As once again war has broken out in Europe, we recall all those New Zealanders who gave their lives in previous conflicts. We shall not forget them.
Gallup has calculated the average approval rating for Presidents in their 5th quarter of office. They are:
I expect this may drop even more as cost of living bites there also.
Josie Pagani wrote:
It’s a good time to be thief. The police appear to have legalised stealing by ignoring it. But God help you if you drive at 57kph in a 50km zone.
My daughter is a university student. The single largest asset she owns is her scooter, which she uses to ride to campus and her part-time jobs.
A couple of weeks ago she locked it up on the street while she sat an exam. Someone tried to steal it. Unable to break the steering lock, the thieves ripped off plastic moulding and cut wiring to hotwire it. They were interrupted by a security guard, who also filmed them.
When my daughter emerged, the scooter was an unusable mess. Call the cops: Too busy. They told her to visit a website, and upload details and the video. No fingerprint dusting. No-one came to check if the thieves were still around. It was dark. She was alone.
A few days later she got an email from the police. They were closing the case. They hadn’t even watched the video of red-handed robbers.
The only way they could be caught now is if they turned up at the cop shop and said, ‘’’We did it guv’. We’re turning ourselves in.’’
The police have decided not to enforce section 226(2) of the Crimes Act 1961, which provides for up to two years in the clink for attempting to nick a vehicle (and seven years for actually pinching one).
Parliament imposed tough penalties. It meant these crimes to be serious. So consider the constitutional consequences of the police deciding to overrule Parliament. If the police are wrong in their judgments about which crimes to enforce, then there is no way for the rest of us to bring about justice.
While the police were too busy to attend the fresh scene of the scooter crime, I was driving up Transmission Gully.
Police cars seemed to be waiting, menacingly, every couple of kilometres. Elsewhere, one of my family got a ticket for driving in an empty bus lane.
Road rules are rules, but who decided that bus lanes and doing 110 on a brand new motorway are a higher priority than robbery?
A very good question.
The second round of the French Presidential election is this weekend, and it looks like Macron shoukd win by around 55% to 45% for Le Pen.
There have been 76 polls in April, and Macron has led in 75 of them, including the last 60.
If Putin had not invaded Ukraine, then I suspect it would be much closer.
Kris Faafoi has announced:
The Minister for Broadcasting and Media has confirmed the nine-member Establishment Board to lead the work on creating a new public media entity in New Zealand. …
The Establishment Board is: Tracey Martin (Chair), Michael Anderson, Andy Coupe, Barbara Dreaver, Bailey Mackey, Dr Jim Mather, Peter Parussini, John Quirk and Aliesha Staples.
A former MP should not be on the board of a public broadcaster, let alone chairing it. This is another nail in the coffin for trust in media.
I’d like to see all future appointments to boards of public broadcasters and NZ on Air to be made non-partisan by requiring them to have the agreement of the leader of the opposition. If National wins the election, I hope they do this.
Inflation is at a 32 year high, and the Government’s response to this is going to include cutting the take home pay of every working family in New Zealand.
Yes they are bringing in a new tax, which will see both employers and employees pay 1.4% of their income to the Government, so that people made redundant can spent eight months not working or looking for a job.
So just as hundreds of thousands of Kiwi families are trying to cope with everything costing 7% more, the Government is going to reduce their take home pay for the average family by another $100 a month.
Crazy.
The Attorney-General has reported on whether the Rotorua bill ending equality of suffrage breaches the Bill of Rights Act, and has concluded it does. Some extracts:
In a representative democracy, it is important to maintain approximately the same level of representation for everyone. The proposed arrangements in the Bill would make the number of council members for the Māori ward disproportionately higher than the number of council members for the general ward in comparison to their respective populations. As the disadvantaged group is those on the General roll, changing representation arrangements away from proportional representation therefore creates a disadvantage for non-Māori as they cannot in future elect to change rolls.
So the official word is the bill will discriminate against non-Māori.
This proposed arrangement detracts from the key constitutional principle of equal representation in a representative democracy. I consider that there must be strong reasons to depart from this fundamental constitutional principle and, accordingly, to justify the limit on the right to freedom from discrimination. Departures from the Local Electoral Act may also have broader constitutional impacts and need to be carefully considered. Arrangements like these, if replicated across other local bodies could result in significant impacts, which may be better considered in full by central government and Parliament.
Indeed, a major constitutional change should not be done by way of an obscure local bill.
For the above reasons, I have concluded the Bill appears to limit the right to be free from discrimination affirmed in s 19 of the Bill of Rights Act and cannot be justified under s 5 of that Act.
Of course this advice is not binding. The AG actually voted for the bill at first reading.
Radio NZ reported:
Women make up about 90 percent of those who lost jobs during the pandemic, while many shouldered heavy economic, emotional or care-giving burdens. …
Mirroring these trends, women in Aotearoa New Zealand faced greater economic, social and health challenges than men.
In 2020, women made up 90 percent of pandemic-related redundancies.
I recall hearing that 90% figure before, but off memory it may have just been referring to one quarter or so.
The HLFS data shows that in 2020 the number of men in jobs rose by 15,000 or 1.0% and the number of women in jobs rose by 2,000 or 0.2%. So at the end of 2020 more women were in jobs.
In 2021 a further 35,000 men were in jobs and 66,000 women.
So compared to the end of 2019, there are today 3.5% more men in jobs and 5.3% more women in jobs.
An interesting analysis by Simon Bazelon:
Between those two factors, it’s reasonable to assume that Democrats are looking at a vote share between 47% and 48.5% this cycle. This means Republicans will probably win the generic ballot by between three and six percent, and the median scenario is probably Republicans winning by around 4.5%. Since Joe Biden won by 4.5% in 2020, this would mean that the national environment has shifted 9 percentage points to the right.
Assume, for a moment, that there is zero ticket-splitting, and this swing is uniform across all elections. This would mean any Democrat in a state that Biden won by less than 9% will probably lose. That includes:
So this would reduce Democrats to 46 or 47 seats. But the real nightmare is 2024.
Since the Reagan Era, Democrats have averaged roughly 51% of the two-party vote in Presidential elections. If Biden gets this percentage of the vote, and the correlation between the Senate and presidential vote stays at close to .95 (as it was in 2020), then basically every Democratic senator in a state Biden won by less than 2% who is up in 2024 is likely to lose.
That includes:
In addition, Debbie Stabenow in Michigan (Biden +2.8) and Jackie Rosen in Nevada (Biden +2.4) would likely be in toss-up races.
So what this says is that even if Biden wins 51% of the vote in 2024, the Democrats are likely to only hold 41 seats, maybe as few as 38.
The plan was to rush the Rotorua bill through hearings and Parliament before 1 June so that they could end equality of suffrage for the Rotorua District Council in time for this year’s elections.
They even had already scheduled oral submissions to start this week, thinking they only had a few score to get through.
But around 10,000 people have made a written submission against this awful bill (despite almost zero coverage in the media), and I understand around 2,500 of you have asked to speak to your submissions. This has made it impossible to ram it through, and they have conceded this by extending the written submission deadline to Wed 04 May. So you can still submit at the link above, or through Protect Your Vote. The Government has realised how bad a look it is to try and ram through such a massive change in a fortnight. People power is winning.
Graeme Edgeler has done an excellent submission against the bill here. Graham Adams has covered it on The Platform and Paul Goldsmith has written in the Herald:
In Ukraine, people are giving their lives to defend what freedoms they have to determine their own destiny.
One of the core principles of our democracy is one person, one vote. That we, as New Zealanders, are all treated the same. Our individual votes have equal power in deciding who governs the country and in decisions affecting our lives.
Astoundingly, this principle is currently under assault by the Labour Party, led by Jacinda Ardern.
Tamati Coffey, a Labour List MP based in Rotorua, has introduced a Local Bill for the Rotorua District Council that seeks to throw out the one person, one vote principle, as it is enshrined in the Local Electoral Act.
This is what we need every person to know. Labour no longer support one person, one vote. They are trying to legislate an end to equality of suffrage in New Zealand.
We need to stop this bill, and then stop them trying to do it again.
One News reports:
A group of unvaccinated New Zealand resident visa holders are threatening to take legal action against the Government, saying they are stuck overseas and are unable to return to their homes.
Many are long-time permanent residents and residents of this country, who have lived here for decades.
Aucklander Holly Atkinson is one of the group’s 750 members, which calls itself “The Forgotten of New Zealand”.
The long-time permanent resident has lived in New Zealand since she was 9 years old, but travelled to South Africa in March. She was planning to return through MIQ after spending two weeks with her grandfather, who had been violently attacked in a home invasion.
So she has lived here since she was nine, is a permanent resident, eligible to vote in our elections and has a job in NZ, but the Government won’t let her return home.
While her decision not to be vaccinated was a “personal choice”, she felt the discrepancy between citizens and resident visa holders was unfair – with one able to return, and the other unable to cross the border.
“It’s really, really tough feeling like I am basically shut out, so please, I would love it if you let me back in,” she said.
“If MIQ had said to us, ‘hey, you actually can’t get back in, because you’re unvaccinated and a permanent resident’, I would still be in New Zealand now.’
Lawyer Matthew Hague made the same argument in a letter to the Government earlier this week. He argued that there was “no risk” to changing the policy, as there are currently thousands of Covid cases in the community every day and all travellers are tested anyway.
“They have jobs in New Zealand, they pay taxes, their children go to our schools, many are on the pathway to citizenship and we’re asking the Government to treat these people fairly,” he said.
“Every single international returnee to New Zealand has to provide a negative covid test before they enter New Zealand, and there’s simply no justification for excluding residents and permanent residents, there’s no risk from this group of people.”
One can only agree.
However the argument is sparking debate; public health physician Professor Michael Baker believes increasing the number of unvaccinated people in the community would increase risk generally.
“In principle every extra person we add to New Zealand’s who’s unvaccinated increases the risk of transmission of Covid 19 and any other disease they’re not vaccinated for,” he said.
“In addition they run the risk they’re more likely to wind up in hospital seriously ill and potentially occupying a bed that’s needed for other patients.”
On the basis of that argument, we should also ban fat residents from returning home. They are far more likely to need hospitalisation if they get Covid-19.
Stats NZ has confirmed that the cost of living in New Zealand is increasing at the fastest rate in 32 years at 6.9%.
While there are international factors at play, it is misleading to gloss over the 68% increase in government spending since Labour took office, combined with the huge borrowing done by the Reserve Bank.
Our inflation rate is well above many of our major trading partners. The list below is of New Zealand and our top 15 trading partners. Only three of our top 15 trading partners have a higher inflation rate.
The Herald reports:
Finance Minister Grant Robertson batted away remarks by Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr today that suggested Governments should look at trimming spending to get inflation under control.
In 2017 core crown expenses were $76.3 billion.
Four years later it was $107.8 billion.
That is a massive 41.3% increase in just four years. Try and tell me that hasn’t contributed to inflation.
Even worse the latest forecast for this year is core crown expenses of $128 billion. That is a 67.8% increase over five years ago. Is the health system 68% better? Is the education system? Is anything? Or are they all in fact performing worse, despite a 68% increase in spending?
News.com.au reports:
The Coalition has made a stunning turnaround, according to the bookies, with their odds of retaining government drastically shortening.
LNP HQ will likely be taking the new odds as sign of a Miracle 2.0 for this year’s election.
The odds of the Coalition retaining government have dropped from $3.15 to $1.80 in just over a week, with two bookmakers making them narrow favourites.
That is a big movement. Odds of $3.15 implies a 32% chance of winning and odds of $1.80 a 56% chance.
Radio NZ report:
Couches, blankets and a broken pram are just some of the items that have been dumped in an empty section in the Tauranga suburb of Hairini.
While illegal dumping happens everywhere, it is the final straw for some residents who are frustrated with a lack of action from Kāinga Ora.
The 10 lots on Haukore Street are owned by the state housing agency and despite being fenced off, have become a dumping ground and are overgrown with weeds. …
They’re NZs biggest landlord and they can’t even stop empty sites from turning into a dumping ground.
Newshub reports:
An internal memo from the Ministry of Health has revealed there was no longer “any” health justification for MIQ way back in November 2021.
It means stranded Kiwis could have come home for Christmas instead of applying for a spot in state-run managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ).
Why has this only come out now? The short answer is the Ministry of Health didn’t want this advice out in public. They tried to keep it secret, refusing to release it until their hand was forced by the Ombudsman.
So the Government kept Kiwi families from reuniting for Christmas, even after they had been told there was no health justification for carrying on with MIQ.
The memo expressly says that, way back in November, the risk posed by international arrivals transmitting COVID-19 was no longer higher than the risk of domestic transmission.
The extra damning thing is that, looking at the full context of the Delta outbreak at the time, there were vaccine requirements for international arrivals and we had 80 percent of the population double vaccinated.
There was ongoing transmission in Auckland and health officials agreed that right then MIQ was no longer justified.
So cruel.
News.com.au reports:
Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s early campaign blunders have delivered a plunge in support according to a new poll with primary support dropping to just 34 per cent.
The findings in the Resolve Political Monitor suggest a hung Parliament is a real possibility with independents securing 9 per cent of the vote.
Mr Albanese has been under pressure in the first week of the campaign with unforced errors during press conferences including being unable to remember the national unemployment rate and stumbling over asylum seeker policy.
According to the Fairfax/Resolve poll voter support for the Labor opposition dropped from 38 to 34 per cent with a rise in the number of undecided voters.
Albo has had a shocker first week. Not only his gaffes on economic data and asylum seeker policy, but also his claim that he was an economic advisor to Hawke Government. He did this, as that Government was seen as very good economic managers. But it was a massive massive exaggeration (an 8.5 on the Golriz scale). He was in fact an electorate staffer to Tom Uren who was a bitten opponent’s of Hawke, and merely Minister of Local Government outside Cabinet.
Acumen have published the 2022 Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer. The trust rating for different entities is:
Also only 23% say media is a unifying force in NZ and 55% a dividing source.
Also a huge 64% say journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.
Former NZ Herald Editor-in-chief Gavin Ellis writes:
I have been accused of being a “bullying, old, white man”. I emphatically deny the first but plead guilty to the remaining three charges as the truth stares back at me from the mirror.
The charges were laid when I called for less rigid interpretation of the rules I had helped to write for a social media page. No, you didn’t misread that: I called for a relaxation of moderation, not a tightening.
The accusation of bullying therefore left me confused but then a light went on in my head.
Of course! Bullying is when you say something with which someone else disagrees.
Exactly. And by saying something, another person disagrees with, you are not just bullying, but causing harm. They may even feel unsafe.
What worried me was the willingness to bring down a shutter on discussion that interfered with a particular world view.
That isn’t a generational phenomenon limited to millennials and Gen Zers. It is a current affliction that spans all demographics and many socio-political beliefs. In her book Fascism: A warning, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke of an unwillingness to listen to what others say and, in some cases, to even allow them to speak. Rather than thinking critically, she said, we seek out people who share our opinions and who encourage us to ridicule the ideas of those whose convictions and perspectives clash with our own.
Journalists should have no part of that sort of thinking. Yet I fear this generation of journalists is complicit in some of it.
Matters dealing with race, gender (old men excepted), image and identity are handled with kid gloves. Debate on some subjects – such as the mātauranga Māori letter to the Listener signed by seven scientists – has become one-sided. ‘Old-fashioned’ views have no validity. We can only guess at what subjects get no exposure at all.
The media haven’t covered a bill that ends equality of suffrage in NZ, because presumably it is an old fashioned view. Likewise how often do they cover the huge educational gap between boys and girls in education system? Around 1% as much as the pay gap between men and women.
Journalists should not use perceived majority views as some sort of selection yardstick. To do so risks falling into what German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann called a “spiral of silence” that stifles alternative opinion. The centrifugal force which accelerates the spiral of silence is fear of isolation and I wonder whether the prospect of falling victim to ‘cancel culture’ leads journalists – perhaps unconsciously – to become party to it.
We will be in trouble if journalists or media organisations start to condition their approach to the news by avoiding those things that might isolate them. It is a form of self-censorship that is little better than imposed constraints. And it, too, is a downward spiral.
It is a downward spiral, and we are on it.