Stuff reports:

The Government will change the law to let it step in over the top of the country’s electricity regulator amid concerns the power industry may still not be on the right track.

Energy Minister Megan Woods dropped the bombshell in a wide-ranging Cabinet paper that also set out a delay to controversial plans to phase out electricity tariffs aimed at low-usage customers, and a fresh review of institutions governing the industry.

This should be of huge concern. This will increase the chance of power shortages as once politicians meddle in the electricity market, the consequences are generally bad for us.

Radio NZ reports:

A lobbying firm run by a New Zealand First Foundation trustee pushed for a law change on behalf of a property development company, which then donated tens of thousands of dollars to the foundation.

Doug Woolerton, one of two trustees running the secretive foundation which has been bankrolling New Zealand First, took on apartment developer Conrad Properties as a client for his firm, The Lobbyist.

There is nothing wrong with being a lobbyist.

There is nothing wrong with being a party fundraiser.

There is a lot wrong with being both. The two roles should be ethically incompatible.

And there is even more wrong when your clients are also secret donors to the party you fundraise for.

Between July 2018 and January 2019 Conrad Properties, and entities which share the same two directors, donated $55,000 to the foundation in four amounts, which all fell below the public disclosure threshold.

Foundation records show deposits from Equity Growth for $10,000 on 18 July, 2018 and $15,000 from Mayoral Drive the next day. Both those companies have only two directors: Jamie Hutchens and Ben Dearlove of Conrad Properties.

On 15 October, 2018, Conrad Properties donated $15,000 and followed that up on 22 January, 2019 with another $15,000 donation – both were one cent shy of the disclosure threshold.

Let’s look at these three companies.

• Equity Growth Ltd – owned by K A Law Nominees Ltd, Directors Hutchens and Dearlove
• Mayoral Drive Tenancy Trustee Ltd – owned by KA Law Nominees Ltd and Robert Holden, Directors Hutchens and Dearlove
• Conrad Properties – owned by KA Law Nominees Ltd, Directors Hutchens and Dearlove

So the same directors and basically the same shareholders. The directors control the company and would make decisions on stuff like donations. This is important because of the Electoral Act. S207LA states:

(1) A person is guilty of a corrupt practice who directs or procures, or is actively involved in directing or procuring, 2 or more bodies corporate to split between the bodies corporate a party donation in order to conceal the total amount of the donation and avoid the donation’s inclusion by the party secretary in the return of party donations under section 210(1)(a).

(2) A person is guilty of a corrupt practice who directs or procures, or is actively involved in directing or procuring, 2 or more bodies corporate to split between the bodies corporate a contribution to a party donation in order to conceal the total amount of the contribution and avoid the contribution’s inclusion by the party secretary in the return of party donations under section 210(1)(b).

On the facts as they are known, those involved in the donations may have committed a corrupt practice as the three 2018 donations combined are $40,000 and should have been disclosed under both subsections of s210(1). The law explicitly says it is a corrupt practice to avoid disclosure by splitting a donation between two or more body corporates.

No doubt the SFO will be very interested in this. The parties of interest will be both those who directed the splitting (if it occurred) and anyone who procured it (if someone suggested it to them).

The SFO will need to have regard to the specific facts. Sometimes two or more body corporates with similar directors might genuinely donate independently. For example if say Fletcher Building made a $10,000 donation in February and Placemakers (owned by Fletchers) made a $10,000 donation in August, and the decision makers were quite independent, then probably no offence.

But as two of the donations occurred a day apart, it strongly suggests it was one donation split to avoid disclosure.

So what is the penalty for a corrupt practice? A maximum $40,000 fine and/or two years imprisonment.

Now again that while on the facts known, I think it is very likely the law has been broken, only the SFO can determine if a prosecution is warranted, and who should be charged. And a judge or jury would them determine guilt. So my comments are based on what has been reported, but is not saying any particular individual has broken the law. That is again for the SFO to determine.

Newsroom reports:

Former National MP Jami-Lee Ross is one of the four men charged by the Serious Fraud Office in the National Party donations case – alongside a Chinese community leader who reportedly gave $100,000 to the party, and two others.

Name suppression for Ross and his co-accused Zhang Yikun, Zheng Shijia, and Zheng Hengjia was lifted by the Auckland District Court on Wednesday afternoon after the latter trio applied to end the secrecy. Ross’ lawyers did not object. 

Ross was the originator of a complaint in 2018 to the police over a $100,000 donation he had publicly claimed showed his former party leader Simon Bridges was corrupt. The police referred the matter to the SFO but in January it was Ross, not Bridges or other National figures, who was among those charged.

It goes without saying that Ross and the others have yet to have their day in court, and we should hold off assumptions of guilt until after the trial.

But it is worth noting that as far as own goals go, I can’t think of a bigger backfire in NZ political history. You announce that you are going to the Police to lay a complaint about your former leader, and you end up being the one charged with imprisonable offences. You can’t blame this on some conspiracy of political enemies – it is a spectacular own goal.

Legal counsel for the three defendants Zhang, Zheng and Zheng issued a press statement saying:

“Our clients are fully aware of the public interest in this case and the need to respect the integrity of the New Zealand electoral system. It is for this reason they have asked for name suppression to be lifted and for the process surrounding the charges to be open and transparent.

“Our clients are proud New Zealanders and philanthropists. They were urged to follow a process and are now deeply disappointed at being caught up in a donation’s fiasco. They have supported numerous community groups over many years through fundraising activities and donations, including donating to many political parties and campaigns.”

This will be a very interesting case. If a $100,000 donation was illegally split up to avoid disclosure, then there should be serious legal consequences for those involved.

And again if what the SFO alleges did occur, what I would be interested to learn is whose idea was it. Why did they not just make $100,000 donation and have it disclosed? Dozens and dozens of other individuals make donations above the disclosure limit and are happy to be disclosed. The 2017 return for National has several dozen donors listed.

I’m not sure when the trial will be, but I will be very interested in the evidence.

Newshub reports:

New Zealand’s disabled community is outraged a controversial Australian philosopher who justifies infanticide is being allowed to speak here.

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.

“We decided that yes it was a reasonable decision for parents and doctors to make that it was better that infants with this condition should not live,” he says.

I think his views are terrible and horrible. I disagree strongly with them.

But I think he should be allowed to argue for his point of view, and that if people are silly enough to want to pay money to hear his views, they should also be allowed to.

And while the disabled community isn’t planning to stop him coming here they’re refusing to stay quiet.

“He has every right to freedom of speech, they have every right to host him. I have every right to protest and to counter his speech around disability,” Dr Hickey says.

An excellent response. Protest not censorship. Counter his speech with your own.

But some people Newshub spoke to today want his event axed.

“Yeah I don’t know if I’d be welcoming him here,” one person said.

“I think that’s horrific and terrifying,” another said.

Oh dear. A media story now includes the opinions of two anonymous people.

UPDATE: Sky City have cowardly cancelled the booking. As a private venue that is their right, but it shows what a culture of fear that now exists, and how cancel culture is so powerful.

John Armstrong writes:

When is Jacinda Ardern going to stop displaying all the backbone of a spineless jellyfish and start reminding Winston Peters who is the boss?

Ouch. Harsh. True.

Once it it became public that the commission’s findings had been passed to the Serious Fraud Office, Peters’ relinquishing of his status of Deputy Prime Minister ought to have been a mere formality, if only a temporary measure while the SFO determined whether everything was above board or whether prosecutions should follow its investigation.

And this is what Clark did – have Peters stand down.

With his party’s poll rating dropping the floor and Simon Bridges neutering New Zealand First by declaring National won’t be forming any kind of government which includes Peters’ outfit, he is currently a more prickly customer than ever.

He hasn’t got a lot of options. It would seem to be an opportune time to remind him of that. He is hardly in a position to pull down the Government.

That makes Ardern’s failure to talk tough appear even more gutless.

Exactly. The last thing Winston wants is an early election.

The revelation that he was party to the covert photographing and filming of journalists whose investigations of the New Zealand First Foundation have uncovered much to embarrass him and his party is a clear breach of the provisions in the Cabinet Manual covering the conduct expected of ministers of the crown.

To quote that handbook: “At all times, ministers are expected to act lawfully and to behave in a way that upholds, and is seen to uphold, the highest ethical standards. This includes exercising a professional approach and good judgement in their interactions with the public and officials, and in all their communications, personal and professional”.

Having by his own confession confirmed his failure to meet such high standards, Peters then issued a denial that he or his party had anything to do with any such dodgy behaviour.

It might be news to him, but Peters does not command a salary of close to $330,000 plus expenses for the purpose of making fools of the rest of us. Or himself for that matter.

Sadly it seems it does.

CATO report:

The jurisdictions that took the top 10 places, in order, were New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Luxembourg (tied in 6th place), Finland and Germany (tied in 8th place), and Ireland. 

A great reminder that NZ has great institutions and generally good policy settings. Overall we we third for personal freedom and third for economic freedom. So Hong Kong for example might be slightly higher for economic freedom but is lower for personal freedom.

Newshub reported:

A swarm of previously inactive Twitter accounts claiming to be from the US have sprung to life, professing their admiration for embattled Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters. …

Out of nowhere on Saturday, that post attracted attention when nearly 40 Twitter accounts replied to it with the same message of praise for Peters.

“I stand with #winstonpeters – he’s a very good leader and dear to our hearts,” each user tweeted. 

Many of the tweets were posted within minutes of each other and came from users that appear to be bots or compromised accounts. The majority of the users – mostly using images of young women – have less than 20 followers, last tweeted years ago, and say they are located in the US.

I’m reminded of the fact that Winston insisted on having in the coalition agreement that NZ pursue a free trade agreement with Russia.

The Herald reports:

Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft has called for the right to silence to be abolished, saying that “the fact you might incriminate yourself isn’t a reason for not talking”.

Becroft’s comments come in the wake of the brutal assault on a four-year-old in Hawke’s Bay.

Police say the boy, who is in a stable condition at Starship children’s hospital, suffered a sustained beating – possibly over days – at a Flaxmere address in late January and will most likely suffer from brain damage.

Speaking to Newshub this morning, Becroft said: “I think [the right to silence] needs to be abolished or amended.”

My heart agrees with Judge Becroft but my head says if you abolish it for child abusers, then it will end up being abolished for other charges also. So I’m against a law change, and sad to see National backing one.

I wonder if there is a halfway house though such as you have the right not to incriminate yourself for criminal proceedings, but you may not be allowed to raise children if you are a witness to child abuse and refuse to testify?

Interesting stats on school attendance and truancy.

• Regular attendance rate down from 63% in 2017 to 57.7% in 2019
• Unjustified absence rate up from 4% to 4.7%
• Maori regular attendance rate down from 50% in 2017 to 43.8% in 2019
• Pasifika regular attendance rate down from 51.7% in 2017 to 44.7% in 2019
• Asian regular attendance rate down from 73.4% in 2017 to 68.9% in 2019

The attendance rate has been falling since 2015 it seems. I would have thought it would be an educational priority to increase it as if people aren’t at school, then of course they aren’t learning.

Winston repeatedly claims that the NZ First Foundation is based on the National Party Foundation and operates just like it, so nothing to see here. This lie is wrong is so many regards, I thought it would be useful to document all the ways it is wrong.

1. All donations to the National Party Foundation are treated as donations to the National Party for electoral law purposes and disclosed as party donations. The NZF Foundation donations were not.
2. The National Party Foundation’s purpose is to build up a capital fund, own the building National HQ is in, and produce future income for National. It is not to secretly pay day to day expenses of the party. In fact the National Foundation has never spent a cent as far as i know. The NZF Foundation however was paying day to day expenses on behalf of NZF including sending MPs to the races.
3. No donations for the National Party are siphoned off into the Foundation without the knowledge of the donor. NZF donors had their donations put into the NZF Foundation without their knowledge.
4. The National Foundation is transparent and well known with a website here. Major donors are no secret – they are listed on the wall of National House. NZF Foundation donors were apparently even hidden from the NZF Board and President and Treasurer.
5. The National Foundation is under the control of the National Party and chaired by the Party President. The NZF Foundation is not under their board’s control and many board members claim they know nothing about it.

The 1st bolded point is the key one. And this is the point on which the Electoral Commission has concluded NZ First has broken the law by not declaring donations. But the other points are salient also. Apart from the fact they are both called foundations, they are like chalk and cheese in terms of how they operate.

UPDATE: The Serious Fraud Office has just announced they have launched an investigation into the NZ First Foundation. Tick tock.

Newsroom reports:

New Zealand will emit a million more tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2020 than previously forecast, new figures from the Ministry for the Environment show.

The 2019 edition of the biennial climate change report, mandated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, contains new projections with a gloomier outlook for the country’s greenhouse emissions. While the 2017 report had forecast 79.96 million tonnes of gross CO2 equivalent emissions in 2020, the new numbers predict 80.93 million tonnes for this year.

“The report says the two big drivers of emissions growth in New Zealand are land transport and the dairy sector,” Russel Norman, executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand, told Newsroom. “The Government has virtually no policy to reduce emissions from the transport sector and nothing to reduce emissions from the agriculture sector – nothing regulatory or price-wise. It’s hardly surprising that we’re not making progress.”

The Government is good at talking the talk but once again very bad at walking the walk.

Newsroom reports:

The SFO’s wording for the joint deception charges says: “By deception or without claim of right directly or indirectly obtained for the National Party possession of, or control over, any property, namely a $100,050 [for the 2018 charge] donation made to the National Party between June 1, 2018 and June 8, 2018 (“the 2018 donation”) in circumstances where the identity of the donor was not disclosed in the National Party’s Annual Return of Party Donations.”

The SFO describes the offending over the donations in these words: “The defendants adopted a fraudulent device, trick or stratagem whereby the … donation was split into sums of money less than $15,000 and transferred into bank accounts of eight different people before being paid to, and retained by, the National Party.”

I have said previously that I suspected this may have happened once charges were laid. It is clearly illegal. We actually have a comprehensive law which specifically forbids doing this to avoid disclosure. It is good those involved have been charged.

The political party generally has no way of knowing the ultimate source of a donation, hence the law requires the person making (or transmitting) the donation to identify anyone who has contributed to it. The SFO alleges this did not happen in this case.

For the fourth person’s charge of misleading the SFO, the charging document says: “In the course of complying with a requirement … of the Serious Fraud Act 1990 supplied information knowing it was false or misleading in a material particular.”

The SFO says of that charge that this defendant told investigators a $100,000 sum transferred to their account was a deposit for a building on another person’s property – when the money had been intended as a donation to the National Party. Further, in 2019 the defendant created, signed and back-dated a contract to that end, when no real contract for that work existed. The office alleges the made-up contract copied wording from an unrelated contract.

That sounds very interesting. The offence has a maximum penalty of $15,000 and/or one year imprisonment. Lying to the SFO is a very bad idea.

The SFO appears to have charged the four defendants for deception under the Crimes Act, rather than just the Electoral Act. That has a maximum imprisonment of three years jail as opposed to merely a $40,000 fine under the Electoral Act.

So the SFO is really throwing the book at this, which is great. For far too many years electoral law breaches have not been prosecuted. These prosecutions may serve as a valuable deterrent.

This suggests the investigation into NZ First and its Foundation will be very robust also. Good.

Some interesting stats found under the OIA about asylum claims.

The most frequent claims come from China, India, Sri Lanka and Iran which seems logical as they all have situations where people do fear persecution and death.

But I was surprised there were claims from citizens of countries where it is most unlikely. This includes:

• Czech 17
• Hungary 18
• Samoa 6
• Slovakia 5
• Tonga 6
• US 5

Overall around 1/4 to 1/3 of claims are successful.

Douglas Murray writes:

Recent analysis by the Tax Payers Alliance (TPA) proves the trend.  Its scrutiny of appointments to public bodies or quangos over the last decade breaks down appointees by declared political activity. Over the last decade Labour appointees exceeded Conservatives in almost every year.

Even in 2018-9 there were 54 appointees who declared significant political activity in the Labour party as opposed to 36 who said the same about the Conservative party. Given some of the other numbers over the decade it is surprising the Conservative presence was so high. But it is also a demonstration of a pathetic and craven oversight by three consecutive Conservative governments.

The Conservatives have been in power for 10 years, yet they’re still appointing Labour activists to more boards than their own people.

I suspect we see some of the same here. National often appointed ex Labour people to boards, but you never see the same in reverse unless it is a Bolger like figure who is there just to blunt attacks from the opposition.

National in Government supported Mike Moore to the WTO and Helen Clark to UNDP. Can’t imagine the same being done in reverse.

Which brings me to the third excuse of the party faithful. “We just can’t find people willing to be put forward” they say. To which – assuming that is true – one might pertinently ask “And why might that be?”

One reason is because of something like what happened to Toby Young during the weakest days of the Theresa May minority government. Readers will remember that over New Year’s Eve 2018 the Conservative government slipped out the news that Young – a prominent, writer, journalist and founder of and campaigner for free schools – was to be appointed as a member of a 15-member advisory board called the Office for Students.  

Now frankly the whole OfS is the sort of entity that shouldn’t exist. If the entire board of the OfS agreed as one to do something bold it would still merely land as a recommendation to sit as a paper on a ministerial desk and possibly provide a blueprint for future consideration and action. I am amazed that Young wanted anything to do with such a eunuch-like body.

But the Left went for him when it discovered one of its toys might land in his hands. They picked his life apart, found some sophomoric tweets from a decade earlier and destroyed him in public view. During the ensuing firestorm the government allowed Young to step down from the role he had not started. So it isn’t exactly difficult to work out why Right-wing, or even just vaguely conservative people, might not find the whole appointments thing attractive.

Well here is a thought. I would think that the present government has no more than three to six months to enact it. Flood the public sector with Right-of-centre cultural and political figures.  Change the weather. Re-centre the culture. If they don’t do it now they never will, and the frit-ness of the last decade will remain the default position of this one.

As well as all the other appointments the Conservatives should also focus on making appointments that enrage their opponents. To demonstrate that the era of Clegg-ism and May-ism is over. Appoint Toby Young – and worse – to meaningful, “damaging” roles. Watch the Left scream and stamp their feet once more. At which point we can all turn round to them and say “Well, perhaps you should have won a majority of 80 at the last election”. And “Isn’t this what you would do?”

Boris might do it. The screaming alone should make it worthwhile. First though he needs to move the House of Lords to Birmingham.

Radio NZ reports:

Assistant Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the New Zealand First Foundation – which faces investigation from the SFO – has nothing to do with her or Winston Peters’ role in her Cabinet.

So we have it on the record. False donation returns and false election returns are not a barrier to a role in Cabinet.

In the latest development last week, NZ First leader Winston Peters claimed photos taken of investigative journalists Guyon Espiner (RNZ) and Matt Shand (Stuff) had been taken by a party supporter – after earlier saying “we took them [the photos]”.

Speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report today, Ardern kept her distance from the whole affair, saying none of it was a matter for her. …

She was asked directly whether – considering the fact he was in her Cabinet and was the deputy Prime Minister and stood in for her when she was unavailable – it was truly not a matter for her.

She was also asked whether Peters’ conduct met the threshold required by the Cabinet manual of upholding the highest ethical standards.

“It is not conduct I’ve been engaged in. No, I don’t see these things as being explicit to the Cabinet manual, which is the conduct of how we run the government,” she said.

Ardern is flat out wrong her, and effectively she is saying the Cabinet Manual is no longer worth the paper it is written on. Let me quote sections 2.55 and 2.56

The Cabinet Manual is explicit (ie no wriggle room) that the requirement to behave to the highest ethical standards does not just apply to Ministers in their ministerial capacity but also in their wider political capacity.

So Ardern is either lying about the Cabinet Manual only being about “the conduct of how we run the Government” or she doesn’t know what it says. You can decide which one is more likely.

Stuff reports:

Four members of an international drugs syndicate that attempted to smuggle $20m worth of cocaine into New Zealand have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 27 to 14 years.

​The men, a Serbian, a Croat and two Australians, were sentenced at the High Court in Rotorua on Tuesday for the audacious plot that involved submersible scooters, gym bags stuffed with cash and the use of container ships as unwitting drug mules. 

It remains the biggest seizure of cocaine in New Zealand history and, it was revealed in court, was the syndicate’s third importation into the country.

Croatian Mario Habulin was sentenced to 27 years and six months, Serbian Deni Cavallo was sentenced to 23 years and Australians Matthew John Scott and Benjamin Northway received sentences of 24 years and eight months and 14 years and nine months respectively. 

Fairly decent terms.

A cultural report cited by Justice Powell revealed Habulin “took a dim view of the New Zealand prison system compared to the French prison system”.

Powell, however, dismissed Habulin’s concerns cited in the report, including that he would not be able to access education while in prison and run ultra-marathons, as he had in the French system. 

Oh poor diddums.

John Armstrong writes:

What chance of Shane Jones prising the seat of Northland from the tightly-clenched grasp of the National Party at September’s general election?

In short, not much.

Jones is confronted with a simple, but ugly equation — one that he will never be able to come up with enough numbers sufficient to solve it.

National’s majority in Northland at the 2017 election was a relatively slim one — less than 1400 votes. That figure is very deceptive, however.

That is because of what might be termed the “Winston factor”. The sly, cunning but seemingly ageless fox of New Zealand politics captured the Northland seat in a byelection in 2015. National won it back at the general election two years later.

Such is Peters’ popularity, persona and all-round impact on any scenario in which he chooses to make himself a player that trying to draw comparisons from voting statistics pertaining to him with those of any other politician is both bogus and meaningless.

The way the cookie crumbled in terms of the distribution of the electorate vote in Northland in 2017 has little to relevance to what might or will happen in the seat in 2020. Except for one thing. That Peters slid to defeat by 1400 votes suggests that Jones, who is still an apprentice to the maestro, will struggle to do any better.

I agree with Armstrong.

The best way to analyse the seat is look at the party vote. Voters in Northland now know a vote for Shane Jones will be a vote for a Labour-Green-NZ First Government. Very few National voters will vote for Jones knowing doing so would make it more likely National remains in opposition.

Last election in Northland National for 46.4% and ACT 0.5% so say 47% voted CR and the vast majority will not vote for Jones.

The left parties were Labour 30.1%, NZ First 13.2% and Greens 6.0% so 49.2%. So in theory Jones could win if he picks up 95% of the Labour, NZ First and Green party voters. But that is a heroic assumption.

Also add to that the NZ First party vote in Northland is likely to be lower after their decision not to go with National.

So all up, it is mathematically possible but very unlikely Jones can win.

There is another crucial difference. In 2015, Andrew Little, Labour’s then leader, hinted that supporters of his party were free to lodge a protest vote wherever they thought best.

No sooner had Jones confirmed last Monday that he will be New Zealand First’s candidate in Northland than Jacinda Ardern was all but ruling out an electoral pact with her coalition partner — even one of the unwritten variety like that between National and ACT in Epsom.

Her language left a small amount of wriggle room should she have a change of mind, but otherwise it was a pretty definitive statement and will be read as such.

Without any help from Ardern’s quarter, Jones’ candidacy amounts to little more than a flag-waving exercise. 

With NZ First under SFO investigation, will Jacinda really want to endorse Jones in the seat?

Stuff reports:

In 2010, a Kiwi woman’s love of Coca-Cola made news all around the world. 

Natasha Harris, a mother of eight, drank up to 10 litres of the ‘Classic’ soft drink a day – a habit that ultimately contributed to her death. 

An inquest into the “unusual circumstances” surrounding her death was launched in 2012.

The case raised many questions about soft drinks, such as whether there should be warnings on the labels, or whether caffeine restrictions should be introduced.

The problem isn’t Coke. The problem is drinking 10 litres a day of it. That’s mad.

Drink 10 litres of milk a day and you’ll stuff yourself up. The human body can only process around 15 litres of water a day so even if she was drinking just water she’d be close to damaging herself from it.

If you really need to warn people not to drink 10 litres of coke a day, then we’ve become a society of imbeciles.

The Daily Mail reports:

A couple have miraculously walked away from a horrific car accident captured on dash-cam just weeks after their five-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer.

Regan and Rachel Cunliffe were heading home to Kaukapakapa from a medical appointment in Helensville, north-west of Auckland, when an oncoming truck lost control of its trailer on the State Highway 16. 

Video footage shows the couple approach the bend in the road as smoke billowed from the back wheels of the heavy cargo. 

Mr Cunliffe, who was behind the wheel, told Daily Mail Australia he drives the road ‘all the time’ and usually travels along the corner twice a day.

The dashcam footage is terrifying. Thank God Regan kept his cool and helped prevent it from being far worse.

The car accident comes just weeks after the Cunliffe family learnt their son Theo has cancer.

The five-year-old was diagnosed with leukemia on January 9.

A Give A Little page has been created on behalf of the family to relieve the financial burden following the diagnosis and car accident.  

‘For his family it’s a big adjustment and there are lots of unexpected costs,’ the page says.

‘They will need to get a car to manage Theo’s hospital visits and continue to look after their three older kids.

Regan and Rachel are having a very tough time. If you can help them out, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. Rachel incidentally is the web designer for Kiwiblog and Regan manages advertising for it.