Stuff reports:

A 13-year-old alleges Christchurch City councillor Deon Swiggs gave him unwanted hugs and called him a “very attractive lad”.
Swiggs has revealed himself as the person under investigation for allegedly sending “grossly inappropriate” messages to three young people. However, he denies all allegations of misconduct.
Stuff revealed on Friday the city council was investigating a councillor’s behaviour after a youth group made a formal complaint on behalf of teenagers to the council’s acting chief executive Mary Richardson on September 4.
It was alleged Swiggs sent young people inappropriate social media messages, including a sexually explicit meme. The teenagers are reported to be as young as 13.

I’ve met Deon a couple of times and was impressed with him. His CV of service to Christchurch is exemplary. But none of that matters when such serious allegations have been made.

On Sunday, Dalziel confirmed she knew of allegations against Swiggs for months before an investigation started, and he was told to avoid contact with young people.
She was approached in May by members of a youth group about their concerns.

Dalziel has known since May! Unbelievable. And one can’t ignore the politics that Dalziel is a Labour Mayor and Swiggs a former Labour activist. In fact he stood to replace Dalziel as the Labour candidate in Christchurch East, losing to Poto Williams.

Dalziel said on Monday she had acted in good faith at all times and could only act on the basis of the information she had been given.
“I was not provided with the most serious of the allegations which has now been brought to my attention,” she said.
“The allegations that have now been made and advised to me last Thursday go much further than I was originally told and cast a different light on the situation.”

This is all very deja vu. It sounds near identical to Ardern and the allegations about one of her staff. They knew about them for months, but then claim once to goes public that they didn’t know about the most serious stuff.

Is this now the standard script for Labour Party scandals? “I knew, but I didn’t know how bad it was”.

There is no way that this should have all been kept secret for months, and an investigation only launched after nominations closed for Council.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand will gain one new North Island electorate at the 2020 election based on the troubled 2018 census.

This is pretty much what you would expect as the NI population tends to grow faster than the South Island.

ONE THIRD OF BOUNDARIES WILL NEED TO BE REDRAWN
The Representation Commission will be required to redraw the boundaries for many electorates, as about a third have populations well above or below the average size.

Actually it will be far more than one third because even electorates within the 5% tolerance will probably be affected by neighbouring seats needing to change shape.

I’d say the extra seat will be in Auckland as the areas most over quota are Papakura, Hunua and Rodney.

South Island will see some change also. Invercargill will take some land off Clutha-Southland. West Coast-Tasman will take a bit off Nelson. The two Dunedin seats need to grow so will take off Waitaki. Selwyn needs to lose some land.

Andrea Vance writes:

“The rot is very deep. [The] party is allergic to women.”
Those are powerful words from a former Beehive aide, appalled by how the Labour party has handled allegations of sexual assault by a staffer.

Read that again. This is how someone who actually worked for Labour in the Beehive describes them.

Is it any wonder then, that some complainants turned to National’s deputy leader Paula Bennett for help?

It’s hard to imagine how frustrated they must have been to take such an unprecedented step.

Jacinda Ardern has pledged two – secret – inquiries. It’s the bare minimum, and the cookie-cutter response to a PR crisis.
But look past the PM’s soothing platitudes, to the party’s defensive behaviour over the last fortnight. It reveals MPs and members are in denial about how badly they wronged these young volunteers.
Ardern, who chooses her words with care, dismissed the original media reporting, and interviews with complainants, as “speculation.”  

Kelvin Davis went further, calling the allegations rumours. When he was called out for disrespect, he tried to minimise the harm by playing victim.
Next to wade in was Willie Jackson. It was a devastatingly insensitive PR strategy from Labour: wheeling out the man who victim blamed and supported rape culture during the Roastbusters scandal.

And people wonder why the victims are upset.

Then, with all the sensitivity of your misogynistic old uncle, Peters stepped up to defend his coalition partners. He labelled the allegations “unfounded fiction”, an “orgy of speculation”, and “innuendo”.
In staggeringly boorish fashion, his MP Shane Jones followed up. He was “more worried about Spark, whether or not I can watch the World Cup Rugby than hearing any more about she said, he said.”
And Tracey Martin, chimed in: “[Peters has] got a point – I haven’t seen any evidence be produced.” Suggesting these young people must prove they were abused is an odd position for the Minister of Children to adopt.
Instead of trashing Paula Bennett, perhaps female Labour, NZ First and Green MPs should reflect on why the complainants choose her, and not them, as their advocate.

Remember this is a Government of kindness!

There are nine candidates standing for Wellington Mayor in 2019.

How you should vote depends very much on whether or not you think Wellington is heading in the right direction or the wrong direction.

If you think it is heading in the right direction, then you should vote for Justin Lester.

Personally I don’t think Wellington is heading in the right direction. In fact I can’t recall a time where Wellington appears to be going so wrong.Not all of this is the fault of the Mayor or Council, but leadership does make a difference.

The top 12 problems with Wellington are:

1. Long-term plans indicate rates will double over the next ten years, well beyond the rate of increase of family incomes
2. The previously excellent bus network has become a disaster for many commuters. Scores of buses simply don’t show up, many services have been cancelled and the new routes are less useful than the old ones
3. The rebuild of the Town Hall has tripled in cost from $45 million to almost $150 million
4. The much heralded Movie Museum is no longer happening
5. The Central Library is closed, and the Council seemingly has no plan for a new one. Instead we just have three smaller temporary libraries which means less chance of getting all the books you want at the one location
6. There is no plan, solution or even hope for separating out the North-South traffic and East-West traffic at the Basin Reserve
7. The convention centre is proceeding without the movie museum and/or a private sector partner, meaning it is highly likely to turn into a expensive loss making facility for ratepayers
8. The Council has signed up to a plan to not expand the Mt Vic tunnel to four lanes for at least ten years, maybe longer
9. The Shelley Bay development is bogged down in litigation and bad blood between the Mayor and Sir Peter Jackson
10. The Council has signed up to a plan to never expand the Terrace tunnel
11. The heart of the city, Civic Square, has become a ghost zone
12. Things are so bad even the highly capable and respected CEO is bailing out and not reapplying for the top job

So for me it is a no brainer to vote for change.

Of the eight alternatives to the Mayor, only four would be significant contenders. They are Jenny Condie, Conor Hill, Diane Calvert and Andy Foster.

Conor feels Justin is not left enough. Can’t say I agree, but if you want an even more left leaning Mayor go for Conor.

Of the other three candidates I’d classify Andy Foster and Jenny Condie as centrist and Diane Calvert as centre-right.

The key thing if you want change is to make those three you top three picks. Doesn’t matter so much the order so long as they are ranked 1, 2 and 3. STV means this will help whomever faces off against Lester.

So in summary:

• If you think Wellington is heading in the right direction vote to re-elect Justin
• If you think Wellington City Council needs to be more left wing vote for Conor Hill
• If you think that We need a more centrist Mayor, not beholden to the Labour Party and central Government, then rank Calvert, Condie and Foster 1, 2, 3 (in any order)

A useful voting guide has been out out by Wellington Unions. Just rank people in reverse order to what they say, and you can’t go far wrong. Anyone with an X is probably worth voting for and a tick probably not.

Also worth reading Inside Wellington’s analysis of the race in two parts.

An interesting case of manslaughter when Conrad Gray got 25 months for manslaughter. He has parole eligibility after just nine months, so seems a light sentence.

The manslaughter was he pushed the victim to the ground in an altercation and the victim hit his head on a pole and died of a brain bleed and skull fracture.

If one takes just the shove, then a light sentence is arguably appropriate but when you look at all the other circumstances, to me it seems light. They are:

• He left the unconscious victim alone
• He tried to create a fake alibi and lied to the Police
• He has 61 previous convictions and 34 sentences of imprisonment.
• The offence occurred while he was on bail

The previous offending and offending while on bail got an uplift of just three months. I would have thought 61 previous convictions would count for more than that.

The Competitive Enterprise Initiative has compiled a great list of all the failed predictions of Environmental Apocalypses.

These aren’t general predictions of things getting worse, but explicit predictions that something will have happened by a particular date. They include:

• Dire world famine by 1975
• Everyone dead by 1989
• A new ice age by the 21st century
• Oceans dead by 1980
• US to have water rationing by 1974
• US to have food rationing by 1980
• Fossil fuel burning to drop temperatures to ice age by 1981
• Maldives will be underwater by 2018
• Famine by 2012
• UK to be Siberian by 2024
• Arctic will be ice free by 2013

If one did not have the hysterical predictions (which the authors rarely concede were wrong, even after they clearly are), then people would be less skeptical of the actual environmental challenges we have.

Stuff reports:

Lawyers for a mentally ill man have tried to convince the Court of Appeal the law could be read in a way for him to avoid a seven-year jail term for kissing a stranger’s cheek.
Daniel Clinton Fitzgerald, 46, was convicted of a third strike offence of indecent assault for kissing the woman on Wellington’s Cuba St in December 2016. He also pushed her friend who tried to intervene.
Fitzgerald has been in custody since the night of the offence and serious mental health problems have seen him go from prison to hospital and back again.

The High Court judge decided Fitzgerald had to be sentenced to the maximum for indecent assault, seven years in  jail, because it was his “third strike”, but he said it was manifestly unjust for Fitzgerald to serve the sentence without the possibility of parole.

So the law worked – he was eligible for parole after two years four months for his third strike.

But Fitzgerald was declined parole in April and is not scheduled to go before the Parole Board again until June 2020. The board expected him to receive one-on-one counselling before he gets treatment to stop his sexual offending.

This is key. If the Parole Board is not releasing him they are convinced he will keep on with his sexual offending. So three strikes means the public is protected.

He has sexually assaulted women on multiple occasions. The SST estimated there have been dozens of convictions over thirty years.

He obviously needs treatment. He hasn’t gained it outside prison. Hopefully he will get it in prison.

Duncan Garner writes:

The heat is seriously on Grant Robertson to tell us what he knew about the sexual assault allegations, when he knew it, and who he shared the information with.
What happened to this self-labelled, so-called ‘most open and transparent’ Government? How much longer can Grant seriously hold this unsustainable position of “sorry not going there”.
He can’t. Silence is not golden, and silence shouldn’t be rewarded.

Grant will duck and weave but, at some stage, he’ll have to be forthcoming.

I predict Grant will never ever say what he knew and when. To do so would be fatal.

The provision election results for the 2nd Israeli elections this year are:

1. Blue and White 33 seats
2. Likud 31
3. Joint List 13
4. Shas 9
5. Yisrael Beiteinu 8
6. UTJ 8
7. Yamina 7
8. Labor-Gesher 6
9. Democratic Union 5

You need 61 seats for a majority.

The rough groupings are:

Right 46

Likud 31
Yisrael Beiteinu 8
Yamina 7

Centre 42

Blue and White 33
Shas 9

Left 24

Joint List 13
Labor-Gesher 6
Democratic Union 5

So pretty unlikely to be a Government led by a party of the left. Likud can’t govern without Blue and White as Shas is not enough. And why would Blue and White accept 2nd place as they got more seats.

So I’d say a Blue and White led Goverment either sypported by Likud or by Shas and the left parties.

Their conditions for a peace deal with Palestine are:

• The Israel Defense Forces being authorized to enter Palestinian territory if they are aware of terrorists planning an attack on Israelis.
• The Jordan Valley remaining in Israeli hands.
• No Palestinian right of return.
• Jerusalem remaining the undivided capital of Israel.

The leader, Benny Gantz, is a former Chief of General Staff for the IDF.

The BBC reports:

Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau has said he cannot remember how often he wore blackface as a younger man, as a scandal deepened ahead of an election.
He was speaking after more images of him wearing black make-up when he was younger emerged.
“I am wary of being definitive about this because of the recent pictures that came out, I had not remembered,” he told reporters in Winnipeg.
The revelations have rattled his campaign in a tight election race.
Canadians will go to the polls on 21 October.
The images are so embarrassing for the prime minister because he has positioned himself as a champion of social justice, inclusivity and diversity.

He seems to have had a fetish for it as there are now three different situations where he was in blackface or brownface. Not a great fit for Mr Diversity.

With my black sense of humour I have dressed up as mass murderers and paedophiles at costume parties. Ironically that is less damaging than if I had ever worn blackface,

I did once wear redface but I wasn’t dressed as Pocahontas, I was dressed as Satan. I had red paint over my entire head, chest and limbs plus the normal trident, horns and tail.

Reactions were interesting. A couple of girls actually screamed when they saw me at the pre-party. The best reaction was from Bill English who looked at me and said “You were meant to come dressed up David”. Second best was Jonathan Hunt’s “I always thought you were a redneck”.

After the ball, we went clubbing in town. Turns out being dressed as Satan is a great way to get random strangers dancing with you 🙂

Out university hostel had an annual “reverse hop” where girls and guys would come dressed as the opposite gender. So there are probably a few photos of me dressed as a woman around. I guess today reverse hops are also deemed offensive.

NZ First have released their SOP for the End of Life Choice Bill to result in a public referendum if passed. It is a model of clarity, defining the wording of the questions and options:

(1A) The wording of the question to be put to electors in a referendum for the purposes of subsection (1) of this section is—
“Do you support the End of Life Choice Act 2017 coming into force?”
(1B) The wording of the 2 options for which electors may vote in response to the question is—
“Yes, I support the End of Life Choice Act 2017 coming into force.”
“No, I do not support the End of Life Choice Act 2017 coming into force.”

This is far superior to the Government’s planned referendum on cannabis legalisation where we don’t know what the questions will be, and we don’t know what the law will be if we vote for yes.

Anyway good to see such a well drafted SOP from NZ First.

Stuff reports:

“Words matter, the words used by John Tamihere matter,” Chris Harris, the chief executive of the Holocaust Centre.
There has been widespread condemnation since the Auckland mayoral candidate used the Nazi slogan “sieg heil” during a debate in a central Auckland bar on Tuesday night.

Tamihere was trying to make a point that Goff should not be the arbiter of who is allowed to speak at Auckland Council venues. But his use of “Sieg Heil” was stupid, offensive and wrong.

Newshub reports:

Drug-smuggler Karel Sroubek has been denied parole due to his “undue risk”.
The Czech kickboxer, also known as Jan Antolik, fled to New Zealand on a false passport before being convicted of importing ecstasy. He was sentenced to five years and nine months imprisonment.
On Monday, he told the Parole Board  he accepted he had made a “terrible mistake”.
“I’ve learnt that there’s no shortcuts in life and that I’ve lost everything that I really care for.
“I want to be a good member of the community. I don’t want to be remembered as a criminal or portrayed as a criminal because that’s not who I am.”
However on Wednesday, the Board announced he will stay behind bars, describing his risk as “significantly higher than low”.

This makes ILG’s initial decision to grant him residency even worse. The Parole Board is saying we don’t even think it is safe to release him from prison yet, while ILG said hey let’s make this guy a resident.

This graph shows annual GDP growth for the last five years. Has dropped from 4% to just over 2%.

The Herald reports:

Customers have lashed out at vegan protesters who stormed St Lukes Countdown on Sunday, disrupting shoppers in the process.
During a tense standoff, vegan activists stood in front of the meat section and held signs which said “stop eating animals” and “it’s not food, it’s violence”.

They’ve got every right in the world to protest outside the store. But they don;t have the right to do so inside the store and block people from buying the food they want.

The video shows shoppers being interfered with from buying meat, with customers losing their patience and lashing out at the protesters.

One woman can be heard shouting: “Take your camera off me, I’m doing my f**king shopping. I’m doing my shopping, unless you’re going to pay for my shopping you can f**k off.”

Good on her.

Power to anyone who chooses to be a vegan. But save us from the wankers who want to force their veganism on everyone else.

The Herald reports:

The Māori king, Kīngi Tūheitia, says mana whenua have finally reached consensus over what to do with Ihumātao – they want it back.

What an amazing surprise. How did that take two months to decide?

“Mana whenua agreed the return of the land is outside of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process and therefore requires an innovative and modern solution that does not financially disadvantage iwi.”

The mana whenua can agree what they like, but there is no way other Iwi will not see any Govenment grant or loan to buy the land as anything other than an additional settlement. It will incentivise every other Iwi to do the same.

Also it would destroy the 40 years of near-unanimous support in Parliament for historical Treaty settlements as the support was contingent on them being full and final.

Margarette Driscoll writes in The Telegraph:

When Kathleen Stock pressed “send” on a blog about the gender recognition act last summer she knew she was pressing a detonator. The government was consulting on whether legally changing sex should be a matter of feeling – self-identification – rather than surgery and emotions were already running high. Angry accusations of transphobia were hurled at those, like Stock, who questioned or opposed the idea that men who felt like women could simply declare themselves female and claim all the consequent privileges: access to women-only changing rooms, or being allowed to appear on women-only shortlists or sports teams. A high-profile professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex wading in was bound to raise temperature.
The fight soon came her way: students brandishing a placard reading “Transphobia now in STOCK at Sussex”, a condemnation from the students’ union refusing to tolerate “hate” on campus, attempts to have her fired and a stream of abuse online. What she did not expect was to uncover along the way a deep-rooted seam of fear and intimidation spread through universities nationwide that is, she says, now stifling academic debate.
As soon as she published her own opinion – questioning the validity of self-identification – she began being contacted by colleagues who told her they agreed but dared not say so publicly for fear of ruining their careers. Most were women, some with children and most on short contracts they could not afford to lose.

Ironically the biggest threat to academic freedom today for lecturers is their own students!

Stock’s most recent correspondent has been ‘let go’ from a women’s studies department for wanting to teach menstruation: “You can’t talk about the female body in some gender studies departments anymore because that’s called having “vaginal privilege”. It’s just ridiculous.”

Oh dear. Vaginal privilege.

Tova O’Brien writes:

It should never have taken a scared young woman publicly laying out all the harrowing details of an alleged sexual assault for the Prime Minister to act. 
The message Jacinda Ardern is sending is that she needed a young woman to risk being retraumatised and having her account of a serious sexual assault pasted online, in the media, for her to take it seriously. 

Six weeks ago the Prime Minister and her office were alerted to the fact sexual assault allegations were taken to the Labour Party and that complainants said it formed part of an investigation by the party. Six weeks ago.

Which is why the media are so sceptical of the claim by the PM she had no idea there was a sexual assault allegation.

On the 5th and 6th of August Newshub had made it clear in reporting, and to the Prime Minister’s Office, that a violent sexual crime had been reported to the Labour Party by the alleged victim of the assault. 

That should have been enough for the Prime Minister to request full details from the Labour Party about the sexual assault allegation and to then make the call she finally made to Nigel Haworth last Wednesday which precipitated his resignation as Party President. 

Instead she received an assurance from the party that no allegations of a sexual nature had been raised nor investigated. For some unfathomable reason that was enough for the Prime Minister. She took the party on its word, sweet as, never mind the fact that young, scared members of her party were saying otherwise.

Note the bolded part about how Newshub communicated this directly to the PMs Office.

We’re now hearing that complainants’ names are being leaked and spread around the parliamentary gossip mill. Some complainants feel a witch hunt is underway. 

Just getting messier.