Stuff reports:

Labour will commit to delivering Auckland’s axed light rail project if it wins the election, Transport Minister Phil Twyford says.

During the 2017 election campaign, Jacinda Ardern promised to have the first section of the light rail line between Britomart and Mt Roskill built by 2021.

They promised not that light rail will start by 2021, but that it will be completed. They took two and a half years to even decide on basic parameters such as route.

The project was beset by leaks from NZTA, suggesting incompetence and a lack of direction from the Beehive.

One can probably use a stronger word than suggesting.

Stuff reports:

It was a fine winter’s day when a Waikato mayor loaded up his ute with a ladder and some handyman tools and set out on a mission to change the law.

Matamata-Piako Mayor Ash Tanner pulled up in Manawarū with a stack of freshly made, but illicit speed limit signs.

Without anyone knowing, he removed the 70kmh speed signs and replaced them with 50kmh lollipops – a move designed to slow down traffic that passes a local school, cafe and bicycle traffic that crosses the road at two points.

The new signs are made to regulation, but they don’t have the required sign-off from authorities and the maverick mayor was operating outside the law when he put them up on July 30. His council is now trying to tie up loose ends with NZTA to make the changes legal.

Tanner changed the speed signs out of frustration after years of battling the New Zealand Transport Agency [NZTA] to have the speed reduced, he told Stuff.

I’d say he is going to be easily re-elected.

Stuff reports:

Labour has confirmed it will not extend the fees-free programme for tertiary education to cover any more years of study if elected this year.

The party’s education spokesman, Chris Hipkins, said following Covid-19 the focus would stay on encouraging and reforming vocational education.

The 2017 election policy was originally scheduled to extend to two years of academic study in 2021 and three by 2024, but this has now been indefinitely put on ice.

Just another Labour failure. The policy did nothing but transfer wealth to future lawyers and accountants. Labour should be ashamed of it, and at least they have ditched extending it as they promised.

They said it would allow more people to undertake tertiary education. They even had one of the official measures of its success to be increased participation.

But guess what happened?

In 2017 there were 343,590 students enrolled in tertiary education.

In 2019 it dropped to 328,075.

Yes they spend hundreds of millions of dollars to see a 4.5% drop in enrolments!

The Herald reported:

Police have arrested and charged six men following an investigation into historical sexual offending at Dilworth School in Auckland.

Detective Senior Sergeant Geoff Baber said the Auckland City Criminal Investigation Branch had been investigating since a complaint was initially made a year ago.

A number of serious offences allegedly occurred across a number of decades from the 1970s to the early 2000s, Baber said.

“At this stage in our investigation we have identified 17 victims,” he said.

A 72-year-old, 73-year-old, 68-year-old, 69-year-old, 72-year-old and 78-year-old have been charged.

This is a stunning development. It is not unusual for schools to have had sexual offenders from time to time. But to have six different alleged offenders and 17 victims suggests something on a very different scale.

Good on Dilworth for front footing this and not seeking name suppression. Dilworth has provided excellent education to many students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. But once the criminal trials are over, there will be questions over how such (alleged) offending went undetected for so long.

On my Patreon I have now completed the Central North Island electorate races profiles.

The summary of them is:

• Safe National: Port Waikato, Hamilton West, Coromandel, Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, Rotorua, Taupo, New Plymouth, Taranaki King-Country
• Leans National: Hamilton East
• Too Close Too Call: East Coast
• Leans Labour:
• Safe Labour: Waiariki, Hauraki-Waikato

The last area to be done in Northern (Auckland and Northland). This area will have many interesting races.

  

Newshub reports:

Former National Party MP and Advance NZ co-leader Jami-Lee Ross won’t contest the seat of Botany at the election.

That’s probably good for the people of Botany.

Botany, which Ross held for National from 2011 until his falling out with the party in 2018, will be contested by National candidate Christopher Luxon, the former Air New Zealand chief executive.

It’s a safe National seat, but Ross said he believes it was a three-way race this election between himself, Luxon and Labour’s candidate, Naisi Chen.

In no way was it a three way race. In a poll done by Curia in August 2020, Jami-Lee Ross was at 1.8%. And no that is not a typo – 1.8% not 18%.

Jami-Lee has pulled out because he knew it was going to be a humiliating thrashing. Otherwise he would still be standing.

The Government promised it would move the Government fleet of 15,000 vehicles to be emissions free by 2025. How is it going three years in, or 37% of the way towards the end date?

Before I answer this, I should point out the difference between policies about things you do and do not directly control. A policy on reducing a waiting list is more difficult as you don’t control all the factors such as demand, prices etc.

But a policy about making Government vehicles emissions free is very much within the control of the Government. It is not overly complicated. You just tell agencies you want then to do it, at this pace.

So anyway how are Labour doing. There are 15,870 vehicles in the Government fleet. To be on track for 2025 you would expect around 6,000 vehicles to now be emissions free (ie electric). Even a result of say 4,000 or so would be pretty decent progress, allowing for faster uptake in the final five years.

The actual result is 108 vehicles or 0.68% of the fleet. Yes 0.68%. Not 6.8%. In three years they have managed almost nothing.

People need to understand Kiwibuild is not an aberration. It is the norm in terms of delivery vs rhetoric.

The Herald editorial:

Members of the Make It 16 group have presented their views in recent weeks, plumping for a lowered voting age.

The for and against arguments are pretty well defined. People in their mid-teens are frustrated with a lack of representation in decisions that will affect their immediate futures.

It’s always a sign of bad things to come when an assertion is stated as a fact.

Has anyone ever polled mid-teens to ask them if they are frustrated they can’t vote until they’re 18? I suspect the vast majority of mid teens are not at all frustrated. They are focused on other things.

Just because a few activists say they are frustrated, doesn’t mean they represent all teens.

In the New Zealand context, Labour and the Greens have expressed interest in lowering the age. An election result along similar lines to current polling might put the issue on the next government’s table.

Their interest is in having them vote, as they tend to do better with younger voters.

There are an estimated 1.1 million people under the age of 18 in New Zealand, about a quarter of the population. Based on international experience, lack of overriding scientific evidence and in the face of falling voter turnout, the case for holding the line at 18 is flimsy.

Any line is arbitrary. 16 is arbitrary. So is 13 and 3/4. Or 18. Or 17. Unless you believe there should be no age limit at all, then the argument is what is the best age limit.

In a poll Curia did, only 8% of adult New Zealanders supported lowering the voting age to 16. 18 is the age at which you are generally regarded as an adult, and gain almost all your full rights.

A guest post by Jack5:

The National Library’s cull of 600,000 international books, half-completed, has been surprisingly little debated. What are the criteria for dumping books, and are our librarians misguided in believing that digital replacements for some of them will last? We mostly find librarians helpful and knowledgeable, but if the national librarians mirror those in the regions, they will likely be mainly at the leftist end of politics, and mainly wide-aWoke. Someone has to select books, but culling them is a step beyond that. Who culls the cullers? The National Library could put titles of culled books on-line so we could judge it’s fair and impartial in its purge. It could even partner with someone like TradeMe and auction the discards. The National Library Director Content Services, Rachel Esson, is reported at the Radio NZ web site as saying:

“”Libraries continue to grow and we are collecting New Zealand, Pacific and Maori material. That’s our core role, and we add to that collection between 80,000-100,000 items a year.”

The United States and the UK print nearly half a million book titles a year in English, and even Australia publishes more than 28,000. New Zealand produces about 3500 new titles and reprints a year. This includes a few hundred books about Maori, a minority of them in Maori language. Tonga and Western Samoa don’t even make the Wikipedia list of books published by country. The way society seeks and accesses knowledge has changed “so much,” with the advent of online tools, Esson told the reporter. She said:

“The biggest gaps in terms of access to online material, is New Zealand Maori and Pacific material – as the National Library, we want to focus on that.”

Is Esson dumping hundreds of thousands of books, to help finance digitising a few hundred Maori books a year? Some contractor in Dhaka might do that for a song. Esson and her colleagues are naive about the durability of digital books, online or not. Books available on the internet are in files somewhere. Print on paper can have extremely long life. The Buddhist Diamond Sutra, of Chinese characters printed on a scroll of grey printed paper, is about 1150 years old, and the ornately hand-written St Cuthbert Gospel is more than 1300 years old. Computerised files gradually become unreadable unless periodically renewed. Even products such as DVD M-discs designed to last for centuries, will, way in the future, require compatible hardware and programs to access their content. Esson says it costs $1 million a year to house the national book collection, which is trivial compared with the hundreds of millions politicians sprinkle like confetti. Renewing data files every few years, with costs of administration, hardware and software, could prove more expensive than paper-book storage costs – and less secure. The National Library’s “progress” in its book cull: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/425885/national-library-in-middle-of-first-major-cull-of-international-books How long digital information will last compared with information on paper: https://www.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/ensuring.pdf

The Herald reports:

Sanzaar and New Zealand Rugby bosses have expressed surprise at Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s suggestion that “politics” was behind the decision to award the Rugby Championship hosting rights to Australia.

Sanzaar CEO Andy Marinos and NZR counterpart Mark Robinson were baffled by the comments, insisting instead that the more favourable quarantine regulations across the ditch was the reason for the revamped four-nation tournament moving there.

The Herald reported early on Friday that the tournament, set to start in November and originally destined for New Zealand, would be moved across the Tasman following a crunch meeting between representatives from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina.

However, Ardern insisted at a press conference shortly before the announcement that “Sanzaar politics” was to blame for the decision.

What baffles me is why she said this?

She could have just said we were not prepared to relax quarantine regulations to save the tournament, and most people would probably be fine with that.

But instead she is pretending it isn’t due to that.

  

In September 2017 there were 4,054 on the Priority A waiting list for Housing NZ. These are families who have been assessed as in urgent need of a house.

Labour said 4,054 was a scandal. They said they wanted to abolish homelessness.

In June 2020 there are now 16,651 families on the Priority A waiting list. As Labour has heaped costs on landlords, rents have skyrocketed and the end result is a 400% increase in those deemed in urgent need of housing.

The JP reports:

Bahrain has joined the United Arab Emirates in striking an agreement to normalize relations with Israel, US President Donald Trump said on Friday, a dramatic move aimed at easing tensions in the Middle East.Trump tweeted the news after he spoke by phone to both Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said.

Excellent news. Trump has done more for Israel than arguably any President since Harry Truman.

Audrey Young writes:

Robertson would not say Labour’s tax policy was a bottom line. He wouldn’t rule anything in or out. He declined to even use such language.

What he said repeatedly was that “a Labour Government” would implement that tax policy.

He did not specifically define what he meant by “a Labour Government” but it was understood to mean a majority Labour Government that did not have to negotiate with anyone else.

It was so well understood that National leader Judith Collins was able to reasonably claim that Robertson had not ruled out negotiating additions to tax policy in any coalition negotiations with the Greens.

A very perceptive article by Audrey Young.

  

Stuff reports:

Wellington’s earthquake stricken central library could receive a category 1 heritage listing, despite being less than 30 years old.

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga is calling for the public to submit their views on the library’s heritage status, while Wellington City Council simultaneously considers the future of the building after it closed in March 2019 over seismic concerns.

Heritage NZ seem to be losing the plot in Wellington. First they designate the ugly as f**k Gordon Wilson Flats built in the 1950s as critical heritage and now they are going for a building not even thirty years old.

I propose two changes to Heritage NZ:

1. They are banned under law from designating any property less than 80 years old as a heritage property. Maybe less than 100 years old.
2. Any property they designate, they have to buy at market rates, if the owner wishes to sell.

Screw it, here's a whole thread of Wellington Heritage listed homes which are complete bollocks:

— Joel MacManus (@JoelMacManus) September 10, 2020

Well worth clicking through to the Twitter thread which shows some absolutely ordinary buildings that Heritage NZ has deemed of huge cultural value.

Stuff reports:

Rongotai MP Paul Eagle has ruled out a run for Wellington mayor in 2022 after several candidates accused each other of not being committed to the electorate.

If you look at what he said, he didn’t actually rule out a run. He has left wriggle room.

Stuff has previously asked Eagle whether he was planning a mayoral run, responding he had no “current plans”.

When asked again on Friday, he again said he had “no plans right now”.

That is the weakest form of denial.

When pushed further to definitively commit to seeing out his term if he were re-elected, he said he would.

”Yes, I will [rule it out]. But what I want to ask is: Do either of them live in the electorate? Are they committed to the people of Rongotai if they don’t live here?

”This is hypocrisy of the highest order from two parties who are barely polling … I’ve lived here for 40 years. Where is their commitment? I know every inch of Rongotai.”

On the basis of what Stuff has reported, he has ruled out not seeing his term as an MP out. That is different to ruling out he won’t stand for Mayor.

You could stand for Mayor, and if elected, do both jobs for a year – on the basis of saving the cost of a by-election.

Maybe Eagle did explicitly rule out standing for Mayor, but the Stuff article links the denial to not seeing his term out. It would be good to know if he explicitly ruled out standing for Mayor under any circumstances.

A guest post by Simon Court:

Policy road littered with good intentions – planning waste infrastructure

Waste Management NZ applied for a Private Plan Change to rezone rural land for the Auckland Regional Landfill at Wayby Valley in the Rodney district, as a precinct for future landfill and gas to energy development.

The local community has raised concerns with individual board members and the media about the environment and human health, long term risks, and effects on property values. This has lead to a divisive debate in the local community, and vilification and threats to local board members both on social media, and directly.

The Rodney Local Board has the statutory right to provide “views” on the issues on behalf of their community to Auckland Council, which has dual roles as the governing body, and regulator for this planning process.

While decision making on this Plan Change falls initially to Auckland Council, it will then move to the Environment Court after the inevitable appeals from all sides, and no doubt to the Court of Appeal for a further debate on arcane matters of resource management law.

However the Board is placed in a difficult situation, as there are expectations in the community that the Board should not only take a strong position objecting to the development, but should also have a decision making role, or some influence over the planning and other consenting decisions, which are clearly outside the scope and legal mandate of the board.

In fact, it is manifestly unfair that any of these expectations have fallen on the Board.

That the Board is expected to take a position in this divisive and ultimately futile debate, is largely due to the failure of central and local government policy makers, regulators, and planners to act on the advice given over many years –  that modern waste infrastructure is just as vital for a functioning society as modern sewage treatment, water supply, roads and highways, cellphone towers, fibre optic cables, gas pipelines, airports, and so on.

Central and local government has failed to take responsibility for protecting suitable land for new waste infrastructure, which means that difficult decisions are again left to local communities and activists to litigate with regulators and the industry. This fails any test of good governance, given what we know about the risk landfills pose to the environment and human health, over very long time frames.

Waste infrastructure includes transfer stations and recycling centres, ideally located close to where waste is generated in cities and towns, to allow efficient resource recovery and diversion from landfill. It also includes regional landfills, located near major highways, in suitable natural geology for long term containment, and in areas of low environmental sensitivity.

The waste industry repeatedly advocated to central and local government to provide planning protection for all types of waste infrastructure – designation and zoning used by private utility companies, and public asset owners, to protect land for future growth and development.

The industry made submissions on the National Infrastructure Plan in 2010, 2011 and 2015, and in regular regional and district plan reviews around the country. These proposals were acknowledged as valid by various committees, but never included in final plans.

Industry and concerned professionals submitted to Auckland Council on the Auckland Plan, and the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan, on the long term benefit of protecting land for this strategic purpose. That advice was not acted on.

Policy makers drafting the AUP even rejected internal council advice to make basic provisions for stroring household refuse and recycling bins in new developments, which means that bins are always jammed up against homes and left in odd places in newer, and often poorer high density areas. Trucks can barely negotiate narrow streets to empty bins.

Despite the efforts by central and local government to promote zero waste to landfill by 2040 as an objective, which in itself is laudable, there is no escaping the fact that more effective planning is required to manage residual solid waste volumes, to support the healthy functioning of major cities and the regions.

Poorly planned landfills may affect the environment for 100’s if not 1000’s of years. We already have hundreds of these around NZ in sensitive coastal areas, and embedded in major urban areas like Auckland. Successive policy makers and planners have failed to protect land around these high risk urban sites from encroachment by residential and commercial development.

However there is no doubt that the Auckland Regional Landfill application will succeed in some form, and that landfill will then serve part of Auckland’s needs for 50-100 years or more. That is because local authorities have enduring obligations to deliver core public health services under various Acts, which include to collect municipal refuse and dispose it to a sanitary landfill facility.  

The infrastructure needed to support this core public health service gets little attention from activist types in the waste policy and planning fields, who prefer to focus their effort and resources on more aspirational long term zero waste goals.

Ironically, around NZ, local authorities own and operate many landfills, which are almost always a revenue generating activity. They need to extend these facilities or construct new ones in years to come, otherwise rely exclusively on the private sector to take on those costs, risks, and the revenues, in an uncertain policy and planning environment.

There is currently zero appetite among policy makers to transition NZ from landfill disposal to thermal destruction or pyrolysis, largely due to the perceived risk to air quality, and by inference, to the agriculture export industry. Those risks have been effectively managed by the European Union and other jurisdictions we typically look to, through effective regulation and planning, and clean technology, in place now for decades.

We have yet to see a coherent policy proposal from local and central government in this area, although it provides the clearest and cleanest pathway to reduce waste to landfill.

This technology is not a “get out of jail free” card for dealing with growing solid waste volumes. We must also provide suitable land, and just as important – a flexible regulatory environment – to allow for innovation in the recovery and reuse of valuable resources from the waste stream – potentially for uses we haven’t even identified yet.

Now is the time that policy makers and regulators at a national and local level should come clean, and state the action they will take to identify and protect suitable land for waste infrastructure, including for new technology, to protect public health and the environment for future generations, not to damage it as some activists would believe.

About Simon Court

Passionate about good governance, good decision making, and excellence in project delivery.

A qualified Civil and Environmental Engineer with 23 years experience in roles for the principal, consultant and contractor, with ten years leading multi-discipline engineering, planning, tendering, and construction teams primarily in Auckland, and in Wellington and Fij.

Leading engagement with clients, designers, planners, legal advisors, regulators, community organisations, local politicians, stakeholders, and mana whenua.

Roles as a senior engineer and business unit manager in road, highway and landfill construction, road maintenance, contaminated land remediation, and waste operations.

Experienced in local government operations, functions, roles and responsibilities, statutory and regulatory frameworks, and how Council Controlled Organisations plan, budget and deliver projects and services.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-court-47a56216/

References

https://www.localmatters.co.nz/news/37014-wastetoenergy-answer-to-dome-valley-landfill-blues.html

https://www.localmatters.co.nz/news/37074-candidates-air-their-views-on-dome-valley-landfill.html

Mahurangi Matters May 20,2020

“Leaked submission fails to condemn Dome Landfill”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TCpoJKGuye6_5zAyh0bM3GvVFHrORe0g/view

  

The Victoria Voluntary Assisted Dying Act is fairly similar to the End of Life Choice Act in NZ, which we vote on in a few weeks.

The latest six monthly report on the Victoria regime is worth reading. They note:

Feedback and information gathered over the past six months continue to highlight the compassion and relief Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying scheme is providing to terminally ill people, their friends and family.

Some key aspects:

• compliance with the Act remains high – one application was deemed non-compliant with the law. This was due to an issue in the paperwork; it was not related to the eligibility of the applicant.
• 348 people applied and 341 were found eligible at first assessment. 301 did a consulting assessment and 297 were found eligible.
• There are 125 doctors active in providing assessment services and a further 300 registered for training
• The average age of an applicant is 71
• 55% of applicants are men
• Loss of autonomy frequently cited as a reason for seeking an assisted death
• 31% of those approved for assisted dying, died without assistance (ie before medication was dispensed or chose not to take it)
• 78% of those approved had a malignancy (cancer) and 15% a neurodegenerative disease
• The median time between first and last request is 19 days

A guest post by Lindsay Mitchell:

An urban myth rapidly gaining momentum is that New Zealand women have been harder hit by Covid than men. The origin of this claim comes from the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) – the official source of the New Zealand’s unemployment rate. The latest result for the June quarter showed 11,000 fewer people employed than in March. (Oddly this breaks down to 1,000 fewer men and 9,000 fewer women. That’s not making sense. Obviously some rounding issues there.)

Kiwibank said they “didn’t quite believe the numbers” but despite this ran with a press release titled, “90% Of The Drop In Kiwi Employment Were Women.” Three days later KiwiBank economist Mary Jo Vergara said the figures should be taken with “a grain of salt” because the level of disruption during lockdown made it hard to conduct the survey.

Nevertheless a number of journalists began running with the alarmist headline. Michelle Duff wrote in an election ‘analysis’ piece for Stuff on August 22 that, “Government appears to have barely considered the fact women are the worst impacted” again quoting the 90% statistic. A few days later RNZ  reported, “The Detail looks at how the Covid 19 crisis has hit women hard, with latest employment figures showing 90 percent of those who lost their jobs in the three months from April to June were women.”

Much was also made of female underutilisation yet their rate compared to male stayed steady. That it is higher is nothing new.

Anyway tonight TV Three News reported the now run-of-the-mill ‘fact’ that women have been worse hit by Covid again quoting the HLFS data. There is no link as yet but readers will have heard the item I refer to.

The HLFS is a survey of 15,000 households and while it is usually a reliable method of collecting data, and consistent with other OECD country methodology, in this instance the responses were severely disrupted. Stats NZ itself says:

“COVID-19 resulted in data collection and measurement challenges for the June 2020 quarter. While data collection via face-to-face interviewing was suspended for the majority of the quarter, interviews for the HLFS continued to be carried out over the telephone. At the same time, lockdown affected many New Zealanders’ ability to look for work, impacting how they are represented in official labour market statistics.”

So where can we get accurate real-time relevant data?

From Ministry of Social Development benefit numbers: Jobseeker and Covid Income Relief Payment(CIRP) receipt.

The July annual increase uptake of Jobseeker Support was GREATER for males – 41.5 percent versus 35.3 percent for females.

It can be legitimately argued that females get locked out of Jobseeker receipt if they have a working partner.

But that did not apply to the CIRP for workers – both full and part-time – made redundant after March.

The June-July monthly increase uptake of CIRP was GREATER for males.

And 22% more males than females were receiving CIRP.

None of the MSM news reporters/outlets have bothered to check this data. Or, if they have, chose to ignore it.

My posts this week on Patreon are:

• Why is Labour doing a tax hike that will raise so little revenue?
• The race for Hauraki-Waikato
• Exclusive Poll Results: Do NZers have confidence the Govt can eliminate Covid-19?
• The race for Port Waikato
• Re-election stats August 2020 – Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US

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