Rosemary McLeod writes:

What goes through the mind of a convicted paedophile who hangs out at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care as if he’d be welcome?
More to the point, what goes through the mind of his partner, a member of the commission’s survivor advisory group?

Very good points. How could either of them think that was appropriate. Hey I’m a convicted pedophile, so I’ll just hang out with a group of survivors of sexual abuse.

Commissioner Paul Gibson learned in May that the man had criminal convictions. A more curious person in that delicate setting might have asked a few questions about the nature of those convictions.

Absolutely. He should have asked for details immediately.

Instead the man disclosed the fact in August, and the minister responsible for the inquiry, Tracey Martin, seems to have found out this week. She declined to express confidence in the commission. To put it elegantly.
Some survivors may pull out of the inquiry, seeing the lapse in the commission’s judgment as a breach of their trust, and a shadow has fallen on Gibson’s handling of the matter. The now indignant survivor group found out through media.

I think the Royal Commission should be closed down. It was of dubious value to start with, and the series of mishaps has meant it will never deliver what the survivors want.

Save the $80 million and spend it on support services for survivors instead,

The Victoria Greens are of course quite correct.

An interesting report card from Stuff civic reporters on the Wellington City Councillors. Their ratings are:

• 9/10 – Iona Pannett
• 8/10 – Diane Calvert, Brian Dawson, Andy Foster
• 7/10 – Nicola Young
• 6/10 – Fleur Fitzsimons, Peter Gilberd, Justin Lester
• 5/10 – Jill Day, Sarah Free, Malcolm Sparrow, Simon Woolf
• 4/10 – Chris Calvi-Freeman, Simon Marsh
• 2/10 – David Lee

Interesting that the Mayor and Deputy Mayor are ranked relatively lowly.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand will lead a five-way trade talks with Norway, Iceland, Costa Rica and Fiji to try to use trade to combat climate change by slashing fossil-fuel subsidies and abolishing tariffs on environmental goods.
Work on the deal was announced in New York on Thursday morning (New Zealand time) by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Costa Rica’s Vice minister for Foreign Trade Duayner Saver Chaverri, Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

I’m all for abolishing all subsidies and tariffs, so the initiative is a good thing.

But let’s look at the five countries taking part. What proportion of total greenhouse gas emissions do they represent?

• Norway 0.10%
• Iceland 0.01%
• Costa Rica 0.03%
• New Zealand 0.17%
• Fiji 0.01%

So the five countries are responsible for 0.32% of global emissions. Not really going to make a dent.

Stuff reports:

Waikato health bosses desperate to be first with a new virtual doctor tool sidestepped warnings from staff and procurement rules designed to safeguard public money.
The finding is one of many in a damning report released Thursday into Waikato DHB’s dealings with US start-up company HealthTap, and its SmartHealth product. 
SmartHealth was designed to ease workflows for doctors and allow people to consult medics remotely, but the two-year contract was canned after costs blew out to $25.7 million, nearly $9 million more than anticipated.

About 3100 consultations were made through SmartHealth, with each consult effectively costing taxpayers $8300 before it was axed.

It’s so easy to spend other people’s money.

The Herald reports:

Controversial Cabinet Minister Shane Jones told a forestry awards ceremony they needed to vote for him or miss out on the billions he’s handing out for provincial growth, it has been alleged.
One person present labelled Jones’ comments as an inducement to “bribery” and another thought the minister – responsible for forestry and the $3 billion provincial growth fund – was “buying votes”.

So this makes it crystal clear that the PGF has nothing to do with provincial growth. It is a bribery fund.

A third person who objected to Jones’ comment said it detracted from the intent of the evening, which was to celebrate excellence in forestry.
“It should never have been a political rally, which is what he made it. He was saying ‘if you don’t vote for me, you won’t get any share of the billion dollars’. He said you’ve only got a few months of me here, so you’d better vote.
“It’s just bribery. I thought that was pretty disgusting.”
Another person present said: “It wasn’t a political forum. He didn’t do himself any good. He just made a complete idiot of himself.”
Those interviewed did not want to be named, citing the influence of Jones’ Provincial Growth Fund and concerns speaking openly could have a personal and financial impact.

Lovely country we live in where people are too scared to be named.

Trevor Mallard was quite right in 2017. I look forward to him leading the charge to remove these from Standing Orders.

The media re reporting that 170,000 NZers have taken part in marches today demanding more be done on climate change.

I look forward to the Government announcing immediately they will remove restrictions on genetic engineering (which has huge potential to reduce methane emissions and emissions from crops) and scrap the ban on nuclear power (which has 1.5% the emissions of coal, 2.5% the emissions of gas and half the emissions of hydro).

After all if this really is an emergency, you wouldn’t quibble about using all the tools available to reduce emissions.

So I look forward to James Shaw introducing those law changes under urgency to Parliament next week.

Pretty terrible racism. I doubt he or she would be writing this to a migrant from the United Kingdom.

Shazly Rasheed is a hard working small business owner. She has come here and created jobs. From her website:

Shazly opened her first Salon in 2005. In 2009 the Salon won the Best Small Business award at the Business Excellence Awards hosted by the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce. Shazly Boutique was also opened in 2009. The following year, in 2010, Shazly won the Most Inspirational Role Model award at the HER Businesswoman of the Year Awards and Shazly Salon & Boutique was nominated as a finalist in the Best Small to Medium Enterprise category.
 
Also in 2009, Shazly Salon was recognised as an Industry Training Champion by the Hairdressing Industry Training Organisation (HITO). This was presented in a book published by HITO and titled Champions. This celebrates an elite group of New Zealand businesses committed to apprenticeship training to ensure a skilled future for the New Zealand Hairdressing Industry.

Sounds like she’d be a great City Councillor to me. A good profile of her here.

Her billboards have also been defaced with swastikas.

Stuff reports:

No-one knows what to do with Mohyadin Farah, a Somali refugee with a history of sexually assaulting women.

I know what to do. It’s quite simple. Keep him locked up, so no more women get sexually assaulted by him.

His record includes:

• 2019: Grabbed breasts of 78 year old women in a walking frame
• 2013: Raped a woman
• 2011: Grabbed breasts of woman on bus and threatened rape
• 2004: Indecent assault
• 2002: Indecent assault

So what lengthy jail term did he get for his latest action? Did he get preventive detention? Did he get a lengthy sentence?

Judge Jan Kelly had to reflect his previous offendings in her sentence as well as take into account his multiple issues.
She considered a jail term of about six months but acknowledged it meant he would be released almost immediately.
The judge identified that the most serious part was making sure he did not reoffend and to do that he needed to get targeted help.
“The issue for me today is what sentence would best enable meaningful rehabilitation and would enable Mr Farah to receive counselling and oversight to reduce his risk of reoffending and to balance that against the interests of the victims and the need to protect the public.”
She imposed a year’s intensive supervision to try and get him specialised treatment.

Sadly this just means more women will be sexually assaulted by him.

Stuff reports:

The Speaker has cracked down on the use of edited Parliamentary footage for social media attack ads.
National immediately attacked the ruling from Speaker Trevor Mallard as “censorship in the extreme.”
Speaker Trevor Mallard made the ruling before Question Time on Thursday, specifically instructing National leader Simon Bridges to stop using Parliamentary TV footage for edited attack ads. …

He said it was an enforcement of existing rules around official Parliament TV footage not being used for ads, unless permission by the member speaking was given.
“Mr McAnulty’s letter highlighted the existence of a range of videos posted by different parties that use footage of members’ for political advertising. I would be very surprised if those members had given permission, as the rules require.”

The Speaker is correct the Standing Orders require permission by an MP for footage to be used.

But this rule has basically never been enforced before. Labour and Greens in the past ran ads against National MPs using such footage. National never complained.

But now that it is on the other foot, Labour ran crying to the Speaker.

It shows the ads must have been effective for Labour to demand they be banned.

The End of Life Choice Bill has now had all four parts gone through Committee of Whole House stage and all that is remaining before third reading is committee stage for the preliminary clauses and schedules. This will include consideration of the amendment to have a referendum.

The committee stage has been more extensive than most comparable bills. I don’t think you can claim it has been rushed.

In the four sessions to date, the House (as a committee) has spent 28 hours debating and voting on the details of the bill.

There have been a total of 111 speeches during the committee stage from 39 different MPs.

David Seymour has spoken the most on the bill (as expected as sponsor), doing 11 speeches during committee stage.

Other multiple contributions have been:

• Simon O’Connor 10 times
• Melissa Lee and Alfred Ngaro seven times
• Chris Penk and Louisa Wall six times
• Maggie Barry, Simeon Brown Paula Garcia and Nick Smith five times

It is right and appropriate that such an important law change gets extensive scrutiny. This is on top of the select committee process of course.

So the committee stage should conclude at the next members’ day on Wed 23 October and then probably a third reading on the 13th of November.

The semi-transcript of Trump’s call with the President of Ukraine gives very clear grounds for impeachment. Some things to note:

• Basically the only topic Trump talks about is Biden. There’s no discussion of other topics
• He explicitly says that the US has been very good to Ukraine, but it isn’t reciprocal (ie you owe us a favour)
• He also talked about a server and Cloudstrike, which seem to be related to some other conspiracy theory
• He explicitly asks the Ukrainian President to meet with his personal attorney (Giuliani) and the US Attorney General over Biden and mentions this multiple times

Only someone suffering from TDS (Trump Defender Syndrome) could think this is okay.

Imagine Jacinda Ardern asking say the PM of Fiji to investigate Simon Bridges because his brother once was on the board of a Fijian company. You’d be screaming.

The US President used his role to pressure a foreign country to investigate his main rival. He held back funding for them, to pressure them. He asked they meet his personal attorney. And even worse he said he would get the US Attorney General to call, suggesting he is directing the Justice Department to try and get his political opponents.

Politicians should not be involved in directing law enforcement on who to target, especially their rivals. The fact I even need to state this is ridiculous. It should be a taken.

It doesn’t matter what Biden’s son may have done, or even Biden himself. If they did anything wrong, then there are numerous US attorneys (appointed by Trump) who could investigate.

Nate Silver at 538 points out:

Up until now, I’ve been skeptical of the political wisdom of impeachment for Democrats, as yesterday’s post detailed.
The logic behind my this-is-bad-for-Trump guess is that the White House’s record of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky represents the best–case scenario for Trump. And that best-case scenario is still potentially fairly bad for him. They have Trump on record as imploring a foreign leader to investigate Joe Biden, one of his most likely opponents in the 2020 general election.
The White House’s spin is that the conversation is exculpatory because it doesn’t contain a “quid pro quo” — that is, a direct and explicit threat to Zelensky or a direct and explicit promise to him — in exchange for turning the screws on Biden.

Silver points out:

the White House line presumes that the public won’t see the White House’s record of the conversation as containing a quid pro quo. But there are plenty of readings by which it does. In the conversation, Trump directly invokes the idea of “reciprocity” between the United States and Ukraine. He says “we do a lot for Ukraine …. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.” Zelensky also discusses the purchase of Javelin missiles from the U.S. All of this comes before two fairly direct requests — Trump calls the first one a “favor” — that Trump makes of Zelensky, one concerning a cybersecurity firm called CrowdStrike and the other concerning Biden.

Silver also points out more evidence may come out of a more explicit quid pro quo through formal hearings.

If Trump is allowed to use the presidency to pressure foreign countries to investigate his rivals, then future Presidents will have little incentive not to do the same. The rule of law is something we want to apply to everyone, not just those we politically agree with.

Stuff reports:

Wellington’s Labour mayor and the Associate Transport Minister have been accused of putting party politics before Wellingtonians’ transport needs. …

According to Lester, he told the councillors he was supporting LGWM because it would be a transformative multi-billion-dollar transport project for Wellington, 60 per cent funded by the Government, and he rhymed off the benefits he saw for the city.
Calvert recalls councillors were told by the mayor that it was the best deal he could obtain, otherwise the Greens would walk away from the coalition.

It would be nice to have a Mayor who advocates on behalf of Wellington to central Government, rather than one who advocates on behalf of Labour and Greens to his own Council.

Interesting data from the 2018 census. Birthplaces of normally resident people in NZ was:

1. New Zealand 72.6%
2. England 4.5%
3. China 2.9%
4. India 2.5%
5. Australia 1.6%
6. South Africa 1.5%
7. Philippines 1.5%
8. Fiji 1.3%
9. Samoa 1.2%
10. South Korea 0.7%

Hardly being swamped are we.

I’m the after dinner speaker at the upcoming Petroleum Conference.

I was surprised to get a letter e-mailed to me today on PEPANZ letterhead informing me that the conference had been cancelled due to impending protest action outside the conference.

But as it turns out the conference has not been cancelled. One of the protesters forged the letter and sent it out to conference attendees. So according to these people, even forgery is a legitimate protest tool now.

The letter was not satire or an obvious hoax. It even listed the names of various energy CEOs at the bottom as signatories.

I’m all for democratic protest. But forgery does not fall into that category. It just shows that the persons responsible subscribe to the old mantra of the ends justify the means – an mantra that has led to untold misery worldwide.

Stuff reports:

A student’s body went unnoticed in a University of Canterbury hall for close to eight weeks, Stuff has learned.
The young man was found only after fellow students at the Sonoda Christchurch Campus accommodation noticed an odour and raised the alarm. 

This is bizarre.

Did none of his neighbours not notice him about?

Did his friends and family not notice him missing for eight weeks?

Did the staff at the hostel not notice him missing?

I was at a hostel at Otago University. If someone was dead in their room, I’d expect them to be noticed missing within a day or two.

AP reports:

President Donald Trump ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before a phone call in which he pressured the Eastern European nation’s leader to investigate the family of political rival Joe Biden, a revelation that comes as more Democrats move toward impeachment proceedings.

Trump trying to use the aid budget to bully another country to try and investigate the family of his main rival is so clearly grounds for impeachment, it is hard to imagine a better case.

He was withholding funds appropriated by Congress to pressure a foreign country to try and interfere in their election by investigating his main rival. This makes Watergate look minor.

This is the sort of behaviour you expect from the despotic leader of a third world country, not the President of the United States.

Here’s what my position on impeachment would be if I was in the US:

• If I was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, I would vote for Articles of Impeachment
• If I was a member of the House I would vote to impeach
• If I was a Senator I would vote to convict and remove Trump from office
• If I was a member of the Cabinet, I would vote to use the 25th Amendment
• If I was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, I would charge Trump with felonies on multiple counts
• If I was on a jury, I would find Trump guilty of fraud
• If I was the Judge, I would send him to jail
• If I was on a parole board, I would deny him parole

Let no-one be in doubt of where I stand 🙂

UPDATE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has just announced an impeachment investigation.That is entirely proper. They are not saying they will impeach, just that they need to determine what exactly Trump did and said, and whether that constitutes grounds for impeachment.

Trump may have done some good things with his judicial appointments, but he is fundamentally unfit for democratic office. He should be removed.