Jo Moir at Newsroom reports:

But with a caucus that has been overwhelmingly female in the past two Parliaments, MP and former Minister for Women, Julie Anne Genter, points out the model is now almost “limiting’’ women in leadership with a requirement that one be male.

It is. I have pointed this out for many years. Their quotas have actually worked against women and prevented them from having (for example) Sue Bradford as a co-leader years ago.

Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick sees value in change but she hasn’t made her own mind up about what that might look like.

“It could be a Te Tiriti-based model, or non-binary or trans, there’s so many options and some people are driving certain elements of that conversation,’’ she told Newsroom.

Good God. Please on please let the Greens have a leadership model that requires one co-leader to be non-binary!

Davidson is really interested in the upcoming debate about the leadership structure but stresses her comments are personal to her and are not designed to persuade party members in any way.

“The community and membership and supporters are starting to talk about reviewing that and whether it’s up with the times.

“I think there’s an overwhelming interrogation of the gender-stringent part of the leadership.’’

She says the Green Party has a “long-standing legacy of support’’ from people who “operate and want to live well outside the restrictive gender norms.

“My thinking is ‘let’s have a look at that’. Maybe the basis is’ let’s say there’s at least one female, do we need to dictate what the other gender is at all’?

This is what should worry James.

The best model would be of course to simply have no quotas and let the party decide which two individuals would be the best co-leaders. How they complement each other would be part of that.

But what Davidson is pushing is a quota system where there must be a female co-leader but not a male co-leader.

If that change goes, through Shaw should be worried. The quality of Green male MPs is not great, so not even the Greens would replace James with Ricardo. But would James survive a challenge from Chloe Swarbrick? I’m not sure he would.

Chloe can’t challenge Marama Davidson for the female co-leadership as a “white girl” trying to knock off a “Maori women” would be toxic to the Greens’ political correctness. But challenging Shaw is a very different matter, especially as large segments remain distrustful of him.

So the outcome of their constitutional discussions could be very significant.

James Shaw announced:

The Government is rolling out its plan for a carbon neutral public sector by 2025 by committing funding to a range of clean energy projects, including coal boiler replacements at ten schools, the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw announced today.

Schools, tertiary institutions, hospitals, and other government agencies will be supported to replace fossil fuel boilers with cleaner alternatives and improve the efficiency of buildings.

The projects will reduce carbon emissions by around 26,000 tonnes over the next 10 years, equivalent to taking over 1,000 cars off the road.

Wow 26,000 tonnes sounds a lot doesn’t it. It isn’t.

First of all it is over 10 years so on average it means 2,600 tonnes a year.

That is 2.6 kilotonnes.

In 2019 our gross emissions were 82,318 kt.

So the massive initiative that James Shaw is trumpeting won’t reduce NZ’s emissions by 3% or 0.3% or 0.03% but 0.003%.

Or think of it like this. Say you have one million of something and you need to reduce it to zero. This policy will reduce it by 31. Leaving in place 999,969.

Hooray we’re saved.

Don Brash writes:

The absurdity of the current situation is well illustrated by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, which is currently contemplating the creation of one or more Maori wards. The Council already employs one hapu advisory officer, three Maori partnership group members, 10 iwi representatives who control the Regional Planning Committee, and 12 Maori social services nominees on the Maori Committee – and two of the nine councillors (or 22% of the total) are already Maori! Why on Earth would the Council feel that Maori voices are not being heard and that Maori wards are necessary?

Its virtue signaling run amok.

Stuff reports:

Speaker Trevor Mallard has revived plans to upgrade the Parliamentary complex with several new buildings.

Parliament is currently struggling with over-crowding as Bowen House, a foreign-owned office tower it rents out, is seismically strengthened.

Bowen House should not be used for parliamentary purposes. It is not on the precinct (it is across the road) and it is privately owned. The parliamentary buildings should be on one site, and owned by Parliament.

Bowen House was only meant to be used for a few years in the 1990s while the Debating Chamber etc was renovated.

At the heart of Mallard’s proposal is a new nine-storey office block on top of what is currently Parliament’s car-park on Museum Street.

Also included is a three-storey block to replace the earthquake-prone Beehive Annex, and a future small two-storey building on Ballantrae Place.

Sounds sensible. The Beehive Annex is a death trap.

Newshub reports:

ACT Party leader David Seymour has compared the Labour Government to the Chinese Communist Party in social media posts critical of local government moves in Tauranga.

Tauranga City Council commissioners – installed by the Government after significant governance issues were last year found at the Council – on Monday voted to establish a Māori ward.

It is appalling that unelected Commissioners would decide by themselves to change the electoral system used for Tauranga by introducing a race based ward.

Reason reports:

Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand.

Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya’s question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus. He is now suing UVA for violating his First Amendment rights, and a judge recently ruled that his suit should proceed.

Go read the full article. It shows how repressive US campuses have become.

Once upon a time challenging the views of an academic would get you an A grade. Now it gets you banned.

Accenture have done a research note on the economics of news in NZ. Their summary is:

This is significant because Stuff and others all go on about how Google and Facebook have “stolen” their advertising revenue. But in fact they have lost that revenue to other NZ companies who have provided a better advertising service.

If NZ media really thought they were losing revenue through Google Search then they can simply set their news stories not to appear in Google.

Matt Doocey released:

Labour have stated that they will not be supporting my straightforward member’s bill to increase the maximum prison term for killing a police dog from 2 years to 5 years in a move that will baffle most New Zealanders, National MP Matt Doocey says.

The Ministry of Justice has advised that the proposed legislation remedies a discrepancy in New Zealand law: “we note that the proposed increase would bring the maximum term of imprisonment for killing a police dog into line with the existing maximum term of imprisonment for wilfully ill-treating an animal with the result that it dies, under s 28 of the Animal Welfare Act 1999.”

So you can get a longer jail term for killing a pet bunny than you can for killing a police dog in the line of duty.

And Labour will vote against changing this.

This is worse that I imagined.

A common assault has a one year maximum sentence. Labour wants people to spend up to three years in jail for speech crimes.

Including political belief in hate speech laws is a grave threat to free speech. There may be a case for laws against vilifying someone for immutable characteristics such as sex and age and disability but to extend that to religious and political belief is just staggering.

If you use insulting language against a political party, to the degree it is seen to be inciting hatred, then you could be jailed.

Could you imagine Winston Peters being able to complain to the Police everytime I attack NZ First?

It could also affect those on the left, who often demonise people for their political speech.

If a leftie calls the New Conservatives a bunch of bigots, then that could be seen as inciting hatred and they could face prosecution.

If someone attacks the ACT Party as hating poor people, then that could be inciting hatred on the basis of political opinion, and off to the Police.

Ridicule Destiny Church, and they could sic the Police on you.

You could even have the neo-nazis in Action Zealandia use these provisions to claim calling them neo-nazis is inciting hatred against them and this law would protect them.

I urge everyone to join and donate to the Free Speech Coalition to fight against this repressive law from a repressive party. Note that once this law is passed I won’t be able to call Labour repressive as that could be inciting hatred against them.

Duncan Garner writes:

It’s pretty clear to me New Zealand’s COVID-19 vaccination programme has some serious problems.

It’s a flop, it’s behind time, it’s tardy, it’s slow – in other words ‘it’s failing’.

There simply aren’t enough professional vaccinators and in many ways the robustness and capability of our health workforce has been found out. 

To vaccinate the entire country we need to be doing 30,000 immunisations a day, seven days a week but we can’t and we haven’t.

We’re doing an underwhelming 5000 a day and at this rate, get this, it’ll take 5 years to vaccinate the country.

We don’t have a shortage of vaccines (for now). We don’t have a shortage of vaccinators (half are not working). What we are lacking is a Government that can co-ordinate and manage a mass vaccination programme of 30,000 a day.

The latest data from the MFE shows that greenhouse gas emissions once again increased under Labour despite the rhetoric from the PM. It’s almost as if just talking about it doesn’t reduce emissions. A good Emissions Trading Scheme will.

So gross emissions rose 8,237 kt under Bolger and Shipley. Under Helen Clark they rose 7,239 kt. Under Key and English they dropped 323 kt. And so far under Ardern they are up 2,036 kt in just two years.

Stuff reports:

Speaker Trevor Mallard has reprimanded Labour MPs for their treatment of National Party MP Chris Bishop, after a testy parliamentary hearing about issues at managed isolation facilities.

At a meeting of the Health Select Committee on Wednesday, Labour MPs routinely frustrated Bishop’s attempts to question officials on a failure to ensure Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) staff were getting fortnightly surveillance tests.

In the House on Thursday, Mallard said he had watched a recording of the committee and the ability for the Opposition to ask questions was “not in compliance in the spirit” with parliamentary rules.

Because of this, Mallard said Bishop could have an additional four supplementary questions to pursue the issue with Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins in the House – effectively punishing Labour.

This is exceptionally rare, if not unique.

I can’t recall another occasion where the Speaker has basically punished the Government for the actions of their backbench MPs in a select committee.

But this seems justified. The Labour MPs were doing everything they could to stop Opposition MPs from actually questioning officials in a meaningful way.

“From my perspective, there was not adequate time for the Opposition to ask questions at that time. This was the first opportunity, from my perspective, to at least partially remedy that,” Mallard said to reporters afterward.

“It’s a clear indication to select committee chairs that it is the job to provide the opportunity for officials to be held to account. That did not appear to occur yesterday.”

Again a good call from the Speaker.

I’ve referred to in the past of the huge survey Pew did in 2012 of almost 32,000 Muslims in around 40 countries. I’ve blogged some of their published findings.

What I didn’t realise was their entire dataset was available for download, allowing me to get the full data.

I’m blogging some of the results here to highlight both that there are big differences in views between Muslims (ie not a homogenous group), but also some concerning minority views.

• 34% think Islamic political parties are better than other parties, 16% think they are worse and 38% much the same
• 55% think religious leaders should have some or much influence in political matters and 39% think not much or none
• 81% think you have to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values
• 46% believe in evolution and 40% think humans have existed since beginning of time
• 59% identify as Sunni, 10% as Shia and 25% as “Just as Muslim”.
• Only 27% attend mosque more than once a week. 46% attend just a few times a year or never
• Only 21% would be comfortable with their son marrying a Christian’
• 91% believe in heaven and 86% believe in hell
• 35% believe Jesus will return to Earth during their lifetime to initiate the Day of Judgement
• 96% mostly or completely agree Muslims have a duty to try and convert others to Islam
• 20% think it is sometimes or often justified to kill a man who has premarital sex or adultery to protect family honour
• 24% think it is sometimes or often justified to kill a woman who has premarital sex or adultery to protect family honour
• 43% think it is sometimes or often justified to kill a man who has dishonoured his family
• 48% think it is sometimes or often justified to kill a woman who has dishonoured his family
• Only 8% have made a pilgrimage to Mecca
• 75% support blasphemy laws
• 39% say a wife should not be able to divorce their husband
• 80% agree mostly or completely that a wife must always obey her husband
• 48% think sharia law should apply to non-Muslims in their country
• 33% say polygamy is morally acceptable
• 85% say pre-marital sex is morally wrong
• 86% say homosexual behaviour is morally wrong
• 56% of Muslims are concerned about extremist religious groups. Of that 56%, 48% are mostly concerned about Muslim extremist groups, 13% mostly Christian extremist groups and 33% both
• 16% think suicide bombings are sometimes or often justified
• 35% favour the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion
• 45% favour stoning people who commit adultery
• 99% of Muslims who are married, are married to a Muslim

I found it interesting that 25% of Muslims don’t identify as Shia or Sunni. Media often report it as if every Muslim is one or the other.

There are very few issues which get over 90% agreement. Only a belief in heaven, a duty to convert and marrying within the faith. Good to see a high level of concern over extremism.

It is concerning to see such high levels of support for killing apostates or adulterers.

In the US, the views of American Muslims are more moderate . Some data from a 2017 Pew survey:

• Only 42% pray five times a day
• 82% concerned about extremist Muslims (in fact US Muslims more concerned about Islamic extremism that other US citizens)
• Only 12% say violence against civilians can be justified to further a cause (US Muslims more likely than non Muslims to say violence is never justified(
• 90% of US Muslims say they are proud to be American
• 52% say traditional understandings of Islam need to be reinterpreted in light of modern contexts
• 52% of US Muslims say homosexuality should be accepted by society (up from 27% a decade ago)

It is no surprise that US Muslims are more moderate than say Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan etc. What the US data shows is the views do change over time, just as they have with Christianity.

Stuff reports:

Critics who think the new passenger rail service between Hamilton and Auckland is a bit slow and ineffective have found an unlikely ally: Patrick Reynolds, a member on the board of the Government agency that bankrolled the service to the tune of nearly $80 million.

In a tweet, Reynolds said the service was the “worst of both worlds” and it is “[v]ery hard to see how it will attract much ridership”, until problems with the speed of the trains were fixed.

He is right. few people want to spend five hours a day commuting. The train service will almost inevitably get closed down in a year or two as so few people will use it, and the taxpayer will lose $100 million.

RNZ reports:

The Government’s move to make it mandatory for all testing of border workers to be recorded in a central register is being derided as months too late. …

Auckland University professor of medicine Des Gorman said it was ridiculous the register was not already mandatory.

“I, like most people, would be saying ‘oh, I’m very, very surprised that we’re having conversations about compulsory registers now’ – it’s April 2021. I would have thought this was something we would have nailed in March 2020.”

Better late than never I guess.

Stuff reports:

Energy Minister Megan Woods says an uptick in climate-heating gases from electricity and heat production proves the country must stop burning coal and gas to make electricity.

While most of the country’s power is clean, fossil fuels top up the grid during times when hydro lakes are low.

The ban of gas exploration has led to more coal being used. So it is the Government itself that has made things worse.

The renewable share of electricity has fallen under Labour:

• Sep 2017: 84.9%
• Sep 2018: 83.4%
• Sep 2019: 82.2%
• Sep 2020: 81.1%
• Dec 2020: 80.8%

And coal used in electricity has risen:

• Sep 2017: 943 GWh
• Sep 2018: 1,181 GWh
• Sep 2019: 2,314 GWh
• Sep 2020: 2,188 GWh
• Dec 2020: 2,170 GWh

So well done Labour. You have doubled coal use for electricity.

Headline 1:

Wellington City Council to explore plan for car-free CBD by 2025

Headline 2:

More than 1200 Wellington bus services cancelled during March

You know maybe if they got the buses to run on time, then people would drive into the CBD less often!

But the stupidity of talking about banning cars when the public transport system is failing in monumental.

Go work with the Regional Council to fix the buses, and then come back and talk about a car free CBD.

National has released a policy to get more houses built. They key aspect is:

$50,000 infrastructure grant would be provided to all local authorities (urban and rural) for every new dwelling they consent above their five-year historical average.

This aspect is crucial. It radically changes the incentives from Councils from less housing to more housing.

Councils generally don’t like new subdivisions and the like. Because it costs them money. They have to pay upfront for extending infrastructure and the income from extra rates only comes in over many decades. And even developer levies only go so far (and increase house prices).

By saying every extra dwelling (including apartments) that gets consented will get you $50,000, this will absolutely turn around the Council roadblocks. The NZ Initiative have done many reports on how you need to incentivise Councils to increase the supply of housing, or it will never happen.

So if a Council consents 1,000 more dwellings than their current average, that’s $50,000,000 in the ban for them. If they do 5,000 more dwellings that is $250 million.

Taxing landlords more will not increase the supply of housing. This policy will.

Great to see National coming out with serious policy. New Zealand needs it.

Derek Cheng reports:

A security guard who tested positive last week was previously last tested in November last year – six months ago – even though he is meant to be tested every fortnight.

The information has emerged during the health select committee this morning, when MBIE chief executive Carolyn Tremain said the last test in their system was November 20.

This should be astonishing, but it isn’t as we know how bad the management is. New Zealanders were promised that all frontline staff would be tested every two weeks and this guy hasn’t been tested five months, or 20 weeks.

National Party Covid-19 response spokesman Chris Bishop asked: “How many workers have missed tests they should have had in the border workforce?”

Tremain said she didn’t know.

So there could be hundreds.

Bishop said the committee hearing – where he was only able to ask two questions – was a joke, with a “20-minute lecture” about how Covid-19 is transmitted and an explanation of the end-to-end MIQ process.

He confirmed that he already knew that returnees spent 14 days in MIQ.

“The Opposition gets very few opportunities to question officials about the Covid response. To have that curtailed by, frankly, Government MPs asking patsy questions to make it easier for the officials is pretty depressing.”

Bishop was visibly frustrated during the committee hearing, and at the end tried to move a motion to have the session extended for an extra hour.

Committee chair Liz Craig then closed the public session without the motion being voted on.

This information only came about because Chris Bishop asked the right question. The public only knows becauses of the Opposition.

Labour is desperately trying to stop the public from knowing this information. So Labour MPs wasted around 75% of the time of the select committee by asking patsy questions which they are not even interested in. They are simply trying to block opposition MPs from asking useful questions.

Jo Moir is a press gallery reporter. Remember when the Government preaches kindness, they don’t really mean it. If they did, they would not instruct their MPs to block opposition questioning of key Covid-19 officials.

RNZ reports:

A bogus checkpoint run by the police to obtain details of euthanasia supporters was unlawful, the police watchdog has ruled.

About 50 vehicles were stopped at the checkpoint in Lower Hutt, seven of them containing people who had been at an Exit International meeting.

Police were investigating a possible suicide at the time, and were seeking evidence to support a prosecution of Exit International member Susan Austen for assisting with that.

Police later visited some of the people they had stopped, saying they were concerned about their welfare.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority spoke with some of those targeted by the police, who expressed their dismay at the visits.

This was disgraceful behaviour by the Police. The meeting was a legal meeting about a current political issue. The Police had no business stopping vehicles to try and find out who attened the meeting, let alone visiting them at home later.

The IPCA said police’s decision to visit people who had attended the Exit International meeting did not breach the Privacy Act.

However, Privacy Commissioner John Edwards initiated his own investigation into the incident in October 2016 and found the collection of information was unlawful, unfair and harmful.

Mr Edwards said he had received complaints from the individuals affected, who said the visits from police made them feel anxious and uncertain about their ability to speak freely.

The investigation was completed in July 2017 and found police actions breached principle four of the Privacy Act, which relates to how information can be collected.

“Police used an unlawful checkpoint to take advantage of the public’s trust in them and collect information from people who were not legally required to provide it,” Mr Edwards said.

“Police approached them after unlawfully collecting their information, and questioned them about a socially and politically sensitive subject. It is fair to say that the actions by the police officers caused those complainants harm.”

Police had apologised and deleted the information and Mr Edwards said that was an appropriate resolution to the privacy complaints.

How about they promise not to do it again?