There is a bill going through Parliament that will change the law so Ngai Tahu directly appoints two members of the Canterbury Regional Council, or ECan.

This is different to having Maori Wards. Because at least with Maori Wards, it is still one person one vote.

But what this does is give members of Ngai Tahu two votes.

Every resident of Canterbury (of whom 11% are Maori) will get to vote in the elections for ECan. But if this bill passes, then Ngai Tahu will get to appoint two additional members directly. So members of Ngai Tahu get to be represented twice – both by the person they vote for, and by the direct appointees (who are appointed by their Iwi leadership whom they vote for)

This is a radical development in democracy. And if it passes, it will set a precedent.

Really puzzled by why the Minister of Defence thinks a selfie of him in the gym is appropriate response to what is happening in Tonga.

Have been told the story of a Kiwi family in Australia who were desperate to get home, as there were serious mental health issues due to being stuck in Australia. But the Government refused them a compassionate spot in MIQ and of course people in Australia can’t even go into the MIQ ballot at the moment.

So what they did was book an airfare to Fiji which had a stopover in Auckland. In Auckland they got the kids to refuse to get back on the plane, as the kids wanted to see the rest if their family in Auckland. It seems that there is some international convention that prohibits forcing children onto a place, so the family was then transferred into an MIQ facility in Auckland, which is what they wanted.

The MIQ facility was in fact half empty (as many are, as the Government is unable to do simple stuff like match supply and demand) so they weren’t even taking a place from someone else.

So if you have kids, can’t get an MIQ spot, and don’t mind forking out for a wasted airfare to Fiji, this could be a way home!

And it occurs to me there is another way stranded Kiwis could get home, even if they don’t have kids. Just book an airfare which has an Auckland stopover and during the stopover, claim asylum. I know it is ridiculous for a NZ citizen to claim asylum against a country they have lived in such as Australia or the UK, but it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is.

You see the moment you have informed a NZ official that you are seeking asylum, they are forbidden from forcing you to get back on the plane you were on. So the plane will leave without you, and you will be transferred to MIQ. You then drop your claim for asylum and after your MIQ stay, get to stay in NZ (as a NZ citizen or permanent resident).

Josh Bloom at the American Council on Science and Health writes:

Round 4 started today, with the FDA granting Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Pfizer’s Paxlovid (1,2), something that was a foregone conclusion. Paxlovid is an effective, direct-acting antiviral drug that can be taken orally in pill form. If life makes any sense at all, Round 4 will be won by science. But instead of a knockout, I would expect multiple knockdowns.

However, when added to the beatdown the virus took in Round 2 from the vaccines, we can reasonably expect that the match will end with both opponents standing and the judges awarding the match to science by points.

Translation: COVID isn’t going away, but its threat to human health should be significantly reduced. 

All of this is possible because, unlike what happened with Merck’s molnupiravir, the interim clinical results for Paxlovid held up in the final analysis, while molnupiravir’s efficacy dropped significantly when all the data were analyzed. Pfizer’s gain will likely be Merck’s loss, which is a shame because the two drugs operate by a different mechanism and could be used to complement each other, just like cocktails of drugs of different classes turned HIV/AIDS into a manageable, chronic disease instead of a guaranteed death sentence. 

As I have written here and here, Paxlovid is a potent inhibitor of the viral M^pro (main protease) enzyme, which is responsible for chemically cutting newly-formed viral protein, which is initially a single long, non-functional chain, into multiple functional proteins that the virus requires for replication. This is not a novel approach; inhibitors of viral protease enzymes became approved drugs for both HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.  

Clinical data were consistent with the antiviral profile of Paxlovid. In other words, both the inhibition of M^pro in an enzymatic assay and inhibition of viral replication in a cell-based assay were predictive (3) of the drug’s efficacy in humans. The drug, when taken early in the infection, (4) reduced hospitalizations by 89% and deaths by 100% and had no adverse effects (5). As someone who did antiviral research in a former life, to me these data are nothing short of spectacular. 

The key takeaway is that Covid-19 is not going away, but this drug can massively reduce the severity in those infected, reducing the hospitalization rate by 89%.

I hope our Government has placed a large bulk order.

A guest post from a reader:

As someone who has clocked up over 300,000km in diesel 4×4 utes, it pains me to note that I now drive an electric vehicle.

There was only limited choice in this transition, as the EV-as-company-policy came with the new job. A ute was simply not an option.

And I have very mixed feelings about this.

The EV will never have a towbar and so I’ve had to keep the ute to tow the boat, but having sad that the EV is a nippy wee thing around the city. The torque response means one can launch off into a much smaller gap in traffic than a ute, but the speedbumps that Council insist on putting on roads and zebra crossings are now noticeable, whereas in the ute they were but pimples.

In diesel-days I’d know the price of fuel at every station on my regular routes and be able to predict the sales and do some amateur hedging over a few weeks as I ran the risk of an early-and-expensive purchase versus running the tank dry. Now I negotiate with my colleagues on who gets to plug in every couple of days at work, with Mondays and Fridays being at a premium.

In this car, a commercial fast charger from 10% to 80% takes around 40 minutes, and will get me about 180km and cost around $16. Another 10% will take another 10 minutes and cost another $3 for about 25km. On a slow charger like those installed at work or homes, that charge to 80% or 90% would take all day. These numbers vary hugely depending on the passenger loading in the EV, and the commercial chargers fees are comparable to what I was paying, litre-per-kilometer, in my ute.

It is nice to be able to park up at the supermarket and plug in, fire up an App, and then charge while doing the shopping, for this saves standing around on a windblown forecourt. But the novelty soon passes when you need to wait around in the supermarket carpark anyway for a charge when you’d rather be doing other things. I’ve been known to sit in the shaded back seat with the doors open and work away on my laptop, but that gets tiring pretty quickly.

But Auckland is a big city. You simply cannot drive from one side to the other, back again, then from top to bottom without either a full charge before to make it and afterwards to get home, or without a charge and work-in-the-back-seat in the middle. Last weekend I started out with a full charge and went to the beach and then home, then into work, and I needed to charge before popping out again.

Indeed, my last commercial charge saw me arrive to find someone else using the charger, for his company car. Given his company-shirt and company-branded-car he was circumspect in our discussion, but he was open that he not impressed with the interruption to his day that charging necessitated. As someone who thinks technology should fit the person, not the person fit the technology, I was bound to agree.

One thing with EVs as company cars that is overlooked in their adoption is the probable increase in kilometres driven. Because I’m not paying for it, I don’t object to do several different trips to the fruit-n-vege place, kids sports, to run personal errands, and the like. When I was paying for it I’d delay one of those to do two or three on one trip, and so I suspect I’m doing more kilometres around town than I used to.

I know that EVs are not the panacea to all our ills, whatever they may be, as claimed by some, but I’m not the sort of person whose identity is enmeshed with their vehicle. To me, they are a tool that I can and try to take pleasure in using. And I do. I love the ‘bugger you’ thought to the council when my ute plows over speed bumps and medium strips and ‘traffic calming measures’, and I enjoy being pushed back into the seat of the EV as I ‘gas it’ through a gap the ute would never have made.

I’m also very aware that in 100,000km the EV will be knackered, but my ute has done that and then some and still gets me, and my stuff, where I want to go. And it will. I think of the EV as a disposable car, like plastic bags that fill up landfills, whereas the ute is like nana’s huckery old basket.

As I said, I have very mixed feedings about this EV business. I’ll drive the EV for work and private use as it comes with my job and is free, but it won’t tow the boat or be loaded for trips away, and so I’m not selling my ute. Besides, who knows how long the job, and therefore the EV, will last?

An op ed from six NZ academics is a good one:

In their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explore the recent explosion of anxiety and depression experienced by young people in many of the wealthier countries of the world.

Lukianoff and Haidt lay the blame on “three great untruths” that, they believe, have taken hold in these societies, one of which – in an inversion of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous maxim – is, “what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker”.

By this they mean that our society has become so risk-averse that many young people have grown up without experiencing the psychological strengthening that comes with suffering setbacks and overcoming difficulties.

Among the chief culprits for this over-protective society, argue Lukianoff and Haidt, are universities, which have promulgated the notion that even mere exposure to ideas with which one disagrees can be dangerous to one’s mental health.

This is, in fact, precisely the opposite of what universities are supposed to do. In addition to teaching the knowledge associated with specific academic disciplines, it is the mission of universities to prepare students to think critically.

Sadly this is becoming more common in NZ, with some universities saying that “danger” to mental health will be used as a factor in deciding who is allowed to speak on campus.

Critical thinking requires us to engage with ideas we find disagreeable, difficult and even offensive, and to learn to bring to bear reason and evidence, rather than emotion, when we respond to them. One of the core principles that have historically enabled universities to fulfil this mission is academic freedom.

New Zealand’s Education and Training Act (2020) enshrines “the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas, and to state controversial or unpopular opinions”.

Thus, the Act recognises that the expression of unpopular opinions – which, almost by definition, will be deemed offensive by some – must be allowed, if universities are to fulfil their mission to advance knowledge. Members of the academic community must accept that universities are venues for robust debate, which will inevitably sometimes cause upset or offence.

This is a key point. The Act explicitly defines academic freedom as including controversial and unpopular opinion. Such opinions are by their nature always offensive to someone. I find defences of communism highly offensive as it is an ideology that has killed tens of millions. But I don’t advocate banning Marxists from campus (which would mean a lot fewer lecturers 🙂 )

Well-reasoned criticism of the arguments raised by the Listener seven would, of course, be entirely legitimate and firmly in keeping with academic freedom. However, the personalised attacks on them from several quarters and the action by the Royal Society – both of which are likely to intimidate anyone tempted to make similar arguments – are not. Such reactions stifle, rather than promote, healthy public debate, not to mention debate within universities themselves.

Furthermore, they send a terrible signal, especially to young people, that some ideas are too sensitive – or even too sacred – to discuss openly. This is anathema to the spirit of academic freedom and to the scientific mindset.

The reality is that some people do want certain ideas to be sacred and beyond debate. They attack and stamp on anyone who disagrees.

The church authorities, it would seem, were not big fans of academic freedom. Indeed, in 1619 Lucilio Vanini had his tongue cut out before being strangled and burned at a stake in Toulouse for his sins, one of which was proposing that humans had evolved from an ape. Two and a half centuries later, when Darwin made his similarly outrageous claim, that human beings had descended from ape-like ancestors, the church’s power had waned.

Science was coming into its own and, while many of a religious bent were incensed – although some clergy were also supportive – Darwin promulgated his theory without threat of reprisal, to the great benefit of human knowledge.

Obviously, the reaction to the Listener letter doesn’t come anywhere close to the violent persecutions that were faced by scientists and free-thinkers in the past. Still, the role that powerful institutions have historically played in setting the boundaries of discussion – often to the great detriment of society as a whole – should lead us to think hard about the relationship between academic freedom and whatever ideology is currently in the ascendant. If the record of intellectual history shows anything, it is that opinions that were once seen as indefensible – both morally and intellectually – have often turned out to advance knowledge.

Great to see some academics coming out strongly in favour of academic freedom.

An interesting tweet about how Omicron is a massive 91% less deadly than Delta. It was wrong to compare the original version of Covid-19 and the delta version to the flu, but the Omicron version is comparable. It is highly highly infectious, but massively less deadly.

And in case anyone thinks this comes from an anti-vaxxer, the tweeter is the Director of the US CDC.

I’m 100% in favour of people choosing to get vaccinated as the benefits of doing so massively outweigh the risks. But what Omicron is showing is that the justification for the public health restrictions of the last two years is much reduced. Our strategy for Omicron should be different to Delta. It should be about mass rapid testing. It won’t be about contact tracing (which will be impossible as Omicron will spread so fast).

A guest post by Owen Jennings:

An interesting court case in Wellington.  A 76 year old man sold his house to a developer.  His daughter is disputing his right to do so.  She is claiming there were understandings about the property not being sold because there is tikanga involved, her baby’s placenta is buried on the property and that there were clearly issues of ethnicity and cultural values at stake.

Without commenting on this particular case it does, however raise significant issues about the nation’s slide into what can only be a quagmire of confusion, uncertainty, heartache and vagueness.  The harder the elitists, the media and the academics push for the adoption of Māori language, Māori ownership, Māori control, the adoption of ill-defined terms, the incorporation of Māori factors into science and, particularly, if the courts continue down the path of judicial activism by embracing ethnic and cultural values into judgements and judicial process the greater the problems will become.

Instead of promoting this surreptitious and arrogant movement the Government needs to stand firm and stop this nonsense before even more harm is done.  They won’t, of course, because they are beholden to a bloc vote in their caucus and they want to bask in the adulation of their sister elites.  They are like a bunch of vacuous art critics cooing and fawning over a blank wall that some artist has offered as modern art.

The problem is there is no clear definition of many of the terms and concepts that the conceited want to impose.  They cannot even agree among themselves.  Because they are revisionists they will force the most extreme position.  Take ‘taonga’.  At one time this term was quite limited in its application. Hone Heke used the word in relation to items gained in battle – a mere, a korowai or similar.  Today it can mean any tangible or intangible item including radio waves.

This creates uncertainty.  Uncertainty halts process.  Progress ends.  Investment stops, decisions get deferred or just not made, wrangles emerge, division and antipathy grow.  Instead of a nation of “one people” we are being cleaved down the middle – the totalitarian elitists on one side and the hoi polloi on the other.  The arrogant writing their own cheques on the back of those who have no claims, no acceptable blood. The anger is now evident.  The push is too far, too fast.  The future looks bleak, even bloody.

Sadly, those who will miss out yet who need common sense solutions are people like my neighbours – John and Tracey.  John drives a digger in a quarry and Tracey works part time at shop.  Both have small percentage of Māori blood.  They rent. Their kids struggle to read.  They have little to get by on. They have not seen a red cent from any settlement. The problem for John is there is dispute with an iwi group about a grave site near the quarry.  The business owners have given notice that they may just wind up and let John and his fellow workers go.  The very people who need genuine help are ignored, thrown a welfare cheque bone or have the state force their wages up by fiat only to see jobs disappear.  The negative stats affecting Māori just get worse.

This uncertainty, confusion and growing unresolved claims plays havoc in the business world.  It kills entrepreneurship, smothers risk taking and investment and jobs go.  The low paid jobs go first.  The crème le crème are not affected.  When their bloated salaries are insufficient they sell their over-rated service under contract and double their income.  They become a consultant and double it again.

Meanwhile Minister Robertson crows about a strong performing economy. His selectively adopted numbers are justification for his claims.  Alas, he confuses wheel spinning with winning Bathurst.  He and his equally hoodwinked mate at the Reserve Bank think that sustainable economic growth is about money creation and topping up countless bank accounts with tax money.  Meanwhile the critical factor – labour productivity keeps going south.  Thanks goodness, the much maligned rural sector is still smart enough to bail us out.

Down on the street in Otara gang life looks even more attractive.  The weed kills the pain.  The shoplifting techniques get sharpened. The black economy picks up. The police are too busy with Covid ‘criminals’ to stop the rot.  We slide further toward third world status – Aotearoa New Zimbabwe.

What to do?  Can paradise be regained?  Ultimately power lies with the people.  It may take a decade, it may take a century but eventually the masses prevail.  If we do not want a split nation, a fully totalitarian state, a country of even greater ‘haves and have-nots’, a basket case economy where long proven values of free speech, freedom of association, freedom from state control are lost, we need to take action now.  We either do it now by talk and the ballot box or we do it later by more dramatic means.  Is Groundswell an answer?  Should it grow an urban leg?  Is there a political party with the balls to rise above the scrum of mediocrity and absurdity?

Exaggeration??  Hyperbole??  Unrealistic??  I desperately want to be shown as wrong.  I love this country.  I want my grandkids to have better.  Tell me I am wrong.  If I am not don’t just sit there, do something. 

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.