The Herald reports:

National is crying “waste” after Waka Kotahi – NZ Transport Agency spent $25 million on a fit-out for its new Wellington offices.

Questions to National transport spokesman Simeon Brown show the fit-out of 8700sq m of Wellington office space will cost $25m, or about $2870. That’s significantly higher than the roughly $1600 a square metre fit-out costs that got Kainga Ora in trouble earlier this year.

That’s an insane amount of money just for a fitout. Hell you can almost do a new build for less than that, and this is just a fitout.

Newshub reports:

An independent economist says the Government’s refusal to tweak immigration rules is a “mistake” that could make inflation worse. 

It comes as staff shortages are hitting nearly every industry including healthcare, agriculture, teaching and hospitality. 

But speaking with AM on Tuesday independent economist Cameron Bagrie said the Prime Minister’s refusal to tweak the settings is a “mistake”. 

“It’s a mistake, to be brutally honest,” Bagrie told AM. “It’s a really simple equation at the moment in regard to getting inflation down. Some inflation is beyond our control, we don’t control international oil prices so we’re sort of beholden to what’s happening globally. But if you look at what’s called domestic inflation…That’s a basic mismatch between demand versus supply and at the moment, we’ve got too much demand relative to supply.

A very astute point. The anti-immigration policies of the Government is adding fuel to the inflation fire.

Stuff reports:

The Ministry of Justice struck a deal with political parties to keep secret their submissions on donation law reform.

Last month the Government announced plans to overhaul the donations regime. The shake-up will cap anonymous donations to parties at $5000.

As part of the reform, political parties – and the public – were asked for their feedback on a range of policy options.

The ministry says it will release submissions from ordinary people. But it will not disclose those from three political parties.

That’s outrageous and I hope the Ombudsman intervenes.

If there are any submissions that should be public on donation laws, it is the submissions of those who are affected by it – the political parties.

There may be a case for a small portion of a submission to be redacted if it has confidential info such as overall income and/or membership levels, but the views of the political parties should not be kept confidential.

Brightwell did not say which three parties had requested anonymity and Stuff has asked for clarification.

However, last month National released its submission to Stuff when asked for it. The Labour Party refused.

Okay so we don’t have to be Einstein to work this one out.

I didn’t think Local Government New Zealand (an organisation that previously was very well respected, and I even was a guest speaker at) could shoot itself in the foot even more than they have over Three waters, but they have managed it.

The start of their troubles was when for some moronic reason they signed a contract with the Government where they agreed to not oppose the Three Waters reforms in return for a payment of $250,000. Such an agreement would be repugnant for any democratic organisation, but even worse for one that represents a local government sector worth tens of billions of dollars. Selling your soul for a paltry $250,000 was an own goal of monumental proportions.

But now they have gone one better. The Taxpayers Union had advised its 180,000 members and supporters:

I can’t believe I’m writing this – we’ve been banned from the Local Government New Zealand conference on “the future of local government” that opened this afternoon in Palmerston North. And LGNZ has even banned you!

Late yesterday, the Taxpayers’ Union was notified by LGNZ that our registration for the conference had been revoked and we were no longer welcome.

That’s 180,000 registered supporters like you, our staff, and board members – LGNZ has said that no one from or representing the Taxpayers’ Union is permitted to attend.

So why was NZTU banned from being able to attend the conference as observers?

To our astonishment, the justification for the banning was that “the Taxpayers’ Union has previously criticised LGNZ”. The President of LGNZ said that we are not welcome because “we don’t trust what you might say” about the event.

In short, without any appreciation of the irony, LGNZ is gathering together 400 stakeholders to discuss ‘the future of local government’, democracy, diversity, and Three Waters – but won’t allow groups who disagree with them or the Government!

This could qualify as a George Orwell novel.

Remember, LGNZ is 100% funded by ratepayer and taxpayer money!

What next will LGNZ do? Ban journalists whose reporting they don’t like?

If LGNZ – tasked with promoting local democracy – is banning ratepayer voices from discussions on proposed changes to local government, what trust do you have that ratepayers will be a part of the results?

So I am emailing to ask you to speak up for democratic control and accountability.

If you agree that democracy should include those who disagree with the government and their sock puppet groups like LGNZ, please take a moment to send an email to those who made this outrageous decision.

Tell the LGNZ President, Council, and the mayors that ratepayers like you should be at the table of these discussions. Local democracy shouldn’t be limited to a special club of people and organisations that the elite happen to agree with.

The team worked overnight and most of today to create an email tool to make contacting the LGNZ leadership easy. They are relying on you to deliver the message at www.BannedByLGNZ.nz

So readers, please click on the link above and tell the leaders of LGNZ what you think of them banning NZ’s largest ratepayer group from attending the LGNZ Conference.

The Herald reports:

An “unrepentant, life-long member of the Mongrel Mob” who punched his pregnant partner unconscious has been handed a get out of jail card – but it comes with a condition.

James Meha Te Ruruku Elkington, who has 16 children and now 13 family harm incidents next to his name since September 2020, must sign up to rehabilitation programmes aimed at getting his life back on track.

He has 16 children!! Sadly most or all of them will turn like their father. I can guarantee you he has not been working to support them, as most fathers do. Almost beyond doubt the taxpayer is supporting the all.

And he has 13 family harm incidents in under two years, and the judge thinks he just needs another chance!

The assault, which left her with two black eyes, happened only months after he was sentenced to prison on charges related to serious abuse against his partner culminating in strangulation, while subject to sentencing on similar charges.

Lovely guy.

These comparisons are stupid, with respect.

First of all, wearing a seatbelt has no real negative impacts on those who do so. The inconvenience is either trivial or nil.

Being forced to wear a mask has significant negative impacts. A few:

• Masks not cleaned properly can develop bacteria and fungi
• Some masks have microfibres which can get into your lungs as foreign bodies
• People with asthma or lung problems can find it hard to breathe well while wearing a mask
• If you have glasses, they can fog up while wearing a mask making it hard to see
• It is difficult to communicate clearly while wearing a mask
• It is harder to recognise people when they are wearing a mask
• Non-verbal communication such as smiling is lost when wearing a mask

These are not trivial things. Making it harder for people to breathe, to see, to hear and to communicate is significant.

Then we turn to the benefits. Wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of death and/or serious injury in a car crash by around 50%,

Wearing a mask does reduce your chance of getting Covid-19 and spreading it, which is good. But Covid-19 is endemic, and almost everyone is going to catch it at least once, if not several times. A mask mandate at best may slow down the speed of infection, but it doesn’t save your life like a seat belt does in a car crash.

I personally still wear a mask at various indoor venues, even when not legally obliged to. But I (and most people) are not going to spent the next 30 years wearing face masks indoors.

The chart above shows annual inflation for the last decade. Up until 2017 inflation remained under 2% (the midpoint target) and last year it took off smashing through 3%, 4%, 5%, 6% and now 7%.

What makes it more painful too isn’t just the peak, but how long it stays above 2%. If you have a year at 7%, a year at 5% and a year at 4% then over the three years prices will be 17% higher.

The Herald reports:

Most Aucklanders support Collins’ free public transport proposal in a survey of 772 Aucklanders conducted by the mayoral candidate and research firm Talbot Mills.

The poll showed 73 per cent support, 7 per cent opposed, 17 per cent neutral and 4 per cent unsure.

Who doesn’t want free public transport? I also want free apple pie and free Internet. If you asked another question, you would get a very different answer. Think if you asked:

“Public transport in Auckland costs $250 million a year. Who should pay for the cost of the trains and buses – ratepayers, motorists or bus/train users” and you would get a different answer.

If you asked “Would you be willing to have your rates bill increase by $500 a year so that bus and train passengers can travel for no charge” you would get a different answer.

The most useful question (and the one I would ask) would be along the lines of “There are three broad sources of revenue for public transports – fares from transport users, rates from ratepayers and petrol tax from motorists, what proportion of the $250 million a year to run public transport in Auckland should come from each”.

Barrie Saunders writes:

If the Government gets its way, around $100 billion of community owned three waters assets, will be effectively nationalised. They will be placed in the hands of the most convoluted monopoly structure I have seen, with iwi leaders substantially in the drivers’ seat.

One might have thought a transaction of this scale would have attracted the attention of our business journalists, capable of going beyond the so called co-governance aspect.

What Barrie is saying, is that even if you put the co-governance issues to one side, where is the analysis of the case for taking $100 billion of assets off local government and placing them with monopoly companies with little public accountability?

I may have missed it, but I have not seen anything in mainstream or business media that thoroughly dissects the case for nationalisation and whether the extraordinarily complex arrangements embodied in the proposal, will deliver the benefits claimed.

This is seriously important for everyone, so why have mainstream media not allocated a significant journalistic resource to it?

Is $100 billion not large enough to warrant scrutiny?

These are key questions to ask:

1. Are the three waters operations across the country so uniformly bad, wholesale state control is justified?
2. How should local authorities be compensated for their loss of property rights?
3. If there is to be forced aggregation is four entities the right number, or should it be more like ten to allow some natural groupings to form?
4. Why are they not based regional council boundaries and why is Gisborne lumped in with Wellington and Nelson?
5. How can captive customers ensure the new entities are not typical flabby monopolies that gold plate their systems?
6. Why should iwi have a dominant governance position of assets created by communities since 1840?
7. Could the new system lead to the entities paying iwi royalties for water which originally comes from the skies?

All good questions

Inflation for the year ending June 2022 was 7.3%, exceeding most market expectations.

This is higher than many of our trading partners. Here is NZ against our top 15 trading partners:

1. US 9.1%
2. UK 9.1%
3. Italy 8.0%
4. Thailand 7.7%
5. Germany 7.6%
6. New Zealand 7.3%
7. South Korea 6.0%
8. France 5.8%
9. Singapore 5.6%
10. Australia 5.1%
11. Indonesia 4.4%
12. Vietnam 3.4%
13. Malaysia 2.8%
14. UAE 2.5%
15. China 2.5%
16. Japan 2.5%

So the NZ inflation rate is higher than 10 of our top 15 trading partners and lower than five of them.

Inflation has an international component to it, but the fact we have higher inflation than many of our trading partners is because of our domestic decisions. Non-tradeable inflation is 6.3% – more than double the maximum target of 3%. Thanks Rod and Grant.

A guest post by Owen Jennings:

My neighbour, many moons ago, was an old style socialist.  In the mould of Mickey Savage.  He championed the down and out.  He would have willingly got out of his socks for you. He distrusted control and authority of any sort.  He appreciated the value of democracy. While he worked for equality of outcomes, he saw value in equality of opportunity.

I think of Patrick, often, when I come against those who claim to be “socialists” today.  Because they have few of Patrick’s noble attributes.  Quite the opposite.

It struck me forcibly watching the various reactions to the US Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade and more recently the Court’s decision to severely clip the wings of the Environmental Protection Authority.  Like it or lump it the Court said, in both instances, “power belongs to the people, not some centralised authority, controlled by elites”.  Generally, the “socialists” went nuts over both decisions.  Washington took a massive hit.

Today’s brand of socialism is totalitarianism.  It is centralised control.  It is disdain for the ordinary people. Whether it is Roe v Wade or Three Waters, it is the elites who want to keep decisions away from the democratic, “every-person-a-vote” approach so they can exercise their superior knowledge, their advanced form of management.  In its simplest form the repudiation of Roe v Wade was about whether the Supreme Court with its narrow focus on the Constitution should make a determination on abortion or whether it was a decision to be made by the states, a decision closer to the people.

It is why the media, accomplices to the current socialist cabal in Wellington, went after Luxon.  Knowing his private views he just might open up the decision in NZ on abortion to the people.  Those ignorant oafs could not be given a say on such a matter. Luxon wondered, for a moment, what had hit him.  He is still making the transition from the boardroom where decision making gravitates up to the top, to politics where decision making best gravitates to the people. Hopefully he is getting the message that he not only works for the ‘shareholders’, they should determine the direction.

The legacy of Ardern and her government will ultimately be seen as a massive power heist. Influence stolen from the people.  From Covid rules to He Pua Pua, from the pathetic attempts to build houses to the doubling of bureaucrats in education, from taxing cow farts to captain’s call on gas exploration, from crudely forcing Te Reo on the population to controlling tenancies, from creating new ministries and building bureaucracies to the demolishing of the DHB’s, from sneaking in union control of wage bargaining to demanding Māori wards almost every major decision involves a shift of power from the people to Wellington.

Such is nature of totalitarianism in a small population the elites have to pull in family members to keep the hoi polloi from the levers of power.  Nepotism is a close colleague of totalitarianism. Two control knobs that the new socialists keep a tight handle on are controlling the narrative and engendering fear.  Most of us are too busy and too disinterested to dig below the story of the day.  Keep up the good news stories, distract when required, buy more allegiance if necessary but do not lose the storyline.  Covid and climate change are godsends for twisting the fear knob.  There is nothing like the ‘end of the world’ and ‘we only have six months to act’ to keep the masses in semi-panic and under the whip.

Ardern has made the most of her PR training to run a clever propaganda program.  Her daily appearances during Covid, her smiles for selfies, her media beat-ups when touring, her shutting down debate with a churlish, “I reject that”, have kept her in the limelight, distracting too many from what has been cooked up by the ransom-holding Māori caucus and the growing arrogance of the Wellington elites.

The hard question is, “will this centralisation be undone?”  Are National working around the clock in their smoke-filled rooms to find ways to return power to the people?  Are there strong, well-considered plans being hatched to de-centralise?  Could you envisage an Orewa speech from Luxon outlining bold plans to cut bureaucracy, establish charter schools very firmly for the long term, bring health care back to the people, localise local bodies, defund the media, and more?

Patrick will not be voting next year.  Wherever he is, votes are not needed.  Were he still here there is one thing certain – he would not be voting for growing centralisation and the power of totalitarianism.  So, who would he vote for?   

A reader writes in:

I don’t know if you have seen this article in Newshub here, but it got my BS detector tingling when I read it.  It’s around Maori suicide rates and the use of maramataka.  It’s written in a pseudo-scientific manner, but it seems to be completely oblivious to what it is actually stating.  Of note, this is a Public Interest Fund article, so probably why it has swallowed down with limited editorial input…

Lines like “In 2018, Solomon and Makiha correlated a decade of coronial suicide data with a Māori lunar calendar and found that many suicides occurred on the new moon and the full moon – 35 percent on the new moon and 16 percent on the full moon” The new moon and full moon are a week,  In this two week period, per month, 51% of the suicides occured. Which hardly speaks to it being a special time of the month for suicides and is, I suspect, well within the bounds of probability that 51% of suicides happen in 2 weeks in every 4.  Without further analysis, I suspect that even the 35% in one period is also not statistically significant.

But what the article is saying is that this pseudo-science woo is going to get government funding.  

What is particularly annoying is that the author of this work (I hesitate to use the word journalist as that implies some degree of critical thinking) has pushed all this out as being a good thing.

I’m not trying to belittle the impact of suicide on any group, as an ex-police officer in the UK, I attended more than I would ever want to and seen the impact on families and friends, but I also don’t believe that pouring money into pseudo-scientific treatments is the way to go, especially when you consider the NZ Govt’s woefully inadequate funding of mental health services across the board.

A guest post by a reader:

“The Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, has just released one of his most important press releases of the year, perhaps even this term of Government. He has announced the new Board of the Reserve Bank effective 1 July 2022. The statutory remit of the Reserve Bank board is: “overall responsibility for our strategic direction, functions and operations, and ultimate accountability for the delivery of our outcomes.”

One of the most important Board’s in New Zealand and one might expect stacked with the best and brightest economics and financial people in New Zealand, and from our global diaspora. A mix of heavyweight academics at masters, preferably PhD, level in finance and economics with significant research experience in monetary policy or similar. And balanced against that would be business people with heavyweight real world experience in how economies work and how the Reserve Bank can execute its obligations so there’s an environment where businesses can thrive and help create wealth and prosperity for all New Zealanders: people who’ve who have demonstrated an executive ability to understand and drive the economy, not just get appointed to boards.

You be the judge of the four new appointments. Here they are, referencing their Reserve Bank profiles:

• Jeremy Banks: BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from Otago University. Co-founder and CEO of Plink Software, a software company based in Nelson that produces a free te reo learning app, and similar. In 2019 Plink had 4 staff, but I expect its bigger now. A few minor governance roles.
• Professor Rawinia Higgins: Deputy Vice Chancellor Maori at Victoria University with research expertise in Maori language revitalisation, She has a PhD from Otago University, but the subject isn’t disclosed. Based on the disclosed undergraduate qualification and her current role, we can confidently exclude economics or finance.
• Byron Pepper: LLb and Bachelor of Management Studies (Finance) from Waikato University.  22 years with Goldman Sachs in investment banking.
• Hinerangi Raumati-Tu’ua: Masters in Management Studies (university not disclosed) and fellow of Chartered Accountants ANZ. Previous CFO of Tainui Group Holdings and lots of past governance roles in public, Maori and resources sectors.

The continuing members are:

• Prof Neil Quigley: Vice-Chancellor Waikato University. PhD from Toronto University (doesn’t say what in) but has research interests in industrial organisation, money and finance and economic history.
• Susan Patterson: a pharmacist with an MBA from London Business School and lots of Government and mid-level board experience.
• Rodger Finlay: BCA from Otago. An accountant with lots of Government, Maori related and mid-level board experience.

So there you have it, the seven people who the Minister of Finance believes have the collective wisdom and experience to oversee and guide our Reserve Bank. In summary:

• Two accountants who’ve practiced at mid-size domestic entities.
• A software developer running a small business in Nelson.
• Two academics, one with expertise irrelevant to the core role of the Reserve Bank and the other with expertise peripherally relevant.
• One ex-investment banker.
• No-one with a PhD level qualification in a relevant discipline.
• No-one with substantive treasury experience.
• No-one with a senior commercial banking background.
• No-one with senior executive experience (eg CEO or CFO) of a substantial international company, organisation or research entity, or even an NZX10 company like Spark or Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
• At least three with a deep knowledge of Maori custom , knowledge and language.
• An abundance of mid-level and Government governance roles.

Quite frankly, you couldn’t make this up if you tried.

DPF: I would slightly dispute the characterisation of Professor Quigley as only having peripherally relevant expertise as he in fact lectured me in monetary economics at Victoria University. But I agree with the concern expressed by the reader that the board is very light on people with expertise in monetary policy.

A good graphic. Good media companies could use this as a learning tool – how to avoid each of the 33 issues within.

Stuff reports:

Consumer NZ’s product test and studies can be helpful for buyers looking to get the best bang for their buck.

But Re-Stor chief executive Grant Taylor says he believes the watchdog’s testing is flawed, and can damage the public reputation of a poorly scoring brand.

Of course. That is a feature, not a bug.

Consumer recently released its annual laundry detergent findings. It found Re-Stor Concentrated Laundry Detergent Sheets performed poorly. The product was rated lower than a wash with only water, landing it firmly on the “do not buy” list.

Consumer tested 55 detergents. The highest scoring ones got 91%, 88% and 74%. Ecostore which we use got 74%. Re-stor got bottom of all 55 with a score of 26%. Consumer test ten different types of stains for removal including grass, olive oil, tomato, baby food and blood.

Taylor said the brand had done rigorous testing itself, and gathered consumer feedback that had rated it at 4.5/5 on cleaning effectiveness.

Consumer feedback is not scientific. Many users won’t bother giving feedback.

He said the Consumer findings were “historically flawed” and it had misled the public with its pricing statements.

The company is now in clean-up mode – attempting to rectify the negative publicity.

“We’ve contacted Consumer to correct their outlandish comments immediately and will consider taking legal action.”

I have no idea what historically flawed means but I do not that “consider” taking legal action means they won’t.

Consumer NZ product test manager Paul Smith said it was standing by its testing, which was conducted in an independent lab.

“We have been testing laundry detergents for a decade and are proud to provide the results free to the public. We think it is important consumers have an independent source of information about the quality and performance of laundry detergents.”

Independent is the key. This is why I subscribe to Consumer.

Two good article on how woke purity is destroying left or progressive organisations in the US.

Read Politico and The Intercept.

We’ve seen this in the recent abortion debates. Organisations that have spent 50 years labelling themselves as pro-choice, are now saying they are pro-abortion? The difference is huge in terms of trying to attract support. So why have they done this?

Because their woke staff have declared the BIPOC people are so oppressed that abortion is not a choice for them, so it is wrong to refer to wanting to keep abortion legal as pro-choice. Own goal.

NewstalkZB reports:

A woman who was violently assaulted at a bar after CCTV footage of her kissing a man was shared with his partner has lodged a complaint with the Privacy Commission. 

The woman, who doesn’t want to be named, was drinking at The Residence bar in Wellington when she was punched in the head from behind while ordering a drink in October last year. 

Not long before that she’d kissed a man she’d met that night. Unbeknownst to her, a staff member was watching through the closed circuit television cameras and filmed the pair on her phone before sending it to the man’s partner. 

His partner and her friend then stormed the bar and attacked the woman, punching her to the ground where she lost consciousness before waking up in the bathroom. 

Putting aside the privacy issue for now, why did the aggrieved partner assault the woman, instead of the man (her partner)? It is her partner who was cheating on her, not the woman. She only met him that night. She isn’t culpable.

The woman, who suffered a concussion and was unable to work for close to three months, alleges the staff member refused to get her help so she had to call for an ambulance herself. 

“You kissed my mate’s boyfriend, you’re banned and that’s why she hit you. I’ve got footage of you kissing him,” she claims the staff member said. 

The staffer, if this is correct, should surely be sacked,

Matthew Lynn writes at The Telegraph:

This year is shaping up as a terrible one for any ruling party to try and get re-elected

In France, Emmanuel Macron is already a lame duck President after losing his majority in last weekend’s Parliamentary elections. Over in Estonia, the coalition government has collapsed, and Israel is poised for fresh elections.

Chancellor Scholz in Germany and President Biden in the United States may now be waiting to be evicted from office by the electorate, while in Britain the Tories have just lost one of their safest seats in a by-election and don’t look like hanging on to power much longer.

In each country, there are local explanations for why each party is so unpopular. But there is one common, global theme. Inflation.  

Rapidly rising prices are a catastrophe for whichever group of politicians happens to be in power.

Real wages get hammered. Interest rates have to go up, tipping economies into recession and raising unemployment.

Public spending has to be cut to cope with soaring interest and welfare payments. And, perhaps worst of all, governments have no one else to blame as voters work out that printing money for wild spending sprees is what caused the crisis in the first place.

Persistent inflation is caused by monetary policy.

First, once inflation starts to take off real wages inevitably get hammered. We can see that very clearly in the UK, where wages may be rising by 4pc per year, but with inflation now at 9.1pc, the amount that people earn is actually falling by 5pc annually. But the same remorseless logic is taking hold everywhere. In Germany, wages are rising at an average of 3pc but prices are going up by 7.9pc; in the US, wages are up by 3.4pc but prices by 9pc; and in the Netherlands wages are up by 3.8pc but inflation has now gone past 10pc. Living standards are getting squeezed and people are feeling poorer. In many cases, families have to cut back on holidays, new clothes, or even food simply to make ends meet.

And if your answer is to simply put wages up by say 10%, then that itself will fuel more inflation. When you have high inflation there are no good options, just least bad options.

Thirdly, public spending will have to be cut back. When inflation hits the 10pc level, the amount of interest that governments have to pay on all the debt they owe (and most of them owe more money after Covid than at any time since the Second World War) goes up as well. So do many automatic, inflation-linked welfare payments, as we have just seen in the UK with rises in pensions, especially for former public sector workers. The result? There is far less money to be spent on everything else. 

Any chance of NZ getting back into surplus is near zero.

But the harsh truth is that the root cause of the current round of inflation is spending too wildly, and printing too much money, especially during Covid lockdowns that look more and more like a catastrophic mistake. Voters aren’t stupid. They can work that out – and they are not in a mood to either forgive or forget. 

The printing presses went wild and we’re all paying for it now.

Inflation is completely lethal for any party that happens to be in power. Here is a simple prediction. It doesn’t matter whether they are from the left or the right. Over the next three years, not a single ruling party anywhere in the developed world will be re-elected.

A bold prediction.