Moderators have been deleting lots of comments trying to spread rumours about some MPs personal lives and/or their families.
We have been just deleting them, but the new policy is an instant suspension for those who try to post such a comment. And this includes trying to be a smart arse and use code.
HDPA writes:
f you’re about to be hit with a rates increase, wherever you are in the country, I think you have good reason to be really grumpy with your local council.
Raising rates in this current economic climate is unbelievable.
The most recent example of this is Auckland Council, yesterday voting to increase rates by 3.5%. In doing that, they’ve ignored their own ratepayers: two thirds of submitters asked them not to raise rates by that much.
The Council has all the excuses in the world for why rates have to go up.
But actually, it doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to, and shouldn’t, accept an increase as if there is no other option.
Let me tell you about Horowhenua District Council.
These guys are actually decreasing rates this year, by 1.83%. …
The fact is, Auckland’s rates are going up because the council can’t be bothered taking the pain like Horowhenua’s leaders are prepared to.
Yep 18 of the 21 Auckland Councillors made the choice to increase rates by 3.5% during a recession in which many business and family incomes have plumeted.
Stuff reports:
The Government keeps urging New Zealanders to use the NZ Covid Tracer app but Kiwis aren’t responding.
Now, one public health expert says it should probably be abandoned.
Figures from the Ministry of Health show QR codes on posters in businesses and other places frequented by the public have been scanned a total of about 1.43 million times in the nearly two months the app has been available. That’s an average of only around 25,000 a day.
So less than 1% of people using it daily.
But professor Nick Wilson from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago said 10,000 users a day would be just 0.2 per cent of the population.
“That’s just microscopic. It’s just not working,” Wilson said. “It should probably be abandoned.”
For an app to be more effective than manual contact tracing, uptake by the population would need to be much higher than 50 per cent.
So pretty much useless.
One was a Bluetooth-enabled smart card that everyone carried around, along the lines of a system being developed in Singapore.
According to the Singapore government, the “tokens” it started to hand out in late June exchange Bluetooth signals with other nearby tokens, or with an app it launched in March.
When a token user is identified with Covid-19, the data on their token can be used to identify other token users who have been in close contact with the infected person.
A much better system. No manual checking in.
Judith Collins has announced a massive $31 billion infrastructure package. Key details are:
A stunningly bold and visionary package. Just imagine four lane express ways between the four major cities of Upper North Island.
The difference between two and four lanes is massive. On a two lane road all traffic moves at the pace of the slowest vehicle on it. On a four land road, traffic can and often will travel at the designated limit.
Henry Cooke writes:
“I accept there will be politicking this year. I accept we have an election. But if I’m being brutally honest, my mind hasn’t been focused on that to date.”
“I absolutely accept that there is an election this year – and there is no avoiding that – but at the moment it’s taking up a bare minimum of my attention.” …
It’s also quite an odd way of putting it. Ardern doesn’t have the choice to “accept” whether there is an election this year. Elections are the means by which the Government has legitimacy and power; not minor inconveniences on the path to Covid-19 recovery.
Exactly.
Thus far Labour has released a single election policy, which deals with afforestation of farmland and seems mostly engineered to give Kieran McAnulty a good shot in Wairarapa. When you ask about other policy areas, MPs either say “maybe soon” or point to wider government policy on an issue. But the Government is not the Labour Party, it is a set of compromises between Labour and two parties with wildly different views. Kiwis can’t vote for “the Government” – much like they can’t vote for Ardern herself. They can vote for a party, and they deserve a coherent set of values and promises to make that decision on.
Labour are hoping they can get away with as little policy as possible, because then they get a blank cheque for their second term, and we’ll see massive tax increases to pay for it all.
Auckland Councillor for Rodney Greg Sayers released:
Today the Auckland Council voted to support Mayor Phil Goff’s 3.5% general rates increase.
Rodney Councillor Greg Sayers was one of three Councillors who voted against the increase.
He said increasing taxes such as rates in a recession makes a recession deeper and that was the wrong thing to be doing.
The other two Councillors who voted against the 3.5% general rates increase were Cr Christine Fletcher and Cr John Watson.
“The mandate from the public was clear with over 64 percent of the submissions from Auckland residents wanting a 2.5 percent rates increase or less,” says Sayers.
“The majority of people said they wanted Auckland Council to cut-its-cloth to fit its income, especially at a time when households can least afford more taxes,” Sayers said during the debate.
Sayers gave alternative solutions to increasing rates which included central Government taking the City Rail Link debt off Auckland Council’s books, bringing payrates for Council staff paid over $100,000 back into line with the private sector, and implementing a Royal Commission recommendation to have an Independent Performance Auditor residing over Auckland Council providing independent assurances to the public that the Council was providing high-quality services in a cost effective way.
“It’s the financial hardship created on Auckland’s most vulnerable, the poorest, the supernatants, and those on fixed incomes that concern me the most,” said Sayers.
Aucklanders should be angry at the 18 Councillors who voted to sock them in the middle of a recession with a 3.5% rates increase – ignoring the vast majority of submissions against this.
Marc Daalder writes:
A politician takes over as head of one of the major parties of a small island nation, replacing a predecessor who had become increasingly unpopular, jeopardising the party’s chances at the upcoming election.
Then, as Prime Minister after the election, the politician surrounds themselves with climate activists and scientists and begins, in response to massive protests and a clear mandate from the electorate for action on reducing emissions, rolling out evidence-based climate policy.
That includes an ambitious plan to totally decarbonise transport, the banning of the import of fossil fuel vehicles by 2035, investment for electric vehicle charging statements, continuing the transition to renewable energy, requiring big companies to list their climate-related risk, requirements to upgrade the energy efficiency of commercially-rented buildings and millions of dollars to research reducing industrial emissions.
Although, at first glance, the above story seems reminiscent of Jacinda Ardern’s rise to power, the politician in question is actually Boris Johnson and the small island nation is the United Kingdom. The key difference is in that last sentence, where the politician actually implemented policies that would significantly reduce emissions.
Good to see this analysis. All Ardern has done is set up a committee to advise on future policies. She hasn’t actually made any significant policy changes. Once again it has been rhetoric over substance, like with light rail and Kiwibuild.
Jacinda promised the Government vehicle fleet would be emissions free by 2025. Less than 2% are electric after three years.
Talk is easy. Results are harder.
A couple of months ago some of the usual suspects said that the Police should be defunded and not armed etc because most of the people shot by the Police have been Maori or PI.
Of the 21 people killed by Police between 1990 and 2015, seven are European, nine Maori, three Pacific and two others. Now I personally didn’t thunk the Police are shooting people because they are Maori, but because they were posing a threat to Police or others.
It got me wondering about the other side of the equation. What is the breakdown by ethnicity of those who have killed or assaulted police officers. So I asked the Police and they have responded.
There have been eight (now nine) officers killed since 1990 and the ethnicity of the killers is three Maori, two Europeans, one Pacific and two unknowns. So at least half of those who have killed Police are Maori or Pacific – much the same ratio as those killed by Police.
Not enough data to reach much of a conclusion but the assault data is more robust as there has been a shockingly high 16,000 assaults on police officers since 2010.
The ethnicity breakdown of people assaulting police officers is:
No doubt the usual suspects will somehow also blame the Police for being assaulted so often by Maori and Pacific offenders!
Judith Collins has announced her new lineup. Big changes are:
In terms of portfolios the big changes are:
The full list is here.
A nice mixture on the front bench of experienced Ministers and newer MPs who would make great Ministers.
After the unscientific survey on Kiwiblog on perceived media bias, I decided to follow up with asking the same questions in a scientific poll by Curia of 905 New Zealanders.
The full results are on my Patreon.
The summary is:
Centre right and centre left voters agree that they perceive Stuff and Radio NZ as leaning left and NewstalkZB as leaning right. For the NZ Herald, One News and Newshub they disagree with each set of voters seeing the outlet as leaning the other way.
Nikki Kaye has announced she is retiring from politics. I’m very happy for Nikki, but equally sad for National.
Nikki is one of my closest friends. We’ve been friends for around 20 years and often holidayed together. As a 28 year old she won Auckland Central off Labour – the only time in 90 years National has held the seat. She is one of the hardest working MPs and candidates I have known – her door knocking is legendary.
She went on to win Auckland Central four times, including beating Jacinda Ardern twice. She became National’s youngest ever female Minister and one of the youngest Ministers of Education.
Auckland Central will miss having her as their MP. She got involved in scores and scores of projects and delivered real results for an electorate that had been taken for granted.
Her cancer diagnosis in 2016 was a huge shock as she was so young and so fit and healthy. It was a stark reminder how cancer can strike anyone, and Nikki showed huge tenacity in fighting it.
She has spent more of her adult life inside Parliament than outside it, and so there is a lot to do outside politics. She’s already done the Coast to Coast three times, so I don’t know what her next big challenge is, but I’m sure she’ll succeed at it.
Stuff reports:
New National leader Judith Collins has stripped Michael Woodhouse of the health portfolio over his involvement in the COVID-19 leak.
On her first full day as leader Collins replaced Woodhouse with Shane Reti, and promoted Reti to the front bench. …
Speaking to reporters at 3pm, Collins said that Woodhouse had been given the portfolio of Pike River Recovery, and the economic portfolio of regional development, in addition to his associate finance role.
She said that she had spoken with Woodhouse about the leak, and that he had made a mistake, but she still had confidence in him. “He’s a top performer,” she said.
She had advised him that the right thing to do when he received the email from Boag was to not reply, and to tell the Health Minister immediately.
She said Reti was “delighted” to be moved to the front bench.
A well deserved promotion for Shane Reti, and politically also very useful as it allows National to move on the from fiasco over the health leaks.
The 2020 Jonesie Awards were held this morning at Parliament by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. The awards celebrate the best of the worst of government waste at the central and local level with a glitzy Oscars-style ceremony.
You can read the full nomination and winners list here.
Congratulations to all the winners – in particular Phil Stoner Twyford (yes that’s really his middle name) for taking home this year’s lifetime achievement Jonesie. Good on him for fronting up to accept it.
Bari Weiss writes:
But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.
Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.
My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.
There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.
I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.
But it does.
A fascinating poll in Texas by the University of Texas at Tyler for the Dallas Morning News. The UTT poll normally has a small bias of 0.3% to Republicans.
Trump won Texas by 9% in 2016 but in this poll is trailing by 5%. They found:
Texas has 38 electoral college votes, second only to California. On current polling Trump is behind in the 13 largest states.
112 days until the US election. Can Trump turn it around?
Newshub is reporting Judith Collins has been elected Leader of the National Party.
Game On!
UPDATE1: National has confirmed Judith has been elected.
UPDATE2: Gerry Brownlee has been elected Deputy
Two very experienced and effective MPs. This will excite a lot of National supporters and activists.
UPDATE3:
As a huge Lord of the Rings fan, I love this take:
The Taxpayers’ Union’s Jordan Williams and Neil Miller, sit down with political commentator and Stuff columnist Damian Grant discuss the runners and riders of the sudden National Party leadership race.
You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio and all good podcast apps.
The tenures of 14 leaders of the National Party, in order:
I’m hoping the next leader has a tenure somewhere in the range of the top five!
You can vote below for who your preferred National Party leader is. The candidates listed are not necessarily candidates. This is just a fun poll to see where Kiwiblog readers lie.
The results will be posted tonight after the caucus meeting starts, so there can be no question of it influencing the results (not that it would anyway).
Create your own user feedback surveyUPDATE: Over 4,000 votes cast and the results are:
No recount needed for this one!