If you want to submit on the Three Waters legislation, the TU have set up a website which you can use.
You have two weeks to submit on what will happen to $100 billion of community assets.
The submission tool makes it very easy for you. Just click on one or more of the following issues that may concern you and it will create a draft submission for you, that you can edit.
If you make a submission, also ask to be heard by the Committee, This makes it harder for them to ram the law change through quickly and hearing face to face from thousands of New Zealanders may make them reconsider or compromise.
The June 2022 Roy Morgan is out.
Party Vote
Governments
Direction
This is the seventh Roy Morgan poll in a row to show a change of Government if there was an election.
NewstalkZB reports:
Wellington mayor Andy Foster has announced on Newstalk ZB’s Wellington Mornings he wants another term in the city’s top job. …
Referring to his fellow councillors, Foster said he hasn’t always had the team to back him, but he thought they were now working reasonably well together.
“We’ve done a lot for the city and I’d really like to take that forward.”
He said he saw the situation as a two horse race between himself and Rongotai MP Paul Eagle.
Foster added the council has delivered more in the past two weeks than most councils would deliver in three years.
This included signing off on the year’s budget, the proposed district plan, a sludge treatment option, agreeing to create a community housing provider, and opening the St James Theatre.
I’m not sure I’d call it a two horse race. But anyway as it is STV, one can get to rank all the candidates.
He has struggled to find the numbers around the table- leaving majorities to form elsewhere, often resulting in council decisions being influenced by a left bloc of councillors.
The Mayoralty is important, but electing Councillors who will not cripple the city with rate hikes and debt is also important.
The best comment I’ve seen on Boris Johnson this week was the one stating how remarkable it was that he would be brought down by a sex scandal that didn’t involve him!
Once he lost support from senior Ministers it was when, not if, and he has finally conceded.
He lasted almost three years in office. His great achievement will be actually implementing the will of the people in the Brexit referendum. By coincidence his tenure of 2 years and 348 days is the same as Neville Chamberlain.
The Conservatives have gone through a lot of leaders. The duration of recent leaders is:
On the plus side 10 of the 13 of them got to be Prime Minister.
Labour has only one leader, Tony Blair, win an election since 1974!
Stuff reports:
It involves a new four-lane tunnel under Mt Victoria, with two lanes each for cars and buses, a change of traffic patterns around the Basin Reserve, and new mass rapid transit system – most likely light rail – running from the city out to Island Bay in the city’s south. It would also convert the current Mt Victoria tunnel into a pedestrian and bike tunnel.
This is, with respect, nuts.
Going from two lanes to six lanes is good. But to spend what will be over a billion dollars on a new tunnel, and not have any extra capacity for motor vehicles is nuts.
I’m all for a dedicated bus lane, and pedestrian and cyclist lanes. But to have as many lanes for pedestrians and cyclists as for motorists is crazy. Around 50,000 cars use the tunnel. Unless you are having a daily marathon through the tunnel, you don’t need the same space for pedestrians.
On an average weekday there are 300 cyclists and 45,000 cars. And they are giving the same space to cycling as cars.
Again we should have cycle and pedestrian lanes. But we need four lanes for motorists also also.
The silver lining is that if a new four lane tunnel gets built, it will be simple enough to turn it in the future into a tunnel for cars. You then turn the current tunnel into a bus rapid transit tunnel and the current bus tunnel into a pedestrian and cycling tunnel.
I’ve calculated when Labour will achieve its key promises, based on progress to date since 2017. Five of them are listed below in a quiz where you have to match them up to the year they are projected to achieve them. Vote below and check back next week for the answers.
For some reason a decision by the US Supreme Court on whether abortion is a constitutional right under their constitution has lead to claims this means NZ could change our abortion laws, if there was a change of Government.
This is farcical. We have had a liberal abortion regime for over 40 years and in 2020 went to an even more liberal regime (and one I support). The third reading had 68 votes in favour and 51 against.
But that was before the 2020 election. Now only 26 MPs remain of the 51 who voted against, and the vast majority will have been replaced by MPs who support the current law. I’d say a vote today would be around 90 – 30. And that isn’t a vote between abortion being legal and illegal – that is a vote between the current very liberal law and the previous law.
Of the 26 MPs remaining who voted against the 2020 law change nine are Labour MPs and 17 are National MPs.
I’d say the chance of abortion laws in New Zealand being made more restrictive in the next five years is less than 1%.
The Herald reports:
New Immigration Minister Michael Wood is standing by a decision to leave nurses off a fast-track residency pathway even after the boss of the new health agency said changing that would be a “priority”.
On Friday, Health NZ interim CEO Margie Apa told Today FM they were working with officials to support more nurses coming into the country.
It comes after nursing and midwives unions called immigration settings that leave their workforce off a green list guaranteeing residency for certain professions “sexist”.
Nurses, of which the main nurses union estimates the country to be about 4000 short, have to work two years here in the profession before getting residency. Meanwhile, under the fast-track system, specific other professionals including doctors can receive it immediately.
So the Government is discouraging nurses from coming to NZ by not allowing them to have the certainty of residency should they move here to work, despite NZ being short of 4,000 nurses? The head of the new Health NZ says the policy is wrong.
So why are they doing this?
During the meeting, Wood said applying the degree of specialisation to a sector meant they were less likely to leave that profession once they arrive here.
“On the whole it seems less likely someone who works in a highly-specialised area will find employment in a different role.”
So Wood says nurses are more likely to leave nursing? And on what basis does he conclude this?
National’s Immigration spokeswoman Erica Stanford questioned Wood about the settings during an Education and Workforce Committee meeting today.
Stanford said there was no justification for making nurses wait the two years.
She asked for Wood for evidence, but he responded the policy was “based on logic and common sense rather than any particular evidence”.
We’re short of 4,000 nurses and the policy to discourage them from coming to NZ is based on common sense, rather than evidence!
Interesting data from a parliamentary question asking how many people presented to an emergency department each years during May. The data is:
So the numbers presenting are broadly in line with 2017 and 2018. The problem isn’t increased demand, it is not enough doctors and nurses due to our immigration policy and abolishing ED waiting times targets.
ACT released:
“2016/17 saw 450 prosecutions carried out, this was down to 60 by 2020/21 and 2021/22 is set to be even lower with only 30 recorded so far.
“Somehow despite plummeting prosecution rates, spending on investigations has increased from approx. $2.9 million per quarter in 2016/17 to $4.2 million per quarter in 2021/22.
This is great. The level of benefit fraud must have fallen by a massive 85%, as prosecutions have fallen by 85%. This is a terrific achievement by Labour to have almost eliminated benefit fraud.
I assume this is the case. I mean it is unthinkable that benefit fraud is still occurring at the same or greater levels, and instead no one is prosecuted for it. I am sure that is not the case.
Radio NZ reported:
Victims of serious crime are going without the financial support they’re entitled to so the government can keep within budget.
“Untenable and unethical” are the words used to describe a deliberate strategy to exclude crime victims from accessing the Victim Assistance Scheme (VAS).
More kindness.
“The Ministry and Victim Support have managed the cost pressure by deliberately under-promoting the scheme to minimise access and uptake,” it reads.
“This approach is untenable because victims are being deliberately excluded from accessing support they are entitled to receive. If this was widely known, it would erode public confidence and undermine the stated ethos of access to justice.”
This is very bad stuff. You are a victim of crime. That is bad enough – what the criminal has done to you. But now the Government is trying to hide from you that you could be eligible for financial support.
“Currently the scheme has extremely low uptake: grants are paid out on average for only 4 per cent of the 104,190 eligible victimisations reported to police each year.
The Government seems to care more about the criminals that the victims.
Martyn Bradbury writes:
Ummmm, isn’t Professor Joanne Kidman the worst person to appoint to an extremism taskforce?
This academic research unit will advise the Government on how to clamp down on our free speech and restrict our civil liberties for the implementation of woke doctrine. It is half social engineering and half Identity Politics Stasi.
There is still a push to create a national intelligence and security agency whose lidless eye will stare unblinkingly over the people to ‘save’ us.
Labour have been pushed back on their hate speech madness, but are still trying to find new ways to restrict free speech, meaning this new Extremist Research Academy will have vast influence over very large powers, which brings us to the problematic appointment of Professor Joanne Kidman.
The good professor was the one who called out and started the woke cancellation of Dress Maker Trelise Cooper for a dress called the ‘Trail of Tiers’ which Kidman argued was a play on the ‘Trial of Tears’, the genocidal forced march of 46,000 Native Americans between 1830 and 1850 by the United States federal government.
Hands up who thinks for one second that Trelise bloody Cooper had any idea whatsoever what the Trail of Tears was or intended to culturally appropriate a genocidal forced march?
Kidman wanted Cooper cancelled for a dress, that’s her threshold for hate and extremism, a dress maker who had no idea of an indigenous atrocity.
That’s the person in charge of an Academy on Extremism? Someone who is triggered by a dress and who used their platform to start a woke Lynch mob?
Kidman is an angry intolerant tweeter. Having her in charge of deciding what is extremism, is an awful idea. Here are a couple of her tweets.
Much of the focus around Three Waters has been the co-governance of the regional entities that effectively will appoint the boards of the four proposed water companies. But Graham Adams reports there is more to it than that:
According to Cranmer’s analysis, a direct and unbreakable chain of command flows from the Māori Advisory Group via Taumata Arowai to control the four new Water Services Entities (WSEs).
The WSEs control the day-to-day management of the operations of Three Waters. We have been repeatedly told they will be completely independent, working at arm’s length from the higher echelons of the complicated water bureaucracy.
However, it is made clear in legislation that the water regulator Taumata Arowai has to jump when the Māori Advisory Group says jump. When it — and Tipa as chairperson — speaks, Taumata Arowai has a statutory obligation to listen and act on that advice.
And the clincher is that Taumata Arowai directly regulates the Water Services Entities. In short, if Tipa Mahuta chooses, she can — as chair of the Māori Advisory Group — call the shots throughout each level of water management.
So the Minister’s sister is appointed to chair a group that the industry regulator must pay heed to.
And what role or powers does the Māori Advisory Group have? It has statutory powers to advise the board of Taumata Arowai on Māori interests and, per s17(3) [of Taumata Arowai — the Water Services Regulator Act], the board must have regard for that advice and must demonstrate in its annual report how it’s had regard.
So the board of Taumata Arowai ignores Tipa at its peril. And good luck to the Water Services Entities if they don’t comply with its regulator, Taumata Arowai.
And, anyway, if Tipa isn’t getting her way, she can always call her sister, the Minister of Local Government.
The above is a quote from Thomas Cranmer on Twitter. The statutory direction to the regulator that it must follow or have regard to the advice from he Maori Advisory Group, and demonstrate that it has done so gives immense power to the group – chaired by the Minister’s sister.
For instance, the Water Services Entities Bill, introduced by Mahuta in early June, gives mana whenua whose territory includes “a freshwater body in the service area of a Water Services Entity” the right to provide that entity with “a Te Mana o te Wai statement for water services”.
This statement can be provided “by an individual iwi or hapū, or by a group of iwi or hapū”. It can be summarily ditched and a new statement provided at any time.
So the water companies must follow the statements prepared by Iwi, and if they don’t:
So there is no ‘co-governance’ at the operating level. [But] WSEs need to follow Te Mana o te Wai statements prepared by iwi — and the regulator charged with ensuring compliance is the minister’s sister, Tipa.
These are issues worthy of debate.
Stuff reports:
Wellington mayoral candidate Paul Eagle’s lawyer has asked Wellington City Council to retract its statements claiming he is breaching election policy by advertising his campaign.
More digital billboards have popped up around the capital this week, after the first batch caused confusion online last Monday, the day Eagle announced he was running for the mayoralty. Twitter users questioned their legality as they fell outside the permitted election advertising period.
Wellington City Council spokesperson Richard MacLean said displaying the signs before August 27 went against council policy – but as the signs were on private property, there wasn’t anything the council could do.
This is entirely wrong. The policy applies to signs on private property. What it doesn’t apply to is commercial billboards. It applies to temporary signs of under three square metres.
Eagle said other candidates had in previous years advertised early without problems, to which MacLean said in this case “we’ve received a lot of heat [from the public] so we feel compelled to act”.
This is an appalling admission. They’re saying they demanded a candidate take down signs that were 100% legal, because people on Twitter complained about them. The job of Council staff and electoral officials is to enforce the rules fairly and impartially, not to smear a candidate because of complaints on Twitter.
Eagle’s campaign spokesperson Georgina Stylianou said on Friday afternoon, the electoral officer contracted by the WCC confirmed to Eagle’s lawyers that there is no legal basis for him, or the WCC, to require the campaign advertising to be taken down.
Angry people on Twitter is not a legal basis. I’m amazed WCC don’t realise this.
Stuff reports:
When Phillip James Williams crashed his red Ford Falcon into a power pole at a speed of at least 112kph, he did so to try “to get rid of” his partner.
After she had been flung about 13 metres from the vehicle, she woke up on the crash scene screaming and realised Williams seemed disappointed she had survived.
Williams, 36, was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment in the High Court in Christchurch on Wednesday after he had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, two counts of assault, and impaired driving causing injury.
Because Williams received his second strike warning for his latest offending, he will serve his full sentence without the possibility of earlier release on parole. Williams has 48 prior convictions.
Thanks to three strikes, Williams is locked up for nine years. Labour is changing the law so that he will be eligible for parole after just three years. He has 48 previous convictions, yet they think he just needs another chance!
Experts had found Williams was at high risk of intimate partner offending. This was not the first time he had been violent towards a partner. In 2017, he was convicted of kidnapping, threatening to kill and assault after he had threatened to drive his partner at the time off a cliff at 120kph. She managed to escape.
Sooner or later he will probably kill someone.
Stuff reports:
The Wellington branch of the NZ Law Society has voted to pursue a motion that would see an international jurist look into the conduct of NZ judges and judicial independence.
Wellington branch president Christopher Griggs said about 40-50 members met for the branch’s annual meeting on Wednesday evening and voted “by a significant majority” in favour of presenting two motions to the council of the NZ Law Society at its next meeting in October.
Both motions concerned a memorandum written by legal luminaries including Sir Geoffrey Palmer, several QCs and various law professors to address concerns raised in the “Moana” case.
I’m heartened to see Wellington lawyers at least think judicial independence is worth fighting for.
The conduct in question involved Family Court Judge Peter Callinicos being contacted by Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu and Principal Family Court Judge Jackie Moran in relation to the part-heard “Moana” case. They contacted Callinicos after being contacted by the then-chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, Sir Wira Gardiner who claimed Callinicos had “bullied” Oranga Tamariki staff.
The committee found the actions of the senior judges “highly unconventional” and said private meetings between Heads of Bench and a party to a current proceeding “undermines the separation of powers and independence of the judiciary” and “has the potential to undermine public confidence in the judicial system”.
You have a powerful party (the Government) in a court case which is going terribly badly for them having private meetings with the heads of bench to try and pressure the Judge to change how he manages the case. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
As a result of that vote, the Wellington branch will present its motion to the national body seeking the adoption and implementation of recommendations made in the memorandum, and to direct the president Jacque Lethbridge to write to the Attorney-General requesting him to advise the Governor General, Dame Cindy Kiro, “to appoint a current or retired senior jurist [a judge, lawyer or academic] from a common law jurisdiction outside of New Zealand, to inquire into, and if appropriate make recommendations upon, the matters raised in the Rule of Law Committee memorandum”.
That would be a great way forward. The heads of benches are compromised on this issue. The Chief Justice is compromised. A senior international jurist would be an excellent idea.
One News reports:
Checks weren’t done on Matthew Tukaki’s resume before he was appointed to a key Government role.
And in the same week he was appointed to Director of the Suicide Prevention Office, 1News can exclusively reveal his CV holds inconsistencies.
Just over five years ago, Tukaki came home from Australia with claims of an extraordinary career, claiming he held down a role with the United Nations (UN) and led Drake International through the global financial crisis (GFC).
Back in New Zealand, he became the Māori spokesman on just about everything, and has taken on a number of Government roles.
That includes chairing an advisory board to turn around the maligned ministry, Oranga Tamariki, being a director for the Workforce Development Council for the Tertiary Education Commission, and this week he was appointed as the Director of the Suicide Prevention Office.
The circumstances surrounding Tukaki’s departure at the UN are disputed.
In his Māori Council bio, Tukaki claimed he was directly appointed to the global entity by the then Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, to sit as a member of the institution’s governing board. According to Tukaki, he undertook the position for over three years.
A UN spokesperson said it was an elected position, not an appointment by the Secretary General, and one which he held for less than a year.
“He then had to resign the role of Local Network Representative when he was asked to step off the [Global Compact Network Australia] Board for an alleged serious breach of Director’s Duties, including misrepresenting himself at meetings with the Australian Government.”
Tukaki disagrees with the spokesperson’s representation of his departure.
“First of all, we were appointed by Ban Ki Moon in a press release on the sixth of May of 2013. And you’ve got to understand the process of election, I was elected. I’m very proud of that.
Just because you get mentioned in a press release doesn’t mean you are the personal appointee of the Secretary-General.
I could play that game. Back in the 2000s the UN set up a “Secretary-General’s Working Group on Youth Unemployment”. Various global youth groups were asked to nominate reps to it. For a meeting in Beijing I was asked to attend on behalf of the International Young Democratic Union and an obscure parliamentary staffer called Jacinda Ardern was due to attend on behalf of the International Union of Socialist Youth. We were both on their respective boards. Now never in a million years would I suggest that I was personally appointed by the UN Secretary-General. He wouldn’t know me from a block of cheese.
In various places, including on LinkedIn, his biography for the Māori Council, and the information he presented to the Tertiary Education Commission, Tukaki described leading Drake International through the GFC, and holding power of attorney for the Southern Hemisphere at the recruitment company.
A spokesperson for Drake International rebuffed Tukaki’s description.
They say he worked there for a year between 2007 and 2008, and a further month in 2010, and that his title in their records in Australia was ‘General Manager, Government and Public Sector’.
A further top source at the company said Tukaki “overstated” the scope of his employment. When queried whether Tukaki had led the company through the GFC, the short response was, “not at all”.
Good reporting by TVNZ, but I should point out Cactus Kate actually exposed this claim over 14 months ago in May 2021.
Tukaki was never asked for a CV when charged with turning the organisation around and being paid a rate of $1000 a day, on the taxpayer dime.
There was no requirement to check Tukaki’s employment history, says the Minister for Children, Kelvin Davis.
He was well-known and had previously been appointed to Government positions, Davis says.
“So we just trusted in what they had done, and I’d heard about the stuff he’d done apparently overseas.
There’s two issues here. One is that Tukaki had massively exaggerated his CV – say an 8.5/10 on the Golriz scale.
The second is that he got appointed to senior government roles without a reference or employment check. Kelvin says there was no need as they knew him. You’d get sacked in the private sector for that.
Tukaki is of course a very vocal critic of National and ACT. Maybe that was the only reference checking they decided was needed?
The 2021 Residents Survey in Wellington was a terrible terrible results with less than 1 in 5 Wellingtonians happy with the Council. I thought that was rock bottom, but no they have managed to go even lower so now barely 1 in 10 Wellingtonians are happy with them.
The 2022 survey is here.
Wellington needs change.
Labour would have you believe our high inflation is all due to international factors. But the reality is that Labour’s own policies are contributing to inflation and tighter household incomes. Have a look at the PM’s speech in January.
And that is before one even looks into the macro impact of borrowing and printing billions of dollars to fund their overall spending.
The Court of Appeal recently ruled in a case about:
This appeal concerns a decision by the Chief Ombudsman under s 28A of the Ombudsmen Act 1975 refusing permission for a private dispute resolution service to use “ombudsman” in its name. Without that permission, it is unlawful to use the ombudsman name in connection with any business, or the provision of any service.
The appellant is Financial Services Complaints Limited (FSCL). FSCL’s dispute resolution scheme is approved under the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008 (FSP Act). Two other such schemes have permission to use the ombudsman name in connection with their schemes. FSCL wishes to do likewise.
We trust on the Ombudsman to be the fair neutral party holding the Government to account. But in this case they were found to have acted very badly.
The summary is:
The Court of Appeal found:
Why this is important is that the Court of Appeal found the Chief Ombudsman didn’t decide this issue fairly. The decision was predetermined. And the role of the Chief Ombudsman is to make sure the Government doesn’t predetermine things and treats people fairly. So there is an obvious loss of confidence following this ruling.