It would be interesting to do such a poll here. I am sure we would also over-estimate, but surely not so badly.

If you groups responses together, then Americans think:

• 20% are millionaires
• 59% are gay, lesbian or bisexual
• 57% are Jewish or Muslim
• 97% are Black, Asian or Native American
• 92% live in Texas, NY or California

Oliver Hartwich writes:

Another concern is food prices. Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of maize and wheat. It is unclear whether there will be a large harvest this year, and no major shipping lines service Black Sea ports.

The price of wheat has skyrocketed as a result. In January, it was about US$7.50. Now it is US$13. It is a catastrophe in many poorer countries where households spend most of their budgets on food. It could trigger famines.

An increase in fertiliser prices – another major export from this region – will exacerbate agricultural crises. The fertiliser price in Britain increased by almost 50% in the past week alone.

Metals and rare earths are also a concern. Nickel, for example: From US$18,400 per tonne in January to US$80,000 today. Best of luck to any industry needing such resources.

The war has business implications everywhere. Airlines must make huge detours to avoid restricted airspace. Car manufacturers are closing factories because some of their parts suppliers are based in Ukraine. McDonald’s lost 9 percent of its global revenue from leaving the Russian market.

This is before we get to the question of how central banks will respond. Will they fight the wave of massive inflation? Or will they support their struggling economies?

I didn’t realise the impact on wheat or nickel. Inflation may not peak for some time yet.

A reader asked me which Labour MPs would be out on the latest ONK poll. This poll would see Labour going from 65 to 47 seats, so losing 18 seats. If you assume no change in electorate seats then the List MPs who would be out (in order) are:

1. ROBERTS, Angela Susan
2. WHITE, Helen
3. BROOKING, Rachel Jane
4. KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI, Anahila Lose
5. OMER IBRAHIM SALEH, Ibrahim
6. CRAIG, Elizabeth Dorothy
7. CHEN, Naisi
8. COFFEY, Tamati Gerald
9. CLARK, Angela Maree
10. LUBECK, Maria Josina Elisabeth
11. TINETTI, Janette Rose
12. BELICH, Camilla Vera Feslier
13. WALL, Louisa Hareruia
14. JACKSON, William Wakatere
15. VERRALL, Ayesha Jennifer
16. FAAFOI, Kristopher John
17. MALLARD, Trevor Colin
18. PARKER, David William

However it is likely Labour will lose some electorate seats also. Their smallest margins (to National) are:

1. Northland
2. Whangarei
3. Maungakiekie
4. Tukituki
5. Upper Harbour
6. Northcote
7. New Plymouth
8. Hamilton East
9. Otaki
10. Ilam
11. Hutt South
12. Rangitata

All these seats have a majority of below 4,500. Nelson, Whanganui, Hamilton West and even West Coast-Tasman could come into play. But’s let’s assume those 12 seats go to National. Then Labour loses six List MPs and 12 electorate MPs, so those out would be:

1. BENNETT, Glen Thomas
2. NGOBI, Terisa Telesia
3. HENDERSON, Lorenza Emily Preston
4. PALLETT, Sarah Jean
5. HALBERT, Shanan
6. ROBERTS, Angela Susan
7. WHITE, Helen
8. BROOKING, Rachel Jane
9. ANDERSEN, Virginia Ruby
10. KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI, Anahila Lose
11. OMER IBRAHIM SALEH, Ibrahim
12. CRAIG, Elizabeth Dorothy
13. STRANGE, Jamie Ross
14. LUXTON, Jo-Anne Marie
15. CHEN, Naisi
16. COFFEY, Tamati Gerald
17. PRIME, Willow-Jean
18. CLARK, Angela Maree
    

Newsroom reports:

As of 9.05am on Tuesday morning, there were 152 staffed intensive care beds across New Zealand (excluding Christchurch). All but four of them were full.

That’s according to a snapshot obtained by Newsroom of the Critical Health Resource Information System (CHRIS), which updates ICU capacity twice a day with submissions from each of the country’s public hospitals. It’s also much, much lower than the estimates provided by the Ministry of Health, which told Newsroom on Monday there were 297 staffed ICU beds in the public health system.

That is not a minor discrepancy. The Ministry pf Health is citing a number twice as large as the hospitals.

The Free Beacon reports:

More than 100 students at Yale Law School attempted to shout down a bipartisan panel on civil liberties, intimidating attendees and causing so much chaos that police were eventually called to escort panelists out of the building.

The March 10 panel, which was hosted by the Yale Federalist Society, featured Monica Miller of the progressive American Humanist Association and Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative nonprofit that promotes religious liberty. Both groups had taken the same side in a 2021 Supreme Court case involving legal remedies for First Amendment violations. The purpose of the panel, a member of the Federalist Society said, was to illustrate that a liberal atheist and a conservative Christian could find common ground on free speech issues.

“It was pretty much the most innocuous thing you could talk about,” he added.

That didn’t stop nearly 120 student protesters from crowding into the event.

The intolerance is depressing.

Newsroom has a story that is almost beyond belief:

His company, Ubiquitome, which is 20 percent owned by Otago Innovation, was launched in 2014. In the early months of the pandemic it received more than half a million dollars in development funding from MBIE’s Covid Innovation Accelerator fund and more than $2 million from a similar fund set up in the US to advance Covid-19 testing technology.

“We were primed and ready [with the testing technology], and the MBIE and US funding allowed us to get meaty Covid work going,” Pickering says. 

“We developed a hand-held device and the app that supports it, and we are contract manufacturing it here in [the Auckland suburb of] Rosedale, with sales overseas and a growing group of organisations including Napier Port, Winston Pulp International, Endoscopy Auckland and Te Whānau O Waipareira using it to test for Covid variants.”

The lab-in-a-box Liberty 16 device can be deployed at a company, school, hospital, marae or even an apple orchard, Pickering says, and run up to 30 saliva PCR tests at a time. Results come back within 90 minutes and can be sent to a mobile phone through the Ubiquitome app. One unit and the associated lab materials costs around $10,000, although it’s cheaper if you buy more units.

The technology has ISO international quality certification, and US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval. Ubiquitome has a partnership with the Yale School of Public Health. It has the effectiveness of a PCR test, with the flexibility of a rapid antigen test, Pickering says. 

And it’s not available for use in New Zealand – at least not officially.

“We went to the Ministry of Health in 2020 and said ‘The New Zealand Government funded this, it was extraordinarily prescient, and it’s ready and working for you.’ The feedback was along the lines of: ‘We don’t have time, we are too busy, we are focusing on the Covid response.”

So we have a NZ company with a mobile testing device that was part funded by MBIE, yet the Ministry of Health wouldn’t even look at it!

Barrie Saunders writes:

The Three Waters proposal driven by Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta is a totally unnecessary, very divisive battle with local government and the people of New Zealand.  

The focus has been on whether there should be co-governance with iwi leaders, and also, whether it adequately prevents privatisation, which I see as a red herring maybe designed to divert attention from the real issues.  

The critical question is whether the failings of local government are such, that their Three Waters assets should be confiscated by the state, reformulated into four entities, and then handed back into a convoluted governance regime involving iwi and local government nominees.   

Having looked at the papers behind the proposals I do not believe they meet the necessary threshold.  Yes, there are problems, as Local Government NZ has recognised for many years, but they do not in my view justify central government overriding local government in this heavy-handed manner.  

And the problems can be fixed by central government setting standards that must be met, but leaving it to local government as to how they achieve them.

Some of the boundaries defy the common-sense test.  Gisborne to Nelson including Wellington is Entity C, which is not rational, particularly when it’s remembered that Horizons in Manawatu is actually split with Entity B.  The logic of Entity C is to accommodate Ngai Tahu, which in the 19^th century controlled the South Island outside of the Nelson area.        

Yep the boundaries are not based on regional or local councils today, but on what were the tribal boundaries in the 1800s!

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern still has confidence in COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins after he released personal information about journalist Charlotte Bellis despite official advice not to. …

Revelations on Thursday show foreign affairs officials sent details of Bellis’s consular assistance to the Foreign Minister under the ‘no surprises’ policy because there’d been “extensive media attention”.

This was then passed to Hipkins with a note saying all personal information was “not for public comment”.

“Let’s be very clear why he did that – he did that to attack her because he felt under attack by her,” National’s COVID-19 spokesperson Chris Bishop said. 

The Prime Minister still has confidence in Hipkins.

“I do have confidence in our minister in the fact that he at all times was working to best ensure that in a really difficult environment that all those who needed to access MIQ were able to do so,” she said on Thursday. 

Bellis’ lawyer Tudor Clee wants an apology from Hipkins. 

“He owes an apology not just for breaching her privacy but ultimately the information wasn’t even true.”

So MFAT explicitly said the information was not for public comment, but Hipkins went and used it exactly for public comment.

Normally it would be ridiculous for a Prime Minister to claim that a curriculum change would be one of their most important legacies. But this is quite plausible, when you consider what they haven’t managed to do.

• They’ve only managed 1.2% of their Kiwibuild houses goal
• 4.3% of their billion trees goal
• 2.4% of their government electric vehicles goal
• Around 1% of their emissions reduction goal
• A 0.4% reduction in child poverty
• 0% of Auckland light rail
• 0% of Dunedin Hospital
• 0% of increasing renewable energy

So a new history curriculum is probably their biggest achievement.

Stuff reports:

There has been no fluoride in Wellington’s water supply since February and fluoridation has been inconsistent for the last four years.

The water supply in Wellington, Upper Hutt, and Porirua has not been fluoridated for more than a month.

“Wellington Water made the decision to turn off the fluoride facilities in February because of health and safety issues, according to an email sent to mayor and councillors last night. …

A draft press release attached to the email stated the fluoride dosing at all water treatment plants has been inconsistent for the past four years.

Because of the inconsistent dosage, operators have lowered the dose of fluoride to avoid dangerously high levels of fluoride. This means dosage has often been below the effective range.

This doesn’t affect us as we are on a tank supply, but this is a huge fail. For four years fluoridation has been below the effective range, and they even turned it off without telling anyone.

UPDATE: It’s even worse. The Herald reports:

An independent inquiry has been launched after Wellington Water was found to have overseen low and inconsistent levels of fluoridation in the region’s water supply for four years.

Fresh revelations have also emerged tonight that Upper Hutt, Porirua and Wellington City have not been supplied with fluoridated water since last year without residents being told.

Wellington Water previously reported fluoride had been turned off last month, which was incorrect. …

The board has clarified fluoridation was stopped at the Te Marua water treatment plant in May 2021 and in November 2021 at the Gear Island plant.

They supply Upper Hutt, Porirua and Wellington City.

This is a failure of such monumental proportions that either the Chair or CEO (or both) must go.

Any competent commercial board would have governance policies that would require management to report significant risks to them. A failure to comply with a statutory requirement to fluoridate the water would be as big a risk as you can imagine.

If the board did not have a policy requiring them to be informed of such risks, then the board chair must resign.

If the board did have such a policy, then the CEO must resign for keeping this hidden from his board for many months.

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!