Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins announced:

Last year the Public Service Commissioner issued guidance to Public Service agencies asking them to have nil or minimal pay increases for public servants until June 2021.

“Today the Public Service Commissioner is updating that guidance to make clear that pay restraint will need to continue to be exercised across the Public Service for the next three years,” Minister for the Public Service Chris Hipkins said.

“The updated guidance will continue to mean no pay increases for those earning over $100,000 and senior leaders within the public service. Any increases will be targeted to lower-paid public servants, largely those earning below $60,000, who account for about 25% of the public sector.

A three year wage freeze for public sector employees is very bold from a Labour Government. If National announced this, the unions would already be calling for a month long general strike.

“This is about prioritising spending. The policy will also help protect jobs by taking financial pressure off the public wage bill.   

Despite the belief of some on the left, there is no unlimited pool for spending. There are trade offs. For example you can either give all nurses a 10% pay rise or you can hire 10% more nurses which results in more patients being seen and treated. Or you can give MBIE staff a 10% pay rise or give Pharmac 5% more funding.

Pay should increase to recruit and retain capable staff. If pay rates are too low, then you will get vacancies which will lead to pay rates going up. But are public sector salaries too low?

Public sector employees get paid much better than private sector. The average FT income in the public sector is $83,700 compared to $65,600 in the public sector.

The gap has been growing also. Since 2017 average public sector pay has gone up 11.2% and private sector 9.8%. ACT have calculated the number of bureaucrats earning over $100,000 has increased by 43% since 2018.

So huge kudos to Robertson and Hipkins for their fiscal conservatism. This move could almost qualify them for honorary membership of the Taxpayers’ Union!

It is surprising that they have done this. It is rare that the only union praising them is the Taxpayers’ Union.

I suspect they are worried by two things. The first is to be able to show an eventual path back to surplus and repaying debt. The second is inflationary pressures, which this decision will help subdue.

Some on the left are calling this austerity. That is unfair. They are not cutting government spending. Far from it. They are still increasing spending massively each year and borrowing tens of billions. It’s just they have decided that they would rather spend the money elsewhere.

Now while I am fully supportive of their fiscal rectitude in this area, I will concede the tool they have used is a blunt one. Freezing all salaries over $60,000 is rather Muldoonish. It also may be somewhat ineffectual as it may just lead too more job swapping, consultants etc. A better way of achieving fiscal rectitude would be freezing the overall staffing (and consultants) budget for each agency and leave it to each CEO how they manage within that. Some might freeze salaries. Others might reduce staff numbers and give remaining staff an increase etc. One size fits all solutions are rarely the best option.

But once again kudos to Robbo and Chippie for doing what not even a National government would dare to do, telling public sector unions there will be no pay increases (for staff over $60,000) for three years.

Stuff reports:

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson will become the Government’s informal Minister for Delivery, thanks to a newly created “implementation unit” within the Government’s powerful Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, or DPMC.

The move comes after a term of Government in which several big-ticket plans fell apart as they were implemented – most notably KiwiBuild and light rail in Auckland – and is inspired by a unit set up by British PM Tony Blair.

The Government has a problem. It has failed to deliver on scores and scores of promises – from massive to minor.

The primary responsibility for ensuring promises are carried out is Ministers and their offices. That is in fact the main reason they exist. The job of a Minister is to make sure their commitments are carried out. Their office staff should have every commitment written down, and be doing monthly reports on progress.

And a competent PMs Office should co-ordinate all the Ministerial office and be advising the PM as to progress, and where there are problems. This is a core function of PMs Offices in the past.

To have to set up a unit in DPMC to do what Ministerial Offices and the PMO should have been doing for the last four years is a vote of no confidence in Ministers and their staff.

And having Grant Robertson take responsibility for it is an effective vote of no confidence in the PM and her office. Making sure the Government delivers its agenda is the job of the PM. I know when John Key was PM he met every single Minister every (off memory) three months in a one on one detailed meeting to discuss their goals and their progress.

It isn’t just me saying this is a sign of Ministerial incompetence. Danyl Mclauchlan writes at The Spinoff:

Which raises an awkward question. If policy is developed by ministerial staff and implemented by DPMC, what do all of Robertson’s ministerial colleagues and their thousands of highly paid advisers do all day? Because the description of the Implementation Unit sounds an awful lot like the current role of a ministerial office.

Taxpayers spend $73 million on Ministerial Services so Ministers have offices and staff who can deliver policy.

Stuff reports:

An online wellbeing hub for teachers intended for launch by the end of 2020 is still not operational.

The $1.5m wellbeing hub was announced in September by Education Minister Chris Hipkins as part of a $9m teacher wellbeing package to help educators through Covid-19.

Hipkins said the hub was “expected” to be up and running before the end of the school year and would providing peer support and material directly to those in the education sector.

So they said it would be running within three months, and after seven months nothing has happened!

Same old story.

In the House last night there was some extraordinary scenes. They were reminiscent of Muldoon vs Moyle when Muldoon made allegations under parliamentary privilege. To avoid potential defamation I will quote exactly from Hansard:

It started with Chris Bishop asking:

 In relation to the Francis Review and the publicly reported comments that have led to an ex gratia payment to a former employee of the Parliamentary Service, when did he find out that what he said was wrong, and who told him what he’d said was wrong, and why, thirdly—to start things off—he then told his lawyers to tell the plaintiff that he intended to plead truth in the defamation claim lodged by the plaintiff? …

So the question that obviously follows from that is if the Speaker knew he’d made a mistake within 24 hours—a number of questions follow from that. Firstly, why he didn’t apologise straight away and admit that he’d made a mistake—because it’s worth recalling this has ended up costing the taxpayer $340,000 and rising, and we need to know why there wasn’t an immediate admission of wrongdoing. Why, when the plaintiff wrote to him, or his lawyers, and said, “I’d like an apology and a retraction and a commitment to not say it again,” that was not met with immediate acceptance. Again bearing in mind he knew immediately or nearly immediately he’d made a mistake, why was that not met with acceptance? Why was that rejected?

Not only was that rejected, the defendant in this case, the Minister, wrote and said, “If the case proceeds, I will plead truth,” which, as any defamation experts watching will know, means, actually, at trial, the defendant will lead evidence to prove that what he said—and in relation to this it’s about rape—was correct and true.

Now it is important to define here what rape is, and what sexual assault is. The Crimes Act defines rape as:

Person A rapes person B if person A has sexual connection with person B, effected by the penetration of person B’s genitalia by person A’s penis without person B’s consent to the connection

So rape is non consensual penetration of someone’s genitalia by the person’s penis. This is what the former staffer was alleged to have done by The Speaker, and what The Speaker said he would prove is true in court.

The Speaker replied:

I have apologised for a mistake which I made. I shook the man’s hand in September. The paperwork was completed in December. But my mistake doesn’t erase the fact that there were serious allegations from staff members that had to be taken seriously. I have a duty of care to make sure that staff are safe. I believe in taking a victim-centred approach, and I want to be really careful about causing further distress for the three or more women who have suffered serious sexual assaults as a result of working here.

The Speaker has stated as a fact that the former staffer committed serious sexual assault. He doesn’t just say this is alleged. He states it as a fact, under parliamentary privilege.

Now sexual assault is not in the Crimes Act, but sexual violation and indecent assault is. Sexual violation has the same maximum penalty as rape. It is regarded as non consensual penetrative sex which is not rape. So it includes penetration with objects, fingers etc.

Now the former staffer has said that the complaints about him were unwanted hugs. We of course don’t know what the complainants have alleged, but if this is correct then calling that sexual violation is just as defamatory as calling it rape.

Possibly the Speaker meant indecent assault. The Community Law Centre states it as:

If someone intentionally touches your penis, vagina or anus with their fingers or hands, this could be a different crime called “indecent assault”.

The Rape Prevention Trust states:

Indecent Assault covers all other sexual stuff that may not include penetration such as unwanted sexual touching or flashing. Indecent Assault is defined as “the doing on the person of an indecent act that, without the person’s consent, would be an indecent assault of the person”. 

Now it is possible an unwanted hug could be viewed as indecent assault, especially depending on where it occurred. It would have to be regarded as sexual touching.

But the Speaker labelled it as serious sexual assault. That suggests not some fleeting unwanted contact, but an indecent assault at the more serious end of the scale.

If the former staffer is correct about the allegations are about unwanted hugs (and of course it might be more than that), then labelling what he did as serious sexual assault is also defamatory, if not done under parliamentary privilege.

That is not to say that unwanted hugs or contact isn’t an issue an employer should take seriously and stop. Those who complained should have an employer who makes them feel safe at work.

The issue is whether it helps to have the employer label it initially as rape and then as serious sexual assault.

Of course the courts should be the finders of fact in this case, not allegations under parliamentary privilege.

Stuff reports:

A Hawke’s Bay man is calling for an offensive number-plate series to be removed from circulation after he received one for his new car.

Earlier this year, James Crow and his family needed a new plate for a recently purchased car so went along to collect it.

They were shocked when they found the first three letters on the number plate were “NGR”.

“We arrived at the AA Centre to receive it and as we drove in … my wife saw it first and said, ‘Oh my, we can’t have that on the front of our car’,” Crow told RNZ.

Have to laugh that a Jim Crow is complaining about a NGR number plate. He’s also a former Green candidate.

Being rather precious also. If I saw a number plate NGR187 I would not think of the N word.

You can in fact get personalised plates which are far closer to it such as NGGR, NIGR, I think those plates are getting rather edgy especially with no numbers. But NGR187 seems a stretch.

Stuff reports:

Trade Minister Damien O’Connor has warned a parliamentary debate on whether Beijing is committing genocide in Xinjiang would damage trade with China.

This makes Neville Chamberlain look strong.

The Government is saying that the NZ Parliament should not even be allowed to debate whether a genocide is occuring, because it might damage our trade.

It’s one thing to say you don’t think what is happening is genocide. There is a case for and against whether the treatment of Uighurs reaches the level of genocide. But to say that the NZ Parliament should not even debate it, due to trade concerns, kills off any idea of us having an independent foreign policy.

UPDATE: Labour has managed to water down the parliamentary motion from genocide to “possible human rights abuses”. Beijing will be very pleased.

Stuff reports:

Tenancy unions, maximum annual increases and a temporary rent freeze. These are some of the options the Green Party is looking at for rent controls.

We had a temporary rent freeze once – it was a disaster.

Why only freeze rents? Why not groceries? Petrol? Electricity?

Economists are generally but not uniformly opposed to rent controls, arguing they will reduce the overall supply of housing. An American survey of economists in 2012 found 95 per cent opposed them. 

This is what you call the science is settled. If 95% of climate scientists says greenhouse gases increase temperatures, then we regard the science as settled.

So if 95% of economists say rent controls are a bad idea and decrease housing supply, we should also regard the science as settled. Maybe we should call the Greens science deniers?

The April Roy Morgan poll is out. The party vote is:

• Labour 41.5% (-4% since last poll)
• National 29.5% (+6.5%)
• Green 13.5% (+1.5%)
• ACT 9.0% (-2%)
• Maori 2.5% (+1.5%)

A Parliament on this poll would be:

• Labour 52 (-13 from election)
• National 37 (+4)
• Green 17 (+7)
• ACT 11 (-1)
• Maori 3 (+1)

The Government would be Labour/Green with 69 seats out of 120.

Direction

• Right 62.5% (+1%)
• Wrong 26.5% (+0.5%)

Jane Bowron writes:

While this might sound mean spirited, the facts of who owns what, and how much they own, in this country had become increasingly apparent.

Research provided by Ramifier last year found that a 27.1 per cent of us own one home, 13.2 per cent own two homes, 10.7 per cent four to six, and 9.4 per cent more than 20 homes.

Whaaat? Yes, that’s right – more than 20 homes.

Common sense tells you this so called fact is nonsense. If 10% of New Zealanders owned 20 or more homes each, then there would be twice as many houses as New Zealanders!

There are around two million households in NZ. Let’s use Bowron’s so called facts and do some basic maths.

• 27% x 1 x 2 mil = 540,000
• 13% x 2 x 2 mil = 520,000
• 11% x 4 x 2 mil = 880,000
• 9% x 20 x 2 mil = 3,600,000
• Total = 5.54 million homes

I know her column is an opinion column but something asserted as a fact should be fact checked.

If one looks at the data she links to, it is something quite different. It does not say 10% of us own more than 20 homes. It says 10% of homes are owned by someone who has 20 or more homes.

On my Patreon I have made a case for National to ban leadership challenges in election years.

There has in fact only been one election year leadership challenge in the last 85 years, but the possibility of a challenge often results in endless negative stories and speculation.

So my proposal is Caucus has two years after an election to decide on the leadership, but once you get to the final 10 months or so before an election, it is time to implement your campaign strategy, not change the leadership.

In the Patreon article I give three reasons why a ban makes sense.

News.com.au reports:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has again lashed the misuse of social media and called out identity politics during a passionate speech at a dinner on Thursday night. …

On Thursday night, Mr Morrison told guests “social and moral corrosion” was “caused by the misuse of social media, and the abuse that occurs” on such platforms.

“I would say it also includes the growing tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics,” he said.

“We must never surrender the truth that the experience and value of every human being is unique and personal.

“You are more, we are more, individually, more than the things others try to identify us by, you by, in this age of identity politics.

“You are more than your gender, you are more than your race, you are more than your sexuality, you are more than your ethnicity, you are more than your religion, your language group, your age.”

Mr Morrison said all of these attributes contributed to the “incredible diversity” of Australian society, but they were not the essence of our humanity.

“When we reduce ourselves to a collection of attributes, or divide ourselves, even worse, on this basis, we can lose sight of who we actually are as individual human beings – in all our complexity, in all our wholeness and in all our wonder,” the Prime Minister said.

“Throughout history, we’ve seen what happens when people are defined solely by the group they belong to, or an attribute they have, or an identity they possess.”

He said the Jewish community understood that better than any other in the world.

Excellent speech. Identity politics reduces people to their group characteristics and is actually dehumanising.

Newsweek reports:

70-year-old man from Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to casting an illegal ballot for former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election and was sentenced to five years of probation on Friday.

Bruce Bartman, of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, admitted to casting the illegal vote in his dead mother’s name and told a court Friday that it was a “stupid mistake.”

The Republicans warned that dead people were voting, and they were right!

At the time of voting, his mother, Elizabeth Bartman, had been dead for 12 years, the Philly Voice reported.

Bartman also attempted to do the same for his deceased mother-in-law, Elizabeth Weihman, using her Social Security number. However, he did not cast a ballot for Weihman.

Why not do the grandparents also!

Bartman was one of three men in Pennsylvania accused of committing voter fraud by casting illegal ballots for Trump. Two others, Ralph Thurman of Chester County and Richard Lynn of Luzerne County, have criminal cases pending, according to the Inquirer.

Another 80,000 like that and Trump could have won the state!

We have been advocating for 10 years that every primary school teacher needs to have, at least, Level 2 NCEA Maths and Level 1 NCEA Science.

Here is a Labour government Minister telling NZ that our children/families are being screwed over because teachers (most of whom are well above $75k per annum) are “not confident” at the higher primary levels … which are, intellectually, the equivalent of teaching a dog to sit.

Please spread this far and wide. Heads should roll – the Minister, the Associate Minister, the $570,000 Secretary of Education (bet you can’t even guess their name) …

I have no more words – except to say that “teachers” are supposed to be the adults!

Stuff reports:

A dating app hookup turned into a nightmare for a man after a woman made dozens of false complaints about him to police and faked a pregnancy, with the help of a forged birth certificate.

The woman’s campaign of revenge included an email to a 10-year-old child intended to make the man look like a paedophile.

Nichola Watts, a 35-year-old caregiver, met A* on an online dating website in January 2019. They dated casually for a few months and he had no reason to be concerned about Watts’ behaviour.

But when he broke off the relationship in October 2019, everything changed.

No one likes being dumped, but hurt feelings is not an excuse for trying to destory someone’s life.

In November 2019, Watts went to the Christchurch South police station to make a formal complaint. In a sworn statement, she alleged A had assaulted her, that the bruises had been seen by her doctor and that she was sick due to her pregnancy.

Watts later told police she did not want to pursue the assault charge, but continued making dozens of complaints alleging that A was harassing her.

When she didn’t have any evidence of the harassment, she fabricated some. Watts created various different email addresses and Snapchat accounts using variations of A’s name, and used this to send herself threatening and abusive messages.

She sent emails to her employer to make it seem like A was sabotaging her employment. She sent emails to Oranga Tamariki to paint a picture of A ruining her home life. She sent emails to a 10-year-old child to portray A as a child sex offender. She even sent emails to police making it appear as if A was confessing to criminal harassment.

In total, Watts made 55 complaints to police.

That probably helped save him. If she had been smarter and only done a couple, they may have believed her. But 55 complaints screams deranged.

Watts was charged and later released on bail. In an effort to discourage any further false statements, a bail condition was imposed that she was not allowed to contact the police unless it was an emergency.

But Watts was not deterred. In January, she sent the investigating officer a text message pretending to be a third party who had knowledge of extensive offending by A, including sexual violations, stalking, computer hacking, intimidation, wilful damage, gang interference and cat theft.

This led to her being charged with breach of a protection order.

When Watts’ case was called in the Christchurch District Court on Tuesday, she refused to leave her holding cell to appear in the dock. Her lawyer, Colin Eason, told Judge Tom Gilbert she was having a panic attack.

Watts was allowed to appear in court via video-link to enter her pleas. She was convicted of six charges, including a representative charge of making a false statement, perverting the course of justice, and breach of a protection order.

Watts has been remanded in custody to a sentencing hearing in June.

If she breaches protection and court orders, it is appropriate she is held in jail to protect her victim.

Ultimately she obviously needs psychiatric assistance. I hope she gets it.

Newshub reports:

National is accusing Labour of trying to sneak through a divisive plan to set up separate systems for Māori at all levels – including in Parliament.

Party leader Judith Collins made the remarks in a speech to party members on Saturday in Auckland at the first of a series of regional conferences being held around the country.

Collins has doubled down on her opposition to the Government’s proposed Māori Health Authority. …

“The proposed Māori Health Authority will not only have the ability to commission its own work, but also the ability to veto decisions made by the government on general health.

“That is a veto power over $20 billion worth of government health spending.

This is what a lot of people don’t realise. It has veto over the entire health budget. An appointed body from one race will have the vet over $20 billion of health spending.

Collins acknowledged Māori suffer worse health outcomes, but said this would be best addressed by targeted programmes, like Whānau Ora, not structural change.

The fact there are unequal outcomes doesn’t mean that anything put up as a solution is a good idea.

She said National will not accept the implementation of separate entities “by stealth” and the Government’s plans are broader than just the health sector.

They could lead to separate education, justice and resource management systems based on a report called He Puapua which she described as a “divisive” document.

It also contemplates a separate Māori Parliament or upper house – able to veto any decision of the New Zealand Parliament, she said.

If anyone thinks this won’t be on the agenda one day, then just look at Maori seats on local authorities.

In the 1990s they were allowed for one Council, as they requested it. It was not meant to be generally available.

Then in the 2000s it got expanded to being available to all Councils, but with the ultimate decision being with ratepayers and residents (as should be the case with major electoral changes).

Then in 2021 they abolished the ability of residents and ratepayers to decide whether or not they wanted race based seats.

Inevitably in a few years, they will try and make them compulsory for all Councils. And already some advocate they should not be proportional to population but as a partnership, they should be 50%.

Stuff reports:

Auckland Transport is threatening to file a police report against the person responsible for spray-painting bright green penises around potholes.

Road safety campaigner Geoff Upson has been spray-painting around potholes since 2018, spending about $400 on spray paint each year.

The Kaukapakapa resident regularly spray-paints circles around potholes out of “sheer frustration” over seeing motorists navigating around them.

But it’s the roads in the worst condition that are reserved for his signature bright green penises, he said.

So he spray paints green penises around potholes to shame Auckland Transport into fixing them.

No wonder AT want him prosecuted!

On my Patreon I have written about why the conviction threshold for the proposed hate speech laws is of little comfort, as giving social media mobs a licence to sic the Police on you will have a huge chilling effect.

The issue will not be whether or not you are jailed for quoting the Bible, but the process of going through a Police investigation, Police interviews, hiring a lawyer etc. will have a huge chilling effect.

In the UK people have been convicted or arrested not only for making a statement of religious belief (same sex activity is sinful) but also an atheist was convicted for a cartoon showing the Pope with a condom on his finger!

Audrey Young rates the Ministers’ performance so far in the 2nd Ardern Ministry.

• 9/10 – Robertson, Little, Wood
• 8/10 – Ardern, Hipkins, Mahuta, Nash, Shaw
• 7/10 – Davis, Woods, Sepuloni, Parker, Faafoi, Henare, Verrall, Radhakrishnan
• 6/10 – Williams, Jackson, Clark, Whaitiri
• 5/10 – Tinetti, Sio, Twyford, Davidson
• 4/10 – O’Connor

I’d say the relative placements are about right even if I would disagree with some of the absolute scores.

Robertson, Little and Wood would be the strongest Ministers.