So while Winston is having people follow around journalists who report negatively on the Government, a former Cabinet Minister is reporting that shock horror a National MP was at MacDonalds (sic).

Was Clare’s source the same one who happened to see Guyon Espiner and Matt Shand meet the former NZF President?

I think trying to shame an MP for being at McDonalds is silly in the extreme. But as it happens Woodhouse wasn’t there. He was somewhere else where several thousand people could testify he was there.

Clare won’t believe his denials though.

Now as it happens Michael does have brothers who look like him, but no it wasn’t them either.

The only true part of the claim is that Michael’s car was seen outside McDonalds. A party volunteer had borrowed it and she popped in to McDonalds with her school age kids to grab some food.

There were no rosettes and certainly no lollipops, blue or otherwise.

But may I suggest that Government MPs stop photographing journalists meeting sources and stop “reporting” on opposition MPs. It really doesn’t fit in well with Jacinda’s claims of a government of kindness.

Radio NZ report:

NZ First Leader Winston Peters has claimed responsibility for photographs taken of RNZ journalist Guyon Espiner, Stuff reporter Matt Shand and former NZ First president Lester Gray.

The photographs, and a video, were posted on The BFD, a Whale Oil-linked website which has been running stories defending New Zealand First and trying to belittle reporting about the NZ First Foundation donations.

The photos ran with an article criticising the reporting, which Espiner and Shand have both been involved in.

The deputy prime minister has said two reporters were photographed going to a meeting with Gray “to prove that was the sort of behaviour going on”.

When the photographs were raised with him by Magic Talk Radio, Peters said “we took the photographs”.

Jacinda Ardern has repeatedly said her aspiration is to lead a Government with a guiding principle of kindness. And is there anything kinder than having the Deputy Prime Minister arranging to have journalists followed and photographed, to try and expose sources who have been critical of the Government.

Also worth noting the massive silence from the Greens. Let’s imagine the nightmare happened and NZ First had chosen to go with National, and all the revelations about secret donors, secret trusts, policies that benefit donors and finally the Deputy PM (or a proxy) having journalists tailed to expose their sources.

The Greens would by at hysteria level 13 on a 0 – 10 scale. They would be calling it corrupt. Demanding resignations, court action. Calling for a general election. They’d be painting National as equally complicit and corrupt as NZ First for putting up with it. Every day they’d be asking questions in the House about it.

But to protect their baubles of office, the Greens remain silent. At best we’ll get an innocuous press release expressing concern.

The One News Colmar Brunton poll is:

• National 46%, 59 seats
• Labour 41%, 52 seats
• Greens 5%, 7 seats
• NZ First 3%, no seats
• ACT 2%, 2 seats

So National/ACT 61 seats and Labour Greens 59.

The Greens must be terrified that Winston will not only drag NZ First under the 5% threshold, but them also. In the last OMCB pre-election poll they were at 8% and got 6.3% so polling at just 5% means a very high chance they’ll end up under.

Ben Thomas writes:

What follows is an attempt to provide context to some of the questions Peters answered. 

“Is the Serious Fraud Office justified in launching an investigation into your party’s handling of donations and loans?”

Peters did not mention the Electoral Commission’s referral of New Zealand First Foundation donations to the Police at all. By his answer, it sounded as if SFO investigation was his idea. “Having seen the controversy out there” in the past months’ through Stuff and RNZ’s reporting of the Foundation’s affairs, he said, “we had decided, from my consultation with the party itself, that we should request the police’s involvement because they would have the powers to get out the truth.” Finding the leaker was only “one of the matters” that Peters desperately wanted resolved with Police (and now SFO) assistance.

Welcoming an inquiry by a law enforcement agency is a smart PR move – after all, why not welcome it if you have nothing to hide? Peters has embraced the tactic with such enthusiasm, though, it appears to have affected his short term memory. His claim that his party had resolved to seek an investigation into its donations is not borne out by any of his statements prior to the Electoral Commission actually referring the donations to the Police on Monday. 

On Sunday, Peters released a statement saying that he was recommending that the Party’s president make a complaint to the Police based on a “massive breach of party information”. 

When Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking asked Peters on Monday (before the Electoral Commission’s statement) what he was intending to ask Police to do, Peters’ response was “what we can do is get them to trace the person responsible [for the leaks] and charge them because it’s a criminal offence.”  

You almost have to admire the lies when they get this brazen. The reality is they kept saying they had complied with laws at all time and nothing to see here right up until the day the Electoral Commission told them it was referring them to the Police.

“What does the NZ First Foundation do and what was it set up for?”

An excellent question, to quote Peters himself. “A group decided the National Party had a foundation and that we should duplicate that.” But a better question might have been, what is the relationship between the Foundation and the party? This is a key question. If the Foundation operates genuinely independently from the party, then many of the nascent issues raised in the investigation will be solved. But is it independent? 

This should be a key focus of the SFO. We know the Foundation paid expenses incurred by the party or by MPs. It spent $425,000 on stuff ranging from campaign office rent to website expenses to legal advice for MPs to a $5,000 tent at the races. Most of these bills were addressed to Winston Peters or his staff.

So who authorised this spending? Who decided that the Foundation should be asked to pay these expenses and who authorised the expenditure on behalf of the Foundation?

$425,000 is a huge amount of spending. It is hard to imagine that anyone junior could authorise such spending.

Sam Sachdeva also writes:

Decrying a smear campaign against New Zealand First and promising to deliver a message not edited or “contaminated” by outsiders, Peters said nothing he had not already offered up to media throughout the last few months.

The foundation was based on the National Party’s model, he said (an argument vigorously disputed by National); the law was the law, and should be observed as such (a tautology that ignores the more substantive debate about the donations).

Perhaps most interesting was his continued effort to distance himself from the foundation’s creation and operation, noting: “My only involvement then and all the way through was to say at the start, you make sure it’s all legal.”

“I did not receive any money, full stop. I’m not part of the foundation, full stop. And so have I got any information I can proffer to, for example, the police or the Serious Fraud Office? No, because I’ve never seen one of the accounts and that happens to be the truth.”

Again the Foundation spent $425,000 on behalf of NZ First and most of the bills it paid were addressed to Winston personally or his office. The claim his only involvement was to say make sure its legal is of the same nature as his claim he knew nothing about $100,000 from Owen Glenn.

A former press secretary to an Arts Minister tells some truths:

In fact, it’s a stretch to call the arts a “community”. In politics, a community tends to be defined, however broadly, in terms of its interests. Those interests could be based on geography, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, or economic imperatives. The arts are a community more in the sense of the Balkans after the fall of communism – an intractable, internecine turf war based on ancient and obscure grudges.

Ben is probably understating the reality.

This then is the political formula for funding the arts sector: the public hates it, and the arts community hates you for it.

There is no end to how much they believe the taxpayer should be forced to fund them.

This pattern repeated itself over and over again, each layer of the arts community fracturing into smaller and angrier cliques. Helping the NZSO infuriated the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra, helping the APO infuriated other regional orchestras.

The rivalry between the NZSO and APO makes the conflict between Shia and Sunni look like a minor dispute.

A survey of the publishing industry in the US has some moaning there is no progress on diversity in publishing.

If you look at the data you’ll actually see it shows how barmy some diversity activists are, as in fact the data shows the opposite to what they claim. Let’s go by demographic:

• Race. They bemoan 76% of the industry is white. The last US census had 77% white.
• Gender: The industry is 74% (CIS) women.
• Trans: The industry is 97% CIS and 3% non-CIS. That 3% is certainly higher than any population estimate.
• Sexual orientation: The industry is 81% straight and 19% other. The 81% straight is well under the population.
• Disability. 11% of the industry say they have a disability – well in excess of most population estimates

I’m all for a focus on diversity but there are some who get besotted with it and no matter what the data is, will always claim there is a diversity problem and minorities are under repesented.

NewstalkZB reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is defending her deputy, and New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters, amid criticism over donations to his party from the racing industry.

Yes she is defending NZ First having massive secret donations from the racing industry and in return delivering huge financial windfalls to the racing industry with taxpayer money.

Peters, also Minister of Racing, has delivered lucrative benefits to the industry since taking the portfolio’s reins in 2017.

National finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith said this afternoon New Zealanders needed reassurance that there had been no undue influence as a result of the donations.

“We have New Zealand First ministers making large decisions about large spending and all New Zealanders want to be assured about the integrity of the decision-making.”

But Ardern said these sorts of accusations were “not fair”.

“Racing policy, decisions, bills, as with any decision we make, as a Government, goes through considerable scrutiny – no one policy is ever decided by one party, they go through all of us.”

Jacinda needs to read the Labour and NZ First Coalition agreement. It requires Labour to “Support New Zealand First’s Racing policy”. There is no other portfolio which has the agreement requiring the Government to support one party’s entire policy. This shows how massively important it was that NZ First could guarantee to its funders their policies would be implemented.

The New Hampshire results with 91% counted are:

1. Sanders 26%
2. Buttigieg 24%
3. Klobuchar 20%
4. Warren 9%
5. Biden 8%

New Hampshire, like Iowa, is not a representative state. It is 94% White and the Democrats there tend to be more liberal than the rest of the country. So no one was expecting Biden to win or even come 2nd. But 5th with 8% is terrible.

Unless he does amazingly well in Nevada and South Carolina, I think all over for him. Moderates seem to be leaving him for Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Will his strong black support remain? He could be out just before or after Super Tuesday.

Hard to see a path for Warren. The liberal uber progressive vote has gone to Sanders. Warren may leave even before Biden. New Hampshire is her neigbouring state and she got 9%.

Klobuchar could be interesting. 20% is pretty respectable. She had targeted the first two states a lot and far from clear she has resources to compete in the others. But if Biden looks more and more unviable she and Buttigieg will compete for his vote and she may look safer with a proven electoral record.

So I think now down to Sanders, Buttigieg and Klobuchar with Bloomberg the wild card. Bloomberg is now in 3rd place in the national polls.

If all four of them stay in after Super Tuesday, a contested convention becomes more and more likely. Exciting times.

The Independent reports:

Indonesia has introduced a female flogging squad to punish women who violate Islamic law. …

In a separate lashing, a woman who was sentenced to 30 lashes fell unconscious during her punishment for being found “in the company of a man other than her male guardian”.

I’m not sure what is more barbaric – flogging or having it being a crime for a woman to be in the company of a man.

This is the sort of human rights violation that the UN Human Rights Council should be loudly condemning, rather than their fixation on one country.

But will we hear a word?

Well by coincidence Indonesia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council.

Douglas Murray writes in The Spectator:

So it is worth stressing that on the big questions of his time Roger Scruton was right. During the Cold War, he faced an academic and cultural establishment that was either neutral or actively anti-Western on the big question of the day. Roger not only thought right but acted right. Not many philosophers become men of action. But with the ‘underground university’ that he and others set up, he did just that. During the 1970s and 1980s, at considerable risk to himself, he would go behind the Iron Curtain and teach philosophy to groups of knowledge-starved students. If Roger and his colleagues had been largely leftist thinkers infiltrating far-right regimes to teach Plato and Aristotle there would have been multiple Hollywood movies about them by now.

I never knew that about him.

Martyn Bradbury writes:

This is becoming a God damned event horizon black hole and it’ll suck Jacinda down the way it destroyed Helen’s Government.

Forget doing a bloody electorate deal, this will stink to high heaven and if NZ First is DUMB enough to have screwed this up a second time, then it’s the political kiss of death.

You would have thought after the Owen Glenn fiasco NZ First would have been far smarter, to have this immediately passed to the SFO however is a serious political threat.

What the bloody hell have they done?

Winston kicking up a fuss that privileged material has been leaked to the media means jack shit if the material leaked is real and true and enough for the bloody SFO to be triggered into action.

Jacinda can’t be tainted with this, protect the Queen.

Bye bye Winston, it was lovely knowing you.

This is almost like 2008 repeating itself all over again.

Another potentially good sign for Trump. A record high 90% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life. That doesn’t mean they put that down to Trump, but a happy population is less likely to vote for change.

Back in 2011 only 78% said they were satisfied, so a 12% increase is significant.

Eric Crampton talks sense:

I wish then to advance three propositions.

First, Auckland Council might have a better idea about the actual value at stake were it to put up a serious request for proposals and invite bids.

Second, the high downtown land values that could make the case for moving the port also make the case against using the site for a stadium. Stadium maths are worse than Pythonesque – they firmly reach into Douglas Adams territory.

Finally, decisions to move the port should be contingent on just what alternative uses might be found for the port land. Deciding to move the port first, and only subsequently exploring the options for the vacated waterfront, would be a mistake.

Crampton is basically saying it is barmy to decide to move the Port first, without knowing how valuable the land that would be freed up is. That makes total sense.

And the best way to find out is to invite bids. Ask companies to put in a bid saying how much they would pay for the 550,000 square metres of waterfront land.

The case for moving the Port would be rather simple if the Port could really recoup $20 billion by selling the land on which it sits. It would have more than enough money in that case to buy and develop a site elsewhere. The case would be far more difficult if the underlying land were only worth about a billion dollars, as the Port’s CEO has suggested it might be. Deciding to move the Port before finding out what the underlying site is actually worth could lead to regret.

So a sensible way forward – the Auckland as owner of POAL could invite indicative tenders for the land.

Spiked reports:

This week, we have seen the true toll of political correctness. PC isn’t just irritating or stupid. It isn’t just woke students banning sombreros or schools getting iffy about ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. PC destroys lives.

A report into police and council failings in Manchester has found that gangs of predominantly Pakistani men were free to abuse up to 57 girls after chief cops and local officials turned a blind eye to this foul, cruel behaviour. Why did they turn away? Partly out of fear of stoking racial tensions. Partly because they were worried that drawing attention to the grooming and exploitation of mostly white working-class girls by Asian men might ‘incite racial hatred’ and damage multicultural relations.

Sure one should be sensitive to stoking racial tensions. But if the facts are that gangs of Pakistani men were abusing dozens of girls, then preventing crime comes first.

Let’s put it plainly: they sacrificed girls to political correctness; they thought that preserving the ideology of multiculturalism was more important than protecting girls from harm.

Sadly true.

The independent review into grooming and abuse in Manchester in the mid-2000s, published yesterday, makes for grim reading. It says there were up to 57 victims, mostly white girls aged between 12 and 16, and 97 potential perpetrators, mostly men of ‘Asian heritage’. The review makes clear, from some of the evidence it acquired, that some of the abuse networks were made up of ‘predominantly Pakistani men’. That is, similar to Rotherham, Telford and other parts of the UK, this was a case involving what is sometimes referred to as a Muslim grooming gang.

The girls were groomed, sexually abused, plied with drugs and raped. They suffered, in the review’s words, ‘the most profound abuse and exploitation’. But little was done to help them. Their abusers were not brought to justice. And this catastrophic failing was in part fuelled by what the review refers to as Greater Manchester Police’s concerns about ‘sensitive community issues’. As one news report summarises it, the police were ‘keen not to be seen targeting [a] minority group’. As a result of this PC cowardice, of this mad multicultural sensitivity, the abuse continued.

Many of those girls could have been saved from what happened if the Police had acted properly.

The Institute of IT Professionals writes:

Our sector has been advocating very heavily for either IT/digital tech as a standalone WDC, or IT and Engineering as a joint one. Engineering has many of the same structures and challenges as IT, and it makes perfect sense to look after both under one umbrella. We both have very distinct needs that are different from many other industries and if Government is serious about supporting our industry growth, then they need to get this right.

Our industry spoke with one voice, with the heads of the three main tech industry bodies signing a proposal to establish a WDC in a way that would benefit our industry. This was also signed by the head of CITRENZ, the group of heads of computing schools in all polytechnics who offer IT-related qualifications, following a unanimous vote supporting an IT WDC at their last heads of school meeting.

A WDC is a Workplace Development Council which will create qualifications and educational standards.

So WDCs were established to serve their industries. Our industry spoke with one voice and outlined what would work for us and why. But instead, our industry’s concerns have been ignored and IT has been bundled into a WDC including:

Manufacturing and processing, extractives and drilling, transport (including heavy and commercial), postal, warehousing, engineering, and information and communications technology (development and systems engineering) industries

So the group setting qualifications and standards for IT / digital technologies will be the same group that looks after drilling, truck drivers, warehousing, postal workers, aviation, dairy processing, seafood processing and more.

It’s bizarre. The same Council will set qualification standards for IT professionals and seafood processors!

It’s excellent news that the Police have referred on the Electoral Commission complaint about NZ First to the Serious Fraud Office. The Police have a woeful record when it comes to electoral law enforcement, while the SFO have shown much more ability to investigate these issues.

So what offences may have been committed and who may have committed them? We can now answer this question as the Electoral Commission has determined that they believe any donations received by the NZ First Foundation should have been treated as party donations for NZ First.

This is also common sense. The donors thought they were donating to NZ First. Many of them didn’t even know there was a Foundation. So let’s look at the Electoral Act.

• S207B(2) requires those who received the donations to pass it onto the party secretary (or deposit it into a bank account they nominate) within 10 days. This appears to have been broken dozens of times.
• 207LA says it is a corrupt practice to direct or procure a party donation be split between two or more body corporates to conceal the total amount of the donation. This appears to have happened with several donations.
• 207N requires a party secretary to keep proper records of all party donations received by them. Was she aware of the donations?
• 210(1)(a) required all donations over $15,000 to be notified to the Electoral Commission, with the identity of the donor. Were donations split to avoid this?
• 210(6A)(c) requires the number and total of donations between $1,500 and $5,000 to be disclosed.
• 210(6A)(d) requires the number and total of donations between $5,000 and $15,000 to be disclosed. This was not done.
• 210D(2) states that it is a corrupt or illegal practice for a party secretary to file a false return under s210. The returns appear to be false.

So who should the SFO be talking to, and what should they find out?

• Ask the donors who solicited the donation from them
• Ask the donors whether the NZ First Foundation was mentioned to them or known to them
• Ask the donors how the donation was paid, and who provided the payment instructions. Who did they think they were donating to?
• Ask the donors who split their donations between multiple companies why this was done, and who suggested it.
• Find out who controlled the NZF Foundation bank account. Who authorised expenditure from the account on behalf of NZ First?
• Interview the former NZ First President and Treasurer who resigned because they suspected donations were being hidden from them. Who did they seek information on donations from, and what was the response.
• Was the NZF Party Secretary aware of the NZ First Foundation? Was she at the board meeting when it was discussed setting it up.
• Who in NZ First was aware that donations to the party were being given to the Foundation instead?
• Who in NZ First decided that any donations to the Foundation would be hidden from the party and not treated as party donations under the Electoral Act

So lots of stuff for the SFO to investigate. Some of the work may have already been done by the Electoral Commission.

UPDATE: Thought of four other pertinent questions.

• Which board members caucus members and other officials knew of the NZF Foundation, and specifically knew party donations were being paid into it, and expenses being paid out of it?
• Who was the controlling or deciding person who determined that party donations would be paid into the Foundation and used to pay party expenses?
• Were the Auditors aware of the NZ First Foundation when they signed off the donation returns? Did they ask questions about it?
• What was the reason for the Foundation to lend money to the party and for it to be repaid the next day?
• Were the party expenses that were paid by the Foundation included in the NZ First 2017 expense return?

The Electoral Commission has announced:

The Electoral Commission has made enquiries into issues raised regarding the NZ First Party and the NZ First Foundation and their compliance with the requirements for donations and loans.

Based on the information available, we have formed the view that the NZ First Foundation has received donations which should have been treated as party donations for the NZ First Party.

In the Commission’s view, the donations were not properly transmitted to the Party and not disclosed as required by the Electoral Act 1993.

The Commission does not have the investigative powers to form a view about whether this failure to transmit and the non-disclosure means offences have been committed.

These matters have therefore been referred to the New Zealand Police, which have the necessary powers to investigate the knowledge and intent of those involved in fundraising, donating, and reporting donations.

As these matters are now with the Police, the Electoral Commission will not be commenting further.

I blogged a few days ago that there was almost no doubt that electoral donation laws had been broken, and the only question was which ones.

This is a very significant statement. The Electoral Commission could have just said these matters need further investigation. But they have categorically stated it is their belief that donation returns from NZ First broke the law. The job of the Police is to work out who is responsible.

Basically NZ First were running a scheme to launder their donors through their foundation, and it has been declared illegal by the Electoral Commission.

Will the Prime Minister suspend the Deputy Prime Minister as he is now under Police investigation? Of course not.

The Spin Off reports:

No one seriously thought things could stay as they were. RNZ’s music outputs had been subject to reviews, personnel changes, and plenty of outside speculation. Concert FM was beloved by classic music fans but an audience of 170,000 wasn’t enough. And while its reputation as elitist wasn’t entirely fair, there was no doubt that its audience skewed to a certain seniority and privilege. Something had to give. And yet, according to RNZ staffers spoken to by The Spinoff, the scale of the overhaul announced on Wednesday left those affected stunned, baffled, “shellshocked”.

The top lines were these: a new music station for young New Zealanders would spring up. RNZ Concert wouldn’t be killed, not quite. But it would be gutted. An early headline on RNZ used that word – “gutted” – only to be changed within hours to “cut back”. But it’s a gutting, no doubt. Concert is to become an automated round-the-clock station online and on AM – unless parliament is in session. Its FM stereo frequency is to be taken over by a new music station targeting younger, more diverse audiences.

The thinking, as explained by RNZ CEO Paul Thompson, is to “allocate the FM where the bigger opportunity is”; to be “thinking five, 10, 15 years ahead [so] we can connect with younger New Zealanders”.

For the RNZ music team, this looked like a bloodbath: 20 jobs erased, including just about everyone at Concert, and a welter of redundancies, with impacts beyond Concert and into the numerous music curation and storytelling elements that are part of RNZ National.

The luvvies are up in arms on this, including Clark and Cullen who are demanding Jacinda intervene.

But frankly it sounds like Concert FM was bloated. 12 staff to run a frequency which 95% involves selecting a classical piece every 20 minutes or so.

And it is not as if they are dumping Concert FM. They are just automating it and putting it on AM. Those who like it can still listen in when they like. Or they could join the 20th century and create their own classical playlists.

On an average weekday morning less than 2% of NZers listen to Concert FM.

Stuff reports:

NZ First leader Winston Peters has asked his party’s president to prepare a police complaint over a “massive breach” of party information. 

“Ongoing media stories using as their source stolen information are designed to skew an even political playing field,” a media release from Peters said. 

This is unintentionally hilarious as the information that has been released all comes from the NZ First Foundation and Winston insists that has nothing to do with NZ First.

Winston of course has spent much of his career cheering on the release of party information, when it occurs to other parties. He just can’t handle it when it happens to him.

Incidentally it is far from clear any information has been stolen. There is a big difference between a leak and a theft.

It is well known the former President and Treasurer have lost confidence in NZ First due to the hiding of donations from the board. If they are the ones releasing the info, then they had a right to it in the first place so it is a leak not a theft.

But good luck going to the Police Winston. I hope you’re just as successful as the last MP who did that.