The Herald reports:

The Ministry of Health has backtracked on a claim by director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield that tests requisitioned from private businesses were not already in New Zealand when the Ministry took them.

Last month, when news broke that the Ministry was requisitioning tests ordered by private companies for its own stocks, Bloomfield said private and public orders of the tests were being “consolidated” into one order for the Government.

Bloomfield twice assured the public that tests taken by the Ministry were “forward orders” from overseas, not tests already in New Zealand.

“Many businesses already have tests onshore and we’re not requisitioning those or doing anything like that,” Bloomfield said.

So not once but twice the Government said that the tests they were stealing or requisitioning where not ones already in New Zealand. That was a lie.

While no stocks of Abbott tests that are already in the country have been requisitioned, a substantial stock of Roche tests have been, a fact the Ministry now admits.

A spokeswoman from the Ministry acknowledged it “did take the full February allocation from Roche and their stock on hand in New Zealand as part of having our orders fulfilled by Roche”.

Instead of apologising for the false statements from the podium of truth, the truth comes out through a anonymous spokesperson.

When asked about the requisitioning fiasco, Bloomfield and ministers tend to answer with reference to Abbott’s tests, which had not been requisitioned.

This was despite no companies with Abbott tests on order actually alleging their orders had been taken. The two largest firms who complained their tests had been taken, InScience and Health Works Group, both ordered Roche products.

In a press conference last month, instead of answering what had happened to the missing Roche tests, Bloomfield answered questions relating to Abbott tests – tests which no one had reported as being stolen.

This strongly suggests they knew they had confiscated Roche tests that were in NZ, hence why they changed the topic to the Abbott tests. You sort of expect this level of dissembling from Ministers, but to have a departmental chief executive do it should be of greater concern.

Newshub has released their latest Reid Research poll.

Party Vote

• Labour 44.3% (+1.6% from November)
• National 31.3% (+4.4%)
• Greens 9.6% (+2.4%)
• ACT 8.0% (-8.0%)
• NZ First 1.8% (-0.7%)
• Maori 2.0% (-0.1%)

Seats

• Labour 56 (-9 from election)
• National 39 (+6)
• Greens 12 (+2)
• ACT 10 (nc)
• Maori 3 (+1)

Governments

• Labour/Green 68/120
• National/ACT 49/120

Preferred PM

• Jacinda Ardern 43.3% (+1.6%)
• David Seymour 7.9% (-4.0%)
• Christopher Luxon 17.8% (+15.3%)

The Herald reports:

Engineers for SpaceX, owned by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, are reportedly in Fiji with plans to help restore internet to the Kingdom of Tonga.

The devastating eruption in mid-January damaged an undersea telecommunications cable, which experts have said could take a month to repair.

National Party MP Dr Shane Reti wrote a letter to Musk, who also produces electric cars under the Tesla brand, asking for help to provide his Starlink satellite technology to the Pacific country. …

The Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, FBC News, reports that the team from SpaceX are now in Fiji to work on an internet gateway for the Kingdom of Tonga.

Minister for Communications Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum confirmed the news to FBC News, saying the engineers from SpaceX will establish and operate a temporary ground station in Fiji for six months.

A great result for the people of Tonga, due to Dr Shane taking the initiative.

The Herald reports:

Filling up at the petrol pump is costing New Zealanders up to $9 more than a month ago, putting further pressure on household budgets.

The end of fuel price hikes is not yet in sight, an expert warns, with a number of domestic and international factors likely to force them higher still in coming months.

That will add put more pressure to New Zealanders’ pay packets alongside high rents and rising food prices.

Unleaded 95 has passed $3/litre at more than a dozen petrol stations around the country, according to fuel tracking website Gaspy.

The average price of 95 is $2.79, up 22c from a month ago. That means a smaller car with a tank of 40 litres would cost $8.80 more to fill up compared with the same time last month.

I’m glad our main car is electric.

According to Stats NZ, the cost of petrol is 34% higher today than in September 2017.

Stuff reports:

Health groups are calling on the Government to take action against rising rates of childhood obesity by regulating junk food marketing targeted at children.

The notion that childhood obesity is caused by advertising is hilarious. The biggest factor in childhood obesity is ethnicity. The current childhood obesity rates by ethnicity are:

• Asian 6.6%
• European 10.3%
• Maori 17.8%
• Pacific 35.3%

Most (not all) childhood obesity is caused by parenting, not advertising.

The most obese country in the world is Nauru with a 61% obesity rate. Do the normal activists claim this is because of junk food advertising? Nauru has no daily newspaper,

Stuff reports:

Former US Vice President Mike Pence has directly rebutted Donald Trump’s false claims that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply “wrong.”

In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump’s intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that he could have done something to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

“President Trump is wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election.” …

He noted that, under Article II Section One of the Constitution, “elections are conducted at the state level, not by Congress” and that “the only role of Congress with respect to the Electoral College is to open and count votes submitted and certified by the states. No more, no less.”

“Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” he added. “Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”

The notion that the Vice-President can unilaterally overturn an election result is beyond preposterous. It borders on insane. If you believe that then, as Pence points out, Harris could simply declare Biden (or herself) the winner in 2024.

Anna Fifeld writes:

This obfuscation and obstruction is bad for our society for two key reasons.

One: It’s in everyone’s interest to have journalists understand the complicated subjects they’re writing about. We need to ask questions. We can’t explain things we don’t understand.

Two: It’s called the public service for a reason. They work for the public, aka you. It is the job of the Fourth Estate to hold the powerful to account. So we should be able to ask reasonable questions – like “When will the $1.25 billion Transmission Gully motorway open?” – and expect something that at least resembles an answer.

I have never encountered anything quite like this in any other democracy I’ve worked in: Not when I was a White House correspondent during the Obama administration, not when I worked in Japan or South Korea.

To be clear, our country is free and open compared to many other parts of the world. But I’m not comparing us to Iran (where I used to ask pointed questions at foreign ministry press conferences all the time) or China (ditto).

I’m comparing us to other proudly open and democratic societies. And I’m comparing us to the us we used to be. Where a journalist could ask a straight question and get a straight answer and deliver it to you – straight.

The bolded part should make us reflect.

Sam Stubbs writes:

The reality is, while our politicians and planners are wedded to the idea of trains, they are not the future of public transport. Globally, research and development are focused on electric and hydrogen cars and buses, electric bikes and new forms of air transport. Trains are a 20th-century solution for a 21st-century problem.

And trains are very inflexible. Most people have to drive or cycle to a train station, and drive home. Trains work in dense environments where people can walk home, but that is not Auckland. By landmass, Auckland is one of the largest cities in the world and forever expanding outwards.

The future of public transport is probably going to be electric driverless vehicles that will pick you up at your door and drop you off at your destination. You’ll share them with half a dozen or more other people.

It definitely isn’t going to be trains or trams.

Shane Te Pou writes:

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in political science to understand this much about elections: under first-past-the-post, if two candidates aligned to the Labour Party run against each other for the Auckland mayoralty, neither is likely to win. Instead, by failing to rally behind a single contender, the Labour Party will all but certainly gift New Zealand’s biggest political prize in local government to its adversaries. What a spectacular own goal that would be.

Luckily Labour tends to ignore Shane!

On the dangers of splitting the vote, Collins understands the stakes. He wants to live in Mayor Leo Molloy’s Auckland no more than I do. But he’s bemused by the process, and I found myself persuaded by his calls for a transparent selection that gives grassroots party members a say.

Before I’d finished asking whether he’d step aside if he came up short under such a process, he jumped in with a definitive “yes”.

“If it was an agreed process that was fair, robust and transparent, and the one I’ve requested includes the membership of the party so that people can have a say. Too many of our people are left out, and this is a way to draw them in.”

As it stands today, Collins seems unlikely to get his wish. The NZ Council, Labour’s governing body, is taking charge, seeking input from locals via an Auckland local body committee, but ultimately plans to make the calls themselves. That means party honchos from Wellington and Christchurch get a say, but longstanding members and activists are shut out.

So Collins won’t stand against Hills if Labour runs a fair transparent process for determining whom get’s Labour’s nod. But if Hills is anointed by the Labour hierarchy without local members having a say, then Collins will run regardless. Seems fair.

Whoopi Goldberg sparked a deserved backlash when she said the Holocaust was not about race or racism, but was just about white guys vs white guys.

The video below is a great explanation of why anti-semitism is about race, not religion. Some key points:

• Nazis didn’t care at all about if Jews were observant, it was purely about bloodline. Atheist Jews were killed as much as devout Jews.
• The Nuremberg laws were racial purity laws
• Jews are seen as “white” or “non-white” depending on the politics of the observer
• For centuries, far right and others have not seen Jews as part of the white races
• More recently the far left sees Jews as “super white” because many Jews are successful
• The Holocaust was not about two white groups fighting. It was about one race being marked out for destruction using a military industrial regime.

Hamish Rutherford reports:

Customers who need emergency loans, say for car repairs or medical bills, are discovering the process is so lengthy and uncertain, one banking figure said, that they are better off going to high-interest payday lenders.

If that seems ironic, it might be topped. One banking figure said he had heard examples of a customer wanting to consolidate their borrowing with loan sharks into a personal loan with a bank, but being told the bank could not approve the loan because of the CCCFA.

So the Government says the CCCFA was designed to protect people from loan sharks, but because they didn’t listen to the multiple warnings it was too wide, it now may end up driving people from banks to loans sharks!

These extracts from John Campbell interviewing Poto WIlliams are priceless.

Stuff reports:

More than 3450 submissions were received by the council, of which 77 per cent supported the council’s position that any new entity should be kept accountable to the public through elected council representatives.

More than 2000 people were also independently polled, with 67 per cent of respondents also supporting the council’s position.

So two thirds of Aucklanders oppose the Government’s plans to remove water assets from the control of Councils and place them with regional entities that will be almost immune to public accountability.

Stuff reports:

Nothing is off the table, including rent controls, as Government officials search for ways to help people struggling with the cost of accommodation, Associate Housing Minister Poto Williams says.

“I’ve charged our officials at HUD (Ministry of Housing and Urban Development) to go away and look at what are the options we can put in, in the short term, to support our renters,” she told Breakfast on Thursday.

“We’ve asked the officials to come back with a list next week of things that we can look at. There is nothing off the table,” Williams said.

“There are a whole lot of proposals that are being floated at the moment, including things like rent control and indexation. There are other things that I’ve asked our officials to look at.”

They’re looking at daft stuff which would reduce the supply of rental housing. They’re not looking at their own role in driving rental prices up by imposing massive extra costs and compliance on landlords.

Newshub reports:

Mounting political pressure is not the reason pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis was offered an emergency MIQ spot, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson says.

That whopper would make Pinocchio’s nose reach the moon.

Yes it had nothing to do with the fact the story dominated NZ news media for several days, was reported in scores of countries around the world, and the outrage from fellow Kiwis that a New Zealander was being forced to give birth in Afghanistan instead of New Zealand.

Instead Grant would have us believe, they merely rechecked the paperwork and found she qualified after all.

The Government has finally accepted the inevitable, and announced dates for reopening the border. But they have done this twice before, and then reneged, so these should be treated more as aspirational targets than certainties. But for what they are worth, the details are:

1. 28 February – NZ citizens in Australia can return without MIQ
2. 13 March – NZ citizens anywhere can return without MIQ
3. April – Visa holders such as international students and skilled migrants can enter without MIQ
4. July – citizens from visa-waiver countries such as Australia, US, UK can enter without MIQ
5. October – anyone eligible to enter New Zealand and enter without MIQ

Those entering NZ will still need to self-isolate for seven days, and take a RAT on day 1 and on day 6.

Newshub reports:

The Government’s proposed income insurance scheme would see workers made redundant, laid off or who have to stop working because of a health condition or disability, receive 80 percent of their usual salary for up to seven months.

It would include a four-week notice period and four-week payment, paid at 80 percent of salary, from employers. The worker would then get a further six months of financial support from the scheme, including support for training, also at 80 percent of salary.

However, the maximum payment would be capped at 80 percent of $130,911, in line with the maximum leviable income that ACC has in place.

To pay for it, the Government is proposing an ACC-style fund that both workers and employers would contribute to, paying about 1.39 percent each into the scheme. It would be administered by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). 

This is a terrible policy.

Every working New Zealander will have their take home pay drop (at a time when inflation is rocketing) to fund this scheme which could see someone who loses their job paid $60,000 to stay home and do nothing for half a year.

People will get paid up to $400 a day to not look for a job.

Georgina Campbell reports:

Wellington City Council is looking at a 9.1 per cent rates increase this year.

It comes on the back of interest rate hikes, inflation hitting a 30-year high, and a 13.5 per cent rates increase last year. The latest rates hike was revealed at an Annual Plan workshop yesterday.

While Mayor Andy Foster was sympathetic to the squeeze on budgets, he told the Herald that last year Wellingtonians were “absolutely emphatic” they wanted the council to invest in the city.

Sympathy doesn’t allow households to pay the bills.

WCC has made decisions to spend over $100 million of a second music venue and tens of millions on a convention centre that will be a massive loss maker. They are treating ratepayers as an unlimited source of funds.