In the last 12 months the median house price has gone up by $181,000. This is around $500 a day,

Based on a 40 hour week, this is $87 every working hour. So if you earn less than $87 an hour, the house you are trying to buy is increasing faster than you can earn. Actually it is worse than that as you need to pay tax. So you need to actually earn $130 an hour (and have no expenses) to earn enough to keep up with the house price increases.

National got rightfully lambasted for annual house inflation of 8%. It is now 29%.

Business Desk reports:

We’ve grown our team from six to nearly 20, but we’re still looking for additional reporters, and staff to help us super-charge our subscription sales. Since launch in February 2020 we’ve gained more than 13,000 paying subscribers, and about 100,000 people a month visit the site.

That’s very impressive – 13,000 subscribers and 20 staff after just 18 months.

They have shown people will pay for quality journalism.

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed she signed off on millions of dollars to fund a meth rehab programme run by the Mongrel Mob. 

Nearly $3 million in funding seized from gangs and criminals by police is being used to fund the Mongrel Mob’s Kahukura drug and trauma rehabilitation scheme, Hawke’s Bay Today newspaper revealed on Monday.

They must be laughing all the way to the bank. They make millions importing and selling drugs and then get extra millions from the Government to treat the addicts they themselves created.

But Ardern says the scheme is based on a programme that was run back in 2010 as part of the previous National-led Government’s Meth Action Plan.

“It is very much focussed on trying to address meth addiction and the crime that often results from meth addiction,” Ardern said. 

“It is not new and it would be a shame to see a political party who once supported addressing meth addiction and crime-related meth addiction stepping away from that, as appears to now be the case.”

No one is against meth addiction programmes. We’re just against giving the Mongrel Mob millions of dollars to run one, when they are the ones who import and sell the very drugs that addict people.

Coercion Code claims:

Sometimes, an ugly truth is staring us in the face, we need only to see it and speak it for the reality to become clear.

There are only three (3) countries on this planet whose government officials refused to accept the COVID-19 vaccine from the World Health Organization: Burundi, Tanzania, and Haiti.

Off memory the President of Madagascar refused it also, but never mind.

The officials in those countries who declined the vax were Presidents in each of those countries.

In Burundi it was President Pierre Nkurunziza

In Tanzania, it was President John Magufuli

In Haiti, it was President Jovenel Moïse

All three of those Presidents are now DEAD.

Coincidence?

Not at all. The first two died of Covid-19. This is more likely if you don’t get vaccinated.

Many people have speculated that the entire COVID-19 was a staged, intentionally deadly attack on humanity itself.   

There are people on this planet who believe that humanity itself is like a virus against the planet.  They believe humanity is destroying the planet and so, they continue, humanity must be culled.

Many of those people are in positions of great power and wealth.

It is thought by a large number of people that the so-called “vaccine” for COVID-19 is the method by which these people have decided to cull humanity. 

Definitely peak cray

On Thursday the House discussed suicide in New Zealand. There were moving contributions, some of which I want to highlight here. Few people in NZ haven’t lost a friend or family member to suicide. More Kiwis kill themselves than die on the roads.

Kiri Allan:

As I was purviewing the statistics—and some of them are absolutely heartbreaking—I was putting faces to those statistics. In fact, as a brand new member of this House in my first year, I lost a young niece, just starting out in her life, to whakamomori—a young, beautiful wahine Māori; a young, beautiful woman, 18 years old, passionate about her culture, a love for our reo, a strong whānau unit. I remember at that tangihanga, we all held each other and we cursed ourselves for not doing enough. We cursed ourselves for not seeing the signs.

When I was 19 or 20 I found out that one of my childhood friends had killed herself. I used to play with dolls at her house on a regular basis. We hadn’t seen much of each other once we were at secondary school so I was unaware of the problems that had developed for her. When I heard she had killed herself, I felt guilty even though I had not seen her for years. I wondered if I had stayed in touch, I could have helped.

Losing a family member but be expoentially worse.

Mark Cameron:

Many here in this Chamber may think they understand farmers; respectfully, many don’t. Rural families invest, in many cases, their entire lives. For many families, rural families and country life is all they know. Mental illness is an absolute scourge in rural communities. Farmers bear huge burdens, massive hours, long periods of isolation. We contend with crop failures to floods routinely and more increasingly, and poor public policy that’s becoming increasingly impractical and unworkable. Rural mental health is often attached to well-intentioned politicians, and this hall is full of them, but they lack the consequences of their policies and their ideas in real time. This often exacerbates our lack of self-worth.

In 32 years, I have seen it all. I have seen drug use run amok and depression. I have also buried four of my farming colleagues. Rural folk often and in hushed tones refer to it as the black dog or the hitchhiker or the bloody thief in the night. Farmers and rural folk are often pragmatists and we tend to treat mental illness like broken bones or the flu. But in truth, it’s very different. Ultimately, we know we can’t put time frames on these things. Sadly, the help we often want or need just simply isn’t coming. There are good people, these were us, they were our people, and they are Kiwis.

Four colleagues lost. Awful.

Barbara Kuriger:

Everyone has a story. Every family has a story. And I think, when you first experience it, it doesn’t ever happen in one’s own family—and excuse me for saying “your”, Mr Speaker, but this is just one of those conversations—it never happens in your family until it does. In 1995, my sister lost her husband, and we were left with two young nephews, one of whom is about to become a dad. Until it happens in your own family, it’s something that’s over there and it’s often not talked about. When I was growing up, it was never talked about. Young people died and no one ever knew why they died. But I think every family in this day and age has been touched in some way, if not by suicide, at least by mental health.

Harete Hipango:

It’s also very dear to my heart. I lost two nephews to suicide this year—two young Māori men in their early 30s. During my maiden speech, the twin of my deceased nephew was here, and he found his brother. And regrettably, the mental health service wasn’t there when he needed them. We have all lost loved ones, and what we strive for to come out of this report is that it makes a difference and that it saves lives.

The thought of a twin finding his brother makes me well up with sadness.

Good to see MPs put aside party politics to discuss this awful issue. Here’s hoping progress can be made.

The Herald reports:

Central Hawke’s Bay mayor Alex Walker says the funders of a $2.75 million drug rehabilitation programme led by the Mongrel Mob, must keep their eyes “wide open”.

Close to $3m in funding seized from gangs and criminals by police is being used to fund the new Kahukura programme, a live-in mārae-based aimed at addressing trauma and drug-seeking behaviour.

A powhiri was held earlier this week at Tapairu Marae in Waipawa to launch the Kahukura programme, with invitations signed off by Mongrel Mob national president Sonny Smith and his wife Mahinaarangi Smith.

This is fucking insane. The Mongrel Mob import the drugs and sell the drugs and now the Government is giving them $2.5 million for drug rehabilitation.

This is like New York in the 1930 giving Al Capone millions of dollars to run alcohol addiction services.

Liam is right. The Mob have it great. The create or import the meth. They sell trhe meth and make money from that and then the taxpayer gives them more money to fund rehabilitation made necessary by the drugs they sell. They can’t lose.

And to add insult to injury the money comes from the proceeds of crime money. This is meant to help victims, not fund the people who cause them.

The Mongrel Mob are not a community group like Rotary. Having them involved in drug rehabilitation is a sick joke. The Ministry of Health and Ministry of Justice should be censured for their decisions to fund this.

Kahukura is expected to run for three cycles of 10 weeks per year over three years, serving up to 10 participants and their whānau – about 40 people – per cycle.

So that is $900,000 a year for 30 people a year or $30,000 per person. It is a 10 week course so they are charging $3,000 a week per person. Not only are we funding gangs, but we are doing so at rip off rates.

This would never happen under a National Minister of Health or Justice. It would and should be squashed at conception.

UPDATE: Turns out some of the activities being funded by this money includes participants doing gardening at the home of the local Mob chapter President.

If you want to see an end to this, sign the Taxpayers’ Union petition demanding the Government stop funding gangs.

Newshub reports:

The script extracts are horrifying. Are those involved in this movie devoid of empathy?

If this film gets one cent of taxpayer money, there will be a riot.

Judith Collins announced:

Leader of the Opposition Judith Collins says New Zealanders are being left out of important decisions by the Labour Government and today she has launched a campaign for Kiwis to ‘Demand the debate’.

“The Labour Government continues to make policy announcements that were never campaigned on and will have a significant impact on New Zealanders.

“From the Car Tax, cancelling promised infrastructure projects, the $785m Auckland cycle bridge, rushed law changes to deliver Māori wards, to the hastily announced oil and gas exploration ban; New Zealanders are starting to feel left out.

Yep the Government is forcing through major changes which either they didn’t campaign on, or they actually promised the opposite of.

“At the same time more than 4000 children are left to grow up in motels, mental health services are in crisis, the Government is looking to criminalise speech they disapprove of and tell you what car you can drive.

On the stuff they did promise, they have almost without exception failed miserably at.

“Every week, I’m contacted by thousands of Kiwis who are worried they just don’t have a say in the future of their country anymore. They’re being kept in the dark and their questions go unanswered by Ardern’s Government. So today, we launch the first in a series of billboards on important issues that Kiwis deserve to have their say on.

We’ve already seen the Maori Party say they do not belong in democracy or one person, one vote.

You can read about He Puapua here, and support the campaign to demand a debate.

This issue is just the first of many which National will bne highlighting as worthy of debate, rather than just being kept away from the public.

The Herald reports:

Minister for Courts William Sio has been found to have acted “contrary to law” over his office’s handling of an Official Information Act request.

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier also raised concern that the minister’s office did not understand how parts of the OIA worked.

So either the Minister and his staff chose to break the law, or they are so stupid they don’t understand it.

The judgment on Sio came after an OIA request to his office in January last year.

The Minister’s office sought an extension, which it could under the law, and then sought to extend again, and then again and even again after that with the eventual response landing in May.

Boshier found the three subsequent extensions were not options under the law.

Four months for a response due by law within 20 days.

Sio had been asked to respond within five days and did not, Boshier’s finding stated. Sio eventually wrote back 11 days after being contacted by Boshier, acknowledging a failure to communicate a decision but also saying he intended to again extend the response time.

The Minister ignored the Chief Ombudsman and took over two weeks to respond to him.

OIA researcher Andrew Ecclestone said the explanations behind the delay were ignorance or a deliberate action.

“It is unacceptable 39 years after the law was passed that we have a minister’s office that doesn’t know how to use the extension provisions properly.”

This is very basic stuff.

RNZ reports:

A representative of 22 of the Pike River families says the group plans to seek a court injunction to stop the mine being permanently sealed.

A group of more than two dozen of the victims’ families and their supporters yesterday protested against the Government’s intention to close the mine where 29 men died in a series of explosions in 2010.

Bernie Monk, whose son was killed in the disaster, said the families want the work halted, and for the mine to remain unsealed until the police have finished their investigation into the disaster.

This is a delaying tactic. Labour should never have politicised the recovery by promising to open the mine up at a cost of $50 million.

Stuff reports:

A gap in New Zealand’s armour has seen more than 20 people arrive in the country from Australia without the mandated pre-departure test – including one who had recently been in New South Wales.

While all of these people were caught at the New Zealand border and most sent into a managed isolation hotel there is significant concern that others will have slipped through the cracks, as New Zealand border officials are only checking half of arrivals for their test results.

Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins blamed “capacity constraints” for this situation and said New Zealand was looking to check more people as soon as possible.

It’s understood officials within the Covid-19 response team see this issue as the biggest risk to New Zealand’s current Covid-free status.

Unbelievable. They opened up the borders without the capacity to check everyone arriving.

On Wednesday of this week at www.baylight.co.nz we had the privilege of hosting three Mike King events. Mike is not perfect but he is great. Low IQ Ministry officials tell Andrew Little (the Minister of Health) that he (MK) is “difficult”! Seriously – if NZ has got to that point we are in the crap.

Mike King’s Gumboot Friday programme – the best I have seen since I started as a teacher in 1991 – would cost (fully funded as it ought to be) $1 per NZer each year – and enhance the well-being of many young people as well as the stats for saving lives.

Please email – [email protected] and simply say FT (GF) Programme (i.e. FTP)

How serious is this?

-September 9/11 – 2996 deaths spending to combat this … US$617 billion.

-Ten Years of NZ Suicide Deaths to June 2020 = 5931 people – bugger-all funding – except to people who waffle.

Announced – NZ$1.9billion … i.e. 5 extra beds and NOTHING for Mike King’s GumBoot Friday programme.

It is time to FSU. We had National’s Matt Doocey (spokesman for Mental Health)- in Russell for the Mike King events. He is in the wrong party. I have never met a more insipid and ineffective spokesperson for a cause and he reflected that the day after in the House. Completed missed the point and being called out for his BS by Mike King.

Stuff editorial:

Al Capone ran a winter soup kitchen in Chicago during the depression. Coffee and doughnuts too, cheerfully handed out free for the huddled, freezing hungry.

As an “associate’’ explained to the press, “He couldn’t stand to see those poor devils starving and nobody else seemed to be doing much, so the big boy decided to do it himself’’.

Capone was no Robin Hood. Just a hood. But that’s the thing about organised crime. It tends to be organised. This murderous gangster saw certain corporate benefits in a bit of reputational rehabilitation.

Gangs are not Iwi or Hapu. Treating gangs as just a Maori welfare group is as wrong as treating the Mafia as an Italian American welfare group. They are overwhelmingly organised crime that peddle misery.

In New Zealand the Mongrel Mob has long been a criminal outfit in the worst sense of the word. It also has a pretty good PR department going nowadays, capable of highlighting some good projects and good outcomes, amid evidence that some of its old-timers have a heart for change.

But come on. Business as usual still continues in its ugly form. So it was a thoroughly bad call for Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt to have donated $200 of public money while attending a mob event in Waikato.

Also as a matter of fact the Mongrel Mob was started by Pakehas in the 1960s. Their patch is a British Bulldog. Sure today most members (not all) are Maori, but justifying a $200 donation on the grounds of it being koha is offensive.

Newstalk ZB reports:

Willie Jackson has taken a swipe at Pakeha media’s handling of the issue of a koha to the Mongrel Mob.

The Human Rights Commissioner caused a storm when he admitted to giving $200 at a Mob hui.

The Maori Development Minister was asked whether he gave a koha when he visited.

He says it’s a stupid question.

“If you look at how Māori media and how Māori see this, 99 percent are in support of what we’re saying.

I doubt 99% of Maori support taxpayer funded donations to the Mongrel Mob.

Jackson says he’s overseeing a review of Maori media and says there’ll be more funding for it.

“I think they offer a perspective that a number of Pakeha journalists don’t know.” 

So having just said Maori media are less critical of the Government, he now says he will give them more money because he approves of their perspective.

The Herald reports:

A senior gang leader who has been outspoken about helping “broken people ” make positive changes in their lives has been charged with importing and distributing methamphetamine.

Name suppression has today been lifted from Mark Anthony Griffiths, or “Griff”, who was a longstanding member the Waikato Mongrel Mob Kingdom when he was arrested in November following a covert police investigation.

The chapter has generated headlines in recent years for establishing an all-female chapter, guarding their local mosque after the terror attacks in Christchurch and delivering food to 3000 vulnerable people during Covid-19 lockdown.

The 50-year-old Griffiths was sometimes the public face of the Waikato chapter, which left the Mongrel Mob’s national council two years ago, in what they say was an effort to forge a new kaupapa (founding values) of empowerment for those marginalised in society.

He gave media interviews about the positive changes made by the chapter, in order to help gang members study and get jobs, and even gave a guest lecture at the University of Canterbury.

So he was doing all this media work about how they have reformed and reject drugs, while allegedly was helping run a major Meth organisation.

Anyone who doesn’t treat gangs as organised crime is deluding themselves. That is not to say any gang member is commiting crimes all the time. But they way they get their money is through crime.

Professor Tim Hazeldine writes:

The NZ Climate Change Commission has just released its report. Four hundred pages; 15,000 submissions considered; hundreds – perhaps thousands – of predictions, prognoses, policy recommendations; all buttressed by 700 pages of “supporting evidence”, with 1000 references to technical research papers.

This is an extraordinary administrative achievement, and it is deeply scary, revealing a fundamental misconception of how New Zealand’s obligations to meet lower greenhouse gas emission targets should be met, in our shared battle against global warming.

Hazeldine, as you will see, is scathing of the Commission’s report. His criticism are similiar to those from the NZ Initiative. Now some people discount the latter as it is a centre-right thinktank. But Hazeldine is far from centre-right. I would regard him as one of the most prominent “left” economists in New Zealand, along with Brian Easton.

It is farmers, other businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, scientists, workers, and, not least, households – the whole team of five million – who will get the job done, and at the lowest cost, so long as the overall cap set by the Emissions Trading Scheme (or through a carbon tax) is secure.

Also mostly pointless, are the multitude of policy recommendations that pour forth from the report. If the real decision-makers in the economy (i.e. all those listed above) are getting the correct price signal from the ETS, then there is generally no justification for further government intervention. What should be done will be done.

This is essential. If you have the ETS with an emissions cap, then emissions will be reduced but in a way which allows individuals businesses and households to decide what works best for them. The CCC approach is more akin to the Soviet Union’s five year plans where they decide for everyone.

And – not so incidentally – the expensive scheme to subsidise purchases of electric vehicles that the commission has foisted on the current government will almost certainly fail the cost-benefit test. Around 90 per cent of the well-heeled beneficiaries of the scheme’s largesse would have purchased an electric car anyway – we have just given them an $8000 present.

The $8,000 might not even go to them. The Japanese car manufacturers look at what price the market will pay, when setting prices. So the evidence seems to be they will increase prices of imports into NZ, so they get the $8,000.

Our climate change policy should be solely about climate change. “You can’t kill two birds with one stone” is a cliche but it is not trite. It is true and important in almost every policy context. Yet the Commission considers it should in future “consider broader well-being factors, like eradicating poverty, safeguarding food security and addressing other environmental outcomes”. Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

The commission claims it will be its job to “hold the government to account”. No, in our democracy it is the voters and Parliament who hold the government to account.

How did the commissioners get so off-target? Hubris is probably a factor, but I will pinpoint their failure to meet the statutory requirement to “have regard to a broad range of domestic and international scientific advice”.

The Commission was meant to be the vehicle to get widespread and bipartisan support. But the path they have chosen means they have failed miserably. There is no chance that National nor ACT will support their command and control policies, and now should they. In fact there has to be a decent chance National will now rescind its support for its establishment, as the CCC has failed so badly.

In particular, they virtually ignore the substantial body of very impressive research on climate policy carried out by economists, on which of course I have drawn here.

Just one of the 1000 technical references is a well-published economics article. This, by the way, rates subsidising electric vehicles as the highest-cost of all known climate policies.

The CCC has deliberately chosen policies that will achieve less, yet cost more.

So, what to do? The Climate Change Commission has, in just a few months, seriously outgrown its boots. The Government should step in, and with polite thanks for their efforts, de-commission the commission. It should then persuade a super-smart mid-career research-grade Kiwi economist – tough-minded but humble (they do exist) – to take the reins of a slimmed-down secretariat.

I agree. They have lost all credibility.

The Herald reports:

Act leader David Seymour has overtaken National Party leader Judith Collins as preferred Prime Minister in a new UMR poll, a result described as “unprecedented” by the polling company.

The UMR July poll for showed Seymour had risen to 12 per cent as preferred Prime Minister, leapfrogging Collins who was on 10 per cent.

There is no doubt David Seymour is doing well. He has become a formidable political figure, and his caucus is staying on message.

National has had a tough few weeks. I actually think Judith has been fronting well on issues. and has taken clear stands on important issues. But there has been a lot of baggage which has disrupted National from getting publicity on the issues they want to.

The poll noted that was “an unprecedented result” in its poll – the first time an Act leader had out-polled a National Party leader.

It isn’t really unprecedented, not in terms of a third party leader outpolling a major party leader.

Take 1994 when Helen Clark was Leader of the Labour Party. Not only wasn’t she 2nd in Preferred PM polls. She was 6th!! The range in 1994 in the ONCB poll was:

1. Jim Anderton 17% to 26%
2. Jim Bolger 12% to 20%
3. Winston Peters 9% to 13%
4. Mike Moore 8% to 16%
5. David Lange 4% to 9%
6. Helen Clark 2% to 6%

So Clark was behind two former Labour Leader, and two Minor Party Leaders. She went on to do quite well.

I am not saying that the situation is the same. I am just pointing out that it is far from unprecedented.

Stuff reports:

Yet another KiwiBuild development in central Wellington has stalled, leaving first home buyers ruing the day they signed up for the beleaguered scheme.

The Sunset West apartments, on the corner of Karo Dr and Victoria St, were initially marked for completion last year.

First home buyer Andrew Lensen​ and his partner bought a third-floor apartment via the KiwiBuild scheme last August.

He’s still waiting, and sick of it. “New dates, new deadlines – none of them ever get met,” the 27-year-old said. “It’s a bit frustrating. It’s been a good four months now, and still no guaranteed timeline.”

They should complain to the Government about the dodgy house promoter that takes the money and doesn’t deliver.

Oh wait, the Government is the dodgy promoter!