WCC need to be careful. It is one thing to promote people standing for Council, but the list of issues they chose to highlight is very one sided.

Don’t they want candidates who are concerned about affordable rates? infrastructure? congestion?

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

Ministers have repeated assurances that councils will continue to own water assets under the proposed ‘Three Waters’. But those claims are utterly false. Public law firm Franks Ogilvie, in an opinion reviewed by Gary Judd QC, lay out the extent to which these claims have been “calculated to deceive Parliamentarians, and when it becomes law, to deceive New Zealanders generally”. The opinion is being released publicly today.

Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director Jordan Williams says, “It is clear the Government realised that they could not convince New Zealanders that handing over ownership of local assets was a good idea. So they’ve instead redefined ‘ownership’ to mean nothing, so they can promise continued community ‘ownership’ in an incredible display of contempt for the public, the truth and the law.”

The legal opinion is very detailed, but it is not hard to understand. It calls the claims of retention of local ownership “false, misleading and deceptive” as “councils are expressly denied the rights of possession, control, derivation of benefits, and disposition that are the defining attributes of ownership”. Gary Judd QC comments in his review of the legal opinion: “When all the lying statements are put together, as [the] opinion does, the government’s effrontery is breath-taking.”

The legal opinion concludes that despite the obvious dishonesties, ministers are immune to prosecution under the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 and the Fair Trading Act 1986 as they are not ‘in trade’.

Mr Williams continues, “But that defence does not apply to people assisting the Ministers in a professional capacity. That would include, for example, members of the Working Group on Three Waters governance that could be held liable as they operated ‘in trade’ as professionals providing a service and could be deemed complicit in making the untrue claims.”

I urge people to read the legal opinion.

What the Government is doing is the equivalent of passing a bill that defines Pi as 4, and then claiming it must be true because the law states it is 4.

The bill states that Councils will own the water entities, but all they are doing is getting the word “ownership” rather than actual ownership. Actual ownership involves the ability to appoint the board, sell, buy etc.

Here, without editing or any additional comment is the Facebook post made by Hamilton West Labour MP Dr Gaurav Sharma last night,. which he makes serious allegations against Labour MP’s, the Parliamentary Service and the Prime Minister’s Office:

Over the last 24hours many of you would have read the op-ed I wrote in NZ Herald. I want to start by thanking a large number of you who have contacted me from across the country with support. I have also had a few people who have tried to harass me without knowing the fully story. Due to being busy with constituent work and more recent matters I haven’t had much time to follow the comments on social media, but from what I have seen there are many genuine questions out there. In order to give context to the issues I raised yesterday, I am sharing the following timeline of events:

⁃Before I took my oath I was assigned a Relationship Manager by Parliamentary Services to look after me and my staffing levels. This person had a direct conflict of interest in their role due to being a Labour member who had tried to stop me getting selected as a candidate. I raised this on Day 0 with a senior Parliamentary Manager who assured me that this would never be an issue.

⁃In February 2021 I had an underperforming staff member but instead of listening to my concerns, this was actively turned into a major project by the Labour Party Whips to bring me into disrepute and to rein me in. I sat in meetings after meetings being told I was doing a terrible job and that 9/10 times the MP is a bully so we refuse to listen to anything you have to say. I wrote numerous emails to Parliamentary Services and Whips Office asking for support, providing significant evidence of underperformance by a staff member but I was told in clear words “if you are staying up and working until 3am, you should work until 5am to make up for your staff’s incompetence.” Issues I raised involved staff being drunk at work, not showing up to work, being sent on leave without any notice or approval, and a significant wastage of taxpayer’s money. But all I was told was that I need to shut up and do a mentoring course on managing people. I had hundreds of pages to prove that my staff wasn’t doing the work they were hired to do and it affected my ability to provide services to my constituents but I was never listened to. The main bully was Kieran McAnulty who kept gaslighting me, shouting at me, degrading me in front of caucus members and other attendees at events and telling me that I was a terrible MP. His staff members at the Whips Office were the same. One of the most clearest examples was on the night of the America’s Cup final race where he asked me to come to his room for a meeting on a very short notice, but when I got there I was advised that he had to be in an important meeting so couldn’t make it. I spent close to 2 hours sitting with Kieran McAnulty’s staff in his office being told how terrible a manager I was, with no right of reply. But what was most sickening was that when I came out I saw photos of him drinking and celebrating the America’s Cup final while I sat in his office like a school kid at the headmaster’s office.

⁃In August 2021 I found that a Member of Parliament of the Labour Party and a Parliamentary staff member (also a Labour Member) were misusing taxpayer’s money. As someone who took an oath to uphold and protect the interests of this country I raised my concerns with the Relationship Manager at Parliamentary Services. Instead of protecting my identity and looking into this matter, Parliamentary Services forwarded my concerns to the Labour Party Whips and alerted them of what I had said.

⁃Following this incidence, I was put through further bullying. I was told by then Junior Whip Duncan Webb that what I did was wrong and I should be ashamed of myself. I was told that it was lucky that this Parliamentary Services Relationship Manager (who I had raised issues re conflict of interest on day 0) who is also a Labour Party member informed the Whips Office, because it could have fallen into the wrong hands which could have caused trouble. I was then told by Duncan Webb that an accusation like this could mean that the government could get into trouble, lose the election etc and such issues needed to be contained rather than discussed freely. I was then told by Duncan Webb in clear terms that “the only way this country can succeed is if Labour is in government. Government means Labour. So the Party comes first and foremost before the country.” The matter was never looked into and everything was hushed.

⁃Due to my outspoken stance on squandering of taxpayers money and other policy issues I was further bullied. I was called to last minute meetings with no notice and no support person (but once when I managed to take a caucus colleague with me).

⁃My staffing issues created through the mismanagement of the Whips Office and Parliamentary Services continued. My messages to the Parliamentary Services Relationship Manager were often not returned and I was repeatedly deflected to instead sort it out with the Whips.The same Whips who would bully me and had no legal right to begin with in a triangular relationship between Parliamentary Services (employer), my staff (employee) and myself (day-to-day-manager). I went to the Manager’s Manager but nothing came out of it. I went to the CEO of Parliamentary Services, I wrote emails and made calls – I was promised support to help with the staffing issue but all I got was silence. Many weeks after meeting the CEO I was told that I should go back and talk to the Whips.

Slowly I fell into a cycle of stress, depression and lack of hope as I found myself stuck. I remember one of my former patients sending me very kind message on World Mental Health Day about how I had helped her as a doctor a while ago. I thought to myself about how despite listening to and assisting many of my constituents with bullying and harassment issues, I had to put a bold face up as I struggled everyday with the thought of contemplating suicide. The Labour Party Whips Office and the Parliamentary Services removed all my mānā and didn’t give me any fair process to express my concerns. Slowly I started withdrawing from all the social events in Wellington. Every time I saw my bully Kieran McAnulty speak or smile, it made me sad and angry at the system and the process.

⁃I came to a point in 2021 where I advised Duncan Webb that I had had enough, and because I hadn’t received the support and justice I had been seeking I would go to the media to present the whole issue and tell them how I was being mistreated and there was no investigation into serious claims I had made about the incompetence of a staff member. This is the first time they listened. I was told that they would fly up to Hamilton and talk to me face to face to resolve my issues, which I declined because I had been in meetings after meetings with them for months with no resolution. Their solution included paying a severance pay from taxpayer’s purse to a person who had been repeatedly underperforming. I refused on principle, doing this would mean a double wastage of public money. I kept being pushed to concede but I refused. Eventually they cut a deal with the staff member to encourage them to resign from my office (I did not pay this person out because I stood by my claims which were never and still haven’t been investigated).

⁃After this, the bullying continued in many ways, simplest of which was a freeze on hiring staff. I challenged this and asked them to openly and fairly investigate my claims. But it was refused. For months on end I continued to be short staffed in providing support and services to my constituents who deserved better. I was told that I wasn’t an employee of the Labour Party, or its caucus or Parliamentary Services. My employers were the constituents – but my resourcing was halted by the Labour Party Whips – who were not legally even part of the triangular relationship. A fourth wheel which I continued to challenge shouldn’t be able to make decisions for my constituents especially when they were themselves the bully. When I tried to contact the Parliamentary Services they stopped taking my calls or replying to emails, instead again asking me to talk to the Whips.

⁃I went the only place I felt I could to seek help in December 2021. The Prime Ministers’ Office. The advice was always clear – do not give anything in writing and do not expect anything in writing. Everything can be OIA’ed. So I met the Chief of Staff of PMO for over an hour of meeting which was supposed to be only a 30mins appointment. I took with me hundreds of pages of evidence – emails, timelines, issues etc to explain my case. I very clearly said that Kieran McAnulty was a bully. That I was being bullied. That other caucus members were being bullied by Kieran McAnulty. Few weeks after the meeting when I had not heard from PMO, I contacted the PMO with a written complaint on 18th of December 2021. An investigation was never done. My bully still walks the halls of power with his head held up high, while a “messenger from Caucus” advised me yesterday after my op-ed in Herald that I should take the basement exit and try to avoid Parliament. The kick in the guts however is that despite raising concerns about Kieran McAnulty, not only by me but as I understand by other members of the caucus too (which I had clearly said to the PMO) he was promoted to being a Minister of the Crown. This is our justice.

⁃The issues with Parliamentary Services are even more complex & detailed and have continued. My current staff member has also raised significant concerns about the support from Parliamentary Services and has essentially been ghosted and stone walled. They have had no support in terms of expectation settings & annual review and have been underpaid for a significant amount of time. They went on to raise similar concerns as me re the Relationship Manager (the Labour member with conflict of interest) but it was only after 17months that this person was removed but never investigated for a serious breach of confidentiality (in my case raising concerns re taxpayers money) and in other cases re appropriate support and training.

⁃I know that some people think that I had for some reason tried to time this with what was happening with the issues at the National Party but that is far from the truth. I was told in an email in May by Parliamentary Services that there had never been an investigation against me despite me asking for an official review on multiple incidences. In April this year I contacted a range of lawyers in Wellington and eventually engaged someone to help me draft a legal challenge to the issues I had been facing. I was open about this to the Parliamentary Services and the Labour Whips from the moment I hired the lawyer but they thought I was bluffing. Due to a recent overseas trip and the staff shortage it has taken me a bit longer than I had anticipated to put together all the notes for my grievances and concerns (I am at 40+pages but still writing). Last week I had written to a new Manager at Parliamentary Services asking for a report on some serious complaints I had made (over a year ago). This Manager had promised me 4months ago that things would be looked into but I had not heard back. In reply to my most recent query the Parliamentary Services Manager advised me that they would instead first like to meet me with the Labour Whips and then they would give a written reply. Don’t forget that Parliamentary Services is part of the triangular employment relationship, but Labour Whips aren’t. Hence my comments yesterday about seldom replying and often from behind the Whips’ table.

⁃To me this meeting on Thursday was another attempt to silence me, to bully me and to put me in my place. But unlike other times this time they had given me a slightly longer notice for the meeting. Having been in numerous meetings where I had no support person and was being talked at by 3-4 people often, I decided to take my lawyer Phil Mitchell with me to the meeting to support me. The meeting was called by the Labour Party Whips in their room with the presence of Parliamentary Services on the day of their choosing. They weren’t expecting me to bring a support person let alone a lawyer. Suddenly the conversation in the room was about moving forward. The staffing issues that PM and Whips office claim they had been working with me in good faith to resolve had been going on for 1.5 years but now somehow with the lawyer in the room and threat of a legal case hanging about their head, I was advised that all was forgotten! That I just had to move forward, drop my complaints about Parliamentary Service and significant issues of drunk staff, staff with serious complaints from constituents etc because they didn’t want to investigate these claims. I was told that I was relitigating old matters. At the Thursday meeting I continued to say that Kieran McAnulty is a bully and if they would investigate him. I was just given blank stares and told to move on. I was also told by Duncan Webb that making such claims against a sitting senior Labour MP can affect my career projection.

⁃But they agreed to resolve the staffing issues. Within 30mins of a meeting with my lawyer I had been emailed by two Managers at Parliamentary Services that everything would be resolved and we were moving forward. The ads and roles for staffing were sent to me and I was free to hire asap, something that couldn’t be done in 1.5 years was done in a short meeting with a lawyer.

⁃The reason the op-ed came out yesterday was because the meeting was called by the Labour Whips yesterday at a time and place of their choosing and in that meeting they continued to laugh on my face saying in front of my lawyer “how will you even sue us, you have no legal rights” while repeatedly refusing to investigate anything I have said or investigate me for any issue.

⁃In summary, I stand by my claims that I have been subjected to ongoing bullying by the Parliamentary Service and the Labour Whips and none of my concerns have been investigated. Neither has there been an investigation into any claims against me as per the last written contact from the Deputy CEO of Parliamentary Service. I didn’t just wake up on the wrong side of the bed one day and made these serious claims. For 1.5years I have been trying to seek independent investigation, justice and support from Parliamentary Service, Labour Whips and the PMO. I also want to clearly state that despite what Duncan Webb says it has always been my belief that the country should always come ahead of any party. If I ever have to choose between party and country my allegiance will always be with the country first.

A reader writes in:

My fellow Kiwis,

I think that – as a nation – we may have reached a watershed moment.

As our construction sector implodes, our education system quietly dies and our health system lurches desperately from crisis to crisis, kept alive only by the Herculean efforts of our overworked doctors and – in particular – our nurses, our benevolent and all-knowing Minister of Health, Dr Do-Little, has come up with a plan: the Government is teaming up with Shortland Street.

Like Captain Planet before them, with their powers combined, the Government and the writers of Shortland Street will craft and broadcast a sweeping epic of inspiration, struggle against the odds, and finally, of dreams come true.  As the young heroine prevails against the evils of the colonialist patriarchy, no diversity, inclusivity or equality box will be left unticked.  And so moved will the viewers of Shortland Street be, that they – in their hundreds and in their thousands – will at last comprehend that Shortland Street is set in a hospital, that nurses work in hospitals, and that they too could perhaps train to be nurses and so also work in a hospital.

The walls and foundations of our polytechnics will pulse and throb with energy, as rank upon rank of would-be nurses will file into their seats and begin a salvific journey of nation-building.  And in years to come, we will call them as The Greatest Generation and we will offer sacrifices to the writers and producers of Shortland Street.

So let us all take this moment, to give thanks and to rejoice at the wondrous greatness of our Government, and to bask in the warmth of its protective glow.  For surely, we are all like sheep who would have gone astray, were it not for the wisdom, the foresight and above all, the kindness of our Great Leader and her merry band of student activists. 

Sit tight, New Zealand.  The cavalry is coming.

RNZ reports:

Government spending on boosting nurse recruitment through Shortland Street and TVNZ is commercially sensitive and will not be made public, a spokesperson says.

What nonsense. How is that commercially sensitive? Are they competing with Coronation Street?

In a statement on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Te Whatu Ora Health NZ confirmed the television soap and TVNZ Blacksand Partnerships – an advertising and sponsorships division – had been contracted to deliver marketing material.

TVNZ is a publicly owned company. A deal between the Government and a company it owns must be public, and not hide behind commercial sensitivity.

The Chief Ombudsman released:

The Chief Ombudsman has launched an investigation into concerns that councils are undermining local democracy by using ‘workshops’ to discuss issues and make decisions behind closed doors.

Mr Boshier is taking action after becoming concerned about the use of workshops and other informal meetings by local authorities and the way some are excluding the public from meetings in general.

“There is nothing to prevent councils from holding workshops but I am concerned at reports that some councils may be using them to avoid their responsibilities under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA).”

“Councils must give advance notice of a meeting. They must also provide an agenda and supporting papers at least two days before. Even extraordinary meetings need to be organised and reasonable notice must be given. Importantly, meetings should be open to the public, unless there is good reason under LGOIMA to exclude them.”

Mr Boshier says these meetings requirements can’t be avoided simply by calling what is really ‘meeting’ a ‘workshop.’

The vast majority of these workshops are de facto meetings. Councils use them to discuss issues and work out what the majority view is. They carefully avoid having a formal vote, but they have informal ones which then allows them to schedule a formal meeting where they simply vote in line with their earlier secret workshop discussions.

If the Chief Ombudsman can get this practice stopped, that will be a very good thing.

Brook Sabin writes at Stuff:

“Please allow 40 minutes to complete this form.” I’m sitting in Australia trying to get permission to enter my own country through a process that feels like ‘formageddon’.

Before boarding a flight to Aotearoa, you must have a New Zealand Traveller Pass – which is obtained through a multi-step Covid form known as the New Zealand Traveller Declaration.

I wish it only took 40 minutes. Over two trips I spent maybe four hours trying to get it to work.

On the first trip back from Sydney I started the process and entered in my detail and then the flight. But then the website wouldn’t let me scroll down to continue. So I hit the exit button. It had e-mailed me an ID number and password so I could continue later. So I logged back in to resume. But after I logged in it then said I needed to enter a PIN to confirm, which it had e-mailed to me. So I wanted for the PIN. Around 20 minutes later it turned up. I went to use it and it told me that the PIN had expired.

I tried three more times but every time the PIN took 15 to 20 minutes to arrive and it had expired. I finally gave up on my first attempt. I thought maybe my e-mail provider was slow, so I started a whole new declaration. Got to the same stage and could not scroll down and exited and tried to resume. Used a different e-mail address but same issues took 15 – 20 minutes to e-mail a PIN that was good for only 5 to 10 minutes.

I ended up trying four different applications with four different e-mail addresses on three different providers. All the same. It was not a delay on my end. The Government had designed a system which took longer to send you a PIN that it would be valid for.

Finally I managed to complete my 5th application in one go on a friend’s Macbook. Total time 2 – 3 hours.

Then a few days later off to Rarotonga for a family holiday. Didn’t have the screen and PIN problem this time, but a whole new set. You have to enter in your return flight and the system didn’t recognise the flight number. We tried entering in details manually and that was rejected also. We tried two different computers and same problem.

So we couldn’t complete the declaration before we left NZ, and then tried again once we were overseas. This time it worked, but now we had the issue that we had to do four seperate declarations and go through the same process for both adults and both kids. Why did they not allow you to do one joint application where you can enter the flight details and then attach passenger details and vaccination certificates.

So second trip took around three hours to do.

And it isn’t even that the declaration adds value as Brook points out:

However, you no longer require a pre-departure test to enter New Zealand. And Kiwis can enter their own country without needing a vaccination pass. So, requiring New Zealanders to fill out this form is bureaucratic nonsense.

Yep. They should scrap it for non-citizens.

After making a couple of trips to Australia, everyone I spoke to seemed annoyed by the process. Even the check-in agent said, “I’m surprised they make you do this to get into your own country.”

I spent almost four hours filling in an online form to allow me to return to New Zealand. Ironically there was no form at all for me to fill in (apart from customs declaration once landed) to go to Australia as a visitor.

Don Brash writes:

A recent report issued by the Community Boards’ Executive Committee, on Local Government New Zealand letter-head, urges the creation of “community boards, local boards, and other forms of ‘local community’ or neighbourhood governance”. When doing so “the default membership [of such bodies] should be such that 50% are elected by residents on the Maori roll and 50% by residents on the general roll”.

This is a wild distortion of any concept of democracy. Not only are those with a Maori ancestor (always now with ancestors of other ethnicities as well) only some 16% of our total population, those on the Maori roll are roughly half of that 16%, since there are nearly as many Maori New Zealanders who choose to be on the general electoral roll as choose to be on the Maori roll.

So what we see here is Local Government New Zealand – in theory representing all the local authorities in the country – arguing that 8% of the population should have 50% of the membership of “community boards, local boards, and other forms of ‘local community’ or neighbourhood governance.”

Local Government New Zealand, once again, is off the reservation.

These were posted on Dr Sharma’s Facebook page. Former Labour MP Darien Fenton attacks him for daring to speak up in public, and he responds about how he has been complaining for 1.5 years and the bullying hasn’t stopped.

The NY Post editorial:

As his followers stormed the Capitol, calling for his vice president to be hanged, President Donald Trump sat in his private dining room, watching TV, doing nothing.

For three hours, seven minutes.

There has been much debate over whether Trump’s rally speech on Jan. 6, 2021, constituted “incitement.” That’s somewhat of a red herring. What matters more — and has become crystal clear in recent days — is that Trump didn’t lift a finger to stop the violence that followed.

And he was the only person who could stop what was happening. He was the only one the crowd was listening to. It was incitement by silence.

Trump only wanted one thing during that infamous afternoon: to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to decertify the election of Joe Biden.

He thought the violence of his loyal followers would make Pence crack, or delay the vote altogether. 

To his eternal shame, as appalled aides implored him to publicly call on his followers to go home, he instead further fanned the flames by tweeting: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

His only focus was to find any means — damn the consequences — to block the peaceful transfer of power.

There is no other explanation, just as there is no defense, for his refusal to stop the violence.

It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.

It is no surprise that I agree. The NY Post is probably the most conservative leaning newspaper in the US, so their editorial is significant.

Trump is still obsessed with the 2020 election as his ego won’t allow him to accept he lost to Biden. And hence he has endorsed primary candidates who share his stance. And that has created a huge problem for the Republican Party.

A couple of months ago they were looking highly likely to get a landslide in the House and gain control of the Senate. But 538 now has them down to only 42% likely to hold the Senate, because so many of Trump’s candidates are proving unelectable in a general election.

The same goes for 2024. It should be easy for the Republicans to beat Biden or Harris in 2024, but not if the candidate is someone whose main issue is trying to prove he didn’t actually lose last time.

Just one statistic says so much. In Term 1 of this year only 22% of students at decile 1 schools in New Zealand were fully attending.

Simply appalling.

Hamilton West MP Gaurav Sharma writes an extraordinary column:

For those who need an example, Louisa Wall talked in her valedictory speech about how she was bullied by a senior Labour Party MP early in her career and despite being one of our most outspoken MPs she found out that she had no agency in the halls of Parliament when it came to her own wellbeing. If any of my more recent colleagues could speak freely, I am sure the list of similar stories with no support for MPs being bullied and no consequences for MPs bullying their colleagues would easily fill a book or two.

So a Labour MP says his colleagues are being bullied by their colleagues and get no support.

The above Member-to-Member and Party-to-Member bullying rampant in Parliament is – I believe – promoted and facilitated by this very organisation by working behind the scenes with the Whips Office, the Offices of the Leaders of various Parties, along with the Office of the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister’s Office.

So he says the bullying is facilitated by Parliamentary Services, the whips office and the PMs Office. Incredible that he write this in a column he sent to a newspaper.

With the way the current Parliamentary Service is run, you can go weeks and months before getting a reply to urgent issues and when they do have an answer it is seldom in writing and often from behind the desk of the party whips who – in my opinion, and based on what I have seen in my time in Parliament – use the Parliamentary Service to bully and harass their MPs “to keep them in line”.

This is strong language – bully and harass. And he is not referring to a 16 year old teenager, but the leadership of parties.

Where concerns have been raised with Parliamentary Service about staff or MP colleagues showing unacceptable behaviours in some cases there does not appear to have ever been any investigation or an intent to investigate. If anything, in my experience, when an MP raises serious concerns the Parliamentary Service steps back, stonewalls the conversation, ghosts the MP and throws them to the Whip’s Office to be gaslighted and victimised further so that the party can use the information to threaten you about your long-term career prospects.

Again strong language – victimised, ghosted and gaslighted – the language people use to describe abusers.

Politicians especially at top of our current system and from parties across the political spectrum often talk about “changing the system” and “kindness,” but as the saying goes “charity must start at home”.

That is a very obvious reference to Jacinda Ardern.

How bad must things be for an MP, that he feels the only way he can stop the bullying is to write a newspaper column that will inevitably end his career with Labour.

An excellent editorial by Dom Post Editor Anna Fifield on Taiwan. Fifield was the bureay chief for the Washington Post in Beijing for many years:

It’s a threading of a diplomatic needle that has allowed countries like ours to have diplomatic and economic relations with China, while also having strong if unofficial relations with the vibrant and robust democracy that is Taiwan.

But it’s a needle that’s becoming increasingly difficult to thread as the Chinese Communist Party under leader Xi Jinping has laid bare its true aims.

It has stripped Hong Kong, a key financial hub for New Zealand businesses, of almost all its democratic freedoms; it has committed cultural genocide in Xinjiang; has militarised islands across the South China Sea with impunity; and is now seeking to extend its reach into the Pacific, our neighbourhood.

All those actions together point to China strongly becoming more authoritarian after decades of gradual liberalising.

There is now almost no freedom of speech or assembly or religion in China. Lawyers, independent academics, human rights activists, religious leaders, journalists – they are all unwelcome as Xi pursues his “China Dream” to restore China to what he sees as its rightful place at the top of the global order. That’s one of the key reasons I chose to leave China at the end of 2020.

Taiwan, on the other hand, is a pluralistic democracy with a robust opposition – so robust there are still occasionally fist-fights in the parliament – and a dynamic civil society.

The 25 million people who live in Taiwan deserve to be able to determine their own future, not have it dictated to by force of arms.

But we should have no qualms about where our values lie. In the last two weeks alone, European, Japanese and Australian delegations have visited Taiwan. Pelosi is there now, and a British parliamentary mission is planned.

Where are we? Ardern has sidestepped questions about Taiwan. Our foreign minister – nominally at least – Nanaia Mahuta hasn’t uttered a peep since the tensions brought about by the Pelosi visit.

Weird to have a Foreign Minister who doesn’t seem to like to travel.

We do not exist in the world only as a trading nation. Our outsized standing on the global stage is connected to our steadfast commitment to multilateralism and human rights and democracy. We must stand up, loud and clear, for that.

Strong agree.

Chris Bishop released:

Labour’s housing policy failures have led to a huge increase in the number of Kiwis living in their cars, National’s Housing Spokesperson Chris Bishop says.

“Despite claiming they would fix New Zealand’s housing crisis, the number of people forced to live in cars under Labour has more than quadrupled to 480 in June 2022, from 108 in December 2017.

“While in Opposition in 2017, Jacinda Ardern tweeted that ‘kids living in cars and motels is not a sign of care’.

“Yet under her watch, there are now over 370 more people sleeping in their cars every night and 4100 kids are waking up each morning in motel rooms.

In 2017 I recall numerous stories about the relatively small number of people living in cars. Five years later and that number has quadrupled under Labour, yet it is somehow no longer newsworthy!’

UPDATE:

MSD has clarified that the numbers quoted are for people who were living in cars when they applied for public housing. Some of them will have been placed in emergency housing since they applied. To quote:

480 is the number of people on the Public Housing Register who had previously told us they were living in a car, when they first applied for public housing.

It is a cumulative figure as at at 30 June 2022.

They may have applied in the previous month, or they may have applied many years earlier.  

Similarly, the 108 figure is a cumulative figure as at 31 December 2017.

It’s also important to note the 480 figure is not a measure of who is currently living in a car.

When someone in urgent housing distress comes to us for help, we work with them to find somewhere to stay. We may provide an emergency housing special needs grant, or other assistance so they can avoid homelessness. While it can sometimes be challenging to identify suitable housing for people with complex needs, there is no wait list for emergency housing and people who need it are regularly housed the same day they ask us for help.

d

Labour has now passed a law massively reducing prison times for repeat serious violent and sexual offenders.

The criminals affected by this law have on average 42 convictions (for second strikers) and 74 convictions for third strikers.

91% of the affected criminals have been assessed by the Department of Corrections as being at a high risk of reoffending – and they are the ones Labour has legislated to get shorter stays in prison in future. The majority (56%) of them already offend while on bail or parole so giving them more parole will mean more victims.

The three strikes law saw actually saw a drop in the reoffending rate. Labour’s law change will see more reoffending and more victims.

Voters will be reminded on this next year.

This chart shows the Preferred PM ratings for John Key and Jacinda Ardern at the same stage of the terms as Prime Minister (Month 1 is Jan of the year after they were elected). In their fourth year of office they were polling quite similar but in this fifth year Ardern has dropped month after month and is now 10% below where Key was. And in fact Key remaining in the 40s or very high 30s right up until the end of his eighth year in office when he retired. He never ever polled as low as Ardern now is.

So maybe it is time for some media to stop referring to Ardern as being supremely popular!

Radio NZ reports:

National MP Sam Uffindell has been stood down from the party’s caucus while an investigation is carried out into further allegations of bullying raised by RNZ.

The development comes after earlier revelations that the new Tauranga MP, as a teenager, beat up a younger boy at boarding school.

In a statement, National’s leader Christopher Luxon said he had been made aware of very concerning accusations about Mr Uffindell’s behaviour toward a female flatmate in 2003 while at university.

He said Mr Uffindell disputes the claims – and so an independent inquiry will now be carried out by Maria Dew QC over the next two weeks.

In a separate statement, Uffindell admitted engaging in a “student lifestyle” while at university – including drinking and smoking cannabis – and said a number of his flatmates fell out during his second year.

However, he rejected any accusation he engaged in behaviour that was intimidatory or bullying.

Rather messy, to say the least. Having a QC investigate seems a very sensible course of action. Hopefully it can be resolved quickly – for the benefit of all parties.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the UK Telegraph writes:

Wind and solar provided almost 60pc of the UK’s power for substantial stretches last weekend, briefly peaking at 66pc. This is not to make a propaganda point about green energy, although this home-made power is self-evidently displacing liquefied natural gas (LNG) imported right now at nosebleed prices. 

It is a point about the mathematical implications of the UK’s gargantuan push for renewables. Offshore wind capacity is going to increase from 11 to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 under the Government’s latest fast-track plans.

RenewableUK says this country currently has a total of 86GW in the project pipeline. This the most ambitious rollout of offshore wind in the world, ahead of China at 78GW, and the US at 48GW. The giant hi-tech turbines to be erected on the Dogger Bank, where wind conditions are superb, bear no resemblance to the low-tech, low-yield dwarves of yesteryear. The “capacity factor” is approaching 60pc, which entirely changes the energy equation.

There will be a further rise in onshore wind and solar as well, leaving aside nuclear expansion. The scale is breathtaking. So what will be done at night or at weekends when renewable power generation is 200pc or more of UK demand? Much can be exported to the Continent through interconnectors for a fat revenue stream, helping to plug the UK’s trade deficit, and helping to rescue Germany from the double folly of nuclear closures and the Putin pact.

So the UK is doing so well with renewable energy it will soon be able to export surplus to Europe. Superb.

But what of the rest of the surplus:

Much of the power will have to be stored for days or weeks at a time. Lithium batteries cannot do the job: their sweet spot is two hours, and they are expensive. You need “long duration” storage at a cost that must ultimately fall below $100 (£82) per megawatt hour (MWh), the global benchmark of commercial viability.

That is now in sight, and one of the world leaders is a British start-up. Highview Power has refined a beautifully simple technology using liquid air stored in insulated steel towers at low pressure. 

This cryogenic process cools air to minus 196 degrees using the standard kit for LNG. It compresses the volume 700-fold. The liquid re-expands with a blast of force when heated and drives a turbine, providing dispatchable power with the help of a flywheel. Fresh tanks can be added to cover several days or even weeks of energy storage. The efficiency loss or “boil off” rate from storage vats is 0.1pc each day, and much of this is recaptured by the closed system.

Amazing technology.

It is irrelevant where you stand on the hypothesis of man-made global warming. It is free market capitalism that is solving the energy problem, though neither Extinction Rebels nor denialists seem to have noticed. In that respect they are twins. It does require political support and the right signals from governments. The UK has managed this mix surprisingly well. It has done better than most in resisting capture by vested interests.

A good lesson for us.

The submission by the Auditor-General on the Government’s proposed “reform” of Three Waters is a must read. It gets to the heart of the problems with what the Government is doing, which is a loss of accountability. Some extracts:

WSEs cannot be held to account by ratepayers like local authorities are, nor can they be held accountable by Parliament because they are not Crown entities

So they won’t be accountable to ratepayers or taxpayers.

I consider this to be a serious diminution in accountability to the public for a critical service.

A serious diminution in accountability!

Overall, I am concerned that, as currently drafted in the Bill, the accountability arrangements and potential governance weaknesses, combined with the diminution in independent assurance noted earlier, could have an adverse effect on public accountability, transparency, and organisational performance.

So the Auditor-General thinks the reforms will result in weak governance, diminished independent assurance and adversely impact accountability and transparency.

Of course from the Government’s point of view, diminished accountability and transparency might be a feature, not a bug!