Morgan Godfery writes in The Guardian:
On almost every major issue important to Māori this government is stalling. Even in reverse. No one can agree on what to do with the child welfare agency Oranga Tamariki. The government favours reform. Māori leaders prefer straight up abolition.
The last remaining “big” Treaty settlements, where the government negotiates redress and an apology for its historic wrongs against Māori tribes, are going nowhere. And the occupation at Ihumātao, the headland a little north of Auckland Airport, is still going strong.
Morgan is a former Labour Party staffer, so him saying this is significant.
Taking this all together I regret one thing from 2017: campaigning against the Māori Party. Like Labour and the Greens the party were dealt a bad hand in government. Five seats and decreasing every election from 2008.
But with that hand they managed to implement revolutionary welfare reforms (Whānau Ora, now standard across more and more government departments), re-orientate the country’s foreign policy (signing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), and remove the worst part of the last Labour government’s legacy – the appalling Foreshore and Seabed Act.
It’s a bit late now, but only in their absence can I best appreciate their impact. On the issues that were important to them they went for system change.
The Maori Party need a co-leader. Maybe Morgan should apply!
BBC reports:
Labour’s manifesto includes a pledge to be building 100,000 council houses and at least 50,000 affordable homes through housing associations a year by the end of the Parliament.
Ha. It’s Kiwibuild multiplied by 10. The total disaster of a policy in NZ wouldn’t be touched by anyone else apart from the mad Corbyn.
Labour promised 100,000 homes in NZ and have stalled at under 300.
The NZ Initiative released:
The Initiative’s July 2019 report, Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour, demonstrated that New Zealand’s current labour market settings have been working very well for labour. Unemployment is low compared with our OECD peers. Labour market participation rates are extremely high. And in the nearly three-decade period since New Zealand’s labour markets were freed up, New Zealand has had the third-highest rate of employment growth in the OECD.
Despite claims to the contrary in the Discussion Paper, the Initiative demonstrated in its Work in Progress report that:
The share of GDP going to workers has not fallen overall since New Zealand’s labour markets were freed in 1991. In fact, it has risen. As a result, market income inequality has fallen in New Zealand since the early 1990s.
Wage growth has not lagged behind productivity growth
Wages have not fallen as a result of a race-to-the-bottom in any industry. Indeed, wages in every wage decile have risen.
So the economic case for FPAs is not there. So why is Labour desperate to do these?
A system of fair pay agreements will place unions in the box seat, with workers compelled to have unions represent them in negotiations for a fair pay agreement even if they do not belong to a union.
“It is little wonder the Council of Trade Unions has so vocally advocated introducing FPAs since the working group’s report was released last year,” Roger Partridge said.
This is about funding the Labour Party. Labour passes a law forcing every single employee in an entire industry to fund a union, and in turn that union donates huge amounts of money to Labour as thanks.
Radio NZ reports:
The $128,000 in travel expenses spent by the Hepatitis Foundation board chair could have been used to directly help people with Hepatitis C, the former chief executive says.
A two-year investigation into the charity that was kept secret for more than a year showed the foundation splashed out on lavish dinners, flights and hotels, and could not account for thousands of dollars of credit card expenses.
The investigation by government-run regulator Charities Services found excessive expenses and gross mismanagement may have occurred, though the foundation told RNZ there was no evidence of any wrongdoing.
It spent more than $128,000 on travel for its board chairperson, Chris Cunningham, in just over two years and paid for lavish dinners at top Auckland restaurants.
That should have never happened. Chairs should not have the ability to run up such expenses. On boards I have served any expenses of the Chair must be signed off by another director.
The Chair is also a professor of Maori health and director of the Massey University’s Research Centre for Maori Health and Development. Surely those roles must be called into question.
The Foundation is almost 100% taxpayer funded. It has managed to build up $8 million of assets which suggests it has been growing fat at our expense.
The Stuff headline:
Experts: National’s law and order proposals sound good but have no substance
So who are these experts? Police officers? Victims Rights advocates? Let’s see.
Those quoted are:
I guess members of Black Power and Mongrel Mob can be considered experts!!
Julian Sanchez from Cato writes:
Donald Trump is still searching for “The Server“. On Friday morning, the United States president phoned in to his favourite cable news program, Fox and Friends, to make a series of false claims about the cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) computer systems perpetrated by Russian hackers, as part of their elaborate efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
After the attack, Trump claimed, the DNC “gave the server to CrowdStrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. I still want to see that server. The FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing.”
Every part of what Trump said was false – including the claim that the California-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, hired by the DNC when it discovered the infiltration of its systems, is owned by a “wealthy Ukrainian”.
It’s one thing to be initially mistaken. But Trump has spent months pursuing this conspiracy theory, which is so easily debunked. The ownership of Crowdstrike is a verifiable fact. It’s disturbing when anyone chooses to believe a conspiracy theory over a verifiable fact, but more so when they have nuclear weapons.
The “server” conspiracy theory is baseless for at least five reasons.
First, “the server” doesn’t even exist. The DNC relies on a cloud-based email system consisting of some 140 physical servers. And as Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference explained, the military unit behind the cyberattacks “compromised more than 30 computers on the DNC network”, as well as another 29 owned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Second, it is not unusual that the FBI did not cart off the physical machines affected by Russian attack. As a rule, law enforcement does not seize the property of crime victims unless it’s necessary, and when it comes to digital evidence, it is often unnecessary.
In this case, the company CrowdStrike provided the FBI with digital images of the hacked DNC computers. Asking why the FBI didn’t take the physical computers is like wondering why someone has emailed you a file rather than shipping you their entire laptop.
Third, the information most useful to the FBI would be in the images created by CrowdStrikeduring their efforts to expel the foreign intruders.
Examining the computers after the fact – after the dust had settled and the hackers’ malware had been removed – would have provided far fewer insights than observing them in action.
Fourth, it is clear from both the Mueller report and the special counsel’s indictment of Russian officials charged with the hack that forensic evidence from DNC computers was a relatively small piece of the puzzle.
The evidence of Russian responsibility for the hack is both overwhelming and derived from many sources: It is not based merely on analysis of the DNC’s servers.
Fifth and finally, one element of the theory seemingly original to Trump is the odd and inexplicable notion that CrowdStrike is a Ukrainian company.
The firm – which was only hired by the DNC, but also the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee when its computer network was penetrated – is based in California. One of its co-founders was born in Russia, not Ukraine, and moved to the United States as a teenager nearly 25 years ago.
Crowdstrike is not owned by a Ukranian. It has multiple investors including Google and Telstra.
Perhaps even more concerning, the obsession with the server is a sign that Trump continues to reject the unanimous conclusion – again, not only of the American intelligence community, but of Republicans in Congress – that Russia was responsible for the DNC attacks.
This does not bode well for efforts to secure our elections against another attack in 2020 – a topic Homeland Security officials have apparently been warned not to raise in Trump’s presence, lest it anger the president.
Election security is a hard problem under the best of circumstances – and harder still when the boss refuses to acknowledge the problem exists.
What do you do when your boss refuses to read reports or accept facts?
Mike Hosking writes:
Do you think the Prime Minister understands the trouble her party and Government is in? …
She is tainted by association. Let us not forget that Winston has always been questionable company. From the early days with the Bolger-Shipley government, to the trouble with Clark that appears frighteningly similar over a decade later. If you hang with New Zealand First – at its very best, it’s a colourful ride.
At its worst, it’s the end of your government come election time.
The New Zealand First foundation, at first read, looks to have a tremendous number of questions to answer. The fact Peters could not, and would not answer them yesterday, spoke volumes.
Winston is doing exactly what he did in 2008. Attacking the media and claiming it is all lies. Except of course the truth came out and NZ First were found to have filed three false donation returns and Winston two false pecuniary interest returns.
Stuff reports:
High-level talks are underway over Government backing for a new bid from NZME to buy Stuff, it is understood.
The Government has been lobbied by NZME over whether it can find a way to further its chances, Government sources have confirmed.
One of the country’s biggest media organisations, NZME owns the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB.
The talks are understood to include proposals for a “Kiwishare” arrangement, similar to that last used by the Crown to protect free local calls and fixed phone line rentals when Telecom was privatised in 1990.
That’s a good comparison because in fact the Kiwishare obligation turned into a nightmare that actually hindered competition by forcing rivals to fund Telecom.
Effectively, the arrangement could ringfence Stuff’s editorial operations and protect local journalism.
That would answer concerns raised by the Commerce Commission in 2017 when it rejected a merger proposal on the grounds of a loss of a plurality of voices in New Zealand journalism.
The Kiwishare arrangement would potentially overcome that hurdle but it is one of several options being considered, including bypassing the commission or doing nothing.
Why do you need the Government involved? NZME can try and persuade the Commerce Commission that such an arrangement will meet their concerns, but I doubt it will get anywhere.
Another option being considered is that the Government could issue some sort of directive to the Commerce Commission that could make it view another bid more favourably. Or it could override the commission’s decision through legislation.
Stuff understands that the Government isn’t keen on the precedent either of these options would create.
The last Government that tried to overturn a Commerce Commission decision by legislation got a black nose as the “Axe the Tax” coalition ran a very good campaign against it.
Politicians should not pass laws to overturn decisions they don’t like of independent competition regulators.
I have long been of the view that using prime waterfront land in both Auckland and Wellington as an industrial port is not in the best interests of either city.
It was logical for the ports to be there scores of years ago as back then there was no other significant use of waterfront areas. But today in modern cities waterfront areas adjacent to the CBD are the most highly sought after areas for restaurants, bars, hotels and recreation spaces.
So I support the Ports of Auckland moving from its current location.
But that doesn’t mean politicians deciding where it should move to and/or closing it down in favour of other ports.
What I would support is the Auckland Council splitting the land and operations of the Port Company in two. They take back the land and lease it to the Ports of Auckland for say a final 20 year term. Maybe 15, maybe 25. The key thing is you have a definite deadline for the Port to move.
This is a decision that Auckland Council should make. Firstly because they own Ports of Auckland and have property rights over it. They should not be legislated over by central Government. Secondly because as the governing body of Auckland they have an interest in turning the waterfront land into something more exciting.
So that is all that needs to and should happen. Then Ports of Auckland will make commercial decisions about what to do – ranging from a new operation in Firth of Thames to working with the Whangarei or Tauranga ports.
But what the Government should not do is commit the taxpayer to $10 billion spending in order to help Shane Jones win a seat by declaring it will move to Whangarei.
I am very dubious that Whangarei can go from one container ship a week to 10 ships a week. Even if it could, it is highly doubtful ship companies would choose to use it over Tauranga. And you can’t even be sensible about Whangarei unless you commit to four laning SH1 up there.
Also Politik makes the point that shipping companies want to use ports that can balance export and import loads. So the talk of Whangarei is desperate stuff to try and win Jones a seat.
If the Government decides it can dictate what happens, it could end in disaster. Our exporters and importers could face huge delays and costs.
So by all means Auckland Council should set a deadline for Ports of Auckland to move from the waterfront. There is better use for that land. But it should be the ports companies working with exporters and importers who decide on future locations, not Phil Twyford and Shane Jones.
The Herald reports:
A complaint has been laid with Wellington City Council’s top brass about former mayor Justin Lester releasing information after he was ousted from the job.
Councillor Diane Calvert has made the complaint to council chief executive Kevin Lavery and Mayor Andy Foster.
She has also emailed her councillor colleagues asking for their support to ensure what she considered “this subversive and bullying behaviour does not carry on”.
The complaint is over an email she received from Lester’s private Gmail address on Friday. She was forwarded her own email to a council officer from October 2018 when she requested advice on claimable expenses like mileage.
“It appears Justin Lester’s email to me was intended for someone else. I emailed straight back and asked him for an explanation but have not had a response”, Calvert said in her complaint.
The original email was forwarded to another councillor at the time and no-one else, Calvert said.
“I do not know whether it is just personal against me and or politically motivated because over the past month there has been a range of other petty information being leaked involving myself and others.
“I am deeply suspicious that they were also Justin, and that his email to me was actually intended for the media. If so, such information leaks may well be more than trying to harass me and at worst could be trying to undermine this Council as a whole, either by just himself and or with others.”
It’s not a big surprise that a Mayor would leak information about Councillors to the media, if he sees them as political enemies.
But what is surprising is that he is possibly still doing it, even after he has lost and left office.
Time to move on.
Matt Shand at Stuff reports:
The winebox containing NZ First Foundation documents was next to a dumpster filled with used nappies from a nearby daycare. Or, at least it was supposed to be. There were no boxes in sight. No other options. Time to dig through.
For the past six hours “Deep Throat” figures had been sending me directions from random phone numbers to where the documents could be found. The information had already been uncovered, people wanted to talk, but hard evidence – the documentation – was key.
For the past few hours calls had come in from random numbers giving locations with little context. “The Square Hamilton,” the voice would say and hang up. Then call back with another suburb or landmark. After walking around making many people suspicious of a creeper another call arrives. “The shop on (redacted) street. Another call. Another suburb. “Dumpster. Closed lid. Go now”. Having never spoken to these people before it was all on good faith.
There were two dumpsters that matched. Neither in line of sight of each other. Left or right. Right was chosen. Wrong choice. Random callers on the phone should learn to be more specific. “Deep Throat” had turned into “sore throat” as there was nothing there. No wine box. Just a dumpster full of nappies.
Before concluding it was the greatest prank ever pulled there was one more check to make. The dumpster was near a preschool. Did they happen to see a box of papers dumped there? They had. It seems they had retrieved it for use as scap paper for the kids. With a bit of fast talking the wine box was finally secure.
It’s like the plot of a spy movie, or where someone is in the mafia and decides to try and get out.
Forgetting the rigmarole of finally getting hard proof, the information should be publicly available. It is beyond a lack of transparency. I feel it is a lack of basic honesty. For Peters the documents potentially betray his voters, the donors who back the party, his candidates, his MPs and democracy.
There are so many people left bloodied on the path behind him that a resistance started to form and say enough is enough.
And these are people who were loyal to him, until they realised loyalty is one way with Winston.
New ports, dredging, slipways, a mussel-processing plant in Marlborough, a $5.7 million grant to protect Manuka honey’s trademark, money to plant trees and all manner of activity are funded by the PGF. Knowing what we do now, about NZ First Foundation donations, there are legitimate questions to be asked about the decision making process.
And this is why Jacinda Ardern can’t dodge this as nothing to do with her. Basically what the journalists is asking is whether or not the Government is corrupt. Do donations to NZ First influence grants from a fund, where Ministers make the decisions.
National have released their law & order policy discussion document. It is dramatically different to what Labour and NZ First are doing, as one might expect with a party led by a former crown prosecutor.
Some of the major proposals:
Radio NZ reports:
The University of Otago yesterday announced it would punish more than 50 trainee interns for using their three-month overseas hospital placement to instead go on holiday.
But three former students – who spoke to RNZ anonymously – said the culprits were being scapegoated for a long-running and culturally-accepted practice. All three did their compulsory placement in 2015 in various countries.
One said he knocked off three weeks early to go travelling, another said he only worked mornings for the entire duration of his stint and the third said he spent seven of the 12 weeks on holiday.
“It was very widespread,” one GP said. “I’d say it was culturally normative, to the point where … senior doctors would joke with you about how you’re gonna be on holiday.”
Another GP told RNZ he believed the practice went back decades.
“My family GP, he went to Malta and that was almost 35 years ago. He said he spent the whole time on the beach, you know, relaxing and travelling Europe in a van.
“If you asked the majority of the faculty who are doctors ‘what did they do on their elective?’ – I think that would open up another can of worms.”
He said the university’s response had been “a knee jerk reaction to try save face”.
“There’s no way they didn’t know this was happening.”
None of the three doctors were apologetic for their actions. They said the travel abroad taught them life lessons which were of more value than observing doctors speaking different languages and using outdated practices.
They acknowledged they received some government funding while abroad – about $500 a week – but pointed out their massive student debt and intensive study load.
If generations of doctors have used the elective as a form of holiday, doesn’t that suggest there is little value in it and should be abolished?
Radio NZ reports:
The two men have accused the new chair Judge Coral Shaw of spreading misinformation about the matter, and have accused the commission as a whole of sidelining the survivor group.
Michael Chamberlain of Dunedin and Steve Goodlass of central Otago quit the group within days of each other, three weeks ago.
Mr Goodlass said the incident in which the Commission allowed a convicted paedophile to attend advisory group meetings with abuse survivors without their knowledge amounted to a last straw for him.
The convicted paedophile had more interactions with the group than Judge Shaw let on and it was “deliberately downplayed”, he said.
The offender was at meetings because his partner is on the advisory group.
Mr Goodlass claimed the group had got less support than the judge told the public.
“The support to the survivors group was bogus … I had no offer of support from any of the wellbeing people involved with the commission. And I’ve spoken to one other survivor and he’s in exactly the same boat.”
The advisory group is a world-first for abuse inquiries, but Mr Goodlass described it as an “expensive box-ticking exercise” as its 20 members flew around the country.
As I’ve said before, just close it down. It isn’t going to achieve anything and just seems to be causing more harm.
Electoral Calculus has the latest projection based on average of the polls:
Overall projection is a Conservative majority of 80.
In terms of possible outcomes they predict:
An interesting factoid is that the last time Labour won an election in the UK without Tony Blair as Leader was 45 years ago.
Stuff reports:
While the jurors heard from four of his previous dates, the police spoke to other young women who did not end up giving evidence at trial.
Many of those young women spoke of a man who had an interest in violent sex and a tendency to “switch” when his sexual advances were turned down.
Stuff can now report the evidence for the first time, following the man’s conviction.
The Crown sought to have the 10 women and one man give evidence, arguing it showed the man had a pattern of behaviour over the two and-a-half year period before he killed Grace. …
In a pre-trial ruling in August, Justice Simon Moore ruled evidence from nine of the 11 witnesses was relevant.
“What emerges from many of the women’s accounts is the independent portrayal of [the man] as unusually needy, demanding and insecure,” Justice Moore said.
Despite having met some of the women only a handful of times, the killer expected “emotional support and nourishment”.
“He is possessive and overbearing towards women he barely knows… When the recipients display understandable discomfort, even shock, at what is frankly bizarre, clumsy and narcissistic conduct or otherwise try to distance themselves from him, [the man] reacts in anger and professes betrayal.”
Thankfully the jury made the right decision anyway, but I can only agree with Justice Moore that the Polise should have been able to introduce evidence from his previous dates or relationships.
It seems grossly unfair that poor Grace Millane had her previous dates trawled through court, while he had his mainly protected.
Justice Moore said her evidence was an example of the killer’s “narcissistic emotional blackmail” that he used in an attempt to win affection from women.
“It shows [the killer’s] tendency to believe he is entitled to the emotional nurturing of women he meets through Tinder and his tendency to react aggressively and unpredictably when that nurturing is not forthcoming.”
And if the Police had been able to use this evidence, it would have been a compelling alternative theory to the defence case that it was kinky sex gone wrong. Again thanks goodness the jury got there anyway.
The judge said the evidence could be relevant if the jurors accepted the man saw Grace as a source of “emotional solace and nurture”.
He said if Grace then became uncomfortable and tried to leave his apartment, the evidence from the former dates could support a theory that the man became violent.
Of the 11 witness, Justice Moore ruled nine would be allowed to give evidence.
However, the man’s lawyers appealed Justice Moore’s pre-trial ruling to the Court of Appeal.
We don’t yet know why the Court of Appeal ruled as they did. But again it seems grossly unfair that the laws of evidence allowed Grace Millane’s sexual past to be used against her to paint a theory helpful to the defence, but the killer’s sexual past was ruled largely off limits.
Based on all the reports that have now come out about this guy, I suspect it was only a matter of time until his violence and narcissism led to him killing someone. If it wasn’t Grace, it probably would have been someone else later.
Stuff has got back into the polling business, having published a poll done by YouGov.
It’s great to see another public pollster. Before this we only had One New Colmar Brunton and Newshub Reid Research. If Newshub dies, then we may have been left with just one public pollster.
But fair to say the results of this poll are quite different to the two recent TV polls. Here’s how they compare:
So the three polls broadly agree with Labour and Greens but disagree on National and NZ First.
The differences for National and NZ First are well beyond the margin of error.
So what this means is that either there has been a massive change since the TV polls (mid Oct to early November) or one or more of the polls are wrong.
YouGov polls are done entirely through online panels. YouGov is a very good company globally and has a good track record in the UK of accuracy. In the US their record is more mixed. Five Thirty Eight gives them a B- rating.
In New Zealand the accuracy of online panel polls with elections hasn’t been great. Let’s look at the 2017 polls:
If you look at the gap between National and Labour-Greens ONCB had it at 1.0% and NRR at 1.4%. The actual was 1.2% so pretty damn good. The online panel Horizon had the gap at -7.4% and Newsroom/SSI at -21%. So massively off.
YouGov has shown in the UK that online panels can be accurate for political polling, but it isn’t easy. You need a very large database. You need to make sure your recruitment isn’t skewed, and you need to make judgement calls on weighting.
As I said it is a good thing YouGov are now polling in New Zealand, but I’d caution against reading too much into their initial poll. As always, it is the trend that matters.
Stuff reports:
The Opposition is proposing compulsory education, training or employment for prisoners who are serving sentences of two years or more.
Excellent. Labour wants them voting, National wants them working.
For the safety of guards, prisoners with disabilities and those in maximum security prisoners who won’t be able to take part, he said.
National’s law and order policy would also make the Victims Notification Register an opt-out, rather than something victims should have to sign up to, he said.
“This policy was designed after I was contacted by a family who was unaware their brother’s murderer had been released from prison. It’s not fair or right that they didn’t know.”
National was also proposing that Victim Impact Statements should be read in court exactly as the victim has written them.
“Often judges present edited versions or won’t let them be read out at all. We believe victims should be fully involved in the court process and be able to have the final say.”
That last policy is more important to victims than you may think. I’ve heard from a lot of family members of victims that the censorship of their statements just makes it even worse for them.
Stuff reports:
The National Party is pitting a Feilding teenager’s youth and passion against a sitting Government minister in Palmerston North in 2020
He can’t even vote yet, but William Wood, 17, has become one of the youngest electoral candidates ever.
Now this wasn’t some tokenistic gesture where Wood was selected in a seat that no-one else wanted.
Wood defeated National’s 2017 candidate Adrienne Pierce, newcomer Ava Neal, and sitting National MP Jo Hayes to secure the party’s nomination.
He beat three other candidates including a List MP and the 2017 candidate. That’s deeply impressive for anyone to do, let alone a 17 year old.
“I’m excited and humbled,” Wood told an energised crowd after the National delegates chose him after a single round of voting.
And he won on the 1st round meaning he got more votes than the other three candidates combined.
Wood drew a hearty laugh from the crowd when he promised not to touch a drop until he cracked the bottle on his 18th birthday in January.
He said his selection demonstrated National’s commitment to meritocracy; that age, ethnicity or sexuality isn’t as important as being able to do the job.
“Choosing me as the candidate sends a message, that we’re going to do something different.
“[It says] if you’re passionate, hard-working and believe in our values you can succeed with [National] no matter what.”
He wasn’t selected because he was 17. He was selected because local delegates backed him.
Despite his youth Wood has already wracked up an impressive list of achievements.
In addition to his active work in his community, Wood served as a Youth MP this year.
In that role he helped form the Rangitīkei Youth Advisory Group and was selected as one of three youth policy developers, and sat on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade select committee.
He is also one of New Zealand’s top youth diplomats, the only youth delegate to be chosen two years in a row to represent the country at the Evatt Diplomacy Competition in Australia.
William may be young on life experience, but he has certainly done a lot to date. His record includes:
Palmerston North is not a marginal seat, but it will be interesting to see where William gets placed on the party’s list.
From Hansard:
Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. First of all, can I do something that I never thought I would do: can I thank David Seymour for his work with New Zealand First and with myself. I also want to acknowledge Brooke from his offices.
There are not many issues that you see a politician make such a commitment to over such a long period of time. Often, you don’t see a politician who has been as open to change and to amendment and as flexible to try and do the best by this House and all the perspectives in this House, because they hold on to their own ego and they hold on to the stick in the sand and they make it about them. I am surprised that it’s a leader of the ACT Party that I’m talking about, but I believe David Seymour that has shown himself to be a gentleman of character and that he has made this issue bigger than him. So I want to acknowledge that. It’ll be the last time I acknowledge anything like that, Mr Seymour.
David Seymour: Thank you. You can stop now.
It’s fair to say that generally there is no love lost between ACT and NZ First MPs. But this again shows that MPs can work together on issues with respect and compromise and get good outcomes. And very decent of Tracey to specifically thanks David using the words she did.
The Herald reports:
A leaked Greens discussion document reveals the party is gearing up to ditch its support of the self-imposed Government spending and borrowing rules, labelling them “arbitrary”.
The Herald has obtained a copy of a fiscal policy consultation document, sent out to members discussing a review of the Greens’ fiscal policy.
Within that review is a commitment to scrap the party’s support of some of the Budget Responsibility Rules (BRRs) – co-written by Greens co-leader James Shaw and Finance Minister Grant Robertson before the 2017 election.
Some of the rules have been highly controversial to Greens members, as they put a limit on spending and borrowing.
A limit on spending and borrowing. How terrible. Think if households had to cope with such a thing. I mean how dare you ever have a limit on spending.
Sadly I think both Labour and Greens will abandon fiscal restraint if they get a 2nd term. The only limit will be how much they can increase taxes by to pay for it all.