Stuff reports:

The UK branch of climate action group Extinction Rebellion has announced an end to disruptive protest action, saying such methods have not achieved their desired effects.

However, it remains to be seen whether New Zealand chapters or other climate activist groups in Aotearoa will follow suit.

Extinction Rebellion announced its “controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic” via a post on its website.

I know a few people in the oil and mining industries and almost universally they regard Extinction Rebellion as their best allies in terms of turning normal people off climate activists. They are more valuable than a plethora of PR firms.

If the morons in these groups hadn’t created them, then Exxon probably would have set them up and paid the organisers.

So I guess it is a sign of slight intelligence they have realised pissing off millions of people doesn’t persuade anyone.

Stuff has made their predictions for 2023, which I copy below along with my comments.

1. Covid-19 will no longer play a meaningful role in politics for the first time since 2019. The consequences of Covid will continue to play out, but regardless of case numbers, the political train will have moved on. DPF: Already the case.
2. At least one leader of a major political party will no longer be leader, or will have announced their exit, by the end of the year. DPF: Likely, but not certain. If Labour lose, Ardern will go. If National lose but are close, I would see no reason for a change.
3. Airfares will continue to be expensive and Air New Zealand’s fares, in particular, will become a political headache for the Government. DPF: Agree will stay expensive, but not sure it will be a problem for the Government.
4. After a busy year of post-Covid travel, Jacinda Ardern will make a trip to China, being the first leader to do so since 2016 and the first since Xi Jinping has really started asserting his authority over the country. DPF: Actually with current sentiment, I don’t think she will go there in an election year unless as part of a broader meeting of leaders.
5. With the major three waters legislation shepherded through Parliament, Nanaia Mahuta will lose the local government portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle, but she will retain foreign affairs. DPF: Agree.
6. There will be a new political party in Parliament. Whether it is an NZ First comeback, TOP, New Conservatives or another party, the times seem right for a political disrupter to come to the people’s house. This is extremely rare in New Zealand politics and tough to do, but 2023 could just be the year. DPF: I think NZ First will make it.
7. There will be another sizeable anti-government/vaccine type protest out the front of Parliament, although it will last only for a day. DPF: Of course there will be a sizeable protest at some stage. Like saying it will rain.
8. The Māori Party will win two electorates: Rawai Waititi’s current seat of Waiariki and the seat of Te Tai Hauāuru, which Speaker of the House and MP since 2014 Adrian Rurawhe is not expected to recontest. The party will bring in at least one other MP from its list. DPF: Bold call but probably correct.
9. Ayesha Verrall will become the health minister, while the overworked and underrated Andrew Little will be moved on to other portfolios as part of the reshuffle at the start of the year. DPF: Underrated?? Agree he must and will be shifted.
10. Transport Minister Michael Wood will be compelled to write Auckland a big cheque for light rail in the face of Mayor Wayne Brown’s refusal to pay for the current plan, or the plan will be changed, yet again. DPF: No cheque but no progress either except press releases and consultants.
11. Labour MPs Deborah Russell, Barbara Edmonds and Duncan Webb will all be promoted into Ardern’s ministry. DPF: On talent, they should be.
12. More Labour Cabinet ministers will announce their retirement before the general election. DPF: Almost certainly.
13. When the Green Party holds its AGM and the co-leadership positions fall vacant current co-leader James Shaw will be re-elected without any fuss, unlike this year. Marama Davidson will remain leader. DPF: I hope so.
14. New Zealand will go into recession, however it won’t officially be a recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth – until after the election. DPF: Agree only one negative quarter before the election.
15. Inflation – as measured through the Consumer Price Index – won’t fall below 6.5% prior to the election. But the Reserve Bank won’t need to ratchet up interest rates any higher than its currently predicted high water mark of 5.5%, and Adrian Orr and the bank’s monetary policy committee may be able to stop south of that. DPF: Disagree, I think it will be lower than that by the election.
16. Te Whatu Ora’s Health New Zealand’s backlog of elective surgeries will remain and even blow out further, from about 5.2 months of extra work estimated in October. DPF: Yes, likely.
17. The drop in house prices will stabilise by the middle of the year. DPF: Inevitable.
18. A potential 4 year-term for parliament will become the subject of more serious debate and perhaps a campaign in the coming year. DPF: Sadly I doubt it.
19. Jacinda Ardern will continue to be preferred prime minister in public polls up until the election. DPF: The PM almost always is the Preferred PM in the polls. But during the campaign, this may change.
20. Regardless of whether Labour forms Government after the election, at least 18 of its MPs will lose their jobs. DPF: This is effectively saying Labour will drop to no more than 35%, which seems likely.
21. With the FIFA Women’s World Cup – co-hosted by New Zealand finishing in late August, and the Men’s Rugby World Cup finishing on October 28 in France, the general election will be held on the second or fourth Saturday of November. DPF: Agree it will be November.

Just saw this 2018 article by Andy

• There was no ketch. No one but Guy Wallace says they saw it. Not the 1,500 people there. Not by the 100 other boat owners. And it didn’t feature in the thousands of photos taken.
• Watson repainted his boat before Police were even looking for Ben and Olivia
• The two hairs found on Watson’s boat that were DNA matched to Olivia
• Watson lied in his first Police interview about what he was wearing that night
• Watson says he can’t find the clothes he wore that night
• The 70 hours of recorded conversations between Watson and his former GF struck those listening as from a man completely devoid of compassion
• Not once in the 70 hours of conversations, did he deny he was the killer to his former GF

Stuff has scored their 2022 predictions and just gets a pass mark.

The USSR was created 100 years ago by treaty between four states.

Some achievements:

• 14 million sent to gulags or forced labour camps
• 1.7 million died in gulags
• 8 million died by famine
• 800,000 purged and executed
• 15 million kulaks deported
• 6 million ethnic minorities forced to resettle

This is the regime that many so called peace activists asked us to be neutral towards!

The full list is here.

The titular honours are:

DNZM

To be Dames Companion of the said Order: 

Ms Miranda Catherine Millais Harcourt, ONZM, of Wellington. For services to the screen industry and theatre.

Professor Farah Rangikoepa Palmer, ONZM, of Palmerston North. For services to sport, particularly rugby.

Dr Janice Claire Wright, of Christchurch. For services to the State and the environment.

KNZM

To be Knights Companion of the said Order: 

Dr Ashley Robin Bloomfield, of Lower Hutt. For services to public health.

Mr Markus Dunajtschik, of Wellington. For services to philanthropy.

Dr Haare Mahanga Te Wehinga Williams, MNZM, JP, of Auckland. For services to Māori, literature and education.

Very pleased to see Sir Mark Dunajtschik, whose generosity is staggering.

Also nice to see Dame Miranda Harcourt follow in the steps of her mother, Dame Kate Harcourt. They are arguably NZ’s finest acting family. I love watching productions with Miranda in them.

ASH Chairperson Professor Robert Beaglehole writes:

Vaping has been the critical disruptor of cigarette smoking; more adults now vape than smoke. Because vapes are much less harmful than cigarettes, and much cheaper, New Zealand’s permissive, but tightly regulated market for vapes, will save thousands of lives.

That statement is not from the industry, but the Chair of ASH.

This is also the year in which youth vaping may have peaked. The 2022 ASH Year 10 survey results show that daily vaping is levelling off and regular vaping (at least once a month) is falling.

Many teachers and parents are concerned about youth vaping. I share that concern. Fortunately, there is no evidence to suggest it is a “gateway” to smoking.

The best thing is for young people to neither vape nor smoke, but if they have to do one of those, you definitely want them to vape rather than smoke.

First, the latest report prepared by the UK Office for Health Improvement and Disparities on the safety of vaping confirmed that it poses only a very small fraction of the risks of smoking.

Second, the ongoing assessment of the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in supporting people to quit found good evidence that e-cigarettes with nicotine increase quit rates compared to nicotine replacement therapy.

A very small fraction would suggest around 5%, maybe even lower.

The best way to reduce the demand for cigarettes is to support people dependent on smoking and encourage them to quit, including by the use of vapes. After all, it is the tar in cigarette smoke that causes the damage, not nicotine.

For these reasons, I am surprised that the Ministry of Health’s vaping advisers recently and arbitrarily changed the rules on the nicotine content of vapes. If this results in hundreds of devices being recalled, vapers may find it more difficult, and more expensive, to achieve the nicotine levels they need to sustain quitting; some will return to cigarettes.

The Ministry of Health is making it harder for people to quit smoking!

A collection of people at The Spinoff have done their champs and flops for the year. Some are very predictable (ie in line with their ideology) and some are insightful. I thought it would be interesting to look at who got named more than once in each category.

Champs

• Erica Stanford x 5
• David Seymour x 4
• Christopher Luxon x 2
• Nicola Willis x2
• Kiri Allen x2

Flops

• Gaurav Sharma x 4
• Adrian Orr x 2
• Andrew Little x 2
• Willie Jackson x 2

Nicola Willis has drawn from the ballot in December her bill to allow parents to share their paid parental leave, so they can both take it at the same time.

I would hope that it will be supported by all 120 MPs.

What this will allow is for families to decide to (for example) have the father take six weeks paid parental leave and the mother take 20 weeks paid parental week, so both parents can be home for the first six weeks together.

It won’t cost the taxpayers an extra cent, but will give flexibility so that both parents can have a paid break from work during those first few weeks. And as you spend a lot of those first six weeks as a sleep deprived zombie, having both parents at home is a great option for many.

Connor Molloy writes:

ACT claims to be the party of principle, but when it comes to indexing income tax brackets to inflation, it appears they have lost their way. After rightly criticising the National Party for their U-turn on abolishing Labour’s 39% top tax rate last month, ACT has now done a public U-turn of their own.

Last year, David Seymour supported Simon Bridges’s member’s bill to index tax brackets to inflation. Then, in August this year, Mr Seymour said that tax bracket indexation is “a good start” but that it didn’t go far enough. And now ACT has said they don’t support the policy at all. That’s quite a shift in the space of a year.

But Seymour and ACT have it wrong this time.

When inflation occurs, the prices of goods and services increase, which diminishes the purchasing power of each dollar we earn. This means that if you receive a pay rise in line with inflation, you are not actually earning more income in terms of what you can buy but you end up paying more tax.

Governments of all stripes have been happy to cash in on inflation when individuals’ tax bills increase as a result of being pushed into higher tax brackets or paying a higher proportion of their income at their top marginal rate. Without any consultation or justification, the government is able to receive automatic, unlegislated tax hikes by stealth. This is known as ‘tax bracket creep’ and it makes us all poorer.

ACT’s November newsletter argues against tax bracket indexation on the basis that focusing on taxes without reducing spending leads to more government debt, which is effectively just higher taxes in the future. We agree that tax relief should be funded by savings in government expenditure, but ACT misses the point.

Indexation is not a tax cut. Without indexation, governments get a free pass to increase spending because it is already paid for through bracket creep. Indexation does not reduce the total tax take, it simply doesn’t increase it.

ACT’s new found opposition to indexation stems from confusion because they wrongly conflate different policy issues that should be looked at separately – indexation, distribution of the tax burden, and government spending.

In a system that has indexation, there is nothing to prevent a party from implementing policies that shift the tax burden or cut spending.

ACT’s alternative budget addresses the latter two issues by proposing cuts to government spending, significant tax reductions and a simplification of income tax rates. We support the principle of their proposals but the problem of bracket creep will persist.

ACT argues that “[b]racket creep is not a problem in itself, it is a symptom of progressive taxation.” It’s true that if we all paid a single income tax rate, we would not need indexation. But ACT’s proposed tax system is not flat. Mr Seymour has abandoned his own  2019 tax policy of a single income tax rate. Mr Seymour’s 2022 policy is designed in a way that, over time, taxes would steadily increase year on year.

If ACT’s new tax proposal had been in place since 2017, someone earning $80,000 today would be paying $1050 more tax each year than someone on the same real income in 2017.

ACT could easily advocate for their newly proposed two-tier income tax regime to be implemented and then be indexed to inflation to ensure that the real tax rates remain constant unless changed by Parliament.

It is difficult to understand how ACT reached their current position on this policy when they accept that bracket creep is a tax increase by stealth. Each of their concerns arise from other factors that can be addressed through policies that are not incompatible with tax indexation.

If Seymour truly thought his proposed tax settings were the best for New Zealand, he would commit to indexing them. Otherwise he needs to show some courage and campaign for his 2019 flat tax proposal that would fix this issue completely.

Seymour is clearly positioning himself to play a major part in the next Government. But this U-turn is wrong both in terms of principle and in politics. He should rejoin the cause that even the Nats agree with us on: ‘No taxation without indexation!’

Connor Molloy is a Researcher for the Taxpayers’ Union.

Sir Ian Taylor writes:

I have been wondering for some time now what happened to the Labour Party that I have supported all my life.

I am 72, which means I was voting Labour before the current Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, was even born. …

When the Labour government became the first under MMP to win complete control of the House, I really believed that at last there was a party in power that would use that privilege to show the compassion, leadership, collaboration and transparency that was needed to address some of the major issues around the growing social and economic divide that was facing Aotearoa New Zealand.

Instead, transparency has disappeared, the economic and social divide has grown and the dangers of a party led by ingrained and inflexible ideologies have come to the fore.

Well worth reading the whole column as he details all the things the Government has got wrong, and remember this is from someone who has voted Labour all his life and celebrated their 2020 victory.

Business Desk reports:

A public-private sector partnership to deliver affordable housing in Wellington has extended its eligibility criteria. ….

Until recently, housing developed through the programme has been limited to public-sector workers with individual incomes below $95,000 (or under $150,000 for a household).

Last Thursday, the environment and infrastructure committee voted to extend the criteria to align with job creation industries identified in an economic wellbeing strategy. 

This included the hospitality and tourism industries.

I’d blogged previously on this crazy scheme where a policy analyst on $90,000 would qualify for this cheap housing, and a hairdresser on $55,000 would not.

Now it is good that they have extended the eligibility from solely the public sector, but they are still trying to pick winners like the USSR did. Why do they think a barman should qualify but not a hairdresser?

Why do they just having simple criteria based purely on income, not on whether or not they think you are in a deserving industry or not?

Stuff reports:

Te Pūkenga – the organisation that now runs the country’s polytechs – needs a further cash injection of almost half a billion dollars, according to figures seen by Stuff.

A yet-to-be-published business case from the Crown entity says its “preferred option” is for a further $422.6 million over four years from 2023, including $285.8m to integrate IT systems, $60m for ‘transformation programme management’ and $26.8m for ‘people change costs’.

The document also outlines an option where 487 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff will be made redundant by 2026, with 104 losing their jobs by the end of next year.

So the mega merger of polytechs was because they had a projected deficit of $50 million and this merger was meant to save money. But it turns out the merged entity needs $500 million from the long suffering taxpayers.

A guest post by Connor Molloy:

No one denies that smoking is bad for you. 

Everyone has seen the disturbing images displayed in advertising campaigns or heard the wheezing cough spluttering from the lungs of a lifelong smoker. Those in my generation have vivid memories of Harold the Giraffe visiting schools to scare children with photos of blackened lungs. It worked; everyone knows that smoking is a bad idea.

Yet some people are still unable or unwilling to quit and so the Government is trying new smoking-reduction strategies. But their latest plans fail the litmus test of good law making. 

Even if you don’t smoke, there is good reason to be concerned about the latest piece of Smokefree legislation. Gone are the days where smoking laws only affect smokers.

The latest push in the war on tobacco creates an effective prohibition and will push law-abiding citizens towards gang-run tinny houses just for a full-bodied cigarette.

Right now, around 15% of smoked tobacco in New Zealand is from the black market. The three proposed changes to our smoking laws will be sure to see this figure reach at least the levels seen in Australia where one in five cigarettes is purchased on the black market. 

The first proposal will reduce the maximum level of nicotine in cigarettes by 95%. This is effective prohibition. If the level of nicotine is too low for an addicted smoker to get a hit, they will have to smoke many times the amount of tar (and tax) for the same hit or will resort to the black market where tobacco is full strength and tax free. 

We saw this during the alcohol prohibition in the US where, despite very low alcohol beverages being available, home-brewed and -smuggled spirits were commonplace as people simply did not want the low alcohol alternatives. 

The second proposal will slash the number of retailers from over 6,000 down to only 600. Just a fraction of the number of postcodes in the country leaving many communities without a tobacco retailer – except the local Mob. 

It is not clear that reducing the number of tobacco retailers will encourage smokers to quit. This proposal will introduce a further cost to smoking in terms of time and petrol, but if a smoker has persisted in their habit after a decade of excise tax hikes, it is difficult to believe this small additional cost will push them to quit. Instead, they will simply have even more incentive to become black market consumers.

Lastly, the Government wants to introduce a Smokefree generation where anyone born after 2009 will never be able to legally purchase cigarettes. Not only will this lead to absurd consequences where in the near future a 30-year-old will be slapped with a $50,000 fine for giving their 29-year-old friend a cigarette but we will end up with a complete prohibition for an entire generation. 

For these people, the only source of tobacco will be the ever-growing black market that will have been supercharged by the first two policies.

These black market retailers will not ask for ID and certainly won’t care about the levels of harmful chemicals present in their product.

What we will end up with is a situation where young people are targeted by suppliers from the unregulated black market leading to more people smoking more dangerous cigarettes and paying no tax – the ultimate own goal of unintended consequences. 

There’s no point in having policies that sound good if they only serve to make things worse. 

Every step of the way, non-smoking taxpayers will be footing the bill for the newly created costs of effective prohibition. 

Illicit trade of tobacco will become the new norm and the only way to access full strength tobacco products. We regularly see reports from customs of tobacco seizures at the borders and homegrown super-strength tobacco is not illegal. This law will be a cash cow for organised criminals who don’t pay a cent in tax.

Our police, customs and the courts will be even more thinly spread than they already are wasting money on enforcement and directing valuable resources away from more important things.

Proceeds from the black market will finance sophisticated organised crime operations that push more costs and misery onto hardworking taxpayers.

Tax-free tobacco purchased illegally means that the associated health costs will be borne by all taxpayers.

Minister Ayesha Verrall is already claiming victory, putting out press releases stating that the “Government’s plan to reduce smoking is working” with 56,000 people quitting over the past year. But her new policies have not even come into effect yet.

At every turn, the Government has made it more difficult for people to access the single most effective quitting tool we have – vaping. The safer cigarette.

After years of stagnation in smoking rates, we finally started to see a rapid reduction in smoking as vaping became a viable alternative to the cancer sticks.

People are quitting smoking in spite of the government’s policies, not because of them. 

We know from Public Health England that vaping is around 95% less harmful than smoking and yet the government’s efforts to reduce smoking are actively harmed by the way they restrict and stigmatise vaping. 

The current restrictions on the vape flavours that can be sold at dairies along with restrictions on nicotine levels significantly increase the barriers for smokers to make the switch. 

What’s even more ridiculous is that it is illegal for a dairy worker even to suggest vaping to someone who is trying to purchase cigarettes. This government appears set on isolating an entire group of people from safer alternatives because they don’t like what those alternatives are for no explicable reason

Under the tobacco prohibition, smokers won’t even have the option to switch to vaping when the supplier is a gang member at their local tinny house – what’s more likely is that they get upsold onto even more addictive and harmful substances that are even more lucrative.

Rather than using a smoke and mirrors deception to convince people that making something illegal will make it disappear, Minister Verrall should recognise that the only pathway to a Smokefree country is one that prioritises safer alternatives over prohibition. 

Connor Molloy is a Researcher at the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. Disclaimer: 2.1% of the Taxpayers’ Union annual income is from membership dues and donations from private industry, which includes contributions from the nicotine, alcohol, sugar, and construction industries. We gratefully accept any legal donations from anyone wishing to support our work, but our policy positions cannot be influenced by donations. For more information on our mission and how we are funded, please visit: www.taxpayers.org.nz/our_mission

Almost everyone knows that Don Bradman was the best batsman of all time, with a batting average that will probably never be beaten (99.94, 2nd place is 61.87).

But it turns out he was also great at economics and knew socialism didn’t work. After Fraser replaced Whitlam as Australian PM, Bradman wrote to him saying:

• a passionate advocate of freedom from socialism
• encouraged Fraser to remove as much regulation of capital as possible
• warned against the dangers of inflation
• decried the power of unions in Australia

I was already a Bradman lover, but now I can love him for both his cricket and his economics.

We have a new record for CV embellishment, scoring a 12/10 on the Golriz scale.

George Santos just got elected to Congress as a gay, Jewish, college educated Goldman Sacks executive who owns 13 properties in New York.

It turns out he is straight, Catholic, a college dropout, never worked for Goldman Sacks and owns zero properties, living with his sister!

How do people think they won’t get caught out?

Newsroom reports:

The Cabinet agreed on Monday that ministers wouldn’t receive any further reports on developing a draft plan in response to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples until 2024, Newsroom can reveal.

This doesn’t mean they do not plan to proceed, it just means they want to wait until after the election before they star up again.

We already know they are in favour of giving people on the general roll only 39% of the vote of people on the Maori roll.

We already know they are in favour of having unelected representatives on local Councils having the same vote as elected Councillors.

The only way to safeguard equality of suffrage in New Zealand, will be to vote the Government out.

Eight years ago I blogged:

Former Radio NZ news manager Lynne Snowdon has lost her marathon employment dispute with the state broadcaster. …

It’s insane that this case has dragged on for ten years. Hopefully this brings it to an end. I’ve followed the case for many years and had little doubt it would end this way. …

Snowdon let her grievance become an obsession. Off memory it all began as a dispute with then CEO Sharon Crosbie over the budget for the news division. If you don’t like the budget your boss gives you, then go find a new job – don’t turn it into a ten year dispute. If they really have spent $3.5 million on the fight, then that is even sadder, No one forced them to do so.

I blogged the above in 2014, 11 years after it all started in 2003. But I was too optimistic. The Supreme Court has just released a decision, dealing an recall application from Snowdon.

So 19 years on, the obsession continues. It’s beyond bizarre. Someone needs to do an intervention.