Scoop reports:

National will create hundreds of new jobs and boost the Wairarapa economy by delivering a suite of transport projects to get the region moving, National Party Leader Judith Collins says. …

While visiting the Wairarapa today with National’s Wairarapa candidate, Mike Butterick, Ms Collins revealed details of National’s Wairarapa transport package. It includes two projects that will be fast-tracked with funding from the $300 million set aside for ‘digger-ready’ projects in National’s $31 billion infrastructure package announced last week.

Those fast-track projects are:

· The Norfolk Road Roundabout upgrade

· SH2 Waingawa to Clareville Safety Improvements

National’s Wairarapa transport package also includes:

· Upgrading the Ngaumutawa intersection in Masterton

· Safety improvements on the SH2/Chester Road intersection

· New passing lanes between Masterton and Woodville on SH2

· Investigating a replacement Waihenga Bridge on SH53 at Martinborough

“National has a simple approach to infrastructure. We make decisions, we get projects funded, and we actually deliver them,” Ms Collins says.

Looks like a good package for Wairarapa.

People often just want the basics for their communities – job, decent incomes, good schools, good hospitals and good roads.

The Herald reports:

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has defended sending two friends on a taxpayer-funded trip to Antarctica, calling it an “appalling, racist attack”.

Peters said Bee Lin Chew and her daughter Su Arn Kwek went on the trip as part of efforts to raise $50 million from donations to redevelop Scott Base.

They have not yet made any donations to the programme.

No one is saying they should not have gone because of their ethnicity. The issue is whether the Minister should arrange for personal friends to fly there at taxpayers expense.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson was initially meant to go on the February 7-10 trip at the start of February but had to pull out due to the timing of Waitangi Day and the first sitting week of Parliament.

Emails released under the Official Information Act, sent to the Herald, show Peters insisted the women go in his place, which left officials scrambling as there was only one spot.

Antarctica New Zealand initially warned that science programmes or essential staff may have to be cut to make room for the women but were able to fulfil the request without disrupting the programme.

The women, who are dual Malaysian-New Zealand citizens, are connected to one of South East Asia’s richest families.

That’s curious. The Constitution of Malaysia says you can lose your citizenship if you become a citizen of another country. The Malaysian Home Minister last year urged people to report anyone with dual citizenship.

So it may be worth checking if they really are dual citizens. There are three possibilities.

1. They are citizens of Malaysia only
2. They are citizens of New Zealand only
3. They are citizens of both countries, and no one has reported them to the Malaysian Government

It would look even worse if the people sent were not even citizens of NZ.

Today in the House’s General Debate, Winston Peters said:

Today, I am going to outline the truth about the leak of my superannuation. There have been news reports about the case. The matter is not sub judice. But a source totally connected to both the ACT Party and the National Party has revealed that the leak was one Rachel Morton.

Morton heard about the case because she was present when former Minister Anne Tolley told her ministerial colleague Paula Bennett about it—not outside by the lifts, but in a ministerial office. Ms Morton then, thinking it would be kept in confidence, told ACT Party leader, David Seymour, but, desperate for any sort of attention, Mr Seymour contacted Jordan Williams of the wage subsidy – receiving taxpayer union fame. Williams—no stranger to dirty politics—told John Bishop, father of National MP Chris Bishop, and the details were then leaked to Newsroom’s Tim Murphy.

Williams also told another dirty politics practitioner, National Party pollster David Farrar. Farrar tried to shut it down, seeing the risk it exposed to the National Party, but then went along anyway, although he later tried to steer the story away from National’s guilt, which is its usual modus operandi.

So this bizarre conspiracy theory is that Rachel heard it from Anne, and Rachel told David S and David S told Jordan and Jordan told John and John told Tim, and somehow I’m involved also.

The allegation is of course completely false. I was totally unaware of the issues around Winston’s superannuation until I read about them in the media. It is impossible for me to have leaked anything about them, because I simply didn’t know squat.

I suspect the real target of this bizarre story is David Seymour, because NZ First voters have defected to ACT in huge numbers.

Winston of course has absolute privilege for what he says in the House, which might explain why he refuses to repeat it outside the House.

I actually laughed out loud when I heard the allegation, as it is so batshit crazy. It is as if Winston came up with a list of people he doesn’t like much, and put them all together in the story.

Anyway this is all a giant distraction from the real story of the day, which is why Winston arranged for close personal friends to travel to Antarctica.

Today on Patreon I look at if MPs have affairs (and of course best they don’t), why it matters who the affair is with. ILG wasn’t sacked for the affair but for the fact it was with a staffer of an agency he is the Minister of.

So I look at the pros and cons of if the affair is wth:

• Another MP
• A journalist
• A staffer in another office in your party
• A staffer in a different party
• A staffer in your office
• A staffer in an agency you are responsible for
• Some random in a bar

Iain Lees-Galloway has been sacked for a consensual but inappropriate affair with a staffer from one of the agencies he was Minister for.

He will not stand at the election.

Radio NZ reports:

Foreign Minister Winston Peters directed Antarctica New Zealand to give two highly-prized spots on a trip to the icy continent to two women closely linked to one of South East Asia’s richest families.

Bee Lin Chew and her daughter Su Arn Kwek, who are dual Malaysian-New Zealand citizens, travelled to Scott Base, at taxpayer expense, in February after Antarctica New Zealand scrambled to make room for them at the insistence of Peters’ office.

Emails released under the Official Information Act show Antarctica New Zealand pushing back at the request to include Chew and Kwek, as only one spot was available and that was supposed to be for a government minister.

Tax payer-funded Antarctica New Zealand initially warned that science programmes or essential staff may have to be cut to make room for the women. But it ultimately managed to fulfil the request without disruption to the programme and in line with the “firmly held” views from Peters’ office.

In an interview on the doorstep of one of the two homes she owns on Auckland’s exclusive Paritai Drive, Bee Lin Chew said she was a good friend of Peters and his partner Jan Trotman.

Very strange. I’ve never heard of this before. Those going always have a specific rationale such as being a Minister, or an artist or media etc. I was fortunate enough to go a few years ago – but I applied through the media programme, and did a series of around 20 blog posts on Scott Base and the work of Antarctica NZ there.

Chew says she isn’t a donor to NZ First, and there is no reason to doubt her. So we can only assume that Winston just sees spots to Antarctica as something he can hand out to his friends.

Stuff reports:

Labour list MP Raymond Huo has announced he will be retiring at the election.

Huo was elected in 2008 and was Labour’s first Chinese MP. He has been accused of having close links with “united front” groups linked to the Chinese state, but has denied this.

National MP Jian Yang was also criticised for ties to the Chinese state, and has recently decided to retire at the election.

Yang and Huo are currently Parliament’s only ethnically Chinese MPs.

It would be good to have one or more MPs who are ethnically Chinese. But perhaps they could be Taiwanese Chinese or even Hong Kong Chinese?

Anyway I wish Raymond well. I’ve always found him very pleasant and dedicated to serving his community.

On my Patreon I posed the question, whether National should stop selecting young male candidates?

I note:

In the last three years, four MPs have caused problems for National, resulting in their leaving the party or Parliament. They are Todd Barclay, Jami-Lee Ross, Hamish Walker and now Andrew Falloon.

Todd was 27 in 2017, Jami-Lee was 32 in 2018, Hamish is 35 and Andrew is 37.

I also note:

Is it coincidence that all four are relatively young males? I don’t think it is.

 I can speak with some authority on being a young male, as I used to be one.

In my 20s and 30s I did lots of stupid shit. Spectacularly stupid shit.  If I had been an MP in my 20s or 30s I would probably have imploded. Even in my 40s it could be questionable. It has been becoming a dad that has most changed me. Partly because the responsibility of bringing up children weighs on you massively and partly because you’re too tired to do stupid shit due to sleep deprivation 🙂

The full column on Patreon covers the issues around the four MPs, and what I think National should do in future, noting they have three candidate selections to now undertake, and list ranking.

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is warning politicians on the 2020 campaign trail to watch themselves – because the Debt Monster is looming over them.

The Debt Monster has arrived on New Zealand’s shores in the wake of the Government’s COVID-19 spend-up, and will stalk politicians of all stripes as they campaign across the country.

He may look cuddly, but the Debt Monster not a friend. He loves it when politicians spend big with borrowed money – and he knows perfectly well that it’s New Zealand’s kids who will pay the price.

So far, Government debt is forecast to peak at $109,000 per household in 2024. As if that wasn’t scary enough, we now face two months of electioneering, in which political parties will bribe voters with new spending promises, driving up debt even higher.

We hope that the Debt Monster will serve as a reminder to politicians – and voters – that today’s promises are paid for by tomorrow’s taxpayers, with interest.

The Debt Monster has already been spotted at New Zealand First’s campaign launch in Auckland yesterday, and at the Green Party’s policy launch in Wellington the weekend prior.

To subscribe to updates from the Taxpayers’ Union, click here.

Kate Hawkesby writes:

I know we’re not supposed to believe politicians when they speak, but really, Winston Peters is taking the proverbial isn’t he?

Yesterday, after threatening to knock out David Seymour in 10 seconds flat in a bizarre Twitter rant, he also confirmed the one thing he’s been denying for weeks.. that NZ First has indeed hired the Brexit operatives to work for its election campaign.

The self described ‘bad boys of Brexit’ have signed a contract with NZ First to try to turn around the party’s woeful polling.

In one poll NZ First currently sits at 1.8%, the Brexiteers aim to get them up to between 13 and 15%. I mean good luck with that.

Back when Winston was denying all this, about a week ago, he told reporters he wouldn’t even comment on “this rubbish”.

Yet here we are.

Peters actually attacked the local media for reporting on the story, when it turned out the story was absolutely correct except for a minor detail of where the Brexit staff would be operating from.

I don’t know what NZ First has paid these bad boys for their services of mischief and mayhem, or what results the party believes it’ll actually get.. but it does seem ironic that a party hell bent on hiring Kiwis for everything, and so often poo pooing ‘foreigners’.. has gone offshore to pay for help for their own party.

Very ironic.

Stuff reports:

Andrew Falloon says he will resign immediately.

The news came minutes after Stuff revealed Falloon, the National Party MP for Rangitata, is alleged to have sent sexually explicit photos to more than one young woman.

Stuff has seen screenshots of Falloon, who had announced he would step down at the election, sending sexually explicit material to a young woman. The screenshots indicate the material was sent to the person more than once. The photos did not appear to be of Falloon himself.

His resignation follows calls from National Party Leader Judith Collins on Tuesday morning, who said she wanted to see him go.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told RNZ that if Falloon was her MP, that would be her expectation too

Collins told TVNZ she had heard there may be other instances, and she urged people to come forward.

”I do not want to see any other young women, or anyone else go through the same.”

This is the right outcome.

Falloon appears to have made the fatal mistake of not being upfront with the leadership about what actually occurred. That makes carrying on until the election untenable.

A National Party source told Stuff on Tuesday that Falloon’s explanations had not been consistent and continued to change, which raised further alarm bells among the leadership and senior staff.

When asked what she no longer trusted about his story, Collins told RNZ it was clear to her yesterday that he was admitting what had been alleged.

She had now been advised that he had changed his story.

Following this, Collins told RNZ and the AM Show on Tuesday she wanted him to resign.

He sat in her office and advised her that he was receiving professional medical mental health help and had been for some time, and that he had a significant mental health issue, she said.

“I believed him because I’m not a medical health practitioner, I’m certainly not an expert in mental health, and if someone tells me that they have a significant mental health issue, and they’ve been receiving assistance then I will believe them. I will take them at his word,” she told the AM Show.

“The story has now changed from Andrew Falloon and I have reached the view this morning that it would be in his best interests, the best interests of the young woman who is my first priority, and for his family if he were to resign from Parliament immediately.”

My understanding is that Falloon is currently in very poor mental health, which is perhaps not surprising as his career has just come to a very public and sudden halt. It is less clear whether the poor judgment caused the poor mental health or vice-versa or a mixture of both.

Anyway I think the way Collins has dealt with this has been excellent. She got notified on Saturday, and on the basis of the information she received over the weekend decided that Falloon had to retire at the election and this was announced on Monday, around 48 hours after she was first notified. Then when it became clear Falloon had not been upfront on what happened, she said this morning she wants him gone now, and within minutes he was.

Her focus on the young woman or young women involved is very appropriate too, and she has reached out to them and offered support.

Judith Collins isn’t the sort of leader who will take three weeks to decide if a Minister should go after a staff member alleges they were assaulted, or keep a staffer employed in her office for months after multiple staff complain of bullying behaviour or worse. She has pretty close to zero tolerance for this sort of behaviour.

Of course this doesn’t negate the fact that of course this whole issue has been bad for National. It has crowded out the focus on their excellent infrastructure package on Friday.

Stuff reports:

NZ First leader Winston Peters says that ACT leader David Seymour wouldn’t “last 10 seconds” if the pair exchanged blows, after Seymour said Peters would soon need help to get dressed.

The pair traded insults on Monday morning, after Peters announced a campaign to limit immigration to 15,000 of the “most highly skilled people who will add value to our economy” per year.

Seymour, in a press statement, said Peters’ campaign immigration promise was “tragic”.

“Peters himself will soon be retired and will require a care worker to help him get dressed and go for a walk. He’ll discover that such facilities can’t function without migrant workers,” Seymour said.

“As a local electorate MP, I have helped care facilities deal with byzantine immigration laws to get people into the country and keep services going. This is the reality of business in New Zealand.

“Nowhere else in the world does an economy of five million people say, ‘You can’t hire anyone outside out the border.’ It would be like Victoria sealing itself off from the rest of Australia. NZ First’s policy is like permanent Covid-19 isolation for the labour market.”

Peters, who recently took medical leave to recover from a keyhole surgery, took issue with the comments about him possibly nearing retirement, and said: “As for your nasty comments about my physical – I reckon you’d last 10 seconds in the ring with me.”

“There’d be three hits – you hitting me, me hitting you, and the ambulance hitting 100.

“Thank your lucky stars I’m not into physical violence.”

Seymour poked Peters on Twitter, and Peters fell for it with an angry response guaranteeing lots of publicity for what Seymour said.

Peters is the Deputy PM, and he got played by Seymour.

NewstalkZB reports:

NZ First leader Winston Peters has been ordered by the High Court to pay nearly $320,000 in costs after his failed court action over details of his superannuation payments being leaked.

In a judgment by Justice Geoffrey Venning last Friday, and obtained by the Herald today, costs of nearly $320,000 were awarded against the Deputy Prime Minister. …

The new judgment orders Peters to pay Bennett and Tolley $101,897.26 – while a total of $215,921.11 was to be paid to the remaining defendants.

That money doesn’t go to Bennett or Tolley. The Government covered their court costs as former Ministers, so all $320,000 will go to the taxpayer.

Winston really got off lightly. I understand total costs for the Crown was around $1 million.

I can almost guarantee that Winston will now announce he is appealing, or doing a private prosecution or some such. These will either fail or never eventuate, but it will allow him to dodge whether or not he has paid the $320,000.

Of course Winston also still owes the taxpayer $165,000 back from 2005, so in total he owes $485,000. People should ask him at public meetings when he will be paying it all back.

This is a huge loss. Andrew is a great guy and was a future front bencher. I don’t know what the mistakes are he refers to, but just hope he looks after himself.

Apart from the personal loss, obviously not tidy for National to have another last minute retirement.

Seen on Wilton Road this morning.

Must just be random vandals, of course.

Newshub reports:

A prominent entrepreneur is frustrated that an alternative to the troubled COVID-19 tracing app is stuck in limbo with officials.

Since March, Trade Me founder Sam Morgan has been working as part of a team to test the ability of ‘CovidCard’.

CovidCard is a low energy bluetooth device the size of a credit card, that is designed to be worn on a lanyard around the neck when in areas such as public transport, workplaces, bars, restaurants, gyms, hospitals, large gatherings and events.

It detects and records close contacts using bluetooth and stores this data securely on a person’s card for 21 days.

No contact data is automatically stored in the cloud or elsewhere and it does not track user location as the card does not contain GPS capability.

Sounds ideal.

Morgan said apps overseas – which were even better than the COVID-19 Tracer app – had failed miserably.

“So the solution isn’t on a phone and in our consultation with iwi and Pasifika and so forth, they made it really clear to us that if you’re going to give [them] an app don’t expect all of [their] people to be able to use this and that is a fundamental equity issue,” he said.

“It is really important we can reach every New Zealander and no app is going to do that.”

Sam Morgan has been consistently ahead of the Government on this stuff. He pushed them into lockdown, when they were resistant, and he is right on the app also.

Stuff reports:

Judith Collins is keen to see Kiwis returning home to New Zealand charged $3000 for their managed self-isolation or quarantine, Stuffunderstands.

The National Party will announce the policy on Sunday to charge all New Zealanders entering the country the fee – around three quarters of the total cost – should the party be elected in September.

The policy wouldn’t apply until October 3, giving Kiwis who didn’t want to pay the fee the chance to rush home.

National does not see any serious legal hurdles in creating such a scheme, and would pass a law to enact the policy if necessary, it’s understood.

There’s pros and cons to this.

The argument against is that NZ citizens have an right to return home to their country. Charging them a fee, undermines that right.

The argument for is that those returning home are generally wealthy and well off, and why should low income families in NZ pay for quarantine costs of returning ex pats.

Anyway Labour has announced they will do much the same, so looks like it will happen.

I graphed the daily data showing the cumulative death rate per million from Covid-19 for the OECD countries with the highest death rates. The US isn’t the worst country, but it may end up there.

As you can see the European countries got hit first and still have a higher death rate. But many of them now have relatively few additional deaths. The US though is still having significant increases. Here’s the increase in the death rate (deaths per million capita) in the last month:

1. Belgium 1.1%
2. Italy 1.7%
3. France 2.0%
4. Spain 4.7%
5. UK 7.3%
6. Sweden 11.5%
7. US 18.3%

The US Government/s seems incapable of putting effective measures in place. If they can’t do so, then within six months or so they may have the highest death rate.

The Herald reports:

A complaint has been laid with police after Labour volunteers were spotted taking down New Conservative election hoardings in Auckland.

But Labour says it was a misunderstanding and a signs coordinator has apologised.

A New Conservative supporter posted on Facebook saying they’d seen two ripped signs on a fence while passing Great North Rd.

“I pulled over thought to take a photo but shockingly it was gone and on the ground into pieces already. A couple was replacing them with their Labour Party signs”, Frans Van Schie posted.

Of course it was a misunderstanding. I mean, they just tripped up and accidentally tore the signs down.

Newshub reports:

Northland locals are desperate for a four lane expressway connecting Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, and Tauranga which The National Party on Friday promised to build if elected. …

In the congested, wet, and windy roads of the north, traffic can be backed up for kilometres upon kilometres. 

“It’s shit,” one Kaitaia resident told Newshub. “It’s absolutely shit.”

Cue The National Party. New leader Judith Collins announced its new transport package on Friday – planning to build a four-lane expressway starting in Whangarei, shooting down through Auckland and Hamilton, and ending in Tauranga.

The windy Kaimai ranges would be replaced by a tunnel, so too the Brynderwyns north of Auckland

“And, yes, for those tunnels, you will pay a small toll for a car, or a more sizable one for a commercial vehicle,” Collins said.

In return, it would create jobs and bring more people and goods into the area.

Locals say the most important part for the north is that it’s safer. The area makes up for just three per cent of the country’s population but for 12 percent of the roading  fatalities. 

Locals believe the expressway would save lives and the winterless north’s economy.

The expressway is hugely popular in Northland, and for good reason when you look at the road toll there and the congestion.

Shane Jones has delivered some art toilets and a lot of rhetoric over the port. Labour are against the expressway so NZ First will never be able to deliver it – only National can.