Simon Bridges released:

Leader of the Opposition Simon Bridges has today apologised to Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter for releasing false information about the Government’s car tax.
“In recent statements, National claimed Labour’s car tax would increase the cost of some of New Zealand’s most popular vehicles by up to $3000. We were basing this on information in the Government’s Clean Car Discount Scheme.
“But we’ve since had a good look at another piece of work by the Government – its Clean Car Standard Scheme – and discovered even more hidden costs.
“The truth is, the actual cost of Julie Anne Genter’s car tax on Kiwis could be more than $6000 per vehicle.
“Alongside the Government’s plan to tax higher-emissions vehicles, it is proposing a vehicle emissions target, meaning importers will be charged a penalty of between $50 and $100 per gram of CO2 on vehicles that don’t come in under the target from 2025.
“That could slap an extra $4500 onto the import cost of an average new car and an extra $2250 onto the cost of an average used car – costs that will almost certainly be passed on to buyers.
“More than 91 per cent of the vehicles being imported into the country today don’t satisfy the Minister’s emissions expectations, so this could be a massive tax grab for the Government.
“Julie Anne Genter wants to tell Kiwis what cars they can and cannot drive, and dictate to dealers what cars they can and cannot sell.
“She’s clearly spent too much time in Wellington and not enough in the regions because she hasn’t clicked that not all New Zealanders have low-emission vehicle options that fit their lifestyle.
“What, then, are car dealers in Feilding, Greymouth and Dargaville supposed to do? They can’t just start selling cars their customers don’t want.
“I’d like to say sorry to the Minister for underestimating the true cost of this tax on hard-working New Zealanders, which she thinks is just a ‘small fee’ they’ll be happy to pay.”

So the Government is going to impose taxes of over $6,000 on your car if they don’t approve of your choice.

It’s nuts.

You don’t need a special tax or rebate on cars with higher emissions. You just need to make sure vehicle emissions are fully part of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Motorists should pay for the costs of higher emissions, but what the Government is proposing is they pay three times over – through the ETS, through their new car tax and through special emissions import tax.

Stuff reports:

The Silver Ferns’ remarkable rise is complete.
New Zealand stunned three-time defending champions Australia 52-51 in a thrilling Netball World Cup final in Liverpool on Sunday (Monday morning NZ time). 
It completes a massive 11-month turnaround from the Ferns under coach Noeline Taurua who took over last August, following last April’s harrowing performance at the 2018 Commonwealth Games under previous coach Janine Southby. 

Taurua must get coach of the year.

The Silver Ferns lost in the finals to Australia in the last three world cups, so a very sweet victory.

Very cool that of what is arguably our three major sports of netball, cricket and rugby we are world champions in two of them and moral champions in the third.

Damien Grant writes:

Bridges has two options. He can dance around the prospect of having to sup with Peters, debasing himself and his party for a chance to be humiliated, tethered and degraded for three miserable years.
Bridges will be required to apologise and excuse the behaviour of people he will have no authority over and probably has contempt and loathing for. Sounds great.
Or he can declare that he’d be happy to simply be the member for Tauranga rather than have a possible premiership cheapened by an association with Peters. At a stroke he makes NZ First irrelevant. Nothing more than a right-wing faction of the Labour Party.

I agree with Damien.

I was happy when Winston chose Labour last election as it would have been awful for National to be in coalition with Winston, subject to his every whim.

More importantly it is clear Winston was never serious about going with National. He filed a lawsuit against the then leader and deputy leader the day before the election, and never mentioned it during the negotiations. This is such an act of bad faith, that you could never have a good faith negotiation again.

It is a huge gamble but it also would define Bridges as a leader of courage, honour and integrity. It makes an effective contrast with the incumbent whose power is buttressed by Golriz Ghahraman on her left and Shane Jones on her right.
It would also make him popular. The promise of finally exorcising Peters and his handmaidens from our political process is a powerful campaign promise in itself. 
Bridges will then be free to apply the blowtorch to all members of the coalition with gusto and drive home the point to soft conservative voters than a vote for Winston is a vote for Labour. 

If National rules Winston First out, then indeed a vote for them is a vote for Labour and the Greens to be in Government.

Read these sentencing notes where Fraser Milne got a mere 30 months in jail (could be out in 10 months) for his offending. He should be facing multiple attempted murder charges and a hugely longer sentence in my opinion. His offending was:

• Driving too fast and swerved to avoid the victims’ car
• Did a u-turn, followed them and forced them to stop
• Demanded they pay for any damage to his car and threatened them that he was in a gang
• They drove away. He followed them and tried to cut them off again.
• They stopped. He tried to force the doors open. Hit the car. Swore at them and yelled his pit bull would eat them
• They drove away. He went to some shops where he made racist remarks about the victims (they were NZ Chinese) and spotted them driving past.
• He chased them for 10 minutes of over 140 km/hr
• When they wouldn’t stop, he hit the back end of their car with his, causing their car to flip into the air
• The car landed upside down. It almost slid down a steep bank. Two children were thrown from the car.
• He approached the upside down car and rather than offer assistance continued to yell racial slurs and threaten violence to the father
• All five people in the car had injuries including a skull fracture in the youngest child

How on earth does all that get just 30 months? The Police should have stuck with attempted murder charges. Ramming a car at high speed, especially with children in it, is just despicable.

Radio NZ reported:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has condemned comments made by the US President attacking four Democratic congresswomen and says she utterly disagrees with him.
President Donald Trump has been accused of racism after posting tweets attacking Democratic congresswomen.
He claimed the women “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe”, before suggesting they “go back”.

He then said Speaker “Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements”.
He’s since doubled down on the attack accusing them of “hating our country”.
Ardern told Morning Report there’s no place for comments like that and she is proud that the opposite exists in New Zealand.

Oh the hypocrisy is strong on this one. Has Jacinda checked who her Minister of Defence is? In 2015 RNZ reported:

New Zealand First deputy leader Ron Mark is being accused of racism after telling a Korean-born MP to go back to Korea during a parliamentary debate.

National’s Melissa Lee was born in South Korea but left as a child and is a New Zealand citizen.
During debate on the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill on Tuesday night, Mr Mark said: “Melissa Lee told the House in her rather condescending manner, which she is becoming renowned for, that we need to grow up in New Zealand.
“Well I’ve got a short message: If you don’t like New Zealand, go back to Korea.”

So Ron Mark did the exact same thing Donald Trump did. Yet Jacinda happily went into coalition with NZ First and made Mark Minister of Defence. Yet she tells the rest of the world there is no room for such comments in NZ.

By John Stringer.

IF YOU’D LIKE TO JOIN A KIWI CONTINGENT NEXT WINTER (JUNE 2020) FOR TWO WEEKS ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATING and make some awesome new friends (airfares, food, accomodation all inclusive, approx $4000 NZ) contact me through Kiwiblog. It’s a great trip! We’ll also go to Nazareth and Jerusalem. (Start saving now, and it’s $75 a week).

We’re between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the Shephelah, the foothills of Judea on the Philistine plain at one of the 5 historic cities of the ancient Philistines. In Area F previously we found a bone working area, which was believed to be a production site for bone arrowheads, but none were recovered. This year, a bone arrowhead emerged in Area M.

Searching through the site’s flotation, picking, and bone analysis, a figurine head, two possible clay seals, and a small metal ring also came to light. Here are some aerial shots onsite and using drones. Then the site is bedded in for its winter hibernation with geotechnic cloths, and in some cases (for brick walls) with a special plastic netting.

Finally, a pizza and pool party at the Kfar Menahem kibbutz. End of season 2019. JOIN US in 2020! It’s a blast.

Am on a pacific island for a week and the Internet access is very limited and expensive so probably no blogging from me until next week

The video is only nine minutes long but has some compelling testimony from eight former Labour staffers.

The Institute for Energy Research reports:

A study by the IFO think tank in Munich found that electric vehicles in Germany emit 11 percent to 28 percent more carbon dioxide than their diesel counterparts. The study considered the production of batteries as well as the German electricity mix in making this determination. Germany spent thousands of euros on electric car subsidies per vehicle to put a million electric vehicles on the road, but those subsidies have done nothing to reach the country’s greenhouse gas emission targets. This is just the latest example of government programs expecting one outcome and getting quite another, instead. 

The equivalent in NZ is banning offshore gas exploration, leading to an increase in coal importing!

The Herald reports:

Foreign Minister Winston Peters hasn’t raised concerns about the deportation of New Zealanders from Australia at a meeting with his transtasman counterpart, despite calling the situation “indefensible” after the previous time they got together.

You’d think if you were going to grandstand in the media calling something indefensible, you’d at least discuss it in person. But no, it was for grandstanding, not action.

Meanwhile, both Payne and Peters faced questions about why their countries had joined 20 others in signing a letter to the UN Human Rights Council calling for Beijing to end its mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.
“Because we believe in human rights, we believe in freedom and we believe in the liberty of personal beliefs and the right to hold them,” Peters said.
United Nations experts believe at least a million of the Uyghur minority group are being held in “re-education” centres in the western region.
China’s Government has described them as training facilities and says it’s trying to stamp out “extremism”.
Reuters reports the letter, signed mainly by European nations and dated July 8, was not read out and was not put up as a resolution, because of fear of backlash from China.
New Zealand has made no formal announcement about the letter.

So NZ signed a letter to the Human Rights Council, but didn’t have anyone read the letter out, put it up as a resolution or even tell anyone they had signed the letter.

Such a brave principled Government.

The Dow Jones has hit an all time high of 27,000. This is part of why Trump’s approval ratings are increasing. What I thought would be interesting is to compare the increase in the Dow Jones at 30 months, by President. The list in order is:

1. Roosevelt +138%
2. Coolidge +66%
3. Eisenhower +61%
4. Obama +52%
5. Clinton +42%
6. Ford +41%
7. Trump +36%
8. Bush GHW +29%
9. Reagan +27%
10. Harding +23%
11. Johnson +18%
12. Truman +10%
13. Kennedy +7%
14. Nixon -9%
15. Carter -11%
16. Bush GW -15%
17. Hoover -69%

Those in bold were re-elected

It will be interesting to see how they stand in another year.

Newshub reports:

Hundreds of gun licences were granted in New Zealand over the last decade despite those people having criminal convictions in Australia, a report says.
More than 600 people with criminal convictions in Australia were granted gun licences in New Zealand, of which 37 went on to commit gun crimes, including two homicides, RNZ reports.
Those convictions would have been considered in the vetting process, but they were often minor “and/or may have happened some years ago”, acting superintendent Mike McIlraith told RNZ.

Far too lax. If you have a criminal record, then getting a firearm licence should be very very difficult.

He said the vetting process for gun licence applications includes “interviewing the applicant and a family referee, usually the spouse, as well as an interview with an [independent] person who knows the applicant well”.

All handpicked by the applicant. A real vetting process would be what the SIS does for top secret clearances. You nominate four or five people, and then the SIS ask them each to nominate another four or five people – that way they get to talk to people not hand picked by the applicant.

Stuff reports:

Self confessed “cricket tragic”, Sports Minister Grant Robertson, always had a plan tucked away at the back of his mind for getting to the Cricket World Cup final if we made it.
The plan was put into operation with almost military precision almost before the last ball was balled in our semi final win against India.
Robertson said he had forewarned New Zealand cricket and others that if we made the final he would be making “every effort” to get to Lords.

Once he knew it was on, NZ Cricket sorted the ticket and the rest was down to Robertson – he bought and paid for his own air fares and organised to stay with friends.

I’d actually be okay for taxpayers to fund Grant to attend.

He is the New Minister for Sport and this is the Cricket World Cup. If a NZ team is playing in any major world cup final, I’m fine with the Sports Minister or even Prime Minister attending.

So laudable that Grant has paid for his own airfare, but I don’t think he should be criticised if he hadn’t.

Stuff reports:

National MP Judith Collins has attacked suggestions of institutional racism at Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children.
“It’s a real insult to the social workers who work so hard to try and keep children safe,” Collins said on the AM Show on Friday, when asked if there was institutional racism at the ministry.
“People have been abusing their children, hurting them, killing them in some cases, and the Family Court is involved in all these uplifts.
“It’s not like social workers are wandering around the corridors of maternity hospitals looking for children. A Family Court judge has gone through and said this child needs to be kept safe from this particular family,” she said.

“I actually think that it’s good to hear some people saying they want to take some responsibility. I’ll tell you what, just stop beating up kids, and you won’t need Oranga Tamariki.”

Good common sense.

Stuff reports:

The 10-year-old girl choosing a birthday present in the Warehouse toy aisle did not know the grey haired man behind her was a sex offender about to earn his third strike in five years.
Innocently she told him it was her birthday and she was picking presents with her mum who was in another aisle.
Next, Grahame John Rutherford, 63, put his arm around her and grabbed her bottom.  

Three indecent assaults on kids in five years. Plus two more from earlier on.

The latest offending made him one of the few eligible under the Sentencing Act to be given the maximum sentence under the third strike provisions which would mean he would serve it without the possibility of parole.
He had pleaded guilty to one charge of doing an indecent act on a child.
Justice Francis Cooke in the High Court at Wellington on Friday jailed him for the maximum term available of 10 years but said the imposition of a non-parole provision would be manifestly unjust.
He said the sentence Rutherford would have received without the three strikes legislation would have been about 14 months jail, which might have given him a chance at home detention.
“The three strikes regime has not prevented him from reoffending,” he said.

Yay. He got ten years jail rather than home detention.

The Judge shows he hates the three strikes law by claiming it had not prevented him from reoffending. The reality is that his first two strikes did not get a jail sentence. He got three months community detention for strike 1 and eight months home detention for strike 2. It is community detention and home detention that failed to stop him reoffending. The three strikes law is doing what it should – jailing him for a long time once it is clear he won’t stop.

The Judge admits that without three strikes he would have let him out on home detention again – no doubt resulting in another child being sexually assaulted by him in a shop or playground.