A poll on what US residents think of the media has found:

• 52% (+8% from 2018) have not too much or no confidence journalists act in the best interest of the public
• 57% (+3%) say journalists have low or very low ethical standards

But huge difference by party support:

• 77% (+7%) of Republicans and 30% (+6%) of Democrats have not too much or no confidence journalists act in the best interest of the public
• 81% of Republicans and 36% of Democrats say journalists have low or very low ethical standards

Interesting to also looks at which groups have the lowest levels of trust to act in the best interests of the public.

Democrats

1. Elected Officials 37%
2. Business Leaders 37%
3. Religious leaders 51%
4. Journalists 70%
5. Police officers 71%

Republicans

• Journalists 23%
• Elected Officials 37%
• University professors 48%
• Business leaders 61%
• Religious leaders 77%

So Republicans also skeptical of university professors while Democrats more skeptical of business leaders.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says more public holidays for Kiwis to experience New Zealand is among a number of things the Government is “actively considering” to encourage domestic tourism.

Sigh.

Every extra public holiday costs employers. Businesses are closing down and laying staff off and the Government thinks this is a great time to increase their costs even more, and reduce their income also.

What would be more sensible is to actually combine public holidays with annual leave and allow families to choose for themselves when they holiday. Would lead to less congestion for one thing!

Stuff reports:

Media company NZME has withdrawn its application to the Commerce Commission to allow it to buy its major competitor Stuff.

The move came after a failed bid for an interim injunction to force Stuff’s Australian owner Nine Entertainment back into exclusive talks over the sale of the news website.

The decision is the latest in the on-again, off-again merger negotiations. The Commerce Commission prevented the deal going ahead in 2016. Appeals to the High Court the following year and then the Court of Appeal in 2018 both failed.

NZME shareholders should be aghast. The attempt by NZME to talk down the value of Stuff by declaring it was only worth $1 (its profit last year was in fact $28 million) has blown up. Such tactics may have worked against a Kiwi owner but Aussie companies play tough and Nine has now declared a fatwa on NZME. NZME have turned Nine from an ally to an enemy on the basis of one suicidal press release.

It is worth reflecting how much this has cost NZME in legal and commercial fees. Having chatted to some commercial lawyers their likely costs would be:

• Application to Commerce Commission $800,000
• High Court appeal of decision (including costs for other parties $2.5 million
• Court of Appeal appeal $500,000
• Interim Injunction sought $200,000

So they may have spent $4 million on legal and commercial fees on their attempt to buy Stuff, and have ended up with nothing. It’s probably more than this as the actual negotiations with Nine would also be constly.

The median salary for a journalist is around $60,000. So NZME could have funded 65 more journalists for a year for the cost of failing to buy Stuff.

Thanks to the 1,150 readers who responded to my survey on potential paid content.

The content that was deemed of most interest (moderate to great) in order was:

• Regular data posts on how NZ is doing 81%
• Exclusive polling on topical issues 72%
• Weekly article on political week 63%
• Interviews with MPs and others 63%
• Analysis of upcoming bills 63%
• Summary of interesting polls in NZ and overseas 62%

So data posts and exclusive polling on topical issues are of most interest.

How much would people be willing to pay:

• Nothing $28%
• $1/month $8
• $2/month 13%
• $3/month 12%
• $4/month 8%
• $5/month 31%

So I’m looking at either $4 or $5 a month.

Preferred options:

• Donate facility on KB 70%
• Paywall on KB for premium content 57%
• Additional content on external site 53%
• Micropayments on KB 29%

My thoughts at this stage are:

• Definitely don’t do micropayments
• Definitely allow people to donate
• Set up a Patreon facility but yet to decide whether to integrate it into KB or have seperate
• Have price of $4 or $5 a month

In terms of the first post, I will have exclusive poll results on how people say they will vote on the cannabis referendum – the only poll done since they published the final proposed bill.

Matt Burgess writes:

History tells us well-intentioned governments can prolong rather than resolve depressions with poor spending. In the United States, interventions in the economy in the 1930s, first by Herbert Hoover and then Franklin Roosevelt, almost certainly deepened the Great Depression. The Dow Jones did not recover to pre-Depression levels until the mid-1950s. In Australia, by contrast, the federal government led by Joe Lyons, constrained by high debt going into the Depression, focused on careful fiscal management. Australia had largely recovered by 1936.

NZ had one of the best recoveries from the GFC because it didn’t embark on poor quality spending, but targeted extra spending to where it could do the most good.

The new spending comes at a time when the normal checks and balances have been relaxed or discarded by this Government. Regulatory Impact Statements, a check on the quality of spending of most new spending proposals, were recently suspended. Concerns have been raised about the lack of transparency around Covid decisions.

The Government continues to push legislation through Parliament under urgency. Treasury remains underpowered after a decade of poor leadership. A lesson from the Christchurch earthquake recovery is that the surest way to delay a project was to fast-track spending and procurement processes. Good governance has value.

New spending and debt of more than $60,000 per household signals higher taxes in the future. That has the potential to affect investment decisions in the private sector today. There is a real risk that households and businesses could respond with higher savings and less investment, muting the overall impact of public spending on the recovery.

The only question with taxes will be how many new taxes, and how high.

Newshub have released their Reid Research poll. It is:

• Labour 56.5% (+14%)
• National 30.6% (-12.7%)
• Greens 5.5% (-0.1%)
• NZ First 2.7% (-0.9%)
• ACT 1.8% (nc)

It goes without saying that it is an awesomely good poll for Labour and pretty terrible for National.

It is not entirely surprising. I’m reminded of the Harold Macmillan quote “Events, dear boy, events” when asked what can blow a Government off course. But in this case it has blown the Opposition off course.

Obviously the Government (really the PM’s) handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a huge boost for Labour. We have avoided the huge death rates from overseas and people credit the Government. Also the PM has had a near daily highly viewed press conference where the Opposition has been almost locked out from coverage.

So this poll would see a clear Labour majority Government with Greens, National and ACT in opposition and NZ First out of Parliament.

What will be interesting is to see how the polls move (if they do) as the focus moves more towards the economic response than the public health response.

But no one should fool themselves that this sort of gap would be easy to close by September.

Was listening to a Five Thirty Eight podcast on why Trump’s approval rating has risen, despite his incredibly muddled response to the Covid-19 crisis. Their conclusion was that when countries face a crisis, there is always a rush of support towards the government of the day as patriotism trumps politics. You saw this in the US after 9/11 and we are seeing it with the Covid-19 crisis. However Trump’s bounce is far less than in other countries.

In Australia Scott Morrison has gone from a -20% net approval rating in the February Newspoll to a +26% rating in the April Newspoll.

In the UK Boris Johnson has gone from a +6% rating in March Opinium to a +29% in April.

Even in the US, Donald Trump is seeing his approval rating increase, despite a pretty terrible actual response to the crisis. Gallup had him at -9% in January and at +4% in March. That’s a reasonable increase but of course dwarfed by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo who has gone from a net 0% approval in December 2019 to a huge +48% in March 2020.

In fact many US Governors have seen a huge spike in approval, as you can see here.

Many heads of governments are also getting good ratings specifically for their response to Covid-19. The percentage who approve of their response is Angela Merkel 75%, Boris Johnson 70%, Justin Trudeau 64%.

So even the most incompetent head of government tends to get an increase in their approval ratings during a crisis, while those who handle it competently get a massive increase.

There’s quite a bit of carping in NZ about Scott Morrison, but his net approval has shot up 46%.

So there should be no doubt that while the crisis is ongoing, incumbents do well in the polls. This is natural and expected. The more important question is how long does it last for.

Newshub reports:

The AM Show host Duncan Garner questioned Robertson on whether higher taxes could help pay for the spending. 

“No, this Budget is not about that. This Government has made clear that is not the direction we are going into. The election campaign is still to come. My focus has been squarely on making sure New Zealand responds, starts to recover and starts to rebuild. Those are questions for another day. We are focused on making sure we support New Zealanders through this.”

Pushed on whether he would rule them out, Robertson said: “The Labour Party’s tax policy will be released before the election.”

It is inevitable that Labour will hike up taxes if re-elected. They can’t pay for their spending without doing so. They’re not going to go into the election with any details of tax increases – instead they will try and get away with a blank cheque – where they say they’ll decide once the economic situation is clearer.

They’ve increased spending by $25 billion a year – and not just for one or two years – but basically permanently.

There is no way economic growth alone will close that gap and get us back into surplus. So after a couple of years of massive debt increases, Labour will turn around and say we need to hike up tax to pay for all this spending.

So what could happen to tax rates? Let’s assume $15 billion of their extra spending can be eventually funded by economic growth so they only put taxes up by $10 billion a year. What would that represent?

• The top tax rate going from 33% to 63%; or
• The bottom rate of 10.5% and 2nd bottom of 17.5% going to 25%; or
• GST going from 15% to 22.5%; or
• An asset or wealth tax of 0.7% on your assets

The idea that you could increase spending by 30% but not increase taxation is a fairy tale.

The death toll in the US from Covid-19 is now over 90,000. It seems inevitable it will exceed 100,000 and may even end up exceeding the total death toll for the US from WWI.

The death toll currently if 56% higher than the Vietnam War, 150% higher than the Korean War, 260% higher than the War of Independence, and 3000% higher than 9/11.

A typical flu season in the US kills between 12,000 and 60,000 so is definitely higher than that.

Hopefully it will peak soon. New York appears to have peaked but other states are still growing so we may get a lot of variation in terms of new deaths rather than a smooth bell curve. Most projections are around 120,000.

We’re giving taxpayers the opportunity to get to know their MPs beyond photo-ops and party-line speeches. In this episode, Islay Aitchison interviews Simon O’Connor MP.

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

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

Stuff reports:

Hobbiton is up in arms and lashing back against the $400 million tourism rescue package which its chief executive has labelled a “joke”.

Hobbiton chief executive Russell Alexander said the budgeted package was a disappointment and a joke, slamming the suggestion that consultants could assist tourist businesses reimagine themselves domestically.

“I mean what do they want us to do, turn the Shire into a mini-golf course?

“Hobbiton is a tour business, that’s what it does. If there were other opportunities we would have done them by now.”

The $400 million rescue package was announced on Thursday and Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis said the money would be used to “protect key tourism attractions and amenities”.

However, details on what these key attractions are and how they are measured were lacking.

Alexander was scathing towards the Minister of Tourism Kelvin Davis whom he says does not understand the tourist industry.

“He [Davis] has no idea and is missing in action,” Alexander said.

“The problem is we have a minister of Tourism who is talking at his industry not talking with or for his industry,”

The tourism industry needs a Minister who can perform.

Damien Grant writes:

The scale of the economic vandalism being unleashed on this country rivals that of Sir Robert Muldoon. This prime minister and her finance minister, in cahoots with a weak central bank governor, are destroying 36 years of prudent fiscal and monetary economic management.

They do not understand economics. They do not understand business. Even more frightening, they do not understand the importance of the institutional legacy they have inherited and are in the process of destroying.

This is an inexperienced government who have panicked at the economic fallout of their recent decisions. In order to avoid the inevitable and painful reallocation of resources required after a major economic shock they are not only destroying the Crown’s balance sheet – they are undermining the integrity of critical institutions and traditions.

An extra $85,000 of debt per household!

This year Treasury have failed. They are forecasting unemployment will rise to 8.6 per cent this financial year, based on the surge in government spending. It is currently 5.2 per cent. Even better, the fall in GDP is projected to be just 4.6 per cent.

Let’s look at some underlying realities.

According to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, tourism employs – directly or indirectly – 330,000 people and accounts for 5.8 per cent of our GDP.

International tourism was about 40 per cent of this total and we can safely assume that domestic tourism will fall dramatically. A 1 per cent rise in unemployment is roughly 28,000 jobs.

Job losses in the tourism sector alone will push us over the Treasury forecast.

During the GFC, building consents fell in half. We have over 180,000 people toiling in construction, more in support services.

If even a third of those currently employed in construction lose their jobs unemployment will surge past 10 per cent. If we manage to keep unemployment under 20 per cent, the level that some economists believe is the real rate in the United States today, I will be pleasantly surprised.

I agree that the economic forecasts seem far too optimistic.

A very good ad by ACT. The only quibble I have is they have been far too generous to Shane Jones in suggesting his jobs have only cost $3 million per job. I suspect the majority of those 1,000 jobs are business consultants writing business cases for why they should get even more money. Actual productive long-term jobs is probably well under 500 from his $3 billion.

Stuff reports:

National leader Simon Bridges has written to the Prime Minister asking her to lift the cap on people attending religious services, which is currently set at 10 under coronavirus Alert Level 2.

“New Zealanders find it inconsistent that you allow large numbers of people at bars, restaurants or sporting events but continue to deny more than 10 people gathering for religious services,” Bridges wrote.

The cap on gatherings has been politically contentious. Cinemas and restaurants are allowed to welcome up to 100 people, but they can take bookings for groups of no more than 10.

Funerals and tangi had initially had attendance capped at 10 people, but this has been relaxed to 50.

“It was right to increase the number of people who can attend funerals and tangi — it is right to do the same for our faith communities,” Bridges wrote.

“Religious institutions are in a better place than almost any other organisation that is allowed to host larger crowds, and are therefore able to ensure appropriate physical distancing and health precautions are taking place.”

Again stupidity to have different caps for different venues. The emphasis should be being able to host people safely, not an arbitrary cap of 10.

Stuff reports:

As many as 300 biker gang members and affiliates openly broke the coronavirus mass gatherings rules at a Matamata funeral, as several police watched on.

Lawrence Lynch was one of seven mourners at a funeral for his sister-in-law, who Stuff has agreed not to name, on Monday, where a roll call was taken to ensure they were adhering to mass gathering restrictions.

The following day, Lynch returned to Matamata Cemetery to put something on the grave site, only to be greeted by hoardes of mourners.

“Holy smokes – there’s all these bloody motorcycle gangs there. There’s about 200 or 300,” Lynch said.

So the law abiding Kiwi could only have seven at their funeral, while the gang had 300 turn up to their funeral – and of course suffer no consequences.

A fascinating story at Politik. The OIA papers revealed:

There was no overwhelming health reason why students from China could not have come to New Zealand universities this year. Instead, the Ministry of Health feared the students might create extra work if they were allowed in, and that appears to have been behind the decision to ban them.

So universities had seven quarantine or isolation facilities ready to go where foreign students could live for two weeks to ensure they didn’t have Covid. They also had 50 GPs and nurses lined up to manage them.

The officials said the health risk was “minimal” and 2,000 students could be allowed in.

So why didn’t it happen?

Basically the Immigration Service has no electronic system to check traveler eligibility – it has to be done manually by phone calls and could not cope with bulk exemptions.

So we have lost scores of millions of dollars of revenue from foreign students but due to a health risk, but because the bureaucracy used a manual system.

The sentencing notes for Mark Hayden are a terrifying and sad read.

Hayden was found guilty of vehicular manslaughter despite not being the driver of the car. His cousin (who also died) was the driver. But the facts make clear they were beyond reckless. It was almost inevitable they ended up killing someone.

Basically they drank two bottles of vodka and dozens of people called the Police about their driving. The driver tried running other vehicles off the road.

When finally pulled over by Police they refused a breath test, abused the Police, tried to run the officer over and then took off. The car went across the centre line and killed the 72 year old driver, along with his cousin who was driving.

The driver, Stephen, was seven times the legal limit and Mark Hayden was five times the legal limit (four hours after the crash). Now Hayden wasn’t driving but he was clearly encouraging his cousin and just as reckless.

If he was the driver, a 25 month sentence would be ridiculously low. It still seems low considering he spent hours in a car with a drunk driver egging him on.

But when you read the notes he has never been in legal trouble before. He has three school age children. He is very remorseful and unlikely to reoffend. So maybe the end result is about right?

His initial sentence was 54 months but he got 10% off for his remorse, 20% for lack of prior offending and good previous character, 8% off for having to serve his sentence away from his family in Australia and 25% off for his guilty plea.

I really don’t know. The actions of him and his cousin were beyond reckless. Killing someone seemed almost inevitable and a family lost their father because of the two of them. But would having him serve longer achieve anything?

Stuff reports:

A controversial new coronavirus law has been hastily passed, despite coming under fire for allowing police to search homes without a warrant.

Despite widespread concern, the Government rushed though the powerful legislation for Alert Level 2, but legal experts say the new enforcement law is better for the public than the extreme emergency powers used under lockdown.

There are now calls for the Government to take the unusual step of returning the law to parliament, so it can again be scrutinised while it’s being used.

The law, which passed 63 – 57, had to be hurried through the House as it was required for the enforcement of Alert Level 2 restrictions such as social distancing – set to begin at 11.59pm on Wednesday.

Eight weeks ago the opposition offered to work with the Government to pass a special law for responding to Covid-19. The Government refused. Then suddenly on Tuesday they table a bill and ram it through all stages in just over 24 hours.

And the Greens sat there voting for it at every stage.

Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt said he had “deep concern” about the lack of scrutiny and rushed process for the Bill. 

“For weeks the Government has known that we would be moving to alert level 2. It has not allowed enough time for careful public democratic consideration of this level 2 legislation. There has been no input from ordinary New Zealanders which is deeply regrettable,” Hunt said.

“This is a great failure of our democratic process. The new legislation, if passed in its current state, will result in sweeping police powers unseen in this country for many years.” 

If National had done what Labour and the Greens have just done, the Greens would be flying to Geneva to complain to the United Nations.

The Herald reports:

A distraught Invercargill mum was forced to kneel down in mud and kiss her son goodbye through an unzipped body bag after he died in the first week of lockdown.

Police held up a blanket so neighbours could not see Angela clutching onto her 18-year-old son Brody, with tears streaming down her face, not wanting to let go.

It would be the last time she saw her youngest child – because of level 4 Covid-19 restrictions, funerals were banned. …

On the morning of Saturday, March 28 – day three of lockdown – Warren found his son. He is suspected to have taken his own life.

“He was our world. We were very close. Finding him like that, that’s what I see when I go to bed at night,” Warren said.

Brody left a note but his parents haven’t been able to read it because police took it for forensic examination.

The teenager had two brothers – he was extremely close with both. His 23-year-old brother lives about 5km away and had to say goodbye to Brody via Facetime.

His 26-year-old brother lives in Wellington. “He’s just pretending like it hasn’t happened until he’s able to come down.”

Sharron Hanley, funeral director and owner of MacDonald and Weston, received a call from police that morning to transfer Brody to a funeral home.

She described the ordeal as the most horrendous she had ever seen in 20 years of work.

“I have never seen anything so horrible, it was really really awful and it’s just so wrong what this family have been through.” …

Again common sense out the window. Australia has allowed funerals, limiting them to ten people. Their public health outcomes have been as good or better than Australia’s. So hundreds of people have been denied a funeral in New Zealand because of our inflexible inhumane approach.

Stuff reports:

The Government’s flagship infrastructure project has been put “on hold” while it fights the Covid-19 pandemic, but there are some doubts it will ever get going again.

Transport Minister Phil Twyford said decisions on Auckland’s light rail project “are on hold while the Government’s full focus is on fighting Covid-19”.

During the election campaign, Labour had promised to have the first stage of the Auckland light rail scheme built by 2021.

But after a long and protracted process, the Government has yet to decide who will build the scheme, let alone begin construction.

It’s worse than that. They haven’t even decided a route.

We’ve well over halfway to their promise of having built 13 kms by December 2021 and they have failed to progress it at all.