A good article at Real Clear Politics on the hypocrisy around the Senate filibuster. Almost everyone calling for it to go was very happy to use it in the past.

As someone who comes from a parliamentary democracy, I’m not a fan of the filibuster. I believe if you have a majority, you should be able to pass laws (except in areas such as electoral reform where interests are so vested) with a simple majority. But I also understand the traditional role it used to play in the Senate in encouraging consensus.

What is apparent to me is that the Democrats are screwing up massively the politics on the filibuster. You either succeed in getting rid of it, or you don’t try or even talk about trying.

This is like when they got rid of the filibuster on judicial nominations to get more of Obama’s picks through, and this allowed Trump to totally remake the federal courts. A big backfire.

In the past McConnell has resisted attempts to get rid of the filibuster, despite having a President who deeply pressured him to do so. That is because he knew he would be in the minority one day. But next time they are in the majority and hold the House and Presidency (2024 arguably) the filibuster will go within minutes. Why this time, when he didn’t last time?

Because the Democrats have made clear that if they had just two more votes, the filibuster would be gone. Knowing that the filibuster will die the next time the Democrats have a larger majority in the Senate, McConnell will not wait.

So this is the political stupidity of the Democrats so loudly trying to pressure Senators to get rid of it. They should have kept quiet about it unless they could get the numbers to do it. The only thing they will achieve is that McConnell will get rid of it when he is majority leader again, because not to do so would be politically moronic and that definitely isn’t McConnell.

Stuff reports:

No-one has applied for a $23 million Government loan scheme intended to help struggling apartment owners in earthquake-prone buildings, 16 months after it was launched.

But residents’ groups say the uncertainty of costs and limited criteria make the scheme impossible to access.

The Residential Earthquake-Prone Building Financial Assistance Scheme, which was launched in September 2020, has received 44 expressions of interest and zero applications to date.

This is what happens when schemes are devised by people with no actual involvement in the area they are trying to assist. Things that look useful on paper, are not in practice.

Today ends with a Y, so we have another Kāinga Ora horror story. Stuff reports:

Morunga lived in the Kāinga Ora-owned apartment block in Wellington’s Strathmore Park for three years. In that time, the mother-of-two endured stand over tactics from a local gang member, was confined to her social housing flat while police searched for the perpetrators of an axe attack, and tried to revive a man who overdosed on the lawn.

Here’s a radical idea. What if Kāinga Ora terminated the tenancy of tents who threaten and intimidate other tenants?

If I owned an apartment block and 95% of my tenants were great people and 5% were harassing and terrorizing them, I’d get rid of the 5%.

In October Morunga said she had been asking to be transferred to another Kāinga Ora property for nearly three years without progress.

After the stabbing, Morunga and her partner decided to abandon their apartment and left the next day. As of December 2021, they were staying with her partner’s ex and looking for a new home.

So rather than deal with the violent bad tenants, they force out the good tenants.

Statistics provided by police painted a more damning picture. Police attended 51 incidents and received 128 calls associated with the Nuku Street area from July 4, 2020 to June 1, 2021.

Appalling.

Morgan Godfery writes:

Perhaps Ardern should, like Key before her, take stock of the developing circumstances and acknowledge that tax changes are necessary to protect the Government and the public’s economic and social position.

Those tax changes could take the form of a comprehensive capital gains tax.

Those calling for tax increases are like rust – they never sleep.

Ardern ruled out a CGT for so long as she was Prime Minister. If she backtracked on that, she’d be toast.

Samantha Matheson writes:

An open letter to Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins MP and the New Zealand Labour Government;

I am a kiwi citizen currently stuck in Queensland, Australia. My partner (also a kiwi citizen) and I moved over here for work just as the pandemic was hitting, when we never thought for a moment that we wouldn’t be able to have family and friends come to visit, and visa versa.

We have been here just about 2 years now, and we had made the choice last June (just before the borders were closed again) that we needed to move home to be closer to our friends, whanau and turangawaewae. We cannot sustain living life without our support systems. We have both been struggling with depression since late 2020 after 9 months without seeing family or friends as we tried to settle in a new country.

Even with Queensland closed off to Covid, we got ourselves fully vaccinated ASAP to future proof ourselves to the inevitable covid threat. We thought surely you will open the Trans-Tasman bubble even just briefly for us fully vaccinated Kiwi Citizens in areas with no covid to come home!

No such luck.

Hearing your announcement at the end of last year that NZ was opening to Kiwis stuck in Auz in mid January, we did not bother to try to book a ticket ASAP, and didn’t bother to get an MIQ spot as we thought it wasn’t necessary. We would be home soon enough!

I quit my job at a local high school as I was sure that I would be moving home before the beginning of the 2022 school year. Your government had said ‘lock it in’ and NZ was close to being 90% double vaccinated, which was the milestone in which you said you would open up again.

When you pushed the date back due to Omicron, we brushed off our tears, got ourselves organised and registered for the MIQ lobby on the 6th of January… And then you didn’t even let us join the lobby. Over this time, while being kicked in the teeth as we watched international DJ’s and sports people openly enter our own country as ‘critical workers’ (some for the third time in a year), we went and did the dutiful thing and got our booster shots.

We are now at the stage where we are triple vax’d, living in limbo and hanging out every day for an announcement from you to let us know what our fate is.

As the Australian local and federal governments consistently speak to their citizens through the media almost every day to give their latest updates, my heart flickers every time I see a NZ media notification, will it be YOU giving us an update??

I personally, have had to up my anti-depressant/anxiety medication due to the stress of all of the unknown you have created, and wake up everyday the same way. With an empty sensation in my chest, and the burning question ‘is today going to be the day?’.A week ago, my partner admitted for the first time that he has been struggling with anxiety due to the uncertainty too, which for a southern kiwi man, is no small thing. Your silence is deafening.

Yesterday, to make ourselves feel a little bit better and feel like we had SOME control over our own lives, we booked one way tickets from Brisbane to Christchurch for the start of March for both of us, and booked our pets in with a travel agency.We have been assured that our pets will get home, even if we cannot.

Trying to rent out our house, sell all of our stuff, organise a pallet of belongings to be sent home… Impossible.People need a date to know when they can rent our house, have our stuff, and the shipping company need to know when to collect and send our pallet…

Although we already have our place in Cromwell set up for our own self isolation (thanks for family who organised it), we are prepared to pay for the crappiest MIQ in a random place far from Cromwell (even though there are SO many hotels and AirBnbs in Queenstown going unused and are in desperate need of guests to keep their businesses running). We don’t care. We just want to come home and start living our lives again.

We are not one of the many stories that are categorised by most as an ’emergency situation’. We are not physically ill, we have not had immediate family pass away, we are not homeless or in immediate financial ruin.

We are the average story of most Kiwi’s currently stuck in Australia that have been overlooked time and time again.

There are many Kiwis like this. They have done everything right, yet the Government continues to treat them as second class citizens with no right to return home. Queensland had effectively no Covid-19 cases for 18 months!

A couple of weeks ago a purported screenshot was circulating.

The usual suspects jumped on Matthew and accused him of smearing Clarke Gayford merely by asking if it was true.

I saw it also around that time, and didn’t blog it because I thought it sounded preposterous. The notion that a group of musicians who were told by a pharmacist what sort of test they needed would just call up the PM’s fiancée and he would then inform the pharmacist what the official health advise is – well surely no one would be so stupid as to actually do that.

If some friends called me from a pharmacy saying they think the pharmacist is wrong, I sure as hell wouldn’t go on speakerphone with the pharmacist and try to lecture him. I mean, who would?

The Herald reports that this preposterous story is in fact true. I’m amazed it took two weeks for it to be confirmed, but better late than never.

The Prime Minister’s fiancé Clarke Gayford has today apologised for “any confusion” he caused after speaking to a pharmacist about rapid antigen testing on behalf of a musician mate.

It’s not the confusion he should be apologising for. It is for using his status as the PMs fiancée to try and influence a pharmacist on behalf of his friends. And if anyone thinks it wasn’t him using his status, why else would the musicians have called him? Is he a known expert on Covid-19? Or a known expert on pharmacies? You can’t claim he was acting as a private citizen, when the entire reason they called him was because they though he would have knowledge as the PM’s partner.

The pharmacist alleged Gayford told him there had been a change to testing guidance from the Ministry of Health, which would allow Gayford’s friend to get a rapid test instead of a slower, more invasive PCR test.

I may be wrong but I think the Ministry of Health tends to inform pharmacies directly of their testing guidance, rather than do it through Clarke.

After being approached for comment, Gayford issued a statement through his manager saying “Mr Gayford was rung by a friend about Rapid Antigen Testing and was put on speakerphone while the person was in a pharmacy.

“He apologises for any issues or confusion this may have caused the pharmacy staff.”

A statement through his manager. That’s is the ultimate on contrition in the entertainment industry.

Ironically I wish Gayford’s advice had been correct. RATs should be more easily available. But the Government has refused to make them so. People who want to take a RAT should be able to just purchase one at a supermarket or pharmacy. They shouldn’t have to ring up the PM’s partner to try and get one.

The Herald reports:

Labour’s Marja Lubeck has spent the summer break in Europe, visiting family in the Netherlands.

The list MP, who contests Auckland’s Kaipara ki Mahurangi electorate, was born in the Netherlands and later moved to New Zealand.

Lubeck’s trip is possible thanks to her securing an MIQ spot, allowing her to isolate upon her return to New Zealand. But the MIQ system is becoming increasingly controversial; regular releases of MIQ places are almost always oversubscribed, meaning many New Zealanders are barred from returning home.

Lubeck has done nothing wrong, but this shows how wrong it is that scarce MIQ spots are handed out in a lottery.

While MIQ spots remain scarce, they should be allocated on the basis of national interest and need, just as we do with immigration and residency.

New Zealanders who are stranded overseas and wish to return home permanently should be given a higher priority that people living in New Zealand who merely wish to have an overseas holiday.

Stuff reports:

The organiser of anti-Government protests in Christchurch is being billed thousands of dollars to cover the council’s traffic management costs.

The Christchurch City Council has sent The Freedom and Rights Coalition group, founded by Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki, a $14,117.47 invoice for costs it incurred during three protests in Cranmer Square and elsewhere in the city in November and early December.

I have no time for Tamaki or these protests. But I am skeptical of the Council trying to invoice a protest for the traffic management associated with it.

Fine, if they do this for all protests. But have they ever done this for any other protest?

If the answer is no, then what you have is an agent of the state trying to prevent protests it disagrees with.

Sonia Sodha writes in The Guardian:

And just before Christmas, in a landmark judgment that has attracted surprisingly little commentary from human rights lawyers given its profound implications, the court of appeal went further in ruling that the College of Policing’s guidance that the police should record all non-crime hate incidents, as perceived by those taking offence at them, is an unlawful incursion on citizens’ freedom of expression.

The key is that the Police were not taking into account intent or even context. They were recording them as a non-crime hate incident purely on the basis of the views of those offended by them.

This has become open to manipulation, with sinister consequences for freedom of expression. Anyone can complain to the police if they don’t like something someone says. It will get recorded as a hate incident, in a way that could significantly damage careers and reputations but with none of the due process of a criminal charge. And it is impossible to understate the chilling impact of getting a call from a police officer warning you off exercising your democratic rights.

You don’t get a criminal record, but it is in your Police record and could affect you getting jobs in future which need vetting.

Stuff reports:

Health experts say rapid antigen tests (RATs) will be a critical tool for managing Omicron in New Zealand, but the Government has yet to determine how they will be used.

The Ministry of Health has confirmed it has 3.5 million tests in the country and 20 million on order, which will arrive in batches over the next six months. …

The ministry’s website says self-test rapid antigen tests will be available for purchase “for the general public early in the new year”.

The ministry did not respond when asked how many tests New Zealand would need, according to modelling.

Public health expert Michael Baker said rapid antigen tests, which could be used at home, could confirm positive status among people with symptoms, if a rapid escalation of case numbers made access to traditional testing – PCR tests –and contact tracing too difficult.

In Australia, where case numbers had grown to just under 72,000 daily cases on Monday, some states will require a negative rapid antigen test for children to go to school.

In the US also we are seeing huge demand for RATs as people can’t wait days for a test result if it means 20% of your workforce isn’t at work.

I really hope we don’t muck around in stocking up with them, and making them easily available.

The Herald reports:

Locals on the Napier-Taupō Rd are plotting a challenge to prevent national highways agency Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency from changing the speed limits on State Highway 5.

Waka Kotahi announced last month that the speed-limit on about 90km of State Highway 5 will be lowered from 100km/h to 80km/h from February 18.

NZTA seem obsessed with doing this. In April they claimed that as the mean speed is 81 km/hr the reduction will only increase travel times by 60 seconds. I noted:

This is appalling use of maths, and NZTA should be ashamed.

The NZTA claims would only be valid if motorists didn’t just drive at an average of 81 km/hr on the road but drove at that exact speed for the entire journey. That at no time did they ever ever drive faster than 81 km/hr.

That is of course nonsense.

Now they have gone from junk maths to junk truth.

She said the agency did consider whether different sections should have different speed limits, but said there was no part of the 82km stretch where 100km/h was safe and appropriate.

That is a farcical claim, that anyone who has driven that road will know is false.

Newshub reports:

A building manager in central Auckland alleges some of his Kāinga Ora tenants have assaulted, abused and threatened to stab him. …

Building manager Paul* has lived in his Auckland CBD building for over three years, the exact location of which Newshub has agreed not to publish over fear of retaliation from his tenants.

He is responsible for over 180 apartments and a community of about 300 people. Several of these apartments are tenanted by Kāinga Ora residents, all of whom are single people or couples. There aren’t any families.

Over the past three years, Paul says he and his team have experienced numerous incidents of anti-social behaviour from Kāinga Ora tenants.

“[There are] two very serious issues, one is threatening to kill me – I was threatened to be stabbed – and what makes that particularly concerning is that individual was on the same floor as me and my wife’s absolutely terrified. The other one is the assault – that’s with myself and a younger staff member,” Paul tells Newshub.

Threatening to kill the building manager should see the tenant evicted. But no.

But despite reporting these allegations to the agency, including sending CCTV footage as evidence, he says he’s “pretty much been ignored” by them.

It is very clear that once again Kainga Ora are the worst landlord in NZ. If they were a private sector landlord, the Police would be arresting them as a crime accomplice.

Kāinga Ora says it works collaboratively and professionally with many body corporates and building management teams in the Auckland CBD.

John Tubberty, the agency’s regional director for central Auckland, says they value the relationships they have with management teams and work hard to make sure any issues that arise are addressed and resolved quickly.

He says while there can be points of difference, they want to listen, understand and work together to solve problems.

Note the use of all the buzz words such as collaborate, value, listen, understand etc. But nothing about action.

“Over the past two years, Kāinga Ora has been committed to working with [Paul’s] body corporate and building management. Our responses have included phone calls, face-to-face meetings, email correspondence and direct communication with the body corporate chair,” Tubberty says.

So they’ll answer the phone, and have meetings and send e-mails. But the one thing they won’t do is actually take action against tenants who threaten to kill.

“As part of doing this, we seek to identify the root cause of any customer issues as they arise and tailor our approach in a way that works for each individual and their whanau.”

More buzz words. Still nothing about having minimum standards of behaviour for tenants.

“Often we make progress by working with people and families directly and other specialist agencies in addressing the very different life circumstances people come from and their sometimes quite complex needs.”

Note their entire focus is on the tenants who are doing the terrorising, not on the victims of the resigns of terror.

RNZ reports:

Former senior figures have accused the Greens of jettisoning core principles as party discontent surfaces over its co-operation agreement in government.

Ex-MPs Sue Bradford and Catherine Delahunty say the agreement makes no sense and that the party’s position in government amounts to a failure of leadership.

Delahunty criticised her former colleagues for not pointing to an “unholy alliance between banks and the government” that accounted for record bank profits, inflated house prices and growing inequality.

Former co-leader and current head of Greenpeace New Zealand Russel Norman has also called Green minister James Shaw’s climate position “simply not credible”.

RNZ can reveal a number of activists have recently stepped away from the party, including former executive and policy branch members.

They accuse co-leader Shaw of having an autocratic style and complain that the party executive is not holding the caucus and leadership to account over policy decisions in government.

Fairly significant to have a former co-leader attack a current co-leader.

Dennis Wesselbaum writes:

Soon, the Government is going to announce its plan for the so-called “social unemployment insurance” which will be in place by 2023.

We do not have details about its precise design, but what we hear is that the new scheme will pay up to 80 per cent of income for up to half a year, if an employee loses their job. In any case, the reform will be a historic turning-point.

This policy, however, will reduce welfare (wellbeing would be more politically correct), increase unemployment, increase the duration of unemployment, reduce income, increase inequality, and lead to higher inflation. This outcome is robust and well-known in the field of macro-labour economics.

Every working New Zealander will have their take home pay drop, with an ACC type levy/tax imposed on our income to pay for this.

Recent experiences in Spain and Germany have shown that increasing the duration of unemployment insurance increases level and duration of unemployment. The probability of being unemployed for 12 months, for example, increases from 15 per cent to 40 per cent, if you move from a no unemployment insurance scheme to a one-year unemployment insurance scheme.

So we pay more tax so people can spend longer unemployed.

Even worse, be prepared to have lower incomes, because all of this will be financed via an income tax increase. Taxes will increase by about 3-4 per cent. This tax hike will damage economic growth, by reducing incentives to invest and work. This will additionally shrink the supply side, which further fuels inflation.

In conclusion, you will be paying higher income taxes, have lower income, and pay higher prices such that the Government can implement a policy which will be harmful for the economy in many ways and reduces welfare – which this Government claims to be its raison d’être.

Coming to us very soon.

Stuff reports:

We seem to have dodged a bullet with Omicron so far. But how long will our luck hold?

The Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria are currently struggling to keep their heads above water, with 45,000 reported cases in NSW in the past 24 hours.

Experts and politicians agree its arrival in New Zealand is inevitable – and they are grappling with the questions: When do we let Omicron in? And how?

The number of cases is not a hugely useful metric. Take the US for example. The number of daily cases is a massive 219% higher than a year ago, yet the number of deaths is 36% lower.

University of Melbourne epidemiologist Tony Blakely has been outspoken in his stance on Omicron: it’s coming, so let’s front foot it.

Blakely is in the thick of an Omicron outbreak in Victoria, but – somewhat controversially – believes New Zealand is in a good position to “embrace” Omicron.

95% of the eligible population have had at least done dose and 92% a second dose. So why are we still Fortress NZ? Are we waiting for 96%? 97%?

Omicon is inevitable, and I think we’re far better to have it come into NZ in summer, than in winter.

A guest post by Melissa Lee:

New Zealand’s digital economy is in a growing crisis. We simply don’t have enough workers with the skills and expertise to make our technology sector flourish like the economic powerhouse of innovation it has been as a vanguard during these tough couple of years. With closed borders, the lottery of misery in MIQ (a lottery that may extend well into next year if the Government rescinds it’s border opening plans..) and a lack of a clear direction for high quality digital sector learning and professional development in New Zealand, we are facing a deep problem for the future of New Zealand’s economy.

The Government this week announced 600 spaces for critical tech workers to be allowed into New Zealand. That sounds great but was based on the premise that the borders will be open at the time they are recruited. If they remain closed the MIQ lottery of misery stems its ugly head and it will be countless months for those roles to be filled. What’s worse is it’s only 600 roles when 3000 is probably too few for the uplift in capability to put the next stage of advancement into the Kiwi digital economy. A quick look on seek this week showed nearly 2800 jobs being advertised for the Information and Communications Technology sector. 600 overseas recruits won’t cut it and neither will employing under-skilled local New Zealanders regardless of the salary offered because they lack the years and on the job expertise needed to do the job. We don’t want the next Waikato DHB Cybersecurity incident, Reserve Bank Data Breach or Fisher and Paykel Ransomware attack to happen because our government and our companies could not keep their data safe, one of the most critical issues facing New Zealand with the digital worker shortages domestically and at the border. Not having the people on hand to keep our cyber borders safe and not having trained staff well versed in a variety of technological trades to protect Kiwi businesses is a blight on our tech sector.

New Zealand needs to invest in digital careers today and we also need to invest in getting offshore talent here as soon as possible. It is vital for the future of our tech sector and our digital economy. We must have a cyber-resilient nation and our economy must have the tools it needs to continue to grow our digital sector as we look ahead to 2022 and beyond.

National cares deeply about the future of New Zealand’s Digital economy and it is my priority as National’s Spokesperson to champion every aspect of the Digital sector in our economy. I am proud that National was the only party to have a policy in 2020 that focused on a strong technology platform and we are still advocating for innovative policies for the digital economy in our tech issues paper released a few weeks ago. If you have ideas to resolve New Zealand’s digital crisis get in touch with me and the National team. We want to hear your views and build the best possible policy platform as we prepare to return to Government in 2023.

The Free Speech Union has put out their year in review. They have had a significant impact for the public good. Key aspects of the year are:

• Won a court case against Palmerston North City Council who tried to cancel a venue booking on the basis of political opinion.
• Won on a couple of key points at the Court of Appeal on Auckland Council’s decision to also cancel an event due to the political opinions of the speakers and had the Supreme Court grant leave to appeal on the very important issue of the heckler’s veto.
• Supporters generated over 75% of submissions on the Government’s proposed new hate speech laws
• Successfully assisted a Waikato University lecturer who faced disciplinary action due to his lectures on critical thinking and comments on religion
• Helped defend the Listener Seven, especially those facing expulsion from the Royal Society
• Have battled against Council Code of Conducts that interfere with the free speech rights of Councillors
• Have helped a number of members in cases with their employers

A great much needed union. You can join it here.

From UN Watch:

1. UN Elects Iran to Top Women’s Rights Body
2. UN Fires Whistleblower for Revealing They Handed Names of Dissidents to China
3. UNHRC Urgent Session on Afghanistan Ignores Taliban
4. Syria’s Assad Regime Elected to WHO Executive Board
5. UN Condemns Israel 14 Times, Rest of the World 5
6. UN Monitor Blames West for Venezuela Collapse, Absolves Maduro
7. Dictators Now Comprise 68% of UN Human Rights Council
8. Belarus Elected to UN Commission on Crime Prevention
9. UN Rights Council Ends Yemen Investigation After Saudi Pressure
10. UN Review Praises Slave-Holding Mauritania’s Human Rights Record