Housing Minister Megan Woods will correct the record after misleading Parliament by telling National MP Nicola Willis to read-up on documents that haven’t been published.
Willis, National’s housing spokesperson, criticised the Government last week for producing a “one page back-of-the envelope” fact-sheet on its $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund.
Willis asked Dr Woods in Parliament why she had “failed to publish anything about how the fund will work beyond this one-sided piece of A4 paper”, given she has more than 2000 housing officials working for her.
Dr Woods said there was a “substantial body of work” behind the fund, which had been “proactively released”, and she suggested Willis read it.
Dr Woods said: “All the documents that sit behind this, in a substantial body of work that sits behind this work, have been proactively released. I suggest the member reads them, because she’s clearly confused.”
But it appears the Housing Minister was confused.
Her office confirmed to Newshub the documents she was referring to have not yet been released.
Not a good idea to accuse an MP of being confused when you don’t have your facts right.
Kerryn Mitchell promised the couple she had been harassing in 2012 that she would not stop.
A text message sent to the man who had a protection order against her said, “When is this going to end c…? When I’m dead.” …
A victim impact statement read out by Wellington District Court judge Ian Mill said it was psychological abuse that had gone on for 13 and a half years.
Mitchell was briefly in a relationship with the man, who got a protection order against her, then his now-wife was added to it in 2010.
Since then Mitchell has continued to text, leave voice messages, sending threatening mail and go to their home, breaching the protection order.
Some people take a while to get over being dumped, but 13 years is beyond obsessive.
She now has over 80 convictions for breaching, after being found guilty by a jury last week of five charges of breaching and three of attempting to breach.
She had previously been found guilty in 2019 of a breach and burglary after she had tried to open a locked door at their Wellington home.
No one should be able to breach a protection order 80 times. Protection orders sadly are almost toothless. I think what we need is a three strikes type regime where repeated breaches automatically get more severe consequences.
Doesn’t even have to be three strikes. Even 10 strikes would be better than the status quo. You could have the following:
Warning
Community Work
Supervision
Community Detention
Home Detention
Prison – 1 week
Prison – 1 month
Prison – 1 year
Prison – 2 years
Prison – 3 years
All I know is allowing someone to do 80 breaches of a protection order is a ssytem not working.
The victims have spent more than $60,000 on a security system aimed solely at Mitchell.
The Climate Change Commission has recommended that petrol car imports be banned within 15 years. We have listened to the many submissions from industry groups stating that such a policy could result in a car shortage in New Zealand as there may not be enough affordable electric cars in production by then to allow Kiwi households to make the transition.
To guarantee an emissions free future but protect hard working families, the Government has decided to invest in an initiative to produce affordable electric cars in New Zealand. We believe the Government can use economies of scale and cheap capital to manufacture affordable emission free cars.
Our target is to build one million electric cars over the next ten years. This will be done through recycling $4 billion of capital to produce the first 100,000 cars and then reinvesting the proceeds of sale in the next tranche.
This initiative will be called KiwiCar and will be the responsibility of Transport Minister Michael Wood and Environment Minister David Parker. Full details of the programme will be released in the Budget on 20 May 2021.
Frankly the Government would be better to invest $4 billion in Tesla stock than to try and compete with the motor industry by producing our own cars. I suspect this will end up a huge failure.
The long wait for light rail in Auckland continues.
Transport Minister Michael Wood has announced a new six-month consultation process to get the project moving, and says the Government will make decisions “at the end of the year”.
“I know some would have liked me to announce a shovel-ready project today, but I also want to be absolutely certain that the plan we move forward with is the right one,” Wood said on Wednesday.
The Government has tasked an ‘establishment unit’ with a six-month work programme, including working with Māori, engaging with Aucklanders, developing a business case, and providing cost estimates and financing options for light rail.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pledged during the 2017 election campaign that Labour would build light rail from downtown Auckland to the airport within a decade.
Labour had already promised to build light rail from Auckland CBD to Mt Roskill and Ardern said at the time it would be complete in four years, but more three years have passed and light rail is nowhere to be seen.
Everyone got excited about the announcement today and it was another Claytons announcement – where all they announced was yet another working group.
They promised in 2017 that by the end of 2021 they will have completely finished 13 kms of light rail to Mt Roskill. Now at best they will have made a decision in principle about what to do. Four years to simply decide a route!
Almost half of the families of those killed in the Pike River mine disaster are disputing a statement that they have “accepted” a Government decision to wind down re-entry efforts.
The Pike River Family Reference Group (FRG), which represents the families of 27 of the 29 killed and two survivors of the mine disaster met Pike River Recovery Agency leaders and minister responsible Andrew Little on Monday. Afterwards, the group released a statement that said they “accept, with heartbreak” the Government’s decision not to expand the drift recovery project.
My view remains it would be cheaper and better to have given each family $1.5 million rather than spend $50 million going further into a mine, that also beyond doubt won’t produce any evidence resulting in a conviction.
Bernie Monk, from one of the four families not represented by the group, said Little had broken promises he made to the families.
Little wrote before the 2017 general election, when National was still in power, that “promises to Pike families must be kept”, the mine was stable and it was possible to get the men out.
True he did say that. Just one of many broken promises.
Monk said he was “gutted”.
“They used us as an election promise to get into Government. Andrew Little stood on the steps of Parliament and supported us and now this is yet another broken promise to the families and the country.”
Of course they used the families. It was a cynical promise designed to achieve nothing but play on sympathy.
Leaders of several major Black-owned media companies including Byron Allen and Ice Cube are accusing General Motors CEO Mary Barra of being racist for what they described as her refusal to meet with them.
They are asking for an hour-long Zoom meeting with her or, in the alternative, her resignation.
So what exactly is it that they are so upset about?
The Black-owned media group wants GM to allocate at least 5% of its ad budget to Black-owned media companies, said Allen in an interview with the Free Press on Sunday.
Oh. So they don’t just want a meeting. They want 5% of GM’s advertising budget given to them because the rich owners of the companies are black.
The ad says “less than 0.5% goes to media companies owned” by African Americans, calling that “horrendous, considering that we as African Americans make up approximately 14% of the population in America and we spend billions buying your vehicles.”
Maybe GM spend money on media read and viewed by African Americans, rather than owned by them?
Allen said the men who signed the ad have known each other for years. For the past five years, they have been reaching out to Barra asking for a meeting to win more of GM’s advertising. But Barra does not respond, he said.
Why would you? If you want a share of an advertising spend you make your case based on who reads or views your material, not who owns the company. The former is marketing, the latter is extortion.
This time GM’s Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl responded indicating she would meet with them instead, Allen said. That was the final straw that prompted the group to compose the ad, which Allen said is currently running only in the Free Press.
If it was about marketing, not reputational blackmail, then you would want to meet the Chief Marketing Officer.
A woman convicted and fined for conducting a “relentless campaign” against her neighbours may have been acting in a way that reflected her cultural difference, a court has heard.
Napier woman Mary O’Neill was sentenced on Tuesday for four charges related to harassing a couple and their two young children who live next door.
This is the latest in multiple stories about this woman.
In Rotorua, acts intended to cause injury, and theft and related offences were the highest they have been. Sexual assault and related offences were equal-highest with 2019.
And in Tauranga, sexual assault and related offences, theft and related offences, and robbery, extortion and related offences were higher than they have been in the past five years.
This got me interested in which areas have had the largest increases in violent crimes (formally acts intended to cause injury). So I collated the data below.
Change
2020
2017
Bay of Plenty
52.7%
6,950
4,550
Waikato
47.4%
6,329
4,294
Central
35.5%
6,086
4,492
Northland
28.5%
2,432
1,893
Waitemata
28.3%
4,503
3,510
NZ
22.6%
61,423
50,105
Wellington
22.2%
6,982
5,712
Counties/Manukau
17.2%
9,577
8,169
Eastern
17.0%
5,214
4,458
Canterbury
11.6%
4,986
4,467
Tasman
0.3%
1,941
1,935
Auckland City
-0.5%
3,688
3,706
Southern
-6.3%
2,735
2,919
As you can see the Bay of Plenty has had the largest increase in violent crime with a staggering 53% increase since 2017. Close behind is the Waikato on 47%.
The Government could increase managed isolation by about an extra 3000 rooms making space to reunite families and bring home stranded Kiwis, but it’s choosing not to open them.
The MIQ system appears to be designed entirely for the ease of the bureaucracy, not for the ease of New Zealanders wanting to return home. Kiwis have to play lotto with the system hoping they get lucky and after refreshing 500 times find a spot. Some have to wait months and months until they can get a spot.
And there’s a fix to reunite them: about two dozen managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) hotels good to go – that’s around 3000 extra rooms.
Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi admits it could help ease the strain on the border.
“Of course we could,” he said, when asked if opening up a few more MIQ facilities could enable the Government to bring in more families.
Of course they could – but they’re not.
The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which is responsible for MIQ, says 55 facilities were originally deemed suitable. Just 32 are currently operating so that means 23 are available.
But it says the Government hasn’t asked to increase the network.
Because there is no benefit to the Government in doing so. The more facilities, the more work it takes to manage. So they prioritise their ease over Kiwis being able to return home.
Newshub can reveal yet more discord in the National Party, this time over fluoridation – in an extremely rare move, MPs voted down the leadership on a key health policy.
The Government has proposed making Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield responsible for fluoride in water to protect Kiwis and their kids’ teeth, rather than the region-by-region approach.
National’s leadership, Judith Collins and her deputy Dr Shane Reti wanted National to oppose the proposed changes, believing it to be an overreach. But the caucus disagreed and voted the leadership down.
The policy itself is not a biggie. Both Labour and National agree local Councils should no longer decide on fluoridation. The last National Government was moving towards having DHBs decide instead of Councils. Labour then said it would have the Ministry of Health decide.
I think either route would lead to universal fluoridation of community water supplies. I probably slightly favour Labour’s policy as it stops DHB elections becoming referenda on fluoride. Of course we should abolish DHb elections but that is a different issue.
So according to this story Collins and Reti wanted National to back its original policy, but the majority of caucus wanted to back Labour’s proposed law. The actual policy difference is not huge.
What is huge is the fact this has leaked.
National MPs have told Newshub this is incredibly rare and almost unheard of.
One National MP said it’s even rare to have these votes in caucus, and that it shows indecisiveness and lack of belief from Collins.
Another National MP says she’s confused about what Collins stands for. …
Remember, National’s caucus meetings are supposed to be top secret and impenetrable, but once against the caucus is leaking like a sieve.
For fuck’s sake. We’ve just had the review into the disaster of a 2020 election go around the country telling members that disunity and leaks were toxic to National’s brand, and some MPs are back at it. If they keep this up, Jacinda will be Prime Minister until Neve is old enough to vote.
UPDATE: While Tova definitely has a source, it is not necessarily someone who attended caucus, as some (not all) of the details are incorrect, which someone who attended caucus would know.
Just spoke to Judith who reiterated she remains adamantly pro-fluoridation and has said so publicly many times. Judith has said on Twitter, and to me, that parts of the story are wrong.
This is nuts. There’s a reason so many cities have fluoridation. It works. https://t.co/hvWhVwmpWP
The Government is concerned about the perception that its new housing policy will raise rents, according to an email from the Beehive which was accidentally sent to Stuff.
They are not worried about whether it will increase rents, just that people may think it does!
Campbell sought advice on six topics:
“Can we get a table rent increases year on year since been in Govt year on year compared to increase in wages and house prices [sic].
“My understanding rents have been in line with average wage growth and obviously a lot less than house price growth,” Campbell wrote.
Rents have been increasing far quicker than wages as reported below:
Rent data is notoriously difficult to collect. It’s difficult to get data on the small increases in rent landlords put onto existing tenants. The main Government measure only captures a snapshot because it records rent when a new bond is lodged. This means it doesn’t capture when a landlord puts up the rent.
Under National, the national median rent went up from $290 a week at the end of 2008 to $400 in September 2017. The national median rent is now $495 a week.
So the median rent went up $110 over nine years of National and has gone up $95 after only three years of Labour. That’s a 24% increase over three years, and you can be sure wages did not go up 24%.
Wellington list MP Nicola Willis and several Wellington city councillors say they don’t feel safe in the central city, with police acknowledging the capital is “over-represented” in incidents of assault and disorder. …
Willis, a National Party MP, said she had spoken to many people in recent weeks who had reported seeing multiple incidents of intimidating behaviour, particularly around Te Aro Park on Manners St.
She blamed an “explosion” in emergency housing and a growing gang presence in the area, and said she would be calling a public meeting on possible solutions.
So Nicola, a young female MP said she doesn’t feel safe in Wellington City. What was the initial response of the local MP, Grant Robertson:
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson, the MP for Wellington Central, said he had no personal concerns about the safety of central city streets. “I spend a lot of time in Wellington central. It’s a very vibrant place, but we’ve always got to work together ot make it as safe as possible,” Robertson said.
So his first response is to say well he feels safe. Could you imagine the outrage if say a young female Labour MP had said she doesn’t feel safe on the streets and say Bill English had responded that he feels safe.
So obviously there is a problem. Is it related to gangs and emergency accommodation as Nicola said? Well yes according to the Police:
A rise in violence and disorder in Wellington’s CBD has been linked to gang members, some of whom are living in downtown emergency housing. …
Police cite a number of premises in the area are contributing to challenges at the park, including nearby emergency accommodation providers and liquor stores, Stuff understands.
Arthur Taylor says it is a problem:
Jailhouse lawyer and former inmate Arthur Taylor, who lived at a Manners St accommodation in May and June as an MSD client, called it a “recipe for crime”.
“It’s like baking a disaster, you have all the ingredients there for a disaster.”
During his stay, Taylor said he witnessed multiple drug deals in an alleyway behind the accommodation.
The accommodation was housing the most vulnerable, including people with serious mental issues, he said.
“Anyone with any common sense knows that you don’t concentrate all those problems in one area.
And an example of what people have seen:
Recently, he watched a woman in the park being dragged down the street by her hair and getting kicked in the head.
Wilson ran outside to help but froze, along with other bystanders attempting to intervene, put off by a man making threats to people, yelling “Black Power!” and “we will kill you”.
Wellington police have searched a central city motel used for emergency accommodation, seized drugs and stolen property. …
About 20 officers, including the Armed Offenders Squad, raided Harbour City Motor Inn on Webb St in Te Aro early on Wednesday morning. They uncovered methamphetamine, cannabis and stolen property, said Detective Senior Sergeant Warwick McKee.
So hard to dispute the linkage to gangs and emergency accomodation, but what did Grant next do, after saying well he felt safe. He wrote the following:
Violence and intimidation, especially against women is a scourge in our community that we are working to eliminate. The conflation of this with the provision of transitional and emergency housing and those that are needing that is in my view “dog whistle” politics.
So he attacked Nicola (without naming her), smearing her as practising dog whistle politics. All because she said exactly the same thing the Police have said, and numerous others have said.
Mayor Andy Foster said Wellington was not alone with the problems it was experiencing. …
“There has always been an issue with alcohol management which council, police and hospitality have to continually work on together. But clearly an increasing issue post-lockdown is an apparent increase in gang activity and from the emergency housing of a substantial number of people, often with issues,where it appears that they don’t have the necessary support.
So the Mayor says it is linked to gangs and emergency housing.
Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson, who had a representative attend Monday’s meeting, said he was committed to working with the groups to implement the initiatives.
“I will be taking these ideas to my colleagues in government to see what can be done to help address these issues.”
Currently, clients in emergency housing might not automatically qualify or receive the support services offered, Robertson told Stuff. “The feedback I am getting is that the support is provided, but we just have to make sure it’s there at the right time and place.”
And here Grant also implicitly acknowledges the link to emergency housing – after attacking Nicola for the same thing.
And note Nicola never called for those in emergency housing not to be housed, or to be moved. She correctly identified it was a partial cause of the lack of safety, and Nicola herself several times has expressed concern that those in emergency accomodation aren’t getting the support they need.
Grant Robertson should apologise to Nicola WIllis for his facebook page. A female MP should be able to raise issues of personal safety without having their motives attack and be accused of dog whistling by the local male MP.
Jacinda Ardern met with Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown in Auckland on Friday to discuss a potential date for the bubble.
Business and tourism experts were hoping they would announce a firm date somewhere in the next month or two for the bubble, which would boost tourism in the South Pacific nation, which has been decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Officials of both governments are committed to working towards ensuring all safety protocols and response capabilities are in place for the resumption of two-way quarantine free travel between the two countries within the first quarter of 2021.
The first quarter ends on Wednesday.
Hayden said businesses in the Cook Islands are desperate for the bubble. Their government has said the country is losing $1 million in revenue per day the border is closed – $57 per inhabitant.
Businesses are also losing valuable employees to New Zealand, where they have more work options.
But Hayden said it’s not sustainable and if New Zealand isn’t willing to commit to a travel bubble, they will look to establishing travel bubbles with other countries first, including Australia.
I started teaching in 1991. It is an incredibly frustrating system to be a part of – despite many, many good people being involved and some good intentions. The best analogy I can think of is that the system acts like a human with a pea sized brain, virtually no nervous system to communicate to the organs and limbs as well as being addicted to heroin and always looking for the next quick fix for political expediency.
It is back two years but I was incensed by the public statements and impression given through a NZ Initiative study.
“The initiative found that decile one and decile ten schools had about the same impact on their students’ NCEA and University Entrance results once family background was accounted for.
Dr Hartwich said the research showed family background, especially parents’ education, had a massive impact on student performance.”
And:
“All the talk that we’ve had in the last few years about a systemic crisis at the bottom of our education system in the lower deciles is simply not true.
The research shows that while lower-decile schools were less likely to produce students that achieve University Entrance, and high-decile schools more likely, once the students’ their socio-economic status was taken into account, the line was largely flat.”
A surface reading of those comments – and that is all that seems to have been given – seemed to say, “nothing to see here and nothing to do”. Shrug of the shoulders – yep -no difference between Decile 10 schools and Decile 1. Well, the NZ Initiative might think the schools are approximately the same but, and here’s the rub (a term only understood by graduates of schools that still do Shakespeare of course) the results are vastly different in individually and societally crippling ways.
Just one example from the very good website Education Counts shows; “students from higher decile schools are more likely to enrol in tertiary education. From the 2018 leaver cohort, 70.0% of school leavers from schools in decile 9 ad 10 enrolled in tertiary education in 2019. This compares with 48.3% of leavers from schools in decile 1 and 2.
Figure 8: Percentage of school leavers in tertiary education one year after leaving school by school2 leaving year by school decile (2013-2018)
“Students from lower decile schools are more likely to enrol in foundation courses, certificates and diplomas than students from higher decile schools. Based on the 2018 leaver cohort, 33.5% of leavers from schools in quintile 1 enrolled in tertiary education in Levels 1 to 7 (non-degree) and 14.8% enrolled in bachelors and above during 2019. In comparison, 17.3% of school leavers from quintile 5 enrolled in levels one to seven (non-degree) and 52.7% enrolled in bachelors and above during 2019.”
15% of school leavers from Decile 1 & 2 enrol in degrees and 53% from Deciles 9 & 10.
Dr Hartwich’s statement “the line was largely flat” in terms of school performance unintentionally did a massive disservice to decile 1 to 3 students. The line is no where near flat in terms of results!
Public education was implemented to help students overcome their family setting and history. It was invented (among other reasons) to provide upward mobility and equality of opportunity going into adulthood. To have come all this way and find out that schools’ results accurately reflect family background and do a superb job of maintaining status quo is a terrible result.
The bottom line: Decile 1 – 3 schools have to be significantly better than the rest and the results lines (e.g. for going into tertiary education) should match up regardless of family background. That IS the PURPOSE of State funded education and our nation should be desperate to attain it.
To achieve that the Decile 1 – 3 schools need massive help, they are trying damn hard already, and for the last 20 – 30 years there has been no sign of it. Here are key changes:
– there has to be a huge and well assisted parents as first teachers programme targeted into low socio-economic areas.
– the Primary and Secondary Collective contracts have to be split. With different pay and conditions for teachers working in low decile schools and an assurance of career pathway help after 3 – 5 years in those roles.
– each Decile 1 – 3 schools need a business manager and a Community Liaison manager in support of the Principal – who can then focus on academics.
– the schools need significant support around changing truancy, transience and parental engagement patterns.
– the Ministry of Education needs to be split and a highly motivated, highly qualified, innovative and communicative unit set up with their entire focus (and measured results) being around the effective assistance for decile 1 – 3 schools.
– these schools need to be funded in such a way that class size is 15 – 20 maximum.
– no consideration should be given to the return of Partnership (Charter) Schools. All it would do is give unions another excuse to do some bashing. Instead, we need a better designed Designated Character School system to provide differential delivery for those that need it.
– our entire education system must be geared towards ASPIRATION and having the world’s very best education for all not languishing as the world’s worst English-speaking nation. This requires some genuine inspirational leadership from our Minister (and Associate Ministers), and the Secretary of Education.
All of these changes – and more – are do-able with collective political will (i.e. including the teacher unions). We haven’t done it for the last 30 years and the consequences are more than obvious.
Within a decade these changes would have societal changes that can only be positive and a much larger proportion with be able to plot and walk their own path, keep out of trouble and maybe even buy a house.
The Government has been accused of working at a glacial pace on fixing Māori unemployment as an ongoing $50 million training scheme has created just four new Māori jobs in eight months.
Shit it takes a lot to make Kiwibuild look sucessful, but they’re managed it!
ACT’s housing spokesperson Brooke van Velden says Finance Minister Grant Robertson has “dropped another bombshell on property investors” after failing to rule out putting limits on how much landlords can hike rents.
A rent freeze would of course increase homelessness and has been described by a Swedish economist who chairs the Nobel Economics Prize Committee as “the best way to destroy a city, other than bombing.”
A Bay of Plenty woman who waited 16 hours with her elderly father to get treatment at Waikato Hospital says she was shocked to learn how overwhelmed the emergency department was.
The woman, who does not want to be identified, sought treatment for her father in January and waited in triage for hours to get help for what turned out to be a brain bleed.
She said he was fortunate enough to get a bed – many others were waiting on chairs for similar lengths of time.
In 2008 only 70% of ED patients were seen and processed within six hours.
National introduced a target of 95% of ED patients being seen within six hours and by 2014 they were at 94%.
Labour effectively abolished the health targets in 2017. They said they will consult on new targets, but three and a half years later they haven’t decided, so in the absence of meaningful targets you get worst results for patients. By September 2017 it had dropped to 84.8%. Next month we will get data for September and December 2020.
Same goes for cancer waiting times. National had 92.3% of cancer patients starting their first treatment within 62 days. Now the number is below 85%.
Prisoner numbers have dropped since Labour entered the Beehive. Corrections’ figures to December show a total population of 8528, well down from September 2017, when it stood at 10,470.
Unfortunately this just makes an accompanying surge in prisoner violence look even worse. Criminals are down, in prison, but crime is up.
