Stuff reports:

One of Auckland’s Covid-19 community cases was not required to undergo mandatory testing in her airline catering job because government guidelines did not require it, her employer LSG Sky Chefs says.

Not the impression we had yesterday.

Stuff reports:

The Government is putting another $55 million into public interest journalism in the next three years to ensure communities are kept informed on issues that affect them.

The Minister for Broadcasting and Media Kris Faafoi, launched the fund on Friday to support democracy and ensure New Zealanders had access to trusted information.

The vast bulk of this will go, I predict, on projects that only include a leftist worldview of the issue.

NZ On Air will administer the contestable fund, which will be for projects that media outlets can demonstrate fill a public interest service and which would otherwise be at risk or not produced.

The Government of course appoints the NZ on Air board.

With state funded media becoming so dominant in New Zealand, we should demand greater independence from the Government of the day.

I believe directors of all state broadcasters, and NZ on Air, should be appointed by an independent Commission, whose members are in turn appointed only with the concurrence of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. That way you would not have politically aligned people appointed.

Stuff reports:

The Green Party is calling on the Labour Government to urgently prioritise banning conversion therapy.

At Big Gay Out in Auckland on Sunday, Green Party spokesperson for Rainbow Communities, Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, will launch a petition calling on it to be prioritised.

“There is no place for conversion therapy in Aotearoa,” Dr Elizabeth Kerekere said in a statement.

Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. …

“We must have the legislation introduced as soon as possible. As the weeks and months roll by, we risk more rainbow New Zealanders being exposed to this harmful practice.

Putting aside for one moment the merits of a ban, I’m interested in whether there is any actual conversion therapy happening in NZ? I don’t mean decades ago, but say in the last three years?

I mean New Zealand seems to be one of most tolerant countries in the world when it comes to sexual and gender identity. It doesn’t seem like a fertile place for promoting conversion therapy.

I would have thought those demanding that the Government give urgency to this issue over other stuff such as house prices, would have firm data on how prevalent this is in modern New Zealand.

I have no doubt it has occured in the past, but is it still occuring today?

The PM has announced Auckland will move to Level 3 at 1159 pm tonight, and the rest of New Zealand will move to Level 2.

I wake up each morning feeling incredibly lucky to live in New Zealand.  

Our country is a true example of democracy. We have free and fair elections. Political division is almost non-existent compared to the United States. There’s comparatively little corruption, and any instances can be reported on without fear by our media. Religion can be practised freely, and all citizens are afforded basic human rights. 

Then there are freedoms we enjoy that are often taken for granted. There are – for now – no laws seriously restricting freedom of speech. Our children can play in public safely. Healthcare and education are (mostly) free. We can wear whatever we want. Access to the internet is not restricted.  

The list goes on. 

But festering underneath all of these benefits is the reality that too many children are living in poverty. It makes me angry. 

I sit on the right of the political compass. It would be easy to rattle off a number of reasons why, but one of the most fundamental is the notion of personal responsibility. I believe that we should be responsible for our own destiny and not rely on the state. 

Nevertheless, there will always be a need for a welfare state because life is not perfect and sometimes things happen that are simply out of our control. It is entirely reasonable to aspire for personal responsibility while acknowledging that compassion will always be required – and that sometimes this has to take the form of government intervention.

I accept that not everyone reading this will agree with me on that. 

Where I hope we can find common ground is that children who are living in material deprivation are not responsible for their situation at all.  

I recognize there are people who will argue that it is the parents who need to take responsibility. In an ideal world, they would. Unfortunately, this just isn’t always the case, and we shouldn’t punish children for circumstances they were born in to.  

So, state intervention is sometimes necessary. Take free lunches in schools. If life were perfect, parents wouldn’t send their kids to school hungry or without food. The reality, however, is that it is happening. And we shouldn’t just turn a blind eye to it because it would go against our ideological belief about how the world should be.  

If we aspire to live in a society where reliance on the state is all but non-existent, we have to break the cycle of poverty. If parents are unable or unwilling to do this, it cannot be left up to the children to do it themselves. I hope that any compassionate person should be able to recognize this – including compassionate conservatives.  

I can’t say that I’ve always felt this strongly about child poverty. For over a decade, I worked with the most privileged and fortunate of kids and I always thought I was doing my bit for society by ensuring I was helping raise well-rounded, strong, and smart children.  

In the last year or so, however, I was ”mugged by reality” as it became clear to me that these are not the children who need extra time or resources spent on them. And then I started getting angry, because we have a government that has the audacity to say it is kind and compassionate but isn’t acting in a way that I would call even close to transformative when it comes to child poverty. 

The government is quite happy to throw $55m at the media, rush constitutional law changes through urgency, debate supplements, and snipe at the opposition. But child poverty? All we hear is some statistics on supposed measures improving, while conveniently forgetting to mention that the very one that matters – material deprivation – is not.

The government’s apologists will dutifully trot out this or that program being trialed or how the government has made this small sum available to this set of people.  It’s all things happening at the edges. Nothing gets to the heart of the matter.  

I don’t know how someone, whose entire reason for being in politics is to rid the country of child poverty, can live with themselves after 12 years as an MP (over three of which have been in the top job) when life for many kiwi children is only getting worse.  

What is the answer? I don’t know. What I do know, however, is this shouldn’t be a partisan monopoly for the left. It is nothing short of reprehensible that New Zealand still has so many children living in poverty, and our politicians and leaders should be ashamed.  

If Labour isn’t going to act boldly on this, it’s time that National came up with a plan. This is the stuff that matters, and it’s what is going to make a real difference to society in New Zealand.  

Monique Poirier has a Masters degree in Political Studies, and is a former small business owner and Parliamentary staffer. She is the Campaigns Manager for the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance.

Newshub reports:

Senior National MP Chris Bishop will be hauled before Parliament’s Privileges Committee for posting edited video of new Labour MP Anna Lorck. 

Lorck gave an impassioned speech on Wednesday night on the benefits of supplements, drawing ridicule online – but she told Newshub it wasn’t her who complained about National’s video. 

In her speech delivered in Parliament, Lorck – who won the seat of Tukituki at last year’s election – dished out supplementary advice. 

“It’s the Beroccas in the morning and the magnesium at night – and don’t forget about the collagen! How’s the hair looking, ladies?” Lorck says in the speech.

Her speech in support of the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill is causing a stir – and social media storm – courtesy of the National Party’s edited video. 

I thought the video was harmless fun, and I suspect Anna Lorck herself would have chuckled at it.

Bishop says he doesn’t think National has done anything wrong. 

“The video is literally just excerpts from a speech given in Parliament,” he told Newshub. “If people had turned on the TV they would have seen basically the exact same thing, so we don’t think it’s misleading.”

House Speaker Trevor Mallard is referring Bishop to the Privileges Committee, which is basically Parliament’s court, for signing off on the video. 

The pair locked horns earlier this week when Bishop tried to move a motion of no confidence in the Speaker. 

It does rather look like utu that you refer the MP who moved a motion of no confidence in you to the Privileges Committee for what is an absolutely trivial issue.

Lorck told Newshub it wasn’t her that made the complaint. In fact, she even shared National’s video on social media, saying “in the spirit of taking things on the chin, I’m sharing it – got to be able to have a laugh at yourself from time to time”. 

Good on her.

UPDATE: I am informed the referral to Privileges Committee is automatic.

The Standing Orders Committee report Review of use of Parliament TV coverage:

“We therefore recommend that, where the Speaker directs that the use of coverage be altered or stopped, that use of coverage be referred to the Privileges Committee at the earliest opportunity. The Privileges Committee would consider the use, and have the power to either accept the Speaker’s initial direction, or recommend that it be revoked.”

So the referral isn’t so much to potentially censure Bishop, but the the Committee to decide if the Speaker’s decision to block the video be upheld or not.

The Mandalorian star Gina Carano has been sacked from Disney because she tweeted:

“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views,” she wrote.

Now Holocaust comparisons are usually stupid, and Carano’s was no exception. But the point she was making is don’t hate your neighbour because they may have different political views to you. And that got her canceled.

And the irony is her co-star also did a Holocaust comparison tweet, where he actually compared to the US Government to Nazi Germany. Yet nothing happened to him.

Also Ben Shapiro pointed out that if there is anything that is closest to The Holocaust happening today, it is what China is doing to the Uighurs with mass sterilisations etc. But DIsney recently filmed Mulan in China and thanked the Chinese Government for their co-operation. Yet Carono gets cancelled for her tweet.

Cancel culture is primarily used against people on the right, but as it grows it catches those on the left also. That is why everyone should oppose it.

Leftist Nathan Robinson was a columnist for The Guardian. He had previously said there is no such thing as cancel culture. Then he tweeted:

“it’s the law” that “the US Congress is not actually allowed to authorize any new spending unless a portion of it is directed toward buying weapons for Israel”

Now this was pretty obviously a satirical tweet. I didn’t find it anti-semitic. If it had been “The Jewish lobby is so powerful they force Congress to include arms for Israel in every bill” then it could be problematic. But is at worst a sarky tweet.

But cancel culture meant he got dropped by the Guardian, despite him even clarifying in a follow up tweet it was satirical. There is no way he should have lost his column for that one tweet. Just as Gina Carono should not be blacklisted in Hollywood because of her tweet.

So all those who take part in cancel culture should beware – because it will probably turn on them and bite them one day.

Slate reports:

Donald Trump might be in denial about who won the 2020 election, but his pollsters aren’t. Two of them have performed autopsies on his defeat, and those autopsies are now public. One of his pollsters, John McLaughlin, published an analysis in Newsmax in November. Another report, written by consultant Tony Fabrizio, was posted on Monday by Politico. Neither pollster blames the former president, but their numbers tell the story: Trump destroyed himself.

The autopsies identified two reasons why Trump should have won. First, based on self-identification, the 2020 electorate was significantly more Republican than the 2016 electorate. Second, public satisfaction with the economy favored the incumbent. Both pollsters found that people who voted in 2020 thought Trump would handle the economy better than Joe Biden would. McLaughlin’s analysis, based on his postelection survey of people who voted in 2020, noted that 61 percent of these voters said they were better off than they had been four years earlier. Despite this, Trump managed to lose one-third of the 61 percent. “Fully 20% of all voters thought they were better off today than four years ago and did not vote for President Trump,” McLaughlin wrote.

Trump’s tax cuts had been hugely successful. After tax incomes were up massively. Yet he still managed to lose. He blew it.

Fabrizio noted that collectively, in the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump outpolled Biden among people who had voted in 2016. What killed Trump were the new voters. Biden won them by 14 points in the five decisive states.

Turnout mattered.

Fabrizio found that in the 10 battleground states, “majorities of voters … prioritized stopping the spread of [the virus] over re-opening the economy.” The virus “was the top issue” in these states, the pollster observed, “and Biden carried those voters nearly 3 to 1.” In the exit polls and in McLaughlin’s survey, voters said by significant margins that Biden would handle the virus better than Trump.

Fabrizio flagged two particularly foolish mistakes in Trump’s response to the virus. One was ridiculing masks. In the 10 battleground states, voters who favored mask mandates (Biden’s position) outnumbered those who opposed mask mandates (Trump’s position) by a ratio of 3 to 1. The enormous pro-mask constituency went to Biden by about 30 points, on average, in the five states that flipped to him. Trump’s other dumb move was his persistent slander against Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the five states that flipped to Biden, 72 percent of voters approved of Fauci’s job performance, and 63 percent of those voters went to Biden.

If you’re on 40% job approval, you don’t keep having a go at the guy on 72% job approval. Dumb.

An excellent article at Quillette:

These emotional attempts to suppress controversial or unpopular speech have increasingly made use of what I call the “Mourner’s Veto”—individuals will say that a speaker or a piece of writing has caused them to become distressed or sad or angry or frightened, and they will support these claims with allegations of “harm” or even threats to their “right to exist.” Reasonable debate and discussion then becomes impossible as activists make unfalsifiable but furiously emotive claims about alleged threats to their safety and wellbeing amid much weeping and claims of exhaustion and mental fragility. It is not healthy for the limits of permissible speech to be dictated by the most sensitive person in the room, nor to allow emotional appeals to supplant robust argument as the most effective strategy in a debate.

Spot on. We saw this at Massey University when some staff said that having Don Brash on campus made them feel unsafe.

First, offer unhappy employees a graceful exit. In response to the outcry at Penguin, some commentators suggested that the insubordinate employees should be fired. This is a mistake. Those employees have a right to hold and express their views. Although authors’ speech rights should obviously be paramount at a publishing house, we needn’t sacrifice those of its employees. The firm Coinbase recently offered an excellent model in the face of political pressure from staff—they offered any employee who wished to leave a generous severance package. My understanding is that few took it up.

That’s a good idea.

Second, companies need to get into the habit of ignoring social media and discontinuing the practice of outsourcing their public relations or editorial decisions to Twitter (New York Times, I’m looking at you). Social media has many advantages, but it can often swirl into a cesspool of performative outrage that in no way reflects what the average person cares about.

Excellent advice. Major corporates like Vodafone get spooked on the basis of half a dozen people tweeting about something.

In Parliament Tamati Coffey said:

It has been 20 years in the making and a whole lot of frustration, because Māori representation on local council has been dismal. In fact, because of the small provision, which enables 5 percent of the local voting constituency to be able to overturn what’s essentially, as the Race Relations Commissioner said, a racist piece of policy, a discriminatory piece of policy, actually because of that reason we have a lack of Māori being able to represent Māori at the decision-making table.

13.7% of the adult population are Maori and 13.5% of those elected to local authorities in 2019 are Maori.

Where are the fact checkers when we need them.

Stuff reports:

Wellington’s mayor is introducing the most challenging budget he’s ever seen, with the proposition of a 14 per cent rates increase for the city.

The capital is facing a myriad of cost pressures including ageing water pipes, insurance hikes, seismic issues, transport plans, and its social housing portfolio.

They want you to think it is all about the water pipes but actually it is an inability to prioritise spending.

They’re wasting over $100 million on a second music venue. The convention centre is likely to be a huge loss maker and they are proposing a massive $180 million central library rebuild.

How many people living in Wellington have had a 14% increase in income this year?

The Times reports:

Midwives have been told to say “chestfeeding” instead of “breastfeeding” and to replace the term “mother” with “mother or birthing parent” as part of moves to be more trans-friendly.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is the first in the country to formally implement a gender inclusive language policy for its maternity services department, which will now be known as “perinatal services”.

Staff have been instructed that “breastmilk” should be replaced with the phrases “human milk”, “breast/chestmilk” or “milk from the feeding mother or parent”.

I wish I could say this is satire, but it isn’t.

Stuff reports:

Radio host Sean Plunket has “decided to leave” Magic Talk, according to the company.

He was off-air Tuesday and Wednesday, afterStuff reported crisis talks about his future with the station on Sunday.

Plunket and his bosses at MediaWorks initially declined to comment. On Wednesday afternoon, MediaWorks chief executive Cam Wallace issued a statement saying Plunket “has decided to leave”.

His exit comes after advertisers threatened a boycott of the station, with concerns about hosts allowing racist rhetoric to air on the station. The incident to spark the boycott, a caller who told fill-in host John Banks that Māori culture is “from the Stone Age”, did not involve Plunket.

So Plunket has been forced out because of something John Banks said!

The owners are obviously terrified of the threat from corporates whom determine their advertising policy based on likes on Twitter. Anything controversial must be boycotted.

The only good thing about all this is that the driving out of almost all non-woke voices from broadcasting creates a huge opportunity for others. If I was Rupert Murdoch I’d be looking very keenly at New Zealand.

Steve Morris writes:

According to her advice, released under the OIA, the Minister expects Commissioners to set a “robust” budget as councillors, chosen by you, won’t “set rates at a realistic level.” The DIA has advised her that a “realistic” level is “a rate rise of 18-20% year-on-year” over the next ten years. This is despite Tauranga already having some of the highest residential rates of any city in New Zealand.

That’s on top of a 6.5 per cent increase for rubbish disposal that commissioners will implement later this year. Taking a conservative view of compounding rates, the minister’s instruction to her commissioners will see an 80 per cent increase in TCC rates over the next three years. 

Councillors need to worry about the public acceptability of rates increases. Commissioners do not. The appointment of Commissioners may have been warranted, but they should not be used to impose massive rates increases on residents.

This chart shows the number of students who are absent from school more than 10% of the time. In eight years it has gone from 135,000 to 315,000.

And what is the Government’s answer to this. Stuff reports:

“Do we have a culture of excuses for children not being at school? Like somehow it is the school’s fault for not being exciting enough?” Goldsmith asked.

“What I’m seeing is lots of talk, lots of concern, but still a culture of excuses.”

Secretary for Education Iona Holsted said prosecution was not the answer and schools needed to be desirable.

“The answer is to make sure schools are places kids want to be, because they have alternatives. They walk,” Holsted said.

This is, with respect, bullshit. First of all what part of “compulsory education” is hard to understand.

But the truancy is not something happening just with say bored teenagers. It is in every year.

The Year 2 truancy rate has climbed from 29% to 43%. Is the Government really saying that this is because six year olds have alternatives??? Do we really think six year olds are not attending because they don’t see school as desirable?

This is a parenting issue. We need to stop blaming everything on the system and start talking personal responsibility.

Bomber Bradbury writes:

I philosophically hate religion for many, many, many fucking good reasons, but because NZ is a liberal progressive democracy, I tolerate religion.

I tolerate Scientology, I tolerate the Exclusive Brethren & I tolerate those who believe in a magical invisible flying wizard for all their personal choices!

I also tolerate that they don’t pay tax – BUT I SURE AS FUCK refuse point blank to fear them!

We lose free speech to criticise religion? How the hell is that anything other than a victory for the terrorist?

This is a liberal progressive SECULAR Democracy, if you want to believe in crazy myths and crazy invisible magical flying beings, that is your total right to, but equally, it’s my right to mock those beliefs when they collide with my individual rights

Absolutely.

You should not discriminate against individuals on the basis of their religious belief, but that is vastly different from a law that prevents you from criticising or even attacking the religion itself.

I read the terrorist’s manifesto and I don’t recall him referring to Trans Allies or gender identity, so why criminalising the misuse of pronouns is being mooted as a response to white supremacy terrorism is utterly beyond me! …

Why don’t we call this push for Gender Identity Hate Speech for what it really is? The criminalisation of Rachel Stewart & Ani O’Brien.

You have all seen how feral the trans debate between Gender Critical Feminists (TERFS by their enemies) and the Fourth Wave Feminist, Non Gender Binary Activist, Trans Ally Woke Stormtroopers has been online.

We’ve all seen the woke public shaming and cancel culture lynchings erupt in our social media feeds, like violent 1930s street fights as various factions attempt to mutilate the other for dominance.

The bewildering venom from this schism makes feuding Drug Cartels look tame.

I am putting money on the table that within a month of this law passing, it will be immediately seized upon by the woke to make criminal complaints against leading voices of the Gender Critical Feminist movement, people like Rachel Stewart and Ani O’Brien for old tweets they will have sent arguing their case.

Sadly he is not wrong.

Watching the Woke allow the entire NZ Intelligence apparatus off the hook for their total failure with the Christchurch terror attacks by demanding hate speech laws is one of the great intellectual failures of 2020 and 2021.

This is how ACT break 10% by June this year.

Might be right on that one also.

Stuff reports:

New Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March is currently in a Government-run managed isolation hotel after visiting family in Mexico.

Menéndez March was born in Mexico and was visiting for a “serious personal family matter,” a spokesperson for the party said.

He arrived back in the country on February 1 and is thus near the end of his mandatory two-week stay in managed isolation (MIQ).

His decision to leave the country contravenes the current travel advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) – which encourages Kiwis to not travel overseas at all.

Mexico is one of the most infected places on the planet. They have had 2 million cases and 166,000 deaths from Covid-19. Only the USA and Brazil have had more deaths.

I would think the only acceptable reason to travel there during this pandemic would be is if a close family member is terminally ill.

He was tagged in an Instagram photo in late-January by a friend in Mexico, although this account was made private soon after a rumour emerged surrounding his travel.

The problem for the Greens isn’t just the trip (assuming the reasons were valid) but trying to keep it secret. If an MP is going to be absent from Parliament because they have been travelling overseas, then you should be upfront with that fact – rather than just hope no-one notices he isn’t there.

Off memory MPs need the permission of their whip or musterer to travel overseas. I wonder if this was sought in advance. Also what is not clear is how long he was overseas for – was it a few days or weeks?

It’s understood Menéndez March applied to MBIE for an emergency allocation that would allow him to enter MIQ sooner but this request was denied.

There are tens of thousands of Kiwis trying to return home, who are waiting for a spot in MIQ. By choosing to go to Mexico over the summer break, he has denied one of those spots to someone else. Hence his reason for travelling needs to be exceptionally strong.

Stuff reports:

Grant Robertson and the Government were warned in January 2020 that there was a ‘significant’ risk Reserve Bank money printing would push up house prices and deepen inequality. Despite calls from the Reserve Bank that the Government would need to act to blunt the effects of this, nearly 13 months later, nothing has been done.

That one paragraph sums it up. They were told house prices would rocket up if they printed money, but they did it anyway and the end result was 20% house inflation last year.