Claire Trevett writes:

As a result, life can be tough for Labour Police Ministers, which is precisely why the job usually goes to MPs who can at least talk a bit tough: Those who sit on the right-hand pews of Labour’s broad church – people like Dame Annette King, George Hawkins, and Stuart Nash.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was trying something different by giving it to Williams, who is not tough on crime and can’t put on a convincing show of it – and was chosen for those reasons.

We have a Police Minister who doesn’t believe we should be tough on crime, and that is why she was chosen!

Williams is also relatively inexperienced as a minister and that is showing – and is a liability in a portfolio which has rapidly become very political.

Labour’s liability is National’s asset.

Before that was her odd decision to refuse Mitchell’s request to meet with Police Commissioner Andrew Coster or any of the district commanders after he became police spokesman.

The only reason Williams could come up with for refusing it was that she believed police were “busy.” She may regret it and it was possibly counter-productive.

It is unprecedented to block the Opposition Spokesperson from meeting the Commissioner.

An interesting interview with Louisa Wall by Audrey Young:

Asked if she had ever gone to Ardern and Robertson to ask what their issue was about her, she says she hadn’t directly asked them.

Their dislike of her must be pretty strong for them to arrange to roll her out of her own electorate.

“I love my party. I love our principles. I love what we stand for. I just think that some of the behaviour of the people in leadership at the moment is completely incongruent with who we are.”

I wonder who she could be talking about.

• Legalising marriage for same-sex couples, passed in 2013.

• Allowing regulation-making power to set up protest-free zones for women entering abortion clinics on a case by case basis, passed in 2022.

• Allowing the late Katherine Harris to be named on the birth certificate of her daughter, Paige Harris, who was carried by a surrogate, passed in 2022.

• Making it unlawful to post intimate digital recordings of another person, passed in 2022.

• Extending protection of journalists’ sources to investigative journalists. At select committee and will be taken over by Ingrid Leary.

• Setting out legal rights for various parties in surrogacy arrangements. Given to Tamati Coffey and is at select committee.

• Requiring that renewal of liquor licences under Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 must not be inconsistent with local alcohol policy. Awaiting second reading.

&bull: Requiring the Registrar-General to enter details of Diane Sullivan on the birth certificate of Rowen Sullivan.

• Recognising the status of Māori in New Zealand. Not approved by caucus in Opposition.

• Stipulating that housing is a human right. Not approved by caucus in Opposition.

That’s an impressive list, and a good reminder you don’t have to become a Minister to be an effective legislator.

The Herald reports:

The United Nations General Assembly has suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by invading Russian troops in Ukraine.

The US-led push garnered 93 votes in favour, while 24 countries voted against and 58 countries abstained. A two-thirds majority of voting members – abstentions do not count – was needed to suspend Russia from the 47-member council.

Suspensions are rare. Libya was suspended in 2011 because of violence against protesters by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

No permanent member of the Security Council has ever had its membership revoked from any UN body.

Disappointing 24 voted against and 58 abstained, but still a good outcome that restores a bit of credibility to the UN and its Human Rights Council.

The March 2022 Roy Morgan is out.

Party Vote

• Labour 32.0% (nc from February)
• National 38.0% (nc)
• Greens 10.5% (-0.5%)
• ACT 9.0% (-2.5%)
• Maori 2.0% (nc)
• NZ First 4.0% (+2.0%)
• TOP 1.5% (+0.5%)
• New Conservatives 0.5% (-0.5%)

Seats

• Labour 42 (-23 from election)
• National 50 (+17)
• Greens 14 (+4)
• ACT 12 (+2)
• Maori 2 (nc)

Governments

• Labour/Green 56/120
• National/ACT 62/120

Direction

• Right 39.0% (-3.5%)
• Wrong 51.5% (+4.5%)

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

The most significant aspect is the decline in net country direction from – 5% to -12.5%. A year ago it was +34%.

Of great concern to Labour will be the gender breakdown of the direction question. In February women were + 8% but are now -6%. Men have gone from -19% to just -20% so the drop in satisfaction has been with women – a core Labour support base.

Stuff reports:

The Hutt City Council’s consent processing system is “broken”, with it taking up to nine months before applications are returned, developers and survey consultants say.

Under the Resource management Act, local bodies have 20 working days to return consent applications.

Kevin Melville​ is overseeing the conversion of a commercial building in central Lower Hutt into 40 new apartments. He said the delays weren’t helping anyone. The consequence of the lag was that projects were being delayed, and costs were increasing.

“It’s beyond a joke – it’s broken. It can mean it’s a year before we can start building, and the holding cost can add another 10 per cent [to the cost of a project].”

So the incompetence of the Hutt City Council might be adding 10% to the price of new houses.

Councils need to focus on their core responsibilities first. Under the law consents should be processed within 20 working days. Hutt City Council is missing that massively.

I like the idea once proposed that if a Council doesn’t process a consent on time, they don’t get to charge a fee for it. I bet you then they would manage it.

Geoff Chetwin​, director of Chetwin Surveying, said a consent he lodged in August last year came back in mid-March.

“That was for a stock-standard four-lot subdivision, nothing tricky in there. When a council’s taking six months to get a consent back it’s just ridiculous. It’s not just Hutt City, other councils are under the pump, but they’re not taking six months. Thirty or 40 days is more reasonable – I’d be happy with 40.”

Seven months for a simple subdivision.

One News reports:

New data shows police response times around the country have become remarkably slower under the Labour-led Government.

The stats, obtained by National, show response times to serious crime have blown out in many districts since 2017.

In Auckland, officers arrived in 26 minutes or less 90% of the time in 2017. That time has now jumped out to one hour and 49 minutes this year.

That is appalling. You call 111 in Auckland and have to wait two hours for the Police to arrive.

Police Association president Chris Cahill said the data left him “concerned” and he believed the public would also be concerned.

But Police Minister Poto Williams told 1News she wasn’t sure what was going on and had no plans to find out.

Williams said she was “not over the detail” despite 1News having sent the details to her office, and described it as an “operational matter to the police”.

It is not an operational matter. It is a public confidence matter. Good Governments and Ministers set targets for agencies. One of those targets can be (and has been) how long it takes to respond to 111 calls.

Newshub reports:

New Zealand is slapping Russian goods with a 35 percent import tax over alleged war “atrocities” committed in Ukraine. 

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor announced on Wednesday that the 35 percent tariffs will apply to all imports from Russia.

I support this.

I’m all for free trade with as many countries as possible. Tariffs tend to damage both the country that imposes them and that has them imposed on them.

But when a country is committing war crimes, then it is right to use tariffs as a tool to punish them for their behaviour. Free trade is great with friends, and good even with countries we disagree on a lot with, but isn’t appropriate for states that act as enemies.

Stuff reports:

Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard will face some scrutiny in a police watchdog review of the 23-day Parliament occupation, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed.

However, a full government inquiry has been ruled out.

The Independent Police Complaints Authority (IPCA) is running a year-long review of the occupation and police actions. Protesters were able to set up camp on and around Parliament lawn, growing from a few hundred to about 3000 people.

Ardern said how Mallard and the Parliament ground’s management team engaged with each other was also in its scope, but there were no other reviews planned despite National calling for a “deep and full scale inquiry”.

The media have reported this as fact, when the reality is, it can’t be true.

The IPCA is a creature of statute. It can no more inquire into the actions of the Speaker, than the Commerce Commission can.

The IPCA Act is here. Section 12 spells out their function is to receive and investigate complaints about the Police. They are not permitted to go beyond this remit.

Why do media report claims from the Prime Minister, without fact checking them?

Parliament (well Labour and Greens and Māori Party) voted last night to end the concept of one person one vote in New Zealand.

By 77 to 43 they voted for the first reading of the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill.

This bill over-rides the existing electoral law which requires wards to be roughly the same size, so that a vote in one ward is worth as much as a vote elsewhere. The same law applies at a national level with a 5% tolerance.

But what this bill does is legislate for 22,000 voters on the Māori roll to elect three ward Councillors and 56,000 voters on the general roll to elect three ward Councillors. This means the votes of people on the general roll will be worth 39% of the votes of those on the Māori roll – which is of course restricted to those who have had at least one Māori ancestor.

So Labour and Greens have voted for a bill that will, in Rotorua, reduce the votes of those on the general roll to 39% of those on the Māori roll. And the media deem this barely worth reporting on.

Make no mistake, if this law passes for Rotorua, it will eventually become the standard everywhere – for all Councils, and eventually for Parliament. Anyone who denies this is deluded. The Māori Party openly advocate for this.

This bill needs to be defeated. We need tens of thousands of submissions against it. You can make a submission here. This is not the time to sit on the sidelines.

John Tyler was was born in 1790. He became the 10th President of the United States in 1841. He died aged 71 in 1862.

He had 15 children. His first wife Letitia was the same age as him and she married him when they were 23 and died when they were 52. They had eight children.

John remarried Julia in 1844. She was born in 1820 so was 24 when she married the then 54 year old President. She was five years younger than Tyler’s oldest daughter. They had seven children from 1846 to 1860. Julia died in 1889 aged 68. John died in 1862 aged 71.

Lyon Tyler was born in 1853 to John and Julia. He also had two wives – Anne who he was with until she died in 1921 when he was 68.

Soon after that he married Sue who was around 33 and she had three children including Harrison Tyler who was born in 1928 and is alive today.

So John was 63 when he had Lyon and Lyon was 75 when he had Harrison and Harrison is 94 years old – which is how you have a grandson of the 10th President still alive!

• Writ issued Wed 11 May
• Nominations close Tue 17 May
• By-election Day Sat 18 June
• Writ returned by Sun 10 July

Peter Hughes announced:

Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes has today announced the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, has chosen to step down at the end of July.

The Commissioner said Dr Bloomfield had done an outstanding job leading the Government’s health response to COVID-19 and the vaccination rollout.

Dr Bloomfield signalled with the Commissioner late last year he intended to step down before his term officially ended on 11 June 2023.

New Zealand is in a strong position because of its response to COVID-19 and its high vaccination rates. Dr Bloomfield has played a vital role in New Zealand’s success. At this stage in the Government’s COVID-19 response, and at the beginning of significant changes to the health and disability sector, Dr Bloomfield feels July is a good time to step away and have an extended break.

I can only imagine how draining the last two years have been, and Dr Bloomfield deserves a good break from what must have been an insanely high pressure job.

People who know Ashley personally tell me he is a very humble and personable guy. While the response to Covid-19 has had its flaws, our death rate has been a fraction of most other countries.

It will be interesting to see who is appointed to replace him, as the role will be very different under the Little health reforms.

A Stuff article claims:

The world – particularly the wealthiest and developed nations – has failed to take meaningful action on emissions. Since the release of the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2014, there has been little progress in limiting global emissions. From 2010-2019, average yearly emissions were higher than ever before (producing 17 per cent of all cumulative carbon emissions since 1850).

Let’s look at the data and see if this so called fact stacks up. Here’s the top 10 carbon emitters in 2010, and what has happened since then to 2020:

1. China 8616 to 10667 = +2,051
2. US 5675 to 4712 = -962
3. EU-28 3937 to 2928 = -1,009
4. India 1677 to 2441 = +764
5. Russia 1613 to 1577 = -35
6. Japan 1214 to 1030 = -186
7. South Korea 595 to 597 = +2
8. Iran 569 to 745 = +176
9. Canada 558 to 535 = -23
10. Saudi Arabia 517 to 625 = +108

So this assertion stated as a fact is clearly wrong. In fact the US and EU have reduced their CO2 emissions by 2,000 or so while China and India have increased by 2,700 or so.

And this is why trust in media keeps declining.

Stuff reports:

The Government is being urged to step up its sanctions effort and send lethal military equipment to Ukraine, as Russia is accused of committing war crimes. …

National Party foreign affairs spokesman Brownlee said there was a “mismatch” between the sanctions levelled by the Government and the actions of New Zealand’s traditional partners, a gap which needed to be “urgently” remedied.

He said the vast majority of the 488 Russians sanctioned by the Government so far had only been subject to irrelevant travel bans, and he questioned why the Government had so far only placed sanctions on one Russian bank, Promsvyazbank.

“It’s not even Sberbank, which is the biggest bank in Russia … There’s absolutely no clarity here about what process is being used by MFAT to determine who is an associate of Mr Putin.”

He said the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and European Union had frozen the assets of Russia’s major banks, institutions and individuals, hampering Russia’s ability to finance its war.

Travel bans in response to horrific war crimes. It’s beyond pathethic.

Labour’s promise of 100,000 affordable Kiwibuild houses was their most iconic 2017 policy. How are they doing, nearly halfway through their second term.

They promised that by now they would have built 24,000 houses. They have in fact delivered 1,304 which is 5.4% of what they promised – so they have underdelivered by 94.6%.

Overall they are only 1.3% of the way to the 100,000 they promised.

They told voters that their ability was so awesome that by now they would be building 1,000 Kiwibuild houses each and every month. In the last three months they have built 8 Kiwibuild houses vs the 3,000 they promised.

Shane Reti released:

The botched $20 million measles vaccine catch-up programme is worse than it appears, National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says.

“The other week it was revealed that $8 million of measles vaccines were left unused and had expired.

The level of waste in this Government is unbelievable.

“However, information shows that only 11,206 people of the targeted 300,000 received the vaccine – representing a cost of nearly $1900 per person and reaching only 3 per cent of the targeted population.

They spent $20 million and ended up vaccinating just 3% of unvaccinated people for an average cost of almost $2,000 each.

“It was also revealed that Labour spent $1.8 million on public relations to frame a campaign ‘with a particular focus on Māori and Pacific people’, yet only 1181 Māori received the vaccine – a PR cost of $1,500 per person.

“Worse still, to date the programme costs show that $2.2 million has been spent on public relations while only $1.61 million was spent on actually delivering the vaccine to Māori.

Sums up the Government – all spin, no delivery.

Stuff reports:

With that in mind, she said the council’s new preferred model was one with three Māori ward seats, three general ward seats and four at large seats – 3-3-4.

It allowed voters on both wards the same number of seats to influence and equalised the number of Māori ward and general ward seats.

However, the model was unlawful under the Local Electoral Act as the law has a strict formula that limits the number of Māori ward seats based on population sizes.

There were 21,700 people on the Māori roll and 55,600 people on the general roll in Rotorua, her report said.

So we now have this in the open. The Rotorua Council no longer believes in one person one vote. It believes that if you are not Maori, you should get only get 40% of a vote. They think 22,000 people should get the same number of ward Councillors as 56,000 people – because those 22,000 people have the right ancestors.

Their model breaks the law around equality of votes, but hey lets just change the law.

Rotorua-based Labour list MP Tāmati Coffey is the bill’s sponsor. It seeks an exemption from the Local Electoral Act’s requirements preventing the 3-3-4 model.

So a Labour MP is introducing a bill so the vote of non-Maori will be just 40% of those of Maori in Rotorua. Welcome to our future.

Jerry Coyne reports that 70 Fellows of the Royal Society have filed an effective motion of no confidence in the Academy Executive and Council of the (NZ) Royal Society. They state:

The Fellows, listed below as cosignatories, wish to express their deep concern about what has been happening within the Royal Society of New Zealand over the last year, by moving and seconding the motions below for discussion at the at the 56th hui ā-tau o Ngā Ahurei Annual Fellowship on 28th April.

Many of us have lost confidence in the current Academy Executive and Council, whose actions seemingly have brought the society into disrepute, shutting down useful debate and bringing international opprobrium from leading scientists. We are further concerned about the lack of agency that Fellows have following the many restructures of the Society over the last several years, and the spending of fellowship fees to cover lawyers’ costs and, presumably, public relations consultants to defend the Society’s very poor processes and actions.

In particular:

1. We believe that the content of the initial statement posted by the RSTA on its website in August 2021 about the controversy generated following the Listener letter on the relationship between mātauranga Māori and Science was ill-conceived, hasty and inaccurate in large part.

2. We are appalled at the mishandling of the formation of the initial committee set up by RSTA to investigate the complaint, the length of the process, and the handling of the publication of the outcome, which suggests both that the RSTA cannot decide whether mātauranga Māori is or is not Science, and impugned the integrity of two eminent Fellows.

No less than 70 Fellows have signed the letter. Incredibly brave of them. Also many others support the motions, but are (understandably) too scared to say so publicly:

Sadly several other Fellows have also indicated they will vote in favour,  but because of the potential harassment and bullying they believe they would receive (from some current and former members of the Academy and the RSNZ Council, and from colleagues in senior and other positions within their University), they do not wish to disclose their names in this document, especially if it becomes public.  Many younger Fellows and others have said (again in writing) that their jobs would be at risk signing this letter.  Two Fellows (major RSNZ Medalists) said this: “Better not (sign) at this stage – … I agree with all the statements – but you can’t imagine the pressure being put on us. I will vote for the motion though.”, and “In confidence I am disillusioned with RSNZ and I am too scared to sign anything for fear of what may happen to me at UoA if I do so”.  This is a startling indictment of the situation in the research community in NZ at the moment, and of the way in which the RSNZ handled and exacerbated the controversy over the letter to the Listener.

It is good to see this push back against cancel culture where top scientists faced disciplinary expulsion from the Royal Society because they dared to defend science.