provision, then a future centre right Government would be muggins to not do the same. Imagine how the left will feel when a future centre right government requires a supermajority of say 55% to repeal Three Strikes, or to increase the minimum wage beyond 67% of the median wage. They could even ban unions from being able to have their membership fees deducted by employers and entrench that with a super-majority.

The moment you expand entrenchment from constitutional provisions that have bipartisan support, you open the floodgates to entrenchment becoming a weapon all future Governments will use.

The other impact this will have, is that it may embolden future Governments to get around entrenchment provisions for constitutional provisions such as the Term of Parliament. There are two ways the entrenchment provision can be got around.

1. Parliament can repeal the cause that does the entrenching by a bare majority and then after that passes through all stages, can repeal the previously entrenched clauses.
2. The Government could suspend standing orders (which currently require a super majority to amend an entrenched clause at committee of the whole stage) and just repeal it without a super majority on the basis no former Parliament can bind a current Parliament.

Now doing either of these things would result in a massive political backlash to a Government that did it, in regard to entrenched clauses that were done with bipartisan support and deal with constitutional provisions.

But it would be quite legitimate for a future centre right Government to do this, so it can repeal the Three Waters legislation. There is no precedent that because the 53rd Parliament had a Government with 70 seats that it can stop the 54th Parliament from repealing a controversial Act even though say the new Government only has 68 seats.

But once that genie is out of the bottle, the barrier to using it to ignore the 75% super-majority for the constitutional protections is lowered. A future Government might decide that it would ignore the 75% super majority and extend the Term of Parliament by two years because (for example) NZ is in an economic crisis, and can’t afford the instability.

Super-majority entrenchment will only remain respected if it is used solely for constitutional protections, and for laws that were passed with over-whelming bipartisan support.

In this current case, the Government is actually using it almost as a PR stunt, as it deal with not privatising the Three Waters assets. This is a bogeyman created entirely by the Government. They are the only ones talking privatisation. Not a single Council has ever proposed selling off their water infrastructure.

So basically Labour and the Greens are fucking with our most basic constitutional provisions, merely as a sort of PR stunt to try and convince people that Three Waters is about stopping privatisation of water assets (ironically it is in fact privatising control of the assets, just not ownership).

If Labour and Greens do not back down on this, then a future centre right Government should and must feed them their own medicine and entrench everything from Three Strikes to National Standards.

My preference is for them to send the bill back to Committee of the Whole, to have the entrenchment clause removed.

UPDATE:

I forgot to include something that makes this all even worse than what I described above. The entrenchment clause was passed under urgency after being introduced in a last minute SOP from the Minister. There was no ability for the public to debate it, to submit on it, to have select committee scrutinise it and consider the implications.

Labour have basically fucked over the established constitutional order, under urgency without notice or consultation, as Edgeler explains:

The Daily Wire reports:

Princeton University has formed a committee to determine the fate of an on-campus statue of influential Founding Father John Witherspoon, who also served as the sixth president of the school.

No doubt he will be toppled in due course.

Witherspoon was born in Scotland in 1723 before he moved to New Jersey in 1767 to take the job as president of Princeton, where he taught classes and also served a Presbyterian minister. Before dying in 1794, Witherspoon had established himself as an intellectual, statesman, and had the distinction of being the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.

During his tenure teaching moral philosophy among other subjects at Princeton, Witherspoon would lecture to many future leaders in the early American republic, including  39 congressmen, 21 senators, 12 governors, nine Cabinet members, and three Supreme Court justices.

Like many of the founders, Witherspoon’s record on slavery was mixed. While he did own two slaves, he also supported and participated in the education of freed slaves. One slave he baptized while in Scotland gained freedom because of the baptism. He also considered slavery “unlawful,” but believed that it would soon die out in New Jersey.

It really is crazy to judge people who lived in the 1700s, on the basis of society today.

Interesting findings from the latest survey of NZ economists on inflation.

• Only 13% agree medium-term inflation expectations are below 3% with 71% disagreeing for a net disagree of -58%
• 76% agree a return to fiscal surpluses would ease inflation and lead to lower interest rate increases with only 9% disagreeing for a net agree of +67%
• 69% agreed that keeping inflation high will not lead to unemployment remaining low with only 8% disagreeing for a net agree of +61%

So there is a strong consensus that inflation is not under control, that a return to surpluses would help and that keeping inflation high will not stop unemployment increasing.

As David pointed out:

School principals around the country warn new literacy and numeracy standards could “provoke a crisis” and “undermine the credibility” of the NCEA assessment system. …

During the pilot, principals spoke out about their concerns the tests would leave behind Māori and Pasifika students, worsening “institutional racism” in the education sector.

Stuff facilitated an opinion piece from me:

Two key sections from me are:

“[The Principals] are wrong in significant ways. The crisis already exists but has been covered up for a long time. It is now widely known that our education system is a mess and many schools are simply not fit for purpose.

Some key indicators are that: Even our Level 2 NCEA graduates often lack functional numeracy and literacy. We have in excess of 8500 students not enrolled in any school as of July. Our full attendance for Term 2 was less than 40% across all deciles and just 23% for decile 1 students. We have 12% of our students graduating with less than Level 1 NCEA (33% for Māori students in South Auckland). The gaps across socio-economic levels are the worst in the developed world. Our ethnic gaps are also horrendous with Asian students getting University Entrance for leavers at 67%, back to Māori at 18%.”

And:

When principals complain about the new credits for functional literacy and numeracy they need to remember that they can be achieved at any time from Year 10 to Year 13. Are they really saying they can’t help students achieve functional literacy and numeracy in five years? The sitting students will have had [at least] 12,000 hours of funded schooling each by then. The complaining schools have also had three years to prepare their programmes for this, and the new standards do not come in until 2024.”

I shudder to think what these Principals think of their teaching staff, programmes and students.

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]