The Herald reports:

The National Party will shortly declare millions of dollars of donations from some of the biggest names in New Zealand business.

The list of donors includes New Zealand’s wealthiest man, Graeme Hart, as well as Murray Bolton, and Nick Mowbray, who each chipped in $250,000.

The donation drive is actually the work of one of the biggest names in the National Party, former deputy prime minister and former deputy leader of National, Paula Bennett, who has been rattling the tin for National over the past three weeks as a volunteer.

Isn’t that amazing? Paula, as a volunteer, managed to raise $1.8 million in three weeks.

Tina Morrison at Stuff writes:

Frustrated with useless software that didn’t allow efficient sharing of financial data, two Kiwis revolutionalised accounting around the world by creating Xero, a Wellington startup now worth $15 billion.

Xero is not only the most successful new company in New Zealand, but possibly Australasia also.

With just 100 customers under their belt, many of them Edwards’ clients, and 27 staff, Xero succeeded in raising $15m selling shares at $1 each to smaller investors to fund their expansion for the next three years.

I was one of them, and it was the best financial decision I have made by a wide margin. Last year I sold some Xero shares for A$150 which cost me NZ$1.

I invested in the company on the basis of belief in Rod Drury. I knew his record, but I was also lucky that I knew Rod himself.

Otago University Associate Professor of Accountancy and Finance Helen Roberts says Xero has revolutionised financial accounting.

“It’s been one of those golden start-ups,” she says. “It’s brought financial accounting functionality into the operating space of all small and medium-sized businesses worldwide.”

She says the transformation in accounting is incredible. Small business owners who used to bundle up their bits of paper together and ship them off to the accountant every six to 12 months, and then wait four or five weeks for a set of financial statements to be prepared that they could discuss with their accountant now have real time access to their daily, weekly or monthly revenues at their fingertips.

“You don’t have this pressure to keep paper records any more,” she says. “It allows owners to have a better understanding of how their firm is doing and make good strategic management decisions because of that information being so readily available to them.

“It makes managing the business much more efficient when you don’t have all this stress on recording and reporting information.”

I am also a customer and fully endorse this. I used to hate the hours and hours I would have to spend on the monthly accounts. Now it takes just minutes.

ACT said last week:

“National and Labour’s deal to stick it to ‘NIMBYs’ and allow three three-storey homes on every residential section will change the face of our cities without building more homes,” says ACT Deputy Leader and Housing spokesperson Brooke van Velden.

“Council documents obtained by the Weekend Herald show nearly a third of Auckland’s historic villas and bungalows “could be flattened for high-density housing.”

“The ACT Party wants more homes to be built in New Zealand. We want people to have access to warm, dry, affordable homes so that all New Zealanders feel like they can have a future in this country.

“While we know that there is a problem in housing, National and Labour’s housing deal was not the solution. It won’t deliver the houses that it promised to a generation.

“That’s because it focused on changing our planning laws when we know it’s not the planning laws that are the issue.

I know that no party is always ideologically consistent, but one of the things I have liked about ACT is they generally are. But it is depressing to see a classically liberal party argue against a law change that gives greater rights to property owners to develop their own land. Sure I understand David Seymour is MP for Epsom, but ACT should stand for more than Epsom.

ACT said “we know it’s not the planning laws that are the issue.”

Well let’s look at what ACT said in 2019:

“Fundamental changes to our planning rules are long overdue. The 900-page RMA is the single biggest obstacle to housing affordability in New Zealand.

ACT correctly said that planning rules were the biggest obstacle to housing affordability in 2019. Now they argue that planning laws are not even an issue!

ACT are right that the Government needs to do more than just change the planning laws, and also change infrastructure funding. But that doesn’t mean that the RMA changes are not also incredibly necessary.

They should stop campaigning against property rights of home owners.

Newshub reports:

Before landing on the lottery as their chosen system, internal briefings obtained by Newshub show officials tried to develop a waitlist or automated booking system but found it would cost several million dollars and take several months and “the most difficult part” was “creating clear rules… to determine who is eligible”.

A simple waitlist system would not take months to develop. There are already huge number of booking systems out there for accommodation providers.

Ultimately though, they went with a lottery system, or as Newshub can reveal, a lolly scramble. Documents from a workshop show the system’s architects using the analogy of “lollies at a party” to describe the scenario of thousands of New Zealanders trying to get home.

“We used to have enough lollies for everyone… Now there’s sugar supply issues… Suddenly we get a lolly, so we drop it on the floor and everyone dives at it” which means “attendees think our party is terrible”.

Rachel Bradley described it as “disgusting”.

Hipkins also wasn’t impressed. 

“It didn’t come to me, and had it come to me, I would have objected at the time,” Hipkins said. “Ultimately, I think it was inappropriate.”

But that is exactly what they did implement – the online equivalent of a lolly scramble.

Newshub reports:

Labour MP Helen White has shared her concerns about “an increase in gang activity” just days after Police Minister Poto Williams denied a rise in gang violence. 

White, who unsuccessfully ran for the Auckland Central electorate in 2020 against the Green Party’s winner Chlöe Swarbrick, was elected to Parliament on Labour’s list due to its massive 50 percent of the party vote. 

Writing for the NZ Herald on Friday, White shared her concerns about how Auckland Central was once “a city full of international students and tourists” but “now we are faced with an increase in gang activity in the city”. 

The Police Minister denying a rise in gang violence is about as credible as Russia claiming they are achieving their goals in Ukraine.

Stuff reports:

An Auckland man found guilty of threatening to kill Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her family has been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.

Michael Christopher Cruickshank previously denied sending three emails on January 21, 2020 having already sent 89 emails between October 2019 and January 2020.

Court documents said the emails amounted to harassment and to “cause Jacinda Ardern to fear for her safety (or) the safety of her family”.

On Thursday at the Auckland District Court, Judge Brooke Gibson sentenced Cruickshank to 12 months imprisonment.

Good. We should have zero tolerance for death threats against MPs.

In a dramatic announcement today, TVNZ issued a Press Release stating that they will be pulling the Six O’Clock News in it’s current format, to be replaced by more popular programmes such as Married at First Sight (MAFS).

Head of programming at TVNZ, Jane Wilson, was upbeat, stating that the merger with RNZ was going to bring with it earth shattering changes to the media landscape. “The advent of the Internet, blog sites, and citizen journalism, meant that news is available as it happens, every second of the day. The Six O’Clock news is now ‘old news'”, she said. “We must move with the times, and to maintain our advertising revenue, we will move to more entertaining formats at that time of the day to ensure our future going ahead.”

In another shock announcement, Simon Dallow will leave TVNZ at the end of this month, to pursue his legal career again. It was expected that the merger of RNZ and TVNZ would see a massive restructure of staffing, and he said that it was appropriate to leave while at the top of his career as a journalist.

Dallow as not available for further comment, and neither were TV3, who it is understood, were considering a similar move.

Sent in by a reader:

Adernity

noun

ader·ni·ty | \ u-ˈdər-nə-tē  \

1: the quality or state of being seemingly unable to make a decision (or captains call)

2: infinite time lasting throughout multiple focus groups and cabinet meetings

3: the state of presiding over the slow death of hospitality and tourism

4: a seemingly endless or immeasurable series of bureaucratic of delays

Transmission Gully is now open, 103 years after it was first proposed by the Otaki MP in 1919. After decades and decades of Governments that did almost nothing about it, Steven Joyce made it happen, announcing it in December 2009. Thank you Steven.

Every election I can recall (so 1975 to 2008) local candidates and MPs talked about Transmission Gully and how they wanted it to happen. The previous Labour Government approved a route for it, but no money for it (which is a very Labour thing to do). It was Steven Joyce and the Key Cabinet who actually funded it, and without funding a road is a just a piece of paper.

Honourable mention should also go to Peter Dunne who pushed tirelessly for both Labour and National Governments to make it happen.

The cost is around 20% more than the original quote, but to be honest that isn’t too bad as construction projects go. Consider the Town Hall refurbishment that was meant to be $46 million and ended up as $150 million.

This means we now have four lanes from The Terrace Tunnel to Pekapeka, and soon to Otaki. This will make a huge difference, On a two lane road traffic moves at the speed of the slowest car. On a four lane road, traffic flows closer to the speed limit. And no more huge queues as traffic merges into one lane.

The road also provides greater resilience for Wellington in case of earthquake. And it makes life more pleasant for residents of Pukerua Bay and other coastal suburbs who will have less traffic flowing through.

Now we just need to sort out the Terrace Tunnel, the Basin Reserve and the Mt Vic tunnel and we’ll finally have what is so badly needed – four lanes from the airport to Otaki.

Stuff reports:

Businessman and former Far North mayor Wayne Brown has confirmed he will contest the Auckland mayoralty in October’s election.

Brown said in a statement that the Auckland Council he would lead would stop wasting money on “dopey projects”.

The newest entrant to the contest to succeed the retiring Phil Goff, said he brought more than 40 years’ experience running small, medium, and large Auckland businesses.

Brown has homes in the Far North District as well as in Auckland, and is former chairman of Auckland District Health Board, Transpower, and Auckland lines company Vector.

Labour and Efeso Collins must be very happy. Collins is the only candidate on the left, while we now have three or four candidates competing for the centre-right vote – Viv Beck, Leo Molloy, Craig Lord and Wayne Brown. This will allow Collins to win on as little as 30% of the vote.

This isn’t a criticism of Brown. He looks well qualified. But the vote splitting will only help Labour.

The Herald reported:

A gun was pulled out during a fight between Ōtāhuhu students earlier this week and held to a young woman’s head.

Two girls in school uniform can be seen fighting, grabbing each other by the hair. As the pair continue to fight a group surrounding them can be heard yelling.

“Motherf***er” one person yells.

Later in the footage, a woman is seen holding what appears to be a gun.

She holds the gun up, pointing it at a person in a green jumper while screaming at her.

“You touch my sister again, touch her, touch her,” the woman with the gun yells.

She then walks over to the woman in the green jumper and presses the gun to her head.

Is this New Zealand today – school girls carrying guns and brandishing them in while fighting?

Have the Police made an arrest yet?

The BSA has done its regular survey of New Zealanders to see which words are considered unacceptable on air. Generally blaspehmous terms are being more acceptable and racial terms less so.

The n word (I am not spelling it out in full as Google Ads play up when you do) is most unacceptable at 65% followed by the c word at 57%. Down the other end only 23% said nutter was unacceptable.

Curia did a poll in March for the Taxpayers’ Union asking:

Turning to the cost of living, would you support a reduction in the tax levied on petrol to
combat rising petrol prices?

This was 85% done before the Government announced they were cutting petrol tax by 25 cents a litre.

The results were massive – 78% in favour and only 20% opposed.

The net support by party vote was:

• National +82%
• Labour +62%
• ACT +22%
• Greens -32%

It is a good reminder that there is a huge difference between Labour and Green voters. When Labour focuses on the 10% who are Green voters they forget about the 90% who are not, including most of their own voters.

Several media outlets have all run a story that says Christopher Luxon has ruled out ACT’s proposed referendum on co-governance.

The Herald reports:

National Party leader Christopher Luxon has, eventually, ruled out a referendum on co-governance.

But what did he actually say. The Spinoff reported:

During a later press conference at parliament, Luxon appeared to once again be avoiding the subject of a referendum. “I have concerns about co-governance as it moves from management of local natural resources into the delivery of public services but what I’d say to you is the bigger issue is the government needs to make the case as to what they’re doing in this space and where we’re going,” he told reporters.

He even said he wouldn’t be “getting into” discussion of a referendum. “I appreciate [Seymour]’s got a view about what we might want to do with his party and a referendum,” he said.

But after further pressure from reporters, Luxon seemed to relent: “I don’t see a need for a referendum at this point, if you’re asking me that question.”

Saying “I don’t see a need for a referendum” is not the same as saying “I will refuse to consider one, if raised in coalition negotiations”. Luxon has simply said National’s policy isn’t to hold a referendum.

It is very rare for any party leader to adamantly rule something out, because MMP means it is rare to have a majority government and in coalition negotiations you often agree to things that were not your own policy.

I’m not saying National would agree to ACT’s referendum. In fact it is silly to speculate until you get an election result because a result of say National 43%, ACT 7% is very different to say National 35% and ACT 15%.

The Herald did a Q+A with top editors and readers. This is a good thing and is to be commended. A lot of it was around impartiality and Government funding.

It is true that some people often see a media outlet as left leaning and others as right leaning. A poll Curia did in 202 found CR voters thought the Herald leaned left by a net 12% while CL voters thought the Herald leaned right by a net 38%.

With regards to the Government funding, I don’t think that this means the Herald (or others) won’t criticise the Government. However it does create an incentive for media organisations to be more favourable towards parties that will continue funding them, as opposed to those who won’t.

But the real issue, as I have blogged on previously, is the Treaty partnership obligations. A reader asked:

Una G: To get the fund you must “show a clear and obvious commitment or intent for commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, including a commitment to te reo Māori.” Is that why so many media outlets are changing the name of our country and English named cities like Auckland? And secondly is that why you refuse to represent the concerns of many who are critical of the Government’s interpretation of the Treaty…?

This is the key aspect. The Government has a political view of the Treaty as being about partnership. This is highly contested. However media organisations must follow this view, in order to get access to the $55 million. And the Herald’s answer skirts this:

We were well on this path before the $55 million fund was devised – but it has certainly helped us – for example – in finding and funding 25 wonderful new cadets who might not otherwise have followed the traditional tertiary education path that’s normally required to be a journalist. Regardless, the fund in no way dictates or guides the topics we or the cadets cover. And of course we accept opinions and report views from very many people, representing diverse schools of thought and experience.

Yes they were on this path where they agree with the Government, prior to the fund. But that is not the issue. The issue is any media organisation that disagrees with the Government’s view that the Treaty is a partnership is ineligible for funding.

Alex Psirides writes:

A bed is a piece of furniture, incapable of providing any form of care, never mind intensively. To do so it needs a specialist intensive care nurse standing next to it 24 hours a day. This requires five to six intensive care nurses per bed as, inconveniently, they also want to sleep, have families, and not live in a hospital.

Caring intensively also requires equipment, drugs, doctors, a large array of allied health professionals (physiotherapists, pharmacists, radiographers etc) cleaners and administration staff. It costs around NZ$1.5m (£750,000) a year to keep one intensive care bed open, with the availability of intensive care nurses being the rate-limiting step.

So what has happened?

But two years have passed since Covid began and we do not have a single additional operational ICU bed.

We are very lucky that Omicron is so much less severe than delta. Otherwise ICU capacity would have been swamped.

Karl du Fresne writes:

I spent a couple of hours wandering the streets of downtown Wellington this week. What a dismal experience.

Actually, it was worse than dismal. It was profoundly depressing. The city where I spent most of my working life looks as if it has lost the will to live. …

Lambton Quay on Tuesday was like a ghost town, Willis St only marginally better. Cuba Street, which once had an appealing raffishness, now looks just plain grotty. The CBD as a whole looks and feels tired and moribund.

Everywhere you look, businesses are closed or empty – a state of affairs documented in last Saturday’s Dominion Post. Beggars are ubiquitous, sometimes obtrusively so, and Cuba Mall is owned by derelicts.

This isn’t just about covid. Wellington is no longer a safe city in the central city.

All of this brings us to the matter of the city’s leadership, or lack thereof. From 1992 till 2010, Wellington had a succession of mayors – Fran Wilde, Mark Blumsky and Kerry Prendergast – who were energetic, capable and ambitious for their city. That was the Absolutely Positively era.

The rot set in under Celia Wade-Brown and since then, things have gone from bad to worse. Wellington in 2022 is cursed with the worst possible combination: a weak, ineffectual mayor and a council of fractious activists, several of whom treat their office as a licence to pursue ideological agendas.

There is no doubt we need change at the Council, big change. It is not a bad thing that different parts of the city elect Councillors with different views. But what is bad, is when you get Councillors who can’t compromise or work with people they don’t always agree with. And the Council needs leadership which can unite.

What the people of Wellington must do is elect a mayor and council who reflect the priorities and aspirations of the city at large rather than those of a vociferous minority.

That won’t be easy, because Wellington is home to New Zealand’s greatest concentration of woke zealots. They are well organised, ferociously committed and have the support of a broadly sympathetic media, many of whose journalists are of a similar ideological persuasion.

The Left has made an early start. Tory Whanau declared herself a candidate for the mayoralty in November and has been energetically promoting herself at every opportunity. Whanau has no local government experience, but the fact that she’s a former chief of staff for the Green Party provides a clear pointer to the type of mayor she would be. It will also ensure the support of the impressionable young and the idealistic New Left from the inner suburbs.

She certainly doesn’t lack self-assurance, judging by a lavish photo spread in Capital magazine (what was that I said about sympathetic media?). But Whanau as mayor would be a disaster – a guarantee that the city would continue on its present wayward course, albeit even faster.

The Council is already proposing a 16% increase in rates. Whanau as Mayor would probably see that grow to 25% or more.

A reader writes in regarding the call for free public transport:

I am so totally in favour of this.

I’m just not sure that the bus drivers will work for free, the diesel companies will provide free diesel, the road user charges will be free.

Of course, if we mean “every other taxpayer should pay for some select people who have access to public transport and ability to use public transport to get a further discount beyond the massive subsidy they already get”, then that’s quite a different discussion.  I’m not sure I’m in favour of that.

Exactly.