This graph from The Economist shows the big boost to approval ratings many leaders have had. This is generally what happens in a crisis if they handle it well.

Stuff reports:

Controversy over Government no-shows at the Epidemic Response Committee deepened on Tuesday night after Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis decided to cancel his scheduled appearance.

Davis cancelled his appearance on Tuesday afternoon, citing a regional meeting, followed by an apparently unmovable Facebook live event with Finance Minister Grant Robertson.

Davis’s office wouldn’t even comment about the cancellation, referring queries to the office of Chris Hipkins, the leader of the House.

Are you kidding me?

The Minister of Tourism, whose industry has been devastated, is saying he can’t appear before a Select Committee because he will be doing a Facebook Live event?

This shows that the PMs Office instructions to Ministers to dismiss rather than defend is being taken literally.

The Government granted extra funding to General Practices to cope with the extra work around Covid-19. It provided three times as much per Maori or Pasifika patient as it did for an under 60 European patient.

Now this might be justified if Maori and Pasifika were more prone to Covid, but in fact the opposite appears to be the case. The stats are here. Positive test cases are:

1. European 0.8%
2. Asian 0.6%
3. Pacific 0.4%
4. Maori 0.3%

So half as likely to get it but three times the funding!

In terms of overall cases the ethnicity breakdown is:

• Europeans 71%
• Asian 13%
• Maori 8% (vs 17% of pop)
• Pacific 5% (vs 8% of pop)

The Government hasn’t released stats on the deaths by ethnicity but I’ve had suggested to me 100% of victims were European.

So again why has the extra funding gone towards the populations least at risk?

A guest post by Owen Jennings:

I once suffered a major setback, financially.  There were three items on the agenda.

Firstly, what expenses were we occurring that were not absolutely necessary and that could be pruned or eliminated?  It was tough.  Some “nice to have, but not essential” items got cut.

Secondly, we had a look at whether there were assets that we could cash out of.  Trade Me reaped the benefit along with some neighbours.  Again it involved some difficult and painful decisions.

Thirdly, we started a whole new hunt for ways of quickly improving our income.  We had to be innovative, slick and live with a few downsides of some “quick and dirty” decisions.  It meant looking at and removing anything that might slow down our initiatives, frustrate us or add cost, hurdles that were not strictly necessary to getting back on our feet.

We survived.  In many ways we were the better for having tidied up our affairs.  It was a fairly simple strategy – no new blinding science involved.  Just adopting tried and true methods for recovery based on discipline, common sense and sacrifice.

Should it not be the same for the government?  Should the three steps not be followed by the Coalition Government, by Auckland City Council and by all local government?  It is happening in board rooms, CEO’s offices and kitchens around the country.  Businesses are taking extremely difficult decisions, cutting any unnecessary expense, putting unused assets on the market and desperately looking for new ways to kick start revenue.

Husband and wife operations, small enterprises of 3,4 and 5 staff, medium and large companies are hunkering down, mercilessly hacking their cost structures, weeping over losing beloved staff members who have been faithful for decades, shutting the doors of branches, brutally slashing budgets to try and survive.  The sacrifices are gut-wrenching. Its reality in a virus wrecked economy.  It is going to get worse before it gets better too.  Wage subsidies are masking the situation.

Our Prime Minister is daily lauded for her leadership in times of crisis.  In the immediate glare of publicity, kindness and empathy are endearing qualities.  The cold reality is that those qualities will not pay the bills.  Gestures of 20% pay cuts are welcomed but 20% of a heck of a lot is no real sacrifice.  Real leadership involves more than optics and safeguarding political gains. It requires tough and hurtful decisions.

The call to our political leaders at all levels is to show courage and fortitude.  We, the people, are doing it.  As our elected representatives we expect, even demand you do the same.  Cut deeply into the fat.  Scrutinise the ‘not needed’ assets.  Let’s see some smarts about new opportunities.

If ‘helicopter’ cash and ‘shovel ready’ projects are the best you can come up with, think again.  If dressing up green initiatives and sneaking through climate change penalties are on the menu, forget it.  If asking us to pay new taxes is in the budget, pull it out again.  Our burden is already too heavy.  Focus on what might hold back private sector initiatives, frustrate investors, limit progress and delay the recovery.  Prune such fearlessly.  Waiting seven years for a consent to increase a water take when your city is running dry isn’t helping anything – the environment, the economy, thirsty businesses or my vegetable garden.

K.I.S.S. it.  Go with what has always worked and what we are all having to do outside of the Beehive.  Cut unnecessary costs, sell off the non-vital assets and make sure the private sector has maximum room and support to innovate and invest its way back to full health.  Prime Minster Ardern and Minister Robertson remember the state does not create wealth – we do as individuals, partnerships corporates, so focus on making it as easy and burden free as possible.     

The Guardian reports:

The government’s controversial immigration bill was voted through the House of Commons on Monday night amid Labour claims that it will alienate many key workers who have risked their lives during the coronavirus pandemic.

With a Tory majority of 80, it passed easily by 351 votes to 252, a majority of 99, and will now go on to further parliamentary scrutiny. …

The bill follows the promise of an “Australian-style points-based system” first outlined by Johnson and Michael Gove during the 2016 referendum.

The system used by New Zealand and Australia is about as good as it gets. It is massively superior to US policy such as green card lotteries or current UK policy.

Basically you score points on various criteria and the total number of points needed can vary to reflect whether you want to have greater or fewer migrants. The key thing is that it doesn’t care about your national or race – it cares about whether you’ll likely be an economic asset to NZ, rather than a burden.

In NZ you currently need 100 points. You can get them by:

• Age (5 points if 50 – 55 to 30 points if 20 – 39)
• Job offer – 50 points
• Qualifications – 30 points for L3-6 to 70 points if L9-10
• Skilled work experience – 10 to 50 points
• Work experience in are of skills shortage – 10 to 15 points

Our system is not perfect and always need tweaking but it is a good model and glad to see the UK adopting it.

I oppose this bill as it proposes entitlement of voting in an entirely unprincipled and artificial way.

I think there are two principled positions you can take on the issue of whether prisoners vote. The first is that the right to vote is one of those fundamental rights that no one should ever lose, no matter what. That it doesn’t matter what their crime was, or their punishment – it is punitive and un-necessary to deprive anyone of the right to vote. I think that view is an extremely principled and defensible view. It’s not my personal view, but I have respect for that view-point.

Indefensible is the proposal that prisoners sentenced to more than three years do not get to vote, but less than three years do get to vote. This proposed threshold is arbitrary and capricious.

The argument by the Minister that “someone who is going to be released back into the community during a Parliamentary term should have the right to have a say on who leads them during their time of freedom” means that logically then any prisoner with less than three years left to serve should be allowed to vote. But that is not what this bill does. Trying to tie it to the term of Parliament is a red herring. If we had a five year term, would we restrict it to prisoners serving less than five years?

How is it fair that someone sentenced to 35 months is okay to vote but 37 months and you’re not. Why three years? The only plausible reason I’ve heard is that it was the length of the electoral term, but does that means if we went to a four year term, then it should be sentences of four years or more?

With parole, you would have some prisoners get a three year sentence but get out in one to two years so they would never in fact have a practical impact of the disenfranchisement. Whether or not you miss out on voting in an election would depend on where in the electoral cycle your offending or at least sentencing occurs.

And should someone who spends say 14 out of 15 years in jail continue to vote because each sentence was under three years, while someone who gets a one off three year sentence does lose the vote?

So I find little virtue in the proposed law as it is arbitrary and inconsistent.

I have looked at other possible thresholds. If one accepts there are some convicted criminals who should not vote, then what is the best threshold. The range of options that occurred to me, from most punitive to least punitive.

• Permanent disqualification for anyone convicted of any crime. I suspect my Otago University under-age drinking offences would mean I’d be one of those losing the right to vote. This is by the way the law in nine US states.
• Those sentenced to prison can’t vote while in prison and for x years after release This is the law in 21 US states – that you get the vote back not on release but after parole and or probation.
• Those sentenced to any form of custody (home detention, periodic detention) can’t vote while sentence is underway
• Those sentenced to prison can can’t vote while in prison. This is the law in 18 US states and 14 OECD countries.
• Those sentenced to x years or more lose right to vote while in prison – proposed for New Zealand. The law in around 14 OECD countries
• X varies greatly by country. In Malta it is one year. In Bulgaria it is 10 years. How do you make a principled case for what x should be?
• Those sentenced three or more times to prison lose the right to vote while in prison (three strikes and no vote)
• Those serving a life sentence can’t vote
• No restrictions at all – in place in around 14 OECD type countries

Putting aside the no restrictions at all category, I regard the other options as all being quite arbitrary, or even more harsh than what NZ has.

I believe the best case is that prison is the correct threshold. The case is that prison is basically the last resort for criminal offenders. Judges will rightfully go to great lengths to keep more minor offenders out of prison, as once they are in prison their chances of stopping offending is low. For someone to actually be sent to prison as opposed to a fine, community service, periodic detention or home detention they have to be either a massively repeat offender or their crimes have to be very serious such as rapes, grievous wounding or worse.

Heather MacDonald in a column in the New York Times commented that “prison remains a lifetime achievement award for persistence in criminal offending”

So when a Judge finally decides that the offending means you have to go to prison, is for me the best threshold compared to arbitrary ones such as sentences of x years.

I asked the Department of Corrections the average number of convictions for prisoners serving a sentence of three years. They replied that the average number of convictions is 30. So those serving a sentence of three years or less are not generally first, second or third time offenders. They are recidivist criminals (and around 40% are gang affiliates)

So, what about the other option – no restrictions on voting at all? Well that is my second option. I actually would prefer we had that law, than the law proposed in this bill, as it is principled. But why don’t I support no restrictions on voting at all as my first preference. I’ll cite three reasons – two good and one poor.

The poor reason is simply instinct. I hate the thought that someone like Clayton Weatherston or the Christchurch terrorist could get to vote from prison, after they have stolen lives (and votes) from their victims.

The better reason is that society and democracy is based on a social compact. We have elections and laws due to the benefits they bring us as a society. And I think people who very seriously break those laws should as part of their punishment get to lose the right to determine those laws. To use a bad analogy you get kicked out of a club if you can’t follows the rules of the club. Should murderers, paedophiles and rapists get to vote on which policies they want implemented on the rest of society?

The third and final reason why I have no voting restrictions at all as my second, not my first option, is that I think it is a relatively minor right compared to the other rights you lose in prison. If you are sentenced to prison you lose your right of freedom, your right of movement, your right of employment, your right of consensual sex with your chosen partner, your right of free speech, your right of protest, your right of food choice, your right of entertainment, your right of Internet access, your right of clothing choice, and your right to sunshine. So is adding your voting right to that massive list of other rights you lose in prison out of kilter? Note also almost none of these rights are lost with any lesser sentence such as home detention.

Penultimately I just want to touch on a practical issue. While the principle is an important one, and it is good to be considering it, I tried to find out how many prisoners in NZ actually were voting before the 2010 law change. Was this a right that any prisoners were actually using? Sadly it seems officials were unable to find out. That would have been a useful piece of data.

In a recent referendum in Ireland only 1.45% of prisoners voted, despite considerable efforts to making voting from prison easy.

We have around 1,985 prisoners in NZ serving a sentence of under three years. 1.45% of 1,985 eligible prisoners would be around 29 likely voters out of over two and a half million. The point in calculating this is not to say the issue isn’t important because it may only be 29 votes – just that the impact on any electoral outcomes from the law change is probably extremely low.

In conclusion, I think the threshold of prison is a better public policy choice than a threshold of a sentence of three years or more.

Most media are reporting there may be a challenge to Simon Bridges’s leadership at the next National Caucus on Tuesday.

As with any major political event I will cover it on Kiwiblog, but as has been my long standing practice I won’t share my opinions on what I think Caucus should do.

There are two main reasons for this.

1. My company provides services to the party. I work with the party leadership, and hence that means I don’t offer views on the leadership. My job (wearing my Curia hat) is to work with them, not to select them – that is Caucus’s job.
2. I have pretty strong relationships, both personal and professional, with the MPs involved. Some of them are good mates. I don’t crap on my mates.

My only advice to National is to not let things fester. Either confirm the leadership or change the leadership in short order, and then get on with articulating to New Zealanders that they can have a brighter future than an extra $85,000 of debt per household.

A poll on what US residents think of the media has found:

• 52% (+8% from 2018) have not too much or no confidence journalists act in the best interest of the public
• 57% (+3%) say journalists have low or very low ethical standards

But huge difference by party support:

• 77% (+7%) of Republicans and 30% (+6%) of Democrats have not too much or no confidence journalists act in the best interest of the public
• 81% of Republicans and 36% of Democrats say journalists have low or very low ethical standards

Interesting to also looks at which groups have the lowest levels of trust to act in the best interests of the public.

Democrats

1. Elected Officials 37%
2. Business Leaders 37%
3. Religious leaders 51%
4. Journalists 70%
5. Police officers 71%

Republicans

• Journalists 23%
• Elected Officials 37%
• University professors 48%
• Business leaders 61%
• Religious leaders 77%

So Republicans also skeptical of university professors while Democrats more skeptical of business leaders.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says more public holidays for Kiwis to experience New Zealand is among a number of things the Government is “actively considering” to encourage domestic tourism.

Sigh.

Every extra public holiday costs employers. Businesses are closing down and laying staff off and the Government thinks this is a great time to increase their costs even more, and reduce their income also.

What would be more sensible is to actually combine public holidays with annual leave and allow families to choose for themselves when they holiday. Would lead to less congestion for one thing!

Stuff reports:

Media company NZME has withdrawn its application to the Commerce Commission to allow it to buy its major competitor Stuff.

The move came after a failed bid for an interim injunction to force Stuff’s Australian owner Nine Entertainment back into exclusive talks over the sale of the news website.

The decision is the latest in the on-again, off-again merger negotiations. The Commerce Commission prevented the deal going ahead in 2016. Appeals to the High Court the following year and then the Court of Appeal in 2018 both failed.

NZME shareholders should be aghast. The attempt by NZME to talk down the value of Stuff by declaring it was only worth $1 (its profit last year was in fact $28 million) has blown up. Such tactics may have worked against a Kiwi owner but Aussie companies play tough and Nine has now declared a fatwa on NZME. NZME have turned Nine from an ally to an enemy on the basis of one suicidal press release.

It is worth reflecting how much this has cost NZME in legal and commercial fees. Having chatted to some commercial lawyers their likely costs would be:

• Application to Commerce Commission $800,000
• High Court appeal of decision (including costs for other parties $2.5 million
• Court of Appeal appeal $500,000
• Interim Injunction sought $200,000

So they may have spent $4 million on legal and commercial fees on their attempt to buy Stuff, and have ended up with nothing. It’s probably more than this as the actual negotiations with Nine would also be constly.

The median salary for a journalist is around $60,000. So NZME could have funded 65 more journalists for a year for the cost of failing to buy Stuff.

Thanks to the 1,150 readers who responded to my survey on potential paid content.

The content that was deemed of most interest (moderate to great) in order was:

• Regular data posts on how NZ is doing 81%
• Exclusive polling on topical issues 72%
• Weekly article on political week 63%
• Interviews with MPs and others 63%
• Analysis of upcoming bills 63%
• Summary of interesting polls in NZ and overseas 62%

So data posts and exclusive polling on topical issues are of most interest.

How much would people be willing to pay:

• Nothing $28%
• $1/month $8
• $2/month 13%
• $3/month 12%
• $4/month 8%
• $5/month 31%

So I’m looking at either $4 or $5 a month.

Preferred options:

• Donate facility on KB 70%
• Paywall on KB for premium content 57%
• Additional content on external site 53%
• Micropayments on KB 29%

My thoughts at this stage are:

• Definitely don’t do micropayments
• Definitely allow people to donate
• Set up a Patreon facility but yet to decide whether to integrate it into KB or have seperate
• Have price of $4 or $5 a month

In terms of the first post, I will have exclusive poll results on how people say they will vote on the cannabis referendum – the only poll done since they published the final proposed bill.

Matt Burgess writes:

History tells us well-intentioned governments can prolong rather than resolve depressions with poor spending. In the United States, interventions in the economy in the 1930s, first by Herbert Hoover and then Franklin Roosevelt, almost certainly deepened the Great Depression. The Dow Jones did not recover to pre-Depression levels until the mid-1950s. In Australia, by contrast, the federal government led by Joe Lyons, constrained by high debt going into the Depression, focused on careful fiscal management. Australia had largely recovered by 1936.

NZ had one of the best recoveries from the GFC because it didn’t embark on poor quality spending, but targeted extra spending to where it could do the most good.

The new spending comes at a time when the normal checks and balances have been relaxed or discarded by this Government. Regulatory Impact Statements, a check on the quality of spending of most new spending proposals, were recently suspended. Concerns have been raised about the lack of transparency around Covid decisions.

The Government continues to push legislation through Parliament under urgency. Treasury remains underpowered after a decade of poor leadership. A lesson from the Christchurch earthquake recovery is that the surest way to delay a project was to fast-track spending and procurement processes. Good governance has value.

New spending and debt of more than $60,000 per household signals higher taxes in the future. That has the potential to affect investment decisions in the private sector today. There is a real risk that households and businesses could respond with higher savings and less investment, muting the overall impact of public spending on the recovery.

The only question with taxes will be how many new taxes, and how high.

Newshub have released their Reid Research poll. It is:

• Labour 56.5% (+14%)
• National 30.6% (-12.7%)
• Greens 5.5% (-0.1%)
• NZ First 2.7% (-0.9%)
• ACT 1.8% (nc)

It goes without saying that it is an awesomely good poll for Labour and pretty terrible for National.

It is not entirely surprising. I’m reminded of the Harold Macmillan quote “Events, dear boy, events” when asked what can blow a Government off course. But in this case it has blown the Opposition off course.

Obviously the Government (really the PM’s) handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a huge boost for Labour. We have avoided the huge death rates from overseas and people credit the Government. Also the PM has had a near daily highly viewed press conference where the Opposition has been almost locked out from coverage.

So this poll would see a clear Labour majority Government with Greens, National and ACT in opposition and NZ First out of Parliament.

What will be interesting is to see how the polls move (if they do) as the focus moves more towards the economic response than the public health response.

But no one should fool themselves that this sort of gap would be easy to close by September.

Was listening to a Five Thirty Eight podcast on why Trump’s approval rating has risen, despite his incredibly muddled response to the Covid-19 crisis. Their conclusion was that when countries face a crisis, there is always a rush of support towards the government of the day as patriotism trumps politics. You saw this in the US after 9/11 and we are seeing it with the Covid-19 crisis. However Trump’s bounce is far less than in other countries.

In Australia Scott Morrison has gone from a -20% net approval rating in the February Newspoll to a +26% rating in the April Newspoll.

In the UK Boris Johnson has gone from a +6% rating in March Opinium to a +29% in April.

Even in the US, Donald Trump is seeing his approval rating increase, despite a pretty terrible actual response to the crisis. Gallup had him at -9% in January and at +4% in March. That’s a reasonable increase but of course dwarfed by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo who has gone from a net 0% approval in December 2019 to a huge +48% in March 2020.

In fact many US Governors have seen a huge spike in approval, as you can see here.

Many heads of governments are also getting good ratings specifically for their response to Covid-19. The percentage who approve of their response is Angela Merkel 75%, Boris Johnson 70%, Justin Trudeau 64%.

So even the most incompetent head of government tends to get an increase in their approval ratings during a crisis, while those who handle it competently get a massive increase.

There’s quite a bit of carping in NZ about Scott Morrison, but his net approval has shot up 46%.

So there should be no doubt that while the crisis is ongoing, incumbents do well in the polls. This is natural and expected. The more important question is how long does it last for.

Newshub reports:

The AM Show host Duncan Garner questioned Robertson on whether higher taxes could help pay for the spending. 

“No, this Budget is not about that. This Government has made clear that is not the direction we are going into. The election campaign is still to come. My focus has been squarely on making sure New Zealand responds, starts to recover and starts to rebuild. Those are questions for another day. We are focused on making sure we support New Zealanders through this.”

Pushed on whether he would rule them out, Robertson said: “The Labour Party’s tax policy will be released before the election.”

It is inevitable that Labour will hike up taxes if re-elected. They can’t pay for their spending without doing so. They’re not going to go into the election with any details of tax increases – instead they will try and get away with a blank cheque – where they say they’ll decide once the economic situation is clearer.

They’ve increased spending by $25 billion a year – and not just for one or two years – but basically permanently.

There is no way economic growth alone will close that gap and get us back into surplus. So after a couple of years of massive debt increases, Labour will turn around and say we need to hike up tax to pay for all this spending.

So what could happen to tax rates? Let’s assume $15 billion of their extra spending can be eventually funded by economic growth so they only put taxes up by $10 billion a year. What would that represent?

• The top tax rate going from 33% to 63%; or
• The bottom rate of 10.5% and 2nd bottom of 17.5% going to 25%; or
• GST going from 15% to 22.5%; or
• An asset or wealth tax of 0.7% on your assets

The idea that you could increase spending by 30% but not increase taxation is a fairy tale.

The death toll in the US from Covid-19 is now over 90,000. It seems inevitable it will exceed 100,000 and may even end up exceeding the total death toll for the US from WWI.

The death toll currently if 56% higher than the Vietnam War, 150% higher than the Korean War, 260% higher than the War of Independence, and 3000% higher than 9/11.

A typical flu season in the US kills between 12,000 and 60,000 so is definitely higher than that.

Hopefully it will peak soon. New York appears to have peaked but other states are still growing so we may get a lot of variation in terms of new deaths rather than a smooth bell curve. Most projections are around 120,000.

We’re giving taxpayers the opportunity to get to know their MPs beyond photo-ops and party-line speeches. In this episode, Islay Aitchison interviews Simon O’Connor MP.

You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and all good podcast apps.

Support the show (http://www.taxpayers.org.nz/donate)

Stuff reports:

Hobbiton is up in arms and lashing back against the $400 million tourism rescue package which its chief executive has labelled a “joke”.

Hobbiton chief executive Russell Alexander said the budgeted package was a disappointment and a joke, slamming the suggestion that consultants could assist tourist businesses reimagine themselves domestically.

“I mean what do they want us to do, turn the Shire into a mini-golf course?

“Hobbiton is a tour business, that’s what it does. If there were other opportunities we would have done them by now.”

The $400 million rescue package was announced on Thursday and Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis said the money would be used to “protect key tourism attractions and amenities”.

However, details on what these key attractions are and how they are measured were lacking.

Alexander was scathing towards the Minister of Tourism Kelvin Davis whom he says does not understand the tourist industry.

“He [Davis] has no idea and is missing in action,” Alexander said.

“The problem is we have a minister of Tourism who is talking at his industry not talking with or for his industry,”

The tourism industry needs a Minister who can perform.

Damien Grant writes:

The scale of the economic vandalism being unleashed on this country rivals that of Sir Robert Muldoon. This prime minister and her finance minister, in cahoots with a weak central bank governor, are destroying 36 years of prudent fiscal and monetary economic management.

They do not understand economics. They do not understand business. Even more frightening, they do not understand the importance of the institutional legacy they have inherited and are in the process of destroying.

This is an inexperienced government who have panicked at the economic fallout of their recent decisions. In order to avoid the inevitable and painful reallocation of resources required after a major economic shock they are not only destroying the Crown’s balance sheet – they are undermining the integrity of critical institutions and traditions.

An extra $85,000 of debt per household!

This year Treasury have failed. They are forecasting unemployment will rise to 8.6 per cent this financial year, based on the surge in government spending. It is currently 5.2 per cent. Even better, the fall in GDP is projected to be just 4.6 per cent.

Let’s look at some underlying realities.

According to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, tourism employs – directly or indirectly – 330,000 people and accounts for 5.8 per cent of our GDP.

International tourism was about 40 per cent of this total and we can safely assume that domestic tourism will fall dramatically. A 1 per cent rise in unemployment is roughly 28,000 jobs.

Job losses in the tourism sector alone will push us over the Treasury forecast.

During the GFC, building consents fell in half. We have over 180,000 people toiling in construction, more in support services.

If even a third of those currently employed in construction lose their jobs unemployment will surge past 10 per cent. If we manage to keep unemployment under 20 per cent, the level that some economists believe is the real rate in the United States today, I will be pleasantly surprised.

I agree that the economic forecasts seem far too optimistic.

A very good ad by ACT. The only quibble I have is they have been far too generous to Shane Jones in suggesting his jobs have only cost $3 million per job. I suspect the majority of those 1,000 jobs are business consultants writing business cases for why they should get even more money. Actual productive long-term jobs is probably well under 500 from his $3 billion.

Stuff reports:

National leader Simon Bridges has written to the Prime Minister asking her to lift the cap on people attending religious services, which is currently set at 10 under coronavirus Alert Level 2.

“New Zealanders find it inconsistent that you allow large numbers of people at bars, restaurants or sporting events but continue to deny more than 10 people gathering for religious services,” Bridges wrote.

The cap on gatherings has been politically contentious. Cinemas and restaurants are allowed to welcome up to 100 people, but they can take bookings for groups of no more than 10.

Funerals and tangi had initially had attendance capped at 10 people, but this has been relaxed to 50.

“It was right to increase the number of people who can attend funerals and tangi — it is right to do the same for our faith communities,” Bridges wrote.

“Religious institutions are in a better place than almost any other organisation that is allowed to host larger crowds, and are therefore able to ensure appropriate physical distancing and health precautions are taking place.”

Again stupidity to have different caps for different venues. The emphasis should be being able to host people safely, not an arbitrary cap of 10.