The Herald reports:

The family of a man shot dead two decades ago is taking a civil case against the police in the High Court at Wellington.

In 2000, Steven Wallace walked down Waitara’s main street using a golf club to smash shop windows, a taxi and then a patrol car with officers in it.

Wallace was shot dead by senior constable Keith Abbott, who in 2002 was acquitted of murder when the Wallace family took a private prosecution against him.

The 23-year-old’s cause of death, according to the Independent Police Conduct Authority’s subsequent report, was a fatal wound to his liver.

“[Doctors] confirmed that even if first aid had been rendered immediately after Steven was shot, he would not have survived.”

The family believes there were other tactical options available to the police, and has argued Wallace was deprived of the right to life.

The shooting of Wallace has been found to be justified by an internal Police review, by the IPCA and by the High Court.

The internal Police review is worth a read. Wallace:

• smashed 100 window panes with a golf club
• attacked an occupied taxi with a baseball bat
• Tried to run over a cyclist in his car
• attacked an occupied police car with a golf club
• was told to drop his weapons by the Police and specifically told they were armed
• advanced on a retreating police officer
• warned Wallace again they were armed
• ignored calls to talk
• ignored a warning shot in the air from the Police
• kept advancing on the officer who warned he would shoot him if he came any closer
• held the baseball bat above his head and told the officer he was going to harm him with it
• said “You fucking arsehole “I’m going to kill you”

And then the officer shot Wallace dead.

The family of Wallace of course mourn his loss. But they also harassed the family of the constable who shot him, until a court instructed them to stop harassing her.

It is very sad that Wallace died, but he is to blame, not the Police.

The Serious Fraud Office has announced:

The Serious Fraud Office has commenced an investigation in relation to donations made to the Labour Party in 2017.

This is very interesting. If I had to guess, I’d say the investigation was into Labour not naming people who paid tens of thousands of dollars for artworks as a donation to Labour.

And who ran these art auctions:

Wellington artist Karl Maughan provided Labour with two paintings for auction in the last year. He said he gave them to campaign staffer Barbara Ward, who works for Labour leader Jacinda Ardern.

If I am correct that this is what the SFO is investigating, then it will come down to whether Labour valued the artworks fairly. That determines who get listed as the donor.

Let’s say a painting went for $25,000. Now if the painting is worth $20,000 normally then the artist is deemed to have made a $20,000 donation and the bidder a $5,000 donation as they paid $25,000 for something worth $20,000.

And only donations over $15,000 get the identity published, so the person who paid $25,000 for it, has their identity hidden.

But what if the painting wasn’t really worth $20,000. Let’s say that is a nominal value but in reality it is only worth $7,000. Then the donor has made an effective donation of $18,000 and should have been disclosed.

And the story quoted gives us a clue that may be the case:

At the last Labour art auction, they sold three works by Mt Eden artist Stanley Palmer, from a numbered series of 20 prints of the end of the road at Karamea, on the west coast of the South Island.

Palmer believed the $20,000 paid for the three was what they were worth – but admitted they would usually have sold for around $2400.”They went for a lot more than I expected.” 

If they would normally only go for $2,400 then the donation value is $17,600.

So it will be a very interesting investigation, if I am correct in guessing this is the focus of it.

Dan Hannon writes:

Britain’s offer of residence rights to three million Hong Kong citizens has prompted Chinese threats of retaliation. What kind of retaliation, though, would be proportionate? Might China offer spaces to three million British citizens? I can think of one or two Maoist statue-smashers here who might want to take them up.

How odd that Beijing should see Britain’s visa policy as any of its business. The United Kingdom has always recognised that it has obligations to the people of Hong Kong. The basis of the 1984 accord was, essentially, that China could get the land as long as the people living on it kept, at least until 2047, the rights they enjoyed as British subjects. China has now flagrantly violated that deal, snuffing out political freedoms in Hong Kong and making it clear that the inhabitants of that territory will be treated like Uighurs or Tibetans – that is, as renegades to be brought to heel.

Britain’s response, in the circumstances, is remarkably modest. We have not aimed diplomatic or commercial sanctions at the Chinese. We have not taken any action against them at all. All we have done is to honour our promise to Hongkongers. If they cannot enjoy freedom under Chinese sovereignty, let them come and enjoy it under British sovereignty.

A great summing up. The best way the world can stand up this repressive move by China is to allow the people of Hong Kong to leave. To make China realise the economic successes of Hong Kong only work if there is political freedom to match the economic freedom.

The arrival of several hundred thousand enterprising and industrious Hongkongers (it is vanishingly unlikely that all three million will take up the offer) will enormously boost our economy. Conversely, their departure will impoverish China, which has done very well out of having a low-tax, low-regulation, high-wage entrepôt on its doorstep, blessed with secure property rights, global trading links, common law norms and judges who don’t take bribes.

I’d love to see New Zealand offer say 5,000 places to Hong Kong citizens, once Covid-19 is over.

Stuff reports:

The man convicted of the Christchurch mosque attacks will represent himself when he is sentenced next month. …

Justice Mander said the shooter’s choice to represent himself will not affect the sentencing, which would proceed on August 24 as planned.

The court would appoint standby counsel for the sentencing hearing, whose role is to represent the accused should he later choose to be legally represented.

The accused will be sentenced on 51 charges of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder and a charge of committing a terrorist act after he entered shock guilty pleas to all charges in March.

The sentencing is scheduled to start on August 24 and is expected to take three days.

I’m puzzled by how the debate over sentencing will take three days.

The sentence for murder is an automatic life sentence under s172(1) of the Crimes Act, unless it is manifestly unjust. There can be no debate a life sentence would be manifestly unjust.

So the only thing to decide is what the minimum period of imprisonment without parole is. The normal minimum is 10 years, but s104(1) of the Sentencing Act says it must be at least 17 years if the murder was committed as part of a terrorist act or the offender has been convicted of 2 or more counts or murder.

So the real issue before the court is a choice of:

• A life sentence with a minimum period of imprisonment between 17 and x years
• A life sentence without parole

The longest minimum period of imprisonment was for William Bell for murdering three people and attempting to murder a fourth. He got 30 years. So there can be no debate really that x must be at least 30 years as 51 murders is far more than three murders.

But really, I think the only feasible sentence is life without parole. S103(2A) states that “If the court that sentences an offender convicted of murder to imprisonment for life is satisfied that no minimum term of imprisonment would be sufficient to satisfy 1 or more of the purposes stated in subsection (2), the court may order that the offender serve the sentence without parole.”

The purposes above are accountability, denunciation, deterrence and protection.

If gunning down 51 people in an act of terrorism and wounding 40 others doesn’t qualify for the maximum available sentence, then what act possibly could? Would you have to nuke an entire city to get life without parole?

Parliament in 2010 legislated for life without parole to be available for the worst murders. A court that failed to impose it for these 51 murders would be flagrantly ignoring Parliament’s will in making this sentence available.

I don’t want his victims to have to worry that in 30+ years time they will have to track his parole status and make representations to the Parole Board about whether he should be let out. If he gets life without parole, then they can at least not have to think about him again, knowing he will never be released.

UPDATE: The three days for the hearing will not be primarily for arguments over the non parole period. There will be potentially 90+ victim statements to be heard from families members and those wounded.

Stuff reports:

Hundreds upon hundreds of babies are born each year in New Zealand with foetal alcohol syndrome, a devastating and incurable condition that can cause life-long problems.

It is transmitted during pregnancy when alcohol from the mother’s bloodstream reaches the developing foetus, and can cause heart defects, behavioural problems and intellectual disability.

The Ministry of Health says about 45,000 New Zealanders, from babies to adults may live with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. The ministry’s estimate is 1800 affected births each year, while some researchers using overseas data, estimate that figure to be closer to 3000.

With increasing awareness around the effects of alcohol on unborn children, a push for mandatory labelling on alcohol warning about those dangers has been in play since the 1990s.

The notion that warning labels on alcohol will lead to fewer cases of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder is fanciful.

It relies on the following:

• The mother being genuinely unaware of the dangers of drinking when pregnant despite being told at every appointment with their lead maternity carer, and it being on brochures they will have received
• The mother purchases a bottle of booze, and as she raises it up to have a drink she sees the warning label and suddenly realises it is harmful, and decides not to drink the bottle she has just purchased

The sad reality is that most of the very small minority of mothers who drink significantly while pregnant just don’t care. It is not a matter of ignorance.

I don’t mean the mother who has a small glass of wine once or twice during pregnancy. I mean the mothers who drink to excess and their kids get FASD.

I’ve got no problems with pregnancy warning labels on alcohol. They are already quite common. I just think a belief they will change anything is fanciful.

Stuff reports:

“Covid-19 has revealed a serious and growing issue. New Zealanders who have paid high taxes for years are being laid-off and made redundant but finding they get little back in benefits. New Zealanders in genuine, short-term need also face the stigma associated with welfare created by long-term beneficiaries who have made it a lifestyle choice.”

ACT proposed income tax rates should remain unchanged but 0.55 per cent of the tax paid would be allocated to a ring-fenced employment insurance fund.

On the loss of employment, a taxpayer could claim 55 per cent of their average weekly earnings over the previous 52 (or fewer) weeks. The maximum yearly payable amount would be $60,000.

Insurance could only be claimed for one week for each five weeks the person has worked, up to a maximum of 26 weeks per claim. Someone who has worked continuously for only one year could claim up to 10 weeks’ employment insurance.

Once a recipient has used up their employment insurance entitlement, they can move to Jobseeker Support and Electronic Income Management would apply.

I like this. It doesn’t give more money to people who spend most of their life on the dole, but is generous to those who have been in gainful employment and through no fault of their own, lose their job.

Very powerful and effective new ad. 100 seconds of one of Reagan’s best speeches against visual images of America today and Trump.

Democrats could never run such an ad against Trump, but Republicans can.

Most New Zealanders look across the Pacific from a currently Covid free country to the US (and many other countries) where the virus seems to continue to grow and spread with horror but gratitude that you are spared many of the issues that come with trying to managing an ongoing pandemic.

It will not come as a shock to many regular readers of this blog to know that the media are misreporting the current COVID-19 spikes in a veritable orgy (pun intended) of what I sometimes refer to as pandemic porn. The states singled out for the most attention and MSM scorn are Republican run states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Arizona. Cases have been climbing just as dramatically in California but because Governor Gavin Newsome is a liberal media darling, he cops less criticism than Florida’s Ron de Santis, Texas’ Greg Abbott and Arizona’s Doug Ducey. That is but the first aspect of media misreporting of the virus as it stands right now in the US, the way GOP run states are covered versus Democrat run states. When New York was the world’s hot spot and when it was clear Gov. Mario Cuomo had deliberately sent elderly Covid positive patients from hospitals back to their regular nursing home beds only to infect 10,000’s and eventually to kill over 5,000, Cuomo was still the recipient of glowing media coverage for his informative press conferences simultaneously attempting to blame President Trump for New York’s woes.

To look at the other problems with reporting, we will need to dive deep into the statistics because it is how the media covers what is happening is where the major problems lie. What I am about to report on applies to all the major Republican states that are in the media firing line but I am going to focus on Arizona because Arizona’s Department of Health Services Covid-19 Dashboard has the most comprehensive publicly viewable data in an easy to digest format. I will end this essay with three general virus counting issues that are affecting all states but especially southern states.

The AZDHS Dashboard has 12 buttons of data to view. The media focus on 2 metrics: daily positive tests and ICU Beds with Covid to paint the picture of a runaway virus and are uninterested in diving deeper and understanding the publicly reported statistics. In their reporting they make 4 crucial errors:

A – The reasons for the numbers of positive cases exploding

There are 4 main reasons, but the media are only interested in one of these reasons. I list them in order of their contribution to the number of new positive tests with some backup to these assumptions:

1. ALL patients who are admitted to hospital are now tested for Covid REGARDLESS OF WHY THEY WERE ADMITTED. This is massively important because, during the Shelter-in-Place orders, all elective surgery was cancelled, and no one could visit hospitals for anything barring life or death emergencies so as to keep beds clear for a level of hospitalisations that never eventuated except for a few days in New York City. Once the lockdowns were lifted, hospitals scrambled to reschedule all the deferred elective procedures AND were hit with all kinds of admissions of patients with illnesses unrelated to Covid that people put off attending to due to the previous restrictions on admissions. Because the virus is far more prevalent in the community than the official positive test results show because so many people have the virus but have no symptoms, it is no surprise that a good number of these patients in hospital for something other than Covid are testing positive. A kiwi nurse friend told me that at her large hospital, the rate of asymptomatic infection of the non Covid patients testing positive in hospital is 80%! Look at the button that tracks Confirmed Covid-19 Cases Day by Day and compare it to the data under the button Hospital Covid-19 Specific Metrics and you will find that on average, 2/3rds of the daily positive numbers come from the positive tests arising from this surge of hospital admissions for things OTHER THAN COVID. The media are uninterested in this important nuance.
2. The huge numbers of young people who took to the streets day after day to protest over the killing of George Floyd and in favour of Black Lives Matter. This is a factor in the increase in numbers of positive tests in a number of cities.
3. The huge nationwide jump in the amount of testing because of more employers testing en mass, more sites for testing being made available and the fact that free testing is available. It doesn’t take a degree in advanced biochemistry to know that the more you test for something as widespread as a flu pandemic, the more you will find positive cases because you are now capturing a higher percentage of people who are infected but are asymptomatic. Check the numbers in the Laboratory Testing button and numbers have doubled since the time of the lockdown. The tail off in lab numbers just recently is due to more in-hospital tests that are processed in the hospital. This explains the discrepancy between the large daily test figure (as at writing over 17,000 were tested today Saturday July 11 versus the graph which shows only 8,000 on 8 July). The graphs tend to lag by 3 to 4 days as they only show what has been loaded from reports and it takes time for the true daily numbers to be properly populated.
4. More human interaction due to the lifting of the lockdowns. For sure the greater level of economic activity especially in the sunbelt Republican states that opened up more and earlier has contributed to higher numbers of positive tests but according to the MSM, it is the ONLY or the MAIN reason for the spikes when really it is a more minor contributor.

B – The hospitalisations for Covid are misreported

Another statistic that the media focus on is the ICU Beds in Use under the Hospital Metrics button. But read the description of that carefully, it includes “Positive or SUSPECTED Covid cases” so it covers people who doctors are allowed to add because they SUSPECT they MIGHT have Covid but have not tested positive … yet. In order to understand who has been admitted to hospital strictly for Covid, you have to go to the Hospitalization button and that tells a whole different story: nowhere near the same numbers AND on a downward trend! The media are uninterested in that figure because it doesn’t fit the narrative of the hospital system being swamped with Covid patients because Republican governors irresponsibly lifted their lockdowns.

Another way to track the severity of the caseload right now is to look at the Ventilator Intubation rate – this is a more reliable figure than straight ventilator use as ventilators are used for a variety of respiratory issues in the hospital most notably emergency asthma admissions. Intubation is the method of ventilator use most commonly associated with severe Covid patients. When you look at those statistics, you see a flat line of usage which does NOT confirm any massive spike in dangerous cases at the same time as the numbers of positive cases has spiked – again, all you hear is the sound of crickets from the media on this statistic.

C – ICU usage is not differentiated

If you look at the graph on the page Hospital Bed Usage and Availability under the tab ICU Bed Usage and Availability, the media focus in on the fact that ICU Beds are near 90% capacity and they look at the steady rise in this percentage since the state opened up but this page does not differentiate between an ICU bed used for a Covid patient who is in ICU BECAUSE OF COVID versus a patient in ICU for some other reason but who has tested positive for Covid or patients in ICU who have tested negative for Covid. The raw rise in ICU bed usage is in effect a meaningless statistic without the context that before, only Covid patients were in ICUs and now all kinds of other patients are there as well, context the media are uninterested in providing.

D – The death rates are relatively stable despite massive explosion in positive cases

In the case of Florida, it is essentially a flat line of deaths despite the explosion in positive cases. Ditto in California. In Arizona it is a very gentle up-slope. Deaths in AZ are only sporadically reported on the weekend leading to huge reports on Mondays and Tuesdays as the DHS staff catch up which explains the volatility in the daily numbers. Texas has a slightly steeper curve up and Georgia, the state that opened first and faced the earliest hostile media scrutiny, has a sharp downward slope in its death rate. Georgia now is no longer talked about because this good news must be hidden.

There are three other ways that the nationwide coronavirus figures are inflated, again things the media rarely mention.

1 – People who die of other ailments but test positive for Covid either during their existing illness or after their death, are counted as a Covid 19 death even though they only died WITH Covid not OF Covid. Dr Deborah Birx, the Response Coordinator for the Whitehouse Coronavirus Taskforce, went on the record as stating that the CDC’s official death figures were inflated by 25%. Since she made that comment, the CDC again amended it’s guidelines to allow for clinicians to list a death as Covid even without a confirming positive test if they but SUSPECTED that Covid might be involved. If you add this expansive refining of the definition to the last one, it is not a stretch to assume that the US wide coronavirus deaths are exaggerated by a factor of fully one third which would put the national deaths at about 90,000 or slightly above a bad regular influenza season’s death rate in the US.

2 – If you analyze county positive test rates and even specific ZIP code breakdowns of recent positive cases, you will find major spikes in those areas with hospitals near the Mexican border due to increasing numbers of illegal border crossings of Covid infected Mexicans who cannot get help in Mexico’s overloaded health system. This is true for south San Diego CA, Yuma and Nogales, AZ and El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville, TX. This is not a particularly politically correct thing to report hence why little mention is made in MSM reporting.

3 – It is unknown as to how widespread this situation is but because tests are free, people are having multiple tests but results are published by raw testing numbers rather than by individuals so there is no way to determine what percentage of tests figures have some degree of inflation due to multiple testing.

The bottom line is that pandemics play out pretty much the same every time. They continue to spread until they run out of hosts that are not immune or vaccinated. The stated purpose of lockdowns in almost all countries was to flatten the curve so as to not overwhelm hospital systems. Almost all first world countries (with the exception of northern Italy, parts of Spain and for a time in NYC) achieved this goal. So, when you flatten the curve, the total number of cases remains the same, all you have done is distribute the cases over a longer period of time and that is exactly what we are seeing the US right now. Because of what we know about this virus and who is most vulnerable, the growth in positive tests no longer poses the same danger to society as it did back in March when lockdowns began. Positive cases have exploded but deaths and Covid specific ICU admissions have not because:

• The elderly and infirm are better protected
• Many jurisdictions now have far better protection protocols for residential care facilities, a source of 50% of deaths
• Treatments for the virus are more effective due to known successful early interventions leading to shorter hospital stays, fewer intubations as a percentage of cases and thus fewer fatalities
• The age profile of those now testing positive has plummeted from predominantly those over 70 to people in their 20’s and 30’s (as you’d expect with bars and restaurants opening and the widespread protests) and in these age groups, a lower percentage even have symptoms, the symptoms are less severe and fewer die or are hospitalized.

Almost all the media are uninterested in reporting those trends nor are they interested in properly analyzing the statistics focusing only on the dramatic increase in positive tests and people in hospital. This is agenda driven journalism with a deadly twist because inducing needless panic over this pandemic has serious economic, health and well-being consequences.

Finally, a word about NZ. Recent highly publicised breaches of the NZ quarantine regime and the explosion of cases in Victoria as a consequence of even more serious breaches there, highlights that the only way NZ can avoid what is happening in the US and other countries is to keep its border hermetically sealed until all the country is vaccinated. Talk of Trans-Tasman and Pacific bubbles to somewhat assist the ailing travel industry was blown out of the water by the various Health Department mismanagements of the quarantine protocols. It is easy to look at the US with a sense of comfort and unified achievement of the current situation in NZ but it has and will come at an enormous economic cost and, as the residents of Melbourne have found out, if you are wedded to an elimination rather than a containment strategy, a serious breach means another total lockdown re-devastating the economy.

Newshub reports:

A High Court judge is questioning the legality of the Government’s ban on compassionate exemptions from managed isolation – and warned them to fix it.

It follows a case of a returning Kiwi who challenged the ban, but tragically never got to say goodbye to his father, who died before he got his day in court.

Graeme Hattie returned from London and was going to sit out the 14-day quarantine to see his dying father. …

Auckland High Court was ready to host the hearing this week, but sadly Hattie’s father died overnight. Hattie therefore withdrew his court action. 

However Justice Muir has issued a warning to the Government in a note.

“The extent the Director-General purports to have currently suspended all compassionate leave from managed isolation… would appear to be inconsistent with proper exercise of discretion in [the order],” he said.

“There appears to be an urgent need for the Director-General to address the terms of the current [purported] blanket suspension.” 

Hattie’s lawyer went a step further, saying the ban on compassion exemption was “illegal”.

“They have an obligation, at law, to consider the particular circumstances of each applicant who applies for compassionate leave. They cannot refuse them all on a blanket basis. That is illegal,” Foote said.

This is a near repeat of the earlier case, which they lost. The Government doesn’t seem to realise that a press release can’t trump the law. If they really want to end compassionate and exceptional waivers, they need to change the law which allows them.

Newshub reports:

Gangs will be targeted in a new ACT Party policy which promises to amend the Criminal Proceeds Act and “hit them where it hurts”.

The policy, released on Saturday, would allow the police to apply to the courts for an order to seize assets if a search finds an illegal operation, unlawful possession of a firearm, and a person who is a gang member or close affiliate.

“ACT will target the gangs by hitting them where it hurts – their pockets,” the party said in a statement.

Party leader David Seymour told Newshub Nation the policy was simple.

“If the police find illegal firearms and illegal activity by a gang, then they can take their assets because, at the moment, gangs are getting around the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act by having a large number of small operations,” Seymour told host Simon Shepherd. “We’re saying that if you have a firearm and you are dealing drugs and you are a gang, then the Crown can take your assets because, ultimately, these guys don’t care about going to jail.”

Seems a very sensible policy.

Rokzfast reports:

Black Lives Matter-inspired demonstrations against symbols of history, in New Zealand and around the world, have focused on monuments to Europeans, but Ngāpuhi leader David Rankin has called on Tainui to take down Turangawaewae Marae, which he said his iwi had long regarded as a symbol of enslavement and oppression.

The marae, he said, represented a dark period in the iwi’s history, when Tainui slavers abused his people to build their marae and grow crops for them.

“For us in the North, Turangawaewae Marae is a symbol of that slavery, murder and cannibalism, and so needs to be pulled down,” he said.

“The wealth that Tainui generated was made on the backs of Ngāpuhi slaves.”

He had the support of his Te Matarahurahu hapū, whose ancestors were among those captured by Tainui, and used as slaves. Sometimes slaves had become part of the communities of their captors, but in this case they were eventually killed and eaten.

“Tainui famously acquired corn by disembowelling my ancestor and removing the kernels in his stomach for seed,” he said.

“Tainui has a moral obligation to pull down that marae, which for us is a symbol of cultural hatred, and if they don’t pull it down, then we will come down and do the job for them.”

Several Ngāpuhi hapū were preparing a submission to the Hamilton City Council to request the marae be dismantled.

This is I guess where you end up once you start pulling down structures that cause some people distress.

Stuff reports:

he police union says the Government is turning officers into babysitters.

Police Association president Chris Cahill criticised a Government decision to have a permanent police presence at all New Zealand quarantine facilities. The decision was made after a man absconded from isolation at an Auckland hotel and went to the supermarket on Tuesday.

It was a waste of police resources and not policing, Cahill said.

“This is about giving political surety, for the government to cover themselves, rather than actual security. I’m not sure the balance is right.”

We don’t need Police at the facilities. We just need more security guards.

Personally I’d hand the isolation facilities off to the private sector. Pay say $100,000 a day for each facility, but with a $500,000 fine if they allow anyone to leave.

Bryce Edwards writes:

The Green Party of Aotearoa-New Zealand could go from helping Jacinda Ardern run the country, to being turfed out of Parliament altogether in ten weeks.

And that could see the end of Labour in government. Without them, Labour would likely have to do what no party has done since the introduction of the current MMP electoral system: gain an outright majority of seats.

With just ten weeks to go until the election, the Greens have been consistently polling precariously close to the 5 per cent threshold needed by parties who don’t hold an electorate seat.

In fact, since the last election which saw the Greens win 6.3 per cent of the vote and become part of the Labour-led Government, their polling has been stuck below that level.

They have recorded an average of only 5.7 per cent by the country’s two main polling companies. And since the start of the year, this average has been trending downwards to just 5.4 per cent.

Unfortunately for the Greens, they consistently do worse in elections than their polling predicts.

Readers may be interested in what the gap normally is between what the Greens polls and their actual result.

Over the seven elections they have contested, they have on average done 1.3% worse than the polls. By company it is:

• Colmar Brunton 0.8%
• Horizon 1.5%
• Reid Research 2.3%
• Roy Morgan 2.9%

And by year it is:

• 1999: 0.8%
• 2002: 1.7%
• 2005: 0.7%
• 2008: 1.7%
• 2011: 1.1%
• 2014: 1.9%
• 2017: 1.1%

So for the Greens to be totally secure they would want to be polling 6.5% or more.

A guest post by David Garrett:

On 8 June, the Mongrel Mob took over a street in Hamilton in order to hold a tangi for one of their dead members. On 11 June, Stuff reported that residents of the area were “terrified” and that:

“patched gang members and cars were visibly crowding the street, with cars blocking the road and preventing residents from entering”

And disturbingly:

“multiple police cars were in seen in surrounding areas as gang members loitered in the streets [which] caused mayhem for parents trying to pick their children up from nearby Maeroa intermediate”

I made a formal complaint regarding the inaction of the Area Commander of the Waikato Police in response to this incident. In my letter I asked the police to comment on the accuracy of the Stuff report, and if it was inaccurate in any respect(s), to specify those inaccuracies.

On Saturday 4 July, to my utter incredulity, I received the following response to what is termed, in the subject line of the e-mail,  my “enquiry”:

            “Thank you for your email David.

We hope you’ve enjoyed your week thus far.  Your complaint 16/06/2020 was forwarded through to the district however those directly affected by the incident you read in a stuff.co.nz article will be contacted and or updated. We do have to wear many hats and as you stated in the complaint there were a large number of members in attendance likely emotional, grieving, some even angry, we would have to consider whether disrupting this time of mourning or even involving Council in the removal or ticketing of the vehicles parked illegally would potentially put more lives at risk or work to how we plan it.  The wiser choice in this case was unfortunately unfavourable in your eyes.  We do have to take into account incoming emergencies, immediate safety of the public, the safety of our staff members, and availability of our facilities.

Gang Criminal activity are crimes that we take seriously having said that being a part of a gang does not automatically make you a criminal, in fact, there are a number of gang members who are hard working, family orientated, law abiding citizens/permanent residents.  As far as we aware gang patches have been banned from government and public buildings as introduced in 2012 under the Prohibition of Gang Insignia

You do have the freedom to make a complaint irregardless of how separated from the incident you are and below is a link with the correct avenues for you to do so” [emphasis added]

To say I was astounded by this semi-literate poorly punctuated unsigned response to my complaint – it was most definitely not  an “enquiry” – would be an understatement. However its contents – particularly the section in bold (my emphasis) – now confirms my suspicion that the police no longer regard the Mob as primarily a criminal organization.

In  a separate OIA request about possible interactions between Deputy Commissioner Haumaha and gang leader Sonny Fatu,  I asked the following question:

“Is it still the position of the police that the Mongrel Mob is wholly or in part a criminal organization?”

In return, I received a lengthy disquisition on two provisions of the Gang Insignia Act which, read  together, suggest that the simple answer to that straightforward Yes or No question was Yes – unless the police’s view is now different from whoever was the Minister of Police in the National government when the Mob was added to the list of gangs in that Act in 2013.

I thought perhaps I was acting like a typical leftie, and reading more into the answer than was justified, so I have made a follow up request asking for a clear answer to my quite straightforward question.

This latest response to my “enquiry” suggests my suspicions were correct, and that the police no longer regard the members of the Mob as criminals – despite their “code”, and what they need to do to get a patch. I suspect many readers will be astounded to  learn that in the view of the police:

            “…being a part of a gang does not automatically make you a criminal, in fact, there are a number of gang members who are hard working, family orientated, law abiding citizens/permanent residents.”

In my view – and fully appreciating the inherent difficulties created by comparison with the Nazis – this is tantamount to saying “Well, not all the members of the SS were evil, in fact some of them were good family men.” So fucking what? Like the SS, members of the Mob sign up – well, figuratively, most of them are probably illiterate – to a Code that is inherently evil. That Code involves regarding women as “bitches” – their word – whose function is cook clean and fuck, and produce children for which cash can be claimed. They can be abused whenever and however members think fit. It is common knowledge that rape and even murder of women is one sure way to get patched.

As an organization, they reject the societal norms that the rest of us respect, or at least (mostly) abide by – indeed such disdain and disregard is required  of members; it is loosely included in the term “Mongrelish behavior” which all members are expected to exhibit at all times.

It is of course something of a cliché, but if any group of readers – or indeed any group of ordinary citizens – took over a street for three days and behaved as this pack of criminals did, said citizens would be promptly arrested. Such a siege wouldn’t be allowed to last three hours, let alone three days.

So, law abiding citizens, welcome to the Brave New World of policing in 2020, where the law is only strictly applied to members of the middle class, and if there is enough of them in any one place, gang members can pretty much do whatever they like. Have the police been bought off by the gangs? Probably not. Have they being cowed and intimidated into giving them huge amounts of leeway not granted to ordinary citizens? You betcha.

Stuff reports:

Former National Party President Michelle Boag has left the National Party, after being a member for 47 years.

Her resignation comes after revelations she passed on private patient information to National health spokesperson Michael Woodhouse.

Boag had already resigned from several other positions after revelations she passed on private patient information to MP Hamish Walker, who will not stand for re-election this year as a result of the ensuing scandal.

Woodhouse says he deleted the information and did not pass any information on to others. He confirmed the information given to him by Boag was not the source of allegations he made about the lax security measures at the New Zealand border.

It’s wrong to leak private patient information once. It’s even more wrong to leak it multiple times.

Stuff also reports:

A controversial National MP with links to Chinese spy agencies is retiring.

Jian Yang announced on Friday that he would not stand in the 2020 General Election after serving “three rewarding terms” in the National Party caucus.

This is despite announcing in March that he was being reselected as a list-only candidate for the party – in a press release for Chinese-language media only.

“Accordingly, I have informed the Party President that I should not be considered by the regional list ranking committee of the Northern Region in its meeting tomorrow, hence my announcement today.”

Many in National will be relieved at this news. Its not that Dr Yang has even done anything wrong, or been anything other than a loyal MP, but his background has raised issues that frankly are a distraction for National.

So the resignation and the retirement, while messy in themselves, do tidy up some issues that may have caused problems for National in the future.

I’ve published on Patreon on second monthly look at how Governments in Australia, Canada, NZ, the UK and the US are looking in terms of re-election.

The graphical summary is below. The full data and analysis is here.

Not a lot of change in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. A slight deterioration in the UK and a significant slide in the US.

150 prominent authors and journalists and other artists have signed an open letter which is a must read. Signatories include Noam Chomsky.

Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second.

They expand:

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

And they conclude:

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. 

Bravo.

The ODT reports:

Andrew Noone has been elected the new chairman of Otago Regional Council against a backdrop of protest.

He is taking over from Marian Hobbs, who was voted out by councillors this morning.

Councillors voted 9-2 in favour of her removal. Ms Hobbs abstained.

Mr Noone, her replacement, was then chosen as chairman. He was the only nominee. Ten councillors supported his appointment and two abstained.

Being a Council Chair is a very different skillset to being a Minister. You need to be able to built trust in a team, and persuade people – not bully them, and go behind their backs to the Minister.

The PM’s Chief Science Advisor has a site on the cannabis referendum. It isn’t an advocacy site, but has lots of useful and interesting info – especially the FAQs.