Stuff reports:

Winston Peters had dozed off during the meeting in 2001. He was woken by his advisor who handed him a $5000 cheque from fishing magnate Neil Penwarden and a report alleging corruption in the scampi quota system.

 After taking both, he left. 

This set the stage for the so-called “Scampi Inquiry”, which started after Peters alleged corruption in the industry during a speech inside the house, as outlined in Penwarden’s report, then failed to deliver any evidence after it began. 

So Winston took $5,000 from a donor who wanted an inquiry into the scampi quota system, and Winston then demanded said inquiry.

Consider that one fact alone, and then repeat after me 100 times “This Government is not corrupt” until you believe it.

Peters was asked direct questions by Stuff about this incident. His response was to call it “farcical”, belittling the sources contacted individually. Penwarden was able to recall the details. So too was his advisor Ross Meurant who helped broker such meetings. 

There were three people in the meeting and two of them confirm it while Winston denies it.

Peters started strong and made a rousing speech alleging corruption in the fishing industry.  On April 24, 2002 Peters claimed to have “voluminous evidence” to back up his claims, but when the inquiry started he provided no evidence. 

Who needs evidence!

The major scampi player, Simunovich Fisheries, was demanding an apology from Peters behind the scenes. “I suggested he give them one,” Meurant says. ” Peters was ropeable when it became public.”

When the inquiry began Peters moved from prosecutor to defender and needed to save face by targeting hoki.

Meurant prepared Peters a report, he called the ‘Exocet’ after a French anti-naval missile.

“This [Exocet] was a deliberate attempt to take the heat away,” he said.

“He was under pressure from the media saying, ‘You’ve been bought off’.”

Peters presented findings in the Exocet on May 7, 2003 but Penwarden simply called it a “smokescreen”.

Chair of the Scampi Inquiry, David Carter, labelled Peter’s presentation as “incoherent gibberish”. 

So Peters demanded an inquiry as one donor wanted, and then once he got one he then said there was nothing here to see, presumably due to other donors?

Penwarden never gave any more money to NZ First or to Peters. He says he had learned his lesson. Likewise, other donors to the NZ First Foundation shared this sentiment. Some even asked for the money back. 

“The point is: we learned a lot of Winston Peters and over time standing back and observing his behaviour we were not persuaded in any way about his credibility, honesty and decency and suitability to be involved in politics,” Penwarden says. 

Wise words indeed.

Stuff reports:

The Government has sought to reassure the Indian High Commissioner after Minister Shane Jones claimed “unfettered” immigration from “New Delhi” had ruined academic institutions in New Zealand.

High Commissioner Muktesh Pardeshi told Stuff the Government had again confirmed its position on immigration to him after Jones’ comments — which “hurt” the Indian community.

The comments have opened a rift within the Government this week. On Thursday, the Indian Weekender published an interview with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in which she suggested she would demote or further reprimand the NZ First MP if she could.

Pardeshi said Jones’ comments, which came as Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Trade Minister David Parker were touring India, were “not helpful” for New Zealand-India relations.

If the Government is having to reassure the a foreign Government because of what Shane Jones said, you can’t credibly say it is nothing to do with the Government because he was speaking as a NZ First MP, not a Minister.

So presumably the message from the Government is that officially the Government is not racist and bigoted towards Indians, only one or two individual Ministers are.

Damien Grant writes:

Last week, faced with a massive media backlash, well, a reporter phoned them, they deplatformed American philosopher Peter Singer.

They trotted out a spokesperson to announce; “Whilst SkyCity supports the right of free speech, some of the themes promoted by this speaker do not reflect our values of diversity and inclusivity.” …

None of this seems to be an issue. Nor his support of abortion. In fact, he thinks that not only should a woman be allowed to abort their child before they are born, he makes the logical extension that if the child isn’t viable there isn’t any moral prohibition to killing it post birth.

This is the thought crime that had someone on Facebook upset, caused a journalist to call the PR department of the Auckland equivalent of the Death Star and before a SkyCity executive could digest the contents of Peter Singer’s Wikipedia page the philosopher had his speaking gig cancelled.

Now, I’m not sure if I’m on board with killing babies. I have a few questions. But I’m willing to listen to his perspective and see if he can overturn my instinctive position that killing new born children is as morally abhorrent as killing unborn ones. 

What I’m not willing to do is accept at face value PR spin from a parasitic monopoly that preaches diversity and inclusivity while peddling addictive gaming technology and indulging our political class with free room and board in return for sweetheart deals.

SkyCity doesn’t have any idea what a moral compass is much less which way it is meant to be facing.

I used to be a fan of Sky City. I have stayed with them over a dozen times. I’ve attended many conferences there

But if they wish to be a cowardly pandering corporate that can’t even stand up to one person complaining about a guest speaker, then they’ve lost my support for good.

The only way we will stop venues pandering to cancel culture is if we make the price of cancelling more expensive than the price of capitulating.

One way we can do this is to stop staying at Sky City, and to remove them from the list of possible venues for your conferences. I mean who wants to trust them with your conference when they might cancel the booking at the last minute because one person has complained?

GP Joel Howe has a petition:

Let’s call for drive-through community-based assessment centres to be set up by our Labs (not GPs) with technicians equipped to do this efficiently. This is for public safety and for business continuity. It minimizes cross infection in a very public area like a GP clinic and does not cripple the rest of primary care. We should start preparing and GPs and Healthline can all refer to these centres, via an electronic BPAC referral.

The UK BMJ guidelines for GPs published on 6 March 2020 also do not recommend testing in primary care. Testing should take place at the hospital, the patient’s home, or in designated receiving units according to this guidance. …

We need to protect our doctor/nursing staff (who don’t do these swabs everyday) to look after other non-COVID-19 patients during an epidemic, rather than lose them to self-isolation or illnesses. GPs are perfectly capable of handling this but we really don’t need trained doctors or nurses to perform a swab or put the rest of our elderly and vulnerable patients at our practice in unnecessary danger. It is all about risk management.

To survive an outbreak , the Ministry of Health needs to protect its limited medical staff and reduce rampant absentism. This preserves our community healthcare team as an essential service because our patients do not just suffer from COVID-19 during an epidemic. Primary and tertiary care must both remain intact and continue to protect our most vulnerable. People must also feel safe visiting their GPs and the hospital. 

This is the sort of stuff the Government should be doing as a matter of urgency.

We’re already seeing high levels of staff absences in some DHBs and medical staff having to go into isolation.

The last place you want people going to get tested in a hospital or medical centre.

Drive through community assessment clinics means no sharing a waiting room with people who may or may not be infected.

I encourage people to sign the petition.

Stuff Political Editor Luke Malpass writes:

The Government’s approach to the disease’s spread, which seemed pretty well on track last week, has fallen woefully short this week. As Covid-19 has moved to a new phase in New Zealand, the Government has not adequately moved with it.  …

Incredibly, it even refused to even take a commonsense approach with the official number of cases. It admitted that one person had caught the disease off another who had been sick but was now better, and hadn’t been tested – so they would not count them.

Just silly to play games like that with the numbers.

Yet this issue – especially now that the virus is in the country – is not one of technocratic finessing: it is one of political and crisis management. That requires regular briefings from the Government and much better information flow. Telling people to go to a website doesn’t cut it.

I have been covering this issue for days now and, besides knowing which international travellers can’t come, which should self-isolate and that wearing a mask doesn’t help, I know little off the top of my head about symptoms and what I should expect if I were unlucky enough to catch corona. The Government should have been repeating these details so much that I – and everyone else – reflexively know the key points without thinking.

I suggested a few days ago that the Government should use the civil defence facility to message all cellphones in New Zealand and use that to provide updates, specifically referring them to a comprehensive up to date website.

An Utting Research poll run exclusively by Stuff on Thursday showed that less than half of the country thinks the Government is handling the crisis well, four in 10 are worried about catching the virus, and over 50 per cent think New Zealand should stop accepting visitors from countries that have coronavirus deaths.

I don’t think we can close the border with Australia.

National has already publicly called for the Government to move on wage subsidies for affected areas, and Stuff understands the Government has already been considering these. Under John Key, such subsidies were employed to good effect in Kaikōura and Christchurch after earthquakes, and they have the advantage of being relatively cheap and comparatively easy to administer.

They are also – perhaps unusually – sort of in keeping with both parties’ political philosophies. For Labour they are targeted, temporary interventions for those in need; for National it is giving individuals the ability to spend their own money, which will inevitably be better spent than if it were funnelled through some bureaucratic government programme.

Normally I’m against subsidies but if thousands of businesses face going under due to temporary circumstances outside their control, I think it is better to help out, then have tens of thousands more people on the dole.

The latest 538 forecast has:

• Biden 88%
• Contested convention 10%
• Sanders 2%

Also Sanders has said he won’t contest the convention if Biden has a plurality which 538 has 94% likely.

But as we have seen, events can change things. Sanders looked near unstoppable after Nevada. However the states still to come are not very fruitful for him.

The probabilities for the next few states are:

• Michigan: Biden 76%
• Washington: Sanders 62%
• Missouri: Biden 91%
• Mississippi: Biden 97%
• Idaho: Sanders 51%
• North Dakota: Biden 59%
• Democrats Aboard: Sanders 55%

The states in which Sanders leads are marginal. The ones Biden leads in are near in the bag.

Politik reports:

Parliament yesterday ended its Select Committee hearings on Winston Peters’ racing reform legislation with more protests about the legislation’s proposal to close the Dargaville Racing Club. Peters grew up near Dargaville and went to school there and recently boasted of his connections to the area during a Provincial Growth Fund announcement in the town. He advised his audience that they should ensure the voice of Northland, “and, dare I say it, the provinces is heard every time critical decisions are made.”

Unfortunately, the Mayor of Kaipara District Council, Jason Smith, told the Select Committee that was precisely what had not happened over the proposal to close the race-course. No one locally had been consulted about the proposal to close the course, sell the land and give the profits to the racing industry.  The matter is particularly awkward for NZ First because Dargaville is a stronghold for their vote in the Northland electorate; a must-win for Shane Jones to give the party a good chance of getting back to Parliament.

But as RadioNZ has recently revealed, the NZ First Foundation is also the recipient of substantial donations from a number of prominent figures in the horse racing industry. The industry generally supports the reform proposals. Nevertheless, the outcry from Dargaville is strong. In an open letter to Peters, the chair of the Dargaville Racing Club, Tim Antonio said “no club, and no person, in any industry, in any town or city should live in fear of the seizure of their assets by the state. “It’s not the Kiwi way. “Maybe in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe; maybe in Pol Pot’s Cambodia but not in New Zealand, under a democratically elected government.”

Yep Peters and the Government have proposed that the state seize the asset of local racing clubs. This is good for his wealthy racing elite donors but basically theft from local provincial clubs.

A very detailed profile of Joe Biden from 2013 is worth a read for those who like to get beyond the soundbites.

The Listener editorial:

Last weekend, when he said Indian students had “ruined” many of our education institutions, he barely even bothered with nuance.

This was racism, plain as day. He has not resiled from it – saying only that if others think he’s been racist, he will live with it.

The only person who seems to think it wasn’t racist is the PM.

She needs to do a lot more than that. Jones was banging the bigots’ drum – and serving notice that he intends to continue doing it.

When it comes to NZ First, Ardern is showing the lack of authority more readily associated with a relieving teacher unable to deal with the boys in the back row who will go on disrupting the class until the end of term because they know she cannot control them.

She needs to censure Jones publicly and strongly. It hardly matters whether he believes what he is saying or is just practising his lines for NZ First’s tactics in the coming election campaign. The party is free to talk about a population policy and immigration, but singling out a particular ethnicity crosses a bright line that is unacceptable to the public and is embarrassing for the Government.

This is the key. It is not racist to say we should have less immigration. It is not racist to say we should have a population policy. It is racist to scapegoat Indians.

She should demand that Jones apologise. Peters’ behaviour is damaging enough, but Jones’ utterances are a stain on New Zealand’s tolerance and inclusion. If he must indulge himself, he should do so from the backbenches until voters decide his fate.

I predict this will not happen.

Newshub reports:

Sir Michael Cullen has resigned from his role as Chair of the Bay of Plenty Health Board and as a member of the Lakes District Health Boards due to stage four lung cancer.

He said the news was “totally unexpected”.

“What was initially a CT scan of my heart has resulted in a clear diagnosis of Stage IV small cell lung cancer with multiple secondaries in my liver.

“Chemotherapy is likely to extend my lifespan somewhat, but it is clear to me I will not be in a fit state to carry on all that I have been doing in recent months.”

Shit that is devastating news.

Cullen was one of the giants of NZ politics as Finance Minister for nine years and Deputy PM also. He was arguably the most capable Minister in the Clark Government.

It was when Cullen was Finance Minister that I was allowed into the Budget lockups, and always enjoyed being able to question him on the Budget in front of all the other media.

Cullen post politics has been incredibly active. National gave him some SOE appointments and some Treaty claims to sort out and the current Government had him on two DHBs and EQC plus of course the Tax Working Group. He may have been 75 but he seemed pretty indestructible and I was assuming he’d be active for many more years.

All cancers are nasty but lung cancer especially so. An awful thing to have.

I wish him well with the chemotherapy.

Radio NZ reports:

Former Labour minister and Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere is set to run for the Māori Party in the Tāmaki Makaurau seat.

It’s understood Tamihere’s endorsement meeting with the Māori Party is tomorrow and an announcement will be made on Sunday.

Peeni Henare has a fairly good majority of 3,809. But with both Davidson and Tamihere campaigning hard for the seat, could get interesting.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has delivered her strongest rebuking of NZ First MP and Minister Shane Jones yet, suggesting that if he was a Labour MP, he would face demotion.

She also urged voters to condemn Jones’ comments – which have been labelled “racist” and “irresponsible” by the Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon – and to “act on their values when it comes to election time”.

So the PM is saying she won’t take any action against one of her Cabinet Ministers but she wants voters to. Wow.

Speaking to the Indian Weekender, Ardern said she “vehemently” disagreed with Jones’ comments.

But asked if the comments were racist, Ardern again would not explicitly say they were.

What she had already said publicly was the “strongest condemnation I could possibly give [Jones’] comments”.

Oh get real. Saying you disagree with them is not the strongest condemnation you could possibly give. It is close to the weakest you could give.

She again cited the fact that Jones being in a different party to Labour as the reason why she has not gone further in her reprimand.

“If I had a member within my own party making statements like that, I would have a very obvious ability and course of action that I could take,” she said.

“I could demote, I could reprimand; [there is] a range of things that I could do.”

But all those things were off the table because – although Jones is one of her ministers – he is in a different political party.

This is again factually incorrect. She could do any number of things such as:

• Remove him from the Executive
• Move him from inside Cabinet to Minister outside Cabinet
• Take an Associate portfolio off him (the Coalition agreement allows this)
• Declare his remarks incompatible with remaining a Minister and give him a final warning

All of this can be done without breaching the Coalition Agreement as the Coalition Agreement only states there will be four Ministers, not that Shane Jones must be one of them.

“My message to voters is this: In election year, the power now sits with you. You determine who is able to form Governments and you have it within your power to decide what you make of those remarks, as well,” she said.

“What is within other’s powers is to join in the condemnation of statements, like those we have seen made by Shane Jones.

“I asked of voters to act on their values when it comes to election time.”

And my values are I’m happy to have a racist Cabinet Minister in my Government.

Sad to hear of the sudden death of Jeanette Fitzsimons at age 75.

I last saw her at a select committee meeting when we were both submitting against the waka jumping bill.

She was one of the most principled and nicest MPs I’ve known.

She is the only Green Party MP to have won an electorate seat – Coromandel in 1999.

Condolences to her family and friends.

Liam Hehir writes:

Accordingly, some prime ministers have held enough power to operate like dictators (Muldoon). Others have operated more like the chairman of the board (John Key). And, from time to time, you get a prime minister with very little authority at all. Like, perhaps, Jacinda Ardern. 

Consider the manner in which Winston Peters and Shane Jones continue to demonstrate that they are not really accountable to the person in whose cabinet they serve.  

After some outrage a while ago – I forget which one exactly – the prime minister made a big show of asking Jones to take a copy of the cabinet manual with him to read while he was on holiday in Thailand. A seemingly not chastened Jones hit back at his critics. Then he went on holiday and got himself shooting one of the assault weapons that were being banned following the March 15 terror attacks. 

Jones has recently made comments about the volume of Indians enrolled in tertiary study here has “ruined” those institutions. The prime minister has tepidly made clear her disagreement with that reprehensible statement but has refused to call them racist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jones has since demonstrated very regard for his prime minister’s admonition. 

In terms of disciplining Jones, Ardern seems to be maintaining that her hands are tied because he is not a member of the Labour Party. But the arrangements between Labour and NZ First are a matter for them. It is not clear why, in terms of her public accountability, the public should be happy with Ardern’s cries of powerlessness.  

The Cabinet Manual, a fairly authoritative summary of the constitutional customs and traditions that underpin our political system, is clear on this point. It notes that the appointment and dismissal of government ministers is a power that belongs to the prime minister alone, for example. It also states that “[u]ltimately, Ministers are accountable to the Prime Minister for their behaviour.” 

As I said earlier, the powers of the office of prime minister ebb and flow over the years. It could be that we are now entering into an era nearer the ebb. One of Jacinda Ardern’s contributions to our constitutional evolution could well be the addition of the following qualifier to the above Cabinet Manual statement: “except when a Minister belongs to a different party, in which case he or she is accountable to no-one.” 

The Race Relations Commissioner and James Shaw have both said that Jones is being racist. But Jacinda Ardern’s view is that it is fine for one of her Cabinet Ministers to be racist so long as they are not in her party.

Newshub are doing a series of back stories on MPs. This week is on Nikki Kaye, and I think does a good job of getting to the person beyond the politics.

Chris Bishop writes:

For most of my life, Lower Hutt’s population has been pretty stable. When I was growing up in the Hutt in the 1990s, the city’s population was around 95,000 people. By 2013, it was still just 98,000 people.

But Lower Hutt’s been on a growth tear recently, and the latest statistics show we’ve hit just under 109,000 people – over 10 per cent growth in the city in just a few years.

Definitely has become a desirable place for many to live.

A growing city is a good thing; but only if infrastructure and housing supply keeps pace – and it hasn’t. Hutt commuters heading into town on State Highway 2 know that congestion is getting worse, and Petone residents like me are increasingly fed up with an Esplanade that slows to a crawl not just at peak times, like five years ago, but throughout most of the day. 

Incredibly painful.

First, let’s open up the north of Wainuiomata for housing, and build a second road into the area via Naenae. I’ve been saying this for a couple of years, but it’s now time for serious action.

About 2500 to 3000 houses could be built in north Wainuiomata, which would make a big contribution to addressing our housing shortage. A new road through to Naenae would be needed to connect the new suburb to the Hutt, and this would greatly improve Wainuiomata’s resilience.

Second, let’s get on with the Cross Valley Link and the Petone to Grenada Link Road. The Cross Valley Link has been talked about since at least the 1960s, and should have been built years ago. It will take pressure off the congested Esplanade, and make it easier for those living in the east to get across the city.

It needs to be built at the same time as Petone to Grenada, which will open up more land for housing, improve our resilience, and ease congestion from Petone to Ngāūranga. Petone to Grenada is expensive, but nobody really doubts we need it. Let’s get on with it.

Third, while we’re doing the new Melling interchange, let’s extend the Melling train line up to Kelson and Belmont. The line used to run there, and it can do so again. Both suburbs are growing (as are Avalon and Naenae across the river), and it will mean people don’t have to travel to Melling to jump on the train.

Great to see a local MP putting forward proactive ideas for growth in his electorate. They all sounds good to me, especially the 2nd link into Wainuiomata which could transform it.

Stuff reports:

Twenty-one mining applications have been approved on conservation land since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s speech promising there would be no more. 

The delay in legislation to back up the commitment has meant that for the past two years it’s been business as usual, and mining applications have continued to be processed. As one conservationist puts it: “Rome continues to burn” while the promise has floundered.

Between November 2017 and the end of January 21, mining applications have been approved.

Just another in the long line of failed promises.

Personally it was a stupid promise, as not all conservation land has the same value, and treating scrubby stewardship land the same as Fiordland National Park is incredibly stupid.

But what it does show is yet again we have a Government great at announcements and incredibly bad at achievements.

Stuff reports:

The impact of Coronavirus on the economy is likely to last longer than previously expected, Finance Minister Grant Robertson warns.

The Government had been planning for three economic scenarios and was now moving into the second phase, where the impacts of Covid-19 will be felt for a year, Robertson said.

The impact on New Zealand could be very significant, in three potential ways:

1. The economic impact – tourism and trading industries especially hit due to the global impact
2. The personal impact – people getting sick, the anxiety, taking time off work, self quarantines and possible deaths
3. The health system impact – if significant numbers get infected, the health system will face huge pressures

Some facts on Coronavirus:

• Current fatality rate is 3.4% according to WHO
• Fatality rate for 50 to 59 year olds is 1.3% and for over 80s 14.8%
• Median time of death after symptoms emerge is 14 days
• 93,200 infected in 81 countries
• 3,200 deaths

The top 10 territories infected are:

1. China 80,270
2. South Korea 5,328
3. Italy 2,502
4. Iran 2.336
5. Japan 298
6. France 212
7. Germany 203
8. Spain 165
9. US 128
10. Singapore 110

Stuff reports:

A proposed law change prohibiting ads for vaping products and e-cigarettes is “inconsistent” with the right to freedom of expression, the Attorney-General states. 

The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Bill was introduced to Parliament last week, including a complete ban on the sale of vaping and smokeless tobacco products to anyone under 18. 

Under the bill, the advertising of vaping products and smokeless tobacco was also banned, e-liquid flavours would be restricted and vapers can no longer light up in smoke-free areas. 

But a report released by Attorney-General David Parker stated parts of the bill banning the advertising or promotion of vaping products were “inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression” under the Bill of Rights Act. …

Parker’s report said the bill limited freedom of expression in a number of ways, including prohibiting advertising regulated products, restricting trademarks and company names, and requiring standardised packaging. 

He had to determine whether the objective of the bill – to protect the health of the public – was justified enough to overrule freedom of expression. 

In his view, while some restrictions on advertising were “likely justifiable”, a “blanket prohibition” was not a “proportionate response, given the lack of evidence for [vaping] being harmful”, he stated. 

“On the contrary, vaping is significantly safer than smoking,” he said in the report. 

Hopefully Parliament may take notice.