The Herald reports:

A prominent kaumātua is questioning the Māoridom guidance given to National Party leader Christopher Luxon following social media debate of a potential tikanga breach.

An image of Luxon sitting on a desk during a visit to Ormiston Junior College this week has been shared on social media, prompting a discussion as to whether it was in violation of tikanga.

The prominent kaumatua is an officer of the Maori Party.

As explained by kaumātua and Manurewa Marae board chairman Rangi McLean, sitting on a table – particularly one used for preparing and serving food – is in opposition to Māori tikanga, held for generations.

It’s a school not a marae, and it isn’t one used to prepare or serve food so the entire story is a beatup from start to finish.

Auckland North Shore councillor Richard Hills was among those who took a dim view of Luxon’s seating choice, saying it was “basic tikanga” that wasn’t hard to abide by.

Hills is of course a Labour Party Councillor.

The Conversation published:

Successive New Zealand governments have failed to develop a policy or strategy focused on men’s health, falling behind countries like Mongolia, Australia, Ireland, Iran, Malaysia, South Africa, Brazil and the state of Quebec.

The consequences of this failure for New Zealand men are dire, with research showing men falling behind women in terms of access to health care, diagnoses and overall life expectancy.

I blogged back in 2018 how men are:

• Seven times more likely to commit suicide
• Six times more likely to be subject to a mental health compulsory treatment order
• Seven times more likely to be a mental health special patient
• 113% more likely to be a hazardous drinker
• 67% more likely to drink drive
• Twice as likely to be a user of hard drugs
• 10% more likely to get cancer
• 74% more likely to have coronary heart disease
• 31% more likely to have a stroke
• 270% more likely to have gout
• 11% more likely to have diabetes
• Ten times more likely to have HIV/AIDs
• Four years shorter life expectancy
• 24% more likely to be a smoker
• 11% more likely to be obese
• 28% more likely to have high blood pressure
• 33% more likely to have high cholesterol
• 46% more likely to have an intellectual disability
• 22% more likely to be hearing impaired

You would think all of these inequalities would lead to the Government saying we should have a strategy to close the gap between men and women by improving outcomes for men. But, no.

Bernard Orsman reports:

The Auckland mayoral race is wide open after the first public poll shows virtually nothing separating the top four candidates.

The Ratepayers’ Alliance-Curia mayoral poll has Labour councillor Efeso Collins and restaurateur Leo Molloy each on 21.7 per cent, Heart of the City chief executive Viv Beck on 20.5 per cent and businessman Wayne Brown on 20.1 per cent.

Freelance media operator Craig Lord, who came third in the 2019 mayoral race, was four points behind the leading pack on 16 per cent.

It’s a four way statistical tie, and even the 5th place candidate is within the 95% confidence interval of the leading candidates.

This is both bad and good news for Efeso Collins. It is remarkable that despite Labour’s endorsement he is not polling higher. But the good news for him is that if the other four candidates remain in the race and there is no front-runner, then Collins could win with 25% to 30% of the vote. And Labour’s endorsement and campaign machine should get him there.

The poll is also good and bad news for the other candidates. The good news is they all have viable chance of winning. The bad news is as they all have a viable chance, none of them will pull out. There is no obvious front-runner for voters who want a change from the status quo to get behind.

The Herald reports:

The Australian Foreign Minister is to visit the Solomon Islands before New Zealand’s Nanaia Mahuta, despite her being on the job for just over three weeks.

Mahuta has been under pressure in recent months due to her relative lack of travel and engagement with Pacific island countries, particularly as China seeks to increase its presence and influence in the region.

Penny Wong became Australia’s foreign minister in the last week of May and immediately set off to visit several Pacific island countries.

Wong has done five overseas trips in three weeks. Nanaia has just done three in almost two years.

Stats NZ reports:

GDP fell 0.2 percent in the March 2022 quarter

So we’re now just one quarter off a recession, during a time of high inflation. So Labour has almost managed the rare feat of stagflation.

This is an important question. It is one thing for a forecast done a year ago to be out. But the Reserve Bank just a few weeks ago was saying the economy would grow 0.7% for the quarter they were halfway through, and in fact it shrank 0.2%.

I may be wrong here, but would it helped if they focused more on economic capability, and less on te reo capability?

Now how does our economy shrinking by 0.2% compare with others?

1. Canada +0.8%
2. Australia +0.8%
3. UK +0.8%
4. EU +0.7%
5. NZ -0.2%
6. US -0.4%

Something amazing happened recently in US politics. Chesa Boudin was the DA for San Francisco. He was a “progressive reformer” and got elected in 2019 on a platform of making it easier for people to get bail, refusing to work with immigration authorities, generally going soft on law and order.

Since then San Francisco has become terrible. Homeless people are living on almost every street. Drugs are everywhere, stores are being robbed brazenly, organised crime is booming etc. It’s what happen when you go soft on crime. We can see it happening in NZ also.

In a recall election they sacked him 55% to 45%.

The key thing is this happened in San Francisco – arguably the most left wing city in the most left wing state in the US. Only 8.6% of people in San Francisco are Republicans. The last Republican elected Mayor was in 1960!

So for them to sack a progressive DA gives you some idea of how bad things are there.

A guest post by Paul Goldsmith, National’s Justice Spokesperson:

Labour’s Māori Development Minister, Willie Jackson, infamously said on Q&A last month that the nature of our democracy has changed. And he was being serious.

The current Labour Government appears to be reluctantly walking back its support for the undemocratic Rotorua District Council Bill, which would have swept away the principle of equal voting rights for all New Zealanders in the district.

They didn’t really have a choice after their own Attorney General pointed out that it is discriminatory and in breach of the Bill of Rights.

But Labour are pressing on with the equally undemocratic Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill.

Under this Bill, which has passed its second reading, the people of Canterbury would elect 14 councillors. Everyone gets a vote – Māori, Pakeha and everyone else. And then something extraordinary happens. Ngāi Tahu appoints two more councillors. No voting and no election.

This is not a Māori ward, allocated proportionately to the population – remember Māori Cantabrians have already had their vote like everyone else.  It is an appointment by an independent entity – Ngāi Tahu. Something like the English aristocracy of old, or the Fijian Great Council of Chiefs.

Ministry of Justice advice to the Government on the Bill points out that this clearly discriminates against non-Māori. Yet extraordinarily, the Ministry also says in a couple of loose paragraphs that the Treaty justifies this change.

This is a dramatic and radical change to the way we choose our government in New Zealand. When did we, as a country, decide that the Treaty trumps democracy? We haven’t.

The idea of equal suffrage – equal voting rights, regardless of gender, class and ethnicity – has been a pillar of our democracy for decades. All New Zealanders should have an equal say in who governs them; an equal say in appointing the people that make the decisions that affects their lives.

Equally fundamental to our system is the ability to throw poor performers out at the next election – that is the bedrock accountability in our democracy.   But not under this Bill.  Ngai Tahu’s representatives could never be thrown out.

These concepts – equal voting rights and accountability at the ballot box – are basic to our democracy and precious.  Sadly, they are becoming rarer in an increasingly authoritarian world.

Why this Labour Government thinks they can casually move away from these principles without discussion by supporting a Local Bill is beyond me. Where are the legal profession; the constitutional experts, the Human Rights Commission, the usual noisy crowd? The silence is deafening.

To those who say this is just a special acknowledgement of Ngāi Tahu in dealing with a council that has a lot to do with natural resources – I say, get real. 

If passed, the argument will surely be extended to every other regional council, then unitary councils, then the rest.

If we as a country no longer think that equal voting rights apply at one level of government, pressure will build for change in national elections.

I can’t think of a more divisive agenda for any government to run.

We recognise the burden of history, but no past injustices are fixed by undermining something that makes this country the great place it is – preserving the pillars of our open democracy.

That’s my view.

And I would guess that most other people also have the expectation that living in a democracy, their voice is as acceptable and powerful as anyone else’s.

If Jacinda Ardern and her government Ministers no longer think that Kiwis should have equal voting rights, then they should make the case and ask New Zealanders whether they agree.

It would be a constitutional outrage to use a transitory parliamentary majority to set a precedent that changes the nature of our democracy so dramatically, without asking the people first.

Paul offered this as an opinion piece to both the Christchurch Press and the NZ Herald. Amazingly (but perhaps not surprisingly) they both declined. I guess the ending of equal voting in New Zealand is not seen as important enough by then to allow a debate!

Stuff reports:

Highly anticipated and now highly expensive, the March 30 opening ceremony for Wellington’s largest piece of roading infrastructure – Transmission Gully – came with a price tag of $336,712.

Those costs, including planning, venue and equipment hire, traffic management and transport for guests, were revealed when the ACT Party put questions to Minister of Transport Michael Wood.

I could understand $10,000 or $20,000 for an opening ceremony. At $30,000 I’d think it would be getting a bit steep. To spend over $300,000 on it is obscene.

Newsroom reports:

A backlog in Covid-19 PCR testing which led to the country’s systems falling over should have been predicted and prevented by health officials, an independent review has concluded.

Poor communication, data limitations and a failure to learn from international experiences instead led to complacency and meant the country’s laboratories buckled under the strain of requests.

In March, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield admitted the ministry had overestimated the number of Covid-19 PCR tests the country’s laboratories could process as the virus took off in the community.

The revelation came as Kiwis waited upwards of a week for test results and health experts warned of laboratories reaching a crisis point, while months earlier one of the Government’s own groups had raised red flags.

You can forgive mistakes when they were not predictable. But when people had been warning about the problem for months and months, you are less inclined to forgive.

“While modelling was initiated in late January 2022, it appears that positivity rates were used to forecast demand only and were not used to forecast capacity or the point when pooling of samples is no longer viable,” the report says.

“Even then, the positivity rates used in the modelling are significantly understated and do not reflect the messaging from laboratories.”

With other countries having similarly faced difficulties with PCR testing in the face of Omicron, opportunities to learn from international experience were “substantial”.

“It is not apparent how these insights were incorporated into testing modelling, planning, or reporting.”

Saying “it is not apparent” is diplomatic speak for “They did not”

I did something I have never done before and ran a poll on what a sentence should be. It shows how totally out of touch some Judges are with the public.

I would normally never poll on a judicial sentence as there are so many factors to be considered in sentencing. But it was justified in this case as the Judge ignored the written statute and made a value judgement about what New  Zealanders would consider shocking to their conscience. By over-riding the Sentencing Act passed by Parliament, the Judge made his judgement fair game to test.

The background is in this Herald story. Zacquirin Tikena-Stuchbery had managed to chalk up three serious violent assaults in just three years. The Sentencing Act 2002 86D(2) states:

Despite any other enactment, if, on any occasion, an offender is convicted of 1 or more stage-3 offences other than murder, the High Court must sentence the offender to the maximum term of imprisonment prescribed for each offence.

86D(3) states:

When the court sentences the offender under subsection (2), the court must order that the offender serve the sentence without parole unless the court is satisfied that, given the circumstances of the offence and the offender, it would be manifestly unjust to make the order.

So this is the law of the land. This meant that the offender must be sentenced to 14 years in prison, with the Judge having discretion over whether to make it with or without parole eligibility if they thought no parole eligibility would be manifestly unjust.

But last year the Supreme Court found in the case of Daniel Fitzgerald that his seven year third strike sentence for indecent assault could be reduced, despite the statute law, if the punishment was so excessive that it would shock the conscience of properly informed New Zealanders. They based this on the Bill of Rights Act even though BORA explicitly is not meant to over-ride other laws.

Now the Fitzgerald case was a difficult one. His three strikes were burying his head in a woman’s buttocks, slapping buttocks and an unwanted kiss. There is a good argument to be made for removing indecent assault from the three strikes regime as what constitutes indecent assault can range massively. So one can understand (even if one disagrees) why the Supreme Court ruled the way they did in that case.

Anyway the Supreme Court made their decision. And the threshold is that the punishment would shock the conscience of properly informed New Zealanders. You could argue seven years for an unwanted kiss would do so.

But the case of Tikena-Stuchbery is nothing like this. All three of his strike offences were serious offending. The first was for multiple beatings of his partner. The second was for a violent beating and robbery of a man outside a bar. And the third, as reported was:

He was sentenced today for lashing out at the woman on November 27, 2020, after their home was burgled and he blamed her for not being home to prevent it. The following evening, she fell asleep as he played games on her phone and she woke up to what the judge described as a prolonged, “violent and brutal” beating prompted by jealousy over a text from another man who had commented on her looks.

“The complainant begged you to stop the assault and call for an ambulance,” Justice Davison said, noting that the defendant only agreed to medical attention if his victim promised to lie about the cause of the injuries.

“The attack was vicious and extremely violent,” the judge said, adding that the victim has since expressed forgiveness but that doesn’t mitigate the offending.

This seems like exactly the type of offender the law is designed for – three violent assaults in just three years. Yet the Judge refused to sentence him according to the statute for 14 years jail (he could have had parole eligibility in under five years) and declared that doing so would be so “disproportionately severe and crushing” as to shock the conscience of New Zealand.

It is that call by the Judge that the sentence set in statute would shock the conscience of New Zealand I wanted to test. If say 75% or even 50% of NZers said such a sentence would be wrong, then maybe you could say the Judge was right. So here is the question I asked in our June poll of 1,200 New Zealanders:

For this question I’m going to read out details of a recent criminal case. At the end of it I’d like you to tell me which sentence you think would be most appropriate, out of three options. Zach is 22 years old. When he was 18 he beat his partner up and received his first conviction for violent offending. A year later he beat up and robbed a man outside a bar and received his second conviction for violent offending. A year after that he beat up his partner in a lengthy assault described as prolonged, extremely violent, brutal and vicious. The rationale was because another man had  commented on her looks. This got him a third conviction in three years for violent offending. Which of the following three sentences do you think would be most appropriate? 14 years with no parole, 14 years with parole eligibility after five years or Five years with parole eligibility after two and a half years

The results of the poll are:

* 14 years no parole: 43%
* 14 years with parole eligibility in five years: 38%
* Five years, parole eligibility in  2.5 years 10%
* Unsure 9%

So 81% of New Zealanders said they thought the sentence set out in the statute would be appropriate. Only a miniscule 10% thought the sentence the Judge substituted was appropriate.

This is not about selecting sentences by opinion poll. This is about testing the assertion made by the Judge in his decision to ignore the statute passed by Parliament on the grounds that the mandated sentence would shock the conscience of New Zealanders. It is clear that the Judge is massively out of touch on this issue. You could quibble over wording and background of the offender etc, but there is no way you can say that the assertion that the mandated sentence would shock the conscience of New Zealanders is correct when eight times as many think that sentence is the appropriate one.

I hope that Crown Law sees it job as to uphold the law as passed by Parliament and appeal this decision. Otherwise we are on very dangerous territory. 

 Incidentally the support for the statutorily mandated sentence over the one the Judge substituted was in all demographics. The breakdowns are:

• Women 81%
• Men 80%
• Under 40s 79%
• 40 to 59  80%
• 60+ 83%
• National voters 86%
• Labour voters 76%
• Maori Party voters 79%
• ACT voters 88%
• Green voters 81%

Agreement that a 14 year sentence with parole would be appropriate for this offending  has massive agreement in every demographic. The assertion by the Judge such a punishment would shock our conscience is hopelessly wrong. There is not a single demographic that would agree.

The latest food price index shows a 0.7% increase in food prices for the month. Food now costs 8.9% more than at the last election and fruit and veges cost 16% more.

The Herald reports:

A doctor with a criminal history poured alcohol over his wife, ripped open her shirt to prod her torso with a fork while calling her fat, and threatened to shoot police as the incident unfolded.

But the general practitioner, whose name and identifying details are permanently suppressed, is still allowed to practice, a medical authority has ruled.

Incredible.

The 111 call-taker overheard the doctor threatening to shoot police and to kill his wife.

When officers arrived outside the couple’s property during the 2020 assault, they could see through a window the doctor had his hands around the woman’s neck.

She was left bruised and scratched, and “emotionally and mentally broken”.

Who would want to see such a person as their doctor?

He has three previous convictions for driving with excess blood alcohol (EBA), for which he was sentenced to three months’ community detention and disqualified from driving indefinitely on the third.

To have three actual convictions would mean he has probably driven drunk several hundred times. I suspect he is an alcoholic.

How the tribunal thinks an alcoholic wife beater should be treating patients is beyond me.

Quite a lot of changes announced today for a minor reshuffle. Key points are:

• Trevor Mallard and Kris Faafoi leaving Parliament
• Daniel Rosewarne and Soraya Peke-Mason will become new Labour List MPs
• Peke-Mason will become the 60th female MP, making Parliament 50/50 in terms of gender for the first time
• Adrian Rurawhe will replace Trevor Mallard as Speaker and presumably Jenny Salesa will move from Assistant to Deputy Speaker. A Labour MP will become one of the two Assistant Speakers
• Priyanca Radhakrishnan moves into Cabinet
• Kieran McAnulty becomes a Minister outside Cabinet
• Duncan Webb becomes Chief Whip
• Radhakrishnan picks up Associate Workplace Relations
• McAnulty gets Emergency Management, Racing, Deputy Leader of the House, Associate Transport and Associate Local Government
• Hipkins gains Police from Williams and loses Covid-19 to Verrall, and delegates more in Education to Tinetti.
• Verrall gets Covid-19 and Research/Science
• Wood gets Immigration
• Willie Jackson gets Broadcasting
• Kiri Allan gets Justice

On my Patreon, I have analysed the merits of the changes.

Jon Johansson writes:

But making Luxon seem out of touch and a policy-free zone isn’t effective when Luxon is talking about the cost of living every day and when every political journo knows detailed policy isn’t announced midway through an election cycle. So, it seems like an ineffectual, scattergun attack.

Second, it’s illogical for Labour to hammer Luxon’s leadership when it was the PM who appointed him to chair her Business Advisory Council in 2018. Was her judgment wrong then, or now? And why?

Ardern had scores, maybe hundreds, of people she could have chosen to chair the Business Advisory Council. The fact she chose Luxon shows she rated his abilities.

Third, Labour risks turning more people off if it runs negative attacks on Luxon and National because it contradicts the transcendent value expressed by its leader: kindness. This goes directly to authenticity. Lose that and its sayonara.

And that has already been damaged by some of the decisions and rhetoric around Covid-19 response.

An imminent reshuffle offers a circuit-breaker of sorts although removing or shuffling warrants from poorly performing ministers will likely reinforce failures of delivery more than a deep bench.

It will probably be a minor reshuffle, when in fact she should be dumping several under-performing Ministers. She could replace them with Deborah Russell, Kieran McAnulty, Camilla Belich, Greg O’Connor and Arena Williams.

UPDATE: The reshuffle is being announced today. Unclear yet if she is just shuffling portfolios or actually changing Ministers.

Sad news that Richard Prosser has died in the UK. I liked Richard, even though I was the one who exposed his awful Wogistan article to the world. It had been out for several weeks before I blogged on it, which then got the media onto it.

But you can be critical of someone, and still not regard that issue as defining them. Richard would e-mail me potential blog articles from time to time, and I would often run them. I enjoyed his occasional e-mails.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends. Losing a loved one who “lost his battle with depression” is incredibly traumatic.

A Q+A Kantar poll of 500 in Tauranga has found:

• Sam Uffindell 45%
• Jan Tinetti 35%
• Cameron Luxton 7%

Interestingly 220 of their 500 respondents were polled face to face,

The poll is very different to the Newshub Reid Research poll that had Uffindell on 57% and Tinetti on 22%.

The actual result will be very interesting as Kantar says Uffindell is only 10% ahead while Reid Research says he is 35% ahead. Which will be closest? The difference between them is well outside the sampling margin of error.

Politico reports:

Clinton urges progressives to rebuild atrophied muscles of persuasion. “I think one of the ways you win elections is by talking straight with people and giving them permission to vote against you,” he explains in the most recent edition of his podcast. In other words, don’t hector and moralize, as though the merits of your position should be self-evident to any decent person. Assume a position of modesty that argues, “If you really disagree with this, then you will go out and take another choice, but here’s why I think it’s better for you.”

This is spot on. All too often now many on the left try to position anyone who disagrees with them as a bad person.

Blair urges progressives to rebuild atrophied muscles of self-discipline. For much of the left, Blair said on Clinton’s program, it’s not clear that their main goal is really to win power or wield it: “Its primary purpose is to make itself feel good about itself, right? To convince itself that it’s principled, right?

Yep its virtue signalling.

Of course many on the left now hate Blair, but the fact remains he is the only UK Labour Leader to win an election in the last 48 years.

One News reports:

The 1News Kantar Public Poll asked: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Trevor Mallard is handling his job as speaker?

Just 17% said they approved, while almost half disapproved. The rest didn’t know. …

The exact results were:

• 17% approve
• 48% disapprove
• Only 25% of Labour voters approved

To be fair to Trevor Mallard, I would divide his job into three areas.

In the area of standing orders reforms, making Parliament more accessible etc etc he has done (i think) an excellent job. He has also held Select Committee Chairs to account in a way not done before.

In the area of Chairing the House, his record is patchy. I liked some of the innovations he tried, but he can’t seem to get past his visceral dislike of certain MPs, and the result has been a loss of confidence from those MPs.

And in the area of responding to the parliamentary protest, his actions were foolish and counter-productive.