Many on the left push a stereotype that National MPs come from privileged backgrounds. This may have been true in the 1970s but more recently we had John Key who was raised by a solo mum and Paula Bennett who was a solo mum.

To add to those, an interesting maiden speech by Southland MP Joseph Mooney:

Those changes in the 1980s had a huge impact on many lives of people in the rural sector, with many farmers losing their farms or experiencing significant hardship. My stepfather worked on farms, but lost his job during that period and struggled to find more work. I recall my family going hungry during those times, and I remember days on end when we had no food to eat and going to the river to look for blackberries for food.

Tough times indeed,

For a variety of reasons, my younger brother and I chose to leave home when I was 11 and he was nine. We’d planned to travel from Hawke’s Bay to the goldfields in Central Otago, live in old mining huts, and make a living panning for gold. We managed to get to Wellington, but we were stymied by the Cook Strait, and ended up living for a bit over a week on the streets of Wellington, huddling together for warmth on cold, rainy nights in flax bushes, trying to figure out a way to get across that Cook Strait. Let me tell you that Wellington is a cold, hard place when you’re a child living on its streets.

Not sure what the full background is here, but if you’re living rough on the streets as an 11 year old, fair to say its not a privileged background.

I strongly believe that the narrative of hard work and self-responsibility being the surest path to success is vital for the future of our country. We all need to do our bit to grow the pie, rather than trying to divide it into ever-smaller pieces. I know from my life experience that if parents don’t have jobs, kids go hungry. So it is one of the key responsibilities of Government to create a policy framework that empowers businesses, that empowers employers, and that empowers employees.

I think few things are more important than ensuring children grow up in families where people have jobs.

Stuff reports:

The gang representative was in Wellington to protest the Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill, a prospective law being pushed by the National Party.

The bill has not been supported by Labour but crossed an initial vote in the House with the support of NZ First in the previous Government.

If successful, the bill would enable police to place a firearms prohibition on a person if they are a gang member, or have committed a domestic violence or serious offence in the past 10 years. If a person subject to such an order was found with a firearm, they could be imprisoned for up to 14 years, depending on the type of gun.

Hutchinson said the bill was “racist in its intent”, and “impinges on the customary Māori rights” to gather food and meet as iwi, hapu or whānau – as such gatherings take place at homes of legitimate firearms owners.

I never knew that gathering with firearms was a customary right. Must have missed that section of the Treaty.

Politico reports:

Long-simmering Democratic tensions over a lack of Asian American representation in President Joe Biden’s administration boiled over Tuesday when Sen. Tammy Duckworth vowed to block future Biden picks without a White House plan to tap more nominees of Asian American descent.

Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat and the first Thai American woman in Congress, said it was “unacceptable” that Biden has named no Asian American Cabinet secretaries and vowed to oppose nominees on the floor “until they figure this out.”

Biden has the most diverse Cabinet in the history of the US, but even that isn’t enough for the diversity police who insist every conceivable demographic must be included.

Duckworth told reporters that a Monday evening call between Senate Democrats and Biden aides was the “trigger” for her holdup plans. After she asked about Asian American representation in the Biden administration, Duckworth recalled, White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon made a reference to Vice President Kamala Harris’ South Asian American heritage that the senator called “incredibly insulting.”

How is it insulting to point out the Vice-President is an Asian-American?

Biden’s Cabinet has the following:

• White Men 6 (29% vs 30% of pop)
• White Women 5 (24% vs 30% of pop)
• Black Women 3 (14% vs 6% of pop)
• Hispanic Men 3 (14% vs 9% of pop)
• Black Men 2 (10% vs 6% of pop)
• Native American Woman 1 (5% vs 1% of pop)
• Asian American Woman 1 (5% vs 3% of pop)

But even this isn’t enough for the diversity police.

Christopher Luxon’s maiden speech is here. I’m highlighting it because he made some very important points.

It seems it has become acceptable to stereotype those who have a Christian faith in public life as being extreme; so I will say a little about my Christian faith. It has anchored me, given my life purpose, and shaped my values, and it puts me in the context of something bigger than myself. My faith has a strong influence on who I am and how I relate to people. I see Jesus showing compassion, tolerance, and care for others. He doesn’t judge, discriminate, or reject people; he loves unconditionally.

Through history, we have seen Christians making a huge difference by entering public life. Christian abolitionists fought against slavery; others educated the poor and challenged the rich to share their wealth and help others less fortunate. The world is a better place for Christians like William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, and Kate Sheppard contributing to public life.

My faith is personal to me. It is not in itself a political agenda. I believe no religion should dictate to the State, and no politician should use the political platform they have to force their beliefs on others. As MPs, we serve the common cause of all New Zealanders; not one religion, not one group, not one interest. A person should not be elected because of their faith, nor should they be rejected because of it. Democracy thrives on diverse thinking and different world views.

Some on the left have been smearing Luxon for over a year because he is a Christian. Great to see him defend Christianity, but also point out that you can have faith based beliefs but not seek to force them on others.

In my time, Air New Zealand employed 12,500 people, and it represented a cross-section of New Zealand life. As CEO, I had the opportunity to get things done and demonstrate that a business could do well by doing good. For example, we decided that New Zealand’s shameful record on family violence was a workplace issue, not just a social issue, and so we introduced a three-week paid family violence leave policy for victims. The pay equity gap at Air New Zealand was reduced to zero, and we introduced a 26-week paid parental leave policy. Senior leadership team positions held by women went from 16 percent to 44 percent. We worked hard to grow career pathways and internships for young Māori and Pasifika. We worked hard to champion and mainstream te reo and tā moko. We earned Gender and Rainbow Tick certifications. 

Hardly the track record of a hard right conservative that the left try to p[aint Luxon as.

Air New Zealand was also a foundation member of the Climate Leaders Coalition, and 100 percent of our company car fleet became fully electric—and that was over five years ago.

Well Air NZ managed five years ago what Labour has failed miserably at. In 2017 they promised the entire Giovernment fleet would be electric by 2025. We’re almost half way there and they’re at 1.02% of their goal!

We are underpowered because our economy for the last 30 years has been suffering a productivity disease. Economic growth has largely been driven by having more people in the country and more people working harder. We need to work smarter, not harder. We can do this, and we can do it by building and unleashing genuinely world-class export businesses, step-changing education and labour skills, and delivering infrastructure better. Improving productivity is the single biggest thing that we can do to raise our collective standard of living.

Productivity gains are vital and good to see an MP talk about this.

I believe in tackling inequality and working hard to find that balance between encouraging hard work and innovation while always ensuring there is social mobility and a safety net.

Social mobility, not inequality, is what we should focus on. There will always be income inequality as 18 year olds will earn less than 50 year olds. Those with no qualifications will on average earn less than than those with a degree etc. Social mobility is about allowing people to move up (and down) the income deciles, rather than trying to have a world with no income deciles.

Stuff reports:

Resale gains on units are a “significant chunk” of retirement village profits, financial analysts say, as debate heats up on whether residents should share in those.

The Retirement Village Residents Association is calling on retirement village owners to share some of these resale gains with residents or their estates when residents pass away or move into care.

Residents of retirement villages have made hundreds of submissions to the Retirement Commission backing its recommendation of a major revamp of retirement village legislation where one of the issues for debate is whether residents should share some of the resale gains.

Residents pay a cash lump sum to buy a licence to occupy a unit via an occupation rights agreement (ORA) and when they leave or pass away they or their estates get between 70 per cent to 80 per cent of that money back because village owners take 20 per cent to30 per cent in “deferred management fees” for costs in maintaining the unit.

Then the occupation right is resold to a new resident, usually at a higher price, and the village operator makes a gain on the resale.

Personally I think this is a smart business model. By making most of their money from the one-off licence fee, the retirement villages then keep the weekly fee low enough to be below the pension. This means that people can move in, and never worry about not being able to afford to stay on. Sure when they died they don’t get to enjoy a capital gain from the apartment they lived in, but as they are dead that is probably less of a concern to them than having their weekly outgoings kept low.

But if someone wants to set up a retirement village where there is a higher weekly fee, but residents’ estates share in the capital gain of the apartment, you can do so. Then see how many people prefer this model. I doubt few will, but there is no barrier to someone trying.

What shouldn’t happen is have a law passed dictating the model used. These are voluntary transactions.

Stuff reports:

Labour’s Hutt South MP Ginny Andersen has admitted that in 2017 she knew about a secretive rent deal that saw $4500 in taxpayer cash funnelled into the local Labour Party each year.

She’d previously said she only understood the deal after she “looked at it” ahead of the 2020 election, when she axed the arrangement, which was set up by the previous MP, now speaker of the House Trevor Mallard.

The deal worked through a subletting arrangement whereby the local Labour Party rented office space from the building’s owner, the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union, for $1500 a year. It then sublet that office to Andersen for her MP’s duties, for $6000.

Anderson had told TVNZ that she didn’t understand the deal until 2020. This means she must have been unaware of how much PS was paying Labour for her own office rent and/or she was unaware of how much Labour paid NZPFU for the rent.

When asked about the deal by TVNZ last Friday, Andersen said she didn’t know about the deal initially, suggesting she only discovered it when it was raised by Stuff in 2020.

“I was never aware of it initially, but when it was brought out just before the last election, I decided that wasn’t transparent enough,” Andersen said.

“After the intense scrutiny raised by [National MP] Chris Bishop just before the last election, I looked at it, understood what was going on, and decided that it would be much more transparent to see that it was going straight from Parliamentary Service to the existing landlord,” she told TVNZ.

So she very clearly said she didn’t know about it until 2020.

Stuff presented her with multiple documents that suggested she’d been aware of the details of the agreement during most of the last Parliamentary term.

These documents include AGM minutes from Andersen’s electorate, where the deal was discussed in her presence as early as 2019; annual accounts which were emailed to Andersen which show the financial records behind the deal; and even an email sent to Andersen and others in which she asked for a copy of the rental agreements, suggesting that she or people she worked with were in possession of them.

Stuff has also obtained an email to Andersen with a screenshot of Hutt South Labour’s bank account which was sent to Andersen in June 2019 to prove the rent had been paid.

Pants on fire.

The Taxpayers’ Union’s campaign to force Speaker Mallard to pay back the $333,000+ bill he put on taxpayers to fund the legal costs is suddenly more relevant.  It seems that after Trevor Mallard has admitted he know the claim to be wrong he asserted to the victim that it was true anyway – saying that he would turn any resulting court case into a case about his (i.e. the victim’s) reputation.

We’ve put together this full page advert and wants to run it full page across the country.  Click here to chip-in to the fundraiser to make it happen.

UPDATE: Timeline

Our staff have put together this helpful timeline (click for larger image). Maybe we should work this into the ad?

A guest post by Darroch Ball of the Sensible Sentencing Trust:

Someone needs to stand up for our police force in the face of unbelievable allegations that they are racist.

The Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon has called police racist in response to the accusations that the tv show Police Ten/Seven was itself racist.  Apparently, the show “feeds racial stereotypes” by showing more Maori and Pacific people being arrested.  It is hard to describe just how lazy that logic is.

Just because there is an over-representation of one race in crime and arrest statistics doesn’t automatically mean that the system is racist.  In fact, it is quite dishonest to have a one-dimensional glance at the statistics and come to that sort of conclusion.

Using the logic that Meng Foon and other ‘wokesters’ have the Police are clearly sexist too.  How could they not be? Just look at the stats – 94% of all prisoners are male.  The vast majority of those who are featured on Police Ten/Seven are male.  With the New Zealand male population being just 49% this surely clearly shows “systemic sexism” in the justice system.  That is the logic of the intellectually bereft.  The reality is that just perhaps it’s because males happen to have committed the crimes for which they are arrested, sentenced, and imprisoned. 

Perhaps the problem that the likes of Meng Foon have is that the truth is too hard to swallow and the images they are seeing at the frontline are what police officers face every day.  It is one thing for a throwaway line about racism to be topic of the day, but to start talking about racial quotas for police to adhere to is just dangerous.  It is dangerous both for the safety of our community, and because it can only end up leading down a pathway of unwillingness to deal with reality.  If we continue to accept that the entire reason why we have overrepresentation of Maori and Pacific people in our justice system is because the system is racist, we will never be able to address any of the true underlying reasons why that is.  Not showing certain faces on a tv show, specifically having police not arrest certain people, or having certain people not go through court, or receive certain sentences, or be imprisoned, might make the stats look better but will not solve the problem.

For anybody to accuse the men and women on the frontline as being racist, both individually and as a collective, is as lazy as it is outrageous.  I personally know frontline officers and the accusation that seems to be freely thrown around unchecked is simply insulting and not true. 

There is no doubt there is overrepresentation of Maori and Pacific people in our crime statistics.  There are a multitude of reasons for that overrepresentation – least of which is that the system is racist. 

There is one definite bias that Police exhibit and one specific type of person that they purposefully target – people who commit crime.  If we continue to weaken the ability, authority, and morale of Police by continually accusing them of being bias, it will simply lead to a more unsafe community.

Are there some individual police officers bias? Probably.  But not the collective, not the system, and not the law.   If people want to stop being arrested, they need to stop committing crime. 

We should double the budget for the Police Ten/Seven show.  Let’s see more of what our communities are truly like and what the police have to deal with – whether we like what it looks like or not.  Then maybe we can have an honest go at addressing what it is that is wrong. 

d

Let’s look at the details of the Government’s announcement today to see how they are either insignificant or will backfire. The Herald reports:

The First Home Grant is assistance of up to $5000 to buy an existing property or up to $10,000 for a new property.

The median house price has increased by $145,000 in the last 12 months. A $5,000 or $10,000 subsidy is pissing into the wind.

Today the Government announced that these income caps will be lifted from $85,000 to $95,000 for single buyers, and from $130,000 to $150,000 for two or more buyers. The changes to the house price and income caps will take effect on 1 April 2021

So a few thousand more people will be eligible for a subsidy that will be worth around 3% to 6% of the increase in house prices in the last year.

In Auckland, these caps will be lifted from $650,000 to $700,000 for new builds and from $600,000 to $625,000 for existing homes.

In Wellington, Hutt City, Upper Hutt City, Porirua they will be lifted from $550,000 to $650,000 for new builds and from $500,000 to $550,000 for existing homes.

Farcical. Prices have gone up $145,000 and the caps are going up $25,000 to $50,000 for existing houses.

There are basically no existing houses for sale for under $550,000 in Wellington. The median price in even Porirua is almost $1 million.

These changes are meaningless.

The Government has announced it intends to extend the bright-line period to 10 years for residential property except for newly-built houses, which will stay at five years.

This means Grant Roberston has broken his word. Before the election:

When asked by Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan if Labour would make any changes to the bright-line test if it was re-elected, Robertson said no.

When pressed on the rate or the years of the tax he again said no.

So now we know that you can’t trust the word of the Minister of Finance on tax, as just six months after he gave a commitment, they have done the opposite.

The impact of this change will be to decrease the number of houses available for sale as investors will ensure they keep them for ten years. So this will raise some revenue for the Government but also raise house prices.

Housing Minister Megan Woods said the new money for the housing acceleration fund – some $3.8b – will help greenlight tens of thousands of house builds in the short to medium term.

Hmmn. Spend a couple of billion and you get tens of thousands of houses in return. Where have we heard that before? Oh yes, Kiwibuild. Back then it was 100,000 houses for $2 billion. Now it is tens of thousands of houses for $3.8 billion.

They promised 100,000 houses by 2028 and so far they have managed 811 or not even 1% after three years.

Meanwhile, the Government will get rid of the interest deductibility loophole – a rule which allows property owners to claim interest on loans used for residential properties as an expense against their income from those properties.

First of all it is not a fucking loophole. Any journalist who calls it a loophole should be ashamed.

Claiming business costs vs business income is a fundamental part of the tax code. What the Government is doing is not closing a loophole. They are making an exception to a normal tax rule.

And what will be the impact of landlords not able to claim mortgage costs against their rental income? Well they’ll need more income, so will increase rents. Rents go up, and homelessness increases. So their policy is to make more people homeless and make it more expensive to rent, in return for more revenue for the Crown.

So what have others said. The TOP Leader, Shai Navot commented:

“What is more likely is rents will rise so landlords can make the same returns they were making before these tax changes. Or they will choose to sell, and the supply of rentals will reduce even further. However you slice this, renters will be the real losers in these policy changes.

Michael Reddell points out there is nothing in there to fix the real problem – supply of land.

If the Government was serious about reducing house prices as opposed to increasing tax revenue, they would be freeing up the land, starting in Auckland. It was in fact their policy in 2017, but they never did it.

I’ve gone through the Beehive website and have counted up the number of releases and speeches made by each Minister since the last election five months ago. So in around 20 weeks, how many releases and speeches has each Minister managed, with the assistance of their advisors, researchers, press secretaries etc.

The laziest Minister is Marama Davidson who has not managed a single release in five months of drawing a $300,000 remuneration package. A close runner up is Meka Whaitiri who has done one solitary release.

Stuff reports:

The Government will announce the date that the trans-Tasman bubble will open on April 6, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

The media fall for it everytime. The Government says they are making an announcement and the media go into overdrive hyping it up, and then it turns out to be a non-announcement.

Stuff reports:

Police staff were allowed to take over public car parks outside their national headquarters in Wellington after claiming their essential staff felt too unsafe to walk to their cars at night.

If only there were some sort of government agency whose job it was to keep the street safe so law abiding citizens can feel safe when out walking.

Stuff reports:

The National Party wants a stronger debate over whether new laws breach New Zealand’s Bill of Rights, saying that the Government’s own vetting of new legislation is lacking.

Shadow Attorney-General Chris Penk said that the Government’s vetting of new laws like the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill, hadn’t identified rights breaches when it should have done. An alternative view from the opposition is needed, he said.

This is an excellent idea.

The quality of BORA reports can vary greatly. The most infamous was around the Electoral Finance Bill in Clark’s third term. The BORA report said there was no inconsistency with the Bill of Rights Act even though the EFB would have required anyone spending even $1 on expressing a political view in election year to sign a statutory declaration.

So the Government’s BORA reports are not infallible. They are an opinion.

He might not get very far. Tabling a section 7 report would require no objection from other MPs, but Parker has said he’d object to alternative reports being given an airing in Parliament.

“Section 7 reports under the Bill of Rights Act are carefully and independently done in an apolitical way by Ministry of Justice officials, unless they’ve got a conflict in which case it’s down by Crown Law, and then I table their advice,” Parker said.

That is not correct. The Attorney-General can (and past ones have) write the S7 reports themselves. The reports are in the name of the AG, who is both a law officer and a politician.

Penk’s first report looks at the Government’s Sexual Violence Legislation Bill, which is meant to change the way sexual violence is dealt with in the courts, particularly by tightening what sort of evidence is permissible in sexual assault trials.

While Parker’s report on the Bill concluded that it was consistent with the Bill of Rights, Penk concluded that it unjustifiably breached rights guaranteeing a person accused of a crime a minimum standard of trial.

Having Parliament debate whether laws infringe our rights under the Bill of Rights Act is a good thing.

A very raw and real account of Todd Muller’s breakdown last year. I think it is very good for the community that someone who has been Leader of the Opposition can be so open about his mental health challenges, as he is far from alone out there.

Stuff reports:

Wellington City councillor Iona Pannett is concerned a climate change sceptic has been asked to speak to the council, describing his views as “dangerous”.

Councillor Sean Rush has invited University of Cambridge emeritus professor and Royal Academy of Engineering fellow Michael Kelly to address councillors on Thursday.

This is more authoritarian nonsense. First of all he is not a climate change sceptic in terms of the science.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Rpyal Academy of Engineering, the former Chief Science Advisor to a UK Govt Department and was in fact appointed by the Royal Society to investigate a scandal involving the Climate Research Unit (he cleared them of wrong-doing).

Rush said Kelly was “incredibly perceptive around the engineering challenges of decarbonisation”. Rush said Wellington needed to balance emissions reductions policies with adaptation measures, and move past “polarising” debate.

Kelly, who was born in Wellington but moved England in the 1970s. He is a trustee of the UK climate sceptics group Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group founded by climate change denier Nigel Lawson that lobbies against policies promoting alternatives to fossil fuels.

He returned to the Wellington temporarily in October to avoid Covid-19 and the Northern Hemisphere winter.

Kelly said he did not deny climate change was occurring, but believed it was futile to invest money in emissions reductions schemes because they would make almost no difference to emissions.

So again he is not a sceptic of the science. He argues that the cost of decarbonising will be greater than forecast and that the we need to do more adaptation as well as emissions reduction. This is an argument about policy and economics. Yet a City Councillor is trying to get him banned from even being able to speak to the Council.

Pannett said there were many ways to reduce emissions, including building cycleways and creating more sustainable homes.

She said Rush had a right to invite Kelly to make a submission, but there was a wider global issue of “how much space you give to climate sceptics and climate deniers”.

Except he is neither.

Seven other councillors – Nicola Young, Fleur Fitzsimons, Rebecca Matthews, Tamatha Paul, Jill Day, Diane Calvert, and Malcolm Sparrow – said they had no problem with Kelly being invited to talk.

Good. Crs not afraid of hearing from different viewpoints.

Stuff reports:

Last year deaths from ovarian cancer topped the number of women killed on our roads, yet people with the disease say it is an ignored crisis.

On Tuesday, a petition with more than 7000 signatures, calling for national diagnostic guidelines to be developed, better treatment options, as well as more government funding, was presented National Party MP Louise Upston on the steps of Parliament.

Those steps were smothered in 182 white crosses – the number of people who died last year of the disease.

Jane Ludemann, who co-organised the petition, was diagnosed in 2017.

“It took over two years for me to get my diagnosis and unfortunately the doctors think that my cancer’s not curable.”

She said the sector was woefully underfunded.

“At a government level we’re not funding anything, in regard to awareness, and most years we don’t fund any research. It’s one of our least-funded cancers in New Zealand.”

A recent survey by her charity Cure Our Ovarian Cancer, found 90 per cent of women could not name a single symptom of ovarian cancer before their diagnosis and most experienced significant difficulties in accessing the blood test and ultrasound required to find their cancer.

Education and awareness can save lives. That would be money well spent.

Stuff reports:

A fracas has broken out in Parliament over Green Party MP Marama Davidson​ accusing National’s Nicola Willis​ of sharing “racist and classist” concern about her own safety in Wellington.

Willis, who is the National Party’s housing spokeswoman, had earlier in the week told reporters she no longer felt safe in central Wellington, as an “explosion” of emergency housing had led to a growing gang presence in the city centre.

Davidson, the associate minister for housing responsible for homelessness, took issue with Willis’ comments and said on Twitter: “We need to be mindful of the racist and classist understones [sic] that she is running her ‘safety’ narrative on.”

The only person who has mentioned race is Davidson. Pretty disgusting to attack a woman who says she feel unsafe, by effectively calling her a racist.

Willis confronted Davidson about the allegation in the House on Thursday afternoon, and questioned why the minister had not taken a paper to Cabinet or issued a press release during nearly five months in the job.

Five months and not a single press release!

Outside the House, Davidson told reporters she stood by her comment – but when questioned about what she had achieved as minister she abruptly left the press stand-up mid-question.

Davidson is on a total remuneration package of $313,000 as a Minister outside Cabinet. She’s done no releases, authored no papers and won’t front to media who question this.

Stuff reports:

Sabine Schmitz, the first and only female race car driver to win the annual 24-hour race on the famed Nürburgring circuit and a renowned TV personality, has died. She was 51.

Schmitz had been ill with cancer since 2017 and continued racing until 2019. The 24-hour race’s organizers said she died Tuesday following “a years-long battle with her disease.”

That’s very sad. So young. I loved her on Top Gear. An amazing driver, but also such an engaging personality.