Stuff reports:

A cafe at Police National Headquarters (PNHQ) sold coffee to cops during coronavirus lockdown while restrictions to stop the spread of the disease crippled New Zealand’s hospitality sector. 

The cafe, which is on the top floor of the PNHQ building on Molesworth St, Wellington – a short walk from from the Beehive – was closed on April 9 after the rules around it being open were “clarified” by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE). …

Police staff have visited non-essential businesses that have opened during lockdown and told them to shut their doors.

So every cafe in NZ was closed, except the one in Police National HQ!

Effing incredible.

The High Court has ruled in court case Winston Peters brought against the State Services Commissioner, the MSD Chief Executive and two former National Ministers and he has failed on every ground.

This is no surprise. The lawsuit was founded on speculation, not facts, and the hearings showed up how farcical it was.

Not so farcical is this would have cost taxpayers close to one million dollars to defend. The Government must treat Peters no different to any other failed litigant and seek full costs against him. Taxpayers should not have to fund the absurdity of a Deputy Prime Minister suing the most senior public servant in Government.

Some useful extracts from the court ruling:

A significant amount of evidence during the hearing related to Mr Peters’
completion of the application form for NZS. The payment irregularity arose because Mr Peters’ application was processed and payments of NZS were made to him on the basis he was single at the time he applied for NZS. That was an error as, at the time, he had a partner, Ms Trotman. Mr Peters considered the MSD and its form were responsible for the error. The MSD and the Crown defendants considered Mr Peters was responsible for it. I have come to the view that the error arose through a
combination of circumstances. The ambiguous nature of the form, the MSD officer who processed Mr Peters’ application and Mr Peters himself all bear some responsibility for the error which led to the payment irregularity.

So the court has ruled that Peters is partially responsible for the over-payment.

Mr Peters must also bear some responsibility for the resultant ambiguity in the form as completed and the consequent issues that arose. To the left-hand side of question 26 is the definition of partner. If Mr Peters had read that definition, it would have been clear, given that Ms Trotman was his partner, that he should have completed the primary question in question 26 and answered it by ticking “Yes”.

So Peters was not dishonest, he just couldn’t competently read and complete a form!

On 18 March 2014, the MSD sent a standard letter to Mr Peters which included a request that asked him to check the following details:
Relationship Status: You are single.

Clear as day.

If Mr Peters had paid more attention to the letter, he would have realised there was an issue with the MSD’s records regarding his initial application.

Can’t complete a form and doesn’t read his mail!

In closing, Mr Henry accepted that the Ministers’ evidence they did not leak the information was unchallenged. He conceded on behalf of Mr Peters that, in relation to all causes of action insofar as they related to Ms Bennett and Ms Tolley, the claim for damages could not be pursued, although a declaration was still sought.

So they took a lawsuit seeking $2.25 million in damages, without any evidence at all to back his claims.

With respect to Mr Soper, his evidence that, in his opinion, the information was deliberately leaked as an attempt by Mr Peters’ political opponents to damage his credibility and to do what the Prime Minister wanted, which was “to cut out the middleman”, namely NZ First, is speculative. It is not the opinion of an expert based on established fact.

Opinion based on speculation is not the same as facts.

So once again the Government must seek full costs against Peters. There is no way taxpayers should foot the bill for his legal stupidity.

The PM has announced that Alert Level 4 will continue at the end of the initial four week lockdown, until the end of Monday 27 April. So it has been extended for five further days.

NZ will then be in Alert Level 3 for at least two weeks.

Lord Ashcroft has some fascinating US polling where votes are divided into ten segments and you can see for each what the major issues are, what they think of Trump and how they’d vote.

The 10 segments (from left to right), and their approval of Trump for each is:

1. Cosmopolitan Activists 5% Trump approval
2. Mainstream Liberals 20%
3. Blue Collar Democrats 43%
4. Melting Pot Moderates 53%
5. Faithful Centre 57%
6. Low Key Pragmatists 57%
7. Losing Ground 34%
8. Left Behind & Angry 64%
9. Republican Mainstream 92%
10. Fox News Militants 95%

And the Trump-Biden margin for each is:

1. Cosmopolitan Activists Biden 84%
2. Mainstream Liberals Biden 70%
3. Blue Collar Democrats Biden +19%
4. Melting Pot Moderates Biden +1%
5. Faithful Centre Trump +20%
6. Low Key Pragmatists Trump +16%
7. Losing Ground Biden +21%
8. Left Behind & Angry Trump 59%
9. Republican Mainstream Trump 91%
10. Fox News Militants Trump 95%

The key will be how much each group turns out.

Martin van Beynen writes:

I live in a small settlement along the coast of Banks Peninsula. If you are driving, there are only a couple of ways in.

Quite a large proportion of our settlement’s residents are over 70 and, unsurprisingly, many have underlying health issues.

A couple of community-minded residents and I recently decided we needed to do more to protect them from Covid 19. We felt too many people who didn’t look very local were driving into our area and possibly spreading the virus.

We didn’t feel confident the police had the resources to conduct the constant monitoring and surveillance required so this is what we did. We got some cones from somewhere, put on some white overalls and masks and set up road blocks at either end of the settlement. We started stopping every car to ensure the occupants had genuine business in our area and weren’t just coming in for a tiki-tour.

Of course I just made all that up but you can imagine what would happen if we had done exactly that. We would have been rightly marched off by the police, charged with some public nuisance offence and ended up in court.

Yep. You’d have the Police moving you on or arresting you within minutes, hours at the most.

As the Government struggled with deciding how to protect the country from Covid 19, the former Tai Tokerau MP  Hone Harawira, who lives in Kaitaia, was taking the bull by the horns.

On March 25 he told media he was organising checkpoints to be set up at the main entry points to the Far North to keep out tourists and non-locals. Checkpoints would be set up on State Highway 1 and State Highway 12 on the West Coast. …

At a time when the most common headline is “Outrage At..” here really was an outrage but we didn’t hear much from the mainstream commentariat or from Labour ministers. It was left to uncool old timers like former Maori Affairs minister Dover Samuels and former National leader Don Brash to take issue with Harawira’s plans.

Samuels pointed to free movement rights and said it wasn’t the time for “grandstanding by the sheriff of Kaitaia”.    

Brash called the moves appalling and said they breached the principle that all New Zealanders should be treated equally by the law.

Harawira’s first road block at Whakapara on SH1 on March 26 did not start smoothly. Volunteers had chosen an unsuitable place for their checks and when police intervened they moved down the road but were allowed to continue.

So the Police condoned the vigilantes.

I’ve just been tested for Covid-19 (I was negative) and have to say I was impressed with the process, and the speed of it all.

I’ve had a cough and some tightness when breathing for a few weeks. As I hadn’t had a fever over 38 degrees I didn’t meet the criteria for a test. They relaxed the criteria late last week so that if you have any of the symptoms, rather than all of them, you qualify for a test.

My partner had been coughing also so we thought we’d ring up Healthline for advice. This was after 9 pm on a Friday night. Got through quickly to someone. She said she would get a health professional to ring us back as we needed a clinical assessment. We got a call back around 10 pm. As my partner was asleep then I asked if they could call back after 7.30 am Saturday. They did. I missed the call, but they then called back again at 8.30 am. We both answered some questions and they advised up we should get tested and gave us a phone number for testing at Keneperu Hospital.

Called them around 8.45 am and they took down some details and said we could get tested at 10.40 am. Turned up and only had to wait 5 – 10 minutes. Stayed in the car and they asked some questions and then took the swab, and we were out of there just after 11 am.

And then we got the results the next day, on Sunday afternoon.

There were definite issues around the testing early on, but I have to say they seemed to be operating pretty smoothly now, at least for us. To ring Healthline late on a Friday night and to have test results by Sunday afternoon is really impressive.

Damian Scarf from Otago University writes:

I am a researcher from the University of Otago. We are conducting a study on the lockdown and political beliefs. The survey takes 15-minutes and, in addition to political beliefs, we measure alcohol consumption, how it has changed people’s perceptions of young people (given the media talks about them being the group breaking the lockdown rules), belief in science, and views on conspiracy theories. We also have questions looking at peoples fear about getting covid-19 and measures of compliance with the lockdown rules. 

The survey link is pasted below. We really need people from across the political spectrum to complete the survey, if you can help with that it would be great.

The survey is here.

A guest post by Kishan Naran:

On October 20^th, 2017, the day after Winston Peters sided with the Labour Party to form the 6^th Labour-led government, Jacinda Ardern would have set out her strategy for the following three years.

I’d put my bottom dollar on the fact that she would not have planned for a mass-shooting, a major volcanic eruption and then a global health and economic crisis, all in the space of 12 months.

During a crisis, people look to a leader, and not only do we look to a leader, but we demand our leader to bestow us with the necessary means to fight a crisis. Nobody would argue with the way Ardern handled the March 15^th shootings in Christchurch. Her communication, empathy and ability to put herself in the shoes of everyday New Zealander’s is beyond comparable.

She has displayed the same leadership during these dark times. Whenever New Zealanders are uncertain or afraid, Ardern has always made it her priority to address the nation with clarity and assurance. She stepped forward on behalf of the government and cushioned the economic blow of Covid-19 by fronting an estimated $9 billion in subsidies for workers. An unprecedented move.

Not only this, but around the world we have seen time and time again countries attempting to ‘flatten the curve’ or to contain the virus. Two weeks ago, our Prime Minister decided this was not good enough for New Zealanders. She put us into lock-down and now we are reaping the rewards other countries are only dreaming of.

Ardern decided to not simply contain the virus but eliminate it. The statistics speak volumes of Ardern’s success: having over 1000 cases, New Zealand is the only country with only five deaths. This is unequalled around the world.

Forward-thinking and ultimately the optimism and ambition shown by our Prime Minister reveals one blatant truth. Her absolute and unconditional will to ensure that New Zealand not only reaches the end of this crisis in a timely manner, but does it better than any other country from both a health and economic perspective. Although the real result of Ardern’s work will not be clear for number of weeks, the signs are showing that unified New Zealanders are destroying this virus.

History, as it always has, judges politicians based upon the decisions they make. But it also judges them on how they handle their duty. In New Zealand’s largest health crisis, Ardern has handled hers with integrity, transparency, and like no other leader around the world, with the upmost kindness.

Kishan Naran is a political scientist graduate from the University of Otago.

Ian Harrison at Tailrisk Economics critiques the modelling done by the Ministry of Health.

His key takeaway:

When we ran the Covidsim model we found credible paths that could reduce the pace of infections to sustainable levels. Deaths in the range of 50 – 500 over a year are more realistic numbers. 500 deaths is around average for the seasonal flu. We found that the higher OCRG numbers were mostly generated by their assumption that tracing and testing would be abandoned.

This OCRG assumption is almost incomprehensible, unless there was a deliberate attempt to blow up the numbers. Whether the Ministry was ‘in on it’, or simply didn’t understand what was being reported to them, we do not know. We have attempted to discuss the issue with the OCRG but have had no response.

So the figure of potentially 14,000 dead was not at all robust.

This is why we must have a Royal Commission to study all aspects of the Government’s response to the pandemic, including the quality of the modelling and advice.

Worth reading the full paper. It is very easy to follow.

The NY Times reports:

The New York Times spent weeks following women inside the country’s health care system, which has been crippled by a broken economy overseen by an increasingly authoritarian government.

That is Venezuela of course.

For many Venezuelan women today, the defining feature of childbirth is the ruleta, or roulette: The gruelling process of traveling from hospital to hospital, trying to find one that is equipped to help them.

They sometimes hitchhike, or walk for miles, or take buses over roads whose ruts and bumps seem designed just to torture them. In rare cases, they are rejected over and over until finally giving birth in the street, on a hospital’s steps — or in its lobby.

Roulette for childbirth – true equality.

In his many televised speeches, the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has characterized the country’s health system as facing challenges but generally doing well. As recently as March, he encouraged women to “give birth, give birth,” saying that every woman “should have six children” for the good of the country.

He really is nuts.

The Herald reports:

Auckland Council is backing off the idea of a 3.5 per cent by asking ratepayers if they want to go with that figure or a 2.5 per cent rates rise from July 1.

The decision follows a marathon 10-hour meeting of council’s emergency committee yesterday at which councillors also agreed to waive the bed tax on the struggling hotel and accommodation sector for three months.

Ratepayers experiencing financial hardship from the impact of Covid-19 will also be given the opportunity to defer payment of the fourth and final rates instalment this year.

Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett said more than 80 per cent of businesses responding to a survey gave the thumbs down to a planned 3.5 per cent rates rise.

“Businesses have no income, ballooning debt and ongoing costs from paying employees and trying to keep them on the payroll to rental and tax obligations,” he said.

What part of ratepayers can’t afford a rates increase, can’t the Council understand?

Why is the Council too scared to consult on a rates freeze? Is it because they know the feedback would be overwhelmingly in favour of it?

Mayor Phil Goff said councillors were unanimous the council needed to take decisive steps to reduce the pressure on residents and businesses facing economic hardship, while ensuring it could protect and maintain the essential services.

“I think Aucklanders want their council to understand the hardships that some people will be facing and show compassion and flexibility around that. There will be a range of measures to target support through deferral and postponement of rates for those facing genuine hardship and unable to pay their rates in the current circumstances.”

Compassion isn’t sticking rates up 2.5% and deferring payments (which just means you pay even more later). Compassion is living within your means.

The Herald reports:

The central Chinese city of Wuhan has raised its number of Covid-19 fatalities by 1290, with state media saying today the undercount had been due to the insufficient admission capabilities at overwhelmed medical facilities at the peak of the outbreak.

Wuhan’s revised death toll of 3869 is the most in China. The number of total cases in the city of 11 million was also raised by 325 to 50,333, accounting for about two-thirds of China’s total 82,367 announced cases.

There is considerable evidence the actual death toll in Wuhan was in the tens of thousands. This latest number is no more trustworthy than the previous number.

At the end of the day you can’t trust any data from authoritarian countries where the public service is not allowed to freely report the truth.

Newsroom reports:

A private sector proposal to produce and distribute five million Bluetooth-enabled credit card-sized contact tracing tools at a cost of $100 million is one of “a wide variety of technological solutions to contact tracing”, a spokesperson for the All of Government Covid-19 response team has confirmed.

The idea, branded CovidCard, is one of a handful that the Government is considering as it moves to settle on a digital solution for contact tracing.

Carry around a card that will let the Government see where you’ve been and who you’ve met.

Sure I’ll carry that around, once the Government convinces Nicky Hager to carry one also.

This week we have a back to back episodes of Taxpayer Talk.

In our first episode, what is quantitative easing, and why are markets in New Zealand and abroad seen a recent bounce after dramatic falls due to COVID-19? For an in depth look at how markets are responding – including their implications on housing and inflation here in New Zealand, Jordan and Joe are joined by Bevan Wallace, Executive Director of Morgan Wallace. Bevan’s recent explainer on QE and inflation is available here.

In our second episode, the conversation around how and when to raise the lockdown has generated some unenviable problems for policy makers, none more so than how to value the lives of those saved by lockdown versus the jobs and businesses it will destroy. Dr Bryce Wilkinson joins the podcast to discuss his latest paper, which helps to shed some light on how these calculations of life and death are made. You can read Dr Wilkinson’s paper here.

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

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

Simon Chapple writes:

The readiest tool in the box and the most equitably appealing solution here to share the burden of the virus is simply legislating for more temporary steps in the personal income tax system and a more progressive marginal income tax rate. We could have, for example, an income tax rate of 40 cents in the dollar from 70K (up seven cents in the dollar), 50 cents in the dollars from 100K (up 17 cents in the dollar) and 60 cents from 150K (up 27 cents in the dollar). 

Cutting spending or raising taxes in a recession both have the effect of making the recession worse, and last longer. So Chapple’s proposals would see the recession deepen.

His proposal is one of the stupidest I have seen in recent times, especially as he targets personal incomes not household incomes.

Let’s take a household (two children) where both parents were working – one earns $90,000 and one earns $60,000. The one on $60,000 loses their job. They can’t claim the dole. That family has lost $48,000 in income.

Dr Chapple thinks that isn’t enough and wants to increase the tax on the remaining parent by $1,400 a year!

He also thinks we can have a 60% tax rate and it won’t lead to an exodus of staff and huge tax avoidance. Why do so many people think returning to Muldoon era tax rates is a great idea?

My proposed taxation rise would, as emphasised, be temporary. 

Muldoon claimed that also.

High income earners, let the prospect of lower after-tax income concentrate your minds! You have lost nothing but your regular winter holiday in Bali.

Fuck isn’t that the most sneering out of touch thing you have read?

He thinks anyone who earns over $70,000 has it so great that the only effect the pandemic has had on them is their Bali holiday.

There will be small business owners who have suddenly lost the $500,000 of reserves their business has built up. But hey if in a year’s time they’re still making $80,000 a year, never mind the $500,000 loss of their life savings.

There will be the two income families who have to sell their house as they have lost their second income and can’t afford the mortgage. But hey you’re unaffected right – just your Bali holiday, as one of you still earns $75,000 a year.

The Representation Commission has announced final boundaries for the 2020 and 2023 general elections. There will be 72 electorates, meaning normally 48 list seats.

In terms of of it affects prospects in each electorate, the major changes (based on previous voting patterns) are:

• A new South Auckland electorate called Takanini, which should be marginal and competitive.
• New Lynn is now National on paper
• Banks Peninsula (was Port Hills) is now National on paper
• Maungakiekie goes from marginal to relatively safe for National
• Dunedin South goes from safe to marginal for Labour

These final boundaries will now allow parties to complete candidate selections, and then do list rankings.

Some excellent ideas from Rod Drury on how we move forward:

In Queenstown, tourism has just stopped and the airport is closed. The construction sector, which is underpinned by tourism, will fall next. So how can we get Queenstown’s economy back into action?

One of the things I learned from running a global company is understanding New Zealand has a unique set of values. Environment obviously is one. Equality is a value felt much more strongly here than in most of our close neighbours like Australia and the USA. We see this reflected in our recent policies, like when the Government banned the sale of property to foreigners – partially justified on the basis it would help solve our housing crisis.

So while we may not like the idea of overseas people coming here and buying houses, in places like Queenstown, Hawkes Bay and Northland, in a post-pandemic New Zealand, would we allow areas to be designated as okay for overseas ownership and construction? We could make 1,000 sections available for, say, $5 million dollars plus construction project costs, therefore adding $5 billion of residential construction and jobs to our economy this year. How do we feel about that now?

This is a great idea. Let wealthy foreigners pay a huge premium to be able to own a section here. You could then use that $5 billion to fund local infrastructure, thousands of state homes etc etc.

We’ve seen working from home actually working because of New Zealand’s massive investment in ultrafast broadband (UFB). Our domestic internet is the envy of Australia and even the USA. Treating fibre to the home as essentially public infrastructure any Internet Service Provider can connect to, and innovate over, has been an unqualified success.

As we move into the realm of 5G we could do the same. Let’s treat 5G towers as public infrastructure that any number of telco businesses could provide mobile services over.

I’ve been an advocate of this for many years. It is silly to have each retail mobile provider built their own towers. I’d have Chorus (who provide the fibre backhaul anyway) build all new cellphone towers and open them up to all mobile companies. Towers are infrastructure and the UFB project has shown us you need to seperate out the infrastructure layer from the retailers.

While we’re at it, let’s use this time to get the courage to finally fix our domestic payments networks so we can be completely contactless. This just requires courage from the Minister of Commerce to front up to the Aussie banks and lay down the law. That will spur further investment in banking and payments technology that can be taken to the world.

Basically what we have at the moment is the banks all charge each other a big fee to accept payments from other bank’s cards. This means they all reap in huge fees.

This is akin to what mobile phone companies used to do. They charged high termination fees so it was massively more expensive to call Vodafone from Spark or vice versa.

Paywave fees especially are massively high. Many retailers can’t afford to accept paywave.

Rod also looks at the future:

China is rolling out tens of thousands of electric buses per month. Almost everyone in Auckland has a phone to connect to transport network information and anonymously share their transport usage. We could build the smartest city network of autonomous buses chained together with software that dynamically configures the network each day so you no longer have to drive to park and ride. In Auckland, small buses could pick you up near your home in Albany and as your bus nears the bridge other buses are software chaining together, stopping briefly to allow you to change from bus B to E to take you to Westmere.

The future will be this far more than trains that can only go from Point A to Point B.

The current Green Party list is:

1. Marama Davidson
2. James Shaw
3. Jan Logie
4. Eugenie Sage, 25% male
5. Teanau Tuiono, 40% male
6. Julie-Anne Genter, 33% male
7. Chloe Swarbrick, 29% male
8. Golriz Ghahraman, 25% male
9. Elizabeth Kerekere, 22% male
10. Ricardo Menendez March, 30% male
11. Steve Abel, 27% male
12. Lourdes Vano, 25% male

But the silly Green Party rules have a quota for men. They say no matter how talented the female candidates are, male candidates must make up at least 40% of the list at every level (after the top 3).

So if this list was their members elected list, the list moderating committee would have to over-rule it and change it as thus:

1. Marama Davidson (F)
2. James Shaw (M)
3. Jan Logie (F)
4. Teanau Tuiono (M), 50% male
5. Eugenie Sage (F), 40% male
6. Ricardo Menendez March (M), 50% male
7. Julie-Anne Genter (F), 43% male
8. Steve Abel, (M) 50% male
9. Chloe Swarbrick (F), 44% male
10. Golriz Ghahraman (F), 40% male
11. Next bloke on list, (M) 45% male
12. Elizabeth Kerekere (F), 42% male
13. Next bloke on list, (M) 46% male
14. Lourdes Vano (F), 43% male

So Genter will be forced out of the top six, which means she is out at 5%. Swarbrick will be knocked down two places and need 7% and Ghahraman down two also and needs 8%.

The guy ranked 11th, will be pushed ahead of them into 8th place purely because he is a man – but that is what their rules require.

Peter Williams at Newshub makes the point:

So the Prime Minister, the cabinet and the heads of Government departments are taking a pay cut. It will be a 20 percent cut and will last for six months.

That’s great. I applaud Jacinda Ardern for doing it. It shows that people at the top, the well paid, are prepared to do what the rest of us are doing and taking a drop in income.

But I think she was pushing the envelope a bit when she said it was about leadership. 

No it wasn’t. It was anything but leadership. In fact, it was about being a very slow follower.

The leadership on pay cuts came from the private sector. 

From Chief Executives to those on the factory floor or behind the wheel of the delivery truck, people have been taking pay cuts for at least two weeks, if not three.

Remember the bosses at Mainfreight and Fletcher Building, not to mention Air New Zealand taking their big cuts? 

They were doing it because their company income is going to drop dramatically. 

Well guess what? The big company called New Zealand Inc is going to have its income slashed by billions this year too as the tax take falls well short of what it was last year. 

That means the government workers should be just like the rest of us and take a paycut too. 

Leadership from the Prime Minister would have been joining that trend two weeks ago, not yesterday, and not after constant badgering from the media and the Taxpayers’ Union.

A fair point that the decision did lag the private sector and only came after a concerted campaign.

There are vast swathes of the public service who are not doing much at the moment, and the pay rates should be adjusted as such. Or at least a firm stake should be put in the ground to say no public sector pay increases this year. 

There’ll be virtually none in the private sector.

And if the Prime Minister and Cabinet are taking a cut, why not the rest of the MPs? It can’t be that hard to arrange. 

 Under the emergency powers the government has at the moment, arranging a pay cut for 120 MPs should be really easy. 

Very easy.