John Key writes:

But here’s a plan that might work:

1. Give Māori and Pacific health providers a financial incentive for every person they get vaccinated in the next six weeks.

2. Give every person aged between 12-29 a $25 voucher of their choice if they get vaccinated before December 1.

3. Allow only vaccinated people into licensed premises (and maybe park the Shot Bro bus outside a few nightclubs as an incentive).

4. Tell New Zealanders when borders will reopen. It might incentivise more people to get jabbed.

5. Stop ruling by fear. Instead, reassure people that living with the virus is possible, as long as you’re vaccinated. Take positive actions like funding Pharmac to invest in therapies proven to help fight the virus, build up our hospital capacity and workforce, use saliva testing for Covid, subsidise home-testing kits for Covid and order booster shots now.

All good ideas. I think giving a date for reopening the borders would definitely lift the vaccination rates.

He also notes that MIQ is inadequate:

MIQ, as our sole quarantine response, is inadequate. Home quarantine should begin immediately.

The South Australian trial already requires those in home MIQ to leave their phone on 24 hours a day and to agree to using face recognition and GPS technology so they can be monitored.

We could throw in the kicker that if you break quarantine you get a $20,000 fine, and time in the clanger.

Additionally, as Act leader David Seymour has been advocating, we need privately-run and purpose-built short-term MIQ facilities for workers and, in time, for tourists.

This is by no means a complete list of what’s possible. It’s simply a few ways to encourage vaccination and to allow New Zealand to rejoin the world that is opening up without us.

And a reminder of the costs of the status quo:

For those who say it’s too hard, or too risky I ask this: one day, when the largest part of the Minister of Finance’s Budget pays only the interest on the debt we are racking up now, and you can’t have the latest cancer drugs, or more police, because New Zealand can’t afford them, what will you think?

Debt attracts interest and interest rates will not remain low.

Key also skewers the current MIQ system:

You also have to ignore the deafening voices of tens of thousands of New Zealanders who are having their citizenship compromised by being stranded overseas. A very few of them manage to get back when public servants in Wellington decide whose plight is desperate enough to be rewarded with a golden ticket to MIQ. How is it that bureaucrats are deciding who gets to come home, while pretending the rest have been on an extended overseas shopping trip so deserve nothing more than being left to the mercy of a lottery?

A lottery is not a public policy. It’s a national embarrassment. Whether you get to see your grandchild, or your dying mother, or your sister’s wedding, depends on whether or not your number comes up. This is a lottery that is gambling with people’s families and futures.

We can, and should, do better.

The Herald reports:

The Government won’t say whether it will change the law to prevent tens of thousands of Kiwis losing the right to vote at the next election.

Currently, New Zealanders who are overseas must have visited the country once within the last three years to be allowed to vote – or once in the last 12 months for non-citizen residents. Those who fall outside that threshold lose the right to vote in that election.

With entry to New Zealand currently restricted by the clogged MIQ system, many New Zealanders overseas will lose the right to vote at the next election, unless the law is changed to be more flexible or New Zealand’s border becomes significantly more open by 2023.

That currently appears unlikely, with the Government only committing to a gradual reopening of the borders, which is unlikely be normal by 2023 – or 2022, when local body elections are scheduled.

I support the current law that allows overseas Kiwis to vote so long as they have been in NZ in the last three years. I don’t think someone who hasn’t been in NZ for say 20 years should get a vote. So the current law is a good balance.

But the Government at the moment is making it almost impossible for overseas Kiwis to come to NZ. They may have to wait 18 months to get a spot in MIQ. So there are NZers wanting to be in NZ, who can’t get here.

In that situation I think a temporary extension of the eligibility criteria so it is anyone who has been here in the last six years is warranted.

However electoral law changes should only proceed with consensus. So key thing is the Government should consult all political parties on the desirability of a change.

Of course Labour may be reluctant to make a change as they could be worried that all those Kiwis trapped in MIQ purgatory, could be hostile to the Government as they have such a broken system for MIQ.

The Herald reports:

Light fittings and chairs are among the items being saved from within Wellington’s 30-year-old closed central library building because of their heritage value.

Please tell me this is an April Fools joke?

The library – opened in 1991 – has been listed as a Category 1 Historic Place.

No building younger than me should be designated as a historic place. In fact no building younger than the Queen should be.

Stuff reports:

Desperation is growing for Afghan New Zealanders watching from afar as the Taliban raids homes, families go into hiding, and their calls for help from the Government go unheeded.

More than 15 former interpreters who worked for New Zealand’s Defence Force in Afghanistan stood outside Parliament on Monday, wearing medals and holding signs saying “We served now we need help”, and “Please talk to us for five minutes”.

The interpreters want the Government to move forward on immigration applications for their family members, who remain in Afghanistan. No Government ministers met the group at Parliament on Monday.

This is disgraceful. Ministers should be doing everything they can to get their families out.

The University of Auckland released:

A study of Ministry of Health data has shown that Covid19 lockdowns significantly increased mental distress in NZ children.

The study, published in the international Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, shows that attempted suicides in NZ children aged 10-14 years increased from a baseline of 40 per month to a peak of 90 per month following the lockdowns in 2020.

Lead researchers Dr Gerhard Sundborn and Professor Cameron Grant reviewed the last 5 years of monthly counts of hospital diagnoses for children aged 10–14 years from the Ministry of Health, with classification codes for parasuicide (attempted suicide) for all New Zealand. The data included counts from mid-2015 to the end of 2020.

This is a sad reminder that lockdowns take not just an economic toll, but a mental toll.

This is not an argument against the lockdowns. They are what I call a necessary evil. It would have been worse to have thousands dying and hospitals unable to cope. But it is a reminder they do impose a cost, and once everyone eligible has had the chance to be vaccinated, we should lift them.

I’m not surprised by the data. I have found the second lockdown to be much tougher on my mental health than the first one. The way I fight off unhappiness is having things to look forward to, and with lockdowns you can’t be planning or doing activities with the kids – camping, tramping, orienteering, holidays etc. So I’ve really struggled the last few weeks.

Even Level 2 takes an impact (far less than poor Aucklanders in Level 3 or 4 though). I hate wearing a mask. I spend half the time taking my fogged up glasses on and off. I’ve also not realised how important facial contact is to me. At playgrounds I normally interact with other parents and kids by smiling at them as our kids start playing together etc. When you’re wearing a mask, other people can’t see you’re smiling or being friendly, and you tend to have much less interaction.

So let’s hope NZ gets back to Level 1 soon, and everyone who wants to be vaccinated and is eligible gets both shots, so we can have some return to normalcy.

Stuff reports:

Former Labour Party minister Taito Phillip Field, the first MP of Pacific Island descent, has died.

Field, 68, died on Thursday morning at Auckland Hospital, Stuff has confirmed.

The Samoan-born MP served as Minister of State and as associate minister of justice, pacific island affairs, and social development, under the Helen Clark Labour Government.

His political career was tarnished in 2007, when he was charged with corruption. He was jailed for six years in 2009, on 11 charges of bribery and corruption and 15 charges of attempting to obstruct or pervert the course of justice.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday afternoon said “everyone will be familiar with the latter part of his political career”.

“But, ultimately today, his family have lost him, and the first Pacific MP in New Zealand, and so I do want to acknowledge that.”

Field was born in Apia, Samoa, in 1952 and came to New Zealand at 7 years old. His biography published by Parliament said he was married and had two children.

He was educated at Tawa College, in Wellington, and at Victoria University, before working at Treasury and as a union official.

I didn’t know he once worked at Treasury.

At the time of his passing, I reflect again on the maxim that you shouldn’t judge someone by the worst thing they ever did, but by their overall contribution over time. My condolences to his family and friends.

Newshub reports:

Eight people have been arrested with strong links to the Mongrel Mob gang on suspicion of supplying methamphetamine in a town just north of Hawkes Bay. 

A six-week long investigation run by the Eastern District Police Organised Crime Unit searched eight properties in Wairoa. 

The group includes four women, aged between 29 and 42 and four men aged between 30 and 60. 

This is of course the same Mongrel Mob that the Government gave $2.75 million to, to run drug rehabilitation courses.

The sick joke gets sicker.

No doubt the eight people arrested will all go on the Mongrel Mob rehabilitation course, pass it with flying colours, and use it to argue for a reduced sentence from the Judge.

Stuff reports:

A man has been charged with the sexual violation and murder of Lena Zhang Harrap, who was found dead in central Auckland on Wednesday.

The Mt Albert community has been in shock after police began a homicide investigation into the death of the 27-year-old.

Zhang’s body was discovered about 4.30pm in an area of bush off a walkway on Ōwairaka/Mt Albert, where she would often walk. …

Residents were devastated at the news of Zhang’s death. Many had taken part in a suburb-wide search for the woman, who had Down syndrome and was visually impaired.

Floral tributes have been laid at the top of Summit Rd, Owairaka domain.

Mt Albert resident Aysha Blanchard said while the suburb isn’t a stranger to crimes, she’s never seen anything happen like this.

“It’s very clear that [Zhang] was a prominent and well-known member of our community,” said Blanchard.

All homicides are terrible, and leave behind devastated families and friends.

But this particular homicide is a degree of awfulness that is hard to comprehend as Zhang was so vulnerable. The person who did this to her must be lacking in all humanity.

Since news of the death broke, I have been alternating between rage and despair. I just can’t comprehend how someone can do this.

If the person charged is found guilty, they should be sentenced to life without parole. Quite simply they are just pure evil.

Stuff reports:

A Covid-19 modeller says the new official model predicting 7000 deaths with a 75 per cent vaccination rate doesn’t pass the plausibility test.

Covid-19 modeller Rodney Jones, who has also provided modelling and advice to the Government, said real-world experience in countries with reasonably high vaccination rates showed there was unlikely to be that many deaths and the Government “didn’t need to scare New Zealanders into getting vaccinated”.

The Government released the modelling from Te Pūnaha Matatini on Thursday showing how much various vaccination rates would protect New Zealand.

It suggested that even with a vaccination rate of 80 per cent of those aged 5 or over – 75 per cent of the whole country – New Zealand could still see close to 7000 deaths a year from Covid-19, and an over-loaded healthcare system.

Jones said this didn’t pass the “plausibility test” when compared to real-world results in other countries.

“That is 140 deaths a week. Singapore has had 11 deaths with just under 80 per cent vaccinated over the last month,” Jones said. (Singapore has a similar population to New Zealand.)

So the model says 550 people a month will die, while actual data from Singapore is 11 people a month are dying.

“If you’re going to use this model in this way it should be peer-reviewed by global experts.”

So the PM promoted a model that was not peer-reviewed. Why? To scare us all?

Jones said the country didn’t need to be scared into getting vaccinated with talk of high death tolls.

“We need a positive story. The evidence is that negative takes and the use of fear does not get people vaccinated,” Jones said.

I am 100% pro vaccination. I think we should use masses of carrots to get people vaccinated. But, I suspect like many, my first response to reading the claim of 7,000 deaths a year even at 80% vaccination rates was to get pissed off.

It’s a bit like the climate alarmists. I’ll respect people who say climate change is a serious problem and that sea levels may rise up to 80 cm by 2100. But when alarmists come along and start talking 600 cm rises, then I tune out. Alarmism backfires.

Steve Bayliss has done a tongue in cheek rating of the players involved in Covid-19, as if they were a sports team. His scores are:

• 10/10 – the vaccine
• 9/10 – New Zealand outside Auckland, essential workers
• 8/10 – Ashley Bloomfield, Simon Bridges, Chris Luxon, vaccination buses, Gladys Berejiklian
• 7/10 – Auckland
• 6/10 – Jacinda Ardern
• 5/10 – David Seymour, WIlliam and Hannah
• 4/10- Chris Hipkins, Siouxsie Wiles
• 3/10 – Michael Baker
• 2/10 – Judith Collins, Delta Level 2
• 1/10 – MIQ, Shot Bro

RNZ reports:

The government on Thursday announced a review covering three of his 10 years in New Zealand – the second period he spent in custody and since he was released.

It will look at the actions of police, Corrections and the SIS in their dealings with Samsudeen and its primary focus is the period leading up to his release in July and the seven weeks before the attack.

The scope of the inquiry specifically excludes immigration, decisions taken before his latest period in custody and the legislation which agencies operate under.

“The biggest piece of the jigsaw was completely left out,” said opposition immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford. “Immigration really is the key to finding out why this guy was still in New Zealand and why he wasn’t deported. And that is a big bit that’s missing.

It’s ridiculous to have an inquiry into just three of the agencies involved. There should be a full Commission of Inquiry headed by a retired judge to look into the terrorist attack.

These partial inquiries are inadequate.

Jason Wells writes:

As New Zealand faced the brunt of a global pandemic, the Government spent $26,000 commissioning a novel about the collapse of democracy in an association of alpaca breeders.

Actually that was one of their better grants. We own some alpacas so are quite interested in reading the novel, as I understand it is partially based on real events!

As people lost jobs in droves, almost $50,000 was given to the Comedy Trust to examine what changes need to be made to better support a more diverse and sustainable comedy industry.I’m not making this up.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Government has spent $57 billion on New Zealand’s economic recovery.

A lot of this money has been well spent – the wage subsidy scheme prevented what would have likely been an economic collapse.

But amongst the important, well-targeted spending is a smorgasbord of abject waste.

Billions and billions of dollars have been spent on projects that don’t come close to a semblance of sensible spending, let alone meeting the threshold for Covid Recovery.

Take the $18,000 for writing poetry that “explores indigeneity and love in the time of climate change,” for example.

It’s easy to take aim at the Creative NZ funding and to poke holes in what the Government’s decided to fund through its $55m “public interest journalism” fund.

And yes, although $21,800 for the writing music that forms a song-cycle from the suburban labyrinth is a relatively small amount when considering the Government’s mammoth budget, other larger projects are harder to ignore.

Some $26.7 million was spent on cameras on fishing boats, in the name of Covid recovery.

There was also $200m for the construction of a new building at the University of Auckland.

And a whopping $1.22 billion was spent on the jobs for nature scheme – as a little perspective, that’s enough to buy roughly 1000 houses in Auckland.

Are they important projects? Maybe. Should they have been the Government’s focus in these unprecedented times? Absolutely not.

Think if that money had instead been spent on doubling or tripling ICU capacity. Or getting more vaccine doses quicker. Or building more MIQ facilities.

Cabinet’s decided to allocate a further $7 billion to the Covid-19 Recovery Fund.

When added to the $3b that’s left in that fund, ministers have a tidy $10b extra to spend.

Although it’s a sixth the size of the overall Covid fund, it’s not an insignificant amount of money.

It needs to be spent properly, with New Zealand’s health care system at its focus.

That’s more hospital beds – not funding the instrumental arrangement of 10 songs for children, from ideas given by children.

More nurses – not paying for seven large domes in fiberglass for exhibition as exoplanets using satellite imagery.

More money for New Zealand’s hospitals – not funding for obscure and wasteful projects in the name of the ‘Covid Recovery’.

Can only agree.

Stuff reports:

A man who ran over a child twice while more than four times the drink-drive limit will be on home detention despite Corrections and a judge having concerns about his ability to comply.

So why risk him driving over more children?

He’s a recidivist. How about you protect the community from him.

Edwards, 56, of Feilding, is an alcoholic with a long history of alcohol-fuelled offending, including using a firearm while drunk.

Definitely a candidate for prison.

He drove his car over a 7-year-old boy while reversing in a driveway.

Despite people at the property calling out to him, he again reversed over the boy, who suffered a broken shoulder.

He gave a reading of 1151 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath. The legal limit is 250mcg.

At that level he probably can’t even walk.

On Tuesday last week the Herald had me as a guest on their “On the tiles” podcast where we discussed events of the week such as the in principle move to Level 3 for Auckland. The podcast is here for those interested.

Stuff reports:

Energy Minister Megan Woods has accepted a recommendation made in 2019 by the Electricity Price Review to phase out the requirement for power companies to offer “low fixed charge” electricity tariffs.

Power companies will be able to levy several hundred million dollars a year more in fixed charges as a result of the change.

But the Government expects households will see their variable power prices drop as their daily fixed charges rise, leaving ‘winners and losers’ but consumers no worse off on aggregate.

The low fixed charge tariffs are one of those things that sounded okay in principle, but actually caused more harm than good in practice.

But the Electricity Price Review concluded they were unfair, arguing the people who benefited from them most were in effect being subsidised by customers who used more power – including large families who might be living in poverty in poorly insulated homes.

Low user tariff caps were originally introduced by the Labour government in 2004 with the support of the Greens as a way to encourage electricity conservation.

But Woods said phasing them out would create a “fairer playing field” for consumers and encourage people to switch to electric vehicles and use heat pumps rather than gas to heat their homes.

Basically larger poorer families were subsidising smaller families.

Good to see the Government getting rid of this market distortion.

Reuters reports:

China has filed an application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the country’s commerce ministry said on Thursday, as the world’s second-biggest economy looks to bolster its clout in trade.

Commerce Minister Wang Wentao submitted China’s application to join the free trade agreement in a letter to New Zealand’s trade minister, Damien O’Connor, the Chinese ministry said in a statement.

The CPTPP was signed by 11 countries including Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan and New Zealand in 2018.

This is a good thing. Trade works best when it is based on rules that prevent arbitrary tariffs and barriers. China is a huge economy and having them join would be a very good thing.

China has sadly been going more authoritarian in recent years, which is bad. We should speak out when they behave badly. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t trade with them. One should only refuse to trade with countries that you are basically at war with.

Roderick Mulgan writes:

When Parliament passes a law, MPs know what they mean and what the law will do – probably.

Sometimes, however, despite their best efforts and those of their professional drafters, language winds up in legislation which is not crystal clear.

Even simple things can be problematic: what does it mean to park a car, for instance? Does the engine have to be off? Is a fish an animal? Is the airport Koru Lounge a public place? Lawyers routinely deal with these questions and many more, and judges routinely give judgments on them.

A set of rules exists to extract meaning when ambiguous language is before a court and one of them is the obvious one: to look at Parliament’s intention. What did parliamentarians say they meant?

Especially important is the speech from the Minister. The courts pay much attention to this.

Recently the minister has struggled to say if insulting gay people or Baby Boomers will cross the line or not. What is he going to say when he stands up to introduce the bill? If he hadn’t worked it out before the public consultation stage, when might he get around to it?

The prime minister likewise struggled to answer when asked if it would be criminal to tell a Christian his religion was mad.

The point is not academic. The proposed law would not just criminalise the wrong sort of speech, it would provide for jail sentences that are longer (three years) than people get for significant assaults. It is important to know where the line is and yet nobody does.

It gets worse. Ardern articulated a handwashing “solution” to the problem, which appears to represent the Government’s view on how law works. As she put it, “it is not for us to determine what a court may or may not do” in assigning meanings – that’s what judges do.

Yes, that is what judges do, but only with the tools the law allows them, a key one of which is what the minister who shepherded the bill through Parliament said. If the record of his oratorical effort shows he thought that blaming Boomers for house prices might be a bridge too far, that has to go into the judicial interpretive mix.

So the inability of Ardern and Faafoi to answer even the most basic questions on the proposed law means that the judiciary will be far more likely to criminalise speech.

Our law on statutory interpretation (laid out at present in the Interpretation Act), which requires courts to give legislation a construction that best serves Parliament’s purpose, has been around about a century, but neither Ardern nor Faafoi seems to have noticed it.

One contributory problem is having a legally unqualified minister of justice in the first place, but after more than half a year in the job he should not be getting his nuts-and-bolts descriptions so very wrong. The “purposive rule” is our elementary legal canon of legislative interpretation, and Faafoi should have long ago educated himself on the basics of the justice system which he heads.

So sorry, Kris, but reassuring us that someone else decides doesn’t work. The person who decides is going to look straight back at you. By the well-worn constitutional process of courts following in the footsteps of Parliament, what you say – before enactment – the law is supposed to do will have a big impact on what it actually does.

At what point in the process are you going to work out what that is?

I don’t think you have to be a doctor to be Minister of Health. But I do think it is a good idea for only lawyers to be Ministers of Justice.

Newshub reports:

The prisoner at the centre of a fresh COVID outbreak in the Waikato appears to have breached multiple bail conditions.

Corrections GPS records show the man made four stops on the way to his bail address at Whakatiwai, including stopping at two private homes in Mt Albert, one in Mangere and a supermarket in Pokeno.

It’s also been established the prisoner was picked up from jail by three people.

The Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu told Newshub the bail conditions set for the prisoner were “strict”, and he was supposed to be collected by a “specified family member” and go directly to his address “without any unnecessary stops”.

So bail conditions are now voluntary!

Some things are obvious in life:

• Lou Reed is the coolest man of rock ever.

• My wife of 32 years and childhood sweetheart is the world’s most beautiful woman.

• The business acumen of the Labour government is as thin as grease paper from a fishn’chip shop.

• A full-grown kauri like Tane Mahuta in the beautiful far north of New Zealand a big tree.

Some things are more subtle.

• Cristiano Ronaldo is better than Lionel Messi.

• You can’t beat Wellington on a good day.

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the greatest film ever made.

• Sand in uncomfortable places is worth an afternoon on the beach.

Some things require evidence. I have now spent a month looking at outcomes, post-school destinations, attendance, retention to 17 years old, and other things for the 400+ New Zealand High Schools.

For reasons that I can back up – here are 15 of the very best (I would hate to have a reputation for being negative). They have good results – many regardless of the wealth of the families in their community. For some (e.g. McAuley) they are clearly overcoming what other schools might call deficits. Their students have a high tendency to keep studying when they leave.

This is not quite the All Blacks of NZ High Schools. There are other good/great schools and no doubt good teachers and striving students in every school. But you have to start somewhere. In no order:

• St Peter’s College (Epsom)
• Manukura (Palmerston North)
• Marist College (Auckland)
• McAuley College (Otahuhu)
• Lynfield College (Mt Roskill)
• Baradene College of the Sacred Heart (Remuera)
• Liston College (West Auckland)
• Westlake Girls High School (North Otarbour – intentional joke for those in the know).
• St Catherine’s (Kilbirnie)
• Selwyn College (Kohimarama)
• Auckland Girls Grammar School (Auckland City)
• Sancta Maria College (Flatbush)
• Napier Girls High School (Hawkes Bay)
• St Joseph’s Maori Girls (Taradale)
• St Mary’s College (Ponsonby)

I am happy to hear and be challenged on other candidates for this 1^st XV. The main point being that they are clearly doing something right that others can learn from. Nothing replaces well supported, good parenting, but schools have a part to play.

I have also concluded on what the three worst performing schools in New Zealand are. Clues? All founded in the last 12 years at about $50 million each. All decile 10 and lauded by a Ministry of Education and other glossy people who would not recognise a rigorous & excellent education if it bit them their collective posterior.

To access the data set: [email protected]