Graham Adams writes at The Platform:
Hot on the heels of a blistering ruling by the Media Council that Dr Siouxsie Wiles made a damaging and untrue statement in a Stuff column about the seven “Listener” professors, the Royal Society Te Apārangi has now formally decided not to proceed with a complaint against two of them.
Very pleased that the Royal Society has seen sense.
More than once, the Royal Society NZ has been warned publicly that it would become an international joke if it expelled the professors.
Emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago Jerry Coyne also pointed out that mātauranga Māori contained strong elements of Creationism (“refuted by all the facts of biology, paleontology, embryology, and biogeography”) and that “expelling members for defending views like evolution against non-empirically based views of creation and the like is shameful”.
He concluded his letter to the society with: “I hope you will reconsider the movement to expel your two members, which, if done, would make the Royal Society of New Zealand a laughing stock.”
To a degree the damage is already done, but it would have been far worse if they continued.
A reader asked the Government how much it had spent on advertising and information campaigns arund Covid-19 and the answer is $87.7 million up to the end of 2021.
The reader points out this would make the Government the most valuable advertiser to the NZ media, by a large degree.
I wonder how much of the $88 million was spent on those patronising billboards urging us all to be kind!!
Claire Trevett reports:
National Party MP Simon Bridges is quitting politics and will step down as an MP in the next few weeks.
Bridges announced his decision after telling fellow MPs in caucus this morning.
In an exclusive interview with the NZ Herald ahead of that announcement, he said he made his final decision over the last week after thinking about it for some time.
It was the right time to look at other opportunities for him.
It is the first big surprise for new leader Christopher Luxon less than four months after he took over as leader, giving Bridges the third ranking in his caucus and the critical finance portfolio.
Bridges said it was not because of his failed attempt to secure the party leadership again last year and he believed the party stood a good chance of winning the election in 2023 under Christopher Luxon’s leadership.
“Life moves on. I leave National in great heart and with momentum for the first time in a while. I think Chris Luxon will make a great Prime Minister.”
This is a surprise and a blow for National. Simon was doing a great job as Finance Spokesperson.
His kids are at an age where you want to be more in their lives, and I suspect this was a major factor. So good on him for deciding to put family first.
His decision poses two issues for National – a reshuffle and a byelection.
In terms of the reshuffle, there are a number of options. One is to put Nicola Willis into Finance (she used to be on FEC and did an excellent job there). You could then move Chris Bishop into Housing and perhaps have Shane Reti take over Covid-19, merging it into his health portfolio. You could also look at MPs like Bishop or Woodhouse for Finance also.
I suspect National will have a few people interested in standing in the by-election. Labour does have a List MP in the seat, so National shouldn’t take anything for granted.
I highly recommend people read Simon’s recent book called National Identity. The chapters around race and identity are incredibly insightful, as identity politics becomes totemic for so many people.
The New Zealand Association of Economists and The New Zealand Initiative have released the results of their second survey of top economists in New Zealand. This was on the economics of climate policy. They found:
So the Government isn’t following the (economic) science when it comes to climate change. It is pursuing policies that will cost more and achieve less.
Two weeks ago Jacinda Ardern was saying there is no cost of living crisis. Today she announced a 25c per litre cut in petrol tax, because we do have one.
This is good, and significant. Labour hate hate hate cutting taxes. They only do it, when they have no choice. Every reduction in tax means they have a bit less to spend.
So it is significant that they have done this. The combination of high inflation (of which petrol prices are just a component) and a bad poll, plus National and ACT both proposing tax cuts as a way to help families out sure Labour forced to act.
Their actual policy decision isn’t the best, from an economist point of view. As petrol tax is hypothecated, it means either less money available for transport or more debt. The ideal is to cut both tax and spending so debt doesn’t increase.
A better policy would have been to do income tax cuts or as ACT propose a climate dividend from ETS revenues.
But a three months cut in petrol tax by 25c a litre is better than nothing. The challenge is to turn their backdown on this one issue, into a wider backdown so they do actually cut income tax, rather than drag in more money every year through inflation.
Also worth remembering that the 25c a litre cut is less than half the extra revenue (55c) that has been imposed since 2017.
The Taxpayers Union have been campaigning on the level of fuel tax for some time – long before the Ukraine war. Their supporters have been sticking Jacinda “I did this” stickers on petrol pumps, and a recent promotion where they refunded motorists their petrol tax made both TV stations. This backdown shows that a strong lobby group plus the right political conditions can get a policy win – as also happened with Capital Gains Tax.
So now the challenge is not to make this a once off, but to keep the pressure on the Government to lower taxes elsewhere – and not just for three months, but permanently.
This High Court ruling seemed to have been missed by most of the media. A summary:
[146] I am unable to accept the first and second respondents’ submission that the review of the Epidemic Notice is sufficient to meet the constitutional requirement of continuing necessity of the Order. Nor is it sufficient that the Order was presented to the House and subject to its scrutiny pursuant to ss 16 and 18 of the Epidemic Preparedness Act. That process involves parliamentary scrutiny within six sitting days
after the day an IMO is made. If we have learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that circumstances can change rapidly. What was appropriate in April 2020 may no longer be warranted in February 2022.
Basically the court case was about the Government using its pandemic powers to roll over collective contracts to help its union mates. The court basically said it might have been justified in early 2000, but they did no checking of whether it remained justified in 2021 or 2022.
Lord Ashcroft reports an interesting poll from Ukraine:
According to MBIE data, here is how much the taxes on petrol have gone up since September 2017:
So that is an extra 55.3 cents a litre going to the Government. The overall price is $1.02 a litre more than in Sep 2017, so more than half the increase is due to Government taxes.
Around 3.2 billion litres of petrol are sold in NZ every year so the extra revenue for the Government from petrol sales is $1.77 billion a year!
Graham Adams writes at The Platform:
To prove just how ludicrous such “conspiracy theory nonsense” is, The Hui’s presenter Mihingarangi Forbes said: “We would fall over laughing if someone from the Government rang us up and told us to go easy… it just doesn’t happen.”
As it happens, no serious critic is suggesting that the fund, which is administered by NZ On Air, obliges successful applicants to not criticise the Government (or that government officials contact journalists to tell them what to say).
This is right. Of course there is no requirement to not criticise the Government. All media criticise the Government. But the real issue is this:
What critics have focused on are the criteria that prescribe how the Treaty of Waitangi should be presented — a point that Forbes, Jennings and Russell conveniently never mentioned.
The section describing the fund’s goals recommends “actively promoting the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner“.
And the first of the general eligibility criteria requires all applicants to show a “commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.
Critics allege that the media fund has a very particular focus and an overriding purpose: to discourage criticism of the government’s push for co-governance with Māori even as it is being inserted into a broad swathe of the nation’s life — from legislation governing the RMA and health to the conservation estate and Three Waters, among many others.
In short, anyone wanting to argue that the Treaty doesn’t imply a “partnership” is very unlikely to get any money.
The Labour/Green Government has a view that the Treaty of Waitangi established co-governance of New Zealand. NZ on Air also has this view. They will not fund any media organisation or journalist who doesn’t subscribe to this view. So this makes it almost impossible for a media organisation to rigorously scrutinise the Government’s claims on co-governance, as you lose funding if you do.
The meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi is a politically contentious view. Many New Zealanders think the Treaty was simply about sovereignty and property rights, not co-governance. But if you hold those views, you won’t get funded or probably published by a media organisation that has taken money from NZ on Air.
Last June, RNZ and the NZ Herald uncritically published claims that Māori discovered Antarctica with no evidence other than a flimsy oral account to support them.
As far as I can tell, no major media outlet has given similar prominence to Sir Tipene O’Regan’s follow-up paper in September titled, “On the improbability of pre-European Polynesian voyages to Antarctica: a response to Priscilla Wehi and colleagues”. The paper’s co-authors concluded: “Antarctic voyaging by pre-European Polynesians seems most unlikely.”
O’Regan is one of Māoridom’s most-venerated leaders so why would his counter-view be judged to be of so little importance on such a contentious topic?
Could it be that the claims are an attempt by iwi to gain formal influence over New Zealand’s Antarctica policy under an interpretation of the Treaty as a partnership? But who would know? Journalists generally avoid asking or discussing such questions.
There are, of course, honourable exceptions scattered among mainstream media reports but the overwhelming impression is one of avoidance and evasion and half-truths when it comes to issues that are connected with Treaty “partnership”.
The role and meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi is a major issue with huge constitutional ramifications. The Maori Party openly say they don’t support a democracy with one person, one vote. The Government is doing co-governance in health, education and water (so far). So where has been the debate in the media on this?
How many TV stations have does a six part current affairs series on co-governance with a variety of views on whether or not it is good and appropriate? Or even one dedicated episode?
Where are the double page features in the newspaper on this vital issue?
They’re all missing in action.
The Ukrainian Tax Authority announced:
Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption (NAPC) has declared that captured Russian tanks and other equipment are not subject to declaration.
“Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment, because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100),” NAPC’s press service said.
Great news for all those Ukrainian farmers who have towed a tank away using their tractors!
Matt Ridley blogs:
Global warming is real. It is also – so far – mostly beneficial. This startling fact is kept from the public by a determined effort on the part of alarmists and their media allies who are determined to use the language of crisis and emergency. …
The biggest benefit of emissions is global greening, the increase year after year of green vegetation on the land surface of the planet. Forests grow more thickly, grasslands more richly and scrub more rapidly. This has been measured using satellites and on-the-ground recording of plant-growth rates. It is happening in all habitats, from tundra to rainforest. In the four decades since 1982, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, NASA data show that global greening has added 618,000 square kilometres of extra green leaves each year, equivalent to three Great Britains. You read that right: every year there’s more greenery on the planet to the extent of three Britains. I bet Greta Thunberg did not tell you that.
The cause of this greening? Although tree planting, natural reforestation, slightly longer growing seasons and a bit more rain all contribute, the big cause is something else. All studies agree that by far the largest contributor to global greening – responsible for roughly half the effect – is the extra carbon dioxide in the air. In 40 years, the proportion of the atmosphere that is CO2 has gone from 0.034 per cent to 0.041 per cent. That may seem a small change but, with more ‘food’ in the air, plants don’t need to lose as much water through their pores (‘stomata’) to acquire a given amount of carbon. So dry areas, like the Sahel region of Africa, are seeing some of the biggest improvements in greenery. Since this is one of the poorest places on the planet, it is good news that there is more food for people, goats and wildlife.
Fascinating. I did not know this. It shouldn’t be surprising, as changes in climate always have positive and negative aspects to it.
Another bit of good news is on deaths. We’re against them, right? A recent study shows that rising temperatures have resulted in half a million fewer deaths in Britain over the past two decades. That is because cold weather kills about ’20 times as many people as hot weather’, according to the study, which analyses ‘over 74million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries’. This is especially true in a temperate place like Britain, where summer days are rarely hot enough to kill. So global warming and the unrelated phenomenon of urban warming relative to rural areas, caused by the retention of heat by buildings plus energy use, are both preventing premature deaths on a huge scale.
Surely this will change in the future? Probably not. Britain would have to get much, much hotter for summer mortality to start exceeding winter deaths. Not even Greece manages that. And the statistics show that – as greenhouse-gas theory predicts – on the whole more warming is happening in cold places, in cold seasons and at cold times of day. So winter nighttime temperatures in the global north are rising much faster than summer daytime temperatures in the tropics.
This doesn’t mean a huge increase in temperatures will be beneficial. What the data shows is that the changes so far have resulted in fewer climate related deaths. There is of course a tipping point at which heat deaths would exceed cold deaths.
Of course, climate change does and will bring problems as well as benefits. Rapid sea-level rise could be catastrophic. But whereas the sea level shot up between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, rising by about 60 metres in two millennia, or roughly three metres per century, today the change is nine times slower: three millimetres a year, or a foot per century, and with not much sign of acceleration.
All the forecasts are that the current rate of 3mm/year will increase but so far it hasn’t. Here’s the increase for each five year period:
So since 2005 it has increased 46 mm in 15 years which is 3 mm a year.
News.com.au reported:
Bob Hawke was a sex addict who gave up the grog but not having extramarital sex with multiple lovers while Prime Minister, according to a bombshell biography that reveals his taxpayer-funded security team drove him to see women.
The former PM’s widow Blanche d’Alpuget has revealed he had at least four lovers during his time in the Lodge and that he used extramarital sex as a form of stress release while he remained married to his first wife, Hazel Hawke.
This isn’t the most surprising revelation, but to have it come via Hawke’s widow is surprising!
Bill Kelty, former ACTU secretary, said Mr Hawke often drank 20 beers during benders before giving up alcohol.
“Bob would drink, he would f**k somebody, and he would gamble until 2.30am or 3.30am in the morning – and then when the ACTU executive started at 9am in the morning, he was the second one there and he was fine,” he recalled.
Australia’s greatest Labor Prime Minister!
Hawke was in fact a very good reforming Prime Minister. He won four elections. No Labour PM since has won more than one.
Stuff reports:
Consumers’ confidence in the economic outlook has sunk to a lower level than when Covid first struck and the nadir it experienced during the Global Finance Crisis in 2008, according to an ANZ survey.
The bank said its consumer confidence index crashed 16 points in February to stand at 82 points, which was lowest the index has been since the bank began the surveys in 2004.
ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said it was “remarkable” confidence was lower than when Covid first struck early in 2020, “when the uncertainty was so extreme”.
This suggests the record low isn’t so much about Covid-19 as about runaway inflation.
News.com.au reports:
Radio host Ben Fordham has claimed new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) regarding the nation’s Covid-19 deaths exposes “the overblown scare campaign we’ve witnessed”.
The statistics, released by the ABS on Tuesday, showed there were underlying health issues involved in 92 per cent of the 2639 deaths attributed to Covid-19 between March 2020 and January 31 this year. The underlying conditions ranged from pneumonia and kidney infection to chronic heart illnesses.
During the same period, 100,000 Australians died from cancer, 32,000 from heart disease, 30,000 from Alzheimers and dementia, and 10,000 from diabetes. The Covid-19 deaths, meanwhile, made up only one per cent of all fatalities nationwide.
We do not know in New Zealand how many of those who died from Covid-19 had co-morbidities. This is not to say we should not still take measures against Covid-19 as a life lost is a life lost. Losing your parent or sibling is a massive trauma to a family, regardless of if they had an underlying health condition. However in terms of assessing personal risk, it would be good to have data tools that took account of if an individual has an underlying health condition, so we understand our risk better.
This excellent Australian tool tells me that with very high transmission in the community, my risk profile for the next two months is:
But that 1 in 25,000 will be very different depending on health conditions. It might be 1 in 200,000 if healthy and 1 in 10,000 of you have comorbidities. It would be really great to have clear data on this.
The Free Speech Union has alerted supporters:
Now Phil Goff and Auckland Council are having another go – with a sneaky challenge to try and control who we can and cannot hear from at Auckland’s publicly owned facilities.
Friend what the Council is now trying to do is introduce controlled use through the back door. On Monday, the Council’s “Rainbow Communities Advisory Panel” (which is chaired by Councillor Richard Hills) is set to debate a policy that would give “preferred users” and designated groups priority access to Council facilities.
That sounds innocent enough, but what it means is that groups such as the Council’s highly politicised “Rainbow Communities Advisory Panel” will have priority access and be able to prevent events from third party groups if they object, or wish to use the facility instead.
Remember, this was the same “Rainbow Communities Advisory Panel” that lead the charge against previous speakers, saying that there was “harm” and “health and safety dangers” if controversial speakers (including groups debating a then-proposed law before Parliament) were allowed to use Council halls.
In the presentation advising councillors on the issue, the official documents claim that there is tension in the fact that “the venue for hire service is for all Aucklanders, but controversial speakers and groups using venues cause harm to communities experiencing inequity and barriers to participation.”
Essentially, the proposed solution means when a controversial group books a Council venue, ‘preferred’ users can overrule the booking. It makes some groups more equal than others in the name of ‘kindness’. But in reality, this tension is what you get in a democratic society where we should expect countless views, including those we don’t agree with, to be expressed in public venues.
We’ve made a tool for you to email Auckland Councillors telling them not to approve this policy. We have to tell Auckland Councillors that we can see what they are doing, and won’t let them get around the law that all Aucklanders – regardless of political views, or favoured status – should be free to use Council-owned event facilities.>> Email Auckland Councillors now <<
It is not the job of Auckland Council to decide which political or issue groups are allowed to book a venue, or not. But this is what they want to do, after losing at the Court of Appeal.
An OIA has revealed that the Government approved 74 DJs to enter NZ during lockdowns, as critical workers. 62 of them actually arrived.
Since June 2021, a total of 1,637 NZ citizens or residents applied for an emergency spot in MIQ and were declined. So NZ citizens who wanted to return home to see a dying relative were locked out, while foreign DJs were let in as critical workers!
The full results are here.
Party Vote
Seats
Government
Preferred PM (unprompted)
Economic Outlook
Preferred PM (prompted, binary choice)
Parliament Protest
Vaccine Mandates
Economic Outlook
This shows the average price per liter of petrol in various countries. It shows that we are paying much much more than others, because we tax petrol far far more.
In the US they are complaining over a petrol price that is 44% cheaper than in NZ. In Australia it is 37% cheaper.
NewstalkZB reports:
The Government has announced plans to have TVNZ and RNZ fully merged by the middle of next year.
Broadcasting and Media Minister Kris Faafoi confirmed today the Cabinet had accepted the Business Case Governance Group’s recommendations and agreed to set up the new structure.
“The new public media entity will be built on the best of RNZ and TVNZ, which will initially become subsidiaries of the new organisation,” Faafoi said.
This is appalling daftness.
Merging a public broadcaster and a commercial broadcaster will result in a hybrid which will be bad at both. We know this from experience. The last Labour Government tried to make parts of TVNZ non-commercial and it was a failure – according to the then CEO Ian Fraser who is a big fan of public broadcasters.
Its obligations would include having to provide public media content to all New Zealanders, including groups who are currently under-serviced or under-represented.
This might sound good to some, but what it means is that the state owned broadcaster will have its content carried everywhere, which will mean less diversity of content.
Newshub reports:
Emails show Kāinga Ora is unapologetic about covering up the fact it was using a Labour candidate in taxpayer-funded advertising.
But new emails have emerged showing Kāinga Ora officials unapologetic.
“The judgement call you made was fine, I am happy to stand behind you on it,” McKenzie wrote in an email to the senior communications executive on November 11.
“This little maelstrom will pass quickly, I just hope it doesn’t make you too risk-averse!”
So the CE praised the staffer who declared they would just pretend they didn’t know Arena Williams was standing for Labour, and explicitly said he backs her call and doesn’t want her to become risk-averse!!!
Prior to that, on November 10, a general manager wrote: “I don’t like the implication of apology from us when we did no wrong.”
I don’t know how the board can have confidence in the senior leadership, if that is what they think.