The Listener editorial:

The Greens have an idea for cleaning up political donations, starting with “an independent citizens’ assembly” because, they say, “it’s clear that Parliament is incapable of [making] meaningful reforms to itself”.

Here’s a different idea for cleaning up political donations, which is simpler and more cost-effective than the Greens’ proposal: obey the law. Everyone else must, whatever their line of work, and political parties should, too.

Just because parties and individuals sometimes fall foul of electoral law does not automatically mean the law needs “reform”, just as restaurants falling foul of hygiene regulations does not necessarily mean there is something wrong with the regulations. 

I strongly agree.

While the current law is not perfect, it is actually a very good law in regards to donations and expenses. It has the following features:

• Annual disclosure of large donations
• Immediate disclosure of very large donations
• Provisions to require contributors to a donation to be identified
• No significant foreign donations
• No splitting donations between body corporates to avoid disclosure
• Reporting a summary of small donations
• Only NZ residents or companies/organisations can donate
• Spending limits on parties and candidates for the 90 days before the election

Those who say the answer to people breaking the law is to change the law are in fact trying to cover up for those who broke the law.

The answer to people breaking the law is to prosecute them.

Now again there are improvements one can make to the law. I would favour a greater role for the Electoral Commission in being able to see all donations, not just those above the disclosure limit. But these are changes that can be made in the triennial post-election review.

Stuff reports:

Police have referred a complaint about Christchurch mayor Lianne Dalziel’s election expenses to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

Dalziel, who defeated Darryll Park and John Minto in October to win her third term as mayor, was criticised for failing to identify donors who made significant contributions to her campaign.

This is no surprise. Dalziel’s return was clearly wrong. To make things worse both Dalziel and her husband (she says she acted on his advice) are lawyers and Dalziel has been in politics for so long, she should know electoral law well.

The fact the donors are all connected to her husband makes it worse.

The SFO have also just announced:

The Serious Fraud Office has today received a referral from NZ Police in relation to Phil Goff’s election expenses.

So the Mayors of our two largest cities under SFO investigation for their donation or expense returns.

Stuff reports:

Media company NZME has announced a heavy loss, weighed down by $175m of impairments to reflect its share price.

The company reported a full-year net loss of $165.2 million to the end of December, compared to a net profit of $11.6m in 2018.

Excluding the writedowns, NZME noted that operating profit was up 4 per cent to $19.7m.

Overall revenue fell 4 per cent to $371.7m, but its radio revenue grew 5 per cent in the second half, and ended up 2 per cent for the year to $110.9m.

Print revenue fell 8 per cent to $192.4m. However, digital revenue rose 1 per cent after the company introduced a “paywall” for selected content.

A 1% increase in digital revenue only. Hardly a roaring success.

There are 21,000 paid subscribers. If digital revenue only went up 1% that suggests not all paid subscribers are paying the full $200.

Digital revenue went up from $60.0m to $60.4 million or a mere $400,000. The paywall made $1.7 million so other digital revenue dropped $1.3 million – possibly advertising from smaller visitor numbers.

Politik reports:

Louise Hutchison identified herself as the public relations liaison for Waikato Mongrel Mob. She asked Bridges why he had not accepted an invitation to join Dame Tariana Turia and Sir Pita Sharples to meet with the gang last year. “Instead you decided to go on to social media and really make a mockery of the powerful things that are happening an hour and a half away,” she said. “There are answers an hour and a half away. “There is a leader over there that has transformed his life after 33 years of a prison stint. “We know what Bill English said; that prisons are a moral and fiscal failure, so I encourage you, Simon, to come and visit us and see what is happening there and not to use it as a political agenda. “If you really want to win the election it is maybe something you could consider coming and looking at.”

But Bridges was having none of it. “I’ll give you this,” he said. “I accept that in your Waikato mongrel mob patch there will be some good that’s being done, but I ask you, and you can answer or not if you really want to; well, I’m not going to believe you, by the way. “Why is it that your Waikato  Mongrel Mob chapter is growing exponentially in numbers. “Why is it that the methamphetamine numbers in Hamilton and the Waikato are going through the roof and continue to rise and rise? “Why is it your leader won’t give back the illegal guns he has in the hundreds? (this was greeted with widespread applause)

Round 1 to Bridges.

National’s Justice spokesperson Mark Mitchell grabbed a microphone. Mitchell had already treated the audience to a lengthy outline of his own police career and suggested that as a future Justice Minister, he would be in charge of “police, courts and justice.”

“I had a young lady come out of prison that lives in my constituency,” he said. “She became a victim. She got involved in the gang scene when she was very young when she was 14. “And she suffered horrendously inside that environment; she had five children. “And she suffered rapes and serious assaults so serious that she almost died.” Facing Hutchinson, he said: “You know who I am talking about.”

Mitchell accused Hutchinson of taking the woman to the Waikato and reconnecting her with the gang so that now she was back in prison. So please don’t start lecturing me about the Mongrel Mob,” he said.” “If you want us to come at me with Sunny Tau (sic) or whatever his name is name is, we’re happy to do that if he is going to come to us and say we are going to hang up our patches; we are going to stop the inter-generational harm and we’ll help them exit the gang culture and rejoin society.”

Round 2 to Mitchell.

A long but good read by Nick Kerr on the NZ economic reforms and the part his Dad played in them. A reminder of the past:

• To protect dairy farmers, for a period of time you needed a prescription from your doctor if you wanted margarine.
• To protect the government monopoly on rail, trucks were banned from carrying loads more than 30 miles – that’s from here to Tacoma.
• Bars couldn’t open past 6pm, resulting in a culture of binge drinking.
• If you think Bernie Sanders’s policy of free college tuition is crazy, he’s got nothing on New Zealand. College wasn’t just free; the Government paid all students who attended university – as a result it became a lifestyle choice for many.
• During the oil crisis in the 1970s, the government didn’t bother with price controls, it simply banned people from driving their own cars, with a policy known as ‘carless days’.

This is what some call the good old days!

Stuff reports:

A raft of multimillionaire rich-listers are among the funders of Winston Peters’ NZ First party, donating large and undisclosed sums to a slush fund now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.

Stuff can reveal a longer list of donors to the NZ First Foundation up to April 2019 – which appears to operate as a political slush fund – based on Foundation documents seen by Stuff. It includes New Zealand’s richest man, Graeme Hart, and the billion-dollar Spencer family. …

NZ First has traditionally pitched itself to voters as a party for grassroots Kiwis in regional New Zealand, a party keen to trim the excesses of neo-liberal capitalism.

Former NZ First MP Doug Woolerton, a trustee of the NZ First Foundation and a government lobbyist, told the Politik website last year that the party has “always thought [its] constituency was the guy who owns the shop, the guy who fixes the tractors”. 

“It’s not the farmers. It’s the people who service the farmers who do the grunt work day to day,” he said. 

But the donations show NZ First retains the support of some of New Zealand’s business elite and wealthiest individuals.

This is a key point. NZ First doesn’t just get a bit of support from the uber wealthy. It is absolutely reliant on that funding.

The $500,000 from the major donors is well over half of NZ First’s total income. One donor who gave $105,000 represents around 20% of their declared income. The same donor who had the Government do a law change favourable to them.

In no other party, do you get such reliance on a small number of wealthy donors. Take National for example. They declared $4.5 million in donations in 2017. On top of that would be another million or so in membership fees and donations that average $50 to $100.

So a $15,000 donation to National represents 0.3% of their income. It probably gets you a nice christmas card from the party president, but not a lot of influence.

However NZ First would be in massive financial strife if it doesn’t keep its handful of uber wealthy donors happy.

So maybe the disclosure limit shouldn’t be a fixed amount such as $15,000 but a percentage of total income. Say 0.5%? If any donation represents more than 0.5% of a party’s total income then it must be disclosed?

The Herald reports:

A bill to restore voting rights to prisoners serving a sentence of less than three years’ jail has been introduced to Parliament.

The Government wants to pass it in time for those affected to be able to vote in the September election.

It is impossible to pass it before the election if you follow the normal parliamentary timetable of first reading, select committee consideration for six months, second reading, committee of the whole and third reading.

So this suggests that the Government is so desperate to pass this before the election, they will either use urgency or shorten the period for select committee consideration.

I guess they must be hoping to get those prisoners voting for them, otherwise why ram it though before the election?

John Armstrong writes:

The Prime Minister’s adoption of a “do nothing” stratagem which has her turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the chaos which otherwise goes by the name of “New Zealand First” is both reprehensible and indefensible.

Above all — and perhaps most intolerable of all — Ardern’s insistence that the constant and never changing diet of trials, tribulations and troubles afflicting Labour’s coalition partner have nothing to do with her and are for New Zealand First and New Zealand First alone to rectify amounts to an abdication on her part of the responsibilities that come with occupancy of the highest office in the land.

As NZ First made her Prime Minister she is unwilling to do anything.

Chris Trotter writes:

It is one of the greatest tragedies of contemporary “left-wing” politics: that its practitioners have allowed themselves to become identified, irretrievably, with the suppression of free speech. Most particularly, with the suppression of the free speech of persons identified as “right wing”, or, more ludicrously, as “Nazis” and “fascists”. Worse still, they have secured this “de-platforming” by threatening to unleash violence and disorder if these individuals are permitted to speak. They have thus supplied local government, university and corporate leaders with the “health and safety” justification for shutting these speakers down. Free speech advocates refer to this tactic as “The Thug’s Veto”.

Little’s reaffirmed commitment to introducing legislation aimed at curbing hate speech will, therefore, be received by right-wing New Zealanders as a direct assault upon their personal liberties. Labour and its Green allies will be accused of using the power of the state to demonise and silence their political opponents.

The Right will not take this lying down.

Damn right.

Our current laws forbid the incitement of actual physical harm, and will punish those who wilfully defame their fellow citizens. Attempting to pass laws against the giving of offence, however, is a fool’s errand. Far from eliminating offensiveness, such laws will only encourage and intensify it. Harm cannot be prevented, but it can be healed. Building trust and amity between peoples is achieved by starting conversations – not by shutting them down.

I can only agree.

There are nine different measures of poverty, but in reality most of them don’t measure poverty – they just measure income inequality which is not the same thing (but still of some importance).

The figure which measures actual poverty is the one called material hardship. It measures if families can afford actual things such as more than one pair of shoes for their kids etc. That is the most important measure, in my opinion.

In 2013 when measurement started 18.1% of children lived in material hardship. In 2017 that had dropped to 12.7%. That is a huge drop – almost one third.

Since 2017 it has increased from 12.7% to 13.4% in 2019.

So National saw child poverty rates decline by a third and Labour has seen then increase.

Inconvenient facts.

The Herald reports:

Green MP Golriz Ghahraman has opened up about her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis, saying she feels she has a “responsibility” to start an honest conversation about the autoimmune disease.

In a tweet, Ghahraman said today was the first time she had spoken publicly about life with MS.

“I’ve learned so much about community, equality and access to care.

Mostly, it showed me how strong and capable the MS and broader disability community really are – and the importance of our right to representation.”

Speaking to The Project’s Kanoa Lloyd this evening, Ghahraman said she first learned about her diagnosis two years ago after she began to lose sight in one eye.

She was on “hardcore medication” and had to visit a hospital every six months.

“Essentially, they shut down your immune system in order to protect your nervous system,” she told The Project.

I’m very saddened to hear that Golriz has MS, and full of admiration that she has gone public with it. It is not easy to expose your diagnosis to the world.

There is no cure for MS, and treatments are variable, as is the effect on the person.

I’ve known a few people with MS. One of them has had it for well over 15 years, and I doubt anyone who knows them has any idea they have MS as there are no external symptoms. Another died of it in their 40s. Overall the average life expectancy from diagnosis is 30 (more) years.

MS is more prevalent in countries further away from the equator, but no one really knows why. Possibly due to less sunlight.

The treatment for it is improving all the time, and hopefully scientific breakthroughs will improve the quality of life for all those with MS.

Ross Stitt at Quillette writes:

You might expect a row between a moral philosopher and a casino company to involve the former lecturing the latter on the ethics of profiting from gambling. But it is Peter Singer, sometimes called “the world’s most influential living philosopher,” who finds himself rebuked by SkyCity, New Zealand’s biggest promoter of poker machines. Singer had been booked to speak at a SkyCity venue as part of a ThinkInc tour to raise money for his charity The Life You Can Save, which seeks to reduce global poverty. But then an article appeared on New Zealand webzine Newshub reminding readers of Singer’s longstanding views on infanticide. “New Zealand’s disabled community is outraged a controversial Australian philosopher who justifies infanticide is being allowed to speak here,” Newshub reported. “Peter Singer, who’s been described as the most dangerous man in the world, has argued it’s ethical to give parents the option to euthanise babies with disabilities.”

The report went on to compare Singer to ethnonationalists. This “wouldn’t be the first time a controversial speaker had been barred,” the site reported. “After public outcry alt-right activists Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern had their event cancelled in 2018 over ‘security and health and safety concerns.’” SkyCity responded by cancelling the venue hire agreement. According to the New Zealand Herald, the company feared “reputational damage.” A statement further explained that, “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.”

Whatever one thinks of Peter Singer’s philosophy, the idea that he is in any way comparable to Molyneux or Southern is a calumny. Singer is currently professor of bioethics at Princeton University, where he works in the Center for Human Values, and a laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2012, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia for “eminent service to philosophy and bioethics as a leader of public debate and communicator of ideas in the areas of global poverty, animal welfare, and the human condition.” Singer has written dozens of books on philosophy, some of which have been highly influential. His 1975 bestseller Animal Liberation has had a profound impact on the animal rights movement. His 2009 book The Life You Can Save and 2015’s The Most Good You Can Do have been important in advancing the cause of the growing effective altruism movement. The former, which explored our moral responsibility to alleviate poverty with charitable giving, was endorsed by Bill and Melinda Gates

This shows how bonkers the Sky City decision was. Singer is a world class intellectual. Sure his views on infanticide are controversial, but he was even here to talk on that. He was here to talk on how we have a moral responsibility to donate more to charity to help people in poverty.

If Sky City will cancel a talk by Peter Singer on helping people in poverty because of one negative media story, this shows cancel culture is very much in NZ.

The Herald reports:

Hannah Tamaki has sacked her campaign manager after he launched a tirade of abuse against The Project host Kanoa Lloyd.

Goulter, who has also acted as a spokesperson for Vision NZ, took to Facebook to label Lloyd a “rancid rotton [sic] stuffed pig with blood pouring out of her eyes” and said she should “show NZ what voluntary euthanasia looks like”.

A shocking and disgusting outburst, which justified a sacking.

The Herald reports:

Opposition leader Simon Bridges says a National government would look at amending the law to allow Australians convicted of serious crimes in New Zealand to be deported.

Bridges said, if elected, National would explore a policy based on amendments to Australia’s Migration Act in 2014 which now allows for Kiwis living on that side of the Tasman to have their visas cancelled on character grounds.

He said, legally, the Australia government can deport Kiwi criminals and New Zealand needs to look into a reciprocal policy.

We’d be suckers not to change the law. Australia is deporting NZ citizens back to NZ almost every day, increasing our criminal population here. We should of course do the same and if an Aussie citizen breaks the law in NZ, deport them back to Australia.

Stuff reports:

Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer says the disgraced movie mogul is stunned at the guilty verdict given to him at his New York trial.

Weinstein was convicted Monday (Tuesday NZT) of rape and sexual assault against two women – he could now be sent to prison for decades.

“The words he said over and over again to me is, ‘I’m innocent, I’m innocent, I’m innocent. How could this happen in America,'” Weinstein’s attorney Arthur Aidala told Variety and other reporters, outside the courthouse.

How it happens is simple. The women who were raped and assaulted went to the Police. The Police recommended charges to the District Attorney. The DA laid charges. A trial was held and a jury found you guilty after hearing all the facts.

It’s a good day when wealth and power doesn’t mean you’re above the law.

Luke Malpass at Stuff writes:

The New Zealand First Foundation is an entirely different beast. Set up in 2017, its trustees are former NZ First MP and party president Doug Woolerton, and NZ First’s judicial officer and Winston Peters’ personal lawyer Brian Henry.

On the evidence collected by Stuff and other media, it effectively acts as a second bank account for NZ First, raising and spending money on routine party matters, but outside the control of the party’s elected officers. It appears to have had a website for a few days, before disappearing.

The SFO’s announced investigation suggests that the Electoral Commission thinks the foundation is dodging electoral law.

Yet the foundation’s primary purpose actually appears to be to keep the control of money into the party in the hands of Winston Peters’ two closest confidants and away from the party hierarchy.

This is an important insight.

The Electoral Act requires party donations to be notified to the party secretary. The Electoral Commission has said that they believe the law was breached by the donations going into the NZ First Foundation and being hidden from the party secretary.

It appears to have been a deliberate strategy to do this. And who benefits from being able to exclude the Party Board from having oversight of income and expenditure? Well, obviously the party leader.

This is important because it means that the party – governed by rules, a constitution, party president and secretary and so on, who can make decisions at odds with those which Peters, Woolerton and his self-proclaimed “dark shadow” Henry might make – is sidelined. In short, the foundation is about concentrating power in the hands of the party leader.

So the democratically elected board were sidelined, to so that leader could make decisions on expenditure without having to bother with them.

This is very pertinent to the SFO investigation.

This is the second time NZ First has had such a structure. The first led to the Spencer Trust fiasco, in which donations that people thought were going to NZ First ended up in the Spencer Trust – at that time run by Peters’ brother Wayne, Peters’ adviser Roger McClay, and another lawyer.

The common theme with both these trusts was that NZ First party officers were kept in the dark about its operations, or even existence.

There is a veritable conga line of former NZ First officials and MPs who claim to have been forced out when they asked tough questions about party finances. There is a great tale that former party treasurer Colin Forster told about the Northland by-election in 2015 – the party had $20 in the bank, he wouldn’t let them take on a loan, and then suddenly there was money and a campaign bus.

Doing the same thing twice means it is no accident. It is deliberate.

Lester Gray, who resigned as party president in October last year, wrote to the board resigning and saying he was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements in place. Back in 2006, party president Dail​ Jones said that NZ First bills being paid by the Spencer Trust “were totally going on behind my back”.

As far as I can tell the role of Party President is to simply be a fall guy.

The Herald reports:

The Government is seeking public feedback on which new NCEA level one subjects should be taught and which should be merged or scrapped altogether.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) has proposed a number of changes to the year 11 curriculum, after the Government gave the green-light to a “comprehensive review” of NCEA level one.

The MoE has suggested scrapping the teaching of Latin, Classical Studies and Art History but adding a Māori Performing Arts option for students.

Scrapping Classics, Art History and Latin? What sort of cultural barbarians would even consider this?

The classical period have had such a huge influence on the world today, that it is inconceivable you wouldn’t retain it as an option for students.

Reason reports:

The free market experiment of letting people pump their own gas is over. It failed. That appears to be the message behind a new piece of Illinois legislation that would prohibit self-service gas stations.

“No gas may be pumped at a gas station in this State unless it is pumped by a gas station attendant employed at the gas station,” reads the Gas Station Attendant Act, which was introduced last week by state Rep. Camille Lilly (D–Oak Park).

What is wrong with these people?

Increasing safety is the best justification for Lilly’s bill. It’s still not a very good one.

According to a study from the National Fire Protection Association, there were 5,000 gas station fires per year between 2004 and 2008, which resulted in an average of two deaths a year and $20 million in property damage. That seems like a pretty small risk given that there were 117,000 gas stations in the country at the time. The number of gas station fires has also fallen dramatically since 1980, the NFPA notes, even as self-service has become more common.

There’s also not much reason to assume that a gas station attendant who’s responsible for filling up multiple cars at once is going to be more careful than individual motorists.

I pay far more attention to my car than an attendant does!

Melanie Phillips writes:

At long last, an English court has struck a blow against the cultural tyranny of thought-crime and in support of freedom of speech, reason and sanity.

In the High Court this morning, Mr Justice Julian Knowles ruled that the police had been disproportionate in the action they took against Harry Miller, a former police officer and a shareholder in a plant and machinery company in Lincolnshire, when they recorded as a “non crime hate incident” a series of disobliging comments he had tweeted about transgender issues.

It’s worth reading the judgment in full here, not just for the judge’s full-throated defence of freedom of expression, nor his often sardonic turns of phrase, but to understand the jaw-dropping and terrifying state of authoritarian imbecility to which our once-robust culture has descended.

If you have a spare 90 minutes or so, spend it reading the judgment. It has everything from Orwellian references to flaying the Police.

Sue Bradford writes:

Select Committee hearings are happening this week but I’ve seen little media coverage – yet what this legislation proposes is an outrage.

What little coverage there has been includes lines such as this, from a Stuff article:

A section of the bill has proposed the Minister of Racing to be able to use money from the sale of small local racing clubs towards funding improvements in other venues.

Racing supporter Graham O’Brien of Hawera, said the bill was the biggest land grab since early colonial days.

If passed, the Bill will in effect allow the closure and forced sale of the venues of a number of racing clubs, potentially including those at Avondale, Stratford, Central Otago, Kurow, Banks Peninsula and Wairoa.

Even if a club has stopped racing, or has already sold its venue, the legislation allows for its property to be compulsorily taken.

The purpose of this is to prop up other ‘strategic’ venues that have the blessing of the powers that be, for example racecourses at Auckland, Wellington, Manawatu and Canterbury.

Meanwhile, these community hubs that have been built up over many years and decades, in some cases long before any such thing as the TAB or the ‘racing industry’ existed, will be lost to the people of the local area, with no necessary say from the latter in their disposal.

Racing club venues are community assets often used by many other groups. The Avondale markets are just one example of this.

I am no right-winger, but I find myself unusually in the space occupied by the right – that is, I cannot fathom how property rights can be trampled on in this way, nor how Labour and the Greens can tolerate it.

It is a possibility that Winston Peters sought carte blanche on racing policy as part of the 2017 coalition deal with Labour, yet this week Jacinda Ardern has been quoted as saying, ‘Racing policy, decisions, bills … go through considerable scrutiny – no one policy is ever decided by one party, they go through all of us.’

Great to see Sue champion property rights. And Labour did indeed sign up to support NZ First’s racing policy as part of the coalition agreement.

This seems like a prime opportunity for Simon Bridges and friends to expose and oppose the hypocrisy inherent in a government bill which so transparently ignores any sense of property rights and tramples on the kind of provincial communities from which much National support emanates.

As a Green MP I was the party’s spokesperson on Racing for the ten years I was in Parliament. I sat on the Select Committee considering the 2003 Racing Bill.

During the process I managed to persuade colleagues to insert a clause in the Racing Act saying ‘In carrying out its functions, the Board must (a) comply with the principles of natural justice; and (b) exhibit a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates.’

The new legislation flies in the face the 2003 Act in regards to both natural justice and social responsibility.

Labour and the Greens must urgently reconsider their seemingly unconsidered support for the Racing Bill or risk being seen as complicit in a particularly unprincipled piece of legislation.

Complicit is a good word for it.

I miss the days the Green Party caucus had MPs with spines in it.