Barry Soper writes:

And at least the Beehive has finally recognised that the main tool in the kit is to vaccinate – it was as though a light bulb went off in the ministerial offices and the rollout became vitally important.

But it was always important. They were told time and time again that Delta was on its way.

Jacinda Ardern’s Year of the Vaccination became her year of vacillation, that is until her mate ScoMo across the ditch scouted around his buddies abroad and got some additional vials of the stuff.

The Year of Vacillation – I like it.

Useful data from Newsroom.

• 95.9% of those hospitalised with Covid were unvaccinated (as in not had one shot two weeks prior to infection)
• 4.1% of those hospitalised had one shot, but not a second shot (two weeks or more prior to infection)
• 0.0% of those hospitalised with Covid were fully vaccinated two weeks prior to infection

So if you get fully vaccinated and wait two weeks, then your chances of getting Covid-19 badly enough to hospitalise you is close to zero.

Also data from the UK shows that of the 50,000 deaths only 59 (0.1%) were of people fully vaccinated who didn’t have serious health conditions.

I can’t wait for my second jab later this month.

Radio NZ report:

A rare piece of art-history furniture featuring elephant ivory inlays could be destroyed because its paperwork arrived in New Zealand late.

Known as the ‘Pompeiian Cabinet’, the sideboard was made by Johann Levien for the 1862 Exhibition in South Kensington, London. 

The cabinet was purchased by emerging Auckland collector Patrick Soanes, but it was seized by NZ customs because of incomplete paperwork when he had it shipped to New Zealand. 

Furniture historian William Cottrell claims Soanes had done all the paperwork, but it all came down to a missing rubber stamp on the British end.

“What had originally happened was that Patrick had declared there was ivory in it, but a paperwork problem at the shipping end in London meant that that document wasn’t completed.”

He says the paperwork got sent to an empty warehouse and then returned to London, but by the time the cabinet turned up, the document had expired.

“The cabinet was shipped out here and the paperwork arrived after lockdown had started, so it never got delivered to the warehouse with the cabinet, and then that paperwork got returned, it had expired, even though it was incomplete and British customs had cleared the cabinet for export anyways.”

However, Department of Conservation (DOC) national compliance manager Marta Lang argues that is not quite what happened.

She acknowledges Soanes had a permit but claims he didn’t present it to border officials when it left the UK.

“So regrettably, this cabinet was illegally exported from the UK. His permit also had to be physically presented when the Cabinet arrived to New Zealand in March last year and it wasn’t, so it was also illegally imported into New Zealand.”

So he emailed NZ officials to let them know the cabinet was en route but without its permit and it hadn’t been endorsed, she says.

“We said get the original permit to New Zealand as soon as possible. He sent it by royal mail instead of international courier and the cabinet a month later … the permit had not arrived.”

DOC says it has seized the cabinet in the interests of protecting endangered species, under the Trade in Endangered Species CITES agreement.

This is madness. So the permit was sent by mail instead of courier. Who cares. The cabinet is 150 years old. The elephants involved have been dead for 150 years. Moving a historic cabinet from London to NZ is not encouraging people to kill elephants.

This is a classic bureaucratic madness. Someone in Government should use some discretion rather than waste more time on this.

Some interesting data in the latest vaccination rates. As of 14 September we had 30% of the population full vaccinated and 58% partially vaccinated.

The full vaccination rates by ethnicity differ greatly:

1. Asians 41%
2. Europeans 37%
3. Pacific 31%
4. Maori 23%

It would be worth looking at why the Asian vaccination rate is so high, and how that can be emulated rather than blaming racism on any differences.

But what is interesting in looking at the low rates for Maori and Pacific is it is younger Maori and Pasifika only. The rates compared to the non-Maori non-Pasifika population is:

• Maori 65+: 1.01
• Maori 50 to 64: 0.98
• Pasifika 65+ 0.92
• Pasifika 50 to 64: 1.25

So this strongly suggests there is not a systematic barrier to Maori and Pasifika getting vaccinated as those aged 50+ are doing so at the same rates as non Maori and Pasifika. The lag is with those aged under 50. So rather than cry racism, the real question should be why are older Maori and Pasifika vaccinating, but not younger ones?

National’s Covid-19 spokesperson offered an op ed to the Herald and Stuff on what is now NZ’s longest lockdown. You might have thought that with the PM getting up to an hour a day of unfiltered coverage, that they would be keen to provide some balance. But it seems not.

So as a public service, here is the op ed they declined:

Lockdowns are incredibly expensive: it has been estimated a countrywide Level 4 lockdown costs the economy around $1.5 billion per week. That’s before you count the social cost: kids not at school, families split apart, the mental health impacts of being cooped up at home for days on end. I think almost everyone thinks we should be doing all we can to avoid them.

Sadly, it’s become clear in the government’s response to the recent delta outbreak that while Kiwis have done all they’ve been asked to do – the government hasn’t been playing its part. The “team of five million” has been let down.

Two things have become clear. First, we had no alternative but to lockdown because of our woefully low vaccination rates. Second, despite claims to the contrary, the government had done very little planning at all around how to respond to a further outbreak, particularly of delta, since the first COVID lockdown last year.

It gives me no pleasure as the Opposition spokesperson for COVID-19 to say that New Zealand’s vaccination rates, by world standards, are hopeless. For most of this year we had the world’s slowest vaccine roll-out. Chris Hipkins said at the end of 2020 we would be “at the front of the queue” but the reality is we are at the back of the pack. This is not the “year of the vaccine” we were promised by the Prime Minister.

The vaccines are safe, they work, and the data is very clear: the higher our vaccination rates, the less need there is of lockdowns. Every single person that goes and gets vaccinated brings us closer to freedom: freedom from lockdowns, and freedom to travel. That’s why the government’s ineptitude over vaccine supply matters. The government simply failed in its most important job: to get a supply of vaccines as early as possible and make sure as many people were vaccinated as possible as early as possible.

The government’s incompetence is astonishing. We were one of the last developed countries to sign contracts with vaccine manufacturers in 2020. We were then slow to approve the Pfizer vaccine. Hundreds of millions of jabs had been given by the time we approved it. We were then slow to actually order our doses, not doing it until January 29 this year. And we didn’t even bother to ask Pfizer if we could pay more to get earlier delivery of the vaccines, as other countries did. Compare the cost of paying a bit more to the cost of lockdowns, and do the maths. It’s a no brainer.

Incredibly, the government has claimed at various points it would be “unethical” or immoral to have a faster vaccine roll-out, because other countries need the vaccines more than we do. Leaving aside the internal inconsistency in this argument (other countries need them now too, but you don’t see the government giving ours up do you?), the New Zealand government’s first responsibility is to the people of New Zealand – and that means rolling out the vaccine as quick as they could. They failed.

The second failure by the government is their failure to plan for delta. The Prime Minister claimed on television this morning that delta only emerged in MIQ in June. That is completely incorrect. The first case of delta turned up in early April in MIQ and it has been raging across the world for most of this year. The government has sat ensconced behind the barriers of Fortress New Zealand and smugly looked at Australia, but they weren’t doing the work behind the scenes to prepare for when delta turned up here.

A smart government would have done an audit of all our MIQ facilities in light of delta to make sure infection control practices were up to scratch. Instead, a public walkway was allowed to share the same air as an exercise yard at the Crowne Plaza in Auckland and there was a vaccination centre right next to the Crowne Plaza. COVID positive people are still allowed to exercise in an underground car park in Wellington. Only now is the government reviewing MIQ facilities in light of delta.

A smart government would have had a plan in place for more quarantine facilities beyond the Jet Park. Instead the government had to scramble to get more quarantine facilities going like the Novotel Ellerslie – and then a COVID positive man escaped from it, putting us all at risk. It has taken over 24 hours to move many people from the community into quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19, because the coordination plan between health officials and MIQ wasn’t in place.

Some of our current problems date back to the response to the first outbreak last year. Contract tracing has been an ever-present issue. There have been four expert reviews of contact tracing since April 2020. All have found it wanting but little has been done by the government. In this outbreak, it took six days for the government to second public servants from other departments to start contract tracing. By its own admission the government will fail to meet the contact tracing target metrics designed by Dr Ayesha Verrall, ironically enough now Associate Minister of Health. In this latest outbreak there are still 5000 contacts who have not even had a single phone call from a contact tracer!

A smart government would have had a plan in place around testing. Other countries use saliva tests and rapid antigen tests that return results in 15 minutes. Speed of testing with delta is critical, because the virus moves so far. But the government insists on using expensive and time consuming nasal PCR tests as our main testing technique. The result has been people who are told to get tested waiting 10-12 hours for a test or giving up and going home – or even worse, not even bothering. We should be using saliva testing much more widely – recommended to the government a year ago – as well as rapid antigen tests. Incredibly, these tests are banned in New Zealand.

There’s more I could mention. The failure to use Bluetooth tracing even though we’ve all been told for months to turn it on. The refusal to build purpose-built quarantine. The lack of preparation in our hospitals for a delta outbreak – no new ICU bed spaces have been provisioned over the five months.

The government borrowed $62 billion last year on the COVID Response Fund.  Did they spend this on contact tracing, testing capacity, and extra ICU capacity? That would have been sensible. Instead it was used as a slush fund. Instead the fund was spent on art therapy clinics, cameras on fishing boats, horse racing, public interest journalism, and school lunches. Yes, I’m serious.

Auckland is in lockdown – again – because the government failed to vaccinate quickly enough and the government failed to plan for delta.

Stuff reports:

A couple who breached lockdown rules to fly from Auckland to Wānaka have apologised for their “irresponsible and inexcusable” actions as their names are revealed.

William John Lawrence Willis, 35, and Hannah Rawnsley, 26, a lawyer, are set to be charged with breaching the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act over police claims they crossed the Auckland border unlawfully, using essential worker exemptions, on Thursday.

They would have been better to have apologised a couple of days ago, and not ever sought name suppression. Glad they saw sense.

Explaining their bid to get name suppression, they said they sought it after receiving death threats, and they had a “genuine fear for our safety”.

The response to their actions has exposed an ugliness in many of us. It has been like a tar and feathering.

Don’t get me wrong. The couple did wrong. They broke the law, abused their essential worker status and were selfish. For that they deserve to be fined, and to suffer a degree of social stigma. But it should go without saying that death threats are unacceptable.

Also some people have mused about whether Rawnsley could get disbarred for her actions, seeking to do so. I think that would be a gross over-reaction. That is saying that for their actions, she should not just lose her job, but her entire career. I don’t think destroying someone’s life for breaching lockdown restrictions is anything other than petty vengenace.

Again don’t in any way think I am arguing the couple should not suffer consequences. They should be prosecuted and face the legal consequences for their actions. They will have to face the media at some stage and have their court appearance splashed all over the media. They will no doubt face backlash from their family and friends.

But the social media lynch mob should not be allowed to destroy their lives. We should not seek to be a society where people are only judged on the worst thing they have done, rather than their overall contribution.

Do you recall Labour in 2017 saying house prices were a crisis. Well what would you call the situation today? A castrophe?

Since Labour took office the median house price has increased $320,000 or 60%.

In Auckland the median price is now $1.2 million. Evein in South Auckland the median price is $1.16 million.

Over all of NZ,38% of houses sold cost over $1 million.

Had this sent to me. Very funny, and well done.

Newshub reports:

Green Party co-leader James Shaw is defending against accusations of hypocrisy for travelling to a climate conference in Glasgow after criticising Parliament’s sitting at alert level 4.

The Green Party refused to attend Parliament while Wellington was still at alert level 4 on Tuesday last week.

Glasgow currently has 1,800 new Covid-19 infections a day!!

It’s unsafe to be in a socially distanced Parliament in a city that had a total of 15 cases in a fortnight but fine to jetset into a city with1,800 new cases a day!

… by your government accepting the wage supplement of $600pw for a full-time worker. Try and think like the private sector for just a moment?

I recall being woken up by texts from overseas friends on the early morning of 12 September (NZT) and turning on the television. The images remain as shocking today, as they were then. There are probably few good ways to die, but near the top of the list of bad ways to die must be stuck in a burning high rise. It’s now just that 3,000 people lost their lives, but many would have died in extreme agony. The attacks were an act of barbarism.

I worked at Parliament then, and we had a machine that had an NZPA and Reuters news feed. I recall spending an hour or so scrolling back through the stories to see what the first reports were. The first three or four flashes were all factual and implied the first plane crash was a terrible accident. The moment they flashed the news of the second plane, the tone and tenor changed dramatically as it became obvious it was a staged attack.

I recall the many acts of bravery by NY Police and firefighters. I recall the (then) decisive leadership by Mayor Rudy and President Bush. I recall NATO allies activating Article 5 for the first time in history. I recall Yasser Arafat donating blood in an act of solidarity.

I reflect on the way the world has changed. Up until 9/11 it was assumed that if someone with a weapon took over an airline they would try and land it in a foreign port and demand a ransom or something. Now passengers realise letting a hijacker take charge could see the plane crashed, so the example set by the brave passengers of Flight 93 has become the norm. I actually think many of the airport security features imposed since 9/11 are unnecessary as what happened on 9/11 worked only that once as it had the element of surprise. All we really need to do is scan for guns and explosives.

I believe it was the right thing to go into Afghanistan to punish Al Qaeda and their protectors. The idea of not responding to an attack that killed 3,000 citizens is repugnant. Reasonable people can disagree on whether the US and allies should have stayed behind after the initial response.

I recall asking the US Embassy if they had a flag I could borrow to hang from our work windows to show our support for them in the days after the attack. I was surprised to find the flag they lent me wasn’t the standard three by five foot flag but a huge 30 by 50 foot flag. It ended needing four different offices to fit it all on the side of the building.

AP reports:

In his most forceful pandemic actions and words, President Joe Biden on Thursday announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements affecting as many as 100 million Americans in an all-out effort to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and curb the surging delta variant.

Speaking at the White House, Biden sharply criticized the roughly 80 million Americans who are not yet vaccinated, despite months of availability and incentives.

“We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” he said, all but biting off his words. The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of damage, and they are.” …

The expansive rules mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly, affecting about 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.

Biden is also signing an executive order to require vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government — with no option to test out. That covers several million more workers.

The requirement for health workers to be vaccinated is common sense.

Little issue with the Federal Government requiring its own staff to be vaccinated. The expansion to contractors could and well be challenged.

The big question is over the mandate on employers over 100 staff. They don’t actually have to insist on vaccinated staff – the alternative is weekly testing, That one will go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Winston announced:

I have today sent a letter to the Auditor General requesting an investigation into the government’s $60 million procurement contract with Asia Pacific Health Group (APHG).On 4 August 2020 the NZ Super Fund and a Canadian pension fund acquired APHG for a reported $550M.

On 12 March 2021 the Government put out a $60M contract for 12 months of saliva testing. The tender period was 2 weeks, closing on 26 March 2021. Of the tenders received only one company Rako Science had Covid saliva testing accreditation qualifications.

Rako Science, a New Zealand company, obtained validation and accreditation for saliva testing for Covid in December 2020 – three months earlier.

On 26 May 2021 the government, despite the critical requirement of saliva testing validation and accreditation being absent, signed a $60M contract with APHG.The award date was 10 June 2021.Rako Science had been validated and accredited months earlier and ready to rollout widespread saliva testing. They have since entered into contracts with private organisations but not the government.

The government contractor APHG’s product has not been tested and is yet to make any difference to the government testing programme.

Questions need to be asked about what happened here:

1. Was the recommendation for saliva testing made only to assist the NZ Super Funds latest acquisition of 4 August 2020?

2. Who were the decision makers in this procurement?

3. What influences came into play that ignored an accredited and validated option in favour of one that had neither?

4. Why did the government delay the introduction of saliva testing, with all manner of dismissive statements, yet now favour APGH whose product is not yet being tested?

5. Why has a validated and accredited saliva test achieved widespread use around the world yet being side-lined in New Zealand?

6. Is it a mere coincidence that the original Rako Science offer of service to government was $60 million – the precise figure that APHG offered the government?

All good questions

A must read resignation letter from Peter Boghossian. Some extracts:

I never once believed —  nor do I now —  that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.

Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly.

New Zealand is not as far gone as this, but we are heading this way. A future National/ACT Government should be thinking about what a Government can do to stop universities descending into enemies of free thought.

So, in 2017, I co-published an intentionally garbled peer-reviewed paper that took aim at the new orthodoxy. Its title: “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.” This example of pseudo-scholarship, which was published in Cogent Social Sciences, argued that penises were products of the human mind and responsible for climate change. Immediately thereafter, I revealed the article as a hoax designed to shed light on the flaws of the peer-review and academic publishing systems.

Shortly thereafter, swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department. They also occasionally showed up on my office door, in one instance accompanied by bags of feces. Our university remained silent. When it acted, it was against me, not the perpetrators.

I wonder if the swastikas and feces were from students or fellow faculty members?

I continued to believe, perhaps naively, that if I exposed the flawed thinking on which Portland State’s new values were based, I could shake the university from its madness. In 2018 I co-published a series of absurd or morally repugnant peer-reviewed articles in journals that focused on issues of race and gender. In one of them we argued that there was an epidemic of dog rape at dog parks and proposed that we leash men the way we leash dogs. Our purpose was to show that certain kinds of “scholarship” are based not on finding truth but on advancing social grievances. This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous. 

Administrators and faculty were so angered by the papers that they published an anonymous piece in the student paper and Portland State filed formal charges against me. Their accusation? “Research misconduct” based on the absurd premise that the journal editors who accepted our intentionally deranged articles were “human subjects.” I was found guilty of not receiving approval to experiment on human subjects. 

His crime was showing the emperor had no clothes.

For me, the years that followed were marked by continued harassment. I’d find flyers around campus of me with a Pinocchio nose. I was spit on and threatened by passersby while walking to class. I was informed by students that my colleagues were telling them to avoid my classes. And, of course, I was subjected to more investigation.

And once they were bastions of free speech and ideas.

This isn’t about me. This is about the kind of institutions we want and the values we choose. Every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, been initially condemned. As individuals, we often seem incapable of remembering this lesson, but that is exactly what our institutions are for: to remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right. Educational institutions should remind us that that right is also our duty.  

In NZ a future Government needs to look at how to strengthen this requirement for universities, and have consequences if they fail to uphold them.

A guest post by Sean Devine:

We cannot hope to make any progress in adapting to human induced global warming if the opinion makers in the media and in Government focus on how bad the situation could be.  Panic will achieve nothing, what society needs is to be able to discuss what can be done and the trade-offs that need to be made.  In simple terms, any project or action to address global warming needs to be articulated in terms of whether the project increases the carbon dioxide burden of the globe, or reduces it. I.e. a sort of carbon dioxide cost benefit analysis. Take the proposed cycle bridge across Auckland Harbour as an example.  It is not the cost of the $700 million bridge that is the critical, but whether the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (produced by manufacturing the concrete and steel for the bridge) is more than offset by the decrease in vehicle emissions over say the next 10 years.  I would think it is very unlikely that sufficient cyclists, many of whom will be recreational cyclists, will have any impact on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.  That such a carbon dioxide cost benefit analysis seems not to have been done, or is buried in piles of paper, indicates our lack of capability to make reasonable decisions. 

Another issue is that natural gas, as is well known, emits half the carbon dioxide as fossil fuels for the same energy.  The US, despite President Trump, has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by using natural gas generated from the fracking process. Much of Europe is also reducing its fossil fuel emissions with natural gas from Russia.  But New Zealand, without a proper analysis, has curtailed natural gas exploration and use.  Because of this, and because there is insufficient renewable energy to cope with peak electricity generation, there has been an increase in greenhouse gas emissions as coal and oil have replaced natural gas.  What is the point of increasing the number of battery-powered electric vehicles when the batteries are being charged using coal? Until the infrastructure is in place for the power used by the Tiwai smelter to become available, the increased power needed to charge vehicle batteries will come from increased fossil fuel use. Surely we need to know this?

But there is more.  In the 1970s, natural gas became a major vehicle fuel in New Zealand and we already have the technology to use natural gas instead of oil. We could perhaps halve our motor vehicle emissions reasonably quickly, rather than waiting many years to introduce a significant number of battery-powered vehicles which, from a carbon dioxide cost benefit analysis, may not be as effective.  The point is that currently, most vehicle batteries are not recyclable and battery manufacture is energy intensive.

Unless we can learn to discuss the issues and proving me wrong if that be the case, we will make little progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the near future.  Instead of beating our breasts and shouting “Woe is me” and relying on some elite to deliver us, we must learn to journey together to find a credible path forward.

A fascinating analysis presented at the 61st Annual Conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists which found that the reduction in deaths due to the 2020 lockdown (as we had less flu etc) was followed by a surge from November to February.

The reason this is pertinent is some public health advocates have argued that we shouldn’t just do lockdowns etc for Covid-19, but also do them to stop the flu etc, on the basis of the drop off in deaths during the lockdowns.

But the conclusion here is that the deaths were only delayed a few months.

Newshub reports:

Newshub can reveal Phil Twyford has granted three convicted criminals residency since December.

Documents show the trio the Associate Immigration Minister said yes to have 10 convictions between them – including for drink-driving and producing a false passport.

Residency is a privilege. We should not be giving it to convicted criminals.

Below is almost as funny as a developed country having someone without even an undergrad degree (Tracey Martin) as board chair of its Qualifications Authority

For anyone who wonders why the Ministry of Education needs 3,400+ officials – it has been solved. When one person – Jo Martin (no relation to Tracey) – sent a letter to the Minister about her donations to a school to help with teacher aides it took many Ministry officials to deal with it. Beginning by withdrawing services from an 8-year-old with autism and ADHD through to a major butt covering exercise. A timeline is below. But first – the answer to the second most important question re Life, the Universe and Everything – how many tax-paid bureaucrats does it take to deal with one complaint from a parent? …. 32 plus a Minister. Amazing what you can discover through OIA’s (although almost never within 20 days).

True story! It took all of these people: Helen Hurst, Vincent Fallon, Philippa Pidd, Deidre Alderson (the hit-woman), Isabel Evans, Nicky Hampsire, Peter Wood, Tom Dibbly, Emma Drysdale, Sam Bowkett-Howe, Steph Ng, Jo Davies, Chris Owen, Natasha Dingle, Peteli Proasa, Sohini Smith, Lorraine Monahan, Olga Berezovsky, Sally Scott, Puspa Nana, David Wales, Jess Brenton, Sue Wilson, Blythe Wood, Carolyn Grace, Doug Ferry, Jann Marshall, Tania Black, Danielle Ryan, Vanessa Harold, Olivia Funaki, Usha Jeram plus Minister Hipkins (he eventually read it 10 days after receiving it and after doing press on it and drafting replies). 

Timeline

July 6: Villa Education Trust (VET) and associated families in receipt of the Designated Character School application rejection letter from Minister Hipkins that contained the, now infamous, statement: “there are available supports for all learners in existing State schools”.

July 6: 7pm Jo Martin directly emails Hipkins (CC Holsted/Evans) the information about paying $2,700 per term as a donation to her 8-year-old’s school to provide teacher aiding for her son with autism and ADHD – because there “isn’t available supports for him”.

July 7: 9:03am Deidre Alderson contacts the school of Jo’s 8 years old and, among other statements (bringing in auditors, don’t contact the families yourself – leave it to the SENOS, etc), demands that they refuse the donations and effectively withdraws the service from the child. Deidre Alderson’s official title is Deputy Director if Learning Support. You could not create more irony unless you wrote a book called The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump.

July 7: 5:05 pm. A Ministry of Education representative contacted the Minister’s office regarding the email of 6 July. The Minister throws the official under the bus by noting: “The Ministry of Education does proactively contact my office when I and the Ministry receive the same correspondence as standard practice. [i.e. they should have and they didn’t]. Hipkins has also noted: “the Ministry has acknowledged, and I have passed on to the parent, that it would have been more helpful and would have cleared up some of the confusion around this matter, had they contacted her directly.” And has had to publicly admit that some children do need assistance than the State provides and that donations to assist are fine.

July 9: Alderson and Vincent Fallon gloat together about the effect her actions had on the Martin family and the bullying of an 8-year-old boy. Alderson even lies in the internal memo by blaming the action on the Minister.

July 9: Deidre Alderson and Vincent Fallon lead the Ministry of Education team in the mediation over the NZHRC carrying forward a complaint about the discrimination against neuro diverse learners. The two parents associated with VET are furious given things said in the meeting … now knowing the record that Deidre has in this situation. She absolutely should not have been the person sent along after her actions against the Martin child.

July 16: Hipkins finally reads the email from the parent himself.

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]