Newshub reports:

Medical officers of health from our three biggest cities have called for urgent, meaningful action by the Government to address our shameful drinking culture.
Laws were introduced in 2012 to reduce harm, but doctors say the legislation has largely been a failure.
They say the liquor industry is blocking attempts by councils to limit the number of places where alcohol is sold, and the times it can be sold.

The liquor industry is blocking nothing. The courts are finding that local authorities are breaking the law in their decision making, because they are not basing their decisions on evidence.

The activists hate this. They don’t think the decisions should be based on evidence.

“Every time you are trying to put forward a public health argument, the lawyers are looking at the detail and trying to shoot that down,” says Dr Stephen Palmer, Wellington Medical Officer of Health.

Detail is another word for evidence.

What the activists don’t like is that any decision to impose restrictions must be based on evidence.

The 10 Democrats in the 3rd debate are:

• Former Vice President Joe Biden
• Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey
• South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg
• Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro
• Sen. Kamala Harris of California
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
• Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas
• Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
• Andrew Yang, entrepreneur

The 10 or so others have not all dropped out, but failing to qualify for the debates makes it very hard for them.

The 10 in order of polling are”

1. Biden 29%
2. Sanders 17%
3. Warren 17%
4. Harris 7%
5. Buttigieg 4.5%
6. Yang 2.5%
7. Booker 2.4%
8. O’Rourke 2.4%
9. Castro 1.1%
10. Klobuchar 0.9%

In order of price in the predictions markets, they are:

1. Warren 33c
2. Biden 26c
3. Sanders 16c
4. Yang 12c
5. Harris 11c
6. Buttigieg 8c
7. Booker 3c
8. O’Rourke 2c
9. Klobuchar 1c
10. Castro 1c

I can’t see Sanders or Yang possibly becoming the nominee. To me it is a choice between Warren, Biden, Harris and Buttigieg.

My order of preference at present would be:

1. Buttigieg
2. Biden
3. Harris
4. Warren

NewstalkBZ reports:

The latest political security breach has convinced Kerre McIvor that this Government doesn’t know what it’s doing. …

She also took aim at Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her refusal to answer questions. 
“I don’t get the sense she’s across her job.”
“You would think even she could set the agenda and put it to him and get the people to brief you. Just one solid answer would be fantastic.
“You’re in charge of the country, act like it!” 
McIvor says that Labour probably didn’t expect to be in Government after the last election, but that was 18 months ago and they should be up and running now.
“I get the sense that they are still trying to get their heads around the job, but this is their job. This is what they have been training all their lives to do – be the Government – and they aren’t doing a very good job of it.” 

Ironically the PM says:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says losing some of her popularity is the result of taking on serious challenges in Government.

I think it is the opposite. The drop in popularity is because of an inability to take on the serious challenges.

Stuff reports:

Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr aimed another shot at the big four Australian-owned banks, warning that none of them were too big to fail. 
“There’s always been a concept: too big to close,” Orr said.
“[But] Nothing’s too big to fail”.

Now that quote by itself is fine. He is saying that you shouldn’t assume the Government would intervene if a major bank was at risk of failing, just because it is “big”.

But then he goes on to say:

Orr also warned that if one of the big four banks were to close, it would bring the other three down with it. 

This is what is bizarre. He is basically saying that the Government would let all four major banks fail and go under.

The reality is this would send so many hundreds of thousands of families into poverty that of course it would never be allowed.

You can imagine a situation where one solitary bank was allowed to fail, but not all four major banks.

A guest post by Graham Sharpe:

Recent criticism of the Coalition Government is leading to the suggestion we should return to First Past the Post (FPP) and abandon Mixed Member Proportional (MMP).  But this is not a binary alternative scenario.  May I suggest we should consider something else – Supplementary Member (SM)?
 
This would be a balance between MMP and FPP but avoid the extremes of both.  There would be a stable government but smaller parties would have a voice and presence.  It would reduce the horse trading between parties, and the gifting of seats would be unnecessary.  The effective threshold for a list seat would be 2%.
 
We could go to Supplementary Member, as used in Japan and much of Europe.  Under this system, parties get electorate seats as they win them.  Then they get list seats in proportion to their party vote, but, unlike MMP, the list seats are not combined with the electorate seats to determine the outcome.  So if the Banana Party got 10% of the vote they would get 10% of the list seats, so 10% 0f 49 giving them 5 seats plus any electorate seats.  Currently they would get 10% of the 120 total seats, so 12 seats, which includes any electorate seats they already have.
 
How would the last election have looked had we used SM rather than MMP?
There were 49 list seats.
National got 41 electorate seats and 44% of the List Vote, so would have had 66 seats instead of the 56 under MMP.
So putting the results all together (actual results in brackets):
National    66 (56)
Labour      48 (46)
NZ 1st       4   (9)
Greens       3  (8)
ACT          1  (1)
TOP          1  (0)
 
So Labour, plus NZ 1st plus Greens would be 55 (perhaps 56 with TOP joining them).  Winston Peters would not hold the power he now does
 
I think this would lead to better outcomes and governance.  Small parties would still be in parliament, and still have a voice.  It would also elevate the importance of electorate MPs.  The Party vote would not be the more important vote, and List Only parties would suffer, appropriately in my view.
 
It is (to me anyway) interesting to consider what an SM outcome would have been in earlier elections (again with the actual results in brackets.)
 
2008 – Election of Key National Government
National             65 (58)
Labour               39 (43)
Greens                 4  (9)
ACT                     3   (5)
Maori                   7 (5)
Progressive             1 (1)
United Future        1  (1)
NZ 1st                   2 (0)
 
1999 – Election of Clark Labour Government
Labour                  61 (49)
National                38 (39)
ACT                       6 (9)
Green                     4  (6)
Alliance                 7 (10)
United                    1 (1)
Christ. Heritage     1 (0)
NZ 1st                    3 (5)
 
 
1996 – First MMP Election
National         48 (44)
Labour           41 (37)
NZ 1st           13 (17)
Alliance           6 (13)
Christ Coal       2 (0)
ACT                 4  (8)
United              1 (1)
 
If we look back further and assume that an SM Election was held adding one third of seats as list seats, it also shows the value of SM in keeping a measure of control over the main parties but allowing them to govern without being too beholden to others.
 
1990 – Election of Bolger National Government (Notional 49 List Seats)
National        81 (67)
Labour          47 (29)
Greens           4   (0)
New Labour     3 (1)
 
1984 – Election of Lange Labour Government (Notional 48 List Seats)
Labour          78 (56)
National        55 (37)
Social Credit   5 (2)
NZ Party        5 (2)
 
1981 – Peak of Social Credit Support (Notional 46 List Seats)
National            65 (47)
Labour              51 (43)
Social Credit    10 (2)
 
1975 – Election of Muldoon National Government  (Notional 43 List Seats)
National           75 (55)
Labour              49 (32)
Social Credit     4 (0)
Values               2 (0)
 
1972 – Election Of Kirk Labour Government (43 Notional List Seats)
Labour              75 (55)
National            50 (32)
Social Credit      2 (0)
Values                1 (0)
 
These results all presuppose people would have voted the same way under a different system – I accept that this has to be a supposition.
 
MMP proponents call SM “MMP light”.  They are correct.  SM would be a better system for NZ.  We do not have to go back to FFP.
 
I would advocate that if we stay with 120 MPs, 80 would be electorate and 40 would be list seats.  Any increase in MP numbers would follow a 2/3 electorate and 1/3 list pattern.  Recent calls for 150 MPS would result in 100 electorates and 50 list MPs.
 
I would make a few other changes as well.  NZ Citizens only can vote, not permanent residents who are not citizens (anyone on the Electoral Roll at the time of this change could remain on the roll and vote but going forward only NZ Citizens could join the Roll).  Voting basically only on the day, not in the couple of weeks leading up to the election (allowing Special Votes for the sick, travellers etc. as in the past).
 
As for the Maori Electorates, another topic for another day.

The Herald reports:

A 20-megawatt hydro scheme on the West Coast has been blocked by Environment Minister David Parker due to its impact on the pristine and outstanding nature of the Morgan Gorge.
The $100 million development, proposed by Greymouth-based Westpower, had the support of the Department of Conservation, which spent more than two years working with the company on its proposal.
In September 2016 the department recommended the granting of a 49-year concession, leases and easements for the development which would draw water from above the Morgan Gorge in the Waitaha River, through a 1.5-kilometre tunnel, into a power station and back into the river downstream.

This just shows that the Government doesn’t believe its own rhetoric on climate change. The PM says this is the most critical issue of our times, and that we must reduce our emissions to zero. But then they turn down a renewable energy project, despite the Department of Conservation recommending it proceed.

Every hydro project changes the environment that was there before a dam was built. But the post dam environment can be equally beautiful as we see often in the South Island.

Westpower believed the run-of-river scheme could deliver about 120 GWh of power annually – enough to meet almost a quarter of the region’s demand. The proposal, along with the 7.6 MW Amethyst hydro plant the company commissioned on DoC land at Hari Hari in 2013, was developed to improve security of supply in southern Westland, particularly in the event of a transmission failure into the region.
Backers included Te Runanga o Ngati Waewae and Te Runanga o Makaawhio. The West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board also had no objection to the scheme.
But the project was the subject of a concerted campaign by the kayaking community and other environmental groups, including Sage’s Green Party. They argued there was no justification for additional power generation on the West Coast and that the Morgan Gorge warranted special protection from development, even though only expert kayakers can use it in its natural state.

So the Green Party thinks it is more important expert kayakers have an place to kayak, than New Zealand moves to renewable energy. God they’re such hypocrites.

They demand that petrol cars be banned and replaced with electric cars, yet they campaign against almost every renewable energy proposal proposed to actually generate the electricity needed in the future.

Westpower chairman Mike Newcombe said the company is “utterly stunned” by the rejection.

“We put up a proposal that ticks all the boxes: renewable, sustainable energy, long-term regional economic development boost, careful environmental stewardship – and yet it was declined. It is an alarming decision not just for the coast but for regional New Zealand,” he said in a statement.
“We will be carefully reviewing the detail of the decision,” he said. “It makes no sense – not least because of the government’s stated intention to be 100 per cent renewable in energy by 2035 – 15 years – and its commitment to climate change.”

This shows it is a slogan for the Government, not something they have any intention of achieving. That would require making actual hard decisions.

The Herald reports:

A white supremacist who shared the Christchurch mosque shooting video, and had it modified to include crosshairs and “kill count”, has lost an appeal against his 21-month jail sentence.
Philip Neville Arps, 44, went to the High Court to argue that his sentence was “manifestly excessive”.
However, in a new decision released today, Justice Rachel Dunningham agreed with the District Court judge’s “appropriate and justified” decision.
Arps, who compares himself to Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess and owns a white supremacist-themed Christchurch insulation company was jailed in June after admitting two charges of distributing objectionable publication after the March 15 massacres.

I’m glad the sentence held up.

Arps is a good example of the limits of free speech.

His reaction to the murder of 51 innocent men, women and children by a terrorist was to celebrate it, and to ask for the video of the killings to be circulated with a kill count on it.

That is clearly inciting further murder.

Stuff reports:

The Government considered and rejected banning the import of fossil fuel vehicles from 2035 onward, new documents show, despite the Ministry of Transport supporting the move.
The Ministry of Transport found that banning the import of fossil fuel vehicles by 2035 would have a net $2.26 billion benefit, but the Government decided against it. Instead, we have the feebate scheme.
Now, environmental activists say the Government should have gone ahead with the move, which would have averted 27 million tonnes of CO2 emissions between 2021 and 2050, according to Transport’s own preliminary cost-benefit analysis.

Compulsory horse and buggies would reduce it even more.

Stuff reports:

A judge has ordered that prisoner’s “cultural identification” be officially changed from Pākehā to Samoan as he begins a four-year jail term.
The criminal justice system’s records for James Anthony Finn, 29, will be changed after Christchurch District Court Judge Jane Farish referred to the system’s “colour-blindness” at his sentencing on 27 drugs and stolen property charges.
Finn appears to be Pākehā, and is recorded that way in the system, but he had a strong link back to Samoan culture because of his family background.
A cultural report was prepared ahead of his sentencing, which acknowledged his background. Finn found it strange and uncomfortable to be identified as Pākehā, Judge Farish said.

The cultural report also led to an additional reduction in his sentence, after his guilty pleas to all charges in June.

So he got his culture changed from Pakeha and that led to a reduction in his sentence.

I can see this catching on.

UPDATE: I’m informed that the full report from the sentencing doesn’t have his sentence reduction linked to his culture, so the two issues were seperate.

Interest.co.nz reports:

Overall business confidence as measured by ANZ’s Business Outlook Survey has plunged to its lowest level since April 2008.
The ANZ economists have summed it up neatly with their headline for the latest release, which simply says: “Business confidence: Nothing good to say about it”
And there isn’t.
An already weakening NZ dollar weakened further after the release of the survey results at 1pm on Thursday, falling to US63.2c.
In the survey, the so-called ‘headline’ business confidence fell another 8 points to -52% in the August ANZ Business Outlook, the lowest since April 2008.
Remember, in 2008 we were getting into the middle of the Global Financial Crisis.
Firms’ expectations for their own activity over the year ahead fell 6 points to -1, the lowest read since April 2009.

The more important data point is firms’ expectations for their own activities.

Employment intentions fell 3 points to a net 9% of firms intending to reduce employment, the lowest since mid-2009. Investment intentions fell 4 points to -4. Capacity utilisation lifted 3 points off July’s decade low.

That is the most worrying stat.

The Guardian reports:

Boris Johnson has briefed Cabinet colleagues that the government will “bring forward an ambitious new legislative programme for MPs’ approval”, and that the current parliamentary session will be brought to an end.
He has spoken to the Queen to request an end to the current parliamentary session in the second sitting week in September.
Following the conclusion of the traditional party conference season, the second session of this Parliament will commence with a Queen’s Speech on Monday 14 October.
“A central feature of the legislative programme will be the Government’s number one legislative priority – if a new deal is forthcoming at European Council – to introduce a Withdrawal Agreement Bill and move at pace to secure its passage before 31 October.”

The opponents of Brexit are going beserk and calling it undemocratic, and they may even get the numbers to no confidence the Government. But a former Director of Comms to David Cameron has pointed out this is a potential win/win for Boris:

I suspect Number 10 believes it has created a win win scenario with this explosive announcement. Yes – and they get Brexit by October 31st; No – and they get to fight a ‘people versus parliament’ general election.

It is going to be a fascinating two months.

Iain Dale points out the actual impact on Parliament is minor:

No. As Downing Street is pointing out, all this means is that three days of Parliamentary sittings will be lost in the week after the party conferences. Let me just repeat that – three days 8, 9 and 10 of October.

He also points out:

It is not unusual. Up until the last two years, Parliament has been prorogued each year in advance of a Queen’s Speech. This session of Parliament has lasted nearly two and a half years, the longest, so Sky News has just reported, since the English Civil War. So we are long overdue a Queen’s Speech, and quite understandably a new prime minister, and effectively a new government, wants to set out its new legislative agenda. 

So the remoaners are making a fuss about something that is very normal.

TVNZ reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Government is “mindful of its obligations” as Simon Bridges today pressed her whether public money will be used to buy land at Ihumātao.
However, she also said at present negotiations are taking place between mana whenua and Kiingitanga with no Government input.
National’s leader has questioned Ms Ardern about the land dispute at Ihumātao in Parliament two days running, trying to ascertain whether the Government is involved in negotiations.
“Will she rule out any public money either directly or indirectly being used to purchase land at Ihumatao?” Mr Bridges asked today.

The rumour is that Tainui will buy the land off Fletchers, but do so via a no interest loan from the Crown.

It is hard to overstate what a disaster that will be. It will effectively be an additional Treaty settlement for an Iwi which has already had a full and final settlement for land. Making it a loan instead of a grant doesn’t change things.

This will be devastating because for 30 years every party in Parliament has supported settling historical Treaty claims, on the basis they are full and final. Even Don Brash supports putting right these wrongs. But this is contingent on the settlements being full and final. It has also been on the basis that only state owned land is used for settlements, not private land.

If Labour makes a loan to Tainui so it can buy the land, then there is a huge risk that this bipartisan support will die in 2019, and it will never be resurrected. Race Relations will be set back a generation..

It will also be a signal to disaffected minorities in Iwi that if they break the law and occupy private land, they will be rewarded for doing so. This will incentivise such occupations elsewhere such as Shelley Bay.

I hope that Labour stay out of this. If Tainui wish to buy the land off Fletchers using their own money, then great on them. It would be a good outcome. But if that money is a loan from the Crown, then the precedent it sets will set off a backlash.

Michael Moore has made a new film called Planet of the Humans, which exposes the green energy charlatans.

An interview with the director is fascinating:

Take energy from wind. Gibbs points out that manufacturing wind turbines necessitates the use of fossil fuels and huge quantities of resources mined from the earth.

“In these wind turbines, there’s up to 800 pounds of copper, there’s 1 to 2 tons of rare earth metals,” he notes. 

Not only that, but the lifespan of a typical wind turbine is only 20 years, the film says. And making space for wind farms has meant laying waste to large tracts of land, and even, in some cases “mountaintop removal”

So that is wind. And electric cars:

Electric car manufacturing also relies on fossil fuels and other natural resources, Gibbs and Zehner emphasize. 

“The problem is if you have a big box with wheels and you’re going to shove it down the highway at a high speed, that takes a lot of energy. And there’s no way around that. And what electric car proponents have done is they’ve created an illusion that they’ve found some way to do that in a green way, they’ve found a way around the physics, but they haven’t,” insists Zehner, author of “Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism. “It’s just that the physics have gotten hidden in other parts of the process. So the emissions aren’t coming out of the tailpipe, they’re evolving in other ways. They’re through the manufacture of the car – like aluminum, for instance, which uses 8 times more energy than steel to produce; the batteries, which also have a tremendous impact [on the environment].”

And solar:

The sun is an essentially inexhaustible source of energy, right? True (so long as the sun exists), but harnessing solar power is not as “clean” as some imagine. Planet of the Humansshows how manufacturing solar panels (photovoltaic cells) starts with mining quartz, which causes environmental degradation in itself.

“The initial refining turns quartz into metallurgical-grade silicon, a substance used mostly to harden steel and other metals,” notes IEEE Spectrum, an engineering and applied sciences publication. “That happens in giant furnaces, and keeping them hot takes a lot of energy.” 

What powers those furnaces? In some cases, natural gas and coal.

How about biomass?

Biomass has been touted as “sustainable” and “carbon neutral” (as the industry-funded website biomass101.org puts it). But harvesting trees to burn as fuel is not the energy solution it’s cracked up to be, Gibbs believes. In one of the film’s distressing sequences 500-year-old yucca trees are chewed to bits to feed a biomass operation.

Biomass satisfies about 5-percent of total U.S. energy consumption, according to a report updated in 2016 by Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Germany, meanwhile, considered a leader in moving toward renewable energy sources, has built “around 700 biomass plants that predominantly burn residual and non-recyclable waste wood to produce power and heat,” according to Clean Energy Wire. 

But how are biomass and other ostensibly “clean” power plants built? Using fossil fuels and with materials that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, like concrete, Planet of the Humans states.

Even more importantly, according to the filmmakers, the development of “alternative energy” sources like wind, solar and biomass has not, in fact, led to a reduction in consumption of fossil fuels. 

“Building out an electric car and solar and wind infrastructure and the biomass, biofuel infrastructure, is going to run us off the cliff faster,” Gibbs declares. “Because it’s an additional round of mining and destruction that does not replace the one [fossil fuels] that’s already destroying the planet!”

And the summary:

The green energy movement, in fact, has proven counter-productive, Gibbs argues.

“It’s a giant profit center, unfortunately, for environmental groups [that support these ‘green illusions’], for corporations, for the people mining and destroying the planet,” Gibbs maintains. “The people that produce our fossil fuels love [the green energy movement] because it still uses fossil fuels and it’s not a threat to fossil fuels. All the car companies love the electric car.”

This might be one Moore film I will watch.

The Herald reported:

Northland’s Ngāti Hine people are in mourning, following the death of well-known kaumātua, and Waitangi stalwart, Pita Paraone.
Paraone died at 2am this morning in Auckland Hospital.
A whānau member says the much-loved elder had heart surgery about three weeks ago, and failed to recover.

Paraone was known for his quiet but firm diplomacy and was for many years the programme organiser for Waitangi Day, and the chair of the Waitangi National Trust.
He was also a former NZ First MP.
His family are now preparing to bring him north for the tangihana at his home marae in Mōtatau in the Bay of Islands.
New Zealand First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said his party was deeply saddened to learn of Paraone’s death.
“On behalf of New Zealand First let me express our condolences to Pita’s wife, Elva, his three children and wider whānau,” said Peters.
“Northland and the people of New Zealand have lost a man who cared deeply for his people and country, and worked endlessly to make New Zealand a better country for us all,” Peters said.

A very nice man, who worked hard for New Zealand. Had no enemies in politics as far as I know, and respected by all sides.

National’s Economic Discussion Paper has scores of proposals in there, most of them good. Here’s the 10 I think are the best:

1. Index tax thresholds to inflation
2. No new taxes
3. Only tax real interest income, not nominal income
4. Raise the eligibility age for NZ Superannuation from 65 to 67
5. Abolish taxpayer funded bonus payments for being in a union
6. Reverse ban on offshore oil and gas exploration
7. Explore congestion charging
8. Require all government agencies to pay creditors on time
9. Bring back public sector targets in health, education etc
10. Will repeal two regulations for every new regulation

Eric Crampton writes:

Fans of the classic Australian political satire The Hollowmen will remember the standard trick for inflating a figure when doing political math: roll together several years’ expenditures to get a bigger number.
A smallish-sounding $10 million spending announcement, rolled up over 10 years, becomes $100 million. As an official on The Hollowmen warned, “Treasury hate it. Might get you some headlines, but who needs that?”
The past fortnight brought a lot of headline stories about the social cost of alcohol. Felix Desmarais’ article for the Dominion Post warned that alcohol costs $5 billion. The Herald‘s headline warned of a “$70b social cost”, citing Alcohol Action New Zealand’s rolling up 10 years’ worth of alleged costs.

Wow so the cost of alcohol is around a third of NZ’s GDP. My God, let’s ban it and we’ll be so much better off.

When considering health costs, BERL explicitly wiped out any conditions where alcohol reduces net health costs. They worked from the alcohol aetiological tables listing the proportions of every disorder that might be attributed to alcohol. For alcohol-related liver cirrhosis, the proportion is obviously 100 per cent. But for other disorders, like chronic heart disease, the proportion is negative because alcohol reduces heart disease.

For any disorder where alcohol provides those protective effects, BERL assumed away those benefits.

So this “cost” is ignoring all benefits. It is basically meaningless.

When BERL tried to estimate the costs of alcohol-related crime, they used a survey of prisoners who were asked to what extent alcohol had contributed to their offending. If the prisoner said at least “some”, the costs of that offending were entirely attributed to alcohol.

Nonsensical.

BERL’s estimates were also plagued by double-counting. If you follow standard guidelines, you cannot count both the intangible costs of premature mortality and the costs of lost productivity due to premature mortality. New Zealand’s standard measure of the cost of premature mortality already includes all associated costs, including lost productivity. BERL added up both.

It is almost like they were trying to get as big a number as possible.

Last year, BERL came back to argue that alcohol costs the nation $7.8b per year, or $1635 per capita. The number appeared to be an inflation adjustment to the old 2009 figure; but I thought it worth checking. BERL’s Ganesh Nana confirms that the figure is an update of the old $4.9b, inflated by GDP growth since then. Our best hope of reducing alcohol’s social cost, by that measure, is a very sharp recession.
The Hollowmen thought they were teaching us how to build a big number. They had nothing on BERL. We should all know better than to take their new number seriously.

So now you multiple the so called cost of alcohol by GDP growth. Really it is genius work they do.

The Herald reports:

A legal battle in Sydney, Australia is under way with a Māori group claiming valuable land was given to them by Aboriginal people 200 years ago.
The leader of Ngāti Rangihou Kanguru hapū maintains that in the early 1800s aboriginal leaders entrusted their Māori king to 112 acres in Parramatta, which is now Sydney’s biggest CBD, according to 9 News.

Excellent. Next will be a claim on Greenland!

“We are here to reclaim Rangihou land,” Rangihou leader Lady Crown told 9 News.
“We want acknowledgement and recognition. We want the history books corrected and compensation for damages of the land.
“We have the first laws in time, so our laws stand above any other law in the land.”

I suspect they will not do well in court.

In March, the Māori group attempted to forcibly seize Rangihou by changing the locks on the Waratah soccer club and charging for parking in their own setup.
However, the group was evicted four days later.

In NZ they would be there years later.

One News reports:

The Prime Minister has been labelled a hypocrite for continuing to enforce the former National’s Government’s drug sanctions on beneficiaries. 
It comes while the Social Development Minister ignores the Green Party’s pleas for a more compassionate approach to be taken.
1 NEWS revealed this week that of the nearly 40,000 beneficiaries referred for jobs that required a drug test this year, there were only 114 failed tests and on 72 occasions beneficiaries were punished with sanctions.
Under the sanctions, regime job seekers’ can have their benefit cut by 50 per cent for four weeks, then stopped altogether if there are further infringements.
Jacinda Ardern backed the drug sanction regime this week saying, “we need to make sure that if someone is not able to get into work because they’ve failed a drug test that we’re able to encourage them”.
“From a Labour perspective it’s all about making sure it’s appropriate use (of sanctions), there are mutual obligations in our system,” she said.   
In 2013, as Labour’s social development spokesperson, Ms Ardern criticised the drug sanctions telling NZ Herald that cutting support for drug users would reduce their chances of rehabilitation.
“All of the evidence suggests that responding in the way National has suggested doesn’t work,” she said.

So in 2013 Jacinda Ardern condemned what National did, but in 2019 she now defends them as mutual obligations.

The 2019 Ardern is correct of course.

The Government announced:

This Government is ensuring that excessive MPs’ pay increases are stopped and a fairer system is used in future, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says.

Actually they are doing the exact opposite. They are repealing a law that restricted MP pay increases to the change in the median wage.

“In 2015, MPs took control of the way that their pay increases were calculated by replacing the Remuneration Authority’s independence with their own preferred formula. The changes were a failure, with this formula generating higher pay increases than the system used prior to 2015.

“We will repeal this formula and restore the independence of the Remuneration Authority to calculate increases in a fair and transparent manner. This means MPs’ pay will be calculated using the same process for reviewing the remuneration of other key public office holders.”

This is wonderful double speak. It means that they may now get massive pay increases rather than ones restricted to the median wage movement.

Under the law passed by National MPs would get a mere 2.1% pay rise in 2019 – as that is how much the median public sector wage has gone up. Under Jacinda’s law, they could get a lot more.

The best predictor of the future is the present. How much did the PM’s salary increase when Labour was last in office?

It went from $222,400 to $393,000 – an increase of $170,600. That is a 76.7% increase over nine years.

The median public sector increase was 45.6%. So the increase would have been around $70,000 less over nine years.

So who knew when Jacinda called 2018 the year of delivery, she meant the year of delivering huge pay increases to herself and her colleagues.