The so called independent working group on three waters (dominated by Labour Party Mayors) has managed the impossible, and actually proposed changes that will make the proposed three waters reforms even worse!

Here’s some of what they are proposing:

1. A further propaganda campaign funded by taxpayers to try and convince us that this is all a great idea
2. A Claytons proposal that territorial authorities “own” the water entities, but this is ownership in name only, not in substance. Councils will not be able to perform any of the functions of ownership like with any other asset. The shares would have no voting rights, no financial rights and no rights of appointment. They are trying to con the public into thinking that territorial authorities will still have ownership, when all they’ll have is a piece of paper with no rights of ownership.
3. The regional groups require a 75% majority to decide anything, so the councils with just 50% can never ever decide anything.
4. In the northern area, Auckland Council will have just 4 out of 14 votes on the regional grouping, despite contributing 92% of the assets.
5. An extra layer of bureaucracy with sub-regional groups within each region so the miniscule influence of ratepayers (who will have to pay the compulsory charges) will be ratepayers to councils to sub-regional groups to regional groups to appointment panel to the board of the water entity.
6. They have also recommended that not only do Iwi get given 50% control of all the three waters assets in New Zealand, but that taxpayers fund Iwi to allow them to fully participate.

The bottom line remains the same – these new water entities will be unaccountable to the people who have to pay their compulsory charges. They could triple or quadruple what you pay for water infrastructure, and you will have zero ability to vote anyone out to stop it (unlike central and local government where you can). Have no doubt, that water charges will massively increase when you have a model where those who pay the bills have no ability to push back against huge increases.

Stuff reports:

In domestic cricket, it’s 88 to 100 per cent for women playing in the T20 Super Smash competition, who play the same format, in the same conditions, on the same day as their male counterparts.

At international level, the White Ferns have a retainer of between $44,000 and $64,000. Black Caps retainers start at $100,000.

It’s simple. More people pay to see or view the Black Caps than the White Ferns. Same for the All Black as opposed to Black Ferns. This influences pay.

Sometimes it goes the other way. The Silver Ferns get paid a lot more money I bet you than members of the NZ Men’s Netball team (even though the NZ men’s team can beat the Silver Ferns). That is because more people want to see the Silver Ferns play, than the NZ men’s team.

George Monbiot writes:

Among the worst disseminators of Kremlin propaganda in the UK are people with whom I have, in the past, shared platforms and made alliances. The grim truth is that, for years, a segment of the “anti-imperialist” left has been recycling and amplifying Putin’s falsehoods. This segment is by no means representative: many other leftists have staunchly and consistently denounced Russian imperialism, just as they rightly denounce the imperialism of the US and UK. But it is, I think, an important one.

At the end of last year, the writer and film-maker John Pilger claimed “it was the US that overthrew the elected govt in Ukraine in 2014, allowing Nato to march right up to Russia’s western border”. This is a standard Kremlin talking point, dismissing the revolution as a US coup. Ukraine, of course, is not a Nato member.

So Pilger is effectively a Putin propogandist.

I see the Stop the War coalition’s letter of 18 February, signed by many fine and eminent people, as strangely unbalanced. It stated that it “opposes any war over Ukraine”, but said nothing about Russian aggression. It appeared to blame only Nato and the British government, and urged “the entire anti-war movement to unite on the basis of challenging the British government’s aggressive posturing and direct its campaigning to that end above all”.

The coalition has recently produced a map showing Crimea, following its illegal annexation, as part of Russia. Its deputy president, Andrew Murray, has claimed it’s a myth that Ukraine wants peace. He has also reproduced a classic Kremlin falsehood: that in Ukraine, “Russian has been banned from the public sphere”. Fiona Edwards, a member of the coalition’s steering committee, has insisted that “Nato is the aggressor, not Russia”.

Sadly many leftish peace groups (not all) are really just anti-western groups. They always take the side of the autocracies over the democracries.

There is a strong argument that Nato should have been disbanded at the end of the cold war. But while Putin’s sense of threat seems to have been heightened by Nato expansion and mission creep, Nato expansion has also been driven in part by Putin’s belligerence. Are we really to believe that Estonia and Latvia joined because they wanted to attack Russia? On the contrary, it’s because they fear attack. While Nato’s growth is likely to have contributed to the crisis, it’s ridiculous to suggest that Russia is not the aggressor.

Putin is the best recruiting tool NATO has.

The former Labour MP Chris Williamson goes even further. As Putin’s tanks rolled across the border last Thursday, he characterised the government of Ukraine as a “post-coup, neo-Nazi backed, corrupt regime”, a classic Kremlin smear. The Morning Star, to give one of many similar examples, falsely describes Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration as a “fascist government”.

Zelenskiy is Jewish, and had family members killed by the Nazis. His Prime Minister is an economist who is not affiliated to a political party. Most of his Cabinet are technocrats.

True anti-imperialism means opposing not only the west’s imperialism, essential as this is. It’s about opposing all imperialism, whether western, Russian, Chinese or other. It’s about opposing all aggressive wars, regardless of who wages them. It’s about resisting the temptation to believe that your enemy’s enemy must be your friend.

This got me interested. How many of the NZ Peace Movements have even put out a press release condemning Russia?

Peace Movement Aotearoa has said nothing at all on its website.

Peace Action Wellington has said nothing at all on its website.

Auckland Peace Action has said nothing at all on its website.

Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know.

The Herald reports:

A terrified family is begging Kāinga Ora to relocate them to escape violence and intimidation from a Mongrel Mob member living in their street, saying they are “running out of hope and the will to live”.

The family moved into the Weir Lane, Silverdale, state housing development several years ago but say they now live in fear due to extreme antisocial behaviour and gang activity in their street.

The father, who was too fearful to be identified, said gang members from Black Power, Killer Beez and King Cobras frequented the housing development and the abusive Mongrel Mob neighbour had threatened to burn down people’s homes.

Here’s an even better solution. Rather than move out the good tenants, how about kicking out the Mongrel Mob member who is terrorising the other tenants? That is what any other landlord in NZ would do.

The man and his wife are both suffering from extreme depression and are on medication for anxiety. And despite fearing for their children’s safety following serious violence incidents in the street, they’d been told they were “not a priority” for a housing transfer, the father claims.

Of course not. The priority, set by Labour is to never evict, and just let the neighbours suffer.

A week later on February 12, another resident was set upon by about six men, thrown to the ground and kicked and beaten in the head.

He fled into his unit and the attack only stopped when he pulled a BB rifle on his assailants and fired several shots, dispersing the violent mob who ran away.

The father said armed police swarmed the street immediately after the attack and seized the firearm. They returned several times during the night due to disorder.

He believed the attackers were linked to the Mongrel Mob affiliate’s property. They spent the rest of the night chanting “sieg heil”, barking like dogs, fighting with each other and breaking into cars.

Residents found a butcher’s knife and a “shank” lying abandoned in the area the next morning, the father said.

Lovely stuff.

Police confirmed they received reports of a man being assaulted by a group, who then fired a BB rifle in the assailants’ direction before they ran away.

“The male had some visible injuries and was taken to hospital for treatment. He was subsequently issued with a formal written warning in relation to presenting a firearm.”

So the Police warned him for taking an action which may have saved his life.

Farah Hancock of Radio NZ did this graph showing the number of new cases per 100,000 by vaccination status.

This data appears to show that unvaccinated people are having far fewer cases than vaccinated. Now this is not an argument not to be vaccinated as vaccinations reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death massively.

But we do need to understand how vaccination affects whether or not you can get Covid-19 and/or infect others, as this is at the heart of the rationale for vaccine mandates.

The data might be affected by lower testing rates by those unvaccinated. However if you get seriously sick, you’ll have to get tested. So how much of a factor this is, I don’t know.

The Government itself should be publishing clear data on vaccination status and infections, for new cases on a per capita basis. The only way you can get this data is to take a snapshot of their website every day and calculate the changes. This is not transparency.

Radio NZ has done an update and the latest data for new cases per 100,000 population is:

1. Fully vaccinated 616/100,000
2. Partially vaccinated 469/100,000
3. Boosted 259/100,000
4. Unvaccinated 244/100,000

On this data, I don’t see how you can make a case for vaccine mandates continuing – especially as the mandate is merely for full (double) vaccination, not to be boosted.

Vaccination definitely reduces your individual chance of being hospitalised or dying. But the NZ data does not indicate that unvaccinated people are more likely to get Covid, than vaccinated people – which is the rationale for the vaccine pass system.

Mike Smith at The Standard writes:

One of Vladimir Putin’s objectives in the Russian incursion into Ukraine was to “denazify Ukraine.” With the breakdown in the agreement to allow a humanitarian corridor out of Mariupol, this task will be much harder and the terrorist toll much higher. Once Russia has succeeded however, the world will be a better place for it.

So you have a blogger at The Standard cheering on Putin, and pushing the Kremlin’s propaganda line that the invasion is to denazify Ukraine, as opposed to turn it into a puppet state.

But this isn’t any random blogger. Smith served for eight years as General Secretary of the NZ Labour Party – the organisational equivalent of chief executive.

Media spend thousands of column centimeters exposing what they label as the far right, Why do they never bother to highlight and expose the far left?

If a former ACT Party MP was cheering on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it would be a major story. But a former Labour Party General Secretary, and nothing.

The February 2022 Roy Morgan is out.

Party Vote

• Labour 32.0% (-1.0% from January)
• National 38.0% (+3.0%)
• Greens 11.0% (+0.5%)
• ACT 11.5% (-2.0%)
• Maori 2.0% (-0.5%)
• NZ First 2.0% (-0.5%)
• TOP 1.0% (-0.5%)
• New Conservatives 1.0% (nc)

Seats

• Labour 40 (-25 from election)
• National 48 (+15)
• Greens 14 (+4)
• ACT 15 (+5)
• Maori 3 (+1)

Governments

• Labour/Green 54/120
• National/ACT 63/120

Direction

• Right 42.5% (-6.0%)
• Wrong 47.5% (+5.5%)

This is the third Roy Morgan poll in a row to show a change of Government if there was an election.

The country direction is also significant at a net -5%. This has a gender gap with women being +8% and men being -19%.

Christopher Luxon has pledged to reverse the tax bracket creep of the last four years by moving each of the lower thresholds to what it would have been in adjusted for inflation. The 6% inflation we currently have is pushing more and more Kiwis into higher tax brackets.

I’ve done a table below showing how much less tax people would pay in absolute and relative terms at each income level.

The greatest percentage reduction in tax paid would be at $60,000 where inflation adjustment would see your tax bill drop 7.5%. Those on $50,000 (just above the fulltime minimum wage) would get a 4.5% reduction. Those on $150,000 get a 2.7% reduction.

The Media Council has unanimously found a column by Siouxsie Wiles in Stuff was a breach of two principles – accuracy and corrections.

She claimed that the seven signatories to the now infamous Listener letter has sent lawyers letters to junior colleagues, specifically:

 “The reason I got involved is because those professors and fellows have influence and power over people’s careers. Astonishingly, some are now intimidating junior colleagues with lawyer’s letters.”

The astonishing part is this is not true. The Council noted:

11. The complainants complained about the statement “Astonishingly, some are now intimidating junior colleagues with lawyer’s letters”. They see it as a “serious and completely inaccurate” allegation which has harmed university relationships and “seriously damaged our reputations”.  The Council agrees that the statement was inaccurate.  It appears plain that none of the named Professors were involved in intimidating junior colleagues with lawyer’s letters.

12. It is also of the view that this is a most serious allegation to make, striking at the heart of academic freedom by asserting that the Professors were trying to stifle opposing views using lawyers’ threats.  It required immediate public correction.

I hope Stuff will give this finding as much prominence as the original column. It has smeared and damaged the six surviving letter writers by portraying them as intolerant bullies, when in fact they are the ones who are the victims of intolerant bullies.

It is day 11 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the New Zealand Government has yet to place any meaningful sanctions on Russia for their invasion. This stands in huge contrast to the rest of the developed world, which responded within hours or a day or two.

Labour has at least abandoned its nonsensical stance that no sanctions can be imposed unless Russia agrees not to veto them, but it has no sense of urgency.

This has been noticed globally. And the reason we don’t have such a law is that Labour and Greens voted it down the last two times it was before Parliament.

The two measures taken to date by the NZ Government are both so limited as to be meaningless. Rather than do a travel ban on the wider top echelons of the Government and the oligarchs with the real power, NZ has merely said it will ban travel of those involved in the invasion. Well all those involved in the invasion are not going to be looking to come to NZ for some sightseeing, are they. The travel restrictions should apply to the entire Russian Government and oligarchs.

Just as puny is the ban on exporting goods to the Russian military. We basically don’t export anything anyway. Other countries have imposed far far wider exports bans. As companies around the world are voluntarily boycotting Russia, New Zealand has done less than Fonterra.

Radio NZ reports:

Workers at Covid-19 testing sites are copping abuse as frustrations boil over at the limited access to rapid antigen tests amid the growing Omicron outbreak, Dr Bryan Betty says.

The Porirua GP and medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners said some members of the public were becoming verbally abusive to staff when denied access to tests.

The Capital and Coast District Health Board said yesterday their testing teams were experiencing an unacceptable level of abuse.

It came as the Ministry of Health reported 22,527 new community cases yesterday bringing the total of active community cases confirmed across the country to 152,358 – though experts expect it would actually be much higher.

Dr Betty said the supply of tests available for the public was tight at the moment, but about 20 million were in the country and being distributed to providers.

“This level of frustration and anxiety that some people are displaying, we just need to be a bit pragmatic about it and realise if you have symptoms just stay at home until you can access a RAT test,” he said.

The problem is that the distribution of RAT tests, at least in Wellington is a cluster f**k. It took us three days and four attempts to get some. The staff at collection points contradict the information given out on their websites. The queues can be up to three hours. Making sick people spend three hours in a car just to get hold of a test, is ridiculous, and it is no wonder so many people are stressed and lashing out.

Of course they should not lash out at the poor staffers on the front line. It isn’t their fault the Government didn’t order enough tests early enough, and that the local DHB has set up an incompetent distribution system for them. The anger should be saved for those in charge.

It should not be this hard to get a test. Yes some people are lucky and in their areas they can get a test quickly. But there are a hell of a lot of people who are spending hours and hours trying to do something that should take ten minutes.

I blogged previously on the ridiculous demand by the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation that vaping sales be banned within 1 km of every school. This would mean a ban of 314 hectares size around every school.

A reader has shown what this would mean in Wellington.

So I guess you might be able to buy some out in Cook Strait.

Incredibly sad that Shane Warne is dead. He was one of the greatest bowlers in the history of cricket.

He was a larger than life character, with scandals galore. But that did not take away from his greatness.

Good to see Victoria decide to rename the Great Southern Stand of the MCG after Warne. Very fitting.

The last decade or so has been fairly bleak for those who believe in liberalism and democracy. To name just a few issues we have seen:

• China change course from a liberalising country to a more authoritarian country
• Russia start invading other countries
• The rise of the Islamic State
• A rise of authoritarian leaders in countries like The Philippines and Brazil
• Increasing attacks on free speech from cancel culture and associated identity politics
• The first US President in history refusing to concede he lost an election
• Increasing boldness from authoritarian countries such as Saudi Arabia where their leaders assassinate dissident citizens overseas with few repercussions
• More and more countries self-censoring themselves to avoid angering China
• More countries retreating to protectionism

But the global response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has given me hope. Liberal democratic countries have shown that there is a point at which they will act.

The initial response to the Russian invasion was tepid, but due to a combination of social media footage, a slow Russian advance and heroic resistance from Ukraine, hundreds of millions of people have demanded that their governments do what they can to persuade Russia to end the invasion. And the response has been unprecedented – freezing of central bank assets, sanctions, expulsion from SWIFT, travel bans etc etc.

The only way you stop a bully is to stand up to them, and the age of appeasement may finally be at an end. The liberal democratic countries have always had huge power, should they choose to use it.

But it hasn’t just been the response from countries. Russia is out of football, Formula One, Skiing World Cup and the Paralympics. They are out of Eurovision, and are cut off from new films. Their cultural icons are being banned from venues. The giant tech countries are limiting access. Russian propaganda channels are being banned or dropped.

This stuff is important too, as it turns Russians against the war and Putin. It is not guaranteed to succeed, but it is going to act as a cautionary tale to other authoritarian countries. Even China may now be a bit more cautious about military action in the future against Taiwan.

The invasion is a tragedy for Ukraine. Thousands of them are dead and this is just the beginning. Almost a million are refugees. It would be better if Russia never invaded. But the silver lining is the response. It has been unprecedented, and it does give hope.

The longer Ukraine can hold out, the more likely it is the sanctions will force Russia to negotiate an end to the invasion. They were counting on sanctions they could withstand for years, but they have ended up with sanctions that could cripple them in months or even weeks.

Слава Україні!

The FT reports:

Of all the sanctions the west imposed on Russia last week, sanctioning Russia’s central bank is by far the most fateful. “We will cause the collapse of the Russian economy,” said the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. This is not hyperbole. And if managed smartly by the west, these sanctions can also stop the war in Ukraine and beyond.

This is the aim – to stop the war. The more sanctions pile on, the more the incentives shift for Putin to halt the invasion, and negotiate a peaceful outcome.

With 60 per cent of FX reserves out of commission, Russia has to rely on the remaining 40 per cent, but there is no freedom to operate there either. The central bank cannot sell gold for dollars and euros because all transactions with it are prohibited and foreign bankers and dealers do not want to invite western wrath. The IMF reserve position is untouchable. Some $84bn in Chinese securities could, hypothetically, have been sold back to China, with a discount, to be paid in dollars, cut to $50bn, but China’s state banks have already refused financial deals with Russia. Which leaves only $30bn in cash — too little to prevent financial and economic ruin. The rouble is already in freefall and the run on banks in full swing. Russian corporate and individual depositors have $280bn in dollar and euro denominated account balances with Russian commercial banks. Banks cannot have that much foreign cash on hand and the central bank doesn’t have cash to save them. Now people want to withdraw rouble deposits, not because they are afraid that next time the roubles won’t be there but because they expect that next time their bank won’t be there. The Russian people saw bank failures during the default of 1998 and expect no less. The final implosion will be over supply chains. Businesses will demand dollars for payments. The successful part of the economy, producers of natural resources and high-value goods, will operate in dollars. The rest will have to resort to barter and endure supply interruptions, work stoppages and unemployment. The government may ban foreign currency transactions and demand that businesses trade only in roubles. This is unenforceable. The economy will break and a GDP contraction follow.

The challenge is can Ukraine hold out long enough for the Russian economy to break.

A guest post by a reader:

Tonga has a population of about 100k. So there are probably 25-30 trashed dwellings. 

I won’t even try to think about how to provide drinking water for however long it takes to rebuild roofs and stuff. 100k people at 10l/day each is 1m litres/day …. Only until we rebuild houses of course. God knows where that comes from.

Food wise I understand there are a lot of subsistence farmers. There are also people who grow cash crops like vanilla for export. All of the crops have been trashed by ash and will probably not be back up for another 12 months.  Tourism of course will be trashed for 6-12 months.

Sanitation will be a problem – with toilets all trashed there is lots of scope for disease … think Haiti and cholera.

Also Tonga has $150m or so of debt to China … 

The royals who own the satellite slots should be relatively unaffected ….

The odd shipload/planeload of aid is all good stuff, but the big picture is pretty depressing. Charity is admirable, but this is huge. How much of it is our(NZ)problem?

FEE reports:

A Danish newspaper has apologized to its readers for not questioning the government’s data and narratives more throughout the first two years of the pandemic.

The Ekstra Bladet, founded in 1904, said it should have done more due diligence in examining the government’s data and conclusions before reporting them:

“For ALMOST two years, we – the press and the population – have been almost hypnotically preoccupied with the authorities’ daily coronatal,” wrote Bladet journalist Brian Weichardt. “THE CONSTANT mental alertness has worn out tremendously on all of us. That is why we – the press – must also take stock of our own efforts. And we have failed.”

Will we see something like that here?

“WE HAVE NOT been vigilant enough at the garden gate when the authorities were required to answer what it actually meant that people are hospitalized with corona and not because of corona. Because it makes a difference. A big difference. Exactly, the official hospitalization numbers have been shown to be 27 percent higher than the actual figure for how many there are in the hospital, simply because they have corona. We only know that now.

The data is similar in NZ. A large proportion of those in hospital were not admitted due to Covid-19 symptoms, but due to other issues and found to have Covid-19. I’ve seen only very little reporting of this.

Some NZ media have done good work, but not enough have dug beyond the press releases. Where are the in depth stories on the fact we won’t have any anti-viral drugs to fight Covid-19 until April?

The Restaurant & Cafe Hospitality Magazine e-mailed subscribers last week and said:

Strike 1: The Finance Minister can’t seem to do the math, with the criteria for the new Government support package making most hospitality businesses ineligible.

Strike 2: Mixed messages from Government and District Health Boards are driving business owners insane, because while Grant Robertson urged people to go to work to support surrounding hospitality and retail outlets, workers at New Zealand’s biggest businesses and government departments are being encouraged to work from home, decimating CBD based businesses.

Strike 3: No one seems to want to acknowledge that for every cafe, restaurant, bar or tourism business there is a swathe of businesses upstream that supply them, from ingredients, products, tech, packaging, services and many more. It’s only a matter of time before hospitality’s pressure pot boils over as mutterings of a no-confidence vote abound. Time to kick the inexperienced to the curb and let those who have experience in business take over.

I can’t recall a trade magazine before ever taking a stand and calling on a Government to go. They don’t tend to be political. I can only imagine they are reflecting the overwhelming view of their industry.

Curia did a poll for Hobson’s Pledge that asked if New Zealanders and New Zealand is less divided or more divided than a year ago. The results were that a huge 72% said more divided and only 10% less divided.

One can argue about why this is (Government policies, Covid-19, cancel culture etc) but regardless of cause, we should all be concerned that the vast majority of New Zealanders think we are a more divided country. This is not a trend we want to continue.

Political leaders should give serious consideration as to what they can do to turn this trend about, and bring New Zealanders together.