The Herald reports:

Finance Minister Grant Robertson has dug in his heels about not extending the wage subsidy by four days to cover keeping Auckland in lockdown until Sunday night.

If the Government has forced almost every business in Auckland to remain closed, the least it should do is extend the wage subsidy for four extra days, to match the period of the lockdown.

Stuff reports:

The Ombudsman is urging action to fix “serious and persistent” problems at New Zealand’s mental health units, after delivering scathing reports on the state of five units, where a litany of human rights breaches were discovered.

The Ombudsman, Peter Boshier, found two such facilities were in breach of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, despite previous warnings.

Wellington and Waitakere Hospitals were singled out for particularly harsh criticism.

Te Whare o Matairangi Mental Health Inpatient Unit at Wellington Hospital came under fire for using seclusion rooms as bedrooms when over capacity, despite a previous recommendation from the Ombudsman that this should stop.

“These rooms contain little more than a mattress, and are supposed to be used as a short-term measure for patients who are assessed as an imminent safety risk,” Boshier said.

Absolutely seclusion rooms should not be used for long-stay accommodation.

The Government made a lot of noise around mental health and said it was spending $1.4 billion on it. So how come mental health units don’t have enough rooms?

Newsroom reports:

A Newsroom investigation reveals a Ministry of Social Development initiative to provide emergency housing made the housing crisis worse and enriched a small set of landlords and real estate agents.

A former Harcourts property manager in South Auckland has blown the whistle on an emergency housing scheme where a group of landlords were paid up to $3000 a week by the taxpayer for “marginal to uninhabitable” private rentals.

When the landlords ran out of houses they turned to real estate agents who procured vacant properties – allegedly without the consent of the people who actually owned them.

The Ministry of Social Development has admitted the scheme made the rental crisis worse – as people took rental properties off the market and used them instead to rent out to MSD to earn thousands more.

This is a real scandal. Taxpayer money was spent on this scheme which resulted in increasinging homelessness (as fewer properties available) and enriching a group of landlords.

Most people know the Emergency Accommodation scheme put people in motels and hotels at market rates of over $120 per night for every room rented.

What they don’t know is from 2018 – within this current term of government – the Ministry of Social Development extended this scheme to include private homes.

The catch is that MSD continued to pay the same motel room rates to landlords for every room in the house they would rent.

A three-bedroom house rented out at a “hotel” rate of up to $150 per room per night could bring in $3000 per week in areas of the country where median rent for those was $550. The rent was capped at the $3000 mark.

MSD did not visit the properties to check if they met basic living standards.

Gross incompetence.

Minister of Social Development Carmel Sepuloni declined an interview request on the grounds she was still waiting for a briefing on it.

When Newsroom asked Sepuloni about the scheme on August 10 she also appeared to have no knowledge of it. Newsroom received a similar response when an earlier query was made to her office, in June.

She seems really on top of her portfolio!

On the 22nd of July Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters alleged that I was part of a grand conspiracy of people who knew about his superannuation overpayments and leaked it to the media. This allegation was made under the absolute privilege of Parliament. It is of course totally false.

There is a little known standing order (159) that allows someone referred to in the House by name who has been adversely affected by the reference to submit a response to be considered by the Speaker for incorporation into the parliamentary record.

The Speaker has determined that my response should be incorporated, and it was tabled in the House this afternoon. One by Rachel Morton was also accepted and tabled.

The details of my response are:

The Right Honourable Winston Peters on the 22^nd of July 2020 stated in the General Debate that I was told by Jordan Williams about Mr Peters’ superannuation and that I was involved in breaching Mr Peters’ right to privacy.

The statement by Mr Peters is incorrect. I did not discuss or disclose, in any way or form, details of his superannuation prior to reports appearing in the media about it.

I know this for a certainty as I was totally unaware of there being any issue around Mr Peters’ superannuation until it was reported in the media.

I’m pleased that Standing Orders allow ordinary citizens who are smeared by MPs under parliamentary privilege to be able to have their responses incorporated into the parliamentary record.

Spiked reports:

For 24 years, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), headquartered at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in North London, has been seeing, counselling and treating adolescents and children diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’. This, as the NHS describes it, is ‘the sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender’.

For much of GIDS’ existence, few paid it much attention. But over the past 10 years all that has changed. Not only have transgender issues become the object of fierce public controversy and mooted government legislation, but diagnoses of gender dysphoria among children and adolescents have skyrocketed. As The Sunday Times reported last year: ‘Since 2009-10… there has been an increase of more than 3,200 per cent in patients referred to GIDS, from 77 that year to 2,590 in the year to April.’ Moreover, 2019 was the first time the majority (54 per cent) of patients referred to the clinic were 14 or under – some patients were as young as four.

That is a huge increase in just one decade.

Unsurprisingly, GIDS’ activity at the Tavistock has been subject to increasing public attention, and, more recently, scrutiny. In 2018, an internal report, by then staff governor Dr David Bell, effectively accused GIDS of fast-tracking children and adolescents for gender transition. Featuring damning quotes from whistle-blowing clinicians and unhappy staff members, it reinforced the growing sense that GIDS has been a little too eager to encourage young people to transition and potentially undergo life-changing medical treatment. Indeed, since 2017, over 35 clinicians have quit GIDS because they are worried about ‘overdiagnoses’ of gender dysphoria. Sonia Appleby, who works at GIDS as its Named Professional for Safeguarding Children, is even bringing a case against the Tavistock on the grounds that it is failing in its duty to safeguard children, by encouraging staff not to report any child safety concerns to her.

If their own clinicians are quitting, it sounds like a real problem.

It is a difficult area because there is no doubt that many people do have gender dysphoria and transitioning is the right thing for them to do. I’m all in favour of people being able to live their lives in the way that will make them happier.

It gets more difficult though when the person involved is not an adult. I don’t think you should ban people from receiving treatment for transitioning until they are 18, because sometimes it will be very clear that is the best course of action and you may be certain about this at age 17 oe age 15.

But you should be very cautious about allowing what is effectively a permanent change through treatment for a young person, and the younger they are the more cautious you should be.

Hormone therapy, for instance, is a serious, life-altering treatment. ‘It should try to not be at all for children’, says Susan, citing the potential for future ‘sterility or infertility’. She points out how absurd it is that we are encouraging some young people to take a decision that could change their lives forever. ‘There’s a reason we don’t let children marry or have tattoos. And somehow we’ve unrolled this treatment!’

Certainly changing your gender is a much more consequential decision than having a tattoo.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the debate around trans children and their treatment is that there are so many unanswered questions. As many critics have pointed out, there are no reliable or long-term data on follow-up care for patients who have chosen to transition. We do not know how prevalent ‘de-transitioning’ is, how many patients continue to have mental-health issues after their treatment, or the long-term effects of treatment itself. Mermaids and other trans-advocacy organisations claim that fears around puberty-blockers are unfounded, and that the treatment is reversible. But even the NHS admits that ‘little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone- or puberty-blockers in children with gender dysphoria’.

Certainly more data would be a good thing.

Stuff reports:

A campaign to lower the voting age to 16 has taken the argument to the High Court, with a claim that the current permitted age of 18 is age discrimination and a breach of rights.

“Extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds would uphold human rights and give us a more representative, better democracy,” co-director of the Make It 16, Gina Dao-McLay said before the hearing.

Why just 16? Why not 12?

A move to 16 would be deeply unpopular. Earlier this month Curia polled 700 adult NZers on whether the voting age should be 16 or 18. The results were:

• 16: 8%
• 18: 88%
• Unsure: 4%

The support for age 16 by party vote was:

* National: 2%
* Labour: 11%
* ACT: 0%
* NZ First: 5%
* Greens: 27%
* Undecided: 17%

So even Green Party voters are against by almost 3:1. Labour voters by 8:1.

Bjorn Lomberg slays Joseph Stiglitz in his response to a review of Lomberg’s book by Stiglitz. It is a classic step by step destruction.

Radio NZ reports:

Morrah wasn’t leaping to a call for vengeance over a single Ministry of Health slip-up. His question came after nearly five months of reporting on the ministry’s shortcomings.

In April and May, he honed in on health workers’ struggles to access  personal protective equipment, or PPE, in hospitals and community care facilities. 

That reporting has since been reinforced by the Auditor General John Ryan, who found that Bloomfield’s repeated assurances that plenty of PPE was available, didn’t always match the situation on the ground.

In May, he reported on the Ministry of Health’s failure to distribute adequate supplies of flu vaccines to hundreds of GP clinics.

Morrah was also one of those reporting in June on the lack of testing for people in managed isolation and quarantine facilities, along with concerning decisions on compassionate leave.

Last week he broke the story on the fact that nearly two-thirds of all border staff hadn’t been tested for Covid-19, despite a government assurance in late June that they would be swabbed.

Morrah says he doesn’t regret asking whether Bloomfield should resign. He sees those sorts of hard questions as part of his responsibility as a journalist.

I think Michael Morrah has arguably done more than any other person in NZ to improve the public health response to Covid-19. Without his stories, the failures would remain hidden and probably not be acted on.

If National was in Government I’m sure there would be some on the right who would denounce him as a commie agitator just as some on the left today are calling him worse than Mike Hosking.

There are some journalists who do let their leanings show. I don’t think Morrah is one of them. He excels in being able to do solid investigative journalism and I am sure he will annoy future National Ministers just as much as he is annoying current Labour ones.

In that RNZ story it is worth reflecting on the huge range of stories has has broken or contributed to – from lack of PPE to lack of flu vaccines to lack of testing in isolation to lack of testing of border staff. He has obviously developed a very good network of people on the ground who trust him to reveal what is really happening.

Part one of three guest posts by Deane Jessup:

The Covid-19 Omnishambles – Guest Post 1 – Testing – Deane Jessep

Like everyone else in Auckland, I have been managing the yo-yo effect with my family and clients’ lives.  But I have to say; I am wearing thin.

For context, I am outgoing, confident, highly adaptable, and have a great home in which to be locked down.  I already work from home and am in an industry that is doing well; daily, I enjoy helping clients design, deploy, and migrate to cloud communications platforms.  My life’s work has been assisting communications within organisations and outwards with clients and suppliers.  I have never felt as rewarded in my career as I do right now, especially with modern tools allowing my customers’ staff to work from anywhere.

So why am I wearing thin? There are many reasons, some worrying me more than others.  Over the next few posts, I will discuss some problems from a slightly different point of view of others, starting with a look at testing.

A real testing screw up

Testing quality and quantity has me worried, because unless we can get this right, long term planning will be impossible.  Testing management is terrible, and all readers will have been following the press, so I won’t reiterate much here.  What caused me to write this was an account from a friend; by reviewing this I will avoid the armchair commentary of outright lies and mistakes, and instead attempt a limited factual analysis.

My friend works in an office that shares a floor, elevator, toilets, and a café with one of the locations of the recent outbreak:

11^th August they find out we are going into lockdown.

12^th August they find out from the media that their office is affected.  The article wrongly states the office is on one floor, secure, and very few people come and go.  Knowing this and that there is one positive and three symptomatic cases in their very own building my friend decides to go and get a test.

13^th August they report to their GP for a test in the morning.  They were also given this leaflet, and after testing asked to self-isolate away from their family until the test results come back:

13^th August my friend settles into alternating between a cold garage and bedroom on their own for family isolation. Neither were good for their physical or mental health.

16^th August they post a frustrated message on Facebook about not hearing about the test results.

17^th August they reach out to their GP, the results were not available.  They then call the two phone numbers on the helpful flyer above.  One number Healthline on 0800 358 5453 is useless as they inform that they do not have access to test results or timeframes for testing.  ‘The free government helpline’ (0800 779 997) is even worse, the message immediately states: “Kia ora, you’ve reached the government help line. This line is no longer active” before rambling on about some other equally useless websites, and then hanging up.

Go ahead, call it for yourself.

18^th August a friend who saw their Facebook post gives them a link to the Testsafe website and says to call back their GP and they can look up the results. They do this, the GP looks up the results, and promptly tells them; “all good, you are Negative”.

This story is an embarrassment for many reasons. I also noticed that the same screw ups are affecting isolated citizens, causing real release delays for whole families; beyond incompetence, it is avoidable heartbreak. So much of this Covid-19 NZ Omnishambles is heartbreaking; is it any wonder I am wearing thin?

A long post already, at this point I would like to give you, the reader, the chance to stop here.  The rest of this post will focus on what I see wrong, and because I want to be helpful, I will also propose how I would have handled things differently.

What to do?

As an expert in customer experience, my role involves understanding human nature, interpreting it, and deploying solutions to solve problems for my clients, particularly problems caused by rapid change.

Here are the issues as I see them and what I would do:

1. A physical visit to affected workplaces could quickly assess other affected companies, this did not happen fast enough, leaving people to work out their own risk based on speculation.  I last visited staff from this office on the 30^th July, it took me two days of following the press to assess my risk.  My friend also assessed his own risk a full 24 hours before his own company was in contact with a plan.  These communication delays are the real cause of the dangerous armchair speculation on origin of the outbreak.

The fix? I would minimize the value of corporate privacy risks and provide a transparent register of affected locations updated on a website. This could be done by address, including number of positive cases and the timeframe of risk. Frankly, I would democratize contact tracing.

• Doctors are not being appropriately informed on how to access test results.  Presumably, positive test results get actioned faster, but in being slow there are flow on impacts:
  • People will be hesitant to re-test even if they feel sick.
  • Unnecessary physical and mental health impacts from living for many days thinking you may have the virus.
  • Unnecessary inconvenience with your life effectively stopping until the all clear.

The fix? Train all health professionals on accessing the testing databases. Run a register of compliance that they understand. When notifying ‘negative’ test results promptly is difficult, implement a Service Level for positive results, add a buffer, then tell people you are all clear if you have not heard by X date.

• If you tell people they will be isolated in quarantine after the results of a positive test, a high percentage of people who suspect they are sick will avoid the test.  I know four people with this view who were near the outbreak.

The fix? Quarantine with compassion, don’t lock people up, give them an option of home quarantine with compulsory location tracking, ankle bracelets would do the job.  At least it would be a choice. Science has shown that even if both options are lousy, compliance and acceptance is higher with a choice.

• The leaflet handed out after the test was not helpful and focused on fear and propaganda rather than action. It also indicates that the coding for the reasons for testing is likely not collecting accurate data:
  • “You have come for a Covid-19 test because you are unwell with symptoms that you are concerned about…” – This is obviously wrong if you are getting tested for contact purposes. People could pick this up, read the first line, and walk away.
  • “This means our staff will talk with you to decide whether or not you get tested today…” – Wonder why people were being turned away? Look no further.
  • “The last community case of Covid-19 in Auckland was reported on 22 May 2020…” – Out of date, incorrect information being shared.
  • “Since that time, we have done more than 50,000 community tests…” – Propaganda plain and simple, and unnecessary to convey.
  • For general help and advice … call 0800 779 997 – The number does not work.

The fix? Shorten the leaflet to one page, keep the information factual, mandate it is kept up to date by those handing it out. Don’t publish incorrect information ever, it causes rumors and disinformation. Adjust the leaflet so there is more than one for each testing scenario with tailored information to each of the possible situations.

• The tollfree number screw up is the most significant aspect of this story. Frankly, it is an avoidable disaster. A quick Google search shows this number is published all over central government.

The fix? There are four options here that would be better than the current situation:

1. Adequately staff a call centre; use modern technology and respect the public’s desire to seek help during crisis.
2. The number could be automated with modern technology; I would design the call queue with an Intelligent Integrated Voice Responder, including reporting up to date information and redirecting callers to correct places, even going so far as to SMS out useful web links.
3. Use an auto attendant to redirect enquiries; “Push 1 for… Push 2 for… etc). Then send the calls somewhere meaningful.
4. If a recorded notification is preferred then don’t start the message with “this number is no longer in service”; typically, a large number of people hang up before hearing the rest.  Go straight into the list of information, i.e. “For this look here, etc”.

It would not be fair to say this is a complicated situation, no customer service situation is simple, experts in this field are plentiful. The core issue is we need our government to be focused on resolution, not on communication. As I have a professional interest, I’ve applied under the OIA for a report on the number of calls to 0800 779 997 in the last eight months and how long were each call.  I will share this once I get a response.

Polly Gillespie writes:

I may be vilified, tarred and feathered, stoned to death, or bombarded with messages of righteous indignation, but I’m going to go out on a fragile dying elm limb and say: I’ve had enough of “we’ve got this”.

Shut up, Jacinda. I need to mention right now as you’re spitting at me, deriding me, deleting me or aghast with horror, that it’s fairly well known I hang to the left, so I’m not anti-Labour at all.

In fact, I find myself in the unenviable electoral voting position of having orange marker in hand in October, with no-one to vote for. Sacrilege!

It’s been a wee while coming, but I’ve finally had enough of the platitudes, and sentimental psycho-babble. It came to a head last week when we were dished up the rehearsed response to a journalist’s question: re the “team of five million”.

The team of five million phrase is brilliant political propaganda. It is designed to make anyone who disagrees with the Government look disloyal and to almost have people shunned as not being part of the team.

Yes, she’s a great person, an incredible communicator, and could spin any spin doctor. I like Jacinda and have a particular affection for Grant Robertson and Andrew Little, but I’m just finding it irritating being spoken to like I’m a slightly IQ-deprived child. It’s starting to wear very thin. If anyone says “we’ve got this” one more time I will squeal!

My personal hated is electronic billboards on motorways telling me to be kind.

The sentencing of Brenton Tarrant starts today. It is expected to last four days.

The focus will of course be on hearing from the victims and families of the victims. With so many killed and wounded, we haven’t focused on them to the same degree as when there is a sole victim such as Grace Millane.

While his motives were political, the consequences of his actions were that 51 families lost a loved one, and there are children growing up without a parent, and parents morning their children etc.

His motivation in undertaking the killings was to cause hatred and a backlash. He failed miserably. It brought New Zealand, and to a degree, the world together. And I do credit Jacinda Ardern for the role she played in that. Her response was genuine and pitch perfect.

At the end of the sentencing phase, he will be sentenced. He will receive a life sentence. The key aspect is what will the minimum period of imprisonment be, before he is eligible for parole.

I hope that he gets Life Without Parole. If killing 51 people in an act of terrorism doesn’t qualify, then nothing ever will. It would also spare the families of the victims from having to endure the nightmare in a few decades times of submitting the the Parole Board. A LWOP sentence would allow them to move on and forget about Tarrant (but of course not forget their loved ones).

But the fact he pleaded guilty might mean the Judge resiles from LWOP. Maybe there was even some deal with Crown Law that if he pleads guilty, they won’t seek LWOP. I hope not. But by pleading guilty he did spare the victims the horror of a trial.

The normal discount for a guilty plea is 25%, if done at the earlier opportunity, His plea was fairly early, so I’d expect any discount might be around 20%.

Hopefully he does still get LWOP, but if not then what might he get. The longest non parole period to date is 30 years for a triple murder. He did not plead guilty though.

I could envision a situation where the non parole period is say 50 years initially but then after a 20% discount is 40 years. So my “pick” for the non-parole period is somewhere between 40 years and no parole eligibility at all.

Andrea Vance writes:

“My advice to everybody is: if you hear it here at 1 o’clock, it means that it’s true.” – Health Minister Chris Hipkins, August 15.

Except, that’s not quite true.

On June 23, Hipkins’ predecessor David Clark announced frontline border staff would regularly be tested for Covid-19. Even if they displayed no symptoms.

Two weeks later, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reiterated these stringent measures: “We have ensured our frontline workers at the border are safe by wearing appropriate PPE, getting regularly tested.”

Two definitive statements that both turned out to be absolutely false.

As with personal protective equipment (PPE) and distribution of the flu vaccine, there was a disconnect between what the Government was telling us about the enhanced testing strategy and what was actually happening on the ground.

So what they tell us at 1 am is the truth except when it comes to testing, PPE and vaccines!

In the last week, the Government has repeatedly expressed surprise at the dissonance between what it was promising and what its officials were (not) doing.

Ministers have blamed officials and even a reluctance to be tested among border staff (This is disputed by unions, and in media reporting).

But how can we be confident that this is the truth?

I have heard the opposite. That staff were complaining they could not get tested.

I’ve charted above the data from 538 showing what their model in 2016 and 2020 projected or projects for Trump.

In 2016 his probability in the model moved a lot – from as low as 12% ti as high as 48%, and ended up on 29% (and of course he won).

At this stage in 2016 he was seen at only 13% to win and today in 2020 he is at 28%, so you could argue their model has his twice as well placed as in 2016.

However I think the better argument is Trump is more of a known quantity now, and we just are not going to see the same volatility as in 2016. I doubt their model will ever have him below 20% or over say 40%. But time will tell.

The post-convention polls will be interesting but Nate Silver said the model has been designed not to give too much credence to them as any bounce from a convention tends to disappear within a week or two.

Stuff reports:

Parliament’s health select committee has rebuffed a request from National Party health spokesman Dr Shane Reti to summon Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield to answer questions about the latest Covid-19 incursion.

Reti wrote to the committee’s chairwoman, Labour MP Louisa Wall, asking the group to reconvene to question Bloomfield about the response to the most recent outbreak.

But Wall rebuffed the request, saying she had consulted with other MPs from the coalition parties who decided against it.

“Following your request, I consulted with government colleagues on the committee and have established that there is not a majority in favour of requesting Dr Bloomfield to appear before the committee,” Wall said.

There’s been a major failure between the Government and Ministry of Health with regards to testing frontline staff, and the Government won’t allow the DG of Health to be questioned at a select committee about this.

A very effective ad by Kimberly Klacik who is standing for the GOP in the 7th District in Maryland. She has no chance of winning the seat (it vote over 70% Democratic) but the ad has got lots of attention.

The Herald reports:

The Labour Party has posted an ad on Facebook featuring a visit by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to ESR and the national contact tracing centre, with a brief appearance by director general of health Ashley Bloomfield.

Act leader David Seymour described it is scandalous and that no public servants should be used to help political parties to campaign.

But a spokeswoman for Ardern said the advert did not break any rules, despite the decision later being taken to take the advert down for a re-edit.

“To even think it might be okay to go and use a Government department to shoot a political ad is just extraordinary,” Seymour said.

“One of the hallmarks of a democracy is you don’t get to use the power of Government for your own re-election.”

Wasn’t it the PM who said one shouldn’t politicise the Covid-19 response, and then goes and uses footage of the DG of Health in a campaign ad!

A reader who has first hand experience at the border has e-mailed me to share their strong support for National’s policy of having one agency in charge of the border, and has provided the following as to why this is necessary:

National’s new policy to delegate or create an agency to be in charge of the border is exactly what is needed right now. Here is a list of all the various agencies doing various different facets of border control, with insufficient overall leadership or governance from any single body. It’s no surprise that the virus has reemerged! 

1. The local DHB – in charge of the health response for their area. They provide nursing staff, wellbeing staff (they are generally hiring out-of-work air hostesses for this) and conduct testing. Each DHB has different testing labs and reporting methods. Further to this, each DHB has different roles and responsibilities depending on where in the country the facility is. Auckland has three different DHBs (Counties-Manakau DHB being the lead agency for the airport and some of the hotels, Auckland DHB for some of the other hotels, and Waitemata DHB for any staff coming from West Auckland or North of the Harbour Bridge) and has allocated various staff to be under the Auckland Regional Isolation and Quarantine Coordination Centre. Canterbury DHB has not submitted itself to the regional coordination centre and there is a unique dual-leadership structure in place there. And then Wellington, Hamilton and Rotorua have different arrangements again. 

2. NZDF – not actually in charge of anything, despite the assertion that ‘the troops have been sent in’ and Air Commodore Webb is sorting things out. Up until now, NZDF has simply been responsible for providing personnel to each hotel (was 4 personnel, now ramped up to 19), and a number of people to each regional coordination centre. No legislation has been used to give them any powers, for example the hotels have not been declared defence areas under the Defence Act 1990 which would give them substantial powers, including the ability to detain people trying to enter unlawfully. The military staff at each facility have been responsible for the logistics of accommodating the guests for 14 days. As just announced by the government, the NZDF commitment is going to increase substantially. The impact on normal training by the biggest military deployment since East Timor has not been articulated by the government. 

3. MBIE – was going to be ‘taking over’ in September or October, who knows what the progress of this is. Has only been involved in higher level stuff up until now despite supposedly being the lead agency and meant to be doing more from October, but they did have a hand in security arrangements. Their CEO is now in charge overall of the ‘All of Government Response’ – such as it is. 

4. Ministry of Health. From the get go, overwhelmed with mutiple operational tasks to do everything required of them. Probably quite predictable because they are not an operational ministry, they are a policy body. It’d be like getting the Ministry of Justice to do policing, or the Ministry of Defence to do combat operations! 

5. Private hotels – limited to providing the rooms, food and laundry. Contracted directly by the Ministry of Health in Wellington (skipping the regional coordination centres and local DHBs which causes significant friction). 

6. AVSEC – given a role to play early on in the piece because they had nothing else to do. They were responsible for two things – first was to capture all data on incoming travellers because customs / immigration and airlines would not share that info. So travellers would fill out an info sheet (manually, inevitably with errors), this would get scanned and then sent to a data entry team, who would enter it into an excel spreadsheet (again, manually, inevitably with errors) and then email it out to a gigantic distribution list. Massive privacy issues here, this has been tightened up somewhat, but it was a very wierd system. The second thing AvSec would do would be to provide 3 or 4 staff to each hotel as security. They are now withdrawing from this task. 

7. Private security companies. Variously contracted to do various things by each individual hotel, or by the DHB, or by MBIE. Basically to supplement AvSec, with varying standards of professionalism and competence. Now being replaced by NZDF.

8. Airlines. Air NZ would be contracted to charter flights between Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington up to two or three times a day. Multiple international flights into Auckland could not be mixed into a single ‘domestic transfer’ to another city, so sometimes there’d be only 20 or 30 people on an entire charter – costing about $30k a pop. They also needed a charter to return to Auckland at the end of their 14 days – huge costs!

9. Airport companies. Another link in the chain. 

10. Customs, immigration, MPI. Usual checks at the border for direct international flights – different in each region, so has resulted in various ad hoc arrangements depending on which airport is being used. 

11. Civil Defence – the initial response in March was done by Civil Defence, so some coordination centres are still using their IT systems, others are using NZDF or MoH or DHB or Avsec or MBIE – with the usual problems of trying to communicate between government departments each with their own IT systems, and privacy / security issues. 

12. Ministers reaching down for very low-level matters. There’s a fine line between checking up to make sure things are being done properly, and being distracted into micromanagement. 

13. NZ Police. Ended up being ordered to provide an officer to each hotel to sit there and do nothing. (A better solution might have been to have them on quick standby rather than have a few dozen cops at any one time sitting down at each hotel just in case something happened). More worrying was the lack of information about who was coming in until after they were there – criminals have been staying in hotels with no one being aware of their potential risk. 

14. Bus companies. Unsure who liaises with them to ensure testing is happening.  

15. Various other local authorities. Iwi own the Rotorua facilities, and needed to be engaged at various points. Local councils have a stake if neighbouring land is being used (for example for exercise yards)., Fire and Emergency NZ needed to be involved due to the unique considerations for evacuations, and no doubt there are others who have a finger in the pie. 

This government’s ad hoc approach of letting all these players and bodies do their own thing without any lead agency with the authority and responsibility to coordinate everything is not viable for long-term security. Appointing or creating a new agency to be in charge won’t cost much, but will go a long way to tie in all these different efforts. 

A guest post by Stephen Russell:

In my previous posts I described how the polls were wrong in 2016; what can be said about the accuracy of polls in 2020; the possibility of “shy Trumpers” distorting poll results and the “enthusiasm gap”.

Despite winning the popular vote by a 2.1 percent margin in 2016, Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump through failure to win the individual states she needed in the Electoral College. Trump’s supporters are encouraged by this to hope that he can, once again, win the election, even if he gets fewer votes than Joe Biden (as polls are currently suggesting). There is good reason for their optimism in this regard.

But first, some background:

In 2016, Clinton won states worth 232 Electoral College votes. She needed 270 – 38 more than she actually got. The three closest states on Trump’s side were Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20) and Wisconsin (10) – together worth 46 votes. Trump won Wisconsin by 0.76%. Ergo, with a popular vote margin of 2.1% already, Clinton needed a margin of 2.9% of the popular vote to carry those three sates and thus the Electoral College.  

This was the fifth time in US history that a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election (the others were in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000). 2016 was not the most extreme example. The loser on all five occasions was a Democrat* and it is not surprising that Democrats wish the College abolished, or failing that, circumvented.

However, the tilt in the College does not always go that direction. In five of the last ten presidential elections it has actually favoured the Democrat candidate – most recently in 2012. The degree of tilt has usually been small. In six of those ten elections the tilt has been less than one percent. Only twice has it been greater than two percent, and the 2.9 percent tilt in 2016 was the highest in at least 40 years.

Will there again be a Trump-favouring tilt? Probably yes.  It has been a consistent feature of the polls that whatever the ups and downs of support for Trump or Biden, the polling margins in the key battleground states that Biden must win to take the election have been less favourable to him than in national polls.

The Economist’s election model gives Trump just a 4% chance of winning a plurality of the popular vote, but a 15% chance of winning the election, for precisely this reason. 

For example, on July 8, fivethirtyeight.com had Biden ahead nationally by 9.6%. But ahead in Pennsylvania by only 7.6% (that being the tipping point state on that day). If you subtracted 9.6% from Biden’s position in each state so that the national vote were a dead heat, Trump would win four of Biden’s must-win states and romp home in the Electoral College.  (Incidentally, that is not a sound method of prediction because of elasticity issues, but it is good enough to illustrate the point.)

With only a handful of polls in individual states, the averages there tend to bounce around a lot. So the size of the tilt has been erratic, and the identity of the tipping point state keeps changing. Sometimes it is Pennsylvania, sometimes Wisconsin, sometimes Florida, sometimes Arizona.

That said, five weeks later, on August 15, the result was effectively identical: Pennsylvania the tipping point state, with Biden holding a polling lead there exactly 2.0% less than his lead nationally.

It should be noted that fivethirtyeight.com claims that historical attempts to predict the degree and direction of tilt before each election have been notably unsuccessful. They were certainly unsuccessful in 2016. The final polls at that time picked New Hampshire to be the tipping point state, and picked that the vote there would exactly match that of the nation as a whole, so there would be no tilt in the Electoral College. 

In 2000, polls gave George W Bush a handy margin, triggering speculation that he might win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College. In the event, he did the opposite.

It is quite possible that the tilt in favour of Trump will be even bigger than it was in 2016. Political analyst Larry Sabato said in January he believes that Biden could get double the popular vote margin Clinton got, and still lose.

It is also possible it will reverse direction and favour Biden. But irregular observations of the state poll differentials so far are pretty consistent in suggesting a Trump tilt of about 2% – less than in 2016, but still among the highest in recent history.

* Neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party existed in 1824. The loser of that year – Andrew Jackson, who had won a plurality of the popular vote – helped found the Democratic Party in response to the “corrupt bargain” that cost him the election. He went on to win in 1828 and 1832.  

Stuff reports:

High-profile insolvency practitioner and Stuff columnist Damien Grant is battling for his career, after having his application for a licence rejected because of 26-year-old fraud convictions.

From September 1, a new regulatory regime means all insolvency practitioners must be licenced by an accredited body.

Those who are not chartered accountants, such as Grant, must apply to the Restructuring, Insolvency and Turnaround Association of NZ (RITANZ) to be allowed to continue practising.

But, it is understood, Grant’s application was first rejected in June. He was then granted a review, at which it was rejected again on character grounds, because of his historical convictions.

Grant has credit card convictions from the late 1980s and a fraud conviction from when he was 26 in 1994, for his part in a share-dealing scam. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and served 16.

A requirement of the new licensing regime is that an applicant is a “fit and proper” person.

Grant has operated his business, Waterstone Insolvency, since 2006 but will not be able to continue as an insolvency practitioner without the licence. 

The decision by the Restructuring, Insolvency and Turnaround Association of NZ appears to be all about stopping competition, not historical convictions.

Grant’s convictions are from 26 years ago. He has done his time. He is very open about his past. I suspect 95% or more of his clients know about them, and they correctly deem it historical. He has been operating for 14 years without issue.

The real issue is that, as I understand it, Waterstone’s charges for their insolvency work are often significantly less than some of the big players, and the licensing regime is really a way to try and get rid of a competitor. They will deny this of course, but I can’t seriously buy that a conviction from 26 years ago makes someone unfit to do insolvency work.

Grant is seeking a judicial review. I hope he wins.