Stuff reports:

It’s “an absolute train wreck” in the eyes of Māori Party co-leader and Waiariki MP Rawiri Waititi.

For National Housing spokesperson Chris Bishop MP, it’s “a social and economic disaster”.

The normally opposing political forces both condemn the ongoing use of Rotorua motels as emergency accommodation for people who are homeless.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Waititi said he was calling on Housing Minister Megan Woods to launch an independent investigation into the matter.

That is a good idea. The status quo is terrible for everyone – both those in emergency housing in Rotorua, and the other residents of Rotorua.

Andreas Heuser writes:

Castalia has developed a constructive alternative reform model for Communities 4 Local Democracy. The alternative model requires both central government and local government to step up.

Central government would set regulatory benchmarks on water quality, economic performance and environmental outcomes. Councils would then act to comply with those regulatory benchmarks within a strict five-year timeframe.

During that period, we would expect locally and regionally-appropriate models to be developed in response to incentives.

A similar process was used when regional power boards were transferred to electricity lines companies in the early 1990s. The process could be supported by a commissioner, for example the Infrastructure Commission, to resolve any disputes and help facilitate agreement. This facilitation role has worked very well in recent municipal mergers in Portugal, for example.

A target end-state will emerge after the five years. Smaller councils will likely merge their water services into a proportionately-owned regional public water company.

Localities that can reach compliance may opt to stay standalone. Councils will be held to account to ensure water quality, financial performance and environmental outcomes are met.

The result is reform where local and regional differences are accommodated.

Community accountability is retained, management and governance incentives are enhanced, access to finance is improved, scale and scope efficiencies are exploited and the model is flexible for future developments such as climate or demographic change.

This is a vastly superior model to both the status quo and the unaccountable Three Waters regime the Government wants to implement.

It is a false dichotomy to claim it is a choice between the status quo and the terrible model the Government has devised.

The model above should be the basis for reform.

You can also read Andreas’ article on the Castilia site.

Newshub reports:

The Prime Minister is denying Labour is favoured by gangs after a member urged their followers not to vote for National because of the party’s promised crackdown on organised crime. 

Jacinda Ardern faced questions on Monday over whether the call highlighted a view her party was softer on crime than the Opposition – a suggestion she rallied against. 

It comes after a Head Hunters member shared a post from National on social media, urging their followers not to support the party. The post detailed how National planned to crack down on gangs including banning gang patches, giving police the ability to stop gang gatherings in public and the ability to search gang hangouts for guns. 

So now both the Mongrel Mob and Head Hunters have told their members not to vote National.

This is because they are not stupid. Why would they want to change the Government? It just passed a law allowing them all to get shorter sentences and parole eligibility no matter how many violent offences they commit.

The August 2022 Roy Morgan is out.

Party Vote

• Labour 35.0% (+1.0% from July)
• National 35.5% (+0.5%)
• Greens 9.0% (-1.5%)
• ACT 10.5% (-0.5%)
• Maori 5.0% (+1.0%)
• NZ First 1.5% (nc)
• TOP 1.0% (-1.5%)
• New Conservatives 0.5% (-0.5%)

Seats

• Labour 45 (-20 from election)
• National 45 (+12)
• Greens 11 (+1)
• ACT 13 (+3)
• Maori 6 (+4)

Governments

• Labour/Green 56/120
• Labour/Green/Maori 62/120
• National/ACT 58/120

Direction

• Right 37.5% (-3.0%)
• Wrong 53.0% (+2.0%)

Newshub reports:

Newshub can reveal every month thousands of people are choosing to leave emergency departments instead of waiting for treatment, whilst the number of patients waiting more than 24 hours in an emergency department is soaring.

National implemented and achieved a target of 95% of ED patients being seen within six hours.

Labour scrapped that target and now we have thousands of people not even staying to be seen.

Newshub can reveal on average nearly 3400 people are walking out of EDs every month and that’s not even counting those who sign the paperwork confirming it was their choice to go.

Over a year that would be 40,000 people who went to ED and walked out!

“I can confirm that 540 people waited longer than 24 hours in an emergency department in the month of June 2022.”

Again National had 95% of patients being seen within six hours.

Luke Malpass writes:

Was this the week we finally learned just how faulty Labour’s political radar has become?

Within 24 hours Labour had tabled and then walked away from a bill that would have applied GST on fees for KiwiSaver.  …

Anyway, Labour has been stretching the friendship with the electorate on tax since 2020. Getting rid of interest deductibility on investment housing was one, and a new clean car tax on imported combustion cars another that has already gone through in this term. The tax change that was clearly flagged before the 2020 election was an increase in the top rate of personal income tax to 39% for income over $180,000.

But Finance Minister Grant Robertson said clearly at the time that there would be no other taxes. The “KiwiSaver Tax”, according to the Regulatory Impact Statement accompanying the bill, would cost some $103 billion in savings forgone through to 2070.

So they promised no new taxes and tried to sneak through a $103 billion one!

The Government is currently reviewing the Covid traffic light settings and then the entire system. There seems little reason, given the current numbers and so forth, for the country not to go into green.

After a long, cold winter, not having to wear a mask everywhere may be just the tonic a grumpy public needs, as will any movement around isolation periods for people who get Covid. Getting this right will be key for the Government in the latter part of the year.

Labour will need to fix up its political radar if it wants to be re-elected in 2023.

Going to Green would be a sensible step.

Jacinda Ardern in 2017 promised 100,000 Kiwibuild houses in 10 years, or by 2028.

Based on their current progress, they will make their 100,000 promise in the year 2313.

She promised that by 2022 the scheme will be going so well they would be completing a massive 250 homes week or 50 every weekday.

In the last five months they have completed 21 Kiwibuild homes which is one per week.

So they promised 250 a week, and they are delivering one a week.

The latest death rates per million for people with Covid are:

1. Victoria 803
2. NSW 606
3. New Zealand 580
4. Australia 549
5. South Australia 444
6. Queensland 387
7. Tasmania 335
8. ACT 293
9. NT 286
10. WA 229

Steven Joyce writes:

The suggestion seems to be that the decision to charge GST on KiwiSaver fees slipped into the regular tax bill without the top echelons of government being fully aware of the ramifications of it. And that the failure to mention it in the press release announcing the bill was an unfortunate oversight. …

Unless all the officials involved were incompetent, which is highly unlikely, and the Prime Minister and Finance Minister can’t read, also unlikely, there is no way they didn’t understand that the Inland Revenue were lodging a bill to increase the tax take by $200 million and reduce people’s KiwiSaver balances accordingly.

Joyce detailed the numerous steps at which Ministers are briefed on what is in a bill.

So unless there is a total breakdown of the normal decision-making processes within government, which is highly unlikely, this decision and the underhand way it was announced was premeditated.

They knew what its impact would be, and made a deliberate decision not to include it in the press release, hoping no-one would notice!

Whatever the final cause of the Government’s awry political antennae, it appears very likely the die has been cast and the public have made up their minds about this lot, and ministers increasingly know it.

For the evidence of that, see Grant Robertson’s regular personal attacks on Opposition leader Christopher Luxon. It is likely Robertson realises the public’s perception of his government as out of touch and ineffective is now baked in, and the only chance they have of surviving next year is to make the alternative government look as shop-worn as their crowd.

Expect to see much more attacking of the opposition over the next 12 months. Labour’s strategists may not have been able to work out that adding GST to KiwiSaver this way was political poison, but they are aware that the only way to level the playing field for the next election is to drag the alternative government down and create as much doubt about them as there is about Labour. It’s the 2005 and 2008 playbook all over again. And it won’t be pretty.

Yep they will be looking for their H-Fee!

The Herald reports:

The opposition is unhappy Finance Minister Grant Robertson ignored their calls to enhance the expertise represented on the Reserve Bank’s (RBNZ) new board.

National Party Finance spokeswoman Nicola Willis and Act Party leader David Seymour in May raised concerns over the mix of people Robertson proposed be appointed to the board.

Emails they sent Robertson, who was obliged by law to “consult” them before recommending candidates for the Governor General to appoint, have been made public under the Official Information Act.

“The candidates you propose each have impressive records in their individual areas of expertise and have skills that would positively contribute to the board,” Willis told Robertson.

“However, based on the information you have provided to us, the candidates appear to have limited experience in central banking and prudential regulation and supervision. We believe these competencies are essential and could be under-represented on the proposed board.”

Seymour was more specific: “Your appointments to date look sensible, as do your proposals to appoint Byron Pepper and Hinerangi Raumati-Tu’ua.

“However, your other two appointments are dubious. Jeremy Banks and Rawinia Higgins (the latter in particular) appear to have no background whatsoever in economics, finance or banking.”

There are few boards more important than the Reserve Bank Board and it is a huge worry that appointments have been made of people with no experience in banking or even economics.

The Daily Mail reports:

The University of California, Berkeley has introduced a mask mandate for students who have not taken a seasonal flu shot.

‘Masks are required during flu season if not vaccinated for flu,’ an announcement on the school’s website read.

I hope this doesn’t give the Government here ideas. We have already had activists call for measures used against Covid-19 to be used against the flu.

Stuff reports:

Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has decried “fascism” and challenged Sydney’s oldest university to protect free speech on campus after he was yelled and sworn at by student protesters during a function and escorted out by police.

Turnbull left the Sydney University Law Society event on Thursday without speaking, following the boycott by members of the Student Representative Council and student body, who called him “ruling class scum” who “wouldn’t listen to anyone below” him.

He said it was a “dreadful state of affairs” and “a very sad day” for his alma mater and argued free speech no longer existed on campus if it was in the hands of protesters with loudspeakers.

“It’s just complete fascism. Just extraordinary,” Turnbull told the Herald. “One of the things they accused me of being was anti-queer, which didn’t seem to match the fact that I legalised same-sex marriage. It was literally a litany of objections.”

Turnbull correctly describes those responsible as fascists.

And as he says he was an advocate of legalising same-sex marriage. Basically those students and others just want to deny freedom of speech to anyone they disagree with.

Matthew Hooton writes:

The Ardern administration has finally confirmed — were confirmation required — that it is the most incompetent New Zealand Government in living memory, and perhaps ever. …

National’s Muldoonist era might rival Jacinda Ardern’s circus. But, however controversial, the Clyde Dam, the Waitara and Motunui methanol plants and the Marsden Point expansion were built — in contrast to Ardern’s 100,000 KiwiBuild houses, the $30 billion Auckland tram, and the $6.4b Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme, for which the Government has allocated a further $120 million for yet another business plan.

Perhaps we’re better off those projects are doomed. But the Ardern Government’s inability to deliver anything it says it values is surely unique.

Not only can’t I recall a NZ Government that has been so incompetent at delivery as this one, but even globally it is hard to think of examples. Most project failures mean they happen a few years late, but this Government’s failures means they are literally centuries behind with their projected completion.

From mid-2020, real wages began falling and have done so for eight quarters. Since the Labour Cost Index (LCI) began in 1992, that has never happened before.

By mid-2021, real wages fell below where they were under National. A year later, they have fallen a further 3.7 per cent, so that New Zealand wage and salary earners have experienced a 3.3 per cent cut in their real wages since Ardern has been Prime Minister — the worst five-year change since the series began 30 years ago.

Another fine achievement.

Prolonged border controls destroyed the international education industry, putting the viability of universities at risk. Trades training faces collapse following the bizarre project to set up a Wellington-based super-polytechnic, at a cost so far of $200m, with nothing to show for it.

No one knows what the billions for two new health bureaucracies in Wellington will deliver. We don’t know where the $1.9b for mental health went. There is wild talk of writing off student loan debt as an election sweetener.

It won’t work. The defeat of the Ardern Government is increasingly likely, and more than deserved.

Labour governments can do many things and survive. Enriching property owners while slashing workers’ real wages isn’t one.

Hopefully just one year to go.

My Stateline reports:

With California’s power grid under strain due to extreme heat and high demand, the utility grid operator is asking residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles. This comes days after the state announced a plan to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.

They really are muppets.

Stuff reports:

National and the ACT Party have labelled a bill which seeks to make all public sector agencies use clear, concise language when communicating with the public as “stupid” and one which will create “language police”. …

Her plain language bill, which passed its second reading in the House on Thursday, would mean every public service and Crown agency must make sure it communicates in plain language and have a designated plain language officer. 

Language officers – just what we need!

Bishop said the issue didn’t need to be legislated against.

“Why not send out an email from (state services commissioner) Peter Hughes saying we need to make sure we are writing clearly and concisely?”

Bishop is right. You don’t need an Act of Parliament to tell staff in agencies to use plain language.

I have no doubt this law will end up creating bureaucracy within the bureaucracy.

This is the Prime Minister of Finland dancing.

This is (then) New Zealand Labour Cabinet Ministers Pete Hodgson and Trevor Mallard dancing.

Finland wins, hands down.

Luke Malpass writes:

Just as it looked like Labour might be getting out of its own way and hewing back to creating some sort of economic story, it tabled a bill in Parliament that would have literally jacked up the tax on almost every KiwiSaver account.

That plan was swiftly abandoned less than 24 hours later.

Labour do polling every week night, so one can only assume the results were dire on Tuesday night!

The accompanying Regulatory Impact Statement even provided some helpful figures and examples about what this would cost – some $225 million a year in extra tax, or $103 billion to 2070. Both the Regulatory Impact Statement and common sense say the same thing – at the end it was a tax on retirement savings, paid for by KiwiSaver members through higher fees.

Remember that this got signed off by Cabinet. They were told there would be over $100 billion taken from KiwiSaver accounts through this tax change, and they said “Great, let’s do it”

Labour promised no new taxes, and there it was, in black and white. Not only that but it was a proposal to increase the costs of one of Labour’s legacy projects – the Michael Cullen-created KiwiSaver.

Dr Cullen would not have been impressed.

For National this is the closest thing to a political free lunch there is. Both Luxon and finance spokesperson Nicola Willis will try to hang this around Labour’s collective neck until the next election. “Can they really be trusted?” will be the refrain.

They tried and failed with a CGT. They have tried and failed with a KiwiSaver Tax.

What will they try next?

The last leader of the USSR has died, aged 91.

We owe him a great debt. He showed the world that communist regimes can’t survive daylight. Repression isn’t just a coincidental aspect of communist regimes, but a key element of them.

Gorbachev allowed freedom of speech and media, and the result was the collapse of not just the USSR but also the freeing of Eastern Europe from their slave nation status. Few figures have had a larger impact on world history than Gorbachev, even if not by design.