Fraser Newman has a petition to Parliament stating:

That the House of Representatives enacts an autonomous sanctions regime against the Russian Federation under urgency.

I believe that the Russian Federation has waged a war of aggression without justification against the sovereign nation of Ukraine, transgressed its borders, attacked its cities, and killed civilians. In the absence of an autonomous sanctions regime, New Zealand is unable to join our allies in strongly sanctioning the Russian Federation for its aggression.

The Government’s stance of not imposing any sanctions on Russia unless Russia agrees to them can’t be allowed to stand. Let them know they are wrong, and totally out of step with world opinion.

Lady Deborah Chambers writes:

The emergency legislation in response to Covid-19 giving our Government the right to control our freedom of movement is no longer demonstrably justified in removing the fundamental rights to which New Zealanders are entitled.

It was once, but it isn’t anymore – I agree.

The announcement on January 26 required anyone known to be infected to lock themselves in their homes for 14 days. Anyone else in the house automatically becomes classified as a close contact and must also isolate for the same period and then for an additional 10 days as well. If in those last 10 days any of the previously uninfected close contacts in your house test positive, then the whole process starts again.

On February 14, phase 2 was announced reducing the length of self-isolation slightly to 10 days and seven days for close contacts, regardless of testing negative for “non-critical workers”.

If Omicron spreads as quickly here as it has in other countries, it seems possible that at some point nearly every household will be forced into isolation. The new rules incentivise New Zealanders to simply not get tested and not use the Covid tracer App.

This can be seen in the data for the number of people using the Covid app. On 21 January it was used by 1.16 million people and on 21 February that had dropped a massive 37% to 0.73 million people.

The closed borders continue, at least until the end of this month. The mandatory managed isolation system restricting New Zealanders’ rights to enter New Zealand including those triple-jabbed and testing negative when people in our community with Covid can isolate at home cannot be demonstrably justified as reasonable.

It once was, but now for every case at the border there are 100 times as many in the community.

The Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce has suggested:

Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce (AGCC) has asked the Scottish Government to scrap plans to permanently enshrine emergency lockdown powers in law, describing the move as “corrosive” to democracy and detrimental to Scotland’s economic recovery.

Should the government choose to proceed with the plans, the Chamber has requested that five conditions be attached, including that they must have the backing of at least 75 MSPs or more, and that politicians and government officials take a 25% pay cut for the duration of any future business restrictions to “understand” the financial impact.

That would incentivise MPs to consider whether a lockdown etc is really necessary.

An excellent article by Hamish Price on Russia is here. Some extracts:

Russia has overwhelming military superiority. Yet they will still suffer devastating losses. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has doubled its army, and modernised its equipment. Ukraine has 250,000 armed personnel, and 7 million men of fighting age.

Russia has captured the port of Odessa to block Ukraine’s access to shipping. It is now carrying out shock-and-awe air-strikes on Ukrainian cities with relative impunity.

But to force the removal of the government in Kiev and install a puppet regime, Russia needs to engage in urban warfare and land troops on the ground in the capital. As Russian forces descend on Kiev from multiple fronts, there are already signs that they are making less progress than they had planned. Russia’s losses are mounting.

Ukrainian losses will be martyrs in defence of the motherland. Russian casualties will diminish morale. The ground invasion of a country with a land mass almost twice the size of Germany will only lead to bloodshed that will eclipse all other conflicts in Europe in the last eight decades. And the blood will flow for years.

The invasion of Ukraine is now in its fourth day and progress is slow. By comparison the ground war in the first gulf war was over in 100 hours.

But New Zealand is now an outlier among modern liberal democracies in not having an autonomous sanctions regime. When our closest like-minded friends are prepared to make such huge personal sacrifices to stand up for Ukraine’s sovereignty–in the case of much of Europe, this means literally going cold in winter; then it is no longer tenable to rely on travel bans or an antiquated commitment to a compromised UN system to send a message to Ukraine.

It is hand-wringing weakness to opine that New Zealand wants reform of the permanent membership veto on the Security Council. That reform will not happen. We need autonomous sanctions to take action against the most egregious violations of international law.

Although foreign affairs is occasionally a balance between our values and our interests, in the case of Russia, New Zealand needs to allow our values to prevail. We must align ourselves with Europe, the UK, the US, Japan and others on Russia. We need to be prepared to cut off trade with Russia, cease dealings with all Russian financial institutions, and freeze all Russian assets. We need to expel all of Russia’s diplomats and close our embassy in Moscow.

We need to make it clear to Russia that as long as they attempt to tear up the United Nations Charter, attack other sovereign states, and undermine our values, we can have no relationship with them.

We must commit to defeating Russia’s information war against our values, and play our part in advancing the cause of democracy and human rights, and combating authoritarianism. Some of those discussions will be hard.

I like the line if placing our values ahead of our interests. I agree.

The reputational risk to New Zealand is not simply whether we stand up with like-minded countries for the values that we have extolled in New York, Geneva and Vienna over nearly eight decades. The doors are closing on Russian finance. But finance is mobile. Even if there is agreement to lock Russia out of the SWIFT transaction system, New Zealand is still vulnerable. We have the tenth most-traded currency in the world. Our investment and business regime is among the most liberal. Two years into a comprehensive Western embargo on Russian finance, we will become an outcast if we have become an easy safe-haven for it.

Brownlee has attempted to table his Bill again this week. Mahuta responded loftily that the Bill is not “fit for purpose”. Yet they have made no attempt to replace it. The events in the last 24 hours have now made autonomous sanctions an urgent priority for New Zealand foreign policy. Brownlee’s legislation may not be perfect, but the critical need is to provide a mechanism to sanction Russia immediately. National leader Chris Luxon has offered National’s support to fast-track such a regime.

Ardern is due to travel to Europe shortly to press New Zealand’s case for the long-awaited FTA with the EU. When she visits European leaders, she will claim that we are like-minded modern liberal democracies with shared values. Each of them will then ask her what New Zealand is doing to show our commitment to those values. If all we have done is berated a Russian Ambassador and imposed a travel ban on Vladimir Putin, then they will laugh her out of the room.

Australia is not doing nothing. Australia is sending weapons from their military to Ukraine. Almost every liberal democratic country is doing something, except (so far) New Zealand.

Great to see the PSA join the Taxpayers’ Union in attacking the unfairness of not adjusting the tax brackets for inflation. Real union solidarity there.

Someone who earns $50,000 in Australia pays $1,300 less in income tax than the someone earning $50,000 here. Australia almost every year adjust their tac brackets, but we don’t.

ABC reports:

In a striking political acknowledgment Tuesday, a former top Democratic foreign policy official revisited her comments from the turbulent 2012 presidential campaign and directly and openly said she owed then-Republican nominee Mitt Romney an apology.

Madeleine Albright, who served as President Bill Clinton‘s secretary of state and supported President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, apologized to Romney, then Obama’s Republican opponent and now Utah’s junior senator, for her repeated criticism of his claim that Russia was the country’s “number one geopolitical foe,” as he said during the campaign.

Romney’s claim drew a memorable slam from Obama during a presidential debate: “The 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” Obama said, seeking to paint Romney as out of touch on a key foreign policy issue.

Albright, who similarly criticized Romney in 2012, said she’d “underestimated” Russia back then.

“I personally owe an apology to now-Senator Romney, because I think that we underestimated what was going on in Russia,” Albright said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing.

It’s been clear for some time that Romney was right. I always thought he would be a good President and it is a shame he didn’t win in 2012.

A reader has started a Kiwi History Channel on Youtube called Interesting FiNgZ.

Here’s one of his videos for those interested in Kiwi history and wanting to subscribe.

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Newsroom reports:

Questions have also been raised about why labs are already under such strain well below New Zealand’s stated maximum testing capacity, with the Opposition accusing the Government of using misleading figures to overstate the state of play.

In late January, Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall announced the Government had increased the nationwide capacity for Covid PCR tests “from a maximum of 39,000 tests a day to a baseline of 58,000 tests”.

Questions have also been raised about why labs are already under such strain well below New Zealand’s stated maximum testing capacity, with the Opposition accusing the Government of using misleading figures to overstate the state of play.

In late January, Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall announced the Government had increased the nationwide capacity for Covid PCR tests “from a maximum of 39,000 tests a day to a baseline of 58,000 tests”.

You expect delays when the Government reaches its claimed testing capacity. But to have five day delays in processing when you are at half the claimed capacity tells you there is a problem.

Taylor said the Government needed to continue the rollout of rapid antigen tests (or RATs) across the country, while there needed to be much more selective criteria for who should seek PCR tests.

Yet RATs are still banned from general sale. Fortunately the Government is finally about to relent and may let us purchase RATs in March.

A guest post by Mike Wilkinson, former Executive member, New Zealand Republic

Many would have missed a small bit of news in Australia last week. The Australian Republican Movement announced a new model for how a republic would work. Much more water needs to pass under the bridge before it has any real influence here. Yet, proponents of a republic in New Zealand should take heart.

The new model, the Australian Choice, is summarised on ARM’s website. It would allow governments in each State and Territory to nominate one candidate to be Head of State. The Federal Parliament could nominate up to three. A national election would then decide which candidate becomes Head of State.

ARM’s model is designed to overcome problems shown by a republican referendum held in 1999. That vote considered a system where a Head of State was chosen by a two-thirds vote of Parliament. Opponents successfully painted this as a “politicians’ republic” – many voters preferred that they choose the Head of State in an election. The result of the referendum was 55% against – Australians chose to stay with the monarchy.

ARM has tried to build consensus on the Australian Choice – it was the outcome of a 2-year consultation. Yet, ARM’s opponents point to the 20 years since the referendum, asking why has ARM taken all that time? Consensus is difficult because even now, the issue still divides those who want a republic. Some such as Liberal MP Jason Falinski welcome the new model warmly. Others like former PM Paul Keating, staunchly criticise it – they say only Parliament should choose the Head of State. Keating says he would even prefer keeping the monarchy to ARM’s model. 

ARM believes 73% of Australians would vote for a republic if the Australian Choice Model was put to a referendum. Yet, much water needs to pass under the bridge before that happens. Will ARM convince enough supporters to back its new model at the ballot box? Or will its opponents once again succeed dividing those supporters, by say calling the model as a politicians’ republic again? Time will tell. Still, New Zealanders who support a republic should even now applaud ARM’s work. We can hope it leads to further steps in Australia that help republicanism in New Zealand.

The Herald reports:

Asked if this was war, Ardern said it would be the “closest thing to war my generation will have seen”.

It isn’t close to war, it is war.

And the born in 1980 generation has seen a lot of wars, sadly. They include:

• Gulf War 1990 – 91 (50,000 killed)
• Bosnian War 1992 – 95 (100,000 killed)
• Kosovo War 1998 – 99 (20,000 killed)
• War on Terror 2001 – (800,000 killed)
• Iraq War 2003 – 2011 (50,000+ killed)

The full judgment is here. Some key aspects are:

• The Cabinet paper in October 2021 said that “there was public health advice that additional vaccine or testing mandates were not required” in relation to addressing the risk of the outbreak of spread of COVID-19.
• The enabling legislation passed in November said vaccine mandates would be in the public interest, if they ensured continuity of services essential for public safety
• The judge found the evidence by Michael Wood was a mismatch with the stated purpose of the order – in other words he said they did it for a reason different to what the order said
• The Order limits the right of affected workers to refuse to undergo a medical treatment
• An obligation to receive a vaccine which a person objects to because it has been tested on cells derived from a human foetus, potentially an aborted foetus, does involve a limitation on the manifestation of a religious belief
• The Court must exercise its constitutional responsibility to ensure that decisions are made lawfully. And the Crown has the burden to demonstrate that a limitation of a fundamental right is demonstrably justified
• Justification for the Order seems to be close to one based on administrative convenience, which is not a compelling justification for limiting rights.
• Was not satisfied that the Crown has put forward sufficient evidence to justify the measures, even giving it some benefit of the doubt.
• The apparently low numbers of personnel the Order actually addresses, the lack of any evidence that they are materially lower than would have been the case had the internal policies been allowed to operate, and the evidence suggesting that the Omicron variant in particular breaks through any vaccination barrier means that he is not satisfied that there is a real threat to the continuity of these essential services that the Order materially addresses

Stuff reports:

Left-leaning Auckland mayoral candidate Efeso Collins says a push for fare-free public transport will be the first thing he wants to achieve if elected in October.

Collins, a two-term Manukau Ward Labour councillor, says Aucklanders spend up to 30 per cent of their household income on transport, and it is one of the biggest issues the city has to deal with.

“If we are going to address our climate emissions this is the first and best way to do it,” he told Stuff.

Fare-free public transport will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one kilogram as transport is within the emissions trading scheme. It will just force Auckland residents to pay a lot more in rates so companies that produce greenhouse gas emissions can pay less for them.

The idea is not new to an Auckland mayoral campaign. Jim Anderton in 1977 had it as a policy when he came second to sitting Auckland City Council mayor Sir Dove-Myer Robinson.

In the last full financial year before Covid-19 hit patronage hard, fare revenue was worth more than $150 million a year, and an earlier Auckland Transport assessment was that extra demand would cost $60m to meet.

The $60 million is a conservative estimate. Free travel on Waiheke ferries alone will probably chew up $15 million or so (off peak travel for seniors costs $2 million so travel for anyone at anytime would easily exceed $10 million). Every day thousands will flock to Waiheke if it is free.

But let’s go with the conservative figure of $60 million of extra demand and $150 of current fares. That means $210 million of extra income needed through rates which is an extra $420 per household.

The average residential rates are $3,599 in Auckland so the cost of this initial promise by Collins would see rates increase by 12%. They’re already planning a rates increase of at least 6% so basically what Collins is promising is to hike up rates by 20%.

The Herald reports:

A High Court challenge questioning the legality of Covid-19 vaccination mandates for Police and Defence Force employees has been upheld, with the court determining that a government mandate requiring frontline employees to be jabbed is an unjustified incursion of the Bill of Rights.

In a decision released today, Justice Francis Cooke determined that ordering frontline police officers and Defence staff to be vaccinated or face losing their job was not a “reasonably justified” breach of the Bill of Rights.

The lawyer for the police and Defence staff at the centre of the claim is now calling for the suspended workers to return to their jobs immediately, saying many have given decades of service to their community and are still committed to their jobs.

This is a huge blow to the Government to be found to have breached the human rights of our soldiers and police officers.

A guest post by William Hall:

As the situation unfolds between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, many Kiwis may not think it to be top of mind, as COVID and Protests take centre stage for the media we are of course concerned about what is happening within our borders, rather than Eastern Europe. But it is something we should be seriously concerned about, due to us and Russia’s mutual friend, China.

For Russia, the tactics they are using today are nothing new, the Kremlin’s little green men have entered the territory of other post-soviet states many times before and have not left. We have seen this from Vladimir Putin in Chechnya (1999), In the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (2008) and more recent history the Crimean peninsular, from Ukraine and now in Donetsk and Luhansk in the East.

Putin spent over an hour on Russian Television looking to rewrite history, telling people that the people who inhabit what is historically known as Novorossiya (New Russia) should and must be returned to the motherland. Putin has by sending peacekeeping forces into a region of the former Soviet Union that he believes should rightfully be a part of the Russian Federation has started a war.

Now for New Zealand other than following the United Kingdom and the United States on implementing sanctions. That’s about as far as the current government can go in condemning the actions of Vladimir Putin. But New Zealand should be looking towards China to see how they are reacting to the current crisis in Ukrainian and to learn how better to react.

China has been investigating opening a marine reserve in the South Pacific nation of Kiribati that would be able to double as a naval base. Vanuatu has had to deny Chinese plans surrounding the opening of Naval bases in the island nation. All while the Western world spent the majority of 2021 concerned around Chinese military operations around Taiwan. All of this sounds very similar to the build-up of Russian troops over the past few months around Ukraine. In Belarus, Transnistria and along Russia’s border with Ukraine troops and forward bases were opened and moved into position, to project a sense of power and fear across the globe. China’s work in the Pacific and the South China Sea about building military insulations is an exact mirror to what we have seen from Russia.

On the 22nd of February, Boris Johnson said that “This is plainly in breach of international law. It is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine.” The strongest measure that the West is willing to use to deal with this crisis is sanctioning Russian exports, banking and Oligarchs. Even Biden’s biggest threat of removing Russia from Swift was hardly a major deterrent. Only on the 18th of February, did the Russian Finance Ministry submit legislative proposals on Cryptocurrency. Further moving away from Western institutions.

Along with hurting Russia financially, the West has also tried to arm the Ukrainian armed forces with weapons, such as antitank and antiaircraft missiles. However, for the German government, a nation that had half of its population living under Russian control for 45 years. They decided to send a handful of helmets to the Ukrainian people, 5,000 in total. As the fresh-faced German Chancellor Olaf Scholz navigates his way around running the heart of European democracy and a worsening energy crisis at home, all while the new Nord Stream 2 lays dormant under the Black Sea.

The West’s continued appeasement of Putin’s Russia has emboldened him to continue to take bites out of Russia and the Soviet Union’s former colonies. Showing the widening instabilities between the European Union, United Kingdom and the United States in the post-COVID age. Weak leadership in the US, Germany and UK have greatly contributed to Russia’s hand.

So if America and Britain won’t militarily protect Europes second-largest nation then why wouldn’t Putin take what he wants. The precedent continues to be set, as it was with Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. So for a China that economically giants over Russia and is soon to be the globe’s largest economy, understanding their weaknesses is strategically important.

However, there are differences, for Russia the territories it has so far taken are different to China’s relationship with Taiwan. Russia’s interest is with regions that are ethnically Russian and on the whole, wish to rejoin Russia under Putin, whether as a part of the Federation or as an independent de facto state.

For Taiwan, although the population wishes to rejoin China, they do not want to join a nation under communist rule. In Taiwan’s favour, it has the Taiwan Relations Act that requires the US to enable Taiwan to defend itself from any outside aggression. This would mean any conflict China would like to declare on Taiwan would be one fort with the latest US military hardware, Unlikely the Ukrainian armed forces which are mostly using outdated soviet equipment.

New Zealand needs to view what is happening right now in Ukraine as a possibility for what could happen in the Asia Pacific. Just as Europe relies heavily on Russia, New Zealand relies heavily on China. Could our government choose between our economy and another nation several hours away by plane’s economy? How do we sanction our largest trading partner?

It was only back in 2018 when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her then-deputy Winston Peters announced continuing the suspension of negotiations around the FTA with the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan customs union over the poising in the British city of Salisbury. The western alliances have spent 20 years appeasing Russia, waiting for wide enough gaps in breaking international law to enable civil services to negotiate with the largest country in the world. A nation that has repeatedly broken international law and yet our short memories enable us to forget the suffering that has already occurred.

Let’s start with the weak, sadly being our own Government. Here is the response from the PM:

Introduce targeted travel bans against Russian Government officials and other individuals associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in line with a number of our partners;

We already have closed borders. So what the means is that the Russian Minister of Defence will be treated the same as a triple vaccinated Kiwi in London trying to get home to see a dying relative, and be told Nyet.

Prohibit the export of goods to Russian military and security forces

We have none. A ban on export of goods to Russia would have teeth, but this is just a ban on exports to the Russian military. I don’t think we sell a lot of 50 year old planes to them.

Suspend bilateral foreign ministry engagement until further notice

Oh no, we won’t respond to their e-mails!

What we should be doing is imposing sanctions as basically every other liberal democratic country is doing – Australia, Canada, Japan, UK, US and all 27 EU members. But the official policy of our Government is that it can only impose sanctions on Russia, if Russia agrees to them! Yep they have twice voted down a bill from Gerry Brownlee that would allow us to impose sanctions outside the UN Security Council framework.

Now we have the woke:

The need to turn everything, even a war, into an intersectional issue is tone deaf. And the statement that we must actively mediate for peace is just ridiculous. You think New Zealand can convince Putin?

But I’ve found someone who looks like they would fit perfectly into the Green caucus with their takes:

And then finally we have this now widely mocked tweet from NATO itself last year.

I reckon that Putin decided to invade Ukraine the day he saw that tweet from NATO.

We also have John Kerry (US Climate Change Ambassador who said:

“…Massive emissions consequences to the war, but equally importantly you’re going to lose people’s focus. You’re going to lose, certainly, big country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact,” Kerry said after stating that he was concerned about the people of Ukraine, as well as Russia’s willingness to “change boundaries of international law by force.”

“So, you know, hopefully I think President Putin would realize that in the northern part of his country, they used to live on – 66% percent of a nation that was over frozen land. Now it’s thawing and his infrastructure is at risk and the people of Russia are at risk,” he added. “And so I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.” 

So Kerry thinks Putin shouldn’t invade Ukraine as it will produce too many greenhouse gas emissions that will melt the ice in Russia’s north. Yes I am sure that will persuade him.

Labour promised 13,000 metres of light rail would be complete by 2021. Michael Wood shows off how many metres they have delivered.

A reader writes in:

We seem to have daily headlines about PCR testing delays.  Today I walked into a Rako centre in Aucklands CBD and paid for a test. It’s in my interest to work knowing I’m not infecting others or to get back to work quickly if I become a contact and am not infectious.  I should have a result late tonight from Rako, within a few hours.  Last week’s test result came in 6 hours. 

Here’s the crazy part:

1.  Rako doesn’t pool samples so no need for re-testing. 

2.  Their process is simpler so speedier.

3.  They can scale up to more than 10,000/day 

4.  They offered their technology to the govt for other labs over a year ago. 

5. They are picking up Covid before some NP tests due to virus compartmentalisation. 

6.  They continue to provide sub 24 hr tests. 

Business needs to be aware you can access these tests for staff to get people back to work quickly. 

I’m classified as a critical worker so theoretically get access to RAT’s once I get symptoms or become a close contact.  

As a health practitioner I’m in the highest risk category set by the MoH because I work in close proximity to a maskless individual generating aerosol.  I know RATs are less reliable than saliva PCR so I chose to pay to do surveillance to keep my patients, family and staff protected in the absence of readily available RATs.  Worried well? Maybe, but I’m paying so it’s my call. 

My concern is that business will be crippled by delays in testing for close contacts. Staff are sitting at home waiting for results when they could get a same-day outcome and be back to work.  It’s the topic of constant frustration amongst business mates who are not critical workers.  

I can’t understand why Rako is not supported, promoted or subsidised by the govt.   Can you shed any light on the issue and raise the question on your platform please.  

I have no financial interest in Rako and pay for my own tests as a self employed health professional.  I’m just intensely frustrated at the mindless media headlines when there is an alternative which could be subsidised. Please shed some light on this ridiculous situation. 

A great letter and the sad answer is that Rako offended the Government so punishing Rako was seen as more important than better health outcomes for New Zealanders.

This chart shows the ratio of the number of new covid-19 cases each day in the community as opposed to the border. At the beginning of the month it was 1.6 to 1 so you could understand caution at that stage.

By the 7th of February the ratio 7 community cases for every border case. So the border represented 13% of the total cases.

By the 14th of February the ratio was 39 community cases for every border case. The border is 2.5% of the total cases.

Fast forward another week and on the 21st the ratio was 197 community cases for every border case. The border is 0.5% of the total cases.

And today there were 8 (not 80, not 800 but 8) border cases and 6,137 community cases. The ratio is 767 to 1 with the border making up 0.13% of total cases.

Despite this the border remains basically closed to triple vaxxed New Zealand citizens who have tested negative for Covid-19 and want to return home.

It’s insane. There is no public health benefit from doing so. It is merely punitive now.

The Herald reports:

Ardern cautioned that the traffic light system was likely to remain in place for the winter to combat not just Covid, but the return of the flu, following two winters where the flu has been kept largely at bay thanks to Covid measures.

If you give a Government great powers, they become loath to surrender them. This was always the danger. I don’t think the Government wants us to get back to normal. They want to keep the state of fear going.

My prediction is we will get to 2023 and the Government will not have ended the use of its special emergency powers. The only way to get our lives back will be to vote them out.