Vilami Latu is believed to have killed his estranged partner and himself last week. She should still be alive.

The timeline of events shows it was preventable.

• Partner often seen by neighbours with black eyes
• Latu often seen wondering streets with a machete
• Police and other agencies notified by April 2020
• Nov 2020 – shoved a young child from a moving car. Assaulted neighbour who called the Police. Given bail to brother’s place in Pukekohe.
• Jan/Feb 2021 – breached bail conditions by travelling to partner’s house. Despite that bail not rescinded
• Mar 2021 – killed partner

He shouldn’t have been given bail in the first place and he shouldn’t have kept bail after he breached it. Someone who will throw a kid out of a moving car is an obvious danger.

The One News Colmar Brunton poll tonight has the parties at:

Labour Party: 49% (down 4%)
National Party: 27% (up 2%)
Green Party: 9% (up 1%)
ACT: 8% (nc)

In terms of seats it is little change from the election. Labour would have 62 MPs (down 3), National 34 (up 1), Greens 11 (up 1) and ACT 11 (up 1)

The Preferred PM:

Jacinda Ardern: 43% (down 15% since December 2020 poll)
Judith Collins: 8% (down 4%)
David Seymour: 4%
Christopher Luxon: 2%
Simon Bridges: 1%

Image from One News. Enter captions in the comments – funny, not nasty.

My initial degree was Economics and although I would never call myself an “Economist” I think I can a least understand enough to critique nonsense from those in that discipline. In New Zealand we have a lot of that but the worst trait is the pessimism. If some of these people have their ideas taken seriously – or have much influence – that pessimism risks being self-fulfilling prophecy. Our young people, especially, deserve better.

A baseline for optimism about the world to which our country belongs is the 2018 book Factfullness (Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think) by the late Hans Rosling. Connected to that is the brilliant website www.gapminder.org Both detail the incredible improvements in the human condition over time … and how that is accelerating.

There is abundant information that, despite glitches, this is the best time ever to be growing up and there is every reason to envision and plan for a future we can only be optimist about. Improving productivity, opening up land for housing in NZ, using new technologies to solve old and/or persistent problems. Instead of whining or being satisfied with status quo these qualified people should be creating a 25 year vision to see our nation and the broad demographics within it … leading the world.

Here is one example. Shamubeel Eaqub in an article titled Do young people have it tougher than their parents did? he acknowledges that many things are cheaper, but housing is tough. Then, instead of creative economic solutions, he simply fuels the interage-rage.

“Realistically, for the average young person today, no amount of regular and disciplined saving will give them the same access to homeownership and housing costs. For that, young people need to get politically active. The political narrative is still focussed on and for baby boomers. Until the younger generation’s issues become the dominant political issues, nothing will change.”

So – don’t seek the highest paid, highest skilled jobs. Don’t be an entrepreneur and/or innovate around things NZ and the world needs. Don’t go overseas for a while (or for life) to a higher paid economy. And, especially, according to Eaqub, don’t save – it is a forlorn method – wait until you can simply control the vote and smash the oldies.

Another is University of Auckland economist Tim Hazledine who shows how he thinks of fellow kiwis in an article titled: Why the transtasman income gap is larger than it appears. He acknowledges that at present New Zealanders earn significantly less than people in comparable countries but pay a lot more for most things.

“The Australia/New Zealand income gap is actually larger than it appears. It’s not just that we earn less, it’s also that when we spend what we earn, we get less value for our money. New Zealand is a pricey country.”

His vision and solution is simply to be resigned to this state of affairs because Kiwis are by and large a bit lazy and don’t care. According to Hazeldine we “want” to earn less and pay more. I’m not kidding.

“You can probably see by now where this is going. If we all pay too much for just about everything, then it must be because that’s what we all want to do: an inevitable complement to the easy-going life on the production front.”

They are both wrong in their outlook and neither get you charged up to make a difference from such pessimism. One education example shows how a different approach can work. My first teaching job was from 1991-96 at Tauranga Boys College under the superb leadership of Graeme Young. During the last ten years it has been led by another fabulous Principal in Robert Mangan. Both men led/lead with optimism and vision. I have watched the school with massive respect over the years since I left.

In an article on possible solutions to improve Maths teaching in New Zealand I read this:

“Maths was very much alive at Warner Cowin’s house when he was growing up.

In fact Cowin, who is of Ngāti Porou and Pākehā descent, had the perfect maths situation – his mother is a secondary school maths teacher, his father a plumber who used maths in practical applicaton in his job as a plumber.

The Māori entrepreneur went to a school, Tauranga Boys College, that expected academic, sporting and personal achievement from its students. Because his reading wasn’t great, he gravitated towards science and mathematics.”

Three other recent graduates from that school? Kane Williamson, Sam Cane and Peter Burling.

Cr Fleur Fitzsimons in her recent guest post said that there is no bloc or coven against Mayor Foster lamenting the demise of Justin Lester, and that different Crs often vote different ways.

I thought it would be interesting to look at some data on this, so I went through the votes at their recent long-term plan meeting. There were 41 non-unanimous votes. I’ve compiled two tables. The first is how often a Cr was in the majority, and the second is how often each Cr voted with each other Cr.

Here is how often each Cr was on the “winning” side:

• Cr Laurie Foon 95%
• Deputy Mayor Sarah Free 85%
• Cr Jenny Condie 80%
• Mayor Andy Foster 76%
• Cr Rebecca Matthews 76%
• Cr Jill Day 73%
• Cr Fleur Fitzsimons 73%
• Cr Teri O’Neill 73%
• Cr Tamatha Paul 71%
• Cr Iona Pannett 68%
• Cr Malcolm Sparrow 61%
• Cr Sean Rush 56%
• Cr Diane Calvert 46%
• Cr Simon Woolf 44%
• Cr Nicola Young 43%

So Cr Foon is most likely to be in the majority followed by DM Free. Mayor Foster is in the majority 75% of the time. Cr Calvert, Woolf and Young most likely to be in the minority.

This shows how often each Cr voted with other Crs at that meeting. Taking them in turn we have:

• Mayor Foster most often votes with Cr Condie at 85% and DM Free at 80%. Least often votes with Cr Pannett and Cr Paul.
• Cr Calvert votes with Cr Woolf 93% of the time and Cr Young 84%. Least often with Cr Pannett at 15% and Crs Day, Fitzsimons and O’Neill
• Cr Condie most often votes with Mayor Foster at 85% and DM Free at 80%. Least often with Cr Pannett at 49% and Cr Paul at 51%
• Cr Fitzsimons votes 100% with Crs Day and O’Neill and 98% Crs Paul and Matthews and 95% Cr Pannett. Votes least at 14% with Cr Young and 17% Cr Woolf.
• Cr Foon votes most at 80% with DM Free and Cr Matthews and least with Cr Young at 38%
• DM Free votes most with Mayor Foster, Cr Condie and Cr Foon at 80%. Least with Cr Pannett at 54% (interesting as both are Greens)
• Cr Matthews votes 98% with Crs Day, Fotzsimons and O’Neill and 95% Cr Paul and 93% Cr Pannett. Votes least at 16% with Cr Young and 20% Cr Woolf.
• Cr O’Neill votes 100% with Crs Day and Fitzsimons and 98% Crs Paul and Matthews and 95% Cr Pannett. Votes least at 14% with Cr Young and 17% Cr Woolf.
• Cr Pannett votes 98% with Cr Paul, 95% with Crs O’Neill, Day and Fitzsimons and 93% Cr Matthews. She votes 8% with Cr Young
• Cr Paul votes 98% with Crs Pannett, Fitzsimons, Day and O’Neill and 95% Cr Matthews.
• Cr Rush votes 71% with Mayor Foster and 70% Cr Young. Least is Crs Day, Fitzsimons, O’Neill and Pannett at 29%
• Cr Sparrow votes 76% with the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Cr Condie. Least is 34% with Cr Pannett
• Cr Woolf votes most with Cr Calvert at 93% and Cr Young 89%. Least with Cr Pannett at 12%
• Cr Young votes most with Cr Woolf at 89% and Cr Calvert at 84%. Least with Cr Pannett at 8% and Cr Paul at 11%

There are five Councillors who did vote together between 95% and 100% of the time on the long-term plan votes. It may be different for other votes.

Stuff reports:

Justice Minister Kris Faafoi says the Government has no intention of pushing forward with cannabis decriminalisation – but his party would allow their MPs to vote freely on the matter if it came up as a members’ bill.

This opens up a narrow path for some form of decriminalisation of cannabis, despite the narrow loss for legalisation at last year’s referendum.

Faafoi made his comments after a new poll showed some form of decriminalisation had strong majority support – with 49 per cent backing full legalisation and 20 per cent backing just decriminalisation.

Which reinforces the tactical error by the Greens in demanding the referendum be on legalisation, not decriminalisation. You achieve sustainable change by smaller moves.

We saw this with same sex marriage. Doing civil unions first, paved the way for same sex marriage.

It is unlikely that a Labour member would put up a members’ bill on the issue given the party’s position on “respecting the referendum” – but any other MP could also put a bill forward, in a hope to win over 61 MPs in the 120-seat Parliament and change the law.

Indeed, under new rules for this Parliament such a bill could skip the “balloting” for members’ bills if an MP could gather the support of 61 MPs who aren’t ministers or parliamentary under-secretaries.

This is pretty hard to achieve. The distribution of non-exec MPs is:

• Labour 39
• National 33
• ACT 10
• Greens 8
• Maori 2

Even if every Labour, Greens and Maori non-exec MP was in favour that only gets you 49 MPs. You need another 12 from National and ACT. And I doubt you’d get every Labour MP.

Interest.co.nz reports:

The Climate Change Commission expects it will be able to release the detailed models behind its draft emissions budget in June or July – after the public has a chance to provide feedback on this draft, and after the final version is presented to the Government in May.

Again this is outrageous and frankly is killing off any chance of bipartisan support for what the Commission recommends. The full model and data should be released at least four weeks before submissions close, not four months afterwards.

Right-wing think tank, The NZ Initiative, and the Major Electricity Users’ industry group, are among the critics of the Commission for not releasing all its modelling when it released its draft report on January 31.

Their argument is they need to understand the inputs and assumptions underpinning the Commission’s recommendations to provide well-informed feedback.

This is especially so, as the Commission itself has said the changes proposed are more significant than the economic reforms of the 1980s.

However, Commission CEO Jo Hendy told interest.co.nz it was “not critical” for stakeholders submitting on the advice to access its “modelling code and formulas”.

It is not for the Government quango to determine what is critical for stakeholders, it is for stakeholders. If they say they need the data to inform their submissions, then they should get it.

Much of this cost will of course fall on the Major Electricity Users’ Group’s members.  

Yet its chairperson John Harbord told interest.co.nz, “Simply understanding the calculations – I don’t think there’s any self-interest in that. That’s just wanting to be informed…

“It’s very hard to form an opinion on a recommendation if you don’t know how they got there.”

If the modelling is robust enough for the Commission to use to make far-reaching recommendations, it should be robust enough for scrutiny, he said, noting the Commission had otherwise been very good to engage with.

So why won’t they release it? Is it because it wouldn’t survive 60 minutes of scrutiny?

A guest post by Melissa Lee MP:

As Parliament resumed for the 2021 sitting calendar, one of the first Bills that was put up for Introduction was the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. An innocent enough sounding title but in reality, a legislative leviathan that could threaten the future of free internet in New Zealand.

In summary, the Bill makes livestreaming of objectionable content a specific criminal offence and gives significant powers to the Government to create statutory web filters that ISPs would be required to implement as well as empower the Chief Censor to force media and digital platforms alike operating online to takedown live coverage of breaking stories.

The Government has chosen not to word this Bill that way. They are choosing to make it about the abhorrent attacks that took place in Christchurch, something near irrelevant to the proposal which had been in the works since before they took place. This Bill really is about Censorship and fighting free speech.

As my colleague Simon Bridges, Nationals’ Justice Spokesperson, said “the Government’s taking the opportunity to go with their instincts to take power to themselves, to take control for themselves, and to be able to cancel”. This Bill gives power to the Government to stop events like those that we’ve seen in the United States from being live filmed. Think about the George Floyd incident and think should it be a crime to film and broadcast such actions live. Also think about how people who share that livestream could be implicated. That is the reality as it stands of this legislation.

We have a definition of ‘objectionable’ in New Zealand law and it mostly covers what we all would absolutely agree with. However the reason we can agree with the definition is because of the stringent processes behind the scenes, the legal arguments, the court cases and the ongoing debate about this definition and its application. A law creating web filters invariably must be enforced through algorithms and AI which at their heart are cold calculating number crunchers and at their best for the immediate future, a weak alternative for considered and debated human oversight.

If filters based around the concept of objectionable are introduced we don’t know what we will lose access to and bluntly, we live in an age where technology is helping people get around those filters in ways that is becoming increasingly difficult to address.

The Bill is now open for submissions and I encourage you to read the facts and write to the Committee with your views. This is not a bill about online harm, it’s really the start of the next national debate on Free Speech and Censorship in New Zealand.

Be a part of it.

MELISSA LEE MP
National Member of Parliament
National Spokesperson for – Broadcasting & Media| Digital Economy and Communications | Ethnic Communities

YouGov has the latest approval ratings in the UK for the Royal Family. They are:

1. The Queen +66%
2. Prince William +60%
3. Catherine +57%
4. Princess Anne +49%
5. Prince Edward +15%
6. Prince Charles +7%
7. Prince Harry -3%
8. Camilla -7%
9. Meghan -27%
10. Prince Andrew -75%

Also interesting is the change. Prince Harry since 2017 has gone from +70% to -3% and Meghan from +35% to -27%.

Stuff reports:

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta​ says Australian Minister Peter Dutton​ “only serves to trash his own reputation” by insulting New Zealand deportees by calling them “trash”.

Dutton, the Australian home affairs minister, was interviewed for a channel Nine News report about criminal deportees to New Zealand earlier this week, and said, “It’s taking out the trash, then we can make Australia a safer place”.

A personal attack on an Australian Minister isn’t exactly the diplomacy you expect from the Foreign Minister.

But here’s mu questions. If the Government will so vigorously criticise Australian Ministers for their statements and/or policies, why won;’t they be just as forceful with China’s Ministers over their genocide of Uighurs? Surely that should have Mahuta proclaiming they are trashing their reputatons?

Here’s the net approval ratings for recent US Presidents after 50 days:

1. Johnson +72%
2. Kennedy +66%
3. Carter +61%
4. Eisenhower +59%
5. Nixon +54%
6. Bush GHW +50%
7. Bush GW +39%
8. Reagan +37%
9. Obama +32%
10. Clinton +31%
11. Ford +19%
12. Biden +15%
13. Trump -5%

So positive, but relatively low. I suspect partisanship in the US means no new President will ever get a net approval rating of over say +20% so they get judged off their party, not their performance.

Barry Soper writes:

Having worked with the past 10 prime ministers, Jacinda Ardern would be the most removed from the media than any of them. This woman who has a Bachelor of Communications doesn’t communicate in the way any of her predecessors have.

She’s the master of soft, flattering interviews and television chat shows, blanching at tough questions.

She’s commanded the Covid pulpit to such an extent that the virus has become her security blanket, without it she’d be forced to face the reality that her Government has been moribund.

The Prime Minister’s press conferences usually begin with a sermon – it took eight minutes for her to get to the fact that she was moving the country down an alert level last Friday. When it comes to press conferences her forearm stiffens and her hand flicks to those she’ll take a question from. Some of us are left barking from the sidelines.

Ardern doesn’t relate to the messenger, the team of journalists who make up the parliamentary press gallery, they don’t know her. All of her predecessors got to know the parliamentary media by inviting them to their ninth floor Beehive office, at least a couple of times a year. It puts a human face on the public performer.

This is not new. I recall how surprised some gallery members were when Ardern changed her cellphone number after the 2017 election, and her staff refused to give the new number out to any of the senior gallery editors.

It’s a good thing that senior journalists can contact the PM. Not that they do it often – you tend to work through their press team. But if getting the run around, they can text the PM.

Both Key and Clark would frequently receive and reply to texts from journalists.

Ardern is a celebrity leader and she’s determined to keep it that way, which is why she’s turned her back on the Newstalk ZB Mike Hosking Breakfast Show.

The questions were too direct, they got under her thin skin but, more importantly, she didn’t know the answer to many of them. She was exposed on a weekly basis and it simply all became too much for her.

In doing so, she’s turned her back on the highest-rating breakfast commercial radio show in the country by far and she has also turned her back on the many listeners who at the last Covid election (her description) switched their vote to her.

Leaders have in the past become exasperated with the media and at times with good reason but few, if any, have shied away from the tough questions. The regular Newstalk ZB slot for prime ministers has been jealously guarded by them for the past 35 years. This is the only regular slot she’s bowing out on.

Maybe they should put the Labour Deputy Leader on instead? 🙂

Stuff reports:

Parliamentary Service boss Rafael Gonzalez-Montero says he is totally confident that he did the right thing by suspending a parliamentary staff-member who was accused of wrongdoing. …

Under questioning from National MPs in the Governance and Administration Select Committee on Wednesday, Gonzalez-Montero said he was confident he had treated the man fairly – suspending him with pay while he re-investigated a complaint made about him.

After National MP Michael Woodhouse asked whether he might settle the ongoing employment case, which has cost the public purse at least $37,500, Gonzalez-Montero said he was unwilling to settle.

“I simply believe that we have done nothing wrong, so I’m not willing to settle,” Gonzalez-Montero said.

“I’d rather lose because we have done the right thing.”

Umm, if you lose then it is precisely because you have done the wrong thing, not the right thing.

The problem is that it is us taxpayers who fork up if the case is lost.

Stuff reports:

Parliamentary Service, the organisation that looks after the workings of Parliament and MPs’ offices said it will look into whether a subletting arrangement involving the Labour Party’s Petone electorate office is above board, and whether appropriate conflicts of interest were declared.

In a select committee meeting on Wednesday morning Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, chief executive of Parliamentary Service said it would both investigate whether the electorate deal was within Parliamentary rules and whether appropriate conflicts of interest were declared. He said that so far, he was happy everything was above board.

The deal, revealed after an investigation by Stuff last year, involves the local Labour party pocketing $4500 a year in profit thanks to a subletting arrangement. Labour rents its office premises from the building’s owner, the NZ Professional Firefighters Union for $1500, it then sublets that office space to the local MP for $6000.

It’s even worse than it appears. The $1,500 they pay is for a larger office space than the area they sublet to Parliament. So they both make $4,500 off the taxpayer and get their own party space effectively for free also.

Stuff reports:

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the only reason Australian tourists aren’t spending up in Queentown right now is the New Zealand Government.

Morrison was asked about the National Party’s new position that New Zealand should open immediately to travellers from Australia, provided they can show a negative test.

Australia itself is mostly reopening itself to quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders from Friday morning.

Morrison said it was a matter for the New Zealand Government, and it was totally up to them.

“If the New Zealand Government doesn’t wish Australians to visit New Zealand and spend money in Queenstown or Wellington or other parts of the country, that’s a matter for them. It’s always been a matter for them,” Morrison said.

It should be s non brainer that Australians who have been vaccinated should be allowed to travel here without quarantine. It is the whole point of vaccinating.

There is a massive backlog for MIQ places and such a move would free up capacity.

News.com.au reports:

The European Union has been blasted as a “total disgrace” for allowing Italy to block a quarter of a million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine from reaching Australia — and some Brits are even offering to forego their jab so more can be sent here.

Amid a botched rollout across the EU, the Italian government notified Brussels of its decision to prevent 250,000 doses from being exported to Australia at the end of last week.

The European Commission could have objected to that decision, and did not.

I should be surprised, but I’m not.

The UK has vaccinated 33% of their population. The EU has vaccinated around 9%.

The NZ Taxpayers Union has announced:

The Taxpayers’ Union is committing to creating a Tauranga Ratepayers’ Alliance following the alarming news from the unelected Council commissioners that they plan on a 22% then 12% cumulative rate hikes over the next two years.

This is appalling – a potential 46% increase in rates over three years – and by unelected commissioners.

It is important to understand that the appointment of Commissioners in Tauranga was on a very different basis to Kaipara and ECan.

In Kaipara the Council mismanaged a sewerage scheme so that the costs blew out from $17 million to $62 million. That’s on a population of 24,000 so was at a cost of around $3,000 per resident. And they broke the law in setting rates, needing an Act of Parliament to validate them. So Kaipara was in crisis.

With ECan, the Council was failing at basic duties. It was only processing 29% of consents within the statutory timeframe. It had no water plan. It had no regional planning framework. Some consent applications had been waiting five years for a decision. So they were also a Council in crisis.

Tauranga City Council is different. The reason the Council was sacked was not because the Council was unable to meet its legal duties. It was sacked because the relationships between the Mayor and some Councillors was so toxic that it was dysfunctional at the governance level. Now that can certainly justify appointing Commissioners, but the Commissioners should regard their role as status quo good governance, not radical change with no mandate.

A guest post from Southern Ward Cr Fleur Fitzsimons:

Much has been made by some commentators about the so-called “left-wing bloc” on the Wellington City Council and how this has supposedly added to the woes of the City.  

Likewise, the presence of party-backed candidates has come under harsh scrutiny. 

The most troubling aspect of this narrative is that the women who comprise this group are supposedly galvanised by grief over Justin Lester’s defeat at the last election, directing our collective ire ever since at Andy Foster.  Come to think of it, that makes us sound less like a bloc than a coven!  

The notion of a Justin Lester memorial committee, apart from being transparently sexist, completely misrepresents the integrity and experience we bring to the table.

The partisan divide at the Council has been overplayed to begin with. 

In truth, there are friendships and alliances across the political spectrum.  If someone looked into the voting records, they would find Councillors from a wide array of political starting-points supporting decisions made on behalf of the city. 

While it was members of the “left bloc” who first called for an inquiry into the state of Wellington’s water infrastructure, as we saw burst pipes and trucks full of poo driving around our South Coast, this was a move that was supported by the Mayor and all but three Councillors.  

The Council is unified behind the need for a focus on water infrastructure and “lefties” strongly support Sean Rush who is leading this work. 

The request for work on a zero rate increase and better rates deferral schemes in 2020 was also supported from by a wide range of Councillors in the immediate aftermath of Covid 19.  

The group of Councillors who resisted attempts to remove parking charges entirely during 2020 was also a diverse group that included Sean Rush and Jenny Condie.  (The initial proposal was to borrow for a predicted $10 million loss in revenue but the group of Councillors restored the charges and channelled $1.5 million of the revenue gained into supporting community groups dealing with the human toll of Covid in Wellington). 

Even attempts to privatise part of the Library Building last week and cut the book-buying budget drew supporters from across the political spectrum as did the ultimate decision not to go ahead, this was seconded by independent Councillor Nicola Young. 

In fact, I can only think of one decision where there was a fairly obvious partisan split, that was the recent decision to remove a $76 million loan to the airport.  While that decision fell along broadly left versus right lines, many on the left, including me, asked for further information before considering such a significant move from the Council.  

I am a Labour City Councillor, I have now been elected twice on that basis.  

Wellingtonians have been electing those standing under the Labour banner since 1919 when Peter Fraser and a group of Labour Councillors were elected to the Council.  That is over a hundred years of Labour standing candidates and winning the support of residents. 

I appreciate that not everyone supports this approach but it is part of the political tradition in Wellington and has been consistently endorsed by residents in elections – that is democracy.  

The truth is that strict Party line voting rarely, if ever, happens at Council. When it does, it arises from sincerely held values we were elected to uphold, not out of deference to some sinister view of a Party machine or some homage to a former patriarch.