Stuff reports:

But another email noted the writer had received calls from Otago alumni “angry at the decision”. The response was likely to be worse than what the university received over Tuakiritaka, a reference to branding changes, the emailer said.

I had quite a few Otago alumni contact me, very upset also. Some even wanted to do a poll of alumni on the appointment, but there was no practical way to do this.

Meanwhile, another emailer wrote of the appointment: “They have made a very poor decision.”

Another emailer wrote: “As a former student I will not be donating another cent and will not be encouraging family to attend an institution that is seriously flawed from the top down.

“The university council should resign following this decision.”

The Council of course includes another former Labour Minister, and the Registrar is also a former Labour Minister.

But a former graduate was less forthcoming with praise, emailing: “I have left a significant amount of money to the university in my will. However I will be cancelling that.”

Ouch.

Another alumni, who had a history of sending offensive emails to the tertiary institution, wrote: “This must be one of the most gross and ridiculous decisions of the university to date.”

Some of that email was redacted, but the emailer added: “And to appoint such a failure of a politician to such an important post is ridiculous: a man who has virtually single handedly bankrupted our country, saddling every man, woman and child with crippling debt.”

Another former student emailed a list of questions under the OIA, including whether Robertson had been approached to put forward his candidacy.

One emailer expressed their concern, writing: “This is a continuation of the alarming trend of politicisation of the University of Otago, and is entirely inappropriate for an academic institution of your stature.”

The email noted Robertson’s lack of an academic background “reflects unbelievably poorly” on the university.

“Again, I am appalled by this appointment, which materially diminishes a once great academic institution.

“Shame on you.”

It is of course normal for a Vice-Chancellor to have a PhD and be an academic leader. A BA is not quite in the same league.

Another emailed to say they were rethinking their seven-figure bequest.

“However, my family especially, and I, would be very concerned indeed if this bequest were in any respect subject to any type or level of political influence, such as a person’s political identity, as opposed to benefiting individuals or groups solely on merit and academic excellence.”

That’s a lot of money being potentially lost.

Peter Dunne writes:

But Labour’s current woes do not lie at Hipkins’ door alone. He is being constantly embarrassed and let down by the ineptitude of those around him. His main role these days seems limited to tidying up the mess made by his colleagues.

In the last week alone, he has had to call out Peeni Henare, someone who really should know better, for reposting offensive cartoons about Act leader David Seymour on Instagram. Hipkins has also had to deal with more personally abusive comments about a political opponent, this time Melissa Lee, from Willie Jackson, someone who is clearly incapable of knowing better. Add to that the seemingly ingrained superciliousness and sourness of Ayesha Verrall every time she opens her mouth, and it is little wonder Labour still looks to be struggling to come to terms with why it was voted out so comprehensively at the election.

If my party suffered a 24% drop in their party vote, the largest in history, I’d be asking why.

Yet Labour is not without talent in its ranks who could be pushing its case far more effectively at present without the embittered baggage some are carrying. New finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds has been a shining performer. Her interventions so far have been positive, well informed, and largely constructive. Not only does she need to be seen more frequently as the modern face of Labour, but also she needs to be joined by other newer faces in the caucus.

Edmonds is good.

Hipkins’ major challenge is to rebuild the face of Labour so that it can present its message with integrity and credibility. Hanging on to negative and polarising figures such as Jackson and Verrall, and others who still believe the public had no right to boot them out of government, not only tarnishes Hipkins’ leadership but does little to persuade the public that Labour has indeed learned the lesson of its defeat.

Hipkins needs quickly to divest himself of such albatrosses if Labour is to shake off the failures of its recent past. They need to be moved on, at least to the distant backbenches, if not out the door and sooner rather than later. If he cannot or will not do that, Hipkins risks becoming today’s Bill Rowling – a genuine and well-liked nice guy who led the Labour Party nowhere for nearly nine years.

A fair comparison.

A guest post by a reader:

There has been much outrage this week over the deaths of aid workers from western countries in Gaza.

I use the word “outrage” deliberately to reflect the moral element of the stance of Arab nations, many western governments and much of the media.  The outrage is predicated largely on the assumption the act was deliberate or highly negligent and that therefore it is demonstrably true that Israel is a morally degraded and aggressive state and that ……… moral superiority resides with the Palestinians (the dots indicating that we are usually left to deduce that last point rather than it being explicitly stated).

But as commentators continually wish to remind us, context is everything.

So let’s do a little simplistic analysis around whether or not Israel or Hamas is more morally reprehensible by asking a number of questions:

1. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were deliberate and those of Israel this last week were also deliberate, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

2. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were deliberate and those of Israel this last week were accidental, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

3. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were accidental and those of Israel this last week were also accidental, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

4. If the acts of barbarism of 7 October were accidental and those of Israel this last week were deliberate, is Israel less virtuous than Hamas?

It can be seen that only under option 4 is moral outrage at the actions of Israel when compared to those of Hamas actually justified.  And of course Option 4 is off the table because it is clearly not possible for thousands of fighters to stream across a border to rape and kill “by accident” as that particular question would have us accept.

Moreover if as Israel contends the deaths were actually accidental then the moral element of continued outrage as between one side and the other in large part evaporates.

None of this is to detract from the tragedy of those recent deaths or the events as a whole.  None of it either is intended to make morally repugnant actions less so.  But it does help challenge the way in which the noise of moral outrage is so often deployed in unbalanced ways reflecting subtle or overt biases.

One final note to those who wish to contextualise Israel into moral opprobrium beyond the above snapshot of recent events; in other words those who say Israel got what was coming to it on 7 October for what has happened over many decades.  Exactly the same kind of analysis as above is possible with all the major wars and other actions fought over all those years.  It’s never been a morally one-sided conflict.  Fact is that at worst Israel is morally on the same page as the Palestinians and at best (as I would argue) it’s in a significantly better place.  But whichever way one wants to cut it, one-sided versions of Palestinian victimhood and moral superiority as a consequence do not wash.

d

Scotland passed a law against so called hate crimes. As you can see it is a very objective law.

What has been the result of this new law?

Almost 8,000 hate crimes were reported to Police in just one week. Scotland has much the same population as New Zealand, so how many more Police would we need if we had the same response.

Let’s say a police officer needs two hours to assess and deal with each complaint (on average). One officer could do 20 a week, so you’d need 400 more officers just to cope with the people complaining.

Steve Maharey writes:

This is what could be done.

Television New Zealand (TVNZ) is a commercial broadcaster running a programme schedule that, with some exceptions, has little to do with public broadcasting. It should be sold.

Trying to merge it with Radio New Zealand (RNZ) is a fool’s errand because the two entities are from different worlds. One is oil, the other is water.

The cash raised from the TVNZ sale should then be put into a trust that would oversee the expansion of RNZ into a 21st-century media organisation covering everything from broadcasting to social media and print. The new organisation should also receive funding from the Government via the trust.

It is vital the new organisation be independent of government. Any legislation should be free from the kind of instructions the previous Government loaded into its otherwise sensible and still-needed Public Interest Journalism policy.

I have long advocated selling TVNZ and putting the proceeds from the sale into public broadcasting. A senior Labour MP once told me that this is what National should have done, and I agree.

The problem is this is a solution that would have worked a decade ago, as TVNZ was more valuable then. Today a sale of TVNZ would probably generate very little capital because linear TV is dying.

Crucially, the new entity must not take advertising.

That money should flow to commercial media who will need to go through a major restructure.

Not having state broadcasters compete for advertising would help, but again the solution is ten years too late. Advertisers are abandoning media because simply it is less well targeted as social media where you can set exactly who views your ads.

A slimmed-down commercial media with more access to advertising dollars would make for a more viable model. It is possible that a government could help with this by limiting entry to the market.

No, no, no. The job of Government is not to protect incumbents.

Newsroom reports:

he tribunal is currently investigating the Government’s decision to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, which lays out the obligations of the children’s ministry in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi. Last week, the Waitangi Tribunal issued a summons to Minister for Children Karen Chhour when she refused to provide evidence behind the decision to repeal.

While Crown lawyers have said they will seek judicial review of the summons in the High Court, Jones and Seymour have broken rank to openly criticise the tribunal. …

In response, Te Hunga Rōia Māori / Māori Law Society wrote on Wednesday to Luxon and Attorney-General Judith Collins, saying Jones’ comments are likely to have breached Cabinet Manual conventions against influencing or criticising the judiciary.

“These comments are inappropriate and unconstitutional. The Cabinet Manual  provides that ministers must ‘exercise judgement before commenting on matters  before the courts or judicial decisions’ (clause 4.12) and that ‘Ministers should not  express any views that are likely to be publicised if they could be regarded as reflecting  adversely on the impartiality, personal views, or ability of any judge’,” co-presidents Natalie Coates and Tai Ahu wrote in the letter.

“Minister Jones’ comments directly bring into question the performance of the Waitangi  Tribunal, an independent Commission of Inquiry established by legislation that serves  a function akin to a Court and over which a Judge presides. The comments, which are  paired with a threat of executive review of the function and purpose of the Tribunal could also have a chilling effect and reflect adversely on Waitangi Tribunal decisions going forward.”

The Waitangi Tribunal is not a judicial body. In fact it is far from it:

• Only 5 of the 20 members are even lawyers
• Members are appointed by the Minister of Maori Affairs, not the Attorney-General
• Unlike judges who are appointed for life, members are appointed for three years terms – ie they are temporary appointees made by the Government of the day

So criticising the Waitangi Tribunal is not the same as criticising the Maori Land Court. They are different creatures.

An interesting circular by the Cabinet Office on how the coalition Government will operate. Some key aspects:

• All Ministers must be consulted as appropriate in line with their portfolio responsibilities, no matter which party they represent. Alongside the process of Ministerial portfolio consultation, political consultation will also occur where required. On some particularly significant or sensitive issues, the political consultation process between the parties may supersede the usual Ministerial portfolio consultation processes.
• Consultation between parties will be undertaken on all significant policy proposals and government appointments, and other sensitive or controversial issues – including implementation of the coalition agreements.
• All legislative proposals must first be consulted between National, ACT, and New Zealand First to ensure that there is sufficient parliamentary support for them to proceed.
• Ministers’ offices should advise all Chiefs of Staff of upcoming draft bills. Papers seeking approval for the introduction of bills should not be submitted to LEG until the Minister’s office has received confirmation from other parties that there is support for the bill to proceed.

Stuff reports:

House Speaker Gerry Brownlee is planning to cut back on the 4000 swipe cards which let people enter the Beehive without passing through security.

Parliament and ministerial staff, and members of the press gallery are among those with the access cards who have been police vetted. However, there are others who may have access to the cards but have not undergone the same vetting processes.

He raised it as one of the means in which Parliament was going to better deal with abuse, harassment and threats, which new Otago University research published on Wednesday revealed had increased on every measure – and was mostly aimed at women.

This seems a strange response to the problem of abuse of MPs. Presumably the abuse and threats and harassment doesn’t come from people who have a parliamentary swipe card. If it did, they would lose it.

The recent visit to Singapore by the PM has seen some commentators say we should have a defence posture such as Singapore’s where there is no defence treaty with the US.

This shows how seriously Singapore takes its ability to defend itself. We are barely spending 1% of GDP on defence and Singapore is almost spending 3% of GDP. If we don’t want to rely on others, we need to do more ourselves.

There have been two terrible attacks in Australia.

The first, was the stabbing of 18 people by Joel Cauchi, with six dying. The method of attack, plus the fact an infant was stabbed, had many think it was a terrorist attack. But it seems it was a combination of mental illness, and hatred of women. The stabbing of the infant especially is incomprehensible.

The only silver lining was the heroism shown by various people such as “Bollard Guy” and the Inspector who shot him.

Two days later six people were stabbed at the Wakeley Church, including Bishop Elmanuel. The attacker was a 16 year old boy who was angered by the Bishop’s criticism of Islam. Again so sad to think of a child who thinks killing people for their words is justified. His smiling as he was held down by a police officer basically caused a riot, as it was live-streamed.

But the silver lining is the Bishop, who said:

“I forgive whoever has done this act, I say to him, ‘You are my son, I love you, I will always pray for you,’ ” he said, adding he also forgave “whoever sent you to do this”.

So two terrible attacks showing both the worst and best of humanity.

The Herald reports:

An unlicensed driver “panicked” and fled after she fatally struck and ran over a motorcyclist.

Fatima Mohammed, 48, driving a Honda CR-V, did not stop after running over Ian Charles Johnson with both the front and rear sets of her car’s wheels at a Hastingsroundabout last June.

Police found her later at the house of a friend.

Johnson, 73, died in Wellington Hospital almost three weeks after the crash, having suffered multiple injuries including fractures of his ribs and spine.

Accidents can happen, and we should not judge too harshly drivers, unless they are clearly reckless. But what we should be harsh on is leaving someone to die, and not stopping. When you flee the scene of a serious accident, you are saying you care more about what happens to you than the injured person.

Judge Mackintosh said a case of this type was difficult because careless driving was a charge with a lower penalty and there was no way she could impose a sentence which reflected the emotional impact on the victims.

The maximum sentence for a charge of careless driving causing death was a short term of imprisonment but in such circumstances it had to be commuted to a community-based sentence.

She ordered three months of community detention with a curfew to be at home from 7pm to 8am every night.

She also imposed 150 hours of community work, 12 months of supervision, and ordered reparation of $15,599.

The maximum term for careless driving causing death is only three months. Bot for failing to stop, it is five years. For the latter offence, community work seems inadequate.

Audrey Young writes:

Brickbat

Goes to Luke Somerville, spokesman for Renters United, for his wholly negative response to the pet bonds policy to encourage landlords to let tenants to have pets: “Every renter has a story about their landlord trying to charge them hundreds of dollars in rent for a mark on the wall. What’s to say we are not going to see more of that now?” (RNZ). Hey Luke, how about talking on behalf of the tenants who want pets?

It was such a totally negative response to a policy that so many renters are genuinely keen on, that it made me wonder whether the spokesman was a partisan operative.

It turns out he was the campaign manager for Julie-Anne Genter. That would explain it. Perhaps the media should report this, when they quote him as a so called spokeperson for renters. The other spokesperson just got elected as a Green Councillor, so it would be interesting to know if there is anyone involved with Renters United who is not a Green Party operative.

As their main policy is to bring back Muldoon style rent controls, I suspect not.

The drop in overall inflation to 4% is welcome, but it masks we still have a real problem.

This shows the annual inflation rate for both tradable and non-tradable inflation. Most of the tradable sector is international, so we have benefited from the trend there. But non-tradable (generally domestic) inflation remains very high at 5.8% and has barely come down from its peak.

I would not be counting on interest rate reductions too soon.

The Guardian reports:

Angela Rayner has pledged to step down as deputy leader of the Labour party if a police investigation finds she has committed a crime, amid allegations of breaching electoral law and avoiding capital gains tax.

Greater Manchester police (GMP) said on Friday that they were investigating the sale of her council house in March 2015, after she was accused of giving false information about where she was living for the first five years of her marriage before she was elected as an MP in May 2015.

The issue basically is:

Rayner bought her council house on Vicarage Road, Stockport, in 2007 for £79,000 with a 25% discount under the right-to-buy scheme.

Government guidance says a tenant can apply to buy their council home through the right-to-buy scheme if it is their “only or main home”.

Mark Rayner, now her ex-husband, had a property of his own about a mile away. They decided to keep their separate properties after their son was born prematurely in 2008, as Rayner said she needed a lot of support from a wide network of friends and family during this period, a decision that was maintained even after their marriage in 2010.

For the eight years that Rayner owned her Stockport home, she was registered on the electoral roll as living there and insists it was her “principal property”, while her partner lived at his home.

However, neighbours at the two properties have rejected her claims that she lived apart from her husband for the first five years of their marriage, with her brother living at her house from around 2012, according to reports. Daly has made GMP aware of these claims.

It is an obvious nonsense that she actually lived apart from her husband for the first five years of their marriage,.

NZH reports 565 positions to go.

4,509 – 565 = 3,944 remaining employed.

3,944 – 2,700 (in 2017) = 1,244 to get back to pre-Labour (Hipkins) level.

While it is hard for people to lose positions many of the new roles since 2017 have done little or nothing to help the children of NZ get a better education. If fact – the attendance and success of those students – has moved inversely to the willy-nilly employment strategies of Iona Holstead and her Deputy Secretaries.

I haven’t seen it announced that Holsted (and her off-siders) have accepted responsibility for both the dire situation with the education system and the fact that 565 have been shown the door.

There is little integrity if the top 12 have not fallen on their envelope openers and allowed Stanford and Seymour to bring in good people and bring the system change that our children, families, society and economy desperately needs.

Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

Graham Adams writes:

The Court of Appeal itself found MACA “difficult and complex legislation”.

The court’s treatment of Section 58 of MACA is proving particularly contentious. It sets tests for customary marine title — including that the applicant group “holds the specified area in accordance with tikanga; and has, in relation to the specified area, exclusively used and occupied it from 1840 to the present day without substantial interruption”.

The majority judges decided that a literal reading of the second leg of the test — with its emphasis on exclusivity and continuity since 1840 — would be too onerous because it would mean virtually no claims could succeed. That outcome, it declared, would be “inconsistent with the Treaty/te Tiriti”.

Further, the majority judges effectively said they were choosing not to apply the plain words of Section 58 because it considered they were not consistent with the Act’s stated purposes.

In any event, the result of the attempts by judges in the High Court and Court of Appeal to square the circle between the actual words in the legislation in Section 58 and what they thought would make better and more consistent law is that we now have the novel concept of “shared exclusivity”. (This has prompted some observers to recall George Orwell’s quip: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”)

That strained notion is designed to solve the thorny problem arising from the overlaps among competing claims; in fact, six or more claimants per area is common. A reasonable person might quickly conclude that multiple credible claims over the same area would clearly breach the requirement in MACA for individual iwi and hapū to have used and occupied a territory exclusively for 184 years. However, our judges have somehow circumvented that obstacle.

That manoeuvre has been made possible in large part by the magic of tikanga. The courts have embraced the findings of pūkenga (specialists in Māori lore) to reconcile how several competing tribal groups sharing an area can plausibly pass the test for exclusivity. The fact tikanga is fluid and includes cultural values, customs, oral history and ancient legends — and varies from one tribal group to another — has provided a dimly lit path through that particular conundrum. Apparently, sharing can be part of tikanga and that trumps Western notions of property rights, as well as the obvious meaning of Section 58.

Effectively the Court of Appeal has over-ruled Parliament’s clear intent that customary title needed to be based on exclusive use, and has changed it to non-exclusive. This is a major change.

Those opposed to the courts’ expansive interpretation of MACA are pinning their hopes on Winston Peters obliging the judiciary to respect what Parliament actually said. NZ First’s coalition agreement with National, under the heading “Equal Citizenship”, promises the government will, in light of the Court of Appeal judgment, “amend Section 58 of the Marine and Coastal Area Act to make clear Parliament’s original intent…”

When the courts rewrite the law, it is the job of Parliament to change it back to its clear intent.

The Taxpayers’ Union has looked at the ever-increasing costs of FENZ.

The merger was mean to see operating costs decline by over 10%. Instead they have increased by 40%.

Management and support staff have increased by 31% over the five-year period from 2017/18 to 2022/23 whilst career firefighters and volunteer numbers have only increased by 5% over the same period.

I’d rather see those numbers reversed – 31% more firefighters and only 5% more managers.

The BBC reports:

Children have been let down by a lack of research and “remarkably weak” evidence on medical interventions in gender care, a landmark review says.

The Cass Review, published on Wednesday by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, calls for gender services for young people to match the standards of other NHS care.

She says the “toxicity” of the debate around gender meant professionals were “afraid” to openly discuss their views.

Sadly medical professionals who had concerns were hounded for voicing their concerns.

Dr Cass told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that clinicians were concerned about having “no guidance, no evidence, no training”.

She said “we don’t have good evidence” that puberty blockers are safe to use to “arrest puberty”, adding that what started out as a clinical trial had been expanded to a wider group of young people before the results of that trial were available.

Young people who are gender incongruant should not be given treatments that don’t have an evidence base behind them. I absolutely support interventions that have been trialled and which have conclusions about effectiveness and benefits and risks.

“It is unusual for us to give a potentially life-changing treatment to young people and not know what happens to them in adulthood, and that’s been a particular problem that we haven’t had the follow-up into adulthood to know what the results of this are,” she said.

That is startling.

The report recommends that clinicians should address issues patients may have, that are not necessarily related to their gender identity, when they are referred to the new clinics.

Dr Cass says these “holistic assessments” should include screening for neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism, and a mental health assessment.

She said the assessments would address what she called “diagnostic overshadowing” – when patients’ other healthcare issues were overlooked in cases of patients questioning their gender.

She told Today that many of the more than 3,000 young people being seen by gender identity services were birth-registered girls presenting in early teens, “often with quite complex additional problems”.

She said about 15 years ago only 50 predominantly birth-registered boys were being seen by gender identity services.

Basically the report concludes you shouldn’t just conclude that gender incongruence is the only problem and hence a gender change is the only solution. In many cases it could well be the best solution, but not all.

The fact that there has been a 5000% increase in referrals is an issue that needs more research into why.

“What’s unfortunately happened for these young people is that because of the toxicity of the debate, they’ve often been bypassed by local services who’ve been really nervous about seeing them,” Dr Cass said.

“So rather than doing the things that they would do for other young people with depression, or anxiety, or perhaps undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorder, they’ve tended to pass them straight on to the Gid service.”

“There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour,” she said.

Her report added that the “exceptional” toxicity has had a negative impact on the quality and availability of evidence.

The bullies on social media have a lot to answer for.

The report also warns that younger children should be treated with a “more cautious approach” than adolescents when considering whether to allow them to change their names, pronouns or clothing – known as socially transitioning. 

It says those who have not yet reached puberty should be “prioritised for early discussion with a professional with relevant experience” and they should be put on a separate care pathway than older, adolescent patients.

I’ve made this point before. There younger the child, the more cautious one should be about conclusions.