I’ve now done all 17 South Island electorate races profiles on Patreon. The summary of my profiles are:

• Safe National: Southland, Waitaki, Rangitata, Selwyn, Ilam, Waimakariri, Kaikoura
• Leans National: Invercargill
• Too Close To Call: Banks Peninsula, Nelson
• Leans Labour: Taieri, Wigram
• Safe Labour: Dunedin, Christchurch Central, Christchurch East, West Coast-Tasman, Te Tai Tonga

So on election day the two most competitive seats should be Banks Peninsula and Nelson. Also worth keeping an eye on Invercargill, Taieri and Wigram.

Tomorrow I’m going to start doing the North Island seats, starting with Rongotai.

The Herald reports:

An increasing tobacco black market saw the Government miss out on $287.4 million in tax last year, a report reveals. …

But one expert told the Herald the controversial policy of continually hiking up tobacco prices is “feeding organised crime”. …

Customs investigations manager Bruce Berry told the Herald the illicit tobacco trade has seen “the emergence of more organised criminal groups” and a move away from opportunism.

“We’ve also seen more and more crossover with other forms of criminal activity, particularly in the drug environment. We’ve seen the money laundering that goes with all of these illicit ventures … they’re using the same routes as the drug syndicates.”

Again this should be a good lesson learnt. If you increase the price too much, then you turn it into a commodity for organised crime.

Rohan Pike, a former Australian Federal Police officer and founder of the Australian Border Force’s tobacco strike team, said high prices remained the key driver for smugglers in Australia and New Zealand.

“The profit margin is so high and the risk is so low,” he told the Herald. “They don’t care if there’s a policy of seizure, they’re just going to bombard the border.

“The governments created the policy to tax and that’s created the crime environment,” he said. “At the moment all we’re doing is feeding organised crime.”

High tax leads to high crime!

The Telegraph reports:

The Bad Boys of Brexit are back! Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore have been hired by New Zealand’s version of the UK Independence Party to help fight September’s general election in a move bound to infuriate their Left-wing critics.

A team from Mr Banks’ Leave.EU campaign is advising Winston Peters’ New Zealand First party on its social media campaign in a deal said to be worth a six figure sum.

Now there is nothing wrong with hiring political advisors from overseas. National and Labour at various times have had people from Australia or the US helping them.

But the mention of a six figure sum (that means between $100,000 and $1,000,000) is fascinating. Who is paying that bill? Does NZ First have that sort of money just to spend on foreign consultants?

If someone else is paying, then that should be declared as a donation to NZ First. And it would be illegal for that someone else to be a non-resident.

A six-strong team from Leave.EU have been dispatched to Auckland with an instruction to increase New Zealand First’s vote share to as high as 12 percent.

It would be remarkable to increase a vote share from 2% to 12%.

What is more interesting is that a six strong team has been dispatched. How are they being allowed in the country? Is the Immigration Minister declaring them to be essential workers?

And a team of six would cost a lot. The average London salary for data analysts is 35,000 pounds or NZ$66,000. Take six of them and that is $400,000. Assume three months salary and that is $100,000. Add in airfares, accommodation etc and you are heading over $150,000. Also presumably these are people who are really good and on more than the average salary.

So again the question is who is paying for them, and how are they being allowed in?

Mr Banks continued: “We have deployed our top social media team and data experts to do all the creative work, Andy and I are giving Winston strategic advice.”

He added: “Since 2016 we have known Winston, he is a huge supporter of the Commonwealth and watched first hand the referendum campaign.

Is it possible they are funding this themselves, because they like Winston? If so, then they have a real problem as that is a donation in kind and donations of more than $50 from non residents are banned.

So the Electoral Commission should be very interested in this.

Mr Wigmore added: “I’m going to be on ground in New Zealand causing trouble – mischief, mayhem and guerrilla warfare in the New Zealand election – the bad boys are back.”

Unless Mr Wigmore is already in NZ (as Mr Banks is) then he may find his description of his proposed activities here won’t help him gain essential worker status!

The Herald reports:

An urgent Government inquiry has been launched to uncover “exactly who” did it and why Covid-19 patient details were leaked.

State Services Minister Chris Hipkins has appointed former solicitor general Mike Heron, QC, to lead the probe into the massive Covid-19 privacy breach.

The Herald revealed on Saturday that the personal details of 18 active cases had been leaked in a spreadsheet, including their names and dates of births. Two other media outlets have also reported seeing the document.

Hipkins expected the urgent inquiry to report back by the end of the month. It will also examine how the information was stored and whether that could be improved.

As I blogged previously the data should never have been in a spreadsheet, let alone one with no password protection. You don’t need a QC to work that out.

Hipkins said there were a number of theories about how the sensitive information came to be released but he didn’t think it was human error.

“I don’t think that information tends to accidentally be sent to multiple media outlets at the same time.”

Hipkins is making an assumption, that may be unsafe.

It is fair to assume that the person who sent the info to the media did it in purpose.

But what is very possible is that person was themselves sent the information by accident – ie they were not someone meant to have it.

If you use an insecure spreadsheet, then it is very easy to send it by e-mail to the wrong person in your e-mail contacts. Possibly an official sent it to someone outside the public sector, and that person was so shocked that the data had been so insecure, that they whistleblew by sending it to the media.

I don’t know of course, but hopefully we’ll find out.

A guest post by New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union Economist Karan Menon:

There is no greater job creation programme for accountants than the introduction of a new tax scheme for the wealthy.

But the Green Party’s proposed wealth tax has some key flaws. First, it would be ineffective at raising money. Second, it would be incredibly economically destructive, undermining the Government’s current efforts for economic recovery.

In short, the policy is an annual tax of 1% on net wealth over $1 million, and 2% on net wealth more than $2 million. The money would be used to dramatically hike benefit levels for the unemployed and sole parents. The Greens claim the tax will bring in about $8 billion per year – approximately a third of the total tax revenue of GST.

But as the Prime Minister has pointed out, the Greens’ revenue assumptions are ‘heroic’. It is notoriously hard to forecast tax revenue – especially for taxes on assets, which can be easily shifted out of reach of the Kiwi tax man. With international borders closed, it appears the Greens assume none of the ‘rich’ they want to target will rearrange their affairs, alter behaviour, or move overseas.

But just because a tax won’t bring in as much as the politicians want it to, it doesn’t mean we are safe to support it. For New Zealand’s best and brightest – think Peter Jackson and Peter Beck – running international business and investing here in New Zealand, a wealth tax could change the preferred destination. International entrepreneurs need only spend a few more months of the year elsewhere to obtain tax domicile outside of New Zealand. This means they could avoid the tax entirely.

And the experience in France, which introduced a new wealth tax on real estate in 2018, suggests that many of our best would move. In fact, there was a noticeable effect in the London property market due to French elite moving across the Channel.

Public support for these taxes may be high, but, in private, most people change their behaviour based on tax policies, with the costly assistance of those aforementioned accountants – especially when a lot of money is at stake.

In France, for those who stayed, many under reported the value of their assets. Even former French President François Hollande has been accused of undervaluing his property to evade taxes.

With the economic ruin of COVID-19, capital investment is required more than ever. A wealth tax would see much needed capital investments disappear. Economists call this ‘capital flight’. This would be especially painful right now, where money supply is increasingly unresponsive to decreases in interest rates. We want wealthy investors coming into New Zealand – not to chase them away. We want the James Camerons of the world to choose to live (and invest) here – so their skills and capital can rebuild our economy and create jobs. 

And as we’ve seen overseas, when forecasted revenue from the ‘rich’ doesn’t materialise, the tax burden is shifted onto the middle class.

A politically profitable attack on successful New Zealanders is one thing, but to promote a tax that would chase away the very capital New Zealand needs right now to get back to growth is anything but fair – not on the rich, the poor, nor the unemployed who would pay the most.

The Herald reports:

Newly appointed Health Minister Chris Hipkins said a leak of confidential patient details off all active Covid-19 cases in New Zealand was “totally unacceptable” and potentially criminal.

The information included the patients names and dates of birth.

The massive breach of privacy contains the details of 18 confirmed cases, ranging from a 30-year-old woman in Auckland to a 70-year-old man in Canterbury.

It includes the personal details of the man in his 30s receiving care in Auckland City Hospital.

The leaked spreadsheet, seen by the Weekend Herald, also shows which border facility the Covid-positive people were staying in when they tested positive and where they were moved for quarantine.

This is a major breach of privacy, revealing which people have Covid-19. It should never have happened.

The best practice for sensitive data is to not have it in a spreadsheet at all. You should have it in a database where only authorised people can login to it. That also allows you to audit access.

If for some reason you do need to export it into a spreadsheet or other document, then the least you should do is stick a password on the file.

Stuff reports:

A candidate has been removed from the Labour’s Party list following anti-Islamic tweets he made seven years ago.

Kurt Taogaga was at number 68 on the list.

But he is no longer on the list after it was revealed he had supported the then NZ First MP Richard Prosser’s “Wogistan” article in 2013.

Taogaga called it brave and said “we need to see Islam for what it really is”.

A statement from Labour Party president Claire Szabó said the tweets from 2013 do not represent the views of the party.

“The Labour Party is committed to inclusion of all religions, and stands against intolerance. 

The Wogistan article was not a good article. Readers may recall that I broke the story into the media. While there are legitimate criticisms you can make of Islam, the article called for anyone who “looked Muslim” to be banned from flying.

But whether you sack a candidate for a tweet from seven years ago, is another issue.

I’m somewhat surprised the tweets were not picked up earlier. Taogaga was a candidate in 2017 for Labour also. I would have thought/expected all the major parties would trawl through the social media history of candidates as part of background checks.

Stuff reports:

There are now more than 200,000 New Zealanders receiving either JobSeeker Support or the Covid-19 Income Relief Payment.

New data released from the Ministry of Social Development on Friday showed that 56,000 of those people had requested support since March 20.

This will rise again of course when the wage subsidies end.

One News reports:

The latest 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton poll asked: Do you think you will vote for euthanasia to be legalised?

Sixty three per cent said yes, down two on our poll from February.

Twenty four percent said no, they want it to remain illegal, down one, while the rest were unsure or said they wouldn’t vote.

That’s a very solid majority at this stage.

Stuff reports:

MPs are on notice after a new employment law has placed them directly responsible for their staffers.

Politicians have previously been somewhat insulated from employment matters, as staffers are technically not employed by MPs, but by Parliamentary Service, the administrative arm which runs services at parliament.

But a new law designed to allow contracted employees, such as labour hire workers, to allege personal grievances against the business or organisation controlling them has rewritten the employment boundaries in Parliament. …

Under the new law, staffers could apply to the court to include the MP in any personal grievance complaint

“Technically MPs are now considered a ‘controlling third party’, and if they treat their staff poorly and a personal grievance is pursued – whereas in the old days, you could have only ever taken it up with Parliamentary Service – now an MP can be brought into that mix.”

This is a move in the right direction. While most MPs are very good employers, a few are not. Having Parliamentary Service just pay staff to leave isn’t the best way to fix the problem.

Stuff reports:

Student smokers would be more likely to quit the habit if the price for a pack topped $50, a study has shown.

A survey of 2180 students from New Zealand’s eight universities found that if $15 was added to the price of a packet of cigarettes, 39 per cent would quit altogether and 19 per cent would switch to vaping.

This academic research ignores the real world experience that already the high price of cigarettes has lead to an explosion in the black market. Daires were getting robbed almost weekly for cigarettes and massive illegal importation.

Deborah Hart, director of smoke-free action group ASH NZ, said she welcomed the research but New Zealand already has the world’s highest priced cigarettes, in relation to income.

“The people we are most interested in getting to be smoke-free are people who have the highest rates of smoking, and they tend to be in a low-socioeconomic group,” she said.

“Putting up the price any further for people who are already in poverty and have a real dependence on smoking is counterproductive.

“If price was going to be the only thing that worked for that group of people, it would have worked already.”

Nice to see common sense from ASH. Hart is right that those people still smoking are not very price sensitive.

Stuff reports:

A bill proposing a stricter NZ superannuation has passed the first hurdle in Parliament.

The NZ First Member’s Bill would mean migrants to New Zealand would have to wait longer for superannuation.

The New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill passed its first reading on Wednesday.

If passed, the bill, proposed by NZ First MP Mark Patterson, would raise the minimum residency for super from 10 years to 20 years, after age 20. …

“Currently, a migrant of just 10 years’ residency in New Zealand is entitled to full NZ Super without any requirement to contribute to the economy. This would also apply to an expat Kiwi who left New Zealand at age 25 and returned at age 60 after spending 35 years contributing to another economy,” Patterson said.

The current coalition agreement with NZ First means Labour is committed to leaving the age at which people qualify for NZ Super at 65.

While National supports the bill, Labour has not committed to it.

I think 10 years is too short a period of residency to qualify for NZ Super. 20 years seems fairer to me.

Todd Muller announced:

Today I am confirming a minor shadow cabinet reshuffle due to the retirement of Paula Bennett.

Dr Shane Reti will be ranked number 13 and will take on Associate Drug Reform. Shane has demonstrated a huge intellect and capacity for work, supporting Michael Woodhouse in our Covid-19 response, as well as achieving much in the Tertiary Education portfolio.

Reti is very solid and a deserved promotion. He is well respected within the tertiary sector for his approach to the portfolio.

Simon Bridges will be picking up the Foreign Affairs portfolio and will be ranked at number 17. 

Good to see Simon get the portfolio he wanted. Foreign Affairs is a good portfolio for a former leader.

Joseph Boden writes:

In 101 days, New Zealanders will determine whether or not cannabis should be legalised. In making that decision, there is plenty to learn from the Christchurch and Dunedin longitudinal studies, which together have contributed a vast amount of knowledge regarding cannabis-related harm. 

The Christchurch Health and Development Study and the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study were both founded in the 1970s. Each includes more than 1000 participants, with individuals followed into their 40s. Along the way we have repeatedly asked about their involvement with cannabis and problems arising from this. Professor Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland, an internationally renowned figure in substance use research, has referred to our studies in the context of cannabis research as “the best designed and most informative of these [epidemiological] studies”.

These studies are the gold standard for research.

What did we find? We learned that cannabis use is very common, with as many as 80% of participants having used cannabis on at least one occasion. Rates of regular use (using at least weekly) were far lower (35%). We also found that higher levels of cannabis use, particularly at younger ages, were related to mental health problems including increased risk of cannabis use disorder and major depression. Most strikingly, earlier and heavier cannabis use was also related to increased reports of psychotic symptoms in the Christchurch study, and increased risk of meeting criteria for a diagnosis of psychotic illness in the Dunedin study. Further research by both studies has found that long-term cannabis use is also associated with gum disease, impaired lung functioning, and cognitive problems.

In addition to these findings, we also found that earlier and heavier users of cannabis were less likely to complete educational qualifications, and were more likely to report being unemployed, or receiving a benefit. In addition, while only a minority of cannabis users went on to use other, possibly more dangerous illicit drugs, those participants who were heavy cannabis users in adolescence were especially at risk.

So a lot of negative outcomes associated with high levels of cannabis use. Very useful reminder that this drug is harmful.

Given our research on the risks associated with cannabis use, why do the directors of both the Christchurch and Dunedin studies maintain that cannabis should be dealt with as a health issue, and not a justice issue? The reason again is related to our findings. 

First, despite being a banned substance, cannabis is commonly used across both cohorts, indicating that prohibition does not stop people using cannabis. Second, we found that those who were arrested or convicted of a cannabis offence did not reduce their use of cannabis (in fact some increased their use), suggesting that being subjected to the force of the law does not deter people from using cannabis. Third, the Christchurch study found that Māori were three times more likely than non-Māori to be arrested or convicted on a cannabis offence, showing that prohibition law is enforced by the police and courts in a racially biased way. 

Collectively, our findings suggest that cannabis prohibition laws are not fit for purpose, and that in the 21st century we must deal with the problems associated with cannabis in a way that promotes health, equity and justice for all New Zealanders. The way forward is through legalisation and strict regulation as provided by the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill.

A useful reminder that one can agree that cannabis use is harmful but also agree that criminalising its use is not the best way to deal with it.

The Herald reports:

The freedoms New Zealanders enjoy under the level 1 Covid-19 alert level rely on ongoing vigilance, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.

And she has a stern message to the 367 people who have left 14 days’ managed isolation without being tested and had not returned contact from the Ministry of Health.

“Do your bit, get back in contact. It’s a small thing that you can do as a member of our team of 5 million.”

You know maybe you shouldn’t have released them!

It is easy to test someone when they are in an isolation facility.It is far harder to do so once they have left. This is why it was such a fail that over 1,200 people were released without testing.

Stuff reports:

Sir Peter Gluckman, former Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Air New Zealand chief Rob Fyfe have co-authored a paper saying New Zealand needs to start the process of working out how the country can “more completely re-engage with the world”.

“We need to be thinking about defining our longer-term strategy. Is New Zealand prepared to hold itself in its state of near-total isolation for the indefinite future?” the paper asked.

“Even opening the Trans-Tasman bubble looks further away than it did a month ago with resurgent community spread in at least one Australian state.”

A vaccine against Covid-19 could be much further away than the hype suggested, the authors said, questioning whether New Zealand could “afford to wait out another year, two years, or even more in almost total physical isolation”.

“This is not just affecting tourism and export education, but also the many ways in which New Zealand projects and leverages its place in the world.”

With an election in less than three months, the authors also queried to what extent the political cycle was affecting necessary discussion and decisions.

Its madness to keep the borders closed for two or more years.

What the Government needs to do is set explicit objective criteria for allowing people to travel to NZ. This might be:

• Coming from an area with a covid-19 rate below x
• Has proof of a negative covid-19 test in the last week
• Will pay for and undergo 14 days quarantine
• Agrees to be tested on days 3 and 13

Michael Shellenberger is an environmentalist who has been named by Time as a Hero of the Environment and won a Green Book Award.

He writes in The Australian:

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologise for the climate scare we created over the past 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by the US congress to provide ­objective testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to serve as a reviewer of its next assessment report, I feel an obligation to apologise for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

To make it clear he is not saying that climate change isn’t a serious environmental problem. He is saying it is over hyped.

Some people will, when they read this, imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s co-operatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

Strong left credentials.

But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I ­referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilisation, and called it a “crisis”. …

I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence. And so my formal ­apology for our fearmongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

You can order it here. I have.

He gives some highlights:

And he makes a useful comparison:

The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, COVID-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicisation of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform. Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.

An excellent article.

Stuff reports:

The decision to vote down a bill, that would see offenders of king-hits causing death face a maximum of 20 years in prison, has been met with “anger and disappointment” by survivors of recent attacks.

National MP Matt King’s Coward Punch Causing Death bill is now effectively dead in the water.

There was hope the bill, first drawn in September 2018, would go further given some recent attacks in Auckland.

But it stalled at the first hurdle, voted down by 63 votes from Labour, NZ First and the Green Party during its first reading. …

A 24-year-old Auckland man, who was involved in one of the incidents in early June, told Stuff he felt let down by the news it wouldn’t be going any further.

He witnessed the attack on his friend, who was punched from the side and left unconscious for more than 15 minutes.

“I’m just angry to be honest, it seems like there’s no real deterrent for these types of attacks, it’s just like any other assault,” he said.

“I don’t get politics and that, but it seems pretty simple to pass for me – they already have something similar in Australia and it works.”

In 2014, Australia’s Government of Victoria introduced the Coward’s Punch Manslaughter Law, which carries a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence.

Joseph Esmaili, who killed a respected Australian heart surgeon with a single punch in 2019, was the first person sentenced under the law.

A real shame the three Government parties voted down this bill. Such attacks need to be deterered and punished.

There is a follow up survey from Otago University on the lockdown and some of the laws that were created for it.

Lots of KB readers took part in the earlier one. If you have a few minutes spare, the latest survey is here.