It took over six months to test frontline border workers.

Stuff reports:

The New Plymouth District Council has moved to separate itself from the furore over the Government’s decision to give $11.7 million to the Taranaki Green School, after a video was leaked in which Green Party co-leader James Shaw told party members the council was a “funding partner”.

RNZ published a video of James Shaw during a conference call on Friday with green party members, in which he said Minister of Education Chris Hipkins gave the Green School project tacit approval because of its funding partnership with the New Plymouth District Council.

In the video, Shaw said: “He [Hipkins] did say that – assuming everything else being equal – as long as the funding partner is the [New Plymouth District] Council, which it is, that he was okay with it.”

In a statement on Thursday, Shaw said the comment, made during a videoconference with party members was a simple error.

It seems clear the Green Party members were spun, or worse.

Shaw told then NZPDC is a funding partner, and they were not.

Shaw told them Hipkins verbally approved the funding, which he didn’t.

Presumably Shaw didn’t tell them that he personally forced the Government into funding it, by refusing to sign off on the other 165 projects unless this one was included.

What else were Green members misled about?

Stuff reports:

A woman whose terminally ill husband chose suicide over a prolonged painful death is urging New Zealanders to allow people the option to die with dignity. …

Richard, Heather Gregory’s husband of 30 years and father to their five children, was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer at 58 years old.

He had lived with the slow-growing cancer for years, but in 2014 his health rapidly declined.

“The tumour exudes hormones, and it damaged his heart. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen; his body was breaking down,” Heather said.

“When it happened, it was very sudden and very severe.”

She said Richard was thin and she had to dress his weeping leg wounds in adult nappies every day. He had a bed sore on his back, and his personality had changed.

“He felt he was losing control. The day he died, he had a nap in the sun and when he went to push himself up, he couldn’t – he wasn’t strong enough.”

On that August night in 2014, Heather went off to her quiz night in her home town of Hastings.

But she had a bad feeling she couldn’t shake. She contacted her daughter at 8.30pm, and that’s when she heard the news.

Richard had taken his own life.

The fallout from Richard’s suicide was distressing. Two of their adult children were left traumatised after finding him, and the three who weren’t there felt displaced, Heather said.

“It was a devastating end to a very good life, and it could have been so much better.”

A terrible trauma for the family, because Richard felt he had no choice. If euthanasia had been legalised he could have talked to his family about stopping his suffering, and they could have had a proper goodbye.

Richard’s suffering was unbearable and there was little that could truly relieve it, Heather said.

Had euthanasia been an option, he would have taken it, she said.

“If this had been in place it would have changed the whole dynamics of the whole situation leading up to it, and the final moments, and the time afterwards.”

No other family should have to endure what this family did.

The ODT reports:

One of the country’s longest-serving prisoners is back behind bars after taking drugs while on parole.

Andrew Peter McGlynn (53) was sentenced in the High Court at Christchurch in February 1986 to life imprisonment for murder.

The defendant, who appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday for breaching parole, has made headlines in the past for his indiscretions while on release.

Soon after being paroled, in 1994 McGlynn was incarcerated once again after committing an armed robbery.

Another release in 2003 had an almost identical result.

McGlynn was back to prison to continue serving his life sentence after being convicted of aggravated robbery.

However, it was not enough to convince the Parole Board he should remain there.

In 2005, yet another stint in the community was abruptly ended when McGlynn assaulted a woman.

So they release him on parole, he commits a serious crime, they release him again, he commits another serious crime etc etc.

McGlynn’s latest parole decision, released to the Otago Daily Times, revealed he had been released and recalled six times and committed 23 offences since the 1986 murder.

You know I don’t think he is going to change.

The Atlantic has an explosive story about how Donald Trump referred to American war dead as “losers” and “suckers”.

TDS (Trump Defender Syndrome) sufferers will find a way to pretend it is fake news, but they may struggle with the fact that Fox News has confirmed the accuracy of the key aspects of the story with two separate sources.

Other outlets have also had officials confirm the accuracy. In total six different sources. And it is suspected one of the sources is no less than Trump’s own former Chief of Staff.

It saddens me that so many people can’t see what is obvious – Trump is simply a terrible human being. No amount of being right on some policies can make up for having a rotten core.

Stuff reports:

The annual Unicef Worlds of Influence Report Card released today shows that New Zealand is one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child, ranking 35th out of the 41 richest countries surveyed – which include OECD countries and the countries that make up the European Union.

Personally I don’t find the UNICEF rankings very useful. But nevertheless after the PM said her number one priority was child poverty (which has gone up), this reinforces how rhetoric is easier than results.

Winston Peters on 9 May 2019:

‘Government will build ‘a lot more’ than 100,000 Kiwibuild homes.

‘100,000 over 10 years is easily achievable’

Winston Peters on 4 September 2020:

‘We knew Kiwibuild was never going to work, we said so’

The only thing consistent about Winston is his inconsistency.

Stuff reports:

A prominent Wellington politician bought a large piece of land within an area known as being considered for development, months before more detailed plans were revealed to the public.

Lower Hutt Mayor Campbell Barry, then a second-term councillor, purchased a house and 5.13ha of land on Upper Fitzherbert Rd in Wainuiomata North in early 2019. In November 2017 Barry was briefed on possible development options for the area by consultants. The options were not made public.

Shocking judgment for a Councillor to buy land in an area confidentially marked for potential development.

The documents shared with Stuff show Barry and other family members bought the property for $858,000 in February 2019. Zoned rural residential it is now potentially worth millions of dollars if the zoning is changed to residential as part of any future development.

Stuff investigations have revealed that a nearby 4ha property, valued at $540,000 in September 2019, sold recently for $1.9 million. The owner turned down another offer of $2.3m.

It is understood another two neighbouring properties, two blocks of 2.4ha each, both sold for $2m. And developers have been approaching other residents in the area since the release of the report.

So the fact it is now publicly known the area is likely to become developed, has led to sections selling for 300% over their CV. So Mayor Barry’s property might now be worth $2 million more than he paid for it.

The council knew the development, intended as part of a plan to address Lower Hutt’s growing housing crisis, would be unpopular because of its potential impact in a quiet, largely rural area.

Former mayor Ray Wallace, approached by Stuff, said “meetings were all ‘public excluded’, therefore all of the minutes would never be allowed to be released to the public during that sensitive process”. …

The documents and email exchanges show Barry was involved in planning for the development, including “public-excluded” briefings, meetings and workshops throughout 2017 and 2018.

Barry initially claimed he had not been to any briefings. He later clarified that he had attended a meeting at the Dowse Art Museum in November 2017, when consultants outlined “possible options” and some “blue-sky thinking” in Wainuiomata North.

So Mayor Barry denied he had been briefed at all, but later “clarified” he had been.

On at least one other occasion, he and Briggs were invited to an exclusive briefing on progress, documents show.

That progress included a then “confidential” 110-page report detailing well-developed plans for an 84.5ha subdivision, including between 1200 and 1800 homes, a possible new primary school and a small shopping centre.

So that’s two confidential briefings.

Barry insists he knew little of those plans because, despite being one of two Wainuiomata ward councillors, he did not attend any other briefings or meetings.

”I was aware of that fact, as was the wider public,” he replied in an email to Stuff.

But it seems the public knew little of those bigger, post-2016 plans.

As the development firmed, the council became so worried about information getting out and creating concern among residents and a “gold rush” for developers that it declined a number of information requests about what was happening in the area.

The fact prices now are so much higher than they were in 2019 strongly suggests that the public did not know of the plans, as you would not have picked up a five hectare block so cheaply.

Barry initially told Stuff that he sought legal advice on any possible conflict of interest before purchasing his Upper Fitzherbert property. The email Barry supplied to Stuff suggests that advice was sought after Barry had purchased the property.

So that is a second instance in which something Mayor Barry said was not accurate. He claimed he had not been briefed, and he had. He claimed he sought prior legal advice, but it seems he had not.

A little more than two months later, three years after the councillors and officers had begun an exhaustive, public-excluded process, producing a 110-page report and timeline for possible district plan changes, Miller canned the scheme and publicly released the plans.

She did that without first consulting the mayor and councillors, leaving senior officials “shocked” and “surprised”. One described it as “cavalier”.

So why did the Chief Executive ditch the plans?

UPDATE: Stuff has a second article on the issue, including comments from neighbours who are critical of the Mayor.

An interesting profile of Shane Reti in The Spinoff. A long but interesting read.

He would be a great Minister of Health.

Every Friday, I’m going to do a short post here listing the content I have posted on Patreon, so people can check it out (if subscribed) if interested.

The posts have been:

• The race for Hamilton East
• Who would be Ministers in a sole Labour Ministry
• The race for Hamilton West
• The race for Coromandel
• 10 reasons ACT are doing so well

The Herald reports:

A young man has been granted permanent name suppression after admitting he assaulted two people at a drunken Labour Party youth summer camp.

And in what may be a precedent setting decision, the Court of Appeal said it did so to protect him from a social media “mob” intent on “cancel culture” and internet vigilantism.

The 22-year-old has not been identified since the criminal case was sparked when sexual allegations emerged from the Labour event near Waihi in February 2018.

Midway through a trial last year in the Auckland District Court, however, a plea deal was reached with prosecutors after a jury was asked to consider five charges of indecent assault, relating to two men and two women.

The man ultimately pleaded guilty to two amended charges of assault for the allegations against the two men, and the charges against the two women were withdrawn and dismissed.

He was discharged without conviction but declined permanent name suppression in the District Court, leading to a series of appeals.

Today, the Court of Appeal released its decision granting the man permanent suppression and overturning an earlier High Court decision.

In their judgment, Justice Murray Gilbert, Justice Rebecca Ellis and Justice Sarah Katz took aim at social media and the harm “likely to be inflicted” on the man by its users.

I think this is the wrong decision. If you plead guilty, you should be named.

The fact this was such a politically charged case means there were all sorts of speculation about the young man being connected or related to various Labour Ministers. If he had been named, then it would have shown the speculation was incorrect.

After the sentencing, one of the victims spoke to Newstalk ZB and said the case had became a “political football”.

Both victims and the Crown were against suppression for the man.

The victims are the, well, victims – not the person who assaulted them.

National has released a nice little policy for supporting families for the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. The parts are:

1. A $3,000 entitlement to commission services to support their child’s first 1,000 days of development (up to $6,000 for high need babies)
2. Enhanced screening pre and post birth
3. An entitlement to three days stay in hospital after birth
4. An electronic child’s health passport
5. Paid parental leave flexibility so both parents can take it at the same time
6. Establish a National Centre for Child Development

The type of services parents can spend their $3,000 on include:

• Specialist support including lactation consultants, sleep specialists and pelvic health practitioners
• Additional paid parental leave
• More ECE hours for older siblings
• Home-based visits from health professionals
• Registration with Lead Maternity Carers

National explains:

This new funding, allocated per child rather than directly to service providers, will mean that parental demand will determine which
services receive how much of the additional money. We believe this is a better way to allocate funds than it simply being up to Ministers to choose their preferred options.

The flexibility of having the funding follow the parents is great.

Newshub reports:

A leaked video of last week’s Green Party crisis call shows James Shaw claimed the controversial Green School funding was given “verbal sign-off” by Minister of Education Chris Hipkins.

The comments contradict Hipkins who’s repeatedly stated he did not back the proposal. …

In the video clip, Shaw tells members that Hipkins “wasn’t intimately involved in the decision” but gave it tacit approval in a conversation.

“He did, sort of, give at least a verbal sign-off to the project,” Shaw said.

“He did say that – assuming everything else being equal – as long as the funding partner is the [Taranaki District] Council, which it is, that he was okay with it.”

Labour could have said no. Theyt didn’t.

Thomas Coughlan at Stuff reports:

The Labour Party’s Hutt South wing has been running an apparently unusual subletting “arrangement” in which it gets cheap rent on office space off a local union, sublets the rooms to its local list MP Ginny Andersen, and then bills parliament at a markup, pocketing the difference.

I’ve never heard before of a party renting office space to Parliamentary Service when it doesn’t own the space itself. This looks like an arrangement designed to allow it to profit from the taxpayer.

Rent for MPs’ offices are paid in bulk by Parliamentary Service. Accounts seen by Stuff for the Labour Party’s Hutt South wing, home to Andersen, show a sublease arrangement where Parliament pays the local Labour Party significantly more in rent than the Labour Party actually pays the original landlord, the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU).

Accounts seen by Stuff appear to show $6000 of public money going into a Labour Party account for “rent” in 2019, but with only a quarter of that money, $1500 a year, actually going to the building’s owner.

So Hutt Labour makes a $4,500 profit from the taxpayer for space they don’t even own.

If the Hutt Labour List MP wants to rent space in that office, then they should rent it direct from the building owner, not rent it via their own party, allowing the party to mark it up 300% on the way.

Parliament’s rules allow such subletting arrangements. For the purpose of Parliament, the Labour Party is just another commercial property company renting office space to an MP.

Except the MP decides who to rent off, creating a conflict and a reverse incentive.

Say most MPs have a $40,000 annual budget for electorate expenses. It is in their interest to pay as little rent as possible for their office space so they can use more of their budget on stuff such as advertising, brochures, direct mail etc. So if an MP wants to hire an office in a building owned by ABC Corp, they want the rent to be as low as possible.

But if the building is owned by their own political party, then they want the rent to be as high as possible. Because the higher the rent, the more money their party gains from it, and the more money they have to spend on direct voter advocacy (which a party funds) rather than parliamentary information (which PS funds).

When initially approached for comment, Andersen disputed the figures and declined to comment further.

“Those figures are not correct,” she said.

But a member of Andersen’s electorate committee, Graeme Sharman, told Stuff that the figures were themselves correct, but were “not telling the full story,” although he wouldn’t say what the full story was.

A day later, Andersen decided to comment, saying that “the rental arrangement was signed off by Parliamentary Services and is within the rules.”

So does Andersen still maintain the figures are wrong?

And PS may sign off on such an arrangement, but the MP is the person who tells PS they want to rent in that building.

Andersen was backed up by Parliamentary Service who said the rent represented “a very good deal”.

That isn’t the issue. The issue is Labour making a 300% markup on the office which they don’t even own.

Stuff has seen draft financial statements for the Labour Electorate Committee (LEC)’s 2020 AGM, covering the 2019 calendar year. They record backdated rent payments to the NZPFU of $3000, although they don’t say what years that backdated rent is for.

This suggests someone in Hutt Labour is leaking to the media.

“If the local branch of the Labour Party who lease the space to the member have managed to lease the property for even less, then it is reasonable to assume the lessor is making a donation-in-kind to the Labour Party,” a spokesperson for Parliamentary Service said.

Andersen however denied that the rent was a donation, saying that the agreement with the NZPFU going back decades was “commercial”.

Of course it is a donation (in kind). This raises real issues which the Electoral Commission may take an interest in.

If the value of the entire office space (for both Labour and the sublet to Parliament Service) is say $18,000 a year and they are charging only $1,500 a year for it, then that is a donation in kind of $16,500 a year which must be disclosed.

”The ongoing provision of office space to Labour formed part of a commercial agreement when Labour sold the building to the Firefighters Unions in the early 1990s.

“That provision was reflected in the building’s sale price. As such that commercial arrangement doesn’t constitute a donation,” Andersen said.

I doubt that interpretation. Unless the sale deed specifies how much the ongoing rental will be, then the difference between what is paid and what it is worth is a donation. You can’t avoid electoral donation disclosure laws on the basis of a sale that took place 25 years ago.

Facebook in Australia has announced:

Australia is drafting a new regulation that misunderstands the dynamics of the internet and will do damage to the very news organisations the government is trying to protect. When crafting this new legislation, the commission overseeing the process ignored important facts, most critically the relationship between the news media and social media and which one benefits most from the other.

Assuming this draft code becomes law, we will reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram. This is not our first choice – it is our last. But it is the only way to protect against an outcome that defies logic and will hurt, not help, the long-term vibrancy of Australia’s news and media sector.

This is entirely predictable and logical. Passing a special law to tax Facebook for the actions of their users in sharing news stories is unprincipled.

If Australian media really claim that Facebook is stealing revenue from them (as opposed to bringing them viewers) then they should be delighted by Facebook blocking their stories being shared.

I suspect though they won’t be. What they want isn’t their stories being shared, but to steal some of Facebook’s advertising revenue as advertisers prefer to advertise on Facebook.

The ACCC presumes that Facebook benefits most in its relationship with publishers, when in fact the reverse is true. News represents a fraction of what people see in their News Feed and is not a significant source of revenue for us. Still, we recognize that news provides a vitally important role in society and democracy, which is why we offer free tools and training to help media companies reach an audience many times larger than they have previously.  

News organisations in Australia and elsewhere choose to post news on Facebook for this precise reason, and they encourage readers to share news across social platforms to increase readership of their stories. This in turn allows them to sell more subscriptions and advertising. Over the first five months of 2020 we sent 2.3 billion clicks from Facebook’s News Feed back to Australian news websites at no charge – additional traffic worth an estimated $200 million AUD to Australian publishers. 

Australian media will notice the revenue drop far more than Facebook which will not.

Stuff reports:

A Christchurch lecturer – who served time in prison for selling heroin before becoming one of the country’s top criminologists – has retired.

Greg Newbold has stood down from his teaching role at the University of Canterbury (UC) after a 30-year career in academia.

Newbold received a seven-and-a-half year sentence for drug dealing in 1975. He completed a master’s degree from the University of Auckland during his imprisonment.

UC criminal justice director and senior lecturer Jarrod Gilbert said Newbold got much of his education in prison so “brought lived-experience to teaching criminology”.

“He did a reasonably significant prison sentence. He was at university when he was arrested, so he was always intellectually inclined.”

Newbold went on to obtain a PhD and was named a professor at UC in 2009, where he taught criminal justice and social history.

“He had this brilliant mix between being very smart but also having that lived experience,” Gilbert said.

Newbold’s first hand experience with prison made him very realistic about what the prison system can and can not achieve. He was an excellent contributor to the area of criminology.

Bernard Hickey writes at Newsroom:

Just like KiwiBuild, Auckland Light Rail, the Capital Gains Tax and effective climate change policies, this Government got bogged down in a welter of working groups, coalition disputes, bureaucratic infighting and stonewalling, and an inability at the top level of Cabinet to direct the organs of Government to carry out its will. Weak and overwhelmed ministers accepted ‘Yes Minister’ for an answer and were not able to stop the initial energy and direction from dribbling away into the sands of endless consultation, trials and ways for officials to avoid taking risks or challenging the status quo.

Just like many New Zealanders, the Government was complacent in those 102 days between cases of community transmission through May, June, July and early August. Now that is coming home to roost. We saw it when it emerged the Ministry of Health did not follow through on Cabinet’s order in June to test everyone working at the border and in Managed Isolation and Quarantine facilities. Now we’ve seen it again with the stalling of CovidCard.

It’s rare to see anyone inside the machinery of Government call out hand waving and dissembling by those within ministries and by ministers. The number one rule in Government is to preserve the political optics of ‘something is being done’ and to ensure there are no surprises or embarrassments for ministers. This has created a risk-averse culture of arse-covering and plausible deniability whenever accountability is demanded. 

Sam Morgan and the supporters of CovidCard in the private sector play by different rules and were not prepared to simply accept the status quo. We saw that on Tuesday when he and fellow tech entrepreneur Ian Taylor called out the Ministry of Health’s lack of commitment or ability to deliver CovidCard.

“We’ve effectively all stood down over the last couple of weeks. It became clear to us that it was going to fail and it wasn’t going anywhere,” Morgan said.

“It just became buried in the dysfunction of hopeless project managers,” he said.

“There’s just no execution capability in the ministry to do this.”

Ministers did not have the technical background to recognise this or rectify it, Morgan said. The Ministry was not committed to delivering the bluetooth card, and was instead pursuing the Google/Apple model for using bluetooth on smart phones as the way to track and trace contacts of people infected with Covid-19, he said. 

A very good summary.

“Minister Faafoi said the other day: ‘it’s a number of things we’re looking at. I don’t imagine I’ll put anything in front of Cabinet before the end of the year’,” Taylor said.

Such a sense of urgency.

The Ministry had instead committed to the Apple/Google initiative to use bluetooth in phone apps, but it had massive false positive and false negative rates, and was also not available to the 10 percent of the population who don’t have smart phones, let alone the large percentage unable to download or use apps.

This is why a card is a much better option. You just need everyone to have it in their wallet or purse. No phone needed. No download. No app install. No setup. You just keep it on you and forget about it unless you get Covid-19 or end up in close contact with someone who has it.

Stuff reports:

A judge who enabled someone he had a connection with to attend a funeral was “inappropriate,” but did not meet the grounds for dismissal, the Attorney-General says.

A complaint about the judge was revealed in Judicial Conduct Commissioner Alan Ritchie’s annual report for the year to July 31, 2020.

Ritchie said he received 162 complaints about individual judges, with the number of actual complaints 136, down from 158 in the year to July 2019.

In the report, Ritchie said he believed an inquiry into the conduct outlined in one of the complaints was justified. He added the conduct, which revolved around “usual expectations of judicial impartiality” may have warranted consideration of the removal of the judge and recommended Attorney-General David Parker appoint a judicial conduct panel. …

A spokesman for Parker confirmed to Stuff the complaint was regarding the judge’s involvement in a decision about bail conditions to enable them to attend a funeral.

The judge had a connection with the person, the spokesman said.

“He was satisfied the steps already taken by the Chief District Court Judge were sufficient.”

This is quite concerning.

The reason we have an Independent Judicial Conduct Commissioner is becauise they are independent.

If the IJCC recommends the appointment of a judicial conduct panel, then one should be appointed.

That is not to say the Judge should have been dismissed. That would be for the JCP to recommend.

But for the Attorney-General to basically ignore the Independent Judicial Conduct Commissioner and take no action at all, is not satisfactory.

I suspect Labour is not going to do well in New Plymouth.