Newshub reports:

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care has been told to rein in its skyrocketing spending and now has to work with Treasury to get back on track.

Documents released to RNZ show operational spending has increased by more than 80 percent in this financial year.

It has asked for three emergency funding top-ups because it had blown the $56 million budget – meant to last another two years.

It will end up costing $100 million at least and will not actually achieve anything of substance. Think what you could have done with that $100 million if you spent it on actually making people’s lives better.

This article is the proverbial game changer and well worth a read and share. Here is a hint:

“Most importantly, he said, research has shown that the drugs are effective, helping 80% to 90% of patients who receive them to avoid hospitalization or worse.”

We should have this in barrel loads – at least for our vulnerable (high risk factor/Maori) and those in MIQ/MIQ workers.

It retains its efficacy with variants (which vaccines are not doing so well at) and is the pathway to international normality. New Zealanders will have to overtly demand the therapeutics as having them reduces reliance on government and control.

When Bill Maher gets it and is criticising the Left for their ignorance it is clear that things are about to move on. Will we be front or back to the change? Do we want problems or solutions?

Bill Maher – “Give it to me straight doc!”

Newshub reports:

Government minister David Parker says he’s sticking by his claims the border system is “damn-near perfect” even after revelations some workers aren’t being regularly tested.

Newshub on Thursday revealed a ground handler who recently quit her job hadn’t been tested in six months, saying neither her employer nor the Government did anything to enforce the rules – which require frontline workers to be tested every week or fortnight, depending on their role.

Last week MIQ joint head Megan Main told The AM Show there were possibly up to 74 workers who’d never been tested for the deadly virus.

In response, Parker said the border response to date had been “damn-near perfect” – a week later, standing by those words.

I guess compared to Kiwibuild and Auckland Light Rail, it is damn near perfect!

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been labelled the “West’s woke weak link” over her Government’s reluctance to sign joint Five Eyes statements criticising China.

Con Coughlin​, the defence editor of The Telegraph, a major UK newspaper, gave Ardern the title in response to Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta’s comments indicating a preference to look for “multilateral opportunities” to express interests, rather than utilising the power of Five Eyes.

The column is here. An extract:

The New Zealand Labour leader’s preference for cosying up to China’s communist rulers comes at a time when the consensus among the world’s leading democracies is that Beijing poses the greatest threat to their long-term well-being and prosperity.

It is for this reason that leaders of the other members of the Five Eyes alliance – Britain, the US, Canada and Australia – have been pressing for the group to issue a joint communique denouncing Beijing’s suppression of liberty in Hong Kong, as well as its repression of the Uighur Muslims.

What is happening to the Uighur Muslims is correctly described by the US as genocide. We should call it the same.

What is not in doubt is that, by seeking closer ties with Beijing, Ardern risks isolating her country from allies like neighbouring Australia, whose own trading relationship with Beijing has suffered heavily because of Canberra’s criticism of China’s attempts to cover up the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as its assault on Hong Kong.

We live in an age when, as US President Joe Biden has warned, countries that value democracy need to work together to counter the threat posed by authoritarian regimes like China. By choosing Beijing at the expense of her Five Eyes allies, Ardern risks eroding New Zealand’s credibility on the global political map.

I don’t think we need to use Five Eyes as the vehicle to condemn what China is doing in Xinjiang and in Hong Kong. But I do think we need to be far more vocal than we have been.

Dawkins is probably the most famous humanist in the world. His book The God Delusion was a best seller. He was awarded Humanist of the Year 24 years ago.

But he got cancelled because of a solitary tweet he made in April 2021:

That is all it takes to get cancelled nowadays.

And soon the Government will pass a law so people can try and get you jailed for such a tweet.

UPDATE: Two other recipients have done an excellent letter spelling out why the cancellation goes against everything that AHA claims it is for.

The Cabinet Paper revealed Labour is planning to increase the maximum penalty for so called “hate speech” from three months to three years. So how does this compare to other crimes. The following crimes all have a maximum sentence of less than three years, so Labour thinks speech crimes are worse than the following:

• Unlawful Assembly 1 year
• Rioting 2 years
• Forcible Entry 1 year
• Distribution of indecent material 2 years
• Indecent act in public place 2 years
• Criminal nuisance 1 year
• Misconduct of human remains 2 years
• Concealing dead body of child 2 years
• Assault on a child 2 years
• Assault by male on female 2 years
• Common assault 1 year
• Providing explosive to commit crime 2 years

The three year maximum penalty for hate speech will be the same as for infanticide!

Stuff reports:

Labour will vote against a proposed repeal of the Waka Jumping law, killing off any chances of removing the controversial law.

The Waka Jumping or ‘party hopping’ law allows parliamentary parties to remove their own MPs from Parliament in some circumstances, meaning party leaders and caucuses have the power not just to expel MPs from their own party, but from Parliament itself.

It was passed with much controversy last term after NZ First won agreement for it in the party’s coalition agreement with Labour. The Green Party, who have long opposed such laws, swallowed the “dead rat” and voted for the law – as the party believed it was bound to honour Labour’s obligation to NZ First.

This is a terrible law which allows party leaders to expel MPs from Parliament who disagree with them. Bad enough that Labour agreed to it as the price of Winston’s support, but even more shameful they are keeping it on.

Bob Jones drew my attention to the Roy Morgan readership data which has come out for 2020.

They show a stark difference between the two major daily newspapers. Here’s the change from 2019 for both:

• Print: Herald -17% Dom Post -27%
• Online Herald +10% Dom Post -12%
• Combined Herald +4% Dom Post -15%

It is no surprise print readership is down for both. But the Herald has grown its digital readership (despite a paywall) and impressively also overall readership.

The Dom Post has not just had a 27% drop in print readership but also a 12% drop in online which gives 15% overall.

I am not surprised by this. The Dom Post and Stuff has gone in the last year or two from a mildly centre left newspaper to a newspaper so woke and leftish that it is no surprise that readers have given up reading what has often become a daily lecture on how bad we all are.

They do have many good journalists and stories, but the overall tone is so offputting that the readers have deserted in droves.

A scientific poll done by Curia in mid 2020 found NZers regarded Stuff as the most left leaning new sites of the six major media outlets. What was interesting is both centre right and centre left voters said they thought Stuff was left leaning.

The Dom Post and Stuff have of course every right to be a woke left newspaper. They presumably think there is a market for people to be lectured daily on climate change and racism. And there is a market, but the Roy Morgan data shows it is a rapidly shrinking market,

Andrew Little announced:

• All 20 district health boards replaced with a new Crown entity, Health New Zealand, which will be responsible for running hospitals and commissioning primary and community health services. It will have four regional divisions.
• Responsibility for public health issues will rest with a new Public Health Authority, and a new Māori Health Authority will monitor the state of Māori health and have the ability to commission services directly.

Overall this is a very bold (even brave) reform which will significantly improve the status quo, if done well.

My brief take (will do more in depth analysis on Patreon) is:

• No more DHB elections is excellent. They actually decreased accountability by allowing central Government to blame local DHBS
• 20 DHBS was far too many. I supported reducing their numbers. I think overall having one entity responsible for running the hospitals is appropriate for a small country. We have only one Police force etc. The proposed Health New Zealand could reduce a huge amount of bureaucracy and provide for better health services around the country. There is a risk smaller areas could be overlooked, and that can be mitigated
• A dedicated Public Health Agency is probably better than having it in the Ministry of Health. But there is a risk of zealot capture here. A good Public Health Agency should be evidence based.
• The Maori Health Authority will probably achieve nothing, despite good intentions. I can’t think of any other sector where such an agency has led to improved outcomes for Maori. Improving outcomes requires getting involved at the whanau level, in my view.

So overall I think the reforms look promising, and kudos to Labour for commiting to them. But the big challenge is the quality of leadership in implementing them. Done badly and it could be a disaster. Andrew Little is one of their more capable Ministers but he will be tested by trying to maintain services at the same time as huge structural change. The person picked to head up Health NZ will be critical to its success and possibly have the hardest job in the public sector.

South Auckland Middle School, Year 7 – 10, was established as a Partnership (Charter School) in 2014. It was started with 5 months’ notice from the Minister and, at the time, no property, no staff, no equipment and no students. The overall start-up fund was approximately 7% of a State School start-up for a similar number of students. It is only allowed 180 students (who go through a police ballot to get in) and has 100 students on the waitlist each year.

Middle School West Auckland was established in a similar manner a year later but was only given 4% of an equivalent State start up because the Ministry told us they had made a mistake and given SAMS too much (7%). Therefore, a bigger school (MSWA can go up 240 and is currently near 200) got less.

We were able to employ an extraordinary staff and used a model based on our Mt Hobson Middle School the villa Education Trust’s private school).

– 15 per class

– 60 per Villa (mini-school)

– an academic morning (4 hours) and an Arts and activities based afternoon

– 32 fully cross-curricula projects get completed over 4 years – alongside core subjects of  English, Maths, Science, Tech, and Social Studies.

– the preparation we can create by having the students for four years in that way means they are getting great Year 11-13 results.

– we provided free uniform, stationery, and IT too so they can save a bit of money on the way.

The results were superb in terms of NCEA upon leaving us (credit to the high schools that allowed our kids to continue to fly), attendance very good, and moving between schools (a huge problem in low decile areas) negligible. Parents have become significantly more engaged with the learning of their children.

They were so good that the highly respected Cognition Education reported:

“In summary we find and conclude that in both schools, the management and staff are actively involved in continuous development, and the delivery, of a unique programme of teaching and learning which is based on a comprehensive ‘local’ curriculum that is aligned with the New Zealand Curriculum, and which provides for the personalised needs of priority learners ‘many of whom have been failed by the current education system.”

Labour dumped the model of course and we were forced to grovel and squeal to get the two schools re-opened at Designated Character Schools.

That left us with three challenges:

1) Maintaining the standards.

– Better than done. The metrics continue to improve both academically and socially.

2) Maintain the provision (class-size and form of the model) even though no longer bulk funded.

– Done through the skill of our team that oversees the finances. It simply shouldn’t be as hard as it is though as there is no educational down-side to the option of bulk-funding for schools. It has also meant that under the collective contract we have been forced to pay staff less and remove benefits such as health insurance.

3) Given that we provide all uniform, stationery, and IT to families that attend our schools they save up to $1,000 a year per child. With the very hard work the children are putting in they are also improving their future earning power and ability to contribute. Therefore, we have sought a bank or financial institution that would recognise all the good is happening here and come in to assist every child to open a back account, teach some financial literacy (even talk housing and kiwisaver) and assist us in improving the future of these children, their families, and our communities.

– Failed: I have now been trying to find a bank/institution for three years. I have even gone to the ones that have the newspaper articles telling the community about some great thing they have done for a child(ren).

Genuinely … help please? This is a good thing that should be happening. I am failing to make progress on it. We want all of these kids to have bank accounts and to leave us with $3,000 that they have worked with their family to save and give them a head-start. Any ideas and connections would be most appreciated.

Derek Chauvin has been found guilty of murdering George Flloyd.

It should stand as a reminder that police officers should be restrained in their use of force. What Chauvin did would be almost unthinkable in NZ. When someone is handcuffed and prone on the ground, you don’t need to stand on their neck, and certainly not for eight and a half minutes.

Chauvin’s ignoring of Floyd’s pleas he could not breath showed a lack of humanity. The least he should have done is stop and check he was alright. Not only did he not do that, he prevented others from assisting.

Whether his actions reached the threshold of murder or manslaughter beyond reasonable doubt was a matter for the jury. They heard all the evidence.

I thought a conviction for something was likely after the defence laid out its case. They arguably would have been better to not call their own experts, as their witnesses actually strengthened the prosecution case according to court watchers.

There have been many cases where US police officers have been charged with excessive force and a jury (or grand jury) has acquitted them. Just because there is a threat of riots if an office is acquitted doesn’t mean it influences the jury, if they take their oaths seriously. Again many other officers have been acquitted. This jury found Chauvin guilty because they believed his actions did unlawfully lead to the death of Floyd. His actions didn’t have to be the only factor, but had to be found to have contributed (ie would Floyd be dead if Chauvin had not aced as he did).

The Auditor-General has ruled:

In our view, the intent of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, and the intent of Ministers, was to establish a new appropriation that would provide authority for the purchase of the land at Ihumātao. However, because the Ministry did not seek the correct approvals, the expenditure was incurred without appropriation and without authority to use Imprest Supply. For these reasons, the payment is unlawful until validated by Parliament.

So the Ihumātao purchase was unlawful, or illegal. This is not a minor thing.

Ministers do not have authority to expend public money unless it obtains an approportion from Parliament. And the money must be spent in line with the appropriation. You can’t for example fund purchase of native trees from Vote Education.

The need for parliamentary approval to tax and spend dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215.

Treasury explicitly warned the Government that their proposed spending may be unlawful. But the Government failed to get an appropriation and spent the money anyway.

If you worked in a private company and spent $30 million without lawful authority, you’d be sacked at a minimum. Of course there will be no accountability here, especially as the PM insists the Government did nothing wrong.

Stuff reports:

Emergency housing has been described as dangerous and terrifying for some, with families mixed in with gang members and many places rife with crime and intimidation.

Official documents show ministers were warned about the “risks to public safety” in Rotorua a year ago, and that week-by-week motel accommodation is not so suitable for families, or those with high needs.

So what have Ministers done in the last 12 months? You’d expect action within weeks after such a warning wouldn’t you?

Alarming stories continue to emerge about what life is like for many, with a major concern that families with children are being housed near drug dealers and sex offenders, with no support anywhere in sight.

Welcome to the Government of kindness.

The owner of Hennessy’s Irish Bar in Rotorua, Reg Hennessey, says he’s seeing “crime, drugs getting sold openly on the street, gangsters, youth gangs” and while he supports those in genuine need being housed, there are “some horrible, horrible things going on out there”.

“When you walk past a motel on Fenton Street and you see Mongrel Mob colours hanging up in the windows, showing off so the whole world can see it, it doesn’t make me proud to belong to Rotorua anymore.”

Gangs used to at least live in their gang hqs. Now the Government is paying tens of thousands of dollars a week to house them all in motels and hotels!

Housing Minister Megan Woods told Morning Report the situation is “not acceptable”.

Woods says the government is aware of what is happening in emergency housing.

“This is the reality that we’re facing.”

She says she’s asked central government agencies to convene in Rotorua and work with iwi and those on the ground to come up with better options.

They’ve known for over a year, and all they have done is ask for a meeting!

The Herald reports:

An employer, whose staff routinely work in Auckland’s managed isolation facilities and hospitals, is expressing frustration at not being able to get her workers vaccinated.

After five weeks of unanswered emails and non-returned phone calls, the employer wants to highlight the impossible position businesses like hers are being put in by government agencies. …

Karen’s business sees her staff enter about 200 facilities per week across Auckland and Waikato, including MIQ facilities, hospitals, apartment buildings and industrial sites. …

“You have Jacinda on the TV saying this security company should have got people vaccinated, it’s their fault. Well hello, we’re trying,” Karen said.

So not only have some staff not been tested for six months, despite us being told they get tested every two weeks. We have entire frontline employers unable to vaccinate their staff, despite the Government saying it is mandatory!

Stuff reports:

A $25 million fund for student mental health announced in July 2020 is yet to spend a cent.

The zero-spend came after the Government cancelled a tender process and amid news it is set to spend tens of millions less than planned on its new frontline mental health service.

The Ministry of Health has blamed the wider under-spend on Covid-19, but the $25m was allocated in the midst of Covid-19 and explicitly sold as helping students through the pandemic.

This is example #24,638 of the Government being great at announcing things but crap at delivering them.

This is not reocket science.

A competent Minister should have competent staff who keep track of all the major announcements and say once a month make sure there is a status report as to progress.

The same goes with Covid-19. If you announce all frontline staff are being vaccinated every fortnight, then the Minister should be getting at least fortnightly reports on this.

This mental health fund was sold explicitly as helping people through Covid-19. Yet ten months later they’ve done nothing.

It’s understood there has been some disagreement between the Ministries of Health and Education over who was responsible for administering the money.

Again, this is what you have Ministers for. If bureaucrats are not making progress, the job of the Minister is to apply a blowtorch and make decisions. The relevant Ministers could have made a call six months ago about which agency should administer it.

Stuff reports:

It’s been a slow start for passenger numbers on the new Hamilton to Auckland train, with only a handful of commuters travelling on some of the trips.

Figures from Waikato Regional Council shows nearly 100 seats empty on every train after its inaugural journey on April 6.

The train, known as Te Huia, can seat up to 147 people.

On the second day of the service, April 7, 21 commuters travelled on the earliest train from Hamilton at 5.46 am, and 40 took the second train at 6.28 am.

A week later, figures from Tuesday, April 13 show 28 travellers took the earliest train, then 25 people at 6.28 am. Forty-eight people filled the train at Papakura back to Hamilton at 4.42 pm.

This is exactly what many predicted. Some trains have less than 10% of seats filled. What a waste of $100 million.

Stuff reports:

The man responsible for killing 51 Muslim worshippers at two Christchurch mosque attacks wants to challenge his strict jail conditions and terrorist status.

The Australian white supremacist is asking the court to review decisions made by the Department of Corrections about his prison conditions, and his designation as a “terrorist entity” under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

The judicial review will be heard at the High Court in Auckland on Thursday. He will be representing himself.

The gunman was in August jailed for life without parole for the murder of 51 people and attempted murder of 40 at Masjid An Nur and Linwood mosque on March 15, 2019.

He is the only person to be designated the status of terrorist in New Zealand.

Stuff understands he is fighting the restrictions he has during his life imprisonment, on human rights grounds.

Oh the poor diddums. He’s finding prison a bit hard. Maybe he should have thought of that before he decided to slaughter so many people.

Andrew McCarthy at National Review writes:

The Chauvin defense called its big witness Tuesday afternoon, retired federal and state law-enforcement officer Barry Brodd, an expert in police training and the use of force. Some of his testimony was preposterous — particularly the claim that if three police officers physically restrain a person prone on an asphalt street for over nine minutes, with his arms cuffed behind his back, with significant parts of the officers’ body weight pressing down on him, with an officer’s knees occasionally grinding into his neck and shoulders, and with his needing to press his face onto the street to try to shift into a breathing position, that is not a use of force, but merely a “control technique.”

Apart from that, the testimony was an overall disaster for the defense. The danger in presenting a defense case, especially in a prosecution that is so video-dependent, is that it allows the prosecutor, through leading questions on cross-examination, to walk witnesses through the video, explaining to the jury moment-by-moment exactly what the prosecution’s theory of the case is. If he does this skillfully, the prosecutor turns his “questioning” into the equivalent of a summation. …

The foundation of Chauvin’s defense is that he had reason to fear that Floyd would regain consciousness and begin resisting arrest again. Schleicher elicited from Brodd the explanation that there is a difference between a threat and a risk: Police may use force to counter a threat they perceive based on some affirmative act by a detainee; but they may not use force based on a mere risk that a detainee might pose a threat at some future point. Floyd was unconscious and non-responsive. By Brodd’s own stated guidelines, the possibility that Floyd could have regained consciousness and started fighting the police was a remote risk, not a realistic threat, when he was prone on the ground, cuffed behind the back, unconscious, and pulseless.

The objective of a defense case is supposed to be the creation of reasonable doubt, not the removal of all doubt.

It is worth noting National Review is a conservative site and the author is a former Assistant US Attorney who led the prosecution of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993. He is as far from liberal as you can get having called for Obama and Hillary Clinton to be impeached and defending Trump in his first impeachment trial.

So if he is saying the defence had a terrible day, I’d say a guilty verdict is looking likely.

Language not entirely safe for work, but he is one of the many who is sick and tried of those who feel the need to belittle individual success and put it all down to their group characteristics.