Radio NZ report:

Prominent Māori leader Sir Wira Gardiner has died at the age of 78.

My thoughts go out to Hekia and his family at this very sad time.

I commented back in 2008:

I was very pleased to see Wira Gardiner gain a DCNZM (equal to the old KBE or KNZM) in the QB Honours.

When talking about the issues of the bureaucracy in totality, it can be easy to overlook the immense contribution some civil servants make to New Zealand. They tend to only get publicity when things go wrong.

Wira has contributed significantly to both the public and private sectors over the years, and almost inevitably is the trouble shooter sent in by the Government of the day (Labour and National) when a dysfunctional Maori agency needs a correcting hand.

And more recently:

I remarked a couple of days ago to someone that Sir Wira was the most competent and accomplished Maori public servant of his generation. He has been a trouble shooter for Ministers of all Governments for over 20 years. New Zealand would be worse off, if it were not for his service over many years.

He will be missed and mourned by many from Ngapuhi to Ngai Tahu and all those in-between.

The public portion of the poll is here.

Key aspects are:

• Gap between CL and CR has narrowed to just 2%
• The net country direction has gone into negative territory
• Winston Peters up to 5.5% Preferred PM

Verity Johnson writes:

Christopher Luxon really, really isn’t my political type.

In my circles, admitting you’d vote for him is like turning up to book club with a goat’s head and suggesting we all try the Satanic Bible this month.

Yet if you asked me in those polls last week I’d have chosen National – with gritted teeth.

I was on The Panel with Verity a while back, and she self-described herself as Jacinda fangirl. For her to be saying that she would have chosen National over Labour last week is significant.

All the unresolved disappointments of the last election are still here. And then despite there being a global pandemic, last year house prices still went up 23.8 per cent. It looks like I won’t be able to take the Auckland rail link until after I hit menopause.

Verity is 28 years old. The average age of menopause is 52 so this should happen around 2046.

It is possible the light rail Labour promised to complete by 2021 will be done by 2046, but not overly likely. With a possible price tag of $30 billion it is more likely they will just every two or three years spend another $100 million on business cases and reports on it, and not actually ever start it.

So now, as we come out of Covid, we’re looking to peacetime governance. And we’re faced with the underwhelming choice of staying in a loveless marriage – or cheating with Luxon. This is about as grim as $4.50 for one piece of broccoli.

But it’s true, you can’t stay in a relationship out of gratitude for the past. You have to actually have hope and faith in their future. And I don’t know if I do any more with Labour.

Labour have lost over a quarter of their 2020 support in just 18 months. How much more will go?

Stuff reports:

Wellington’s long-delayed, billion-dollar Transmission Gully motorway will be open by the end of the month.

Waka Kotahi will defer a number of quality assurance tests required under the contract with the road builders, CPB HEB, because it believes the 27-kilometre road is now safe for public use.

Additional tests yet to be completed do not compromise public safety, and will be completed after the road is open. Incomplete tests include environmental measures.

A specific date and time has not been given, Brett Gliddon, Waka Kotahi’s general manager transport services, said “nothing substantial” could prevent the road from opening by the end of March.

This is great news. Transmission Gully has cost only 4.2% of what the Auckland tram route will cost and will make a huge difference to Wellingtonians, bypassing all the areas of congestion such as Mana and Pukerua Bay. We will now have a proper four lane expressway from the Terrace Tunnel to Pekapeka. And if National gets back in, maybe even to Levin.

The redundancy will be great also. If there is a crash on SH1 (now SH59) it can cause hours of delays.

It will also make it much easier to get between SH1 and SH2, without having to go around the Pauatahanui Inlet.

So I am very excited by the confirmed opening.

On my (paywalled) Patreon I reveal the exclusive results of a poll of 1,000 NZers in March as to whether the NZ Government should expel the Russian Ambassador.

There was a strong gender difference in the results with one gender being far more supportive of expulsion.

Stuff reports:

Simon Bridges has slammed today’s decision to extend the stay of Tauranga City Council’s commissioners for a further two-and-a-half years, calling the government’s decision “plain wrong”.

Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta confirmed the extension earlier on Friday, with local elections now on hold until July 2024 and a continuation of the commission she installed last year.

Bridges, the National MP for Tauranga, has cited “power, convenience and control” as the reasons behind Mahuta’s decision, and questioned a lack of achievement since the four-person commission was put in place by Labour in February 2021.

“Today’s decision by Nanaia Mahuta is plain wrong,” says Bridges. …

Another figure deeply opposed to the move is former mayor of Tauranga Greg Brownless, who held office in the Bay of Plenty city from 2016 to 2019.

Brownless has labelled the news the “death of democracy for Tauranga,” and says the city is now being run by what is “effectively a dictatorship”.

“I don’t use the word dictatorship lightly given the severity of what’s going on in the world, but this is effectively what is happening in Tauranga,” he says.

“The community’s right to have a say in their city has been removed.

“I am outraged. I would have never imagined this in my lifetime or in all my days I’ve lived in Tauranga, the city which I love.”

The decision to install Commissioners in the first place was dubious. This was not like ECan a decade ago which was failing to meet statutory requirements and all ten local Councils had lost confidence in it. The reason the Tauranga Council was sacked was merely because there was a lot of infighting between the Mayor and some factions.

If that is the basis for sacking a Council, then why has Wellington City Council not been sacked, and why has Invercargill City Council been allowed to carry on with a Mayor who is cognitively unable to chair the Council.

But even if you accept the TCC needed to be replaced by Commissioners because of the infighting, then you’ve achieved that. But to now allow Tauranga residents to have any say on massive rates increased being foisted on them by the Commissioners is wrong.

The Herald reported:

The Government’s plans for light rail in Auckland could cost up to $29.2 billion, according to Treasury papers released this morning.

That is $15,000 for every household in New Zealand. So every family in Gore and Hastings and Levin will be paying $15,000 more tax so Auckland gets some trams to the airport!

If it costs $29.2 billion, then that is a cost of:

• $1.22 billion per km
• $1.22 million per metre
• $12,167 per cm
• $1,217 per mm

Think of the opportunity cost. A new four lane motorway costs around $50 million per km. For what the Government may spend on trams in Auckland you could construct a 630 km long four lane motorway. That is approximately the distance from Auckland to Wellington.

Other things you could get for $29.2 billion:

• 314,022 kgs of gold
• Two aircraft carriers
• 60 747-8s
• 16.2 million hectares of pines
• 1,500 brand new primary schools
• 20 new tertiary hospitals
• 5,220 wind turbines providing 15,700 MW

But instead Labour want to spend that on a 24 km long tram track.

A reader writes in:

Case numbers of Covid-19 have dropped in recent days, this is being attributed to people not reporting positive test results, though accessibility of RAT tests may be the larger contributor to this.

Looking at the steps someone has to go through in order to report a result, its understandable that many might choose not to, as it’s all too difficult.

Firstly you need to have a My Health Account record – this requires you to have valid identity (from Australia or New Zealand – birth certificate, passport etc).

This excludes any overseas visitor (few that we have) or those stuck in New Zealand. Also would potentially affect any RSE worker or someone who fears they are an overstayer. It also excludes anyone who might not yet have an ID – say a NZ permanent resident without a driver’s license – think a fifteen year old child of a immigrant from South Africa. Note you’re expected to report through your personal account, not on behalf of someone else.

If you do manage to create a record, when reporting a result, then you must agree with the privacy statement, you can’t opt out of this – so if you don’t agree with the terms they your only option is not to submit the result.

Next, you must enter a mobile phone number, a large number of people don’t have a mobile, or share a mobile with another person – so this might not suit. There’s also concern some from people that they are at risk if they receive medical information via mobile – especially those in potentially abusive relationships.  You can enter a fake number here though – such as 5551234.

You don’t have an option to opt out of any content, no matter what is sent to you.

Finally you then reach a page which state your result – which is simple enough.

However the steps above and the barriers for many to enter results are high enough to make it all too much effort – especially if they are sick and struggling with Covid themselves.

If the Ministry of Health were wanting the maximum number of results to be entered, a simple form, maybe name, email address or mobile and result – all on one page, no other barriers might be more effective.

For example the Victoria Government in Australia it’s a simple declaration form to capture some minimum data, no obligation to enter in any more details than name, dob, sex, phone number – which can be a home phone number for those without a mobile and a declaration of symptoms. No need for an account, no terms and conditions, just a privacy statement.

This approach is one we need to follow, not the convoluted steps and account creation that the MoH require.

Hard agree. Make is simple and easy for people to get a RAT and to report a positive test. No wonder case numbers are dropping!

A very good article by Eli Lake about the situation in Ukraine, and what it means for both Russia and China. Some extracts:

Whatever the outcome of the war for Ukraine, we are living in a different world now. In the new world, Putin’s Russia is not a part of the community of nations. It is a threat to the community of nations. Consequently, the international system created after World War II must be revised. The free world is again engaged in a cold war with a country whose capital is Moscow.

Agree. Even if there is a peace deal in Ukraine, there can be no returning back to “normal”.

 But they also should be the first steps in a break with the autocratic world.

Such a break will require a commitment to isolate Russia in the near term, and, over time, China, from the international system and global economy; deter future aggression with a credible threat of military force; and nurture freedom movements in the autocratic world with a long-term goal of democratic change. It requires a combination of strategic separation, national resilience, and international solidarity.

A bold and laudable vision.

China and Russia share a common interest in thwarting the U.S.-led international order. Neither country wants to live in a world where the sovereignty of weaker and smaller nations is inviolable. Neither country wants to play by common rules of trade, banking, and international finance. Neither country wants to respect the freedom of its citizens. And both countries need an enemy to justify their autocratic rule.

For now, the priority must be stopping Russia. But the West must prepare to make a break with China as well.

Sadly I think he is right. China had great potential as it liberalised both the economy and its society. But it has done a u-turn and is becoming more autocratic, more threatening and more dangerous.

Since the end of the Cold War, American and Western strategy has sought to tame China and Russia through inclusion in the international system. If we could entice China and Russia, so the theory went, to cooperate when it came to threats to the global commons and induce them to join international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, both nations would be obliged to play by the same rules that restrain democracies. And if over time the West traded with Russia and China to make their countries more prosperous, then a middle class would emerge demanding more freedoms at home.

This strategy has failed. Chinese and Russian elites grew fabulously wealthy and used their wealth to corrupt Western democracies. America and Europe grew dependent on Chinese manufacturing and investment and on Russian energy and natural resources. All the while, both countries have eroded the international institutions the West had hoped would constrain them.

I was a huge supporter of the strategy. I was wrong. It has failed. We should start to move with speed to delink our economy from China, so that when it does move on Taiwan, we are not compromised.

It’s time to stop pretending that it is a font of international law when a country like Russia remains a veto-wielding permanent member. With that in mind, Western diplomats should explore the prospect of demoting Russia’s status on the grounds that there was no General Assembly vote for Russia to join the UN after the collapse of the Soviet Union. If that doesn’t work, America and its allies should issue an ultimatum: It’s us or Russia. If the UN cannot or will not demote Russia’s status, then the West should undertake to build an alternative to the United Nations that excludes Russia and eventually China.

A successor to the UN would have many long-term advantages for the free world. It could introduce clarifying standards for states to enjoy a kind of first-class global citizenship. Countries that launch aggressive wars, violate nonproliferation agreements, or extinguish internal political opposition would be ejected. Their seats would go to free governments in exile. So Belarus, for example, would be represented by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the school teacher who won her country’s 2020 election.

Yes, this is what we want. A league of democracies. You need to meet high standards to join, but get great benefits if you do so. Let the UN become an irrelevant talkfest.

We need to separate ourselves from Russia and China economically, to the extent possible. This has already begun to happen with Russia and to a degree with China. But the free world must do more. This means removing restrictions on fracking and fossil-fuel exploration in the U.S. and Europe and revitalizing the nuclear-power industry on both sides of the Atlantic. French president Emanuel Macron has already started this process. Germany should follow his lead. Europe and America should also support Israel’s natural-gas pipeline to the continent. None of this should preclude efforts to find sources of alternative green energy. But until wind and solar can power nation-states, the West has to focus on freeing itself from Russian energy by producing its own.

Nuclear power is probably the quickest and most effective way to remove the reliance on Russian gas and oil.

The most potent advantage the West has over autocracies is that the free world is a magnet for genius fleeing tyranny. This human capital has been an engine of American ingenuity and creativity since its founding. In this respect, it is not enough to quarantine Russia and China. America should also welcome their dissidents, artists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, poets, and scientists—and offer them a better life in the United States rather than sending them home to use our knowhow to their native advantage. Over time, this brain drain will weaken China’s and Russia’s ability to keep pace with Western innovation.

Absolutely.

Chris Luxon has appointed Nicola Willis as Finance Spokesperson to replace Simon Bridges. Chris Bishop will take Housing off Willis – logical moves which I said yesterday seemed the most likely option. The full changes are:

• Willis gets Finance (and Social Investment), drops Housing
• Bishop gets Housing and Infrastructure, moves from No 4 to No 3
• Shane Reti moves to No 4 from No 5
• Paul Goldsmith moves to No 5 from No 12

Nicola has done an excellent job in housing. A year ago Ipsos had Labour 23% ahead of National as the party best for housing. Last month National was 6% ahead. She now moves into an area where National is already seen as traditionally stronger, so I expect a big focus on the cost of living. As a mother of four young kids, Nicola will have first hand experience of the pressure on households.

Graham Adams writes at The Platform:

Hot on the heels of a blistering ruling by the Media Council that Dr Siouxsie Wiles made a damaging and untrue statement in a Stuff column about the seven “Listener” professors, the Royal Society Te Apārangi has now formally decided not to proceed with a complaint against two of them.

Very pleased that the Royal Society has seen sense.

More than once, the Royal Society NZ has been warned publicly that it would become an international joke if it expelled the professors.

Emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago Jerry Coyne also pointed out that mātauranga Māori contained strong elements of Creationism (“refuted by all the facts of biology, paleontology, embryology, and biogeography”) and that “expelling members for defending views like evolution against non-empirically based views of creation and the like is shameful”.

He concluded his letter to the society with: “I hope you will reconsider the movement to expel your two members, which, if done, would make the Royal Society of New Zealand a laughing stock.”

To a degree the damage is already done, but it would have been far worse if they continued.

A reader asked the Government how much it had spent on advertising and information campaigns arund Covid-19 and the answer is $87.7 million up to the end of 2021.

The reader points out this would make the Government the most valuable advertiser to the NZ media, by a large degree.

I wonder how much of the $88 million was spent on those patronising billboards urging us all to be kind!!

Claire Trevett reports:

National Party MP Simon Bridges is quitting politics and will step down as an MP in the next few weeks.

Bridges announced his decision after telling fellow MPs in caucus this morning.

In an exclusive interview with the NZ Herald ahead of that announcement, he said he made his final decision over the last week after thinking about it for some time.

It was the right time to look at other opportunities for him.

It is the first big surprise for new leader Christopher Luxon less than four months after he took over as leader, giving Bridges the third ranking in his caucus and the critical finance portfolio.

Bridges said it was not because of his failed attempt to secure the party leadership again last year and he believed the party stood a good chance of winning the election in 2023 under Christopher Luxon’s leadership.

“Life moves on. I leave National in great heart and with momentum for the first time in a while. I think Chris Luxon will make a great Prime Minister.”

This is a surprise and a blow for National. Simon was doing a great job as Finance Spokesperson.

His kids are at an age where you want to be more in their lives, and I suspect this was a major factor. So good on him for deciding to put family first.

His decision poses two issues for National – a reshuffle and a byelection.

In terms of the reshuffle, there are a number of options. One is to put Nicola Willis into Finance (she used to be on FEC and did an excellent job there). You could then move Chris Bishop into Housing and perhaps have Shane Reti take over Covid-19, merging it into his health portfolio. You could also look at MPs like Bishop or Woodhouse for Finance also.

I suspect National will have a few people interested in standing in the by-election. Labour does have a List MP in the seat, so National shouldn’t take anything for granted.

I highly recommend people read Simon’s recent book called National Identity. The chapters around race and identity are incredibly insightful, as identity politics becomes totemic for so many people.

The New Zealand Association of Economists and The New Zealand Initiative have released the results of their second survey of top economists in New Zealand. This was on the economics of climate policy. They found:

• 85% agreed and 0% disagreed that tightening the ETS would be a more cost effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions than policies that target emissions already in the ETS.
• 69% agreed and 0% disagreed that paying a carbon dividend (from ETS revenues) to households would be a better way to support poorer households than subsidies.

So the Government isn’t following the (economic) science when it comes to climate change. It is pursuing policies that will cost more and achieve less.

Two weeks ago Jacinda Ardern was saying there is no cost of living crisis. Today she announced a 25c per litre cut in petrol tax, because we do have one.

This is good, and significant. Labour hate hate hate cutting taxes. They only do it, when they have no choice. Every reduction in tax means they have a bit less to spend.

So it is significant that they have done this. The combination of high inflation (of which petrol prices are just a component) and a bad poll, plus National and ACT both proposing tax cuts as a way to help families out sure Labour forced to act.

Their actual policy decision isn’t the best, from an economist point of view. As petrol tax is hypothecated, it means either less money available for transport or more debt. The ideal is to cut both tax and spending so debt doesn’t increase.

A better policy would have been to do income tax cuts or as ACT propose a climate dividend from ETS revenues.

But a three months cut in petrol tax by 25c a litre is better than nothing. The challenge is to turn their backdown on this one issue, into a wider backdown so they do actually cut income tax, rather than drag in more money every year through inflation.

Also worth remembering that the 25c a litre cut is less than half the extra revenue (55c) that has been imposed since 2017.

The Taxpayers Union have been campaigning on the level of fuel tax for some time – long before the Ukraine war. Their supporters have been sticking Jacinda “I did this” stickers on petrol pumps, and a recent promotion where they refunded motorists their petrol tax made both TV stations. This backdown shows that a strong lobby group plus the right political conditions can get a policy win – as also happened with Capital Gains Tax.

So now the challenge is not to make this a once off, but to keep the pressure on the Government to lower taxes elsewhere – and not just for three months, but permanently.

This High Court ruling seemed to have been missed by most of the media. A summary:

[146] I am unable to accept the first and second respondents’ submission that the review of the Epidemic Notice is sufficient to meet the constitutional requirement of continuing necessity of the Order. Nor is it sufficient that the Order was presented to the House and subject to its scrutiny pursuant to ss 16 and 18 of the Epidemic Preparedness Act. That process involves parliamentary scrutiny within six sitting days
after the day an IMO is made. If we have learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that circumstances can change rapidly. What was appropriate in April 2020 may no longer be warranted in February 2022.

Basically the court case was about the Government using its pandemic powers to roll over collective contracts to help its union mates. The court basically said it might have been justified in early 2000, but they did no checking of whether it remained justified in 2021 or 2022.

Lord Ashcroft reports an interesting poll from Ukraine:

• Only 11% of Ukrainians want to leave to a safer country
• 63% of women say they are willing to take up arms, or have done so
• 92% approve of the job President Zelensky is doing
• 86% want Ukraine to join NATO
• 69% would reject a ban on joining NATO in return for ending the war
• 78% reject giving up Crimea to Russia
• 97% have an unfavourable view of Putin
• 65% agreed that “despite our differences there is more that unites ethnic Russians living in Ukraine and Ukrainians than divides us.” with 88% of respondents of Russian ethnicity agreeing.

According to MBIE data, here is how much the taxes on petrol have gone up since September 2017:

• ETS from 2.6 c to 18.1c
• GST from 24.6c to 37.5c
• Excise tax from 91.1c to 118.0c

So that is an extra 55.3 cents a litre going to the Government. The overall price is $1.02 a litre more than in Sep 2017, so more than half the increase is due to Government taxes.

Around 3.2 billion litres of petrol are sold in NZ every year so the extra revenue for the Government from petrol sales is $1.77 billion a year!

Graham Adams writes at The Platform:

To prove just how ludicrous such “conspiracy theory nonsense” is, The Hui’s presenter Mihingarangi Forbes said: “We would fall over laughing if someone from the Government rang us up and told us to go easy… it just doesn’t happen.”

As it happens, no serious critic is suggesting that the fund, which is administered by NZ On Air, obliges successful applicants to not criticise the Government (or that government officials contact journalists to tell them what to say). 

This is right. Of course there is no requirement to not criticise the Government. All media criticise the Government. But the real issue is this:

What critics have focused on are the criteria that prescribe how the Treaty of Waitangi should be presented — a point that Forbes, Jennings and Russell conveniently never mentioned.

The section describing the fund’s goals recommends “actively promoting the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner“.

And the first of the general eligibility criteria requires all applicants to show a “commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.

Critics allege that the media fund has a very particular focus and an overriding purpose: to discourage criticism of the government’s push for co-governance with Māori even as it is being inserted into a broad swathe of the nation’s life — from legislation governing the RMA and health to the conservation estate and Three Waters, among many others.

In short, anyone wanting to argue that the Treaty doesn’t imply a “partnership” is very unlikely to get any money.

The Labour/Green Government has a view that the Treaty of Waitangi established co-governance of New Zealand. NZ on Air also has this view. They will not fund any media organisation or journalist who doesn’t subscribe to this view. So this makes it almost impossible for a media organisation to rigorously scrutinise the Government’s claims on co-governance, as you lose funding if you do.

The meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi is a politically contentious view. Many New Zealanders think the Treaty was simply about sovereignty and property rights, not co-governance. But if you hold those views, you won’t get funded or probably published by a media organisation that has taken money from NZ on Air.

Last June, RNZ and the NZ Herald uncritically published claims that Māori discovered Antarctica with no evidence other than a flimsy oral account to support them. 

As far as I can tell, no major media outlet has given similar prominence to Sir Tipene O’Regan’s follow-up paper in September titled, “On the improbability of pre-European Polynesian voyages to Antarctica: a response to Priscilla Wehi and colleagues”. The paper’s co-authors concluded: “Antarctic voyaging by pre-European Polynesians seems most unlikely.”

O’Regan is one of Māoridom’s most-venerated leaders so why would his counter-view be judged to be of so little importance on such a contentious topic?

Could it be that the claims are an attempt by iwi to gain formal influence over New Zealand’s Antarctica policy under an interpretation of the Treaty as a partnership? But who would know? Journalists generally avoid asking or discussing such questions.

There are, of course, honourable exceptions scattered among mainstream media reports but the overwhelming impression is one of avoidance and evasion and half-truths when it comes to issues that are connected with Treaty “partnership”.

The role and meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi is a major issue with huge constitutional ramifications. The Maori Party openly say they don’t support a democracy with one person, one vote. The Government is doing co-governance in health, education and water (so far). So where has been the debate in the media on this?

How many TV stations have does a six part current affairs series on co-governance with a variety of views on whether or not it is good and appropriate? Or even one dedicated episode?

Where are the double page features in the newspaper on this vital issue?

They’re all missing in action.

The Ukrainian Tax Authority announced:

Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption (NAPC) has declared that captured Russian tanks and other equipment are not subject to declaration.

“Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment, because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100),” NAPC’s press service said.

Great news for all those Ukrainian farmers who have towed a tank away using their tractors!