The 2nd reading of the Abortion Legislation Bill passed 81 – 39. The votes by party were:

• National 25 – 30
• Labour 37 – 9
• NZ First 9 – 0
• Greens 8 – 0
• ACT 1 – 0
• Ross 1 – 0

NZ First will seek a referendum at committee stage but not get it. That means at third reading they will either party vote against or vote by conscience.

Some of the amendments at committee stage will be:

• Darrock Ball – require a referendum
• David Seymour – delete ban on protests outside abortion clinics
• Jan Logie – change eligibility from women to “pregnant people” to cater for pregnant men!

The exit poll for Virginia has Biden more than 20% ahead of Sanders. If the same in other states, Biden should have a good day. California and Texas are most important.

The demographic breakdowns are interesting in comparing.

• Men: Biden +11%
• Women: Biden +31%
• Whites: Biden +17%
• Blacks: Biden +45%
• 18 – 29: Sanders+37%
• 30 – 44: Sanders +3%
• 45 – 64: Biden 30%
• 65+: Biden +63%
• No college degree: Biden +23%

Also of interest is net favourabilities:

• Biden +35%
• Warren +10%
• Sanders +3%
• Buttigieg +0%
• Klobuchar -2%
• Bloomberg -17%

Looking like Bloomberg will have a bad Super Tuesday. If he packs it up after this, then it is Biden vs Sanders and Warren which again helps Biden.

Newstalk ZB reports:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview Sunday did not reveal any details of a potential historic meeting between President Donald Trump and leaders of the Taliban.

Trump said during a news conference a day earlier that he would meet with leaders from the militant group “in the not too distant future” following the signing earlier Saturday of a historic agreement between the US and the Taliban which sets into motion the potential of a full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and could pave the way to ending America’s longest-fought war.

The deal is the least bad option, from what I can see. After 18 years, it is hard to see what more one could do to stabilise the country with troops. So a deal with the Taliban is a necessary evil.

Of course if Obama had struck such a deal, many in the GOP would condemn him as a traitor and surrendering to the enemy.

I’m not optimistic the Taliban will stick to their end of the deal, and what will be interesting is how the US then responds.

But if the US and NATO can withdraw their troops, and Afghanistan doesn’t become a worst place to live for the locals, then that’s a good outcome.

Stuff reports:

First year free study may be a popular policy, but hundreds of students made false declarations to get their university fees covered in the 2018 and 2019 academic years – and some haven’t paid the money back.

In response to written parliamentary questions obtained by Stuff, Education Minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed that at least 473 applicants for Fees Free made false declarations in order to receive get the grant in the first two years of the government’s Fees Free programme.

Hipkins said he was advised by the Tertiary Education Commission of the 342 false declarations in 2018 and 131 in 2019.

Yet charges have only been laid against three individuals for the 2019 year.

Why isn’t everyone who makes a false declaration charged?

Newshub reports:

RNZ reported earlier on Tuesday that despite Ardern saying his language was “loose” and “wrong”, Jones was unrepentant and didn’t believe most people would consider the comments racist.

“I challenge anyone in New Zealand to disagree with me in terms of the sad regularity with which we are seeing egregious cases of abuse, in the media, coming from the Indian migrant community upon their own. In fact, they’re appearing in courts with more regularity than the Mongrel Mob.

So Jones says some racist stuff which Ardern refuses to take action against, apart from she’ll ask him to reconsider his words.

His response is basically a two fingered salute as he doubles down and says even more racist stuff.

He is clearly implying that Indians in New Zealand are not very law abiding, comparing them to the Mongrel Mob.

In fact crime stats for 2019 show that overall Indians appear in court, as a proportion of their total population far less than most ethnic groups. The proportions are:

• Maori 5.4%
• Pasifika 2.1%
• European 1.0%
• Indian 0.8%
• Asian 0.2%

So 992 out of 1,000 Indians have not appeared in court yet Jones compares them to the Mongrel Mob.

But of course once again Jacinda will do nothing except wring her hands. God forbid she actually act like she is the Prime Minister and say something along the lines of:

“There is no room in my Cabinet for a Minister who denigrates entire ethnic communities to score political points. I have informed Minister Jones that if he makes such a comment again, I will immediately dismiss him as a Minister”

Paul Glass writes in the Herald:

I’m deeply concerned about two ongoing issues relating to potential corruption in New Zealand with respect to the current Labour-led Government. Both involve NZ First. …

But in an unhealthy quest for power, Labour outbid National by offering NZ First a disproportionate (NZ First only received 7.2 per cent of the votes) say in the running of NZ, offered NZ First leader Winston Peters the “baubles of office” as Foreign Minister among other roles, and agreed to establish an unprecedented $3 billion slush fund (the Provincial Growth Fund).

It is this fund that has all the hallmarks of banana republic politics. Its $3b, or $1b per annum, is an extraordinary sum of money and could fund many worthy projects. To put it into context we could double Pharmac’s budget each year, build 150 new schools, provide breakfasts for kids at lower decile schools, eradicate all pests, fund 120,000 hip operations or provide almost free public transport to all New Zealanders; all actions that might make a meaningful difference to NZ, unlike the fund.

A good focus on the opportunity cost of the Fund. Much of the fund is being spent on trying to win Shane Jones an electorate seat. Think what a doubling of Pharmac’s budget would mean for hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders.

The second, and potentially related issue, is the revelation that the funding arm of NZ First, the NZ First Foundation, appears to be in breach of at least the spirit, if not the actual letter of the law, with respect to receiving political donations. This matter has now been referred by the police to the Serious Fraud Office for investigation.

The Electoral Commission has said they believe it has breached the letter of the law.

The fact that to date Ardern has refused to ask her coalition partner even the most basic questions, or investigate the matter in any way, is deeply concerning and would be unacceptable in any other walk of life. Whether through political naivety or an unhealthy hunger for power, Labour is setting a very poor example for all other NZ entities.

See no evil, hear no evil.

Before I get accused of bias myself, I should point out that I voted for Labour in the last election so have no political axe to grind in this case.

Corruption is bad, no matter who does it.

Some, even many, CEOs are overpaid. It is especially galling to see CEOs that lead companies badly still getting paid huge amounts of money.

But some CEOs are very very good. They add value to a company well in excess of their salary. Some people claim once a company is big, then it doesn’t matter who the CEO is. But this is clearly not true – look at Steve Jobs with Apple.

Another is Bob Iger at Disney. He become CEO in 2005. The Disney share price since then has gone from $23.80 to $150. It has employed an additional 70,000 people also.

Iger’s salary is a staggering $66 million a year. That is around 0.1% of the company’s turnover.

But the best way to see how valuable the market sees a CEO is the change in share price when they leave. Iger’s resignation saw it drop 2.5%. The net worth is $220 billion so that is $5.5 billion Iger was valued at.

So paying $66 million a year for someone whose value to the company is $5.5 billion seems a pretty good deal.

Both Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg have seen sanity and are endorsing Joe Biden. A split moderate lane only helps Bernie Sanders.

It doesn’t look like Warren will pull out before Super Tuesday and Bloomberg has yet to actually contest a state so he’s staying in for now. So sort of Biden and Bloomberg in the moderate lane vs Sanders and Warren in the radical lane.

The current 538 forecast is:

1. Contested convention 65%
2. Sanders 20%
3. Biden 15%
4. Bloomberg 0.2%
5. Warren 0.1%

They are forecasting Sanders will get around 1,600 delegates, Biden 1,450, Bloomberg 600 and Warren 250. So if polls don’t change (and they probably will), it may come down to if Bloomberg pulls out early enough to allow Biden to benefit.

Stuff reports:

The Government is splitting three ways on plans for Auckland light rail as the saga heads to its endgame phase.

Labour Ministers are erring towards signing New Zealand up to a long and expensive public-private partnership (PPP), while the Greens are understood to favour something more modest. NZ First wants something more modest still, publicly suggesting that its caucus is likely to axe any proposal put to it. …

Jones also noted that there was no concrete commitment to building Auckland light rail in NZ First’s coalition agreement with Labour. He also said the party were “doubting Thomases” when it came to the “light rail kaupapa”.

Jones made the remarks despite other Government Ministers putting him “under strict instruction not to talk about light rail”, he said.

Labour campaigned on building the first section of its light rail scheme from Britomart to Mt. Roskill by 2021.

They have 21 months left to build 13,000 metres of light rail.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Government coalition partner Shane Jones was both “loose” and “wrong” in saying Indian students were ruining academic institutions.

Jones, NZ First MP and minister for regional economic development, said “unfettered” immigration was out of control on Newshub Nation on Saturday, referring to everyone who “comes here from New Delhi”. 

This second broadside against New Zealand’s Indian community in recent months earned Jones a rebuke from Ardern on Monday. She said she would air her disagreement and ask him “to reconsider the way he talks about these issues in the future because I do not believe it is good for New Zealand”.

Ask him to reconsider????

You’re the fucking Prime Minister. You’re his boss. You can sack him. You don’t ask him to reconsider. You tell him that your Cabinet has no room for racism in it and if he wants to campaign against an entire ethnic group, he can do it as a backbench MP, but not as a member of her Government.

Stuff reports:

Fossil fuels and illegal weapons will be excluded from all future Kiwisaver default funds.

The changes announced on Saturday mean investments in fossil fuel production and illegal weapons will be excluded from future KiwiSaver funds that are default providers.

There are currently nine default fund providers, and their terms expire in mid-2021.

This is typical of this Government. A policy that achieves nothing to distract from their total failure to actually lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Having default KiwiSaver funds won’t lead to even one less chunk of coal or litre of oil from being extracted. Fossil fuels will continue to be supplied so long as there is demand for them.

If the Government hiked the price of petrol by 50 cents a litre, that would lead to a reduction in fossil fuel extraction as demand would drop. But that would be unpopular (yet effective) so instead they go for something totally ineffective.

The irony is that this move, if it has any effect at all, will be to increase the yield for those investing on fossil fuel companies.

The share price for fossil fuel companies may drop very very slightly because of this. The profit made by those companies will stay the same. This means the profit to price ratio or yield will increase very very slightly.

So the overall impact of this move is:

• Impact on greenhouse gas emissions – zero
• Impact on share prices of fossil fuel companies – a minuscule decrease
• Impact on yield of fossil fuel companies – a minuscule increase

The Herald reports:

Associate Immigration Minister Poto Williams’s refusal to intervene for a couple who have been fighting to stay in New Zealand for four years was last week described by Northland MP Matt King as “gutting”.

“A petition with more than 3000 signatures in support of Peter and Lina Jia’s plea to stay has been been ignored,” King said. “The community has been behind Peter and Lina Jia the whole way. This is a perfect opportunity for the Minister to use her discretion.”

The couple, Christians with a 10-year-old daughter, Cici, feared that they would be persecuted if forced to return to China.

The Associated Press reported in 2018 that ” Xi is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982″ so their fears seem well grounded.

His parents initially lived in Mangonui for a year, then moved to Waimate North, where their son set up his business, growing strawberries, watermelons and soybeans, which they sell at markets and roadside stalls around the Bay of Islands.

During peak season they employ five part-time staff.

Growing strawberries isn’t as cool it seems as importing drugs from Europe.

Stuff reports:

Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki has blamed airborne demons and human cruelty to animals for the coronavirus outbreak.

He also suggested some born-again Christians could have special protection from the deadly disease.

That’s great news. I suggest Cardinal Tamaki rush over to China with his special immunity, so he can help others.

Interpreting Ephesians 2:2, which refers to “the prince of the power of the air,” Tamaki said some evil spirits invaded human bodies.

“Satanic spirits control invisibility on a certain level where they can energise.”

I’m willing to believe Cardinal Tamaki has evil spirits inside him. Less so for anyone else.

National should put these up as billboards in every city and town with gang problems.

The State Services Commissioner released:

The Commissioner said the Treasury’s failure to keep Budget sensitive information secure was not acceptable.

“This should not have happened,” said Mr Hughes. “Some things are so critical that they can never be allowed to fail. Security of the Budget is one of these.”

Mr Hughes said the Treasury has an excellent reputation as New Zealand’s lead advisor to the Government on economic and fiscal policy, with very good people doing their best.

“But sometimes doing your best is not enough,” said Mr Hughes. “Some things you just need to get right. Each and every time. For these you need to check, check and check again and that didn’t happen with security around Budget 2019.

“Senior leadership at the Treasury were rightly focused on the big economic and fiscal issues which are important to New Zealanders and the Government. That is what I expect. But they got the balance wrong. The Treasury’s core business is also delivering the Budget and I’m disappointed the senior leadership were not hands-on enough in that task.

So it wasn’t a super duper hack by National. It was bad design by Treasury. It seems the 2018 Budget information could also have been accessed in advance in the same way.

David Brooks writes in the NYT:

A few months ago, I wrote a column saying I would vote for Elizabeth Warren over Donald Trump. I may not agree with some of her policies, but culture is more important than politics. She does not spread moral rot the way Trump does.

Now I have to decide if I’d support Bernie Sanders over Trump.

We all start from personal experience. I covered the Soviet Union in its final decrepit years. The Soviet and allied regimes had already slaughtered 20 million people through things like mass executions and intentional famines. Those regimes were slave states. They enslaved whole peoples and took away the right to say what they wanted, live where they wanted and harvest the fruits of their labor.

And yet every day we find more old quotes from Sanders apologizing for this sort of slave regime, whether in the Soviet Union, Cuba or Nicaragua. He excused the Nicaraguan communists when they took away the civil liberties of their citizens. He’s still making excuses for Castro.

He’s like Jeremy Corbyn. So long as you oppose the West, he supports you.

Populists like Sanders speak as if the whole system is irredeemably corrupt. Sanders was a useless House member and has been a marginal senator because he doesn’t operate within this system or believe in this theory of change.

He believes in revolutionary mass mobilization and, once an election has been won, rule by majoritarian domination. This is how populists of left and right are ruling all over the world, and it is exactly what our founders feared most and tried hard to prevent.

Liberalism celebrates certain values: reasonableness, conversation, compassion, tolerance, intellectual humility and optimism. Liberalism is horrified by cruelty. Sanders’s leadership style embodies the populist values, which are different: rage, bitter and relentless polarization, a demand for ideological purity among your friends and incessant hatred for your supposed foes.

A liberal leader confronts new facts and changes his or her mind. A populist leader cannot because the omniscience of the charismatic headman can never be doubted. A liberal sees shades of gray. For a populist reality is white or black, friend or enemy. Facts that don’t fit the dogma are ignored.

Many senior Democrats are getting nervous that a Sanders candidacy would not see Trump re-elected, but also see the GOP reclaim the House and increase their majority in the Senate.

But Biden won big in South Carolina and that could set him up for Super Tuesday. The current 538 forecast is:

1. Contested Convention 60%
2. Sanders 28%
3. Biden 11%
4. Bloomberg 1%

So Biden is the only real alternative to Sanders. If Klobuchar and Buttigieg are sensible they pull out and endorse Biden.

The Herald reports:

Members of the Muslim community are unhappy about a planned service to mark one year since the Christchurch terror attack. …

A service will be held in Christchurch on March 15, the anniversary of the attack that left 51 people dead and many more injured at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques.

The Christchurch City Council said it had been in touch with those affected since October as part of organising the event.

However, Otago Muslim Association president Mohammed Rizwan said many of the victims and their families were not consulted about the service, and were unhappy it was going ahead.

Other Muslim associations have also distanced themselves from commemorative services.

Part of the issue was that in Islamic culture, marking anniversaries was not typically done, Rizwan said.

If anniversaries are not done in Islamic culture, why are we forcing one on the victims and their families?

He said those affected were “just informed” that a service would be happening, rather than being consulted about whether they wanted one.

“If you talk to the victims and families of the victims, most of them will tell you, they don’t want it.

“They just want to move on; they don’t want to remember it again.”

I can understand that.

The Herald reports:

There are claims that at least 210 people in Iran have died as a result of the new coronavirus disease.

BBC Persian reported the figures on Friday, citing unnamed sources in the Islamic republic’s health system and pr

There are claims that at least 210 people in Iran have died as a result of the new coronavirus disease. …

If the BBC Persian figure of 210 deaths is accurate – with the total number of reported cases in Iran currently at 388 – these most recent figures would push the disease’s mortality rate to a shocking 54.12 per cent in Iran alone.

Alternatively, if China’s data on the virus is to be believed and the mortality rate is indeed 2.3 per cent, Iran’s unusually high death rate could also suggest a huge number of cases remain unreported in the country. The number of cases should be closer to 9130 than the 388 currently being reported by Iranian government officials.

The reality is you can’t trust the data from either China or Iran. Both are authoritarian countries that have no neutral public service which can be counted upon to just report the facts.

We probably won’t know the actual death rate until enough people have been infected and died in a non-authoritarian country. There are quite a few infections in South Korea and Italy but it is too early to tell, as you have to wait until people have recovered to work out the mortality rate. So far in Italy 21 have died and 46 recovered and in South Korea 17 dead and 27 recovered. But those ratios will drop as more recover.

Of course even a 2% mortality rate is huge.

Newshub reports:

Shane Jones has lashed out at New Zealand’s current immigration policy, saying too many people “from New Delhi” are being allowed to settle in New Zealand.

This is indisputably racist.

It is not racist to say NZ should have fewer immigrants. It is racist to say too many Indians are being allowed to migrate to New Zealand.

If a Cabinet Minister in a National led Government said such a thing, Labour and Greens would be demanding they’d be sacked. Instead, not a peep I suspect.

He said any population growth should suit the needs of the regions, not the cities, before targeting- not for the first time – the Indian community. 

“What sort of country do you want? We were originally settled through the Treaty of Waitangi. The indigenous people coming with their Pacific roots, the Maori people, then the Anglos came, and in my case the Croatians came. 

“If you want another million, 2 million, 3 million people, we should debate it and there should be a mandate, rather than opening up the options, unfettered, and everyone comes here from New Delhi. I don’t like that idea at all. I think the number of students that have come from India have ruined many of those institutions.”

Again it is not racist to say we should have fewer people in New Zealand. It is racist to say Indians have ruined many NZ institutions.

The Guardian reports:

Yorkshire Tea has issued a plea to people to “try to be kind” after it received a deluge of online abuse because the chancellor was photographed with a large packet of its teabags.

The brand had faced a weekend of calls to boycott it after Rishi Sunak, the Conservative MP for the North Yorkshire seat of Richmond, shared the image with the caption: “Quick Budget prep break making tea for the team. Nothing like a good Yorkshire brew.”

Many Twitter users responded by condemning the brand, leading the company to stress that it had not endorsed the association. It tweeted later that day: “Nothing to do with us – people of all political stripes like our brew.”

However, that message seems not to have been enough to silence detractors, as on Monday the curator of Yorkshire Tea’s Twitter account posted a thread saying they had faced a “rough weekend” of angry comments, and calling for a degree of perspective and greater civility online.

“On Friday, the chancellor shared a photo of our tea. Politicians do that sometimes (Jeremy Corbyn did it in 2017),” it said. “We weren’t asked or involved – and we said so the same day. Lots of people got angry with us all the same.

“For some, our tea just being drunk by someone they don’t like means it’s forever tainted, and they’ve made sure we know it.”

It really is madness. People demanding a boycott of a brand of tea because a politician they don’t like said they like that brand of tea.