A further guest post from Owen Jennings:

The first pertinent question we asked was, “what part of the atmosphere is Methane?” The answer is, “not much”.

All of the Greenhouse Gases (GHG’s) (CO2, Methane, Water Vapour, Nitrous Oxide and Ozone) struggle to make up 1% of the air around us in New Zealand (white coats will state it varies from the polar regions to the tropics but 1% is accurate for us in Godzone).  What you rarely hear from the warmists is that water vapour totally dominates the GHG’s.  In that 1% water vapour crushes it at 95 – 96%.  CO2 is 0.04%. Ozone and Nitrous Oxide add a smidgeon. Methane limps in at 0.019%.  That’s 0.00019% of the whole atmosphere.  Two parts per million.

Infinitesimal.

The second question is how much of that piddling, minute percentage is anthropogenic. (nice scientific word, eh?). Dr Jock Allison sent me this graph on the sources of all Methane emissions.  The numbers come from NASA – the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with a budget of $US 28 billion.

It shows 33% natural and 67% anthropogenic.  Only 15% comes from ruminants – cows, sheep, elephants, gazelles, giraffes and unicorns. 

As an economy that is dependent on agriculture we want to know if we are a significant player.  We are not.  We can’t even muster up 1% of the world’s ruminants.  So at very best, with a tail wind, we are 1% of 15%.  We also emit minor amounts from other human activities.

So, totally meaningless, if you are trying to assess NZ’s agriculture’s emissions from livestock relative to the whole atmosphere.  The world may be a big place but 1% of the 15% of the 0.00019% just won’t fit in the calculator window.  It takes a deluded romanticist (or a well paid scientist??) to think that somehow our cows belching is heating the planet. We are spending hundreds of millions to reduce belching by 20% as if 20% of 1% of 15% of something that is 0.00019% of the atmosphere has some validity. Does your head in, doesn’t it?

What are these miniscule numbers of Methane molecules supposed to be doing that has the world “alarmed”?  Why are we even discussing cutting back our livestock numbers and penalising farmers and our exports for such a trivial percentage?

Now it gets all tricky and technical.  But hang in there with me and we will try and get it down to hayseed lingo.

When the sun shines it heats stuff up.  Some of the heat/energy bounces back up into the atmosphere.  It is called re-radiation.  The GHG’s welcome specific bands of this radiation energy with open arms.  They all jostle around and some energy gets absorbed by the GHG’s slowing down its journey out into space.  And that, ladies and gentlemen is the Greenhouse Gas Effect.

But hang on a mo.  Not quite so fast.  Nothing in climate is that simple. If only!!

The whole theory is based on models. Climate Change is a theory based on models.  Models need full and accurate inputs to be of any value.  With climate there are so many variables and so little is known of them with certainty that the models are of limited use.   All of the science on warming including the claims against Methane originate with these models.  Despite valiant and even cringing efforts by warmists trying to explain the gap between what the models predicted and actual temperature recorded the gap keeps opening.  This yawning gap, three times warmer than actuals will soon swallow the remaining vestiges of the warmist’s credibility.

Facts, that only the most biased and those milking the money tree dispute:

1.            Over the planet temperatures have been creeping up slowly long before GHG’s increased.

2.            Historically, through countless ages, global temperatures have risen and CO2 has followed

3.            Temperatures have stayed pretty much flat for the last 20 years when CO2 kept rising

4.            But here is the biggie.  Water vapour at up to 96% of the Greenhouse Gases dominates the re-radiation process.  Water vapour is 25 times more abundant than CO2 and 5,000 times more abundant than methane.  A few CO2 molecules get to absorb some heat/energy because there is a very tiny window on the spectrum where water vapour isn’t running the show.  According to world recognised physicists like Tom Sheahen, Will Happer, William van Wijngaarden and increasing Methane can’t do any more worth writing about.  Water vapour has it totally corralled. 

The big guns in science say stuff like this….  “Very low concentration greenhouse gases from agricultural sources are shown to make only a minute contribution to the absorption of solar radiant energy and long-wave re-radiation back from earth. Methane only has a few narrow absorption bands with none absorbing 100% at their active wavelength location within the spectrum.  – Dr Geoff Duffy FRSNZ, DEng, PhD, BSc, ASTC Dip., FRSNZ, FIChemE, CEng is Professor Emeritus – Chemical Engineering, University of Auckland.  Yes, a minute contribution swamped by water vapour.

So, Methane is a dead duck.  Water vapour is fully prevalent.  There is simply no room on the electromagnetic spectrum where water vapour lets Methane get a look in.

Seeing is believing.  Below is a diagrammatic look at the spectrum.  It shows that Methane is operating on two places of the spectrum where there is no absorption or influence and one band where it is 50% efficient (the turquoise peak on the right).  

Now look what happens when water vapour is added to the spectrum.   It completely blocks out Methane. 

Methane and Nitrous Oxide have very small absorption bands on that electromagnetic spectrum, at positions where there is significant disruption from water vapour, which has concentrations thousands of times that of the minor gases.

Here is what you hear from the warmist scientists.  They rarely talk about water vapour as a GHG.  Not even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment lets the words cross his lips.  They rarely quantify.  All fancy buzz terms but no hard equations. Why do they avoid the electromagnetic spectrum discussion? Is it an ‘inconvenient truth’?  They do warble on about “feedbacks”.  But like the infamous Yeti one has yet to be spied.  Feedbacks remain unproven and disputed.

Conclusion:  Methane is too insignificant and physically unable to have any influence of consequence on temperature.   Farmers are facing payments running into hundreds of thousands of dollars should current regulations and green interests get their way. Why are we willing to take an axe to our best performing industry when the case is so water(vapour)tight?

Help from:

Dr Jock Allison Ph. D. (Sydney University) ONZM, FNZIPIM

Dr Michael Kelly Ph. D. FRS, FREng Professor at Cambridge University.

Dr Will Happer Ph. D., Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.

Dr Geoff Duffy FRSNZ, DEng, Ph.D., BSc, ASTC Dip., FRSNZ, FIChemE, CEng is Professor Emeritus – Chemical Engineering, University of Auckland

Dr William van Wijngaarden Ph.D. (Physics)

Dr Tom Sheahen Ph.D., 1966: Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• The US Republican Party was set up in 1854 as an anti slavery party
• The 1st Republican (of the current party) President was Abraham Lincoln
• In the 1857 Dred Scott case which decided negros were property not citizens, the only two dissenting judges were Republican and the seven majority judges were Democrats
• John Wilkes Booth was a Democrat
• The Democratic Party opposed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment, which gave blacks citizenship; and the 15th Amendment, which gave blacks the vote
• 22 black Republicans served in the US Congress by 1900. The Democrats did not elect a black man to Congress until 1935.
• The founder of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was a Democrat
• The 1964 Civil Rights Act was supported by 80% of Republicans in Congress and less than 70% of Democrats
• A Democratic Senator filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 75 days

I follow US politics a lot but I wasn’t aware of all of this.

David Clark has resigned as Minister of Health and as a Minister.

I think this shows Labour is very worried about the polls and how his carrying on would continue to erode their previous gains.

Of interest is he resigned, rather than sacked. Ardern kept saying she has confidence him when it was clear no one else did. She should have sacked him on the day we entered Level 1.

Chris Hipkins has been appointed Minister of Health (which is what I recommended a week ago!). It shows how devoid of talent they are that they had to give the portfolio to someone who is already overworked with Education, State Services and Leader of the House.

Politically this is good for Labour. People were appalled at how Clark dumped on Bloomfield, which was the last straw. Clark going removes that weeping sore.

A guest post by a reader:

I probably have little in common with a lot of Kiwiblog readers. I’m pro gay marriage, anti smacking, pro decriminalisation of marijuana, support increasing our military by 100% and our police by 50% and funding it via a lot more taxation, nationalising a lot of key industries, and generally could be seen as a leftie. Even worse, I’m a public servant – yes, a dreaded “trougher.”

But the fact is, in the current times, I have a lot more in common with people here than I do with my supposedly “traditional” leftie allies. And it’s all to do with freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, and censorship.

I’ve stated my opinions, but I don’t expect everybody to agree with them. I like debate. I think people can be vitriolically anti-gay. They can say they think homosexuality is evil and should be punishable by death; that’s their opinion, and they have a right to it. It’s not my opinion, and I would try my best to convince them otherwise, but I would never hold they couldn’t have their own opinion.

This “window of opinion” was as broad as could be in the 1980s. Libertarians. Anarchists. Socialists. Big “C” Conservatives. It was a time of intellectual ferment and difference of opinions. It was a child of the liberalism of the 1960s.

Today, that window has shut, and it’s getting darker. The window of acceptable opinion is so narrow nowadays it reminds me of the Victorian era; instead of whether we’re revealing an ankle, it’s whether we’re mispronouncing Taupo. The so-called liberals are about as illiberal as can be. Freedom of speech is being shut down. We cannot have the fundamental debates about what is right, what is wrong, and what’s inbetween because there is a baying crowd that has already decided. I think George Floyd was murdered for being black. Others may disagree. They have the right to their view, and the right to a civil debate.

The “safetyists” will say that there is no need for civil debate when people’s lives or safety are at risk. That’s hypocritical; they are taking it as a given that human safety is the ultimate ethical imperative, when it’s exactly the sort of thing that is open for debate. The people of Great Britain thought that defiance, democracy, and true liberalism were more important in 1940 than saving lives by surrendering to Hitler. Alexander the Great thought fairness in war was more important than achieving an easier, less costly victory by advancing at night. Humanity has always considered some virtues more important than life and safety at specific times and places. What matters is the freedom to debate which values are more important than safety at a given time. If a slave risked his life for freedom, was he doing the right thing? Modern safetyists would be contorted in knots trying to justify that action, as it would bring into conflict their own preconceptions.

I want a country – and a world – where regardless of the economic system or political system, we have the freedom to debate everything. Where ethics classes at universities can ask whether murder or slavery can ever be morally justified. Where people can protest, or not protest, without immense peer pressure.

As a public servant, I value my political neutrality, but it is becoming harder and harder as so many politically-loaded activities (such as karakia before meetings) are loaded in and seen as “neutral” (i.e. they are so normalised now, nobody sees how political they truly are). There are examples the other way; the normalcy of capitalism, for example, is never questioned even though that is also a political, not a technical, viewpoint. When Auckland Council banned those speakers from community facilities, they were bringing politics into a bureaucratic decision.

I hope I haven’t waffled too much, but that my central point – we are losing freedom of debate – has come through. I don’t know what to do.

I’ll be voting National this year, not because I like them, but because they’re the lesser of two evils.

If Trump was here, even though I believe he’s likely a halfwit, sex offending, buffoon, I’d vote for him. Simply because I would feel my freedom of debate would be stronger under him than it would be under Ardern.

Michele A’Court writes:

In her final months, my mother would say that she wasn’t afraid of dying, but that she was afraid of pain. She had been traumatised – we all were – by my father’s death two years earlier. That had been long and slow, excruciating for him and almost unbearable to witness. We had all done everything we could back then – for him and for her – but there were frustrations and regrets, and wishes that things could have been gentler. Grief is a messy beast, and harder to live alongside when it comes with what-ifs and why-couldn’t-we and how-could-we-have-done-better.

So after her own terminal diagnosis, Donna was clear about what she most wanted for herself. It wasn’t more time – she was philosophical about reaching the end of her life even when we weren’t. What she wanted was as little pain and as much dignity as could be managed. Her life had been about graciousness and elegance, and she wanted her final chapter to match the ones that had gone before. …

Death (and I know my mother would agree with this, because we talked about it many times) is one of life’s bookends. We work hard to make the other bookend – birth – as safe, as free of pain and trauma, and as welcomed as we can. That’s what the End of Life Choice Bill aims to achieve for terminal patients – an acknowledgment that when death comes, we can allow people to leave with the least pain and trauma, and the most dignity. To let them continue to have a voice, even in their final moments.

We have just marked one year since Donna died. You never go back to being the person you were before, but you learn to wrap the grief more gently into the person you are now. You find ways to honour them. Which is why I will be voting Yes for Compassion in this September’s referendum.

This issue affects so many people, who all have their own experience with someone who has been terminally ill.

A guest post by Rumblestrip:

The death of George Floyd in Minnesota has turned the spotlight yet again on the fractious topic of race relations and police brutality in the United States. With terrible regularity, we see news headlines about a person in the US (usually “black”) being killed by a police officer (usually “white”). Sometimes the victim has committed a relatively petty crime; sometimes they appear to be entirely innocent. In most cases the police seem to have used sustained, disproportionate and unreasonable force.

Floyd’s killing has flung a match into a tinderbox of simmering resentment not only in the United States but around the world.

So it was that I was walking through The Octagon late this afternoon, and observed the remnants of a protest in solidarity with those protesting in the United States. The crowd was youthful, peaceful and earnest. I was sympathetic. But I was particularly struck by a large fabric banner strung up under the statue of Robbie Burns. Starkly, it proclaimed: “Abolish Whiteness.”

I was momentarily baffled. I am “white” – if you go back a few generations my heritage is mainly Scottish – and until that moment I found myself in agreement with the protest. I stared at the banner for several seconds. A few questions occurred to me:

–          What exactly do they mean by “Abolish?”

–          By what method would they hope to see this abolition to be carried out?

–          What exactly do they mean by “Whiteness?”

I wondered if there are any circumstances, ever, where it would be acceptable to display a banner proclaiming “Banish Blackness” or perhaps “Banish Maoridom?” If such a banner would be considered a stain and embarrassment on any person hoisting it (and, to be clear, that is precisely how I would feel about it)… why is this “Abolish Whiteness” banner any different?

Let’s be charitable and assume that “abolish” is just a generic term for disapproval: “Boo to whiteness.” The question remains, what do they mean by “whiteness” and why did someone feel the need to raise a huge banner disapproving of it?

In the most slavishly literal sense whiteness refers to skin tone. If your skin is on the lighter end of the human spectrum, if you have a certain look, typically (but not entirely) associated with European ancestry, then you’re “a white”. But the people who hoisted the banner wouldn’t be happy if we just hit the tanning salon. No, what they are really referring to is the nebulous idea of “white culture.” It seems impossible to define, but make no mistake that it is a terrible thing and it is inextricably tied to the problems seen in the US.

It comes with the increasingly common, and lazy, narrative: the problem here is not racism per se, not systemically awful police training, not general militarisation of the police (although these might be side effects of it). The real problem is the “culture” inextricably tied to a race – one race.

By being born white, we have apparently been tarnished by a form of original sin — racism and bigotry might as well be branded into our flesh. (This is, to shovel on the irony, an entirely racist perspective.)

Don’t derail this narrative by mentioning well-known incidents where black U.S cops have killed innocent whites (Justine Ruszczyk) or indeed where white U.S. cops have killed innocent whites (Daniel Shaver) – just keep your focus on “whiteness bad.”

Don’t point out that on a global scale, “whites” are actually a distinct minority (about 10-12% of the world population). Don’t point out that, say, for all the shame and horror of slavery in the United States, it was hundreds of thousands of white men who gave their lives for the cause of emancipation in the US Civil War. Don’t go digging into homicide statistics from around the world to uncover some uncomfortable truths about who is killing who, and how often, these days.

No, don’t try to defend “whiteness,” whatever that means – no matter your humbleness, no matter the depth of your sorrow and sympathy and solidarity for your black brothers and sisters in humanity – if you dare to defend your racial identity as a white person you’ll risk being branded as a racist, perhaps a white supremacist, maybe even a fascist. Don’t worry – those insults are practically meaningless these days. (A shame, because there are still some real fascists and white supremacists out there, and if we throw the terms around willy-nilly we will find ourselves lost, like the boy who cried wolf, when we really need to use them accurately.)

In conclusion, at its core this banner is incoherent – a vague call for intolerance in the name of tolerance; a formlessly racist sentiment in the name of racial equality.

We desperately need a world with less hate and more understanding. The sentiments expressed in this banner are doing nothing to help.

There have been three polls out on the cannabis referendum. They are:

• One News Colmar Brunton: Yes 40%, No 49%
• Horizon: Yes 56%, No 43%
• Curia: Yes 38%, No 47%

The ONCB and Curia poll are very close to each other. The Horizon poll is not.

Curia is asking the question in our weekly omnibus so we will regularly report sentiment between now and the election.

Barry Soper writes:

It’s too easy to dismiss the Greens’ Poverty Action Plan as a flight of fantasy – pie in the sky stuff that’ll never happen.

But think again.

Making policy like they’re planning takes power. And while the Greens may not have it at the moment, it could be a very different story after September 19.

The power in this Government lies with the Winston Peters’ handbrake party, New Zealand First, the only party in the formal coalition. The Greens’ opinion poll rating has been pretty consistent – above the 5 per cent threshold – whereas Labour’s coalition cobbers are struggling at 2 to 3 per cent.

So chances are that after September 19, the Greens could well be where NZ First was after the last election and able to make demands – such as moving tax rates for those earning over a hundred grand to 37 per cent, and those on $150,000 having 42 per cent of their income going into the government’s pocket.

Does anyone think Labour would fight against tax increases?

Smiling all the way to the ballot box if that doesn’t happen will be National, which will be out selling what a Labour/Greens coalition could look like.

Yep a vote for Labour is a vote for increasing taxes during a recession.

Family First released:

The report “A DOG’S BREAKFAST: New Zealand’s Anti-Smacking Law 13 Years On” examines the social indicators relating to child abuse affecting our children and families in the years leading up to the ban on smacking (2000 – 2007) and since the law was passed (2007 – 2019). Using official government data from Oranga Tamariki, NZ Police, Stats NZ and the Ministry of Health, it asks: Has there been any improvement? Have the warnings about the anti-smacking law targeting the wrong parents been proved right? Is the law doing more harm than good? And is it time for politicians to respond to the concerns of law-abiding parents?

Key findings of this report include:

• notifications of abuse to government agencies continue to increase at alarming rates
• rates of physical abuse (including serious physical abuse) found by both the police and Oranga Tamariki (OT) have increased significantly since the law was passed
• successive governments have failed to reduce physical abuse as promised, and any government targets appear to have been abandoned altogether
• child homicides continue to fluctuate with no sign of any long-term, sustained improvement. New Zealand has one of the worst abuse rates in the OECD, and Maori are disproportionately represented
• we have more children in care (especially Maori children)
• there are disturbing trends in the wellbeing of children, including the high rates of self-harm, suicide, and emotional and behavioural problems
• there are significant warranted concerns around increasing levels of violence in schools, including bullying and physical violence targeting principals and teaching staff
• while politicians claim the new law does not criminalise “good parents” for lightly smacking their children, a legal analysis finds this is inconsistent with the actual legal impact of the new Section 59

“The fact that so many social indicators around the welfare of children continue to worsen – rather than improve, or even abate – proves we simply are not tackling the real causes of child abuse. It demonstrates that the law has been completely ineffective in terms of tackling the problem it was supposed to confront.

Newshub reports:

Newshub has obtained an explosive audio recording of Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash talking about NZ First MPs Winston Peters and Shane Jones.

The recording was from February 2018, around the time the Government first delayed the rollout of cameras on nearly 1000 fishing boats – since then it’s been delayed again until at least October next year.

In it, Nash points the finger of blame squarely at them for delaying plans to put cameras on commercial fishing boats to make sure they don’t break the law.

Cameras on fishing boats are causing conniptions and contradictions.

“New Zealand First has not been the cause of delays on cameras,” Nash has claimed on Tuesday.

But in February 2018, a few months after he took office, the explanation was remarkably different according to this secret recording obtained by Newshub.

“I’ve got to play the political game in a way that allows me to make these changes. Now, Winston Peters and Shane Jones have made it very clear they do not want cameras on boats,” Nash can be heard saying in a recording.

So do we believe what the Minister has said publicly or what he was recorded saying in private? Not a hard one.

NZ First MPs are adamant they haven’t delayed things, with Jones blaming the pandemic.

“I’m not the Fisheries Minister, but I suspect that COVID has got a lot to do with it,” Regional Development Minister Shane Jones told Newshub.

“Cameras on fishing boats is really interesting. We haven’t blocked cameras on fishing boats,” NZ First MP Tracey Martin told Newshub Nation.

Although in an interview with Newshub less than two weeks ago, party leader Winston Peters eventually acknowledged NZ First was involved in the delay.

“Do we listen to industry representation, yes. Are we concerned about families and their economic representation? Yes. Are we the cause of that delay? Well, we are part of the representation that has ended up with a more rational and sane policy, yes” he said. Asked whether that was a yes to the original question, Peters responded: “yes”. 

So two NZ First MPs deny it is anything to do with them, while Winston says it is. Such an honest bunch.

Fishing company Talley’s donated $10,000 to Shane Jones’ 2017 election campaign. RNZ also revealed that Talleys donated $26,950 to the NZ First Foundation.

Now here is what is interesting.

The Greens haven’t said a peep.

Imagine if this was happening as part of a National-led Government. Greens would be decrying it as corruption. They’d be laying complaints with the Police, the SFO, the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman etc. They’d demand a Commission of Inquiry into it and would denounce it daily in Parliament.

Instead they stay silent rather than risk the baubles of office.

Newshub reports:

Paula Bennett has revealed she’s been physically assaulted three times, received “numerous death threats” and had to call the police to her house in an eye-opening interview about her political career with The AM Show. …

“I’ve had numerous death threats, I’ve had police at my house, I’ve been physically assaulted three times – which I’ve never said before,” she said.

“There were three times – one time, when they chased me and I managed to get in my car and lock it and they kicked my car door… Another time I was just shoved, and one of my colleagues managed to get in and physically restrain the person.”

This is terrible stuff, and no MP should have to put up with this.

I note some MPs run off to the media almost every few weeks with a story about how they are being picked on online. Meanwhile Paula has had actual death threats and assaults, but doesn;’t use them as a form of profile raising.

I recall being a junior staffer in the mid 90s and there was a campaign against then Health Minister Bill English over Pharmac not funding some drug. There were tens of thousands of postcards and more than a few of them included death threats not just against him but also his family.

Radio NZ reports:

Business leaders say billions of dollars of opportunities are on hold while the government and the army fix up mistakes most New Zealanders thought were being managed.

The government is frantically trying to plug those gaps, while at the same time the Opposition ramps up pressure for the border to open.

Almost four million international tourists typically cross New Zealand shores each year and BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope said livelihoods depend on that window opening again.

But for now, the government isn’t even resuming compassionate exemptions let alone allowing international visitors in, because there isn’t enough confidence in quarantine and managed isolation facilities.

“Until we can guarantee that, I think we have to rightly say the risk is too high, now that’s disappointing because those things are all completely manageable,” he said.

Hope said the border reopening needed to be a priority.

“We do need to get the border in because the economic impact of being shut is so significant,” he said.

What we need is a quarantine and isolation system that works, and not one that allows over half the people to leave without Covid-19 testing.

We should have a system along these lines:

• Show proof of negative Covid-19 test to board the plane
• At arrival airport undergo health check to determine if you go into full quarantine or managed isolation
• 2nd Covid-19 test on Day 3
• 3rd Covid-19 test on Day 14
• Released on Day 15 if symptom free and three negative tests

If you have this occurring, you could then allow in the following classes of people:

• International students
• Those with work visas
• Travellers from countries that are Covid-19 free

There would be no risk in doing so, if one had a competent quarantine and isolation system.

Jobs are being lost because we don’t have one. It should be the major priority.

The Herald reports:

Paris Jackson, daughter of the late pop icon Michael Jackson, will portray Jesus Christ as a lesbian woman in a new indie film.

Habit, which will also star Bella Thorne and Gavin Rossdale, is a rock-n-roll take on the life of the messiah and will see Jackson play Jesus Christ as a woman with tousled hair and a nose ring.

Jackson will play Jesus opposite Thorne, who will star as a “street smart, party girl with a Jesus fetish [who] gets mixed up in a violent drug deal and finds a possible way out by masquerading as a Nun,” a press release announced.

I’ve got no problem with the movie. In fact I might even go and see it.

But what I’d really like to see is their sequel where they portray Mohammad as a lesbian woman. That would be really edgy.

By many measures, socialist ideas are more popular than ever, with academics and increasingly hip activists unashamedly promoting the collective ownership of wealth and centralised government-led decision making. Louis has a discussion with Dr Kristian Niemietz from the Institute of Economic Affairs, who has written a book named ‘Socialism: The Failed Idea that Never Dies’.Support the show (http://www.taxpayers.org.nz/donate)

Stuff reports:

The teen babysitter who murdered a 9-year-old boy in the quiet Southland town of Otautau last year has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Daniel Alan Cameron, aged 15 at the time of the offending in Otautau on October 30 last year, appeared in the Invercargill High Court before Justice Rachel Dunningham on Monday for sentence for murder of Hunter MacIntosh.

Dunningham sentenced Cameron to life imprisonment with a minimum of 11 years. …

Justice Dunningham said she saw no real evidence of remorse but that may be a reflection of Cameron’s immaturity.

Cameron, who never had been involved in the criminal justice system, had a relatively untroubled background but may have difficulty coping with stress and provocation, Justice Dunningham said.

Its a tragic and sad case. What I find chilling is that there was nothing in Cameron’s background that would make you think he could do this. You read this, and this that this could have happened to almost anyone’s child.

In our newest episode of Taxpayer Talk, Jordan sits down (in-person!) with Helensville MP Chris Penk who has written a book investigating the claim that the Government had “gone early and hard” in its fight against
COVID-19. Support the show (http://www.taxpayers.org.nz/donate)

The Herald reports:

The Waikato River Authority wants Auckland to pay for more water from the Waikato River and suggested up to 10 cents a litre, or $20 million a day.

$20 million a day is $140 million a week or $600 million a month or $7 billion a year.

This is why National supports a law change to bypass this greed.

Tracy Watkins writes:

Yet my fear is that as a country we have become less tolerant of ideas and differences in the weeks since; our politics even more tribal and blinkered than it ever was.

In recent weeks I’ve written editorials that have prompted a deluge of emails and comments on social media calling me a traitor and accusing me or treason and worse for criticising or questioning the government.

Individual journalists who ask hard questions at press conferences often get singled out for abuse.

It worries me to think that the social media clobbering machine is now so feared that younger reporters feel you have to be brave to question or criticise politicians or the bureaucrats who – literally – have our lives in their hands.

And yet we have seen overseas that its effect is powerful enough to cost journalists their jobs, so I can hardly blame them for being worried.

Of course the pressure is not just from the public. The NYT Opinion Editor lost his job because other NYT staff were unhappy he allowed a Republican Senator to write an op ed they disagreed with.

Ben Kepes writes:

Clark made a more fundamental error, that in utterly misunderstanding what leadership is actually about. A few years ago I had the privilege of being awarded the Sir Peter Blake Leadership Award.

In my conversations around the time, I was forced to think about what leadership means – what is the basic statement one can use to describe at a fundamental basis what leadership is. What I came up with, while not anything earth-shattering, was that “leadership is about giving the credit and taking the blame.”

When things are going well, stand back and let ones’ team bask in the glory. But when things are going badly, step up and, in the way that Netanyahu epitomised, take on the hard stuff. Clark wasn’t even close to this, and I suspect his inability to stand by his DG will come back to haunt him.

Of course, the thing that makes this lack of leadership even more bizarre is the fact that, while his boss is displaying how not to be a leader, Ashley Bloomfield is doing exactly the opposite.

After all, it’s not like Dr Bloomfield personally let those quarantining patients out or missed giving them Covid tests. There are a huge number of Health Ministry employees who all made mistakes that contributed to the situation.

Showing leadership, however, Dr Bloomfield hasn’t mentioned those failings. Rather he stood up and accepted that, as the man in the top chair, he held the responsibility for the errors and omissions.

There are a huge number of Ministry employees who will have seen that and will have further been cemented in their respect and loyalty to their boss. A situation that any leader should aspire to.

Clark, on the other hand, firmly confirmed himself as a slippery operator who will kneecap those around him when he needs to and when he thinks he can get away with it.

I like his description of leadership as sharing the credit but taking the blame.

Paula Bennett announced:

Today I am announcing that I will not be standing at the next election.

I have had an incredible time in politics for the past 15 years and now I am looking forward to my next career.

In 2005 I entered politics on the National Party list. I was absolutely thrilled in 2008 when the people of the then seat of Waitakere chose me as their electorate MP, I served them for six years until that seat no longer existed. I then went on to win the seat of Upper Harbour where I have served for the past six years. Being an electorate MP and working on behalf of constituents has been a privilege and it is work I have really enjoyed. I believe Jake Bezzant, the current candidate for Upper Harbour, will do an outstanding job and I wish him all the best in the upcoming election.

After just three years as an MP, I became a Cabinet Minister in 2008. I have held 14 portfolios, each bringing their own challenges and achievements. I have many people to thank, too many to rattle off here, but I believe that much of my success has been due to the incredible people who have worked with and for me. I am particularly proud of my work as Minister for Social Development and Child Youth and Family for more than six years.

This is not hugely surprising, but still significant. As I blogged last month:

She was one of National’s best performing Ministers, seeing through welfare reforms that saw a huge decrease in welfare dependency. Her office had some of the best staff around, and her office parties were quite legendary. Paula’s sense of humour was awesome.

When Bill English became PM, she became his Deputy PM and it is a shame she only had a year in the role. I ended up attending a couple of CEO meetings with her and she was one of the few MPs who could take questions over pretty much all of Government. She made a good team with Bill, and I think if they had carried on in 2017 they would have made a real difference with their social investment programme of early interventions.

Paula’s tenure as Deputy Leader of National has finished but I think we should consider how remarkable it is that someone who was a solo mother at age 17 should become the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand. Can’t think of a better example of National’s values in promoting equality of opportunity.

I am sure Paula will have a great career post politics. I wish her well.

Now we don’t know why the Greens cancelled Rose. It is unusual to cancel an MC after you have agreed to them, especially if they are (presumably) doing it for free.