Joe Biden has said his Vice-Presidential running mate will be a woman. If he is elected, then the US will have its first female VP.

The favourites in the prediction markets are:

1. Kamala Harris, junior Senator for California, aged 55: 29%
2. Amy Klobuchar, senior Senator for Minnesota, aged 60: 26%
3. Stacey Abrams, former minority leader of Georgia House, aged 46: 15%
4. Elizabeth Warren, senior Senator for Massachusetts, aged 70: 9%
5. Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan, aged 48: 9%
6. Tammy Duckworth, junior Senator for Illinois, aged 52: 6%

The closest state in 2016 was Michigan. Also Minnesota and Georgia within 5%. So Whitmer could be interesting but she isn’t hugely popular in her home state.

People have joked that Biden appeals to black voters so he needs Kamala Harris to appeal to guilt ridden white liberals.

Klobuchar comes from a key region and is popular in her home state. I’d probably pick her as the favourite.

The Taxpayers’ Union has released a paper with recommendations for the Government’s economic response to Coronavirus. The summary is:

1. Provide all New Zealand employees with one month of sick leave in addition to existing rights for the rest of 2020, paid for by the taxpayer;
    
2. Use buyouts rather than bailouts. Taxpayer funds paid must be in return for the Crown taking a significant/majority or total shareholding;
    
3. Scrap the 2020 increase to the minimum wage — but if the Government insists on going ahead, have it meet the costs to employers for the next 18 months;
    
4. Fund unlimited childcare for health workers, aged care workers, and Police staff for the next 18 months;
    
5. Partner with Progressives, Foodstuffs and Uber to make grocery delivery free;
    
6. Give lump-sum payments to taxpayers by retrospectively cutting the bottom tax rate from 10.5% to 5% for the 2019/2020 tax year;
    
7. Expand ‘Winter Energy Payments’ to begin immediately and continue through winter 2020; and
    
8. Suspend interest and penalties for late tax payments from employers.”

This may be the only time you see the Taxpayers’ Union calling for a massive boost in spending.

The key is that it should be smart spending, which will directly help affected families and businesses.

This is a serious post.

I think consideration should be given to forming a Government of National Unity, as was the case in WWII. Around 2,000 NZers a year died in WWII and we could see the same or higher here. Plus the economic and system shocks will be like nothing we have seen since WWII.

I’m generally a fan of having an Opposition, but I think in a time of crisis, it would be better to have the most talented people making decisions. If National and Labour Ministers can agree on measures, I’d have greater confidence in those measures than ones from one side of the ideological divide.

So what I’m proposing is:

1. Pass a law delaying the election 12 months (needs 75% of Parliament)
2. Form a Government with all parties willing to serve until 31 March 2021
3. Form a “COVID Cabinet” that can make decisions on behalf of the normal Cabinet

Who would be my pick for the “COVID Cabinet”

1. Jacinda Ardern, PM
2. Simon Bridges, Deputy PM
3. Winston Peters, Foreign Minister
4. Grant Robertson, Finance
5. Paula Bennett, Economic Development & Recovery
6. James Shaw, Defence & Civil Defence
7. David Parker, Attorney-General
8. Michael Woodhouse, Health

So three from Labour, three from National and one each Greens and NZ First.

I’d also co-opt if I could the Mr Fixits from the last two Governments (Steven Joyce and Michael Cullen (health allowing) as advisers.

Joscha Bach writes:

You have all seen a version of this curve of COVID-19 case loads by now:

What all these diagrams have in common:

1 They have no numbers on the axes. They don’t give you an idea how many cases it takes to overwhelm the medical system, and over how many days the epidemic will play out.

2 They suggest that currently, the medical system can deal with a large fraction (like maybe 2/3, 1/2 or 1/3) of the cases, but if we implement some mitigation measures, we can get the infections per day down to a level we can deal with.

3 They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns as we are currently observing them in China and Italy. Instead, we let the infection burn through the entire population, until we have herd immunity (at 40% to 70%), and just space out the infections over a longer timespan.

The lack of numbers is the big issue. He does some estimates for the US. Basically they are:

1. 924,000 hospital beds in the US
2. 100,000 ICU beds of which 30,000 might be available
3. 170,000 ventilators available
4. 20% of COVID-19 cases require hospitalisation
5. 6% of COVID-19 cases require a ventilator
6. Range for infection rate is 40% to 70%, assume halfway 55%
7. That means 180 million infected in US
8. Those who need ventilators stay in hospital for four weeks

This then produces this graph:

That line at the bottom is the number of respirators available. At the peak three million people will need 170,000 respirators.

So even if you flatten the peak of the curve by two thirds you’ll still have 830,000 people in the US needing respirators who can’t get them.

To not have the number of patients needing a respirator exceed those available, you need to spread the curve over 10 years, instead of one.

Now this is ballpark estimates. It is now from a health authority. But what it does show is that we should not think flattening the curve by itself won’t still lead to huge numbers not being able to access necessary hospital care.

The model is quite sensitive to the length of the stay in the ICU. If we get that down, fewer people will need these resources simultaneously, and the peaks of the curves will come down. We may be able to fight the inflammation during pneumonia, and reduce the number of critical cases. The available medical resources will increase over time to deal with the need. Regulations will be dropped, new treatments will be explored, and some of them will work. At some point in the near future, we may have to blow into a tube before we enter an airplane or an important public building, and a little screen tells us within seconds if our airways hold COVID-19, H1N1 or the common flu. But the point of my argument is not that we are doomed, or that 6% of our population has to die, but that we must understand that containment is unavoidable, and should not be postponed, because later containment is going to be less effective and more expensive, and leads to additional deaths.

Now containment is not self-quarantine, it is far more than that:

There will be some countries that do not have the necessary infrastructure to implement severe containment measures, which include widespread testing, quarantines, movement restrictions, travel restrictions, work restrictions, supply chain reorganization, school closures, childcare for people working in critical professions, production and distribution of protective equipment and medical supplies. This means that some countries will stomp out the virus and others will not. In a few months from now, the world will turn into red zones and green zones, and almost all travel from red zones into green zones will come to a halt, until an effective treatment for COVID-19 is found.

Flattening the curve is not an option for the United States, for the UK or Germany. Don’t tell your friends to flatten the curve. Let’s start containment and stop the curve.

I’m hoping this isn’t necessary but hope is not a good basis for decision making. The numbers are compelling.

Stuff reports:

People calling Healthline for advice about coronavirus are waiting up to three hours to get through. …

Kapiti Coast man Rob Heaney-Yeatts arrived back in New Zealand on Sunday last week after a two-week holiday in the Philippines.

He called Healthline on Saturday and Sunday to check if people who arrived back in the country a week ago had to self-isolate. He was on hold for three hours before the call was disconnected.

“I’ve been on hold for between one and three hours every time I’ve called, with the line eventually being cut. Now all I get is a ‘sorry we can’t take your call’ reply,” he said.When Stuff called Healthline on Sunday afternoon, they were greeted with an automated message: “Welcome to Healthline. If you have a life-threatening emergency, hang up now and call 111. We are responding to the coronavirus and your call may take longer to answer.”

The next time Stuff called an automated message said to call back later.

This is a very serious problem. All the advice is to ring Healthline, rather than go see your GP. But if people can’t get through to Healthline, the system falls over.

Obviously the Government needs to ensure Healthline get more staff as soon as possible. It could be worth considering approaching doctors and nurses who have retired in the last few years. Am sure many would be happy to help.

Dick Griffin writes:

We all lost a man of extraordinary consequence this week.

Rob Fenwick transcended the political divide and the bickering nonsense of party positioning.

His determination to bridge the posturing and focus on real action that may, in time, ameliorate the damage to our environmental heritage was unremitting.

On Tuesday his very personal campaign ground to a halt. This extraordinarily articulate, empathetic, commercially nimble and complex man was finally overwhelmed by cancer. He died at his Remuera home in the loving company of his wife and daughters.   …

His contribution to the social, commercial and environmental mores of our nation was extraordinary.

I have been fortunate to cross the paths of a remarkable range of dedicated and committed men and women but for me, and dare I say an extraordinarily diverse range of New Zealanders, Rob was in a league of his own. …

His intrinsic joy of life was the hall-mark of the man who earned the respect of all who crossed his path. Washington politicians, European royalty and the grumpy Duke of Edinburgh were all charmed by the seemingly mild-mannered but quietly assured New Zealand environmental lobbyist.

So: Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, Knight of Justice and Chancellor of the Order of St John, member of the Business Hall of Fame, Distinguished Fellow of the institute of Directors, Chair of Antarctica New Zealand, Chair of the Fred Hollows Foundation, Chair of the Sustainable Development movement, holder of the Blake medal for sustainable wildlife protection and much loved by the Ngati Whatua Orakei who will host his farewell on Saturday. The list does go on and includes Chair of the World Wide Fund for Nature, founder of Living Earth deputy chair of TVNZ etc … but I hope the point is made.

I was fortunate enough to have met Rob a few times. He was a great New Zealander who showed that concern for the environment is something all New Zealanders care about, not just certain political parties.

Worth also reading the full article for Griffin’s recounting of the larrikin side of Sir Rob.

I’m much more satisfied with the Government’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic than I was a week ago.

I am still unsure about whether self quarantine is sufficient, as opposed to a travel ban. Questions I have are:

1. Will there be legal sanctions for people who arrive and don’t self-quarantine for 14 days?
2. Will there be regular checks on people to make sure they are in self-quarantine?
3. If at home, does this mean their family must stay at home also?
4. Will incoming travelers have to fill in a declaration saying they agree to self-quarantine and providing details of where they will do it?
5. If so, will such declarations be checked at airports, and if not satisfactory, entry denied?

Now what I find interesting is what a radical departure the measures announced over the weekend were, compared to what the Government was saying during the week.

Take the issue of public events such as Pasifika and the March 15 memorials. The PM kept repeating that the advice is that there is no community transmission in NZ, so no need to cancel them. Then at the weekend both of them were cancelled at basically they very last minute? Why? There still has not been any known community transmission, so the underlying data around that hasn’t changed. What changed is the analysis.

Basically the Government worked out that if they allowed the events to continue, and it later turned out someone with Coronavirus attended and infected others, they’d be blamed. They’d probably lose the election on this. That’s not just my view, but former Labour staffers on Twitter were saying much the same and calling for tougher restrictions otherwise the Government would lose the election.

Now look this isn’t a bad thing. Having a Government respond to public pressure is often a good thing. We saw it with the Key Government who did a u-turn within 48 hours on Syrian refugees as it became apparent their initial stance would damage them politically.

The larger point I’m trying to make is that those who argue these decisions are based purely on health advice are either naive or dissembling. They have tried to stop any criticism of the Government by saying you can’t have a contrary view unless you are an expert in public health, as the Government is merely following the health professionals.

Well I am not an expert in public health but I am an expert in how Government and political decision making works. And the notion that everything the Government has decided is merely implementing the recommendations of the Director-General of Health and his staff is farcical.

Don’t get me wrong – they are an invaluable source of information, but they will be providing options and information. They will spell our benefits and risks, but the Ministers decide what the right mix is, and part of that calculation is of course political.

If you were not worried about the economy or politics, and your only aim is to minimise Coronavirus in NZ you would have three weeks ago closed all borders, closed all schools and ban all public events. But that would have had a huge economic and political impact.

On the travel restrictions just a few days ago the Government was saying there was no need to ban travel beyond China and Iran. Then on Saturday it was a “soft ban” on travel from every country on Earth (bar Pacific Islands). Why? Did any new data come out that was inconsistent with what the Government knew four days earlier? The exponential rate of infection has been known for well over a week. Going from 5 to 6 confirmed cases in NZ is not why you’d go from very lax restrictions to very tight.

Basically it was public pressure. More and more people were saying the response wasn’t tough enough, and more and more other Governments were taking stronger measures. This left the Government in desperate danger of being blamed for further infections, so they came out with a much much tougher package, despite the fact the known facts hadn’t changed in the last few days.

Now again this is not a bad thing. I’m not saying the Government doesn’t care about minimising the numbers infected. If National were Government,. they’d be making the exact same calculations. What I’m saying it those who have argued you shouldn’t criticise their decisions were dead wrong. If it wasn’t for such criticism (and no I am not including myself, as criticism from me doesn’t count) then it is less likely they would have taken these stronger measures.

Oh and on a final different note, very unimpressed with the Australian who flew to Wellington despite suspecting he had Coronavirus and was awaiting the results of a test.Why the hell couldn’t he wait until he had the test results?

Stuff reports:

The Labour Party has put the contested Manurewa candidate selection process on hold amid complaints about the process.

Sitting MP Louisa Wall is being challenged by two others, lawyer Arena Williams and Ian Dunwoodie, who stood against Wall when she first won selection in 2011 after the retirement of George Hawkins.

The selection had been scheduled for Saturday March 21.

But after considering complaints, the Labour Party governing executive body, the New Zealand Council, has delayed it.

Party president Claire Szabo said the delay would be for a short period of time “while we assess the process around the selection”.

It is understood the complaint centres on newly signed up party members and whether some live outside the electorate.

The three way battle is looking to be most interesting.

Sadly I think Louisa Wall is unlikely to retain the nomination. For reasons that have never been clear to me, she is massively offside with the parliamentary leadership. She was the only experienced female MP not given a Executive or leadership role.

Dunwoodie has considerable local support with members, especially the old Hawkins loyalists. He could well win the floor vote and some of the LEC vote.

Arena Williams is supported by the party leadership. She was appointed to the Waitemata DHB at age 30 by Cabinet, which is almost unheard of for a DHB appointee. So this shows she is very good mates with one or more Ministers, and I think also the PM.

So Williams likely to get most or all of the head office vote.

Can’t predict who will win. Wall has some support. If she is knocked out, then it might depend on who here supporters end up voting for.

Nā Ward Kamo writes:

Here’s the thing: having grown up with Māori criminals, I don’t much care for their life choices. You kill, you go to prison. You deal hard drugs, you go to prison. You bash your wife and kids, you go to prison. These people know right from wrong. They know that their choices may end them up in prison. And if you don’t believe me, ask them.

I care about that brutalised seven-year-old and the life path her murderous father set for her. In the lead up to that almost inevitable killing of her mother, her father was a wife-beating, hard-drinking, serial-womanising thug. Her life was punctuated by the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of those her father brought around for parties – Once Were Warriors was effectively her life story. She was a victim of crime. And yes, she went on to victimise, by committing murder.

Unfortunately we’ve become criminal-focused and not victim-focused. We speak in horror that 50% of male prisoners are Māori. And we’re now beginning to speak of the fact that 65% of the female prison population is Māori. Is it a crisis? Only if we consider that for every prisoner, we have multiple victims of their crimes. The number of Māori prisoners does signal a crisis – a crisis for their victims and for our Māori communities.

We are disproportionate victims of crime – 30% more likely to experience theft and damages offences, almost twice as likely to experience property crime, and nearly three times more likely to experience repeat violent interpersonal offences. It gets worse.

Māori women make up just 7% of our country’s population, but 20% of all assault victims. And if that doesn’t cause you to sit up, perhaps this next number will. Of the 58 children killed in their family homes between 1990 and 2014, 35 (60%) were Māori.

For those of you who want to blame colonisation as the cause, tell that to the victims’ whānau – they’ll spit in your face and tell you it was a drug-addled alcohol-addicted useless Māori father that murdered their child. These men should be grateful for prison, in comparison with the justice meted out in our old Māori ways.

Prisons are not a failure. Māori men and women who commit crime are a failure.

Blaming the system and colonisation rather than blaming the criminals is so common, it is refreshing to see someone speak plainly.

We’ve watched the parties that start on a Thursday night and finish Sunday. We’ve been to homes and watched as they sit in a cannabis-induced haze, where the benefit is prioritised on alcohol and partying at the expense of food, clothing, and schooling. We’ve turned a blind eye to the black eyes.

You see, dealing with whānau like this is hard and horrendously frustrating. We know the Treaty has got nothing to do with it – we come from the same whakapapa or have the same grandparents and tīpuna and don’t behave like this. And that’s because of personal choices.

Wow, not blaming the Treaty.

I know first-hand the brutal lives of many Māori criminals and I know that too many of them have been victims of crime, neglect, and violence in their childhood. These root causes have been generations in the making, and no one government can be blamed.

But to focus on prisons as being the problem for Māori borders on absurd. To suggest less prison equals less crime is preposterous. The problem is the victimisation of Māori by our own.

Prisons provide welcome relief for those brutalised by their loved ones on a daily basis – they serve these victims of crime. They may also be a place where we can begin the long road to addressing the issues that led to time behind bars – but I doubt that – if they did we wouldn’t need them.

Exactly – prisons are about protecting victims.

A lack of education, poor life, financial and social skills, hand-in-hand with poor parenting, are at the root of crime. The solutions involve support to the parents of at-risk kids. We must ruthlessly address these issues early, and, as whānau, demand the resources to keep these kids at school, and even, if necessary, to keep their parents away from them.

Crime will not end with more prisons. And nor will fewer prisons end crime. Crime will end within our whānau and the choices we make.

Make this guy Minister of Corrections.

Jacinda Ardern just announced:

• All incoming travellers to NZ (except from Pacific Islands) after midnight Sunday must self-quarantine for 14 days. Not clear if there will be any legal obligation to do so or a penalty for not complying. This includes returning NZ citizens. So it isn’t a hard ban, but a soft ban. Hopefully will be effective.
• People travelling to the Pacific Islands will need to be medically checked
• Cruise ships asked not to come here until after 30 June
• Economic package to be announced Tuesday
• Restrictions on public gatherings will be announced at some stage also

Good to see the Government has finally realised the previous measures were grossly inadequate. Hopefully these new measures will help flatten the curve so our health system copes.

I’ll be interested in details of the self-quarantine. Will people have to register where they self-quarantine? Will they be checked up on? Will there be sanctions for non compliance?

Some fascinating research from Lord Ashcroft:

 Last month I polled over 10,000 people, paying particular attention to those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019. We have also conducted 18 focus groups in seats Labour lost, with people who have moved away from the party (often feeling that the party had moved away from them). The report includes extensive quotes from these discussions, since they explain Labour’s predicament better than any analyst could. They are all the more powerful when you consider they come from people who were voting Labour until very recently and probably never expected to do otherwise.

We also polled over 1,000 Labour Party members, and conducted focus groups with members of the party and of Labour-supporting trade unions, to see how the Labour movement’s understanding of the election differs from that of the electorate at large and whether – and how far – they think the party needs to change.

So this is gold standard research. A poll of over 10,000 voters, 18 focus groups and polls and focus groups of members as well as voters.

From election night on, senior Labour figures have argued that the result was all about Brexit – with the implication that their lost voters will be back in force once that issue is off the agenda. While there is no doubt that Brexit played a huge part in the election, Labour would be wrong to draw too much comfort from that. Yes, many voted to “get Brexit done.” But they also thought Labour’s policy of renegotiation and neutrality was simply not credible: it stemmed from hopeless division and proved the party was nowhere near ready for government.

More serious still for these voters was the principle that Labour had refused to implement the democratically expressed wishes of the people, and often of their own constituents. Brexit therefore became a metaphor for a party that no longer listened to them, taking their votes for granted while dismissing their views as ignorant or backward.

So they have to earn those voters back. Currently they are polling 16% behind the Conservatives even with Brexit sort of done.

It was reported that Labour’s official inquiry “exonerated” Jeremy Corbyn from any blame for the election result. I can only assume this was a compassionate gesture for an already-outgoing septuagenarian leader, because no serious reading of the evidence could reach such a verdict. “I did not want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister” topped the list for Labour defectors when we asked their reasons for switching, whether they went to the Tories or the Lib Dems, to another party, or stayed at home. Though a few saw good intentions, former Labour voters in our groups lamented what they saw as his weakness, indecision, lack of patriotism, apparent terrorist sympathies, failure to deal with antisemitism, outdated and excessively left-wing worldview, and obvious unsuitability to lead the country.

He was basically unelectable, as I suspect Bernie Sanders is also.

Labour today seemed to be mostly for students, the unemployed, and middle-class radicals. It seemed not to understand ordinary working people, to disdain what they considered mainstream views and to disapprove of success. 

Sounds like a perfect description of NZ Labour also. They no longer are the party of blue collar workers.

There is ever growing criticism of the Government’response to the Coronavirus pandemic. First we have the Entrepreneur of the Year Nick Mowbray:

New Zealand entrepreneur of the year Nick Mowbray says the government needs to be doing much more to prevent the spread of coronavirus. …

Mowbray said it was “crazy” that there was no thermal testing at Auckland International Airport and that gatherings were still being allowed to go ahead, while cruise ships were being allowed to dock without any extra precautions.

“It is crazy we are not taking stricter measures.”

I just had a friend call me from Samoa. They went through no fewer than three health checks at the airport – one on the plane, and two at the airport. NZ has none, zero.

Mowbray said while border closures would have an impact on tourism, it was necessary.

We are now an outlier in having our border entirely open to every country except China and Iran. Even our territories have stricter conditions with the Cook Islands having 16 countries on the do not enter list. You can see the full list here.

He said there needed to be better controls at the borders, and gatherings like the Christchurch commemorations should be cancelled.

Again we are now an outlier. Almost every country in Europe has banned mass events over a certain size, as has Australia.

Sam Morgan is also critical:

Our Prime Minister must think we’re much smarter than Italy, Japan, China, the UK and everyone else at pandemic control. In letting large gatherings, concerts and public events to go ahead she is ultimately exposing our loved ones and assuming a risk nobody can reasonably measure. We know an infected person attended the Tool concert at Spark Arena on Feb 28th. He’s now in isolation, so hopefully he won’t be at WOMAD.

Iranians are coming to New Zealand for the Christchurch event. The Pasifika event welcomes families living in multi-family living situations who can’t easily self-isolate. Mosh-pits are hotbeds of involuntary fluid swapping.

Ardern has made the wrong call on this one. I’m not happy that she is increasing the risks to the older folks in my life. I urge her to get her head around the wonder of compounding growth rates.

The infections that happen this weekend, and the infections that come from those infections, will be the direct result of risks that were both obvious and easily mitigated.

Pasifika has now been cancelled, but not by the Government. But many other major events going ahead.

Public Health Professor Nick Wilson is a pandemic researcher. Radio NZ reports:

“I think we have, as a country, missed a bit of an opportunity to get this right from the start.”

He said officials should have been collecting the details of all travellers from Asia at the border weeks ago.

Prof Wilson said health workers should then have been following up daily with any travellers who presented symptoms and put themselves under quarantine.

He said the government should even consider barring foreign travellers from countries other than China until more was known about the disease.

“There’s some evidence [that there’s] uncontrolled spread [of the virus] in places like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore.

“We should be thinking about potential restrictions for those travellers as well as.”

He said the government and health officials overall response to the outbreak has been slow.

Some have argued that the Opposition shouldn’t be criticising anything the Government does as this is a health emergency. But the criticism is not just from the Opposition, it is quite widespread.

UPDATE1: Bernard Hickey also very critical:

In the six weeks since the imposition of a travel ban on China in the wake of the first Covid-19 outbreaks, the Government has announced $11 million in tourism marketing and $4m for extra business advisers in regional areas. Yesterday, it announced $12 million of support for drought-hit Northland and the rest of the North Island.

That’s $27m or less than 0.01 percent of GDP in response to what some are calling the biggest macro-economic shock to the global economy since the second world war and the worst drought some parts of the country have seen in 100 years. …

UPDATE2: The Government has finally seen sense and cancelled the large public memorials for the Christchurch mosque shootings tomorrow. Amazed it took them so long, but better late than never. We will have many more opportunities in future to remember the victims of March 15, but hopefully not ones in the middle of a global pandemic.

These are the 538 probabilities for Sanders for each of the remaining races:

1. Hawaii 31%
2. Wyoming 27%
3. Alaska 23%
4. Northern Marianas 20%
5. Rhode Island 17%
6. Guam 13%
7. Oregon 10%
8. New Mexico 10%
9. Wisconsin 9%
10. Puerto Rico 8%
11. West Virginia 8%
12. South Dakota 8%
13. Kansas 7%
14. Nebraska 7%
15. Connecticut 6%
16. Virgin Islands 6%
17. Montana 6%
18. Indiana 5%
19. Kentucky 5%
20. New Jersey 4%
21. New York 4%
22. Ohio 3%
23. Arizona 3%
24. Maryland 3%
25. Pennsylvania 2%
26. Illinois 1%
27. Louisiana 0.7%
28. Georgia 0.7%
29. DC 0.5%
30. Delaware 0.1%
31. Florida 0%

So it is likely he won’t win even a single more state or territory. At best he maybe could win two or three.

This photo from a week ago shows Australian Minister Peter Dutton in Washington DC with Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. As Dutton has been confirmed as carrying the Coronavirus, this has huge implications.

Obviously everyone will be hoping Martin has not been infected, but as she has been in close contact with someone infected, presumably she will be tested immediately.

UPDATE:

I’ve blogged in the past on how much money I have saved as a member of Cherrytree as you can buy almost anything through them for well below normal retail prices.

One issue for some people has been the relatively large membership fee as people have been uncertain if they’ll shop enough to cover the fee.

Well Cherrytree now has a new membership model where you can join for free. There are now three types of membership:

• Silver: Free to join. Up to 25% off RRP. And you can earn points towards gold membership with your purchases.
• Gold: $1,250 1st year fee and then $250 annual renewal fee. Points earned from silver purchases reduce the membership fee. Up to 60% off RRP as prices are only 4% to 11% over wholesale.
• Platinum: Up to 65% off RRP as prices are only 2% over wholesale. Gold members who refer three other people as gold members in a year gain platinum status

So the silver status is ideal for those not sure how much they’ll spend. You don’t get as large a discount, but you have nothing to lose as no up front fee. And the more you spend, the cheaper gold membership becomes.

Gold membership works well with families likely to have some bigger ticket items, so having a baby, home renovating etc.

Also worth noting Cherrytree membership gets you a discount with trade partners such as PlaceMakers, Resene Paints, Beaurepaires and access to all Gilmours Wholesale Food & Beverage North Island branches.

Cherrytree has over 550,000 products from 2,400 brands. You can order everything online or if in Wellington pop into their showroom.

I’m a very frequent and happy customer. I’m not getting paid for this. I just think it is a great business, and have saved masses of money through them.

Any queries you can e-mail the owner Simon, or call them on 0800 Cherrytree.

A must read article by (Lord) Matt Ripley. He states:

In Aesop’s fable about the boy who cried “Wolf!”, the point of the tale is that eventually there was a wolf, but the boy was not believed because he had given too many false alarms. In my view, the Covid-19 coronavirus is indeed a wolf, or at least has the potential to be one. 

What is significant over Lord Ripley declaring this is a real global threat is he has spent his career debunking alarmist claims over global threats. For 40 years he has been saying this is alarmist scaremongering. So for him to now be the one saying, this is a big big issue, well ….

I am known as an obsessive and serial debunker of false alarms. I have been at it for almost 40 years ever since I realised as a science journalist in the 1980s that acid rain was being wildly overblown as a threat to forests (I was right). This scepticism has served me well. I did not believe that mad cow disease would kill hundreds of thousands of people, as some “experts” were claiming in the mid 1990s. In the end just 177 died. Likewise, I refused to panic over bird flu, swine flu, SARS or ebola.

I set out to debunk exaggerated claims about the population explosion, peak oil and peak gas, nuclear winter, the ozone hole, pesticides, species extinction rates, genetically modified crops, sperm counts, ocean acidification and the millennium bug. In every case this made me unpopular and unfashionable, but close to the truth. I said climate change would happen more slowly and with less impact on storms, floods, droughts, sea ice and sea level than even some experts were claiming in the 1990s, let alone the extreme environmentalists, and it has.

So why does he think this is different?

So why don’t I think this hobgoblin is imaginary? First, because lethal plagues have a long track record. From the plague of Justinian to the Black Death to the Spanish flu of 1918 to the HIV epidemic, new diseases have proved they can burn through the human population with frightening efficiency. It’s true we have got better at eradicating infectious diseases through vaccinations, pills and public health, but most viruses are still very hard to cure and some are very easy to catch.

The second reason is that new diseases are often more dangerous than existing ones and this one has jumped from bats, possibly via pangolins. In the past respiratory viruses have generally proved to be low in virulence once they become highly contagious: hence the large number of rhinovirus, adenovirus and coronavirus strains that we call collectively, “the common cold”. Even flu has been relatively less lethal since the special wartime conditions of 1918. But when they first infect our species, viruses can encounter a vulnerable immune system and run riot.

The third reason for alarm in this case is the speed with which Covid-19 has crossed regional and international boundaries. It does seem to have acquired an unusual skill at getting passed on from one person to another, usually not making them so sick that they stay away from meeting other people, which is what prevents ebola causing pandemics, but yet being capable of killing about 1% of people it infects. This is the frightening combination of traits that we have feared might one day arise.

He makes a final point:

Last week Greta Thunberg was still telling the European Parliament that climate change is the greatest threat humanity faces. This week Extinction Rebellion’s upper-class twits were baring their breasts on Waterloo bridge in protest at the billions of people who they wrongly think may die from global warming in the next decade. These people are demonstrating their insensitivity. They are spooked by a spaniel when there’s a wolf on the loose.

So let’s focus on the wolf.

NewstalkZB reports:

A commuter train between Hamilton and South Auckland will finally roll out on August 3, six weeks after initially intended because of the ramifications of coronavirus. …

The train trip would take a commuter travelling into Auckland central business district 2 hours and 20 minutes

So someone doing a daily commute to Auckland would spend 25 hours a week on the train! You would be leaving at 6 am and getting home after 8 pm.

The cost of a one-way smartcard fare from Hamilton to Papakura will be $12.20, with a trip from Hamilton into Auckland CBD costing a total of $18.50 if using an AT HOP card on AT Metro services.

And it would cost you $185 a week.

So the Government has spent $90 million on the basis it believes 300 Hamiltonians will spend $185 a week to commute for 25 hours a week.

There have been some media stories of late about the push by Martin Matthews against his forced resignation as Auditor-General due to the fraud committed by one of his direct reports when he was CE of the Ministry of Transport.

I was unhappy at the time of the resignation that the Wevers report to the Officers of Parliament Committee was not published. It was I guess part of the deal around the resignation.

But as Matthews is trying to relitigate what happened, the report is now in the public domain. It is well worth the read, and leaves me in no doubt that Matthews could not continue as Auditor-General (I have always said he would be fine for other CE roles).

Here’s some extracts:

• Matthews appointed Harrison to a direct report without advertising the role externally, as required by law
• Matthews appointed Harrison for the role despite her not having a degree, and this being listed as essential
• There was no internal audit function at MoT
• On nine occasions staff alerted Matthews of Harrison not following the rules around contracts and payments
• Two senior managers told Matthews the Victorian Police had told them Harrison was a “person of interest” to them. He just accepted her story about it.
• She told the Ministry she didn’t want her photo on the MoT website or any external documents, and this didn’t make Matthew suspicious

Once he was tipped off she had a fraud conviction:

• Took eight days to freeze her ability to approve payments
• Took 10 days to tell his Deputy CE
• Took 17 days to tell the Minister
• Took 17 days to call in the SFO

There’s also lots of detail about lack of basic controls such as Harrison allowed to both initiate and approve payments.

The best line though comes from the response by Sir Maarten to the lawyers for Matthews:

The Acting Chief Legal Adviser told me that she passed a copy of the Victorian Police enquiry over Joanne Harrison as a “person of interest” to Mr Matthews. He says he does not recall seeing the email. Even so, for Mr Matthews to convey a query of this nature to the person in question, and then take her word in response over the matter, without further checking, is a lapse of judgement. I found I was asking myself – “how many “persons of interest” inquiries does a Chief Executive normally receive from a foreign Police authority over direct report managers?” Very few I would suggest, if any at all. If a serious inquiry like this had come into another agency, my expectation is that it would have been referred immediately to the internal auditor. As we know, the Ministry of Transport did not have a such a role established.

This is a killer line. The rarity of being informed one of your direct reports is wanted by the Police is so extraordinary that of course you would initially launch an inquiry, not just ask the manager for an explanation.

I really don’t think Mr Matthews is helping himself by relitigating this issue.

Also very damning is the detailed timeline in Appendix B. It shows staff were in fact pretty diligent at quickly identifying her lack of compliance and time and time again they went to Matthews, and he did nothing substantive.

Stuff reports:

Homeowners could be required to hand their houses over to be redeveloped under a new bill working its way through Parliament.

The Urban Development Bill gives Kāinga Ora Homes and Communities new development and land acquisition powers.

Kāinga Ora Homes and Communities is a crown entity that combines Housing New Zealand, its development subsidiary HLC and the KiwiBuild unit. …

Bill McKay, a senior lecturer in architecture and planning at the University of Auckland, said the bill would give urban development authorities the same powers to seize property as the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) already had.

“If NZTA decides it wants to build a motorway it can just acquire land… there might be negotiations around money but they’re going to get the land.”

The power for the state to take your house away from you is a massive one. I accept there is a need for such powers for things such as motorways as a motorway has to be able to connect up. You can’t really have a route with a house in the middle of it.

But housing developments are different. Giving the state the power to force you to sell your house simply because they want to build a different type of house there is a huge expansion of that power.