An interesting report by NZIER on how a legal cannabis market could work in terms of costs, revenue and demand.
One key takeaway is they estimate that if the legal market entirely displaced the black market, then a 25% ad valorem tax on cannabis would raise $250 million a year and GST would bring in $240 million a year so total revenue of $490 million a year.
If you spent even half of that revenue on Vote Health it would make a real difference!
As most readers will know, just prior to lockdown, Andrew Little was ramming through a Bill which would reverse a law change in 2010 which currently prevents all sentenced prisoners from voting. Labour wishes to revert to the status quo ante, meaning that any prisoner serving three years or less would be able to vote, and thus help determine who governs the country.
Many lay people assume that a three year sentence – which for non strike offenders means the prisoner is eligible for parole after one year – would only be imposed on relatively low level offenders, and certainly not on “strike” offenders who, by definition, have been found guilty of an offence of serious violence punishable by a maximum term of at least seven years. This assumption is totally wrong, and in fact many strike offenders receive sentences of three years or less.
Our first charmer is one Caleb Kovaleski, currently serving a sentence of two years for robbery and threatening to cause grievous bodily harm. The robbery was his second strike offence. He committed his first strike – presenting a firearm at a police officer – while on bail for other offending. He was jailed for that offence and other offending for three years three months in 2016.
His second strike offending – for which he is now incarcerated – was committed just a month after his release, and while he was on parole for the first strike charges. Kovaleski is believed to have over 80 criminal convictions as an adult, with an unknown number of convictions in the Youth Court, i.e. when he was under the age of 17. He is a Nomads gang member or associate. If he doesn’t have his patch already, it is a fair assumption that his current sentence will put him “over the line” to full gang membership. In short Kovaleski is a violent thug with a long criminal history.
The sentencing notes make rather depressing reading. No doubt on advice from his lawyer Kovaleski wrote a letter to the court expressing his great remorse for the robbery, and stating that if he could attend a restorative justice conference he would. The judge bought that line, gave him credit for it, and deducted three months from the proposed sentence. The nice judge also ordered that the sentence for the threatening to cause GBH be served concurrently with the more serious offence to give a total sentence of 21 months to be served in full, as he is a second striker.
It is important I think to note that by coincidence, the sentencing judge was the same for both Kovaleski’s first and second strike offending. Most recently, the judge said:
“It gave me no pleasure to sentence you to prison then [his first strike offending], and it gives me no pleasure to send you to prison now. I am sad to see you back…I want there to be a day Mr Kovaleski when it is the last day you stand before a court facing charges. When that will be is entirely up to you. ”
With all due respect to the good Judge, I suspect the prisoner was stifling a smirk while being told all this. I have little doubt that in two or three years time Kovaleski’s name will join the ranks of the third strikers. I would be delighted to be proved wrong.
Andrew Little thinks this man is as entitled to vote at the coming election as I am, or the hardworking family who run the Kaukapakapa store. I strongly disagree. As the judge notes, whether this thug faces the court again is entirely up to him, as is whether he is entitled to play a full part in society, and vote at the 2023 election.
Wellington City Council needs to get with the programme.
The increase in rates should be zero. Not 4.9 per cent, or 2.15 per cent, which whilst down from the previously proposed 9.2 per cent, is still too high.
You cannot say rates need to rise because of funding shortfalls and then pledge support to Wellington Airport. Sure, Wellington Airport might be considered a strategic investment for the region, but you are mixing your drinks saying you are short of funds and then putting money on the table for the airport. I support the airport, but not lifting rates to assist with it. Sell another asset if the airport investment is the priority.
And we still don’t know how much of our money has gone into the airport.
Councils are facing less income from non-rate sources as an economic recession bites, just like businesses. Wellington Council debt has been rising fast.
It is missing the point.
They have balance sheet capability. As noted in Wellington City Councils 2018/19 annual report “our financial position remains healthy”.
Wellington City Council have assets close to $8 billion. They have a property investment portfolio of around $250 million. Property, plant and equipment of more than $7 billion. Councils will always have some cash on hand for liquidity and rainy day purposes; that was more than $100 million in the last financial year.
Borrowing is less than 10 per cent of assets.
Increasing taxes such as rates in a recession makes the recession deeper. Borrowing is the sensible thing to do, rather than increasing rates.
We are not talking about cutting rates, just a zero increase. Many businesses are going to be cutting prices to help drive a recovery.
Total sales and income across the economy for the business sector is around $700 billion per year. Do the maths on what it costs the economy and businesses if major parts are shut down for one month, two, and possibly more.
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 Paul Goldmith MP.
Crown Law documents leaked to Newstalk ZB say the Government’s lockdown was unenforceable.
Attorney-General David Parker, however, says the document was a draft – and “not the considered advice of Crown Law”.
If the Government really is trying to claim the leaked document was just a draft, and the final advice was radically different – well then surely they’d release the final advice.
Cam Slater has an extensive post with the leaked advice. It makes it very clear that when the Prime Minister and Police Commissioner said you must do this or be arrested, this was not what Crown Law had told the Police.
The Government had the option of asking Parliament to pass a law to allow the lockdown. They chose not to do that. Why?
Some people might say, who cares. It was the right decision. Well it does matter. Imagine the hysteria if John Key had got up and closed down hundreds of thousands of businesses and it turned out he had no legal basis to do so.
Do you want a future Government to be able to close down businesses and force people to stay home, purely on the basis of press conferences rather than actual laws?
The National Party has put up a new candidate with expertise in viruses to contest the Wigram electorate currently held by Labour MP and Science Minister Megan Woods.
Hamish Campbell has a PhD in viruses and cancer from the University of Otago and is currently the Deputy Head of Research at a facility in Australia where he oversees medical research into multiple sclerosis.
The 40-year-old has been selected as National’s candidate to take on Dr Woods who has held the Wigram electorate since 2011. She has a PhD in New Zealand History from the same university and is currently Science and Innovation Minister.
Dr Campbell said science and technology is his “passion”, and as New Zealand grapples with a novel coronavirus that’s infected more than two million people across the globe, he said his expertise in viruses “is very topical at the moment”.
Good to see National attracting such great quality candidates. A PhD in viruses is very timely indeed.
Ashley Bloomfield might be heading to court to defend the lockdown after a legal challenge alleging he used powers he didn’t have.
Andrew Borrowdale, who formerly drafted laws for the Government at the Parliamentary Counsel Office has filed for a judicial review of Bloomfield’s actions.
Borrowdale told Stuff that the “bringing the application is not in any way intended to impugn Dr Bloomfield personally or to decry his admirable work”.
He’s asked for a court to declare that some of the powers triggering the lockdown were outside the law, and for the court to order those actions be quashed.
The main issue at stake is whether Bloomfield used powers that were in excess of the ones given to him by the Health Act.
This is a very different lawsuit to the rather demented ones by the person on home detention.
Borrowdale is highly respected. He used to help write the laws at PCO and he is the author of commercial law textbooks.
Geddis said the case wasn’t so much about whether or not New Zealand should have gone into lockdown, but whether or not the powers that were used to trigger the lockdown existed – if they did not, Parliament could have created them before level 4 came into force.
He said it was an important legal question to settle.
“Our constitutional and legal health is as important to as the physical health of individuals. Yes, we want the Government to keep us safe and to protect us, but that’s not a green light to not follow the laws.
“If you sweep the laws away at this moment, what’s the point of having laws?” he said.
This is key. The issue isn’t whether it was a good idea to go into lockdown. It is whether it was done legally. The Government could have asked Parliament to pass a law to give it explicit powers to do what it wanted to do. Parliament obviously would have done this, just as they wrote the Government a $52 billion blank cheque for fighting this.
But the Government chose not to seek a specific law, and this lawsuit is about whether or not existing laws were sufficient.
Cabinet has approved the fast tracking of large shovel ready projects, largely by-passing the Resource Management Act.
The announcement this morning, from Environment Minister David Parker, comes as the government continues to identify projects which could be begin sooner with a large injection of public money.
The aim is to boost the economy as it enters a sharp downturn brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The new act, due to be passed in June, would take away the ability of the public and councils to have an input in to whether projects proceed and instead hand this power to small panels of experts, chaired by an Environment Court judge.
Excellent to see. Glad an economic crisis can finally get the Government to move on RMA reform.
But why have this temporary. Make this a permanent change.
Applications to be exempt from quarantine on compassionate grounds are considered on their merits and no blanket approach is applied, the Director-General of Health says after the High Court overruled a Ministry of Health decision.
Except they’re not, as the High Court found. The court found the Ministry three times did not look at the case on its merits and failed to use any discretion (a blanket approach).
On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told reporters 18 such people had been granted permission, but it later emerged she had been given the incorrect number and no one – until the High Court ruling – had been granted an exemption on compassionate grounds.
The Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told The AM Show on Wednesday that exemptions have been granted on other grounds, however.
“We have had several hundred requests for exemptions for people who have flown into the country and are in either quarantine or in managed isolation at the airports and hotels around the place. Of those, there have been 18 exemptions granted, mostly on medical grounds. For example, people who have medical conditions so they can’t really be looked after in that hotel setting,” he said.
This misses the point. The problem is that the DG’s health order allows exemptions on compassionate grounds but the MOH process didn’t allow for such exemptions to be considered. They were only set up for considering requests where the person applying is sick etc.
“We have had a total of 24 inquiries or applications for exemption on compassionate grounds such as the one the judge has made a ruling on and none of those have been granted or hadn’t been until last Friday when the family took it for a judicial review.”
Dr Bloomfield said his team works to apply specific criteria to each case “objectively” and “fairly”, which he said they do with “empathy”.
Has Dr Bloomfield not read the court ruling? His staff did not apply any relevant criteria let alone objectively or fairly.
“This was not a blanket, one-size-fits-all process. Each application was looked at on its merits and all the information. The person who went for the judicial review provided further information and I very quickly asked the team, I said ‘please go back and review. Make sure you are carefully and objectively considering the additional information in putting forward that decision.'”
And they still said no, because in fact they didn’t consider any of the additional information on compassionate grounds. They were only reviewing it on medical grounds.
New Zealand Police’s decision to arrest Kiwis during alert level 4 despite being advised they had little legal basis to do so “undermines the rule of law” in New Zealand, the former Attorney-General believes.
The comment from Chris Finlayson comes just hours after leaked emails to NZ Herald revealed that police were told by Crown Law that they had little to no power to enforce lockdown rules.
Finlayson, a former National MP who served as Attorney-General for nine years between 2008 and 2017, says it’s clear the police have acted beyond their powers during the coronavirus crisis.
“We’re a society that is governed by the rule of law, which means the state can’t exercise power over people without the legal authority to do so,” he told Magic Talk host Ryan Bridge on Monday.
“Where do they get this legal authority? From the laws, and the laws should leave no one – not you, nor me – in any doubt at all about what our rights and duties are.
“I’m not surprised that Crown Law has provided that opinion, and I find it very troubling that people were arrested and certain actions taken without a proper legal basis. That total undermines the rule of law in this country.”
What happened is very serious. The Police decided to implement the wishes of the Government as opposed to enforcing the laws of the land as passed by Parliament. Those two things are very different.
Finlayson says he doubts those arrested for breaking lockdown rules will be prosecuted, as Crown Law’s advice proves police don’t have a leg to stand on.
Those arrested may have a case for wrongful arrest.
Could somebody please send out a search party and locate Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis?
I don’t mean that literally. I know where he spent last week – at Parliament – which makes his absence from the Government’s public response all the more gobsmacking.
The tourism sector is imploding, countless jobs are being lost, and many are left with a feeling of uncertainty. …
What tourism businesses desperately need is a leader to articulate a message of hope. It needs Davis to proactively front the media, on a regular basis, to give an idea of what the Government is doing to save the sector. Because fronting the media gets the message out to operators, who are in the middle of making big decisions about their futures.
Tourism is by far the hardest hit sector, yet the Minister is invisible.
We have seen the finance, education, media and social development ministers all head to the main podium to be held to account. But not Davis.
I know why. Davis struggles in front of the camera.
I remind people Davis is not a junior Minister. He is third ranked, ranking higher than Grant Robertson. The third ranked Minister is incapable of being trusted to hold a press conference.
A promotional video featuring the Prime Minister’s partner has been questioned over concerns it could be perceived to be “politicising” the police force.
Clarke Gayford headlined a police video in mid-April that aimed to encourage people who were looking after young kids during the lockdown.
In the video Wellington Paranormal star Karen O’Leary calls to check in just as Gayford has managed to get his young daughter Neve to sleep.
National list MP Brett Hudson questioned Police Commissioner Andrew Coster about the video during yesterday’s Epidemic Response Committee meeting.
“Do you think that a video is appropriate and does it risk politicising police?”
Of course it does. I’ve had numerous e-mails to me complaining it does exactly that.
“And people will probably appreciate that Mr Gayford has also previously been a part of Wellington Paranormal.
“He is a well-known TV personality, in his own right, and that was the sort of connection that caused it to come about.
Gayford has only been featured in Wellington Paranormal because he is the PM’s partner.
He was not a well-known TV personality in his own right prior to his relationship with Ardern. 98% of New Zealanders would not have heard of him previously. His fishing show was on Choice TV, not TVNZ or Tv3. This is not having a go at Clarke or the show. From all accounts it is a good show which he hosts well. But it is silly to pretend he was used in the Police video because of his background in broadcasting rather than the fact he is the PMs partner.
I’ve got no problems with Wellington Paranormal including him in their show. They are an entertainment show. But for the Police to include him in an official Police video is a very bad idea.
The allegations by Tara Reade that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her when she worked for him has got more attention since two people came forward to confirm that she told them of the alleged assaults soon after they happened.
Generally one of the best (but far from perfect) indicators of veracity in historical claims) is whether they told anyone at the time. I believe Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick primarily because she told someone about it the afternoon it happened. She also told three others shortly afterwards.
Also Reade’s mother called in 30 or so years ago to a Larry King show asking for advice for her daughter who had a bad experience with a Senator she worked for. While we don’t know exactly what happened, we can conclude that something happened back then which Reade found extremely upsetting.
So on that basis I would have regarded Reade’s claims as more likely than that of Christine Blasey Ford vs Brett Kavanaugh as Ford told no one for 30 years. Note we have no way of knowing in absolute terms. The point I am making is you tend to place greater reliance on claims where there is contemporary verification.
In Biden’s defence there is no pattern of behaviour (in terms of alleged sexual assaults) as there has been with Clinton and Trump.
Overall though my conclusion was that it was more likely than not Biden did commit some sort of sexual assault due to what Reade said to people at the time.
So if I was ranking the probability that someone did commit sexual assault my rough order from most to least likely would have been:
Weinstein/Cosby (convicted)
Trump (20+ allegations, boasted on tape about it)
Clinton (multiple allegations)
Biden
Kavanaugh
But I then read this article on Medium about Tara Reade and it really does raise huge issues around her credibility. Again no one knows the actual truth except Reade and Biden. There is no process for adjudicating in a court of law so we need to weigh up issues such as credibility of both Biden and Reade to make political judgement as this is about whether Biden is fit to be President.
After reading the Medium article I now would have Biden at around the same level of probability as Kavanaugh. Ford was a more credible accuser than Reade but Reade did tell people about what she alleges happened at the time.
Sir Roger Douglas and Professor Robert MacCulloch have published a paper on Why the Prioritization of Resources is Crucial to New Zealand’s Economic Recovery in the Wake of Covid-19.
The Covid-19 outbreak has not only precipitated a health emergency, but also an economic crisis, unparalleled in modern history. For New Zealand to emerge from that crisis in a relatively healthy state, the Labour government will need to provide a clear framework for recovery, implementing policies which clearly prioritize those most affected by the societal and economic lockdown necessitated by the outbreak. To date, such prioritization has been lacking, with the Wage Subsidy Scheme unfairly advantaging big business and the professional elite, at the cost of money and resources which could have been better directed towards assisting the newly unemployed – namely workers, their families, and small business owners.
Ultimately, poorly targeted support in the form of helicopter payments, wage subsidies, or broad-based tax cuts (such as a moratorium on GST) is wasteful, and will only serve to entrench inequalities that existed prior to the pandemic. Equally, the time and costs inherent in planning large-scale new infrastructure projects – and the fact that they offer little practical help to the majority of workers who require help now – means that they should not be regarded as a panacea, aiding economic recovery.
Instead, clear, innovative policies, which not only prioritize those most in need, but which also lay the groundwork for further social and economic reform in the medium to long term, are required. For workers and their families, support can be offered via the mechanism of special risk accounts, tailored to meet their individual needs. For small business, help can be provided by facilitating conversations between businesses, landlords, and banks, as well as providing – upon the provision of an approved business plan – forgivable government loans.
Finally, to help manage the recovery, and ensure our younger generations are not saddled with debt, the government must also identify, and eliminate, unnecessary spending, privilege, and waste. It can find an extra $15 billion per annum by doing so, contributing to the recovery in the short term, and – more generally – to implementing wider scale reform once the immediate crisis has been put behind it.
The authors point out:
In 2019, the Warehouse Group made an after-tax profit of $74 million dollars. Even allowing for some inevitable pain, good corporate management suggests that it should have been able to look after itself during the lockdown, or, failing that, should have been capable of paying back a loan once its stores reopened. Similarly, the partners in wealthy law firms like Simpson Grierson, Bell Gully and MinterEllison have enjoyed years of high six (and sometimes even seven) figure salaries. Why haven’t they been required to fend for themselves and their businesses? Why, when the good times suddenly come to an end, have they gone cap in hand to the government? And why has the government responded by treating them the same as workers and small businesses who have never enjoyed an equivalent level of wealth and who do not enjoy access to the resources they do?
You could argue the listed companies have a duty to their shareholders to take the subsidy if they are eligible.
Overall a excellent paper that emphasizes the importance of spending being of high quality, not scattergun.
New Zealand’s Parliament is famous for being able to pass laws quickly in a crisis.
But on Thursday it might have moved too quickly, after an error meant that the wrong piece of legislation was introduced to Parliament and then passed within hours, accidentally bringing into law a multi-billion dollar loan scheme. …
Robertson later clarified what had gone wrong, saying that the error was the result of an error made by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, which is responsible for drafting the legislation.
“The bill that was put up by the Parliamentary Counsel Office and was tabled in the House was incorrect, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office have apologised for that,” Robertson said.
The PCO is unable to table a bill. Only a Minister can table a Government bill. This shows that the Minister obviously didn’t even read the bill he was tabling.
And this wasn’t a minor piece of legislation. It may result in $7 billion of loans, many of which may never get repaid.
Simon Bridges in a speech to Business NZ has announced two major policies to help businesses survive the economic carnage caused by the (necessary) responses to Covid-19.
The first is GST refunds to businesses. The details:
A business can claim back any GST they paid between 1 July 2019 and 31 December 2019 up to $100,000 if revenue down over 50% across two successive months
An eligible business can claim back an additional $250,000 of GST over that period but as a five year loan with a 0.7% interest rate
Bridges makes the point:
Let’s face it – these businesses have been forced to shut down in the national interest.
It is in the national interest to keep them afloat.
It’s not right that small business should be left to carry so much of the economic suffering.
The wage subsidy has helped employees for 12 weeks, but it hasn’t helped businesses with zero revenue pay overheads like rent, power and stock.
This is key. These businesses have not lost their income due to poor planning, due to not being in the right market, due to bad customer service etc. They lost their income due to the response to a pandemic.
The second policy is to increase the amount of capital expenditure that can be claimed off tax immediately rather than depreciated over many years. The limit was anything over $500 must be capitalised and depreciated, not expensed. Bridges proposes lifting it to $150,000.
So, if you have a company and spend $145,000 on new machinery, rather than depreciating that asset over many years, you’ll be able to expense the full $145,000 in this tax year.
This would encourage capital investment, which is excellent.
Great to see National with ambitious practical policies for helping small and medium businesses. Some of the aspects I like are:
The 50% revenue decline over two months means it is tightly targeted at those businesses most in need
Having the grant proportional to GST (and hence revenue) is better than merely based on staff numbers
Targeting it at smaller businesses with the $100,000 cap but allowing the five year loan for larger businesses
The huge lift in the level for expensing capital expenditure will incentivise investment
It will be interesting to see what Labour announces in next week’s Budget.
I encourage National to keep rolling out policies like this. If the election is a referendum on who has the best economic plan going forward, this is an excellent start.
Two of New Zealand’s largest meat companies, Alliance and Silver Fern Farms, have taking over $75 million of public money for wage subsidies. They are essential industries and are still operating in Level 4. Their taking of the wage subsidy is wrong.
New Zealand’s economy is going to take a massive hit from Covid-19. Many small businesses are no longer viable, and many people will lose their jobs. We need every cent we can get to help get people new jobs, especially those in hospitality and tourism where their entire industry has been destroyed.
The Wage Subsidy scheme was set up to keep people employed in businesses that were shut down. It was to avoid the mass layoff of workers who were not working through no fault of their own. It was not a hand out to essential industries that are working through the lockdown.
We need our profitable essential industries to be good corporate citizens and not take the wage subsidy that was supposed to keep people unable to work employed in vulnerable small businesses. Silver Fern Farms made a profit of $70.7m in the last financial year, so they are cashed up and do not need a subsidy. Alliance made a profit of $20.7m in 2019 so they are also not like a struggling bar or café that is going to be ruined by Covid-19. They are not even like the plumber or builder or hairdresser who still has a business after the lockdown, but will have lost almost all their revenue for many weeks.
As a taxpayer I am happy to help out those in need in a time of crisis. Most New Zealanders are happy to help out. It is the right thing to do. Alliance & Silver Fern Farms are not in need and are in a far better position that the vast numbers of small businesses and workers who have an incredibly uncertain future. These people are going to be asked to pay taxes to subsidise Alliance & Silver Fern Farms.
Some PR bullshit artist will probably come out to justify these meat companies taking the subsidy saying they “fit the criteria”. This does not make taking the wage subsidy right. Other companies in the industry have chosen not to take it because they are good corporate citizens and are doing the right thing.
If Silver Fern Farms & Alliance do not immediately say they are going to pay this back you can sign a petition asking the government to take it back forcibly. You can choose to boycott these company’s products. You can do what economist Cameron Bagrie suggested and ask supermarkets to refuse to stock their products.
Hey supermarkets. How about you support the meat companies that haven’t taken the govt wage subsidy and stop buying product from those who have? $77.7m of taxpayer money to sliver fern farms and alliance. Unbelievable #newworld#paknsave#countdown#foodstuffs#supportgoodguys
And you can ask your MPs & Ministers to refuse to appoint the directors of Silver Fern Farms or Alliance to any government board, or renew any appointment to any government board. Ministers have the right to decide who represents us on state owned enterprise boards, and they can send a very clear message to the directors of these companies that they need to take their governance role more seriously if they want state appointments. That way there is a personal consequence for the directors who have overseen the wage subsidy. You can see the Alliance Board Members here and the the Silver Fern Farms Board Members here.
Silver Fern Farms & Alliance’s directors should immediately instruct their executives to pay back the wage subsidy. That is what a good corporate citizen would do because it is the right thing to do. Having to pressure them to do the right thing is frustrating, because it should be so obvious to them they do not need to think about it.
That the House of Representatives urge the Government to require businesses such as Silver Fern Farms and the Alliance Group to pay back any wage subsidies they have claimed while their plants are still operating.
A prominent developer whose tenants have been hit hard by the coronavirus lockdown has accused ministers of being “divorced from reality” over a warning to councils not to cut rates.
Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford issued a blunt threat last week that any move by local authorities to reduce rates to relieve financial pain for residents and businesses could jeopardise the Government’s willingness to invest in any proposed partnerships.
Rates freezes or reductions were also “unlikely to be effective”, Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta told Stuff.
So you have two Ministers telling Council to whack up rates as much as they can, ignoring the fact many businesses and households have had huge incomes drops.
But Richard Peebles, the developer behind Christchurch’s Riverside Market and Little High food venues, accused them of being clueless about the lockdown’s effect on small businesses and urged them to “get their heads out of the sand”.
“They must live in some sort of vacuum,” he said. “They don’t understand the impact of their decisions on small businesses, and I suggest they actually take time to talk to [them] – if there’s going to be any left.”
This is not an anti-iwi column – I am a registered member of at least six iwi across New Zealand, but I don’t want them or any other community group stopping vehicles.
News reports and a social media video showing patched Mongrel Mob and Tribesman members working alongside each other at checkpoints in Murupara is understandably concerning. …
By allowing these shenanigans to continue, our prime minister, minister of police and police themselves have put our health and safety at risk.
Sure, some iwi checkpoints have police officers assisting them. Having a cop standing next to, or supervising you, doesn’t mean their skills and expertise are transferred to you.
That raises another question – why are police involved in the first place? The police website says: “Where communities have determined to undertake checkpoints to prevent the spread of Covid-19, police is working with those communities and other agencies to ensure checkpoints are safe and not preventing lawful use of the road.”
Oh, please. If police think checkpoints should be operated “to prevent the spread of Covid-19”, then go ahead and do it – with police officers – no-one else. To do otherwise shows police are pandering to certain groups.
It is shameless race based pandering. If non-Maori had set up a illegal checkpoint anywhere in NZ, they’d probably all be in jail.
I got quite mad reading this High Court judgment allowing a Oliver Christiansen to be allowed to see his terminally ill father. It is disgisting that he had to go all the way to court to battle the Ministry of Health on this.
The Ministry not only showed repeated ignorance of the law they were meant to be interpreting, but also lacked common sense and compassion in my opinion.
Here’s my brief summary:
Christiansen flies home on 23 April from UK to see his father who has brain cancer. His prognosis suddenly shortened and had only days to live.
OC applied to travel from his quarantine hotel to his family home where his father was spending his final days. The only other people there were his mother, two sisters and a pallative case nurse for a short time every day
OC asked to be tested for Covid-19 but refused as he had no symptoms
OC offered conditions such as travelling alone in a private car, quarantining and cleaning the vehicle, only staying at his father’s house until his death, then returning to quarantine and wearing PPE
The Ministry of Health declined his application to travel three times. The 1st time because he didn’t for the criteria for a medical transfer. The second time because he himself wasn’t critically ill. The third time because he didn’t have serious medical conditions
All three times the Ministry fucked up. They didn’t actually look at the actual health order passed by the Director-General but instead tried to fit him into a category based on their website info.
The DG’s order explicitly states you can apply for travel from quarantine on compassionate grounds. This is the criteria he applied under three times, and not once did the MoH actually assess his application on these grounds. He spent days battling them and having to go to court while his father lay dying without him.
OC went back to MOH and pointed out his application was on compassionate, not medical grounds. Yet time and time again they either didn’t understand or God knows what.
OC even resorted to e-mailing the DG of Health and the Minister. This got referred back to the same team who again denied it.
OC even told the DG that the problem was the team was not considering it on compassionate grounds as the DG had not delegated them that authority. He was helpfully pointing out what their problem was, and how to fix it.
The Judge found that the Ministry of Health made serious errors of law in not considering it on the available grounds. She also found they failed to take into account mandatory relevant considerations.
The Judge noted also that OC is completely asymptomatic, has his health checked every few days and tried multiple times to get a Covid-19 test taken.
The Judge also noted it was hard to imagine a better case for compassionate grounds than a parent likely to die within days
As the Judge said it is hard to imagine a more compelling case. The fact that MOH rejected his application not once but three times is basically appalling. This should not have been even a borderline call. The risks were minimal and manageable and the potential harm to OC and his family immense by preventing him to see his dying family.
Thankfully we do have a judiciary that can over-ride capricious decision making by the executive. It is a good reminder of why we should beware granting such huge powers.
And the Ministry of Health should apologise to the Christiansen family for forcing them to go to court because they were incapable to correctly following their own law.
Sadly it seems this is not an isolated case. Stuff reports that there have been a total of 24 requests to visit a dying relative and the Ministry of Health declined all 24 of them. So much for kindness.
