The Herald reports:

A “huge” part of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series – set to be the most expensive TV show ever at $1.5 billion plus – will be produced in New Zealand, film industry insiders have confirmed to the Herald on Sunday.
A senior member of the Auckland film industry said Kumeu Film Studios (KFS) and Auckland Film Studios (AFS) have been working on pre-production on the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) for more than a year now, preparing and building studio locations. American crews were already in Auckland.

That’s great and exciting news. The first series is expected in 2021. They have not confirmed what it will cover, but speculation is stories from the second age, including potentially the forging of the rings of power.

Other story lines may be the rise and fall of Numenor and the founding of Mordor.

It may even extend to the rise of Sauron and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.

Stuff reports:

“The prejudice suffered by Māori because of these Crown failures is extensive,” said the tribunal in its report.
It said despite the Crown investing some $220 billion into the health system since 2000, there’s been little improvement in outcomes for Māori.

There is no doubt Maori New Zealanders have worse health outcomes than non-Maori. Incidentally males have worst health outcomes than females also.

But to say there has been no improvement is simply wrong. Life expectancy is arguably the most important health outcome. Let’s look at the stats:

The increase since 2000 is:

• Non-Maori females 2 years
• Non-Maori male 3.1 years
• Maori female 3.9 years
• Maori male Maori male 4.0 years

And if we go back to 1951, the increases have been:

• Non-Maori females 12 years
  Non-Maori male 12 years
  Maori female 21 years
  Maori male Maori male 19 years

Stuff reports:

Petrol taxes and road user charges rise on Monday – the second of the Government’s three planned increases in this term.
Petrol is up 3.5c a litre – around 4c when GST is included – and road user charges are up 5.5 per cent.
The rises were first announced by Transport Minister Phil Twyford in June 2018. At the time he said they were needed “to fund the infrastructure for our cities and regions to thrive, and save lives”.

I have no problem with petrol tax going up, if the investment on roads increases. But what this Government is doing is increasing petrol tax, but spending less on roads.

Lana Hart writes in Stuff:

The country’s District Health Boards will all blow their budgets, yet again. My own DHB in Canterbury tops the list of the country’s biggest spenders with projections of deficits of over $100 million. Added up, expected overspending for 2018/19 will amount to almost $350m across New Zealand’s 20 DHBs.
With this kind of chronic, amplified budget blow-out, it doesn’t take a health policy analyst to work out that something is broken here.
What’s a Health Minister to do? Warn DHBs to tighten their spending belts or face unapproved budgets to stalemate their organisations? Done that. Send a Crown Monitor to the worst-offending DHB to recommend ways to reduce costs, using them as an example of what might happen to other boards if they don’t keep better check on their spending? Yep, poor ol’ Canterbury. Take a long, hard look at the structure of the healthcare system with its tiddly regional health boards that suck up a disproportionate amount of costs in the name of representative governance? Now we’re talking.

I agree. We have too many DHBs. It is ridiculous Auckland has three separate ones and Wellington has two. I’d merge as follows:

1. Northland
2. Auckland (merge 3)
3. Waikato-Lakes (merge 2)
4. East Coast (merge 3)
5. West Coast (merge 3)
6. Wellington (merge 3)
7. Canterbury (merge 2)
8. Upper and Western SI (merge 2)
9. Southern (merge 2)

Nine would be a more efficient number than 21.

Tracy Watkins writes:

Jacinda Ardern tried to convince reporters ahead of her first big reshuffle last week it was only a minor rejig.
Who was she trying to kid?
Phil Twyford’s dumping from the housing portfolio was as surprising, as it is rare. 
Ministers get dumped for personal transgressions. They get dumped for grave errors of judgment. But they rarely get stripped of their portfolio for incompetence.

The collective wisdom around Wellington ahead of the reshuffle was that Twyford was safe for that reason, though there was a precedence.
John Key unceremoniously sacked his former housing minister Phil Heatley – legend has it because he was unimpressed with his work on State housing. But it was also useful in highlighting Key’s ruthless streak, playing up to the legend of the smiling assassin. 

With respect I disagree with Tracy that the two are the same. In fact they are very different.

Phil Heatley didn’t stuff anything up. He certainly didn’t preside over a zombie disaster such as Kiwibuild. He was just reportedly seen as not hugely effective, and that was enough to have him removed from the ministry entirely.

Phil Twyford has presided over an initiative that has failed on every possible measure, and has become a huge debacle for the Government. Not only does he remain a Minister, he keeps his No 5 ranking and gets a top portfolio in Economic Development as a reward.

Stuff reports:

Close to $1 million has been donated to the victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks by a Jewish community in the United States. 
The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh has raised $966,000, Trib Live reported. It has given the money to the Our People, Our City fund, administered by the Christchurch Foundation.
Federation chief development officer Brian Eglash​ said the emergency relief fund was opened in solidarity with the Christchurch and local Muslim communities after the Pittsburgh Muslim community was so helpful and supportive after an attack on its own religious institutions last year.
In October 2018, an attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill killed 11 worshippers.

That’s stunningly generous from both the Pittsburgh Muslim community and the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Federation. A great reminder of shared humanity and how differences of faith need not interfere with that.

The Guardian reports:

Labour is to push for a national law to ensure that new policy decisions are gauged against people’s future health and wellbeing, with an ambitious idea modelled on similar schemes already in place in Wales and New Zealand.

If Corbyn likes it, well …

Duncan Garner writes:

And yes, Twyford has taken the fall for KiwiBuild’s spectacular fail, but he’s not the only one to blame.
The industry has been shouting at Labour, warning them it can’t be done, and Labour looked the other way. It got caught in its own bubble of self-importance and no leader within the party was brave or smart enough to call Twyford in to make the tough call until now.
Yes, he should have put his hand up, but where were the others? It’s arrogant, naive and desperately self-obsessed to cling to housing failure while people live in cars and sheds and caravans and need genuine solutions. Vanity before results – I detest that.

Labour had this policy for seven years. Twyford was the muggins who had to implement it, but he didn’t design it. For years people said the policy was madness and would never work but they didn’t listen.

The truth has been obvious for years if we’re brutally honest. This failure has to belong to Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson too; they’ve been far too silent and appear to have simply gone along with KiwiBuild when they needed to intervene.
Like the capital gains debate, where was Jacinda? She only appears at the end to hand out the doctor’s final diagnosis and the medication required.

The so called reset of Kiwibuild is likely to be an effective abandonment of it, but they will keep the name and apply it to a very different programme.

Jacinda’s “year of the delivery” slogan has gone missing, especially in housing. If you find it, call Parliament, 04-471-9999. Ask for the PM.

Heh.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has shared her own cancer experience in a hand-written letter to 12-year-old Lilly Vining whose dad Blair is dying of cancer after being let down by the public health system.

It’s good she replied personally. But let’s look at the substance:

Lilly – a rugby fanatic like her dad – wrote an open letter to Ardern and read it to the public in a video that went viral online earlier this month.
“Before you were Prime Minister you promised New Zealanders world-class cancer care including a national cancer agency.

“If you do what you promised it would tick the last thing off my dad’s bucket list and help many more New Zealanders,” Lilly read, as footage capturing precious moments spent with her dad, who she will soon lose, showed in the video.

So all Lilly is asking is for Labour to implement their manifesto promise.

The Prime Minister begins by sharing her own experience with cancer.
“I lost my nana when I was your age, and I felt like the world was closing in on me, so it’s hard for me to imagine how you are feeling right now,” Ardern wrote.

She says how important it is New Zealand has a specific plan for cancer but is unsure if an agency independent from political interference would be better equipped to address the issues than the Ministry of Health.
“We made that promise when we were opposition (so before we were in Government) and we were worried the [former] Ministry of Health had lost lots of the resources it needed to do a good job and make sure we fix all of the issues stopping people from getting the cancer care they need,” Ardern wrote.

So seems pretty clear there is no intention to implement their manifesto promise. It was just something they say in opposition, but don’t do when in Government.

Stuff reports:

Auckland’s longest-serving councillor has made a surprise decision to seek re-election, setting up a potentially vote-splitting contest on the centre-left. 
Mike Lee had himself intended to retire after three terms as ward councillor, and 27 years in local body politics.
Left-leaning Lee’s decision will pit him against the centre-left City Vision ticket which has already selected local board chair Pippa Coom as its candidate, on the understanding Lee was retiring. …

He said he feared the council’s debt levels would become a pretext for another attempt to sell Ports of Auckland, and he would oppose the proposed Light Rail project, instead favouring an expansion of conventional rail.
Lee said he had thought seriously about a tilt at the mayoralty, but that that was a contest only for those with wealthy backers.
Coom has spent three terms on the Waitemata Local Board, and is the current chair.
She doesn’t see Lee’s decision as pitting left against left.
“I’m a progressive option – I’m backing progressive change and want to work effectively with councillors and the mayor,” Coom told Stuff.

Lee is what I call an honest leftie. He holds Goff to account despite being on the left like Goff.

It is remarkable how far left the Democrats seem to be going, in response to the Trump Presidency. A moderate candidate can and should win, but many Democratic candidates are so desperate to appease the Twitter activists they risk being unelectable. Some “highlights” from the first debate:

• A top tax rate of 70%
• Abolish private health insurance
• Guarantee abortion access to trans women (yes!)
• Decriminalise entering the United States illegally

Here’s what Nicky Hager said in 2017:

The SAS believed, based on flimsy intelligence, that they would find a group of Taliban fighters who’d attacked a New Zealand patrol 19 days earlier. But the group wasn’t there, and the 21 people killed and wounded in the operation were all civilians – mostly women and children.

This week Stuff reports:

Another clip from earlier showed two men were visibly carrying weapons – a rifle and a rocket propelled grenade launcher – when emerging from a building that is said to have included a woman.

I’m sure the rocket propelled grenade was for self defence to protect against any wolves menacing their sheep.

Hager ignores his actual claim in the book and now argues:

“That’s only two armed people …. this isn’t many weapons with which to climb a hill and attack the foreign forces. This isn’t what it was made out to be … two people isn’t an armed group.

He can never admit when he is wrong. And even better he goes for pop psychology:

“Real insurgents would never ever have climbed up that hill when they could hear helicopters around.”

Real insurgents don’t eat quiche.

The Herald reports:

The Minister in charge of New Zealand’s public service has announced the “most significant” shake-up of the state sector in more than three decades.
State Services Minister Chris Hipkins said the Government will repeal and replace the State Sector Act of 1988 with a new, modern piece of legislation – the Public Services Act.
The new law, which will be introduced to Parliament in a few months, shifts the focus of Government agencies – such as Treasury and other Ministries – and puts more emphasis on them working together.
At the moment, Government departments and agencies tend to work in silos.

Hipkins said the shake-up would help create a “unified public service”, which aimed to tackle specific issues, such as reducing child poverty, mental health services, climate change and the future of work.

The reforms looks useful and potentially worth supporting. But Government agencies already do work together.

The last Government set Better Public Services targets than required agencies to work together to achieve them. Sadly this Government has scrapped them.

HDPA writes:

I’m still not convinced our Prime Minister has what it takes to make tough calls.
Jacinda Ardern has finally unveiled her much-anticipated cabinet reshuffle, and once again, she just couldn’t make the tough call to demote someone.
She’s taken the Housing Minister job off Phil Twyford and she’s given it to Megan Woods, which means she’s obviously unhappy with his handling of the Kiwibuild shambles.
But, hey, Phil Twyford’s going nowhere. There’s now a team of housing ministers. Megan Woods is in charge because she actually is capable, but there in the team is still Phil Twyford, taking the lead on urban development apparently because he’ll share his ‘extensive knowledge’. He also keeps Transport, which is a portfolio he really does deserve to be fired from, and he keeps his cabinet ranking of five.

He undershot the target he promised by 80% and stays No 5 in Cabinet. What would it take to actually be demoted?

Today wasn’t actually a test of Phil Twyford at all. It was a test of the prime minister. Does she, yet, after nearly two years, have the mettle to make tough decisions? The answer is clearly no.
She didn’t fire Clare Curran when she stuffed up. Curran had to resign. She did fire Meka Whaitiri for allegedly manhandling a staff member but even today left the door open for Whaitiri to come back into cabinet.
She didn’t demand any heads when Labour HQ kept the summer sex scandal a secret from her, and now she’s demoted but not demoted Twyford.
Come on, a Prime Minster needs to make tough calls. That’s the job. If only to set a standard in cabinet, if only to say to other ministers ‘If you aren’t completely honest about meeting people in your active wear, if I’m not completely happy with the way you’re handling your portfolio, you’re out’.
The rest of cabinet can clearly breathe easily: the bar is obviously set very low.

Yep.

It takes special ability to stuff up both the supply and demand side of something, but Labour have managed it with Kiwibuild.

Not only are they 80% short of their election promise target, but the few houses they have funded are not selling.

Kirsty Johnston reports:

Out of the 271 homes offered for sale since the scheme made its first offer to market in September last year, 158 are currently up for grabs.
Of those unsold, 55 are in Christchurch – where just two homes have sold so far, and four have had to be bought back from developers because of the lack of sales.

So only 42% of Kiwibuild houses have even sold. Remember the Government telling us tens of thousands of people were queued up to buy them.

Economist Cameron Bagrie said the data illustrated the fundamental problem with the policy’s execution – that it was done poorly.
“There’s product on the market that there’s not demand for. If the product is on the market at the right price, it will move. If it was quality product at the right price, then it would shift. And what you’re seeing is the reserve,” he said.
“If you look at what the Government was trying to achieve in response to affordable housing, this isn’t the response. It’s a poor policy and it’s been poorly executed. KiwiBuild is a dog with fleas. 

A dog with fleas – great analogy.

Stats NZ has just released wellbeing data from their general social survey they do every two years. As the Government is trying to brand themselves all about wellbeing, I thought it would be interesting to compare the 2018/19 data with the 2016/17 data. And rather embarrassingly for the Government, major indicators have declined. It shows they are about talk, not delivery.

Some key changes:

• Proportion with life satisfaction at 8/10 or higher declined from 64.7% to 62.2%
• Proportion with life satisfaction at 6/10 or lower increased from 17.3% to 18.9%
• Proportion with life worthwhile at 8/10 or higher declined from 71.4% to 69.2%
  Proportion with life worthwhile at 6/10 or lower increased from 12.6% to 14.0%
• Proportion with enough or more than enough money declined from 64.4% to 62.8%
• Proportion with very good or excellent health status declined from 57.8% to 55.3%
• Proportion who have trust in people of NZ at 7/10 or higher declined from 67.6% to 65.9%
  

Again these are the official measures of well being measured by Stats NZ, and they are going backwards.

Stuff reports:

The New Zealand parliament could be set for expansion.
A new report suggests an extension of the current three-year term to four years and an increase in the number of MPs representing the regions from 120 to 150.
“The current three-year Parliaments, as well as reinforcing a short-term bias in ministers and MPs, contributes to a substantial turnover rate of MPs,” co-author Professor Jonathan Boston from Victoria University of Wellington said in a statement.
New Zealand currently has one of the shortest parliamentary terms in the world – the US has a four-year term, while the UK follows a five-year cycle.

I think a four year term would be great. Three years is one of the shortest in the world, and you will get better Government if half of a term isn’t spent in near campaign mode.

Also voters are more likely to tip out a bad Government after one term if the term is four years. That is long enough to expect decent results. But a three year term almost by default allows a bad first term Government to claim they need more time.

I also support the proposal to increase the size of Parliament to 150 MPs, even though it is likely to be about as popular as a Big Mac at a Green Party conference.

A rough rule of thumb for the size of national legislatures is the cube root of the population. That would mean we should have 169 MPs.

We have one of the smallest legislatures in the world because we have only one chamber. Also we have no state legislatures. Let’s look at the size of legislatures in a few countries.

Croatia and Ireland have smaller populations than NZ and have 151 and 218 MPs respectively.

Norway, Finland and Denmark have under six million population and have 169, 200 and 179 MPs respectively.

Sweden has 349 MPs for 10 million people.

The changes announced by PM Jacinda Ardern are:

• Kris Faafoi promoted to Cabinet (well deserved) and picks up Government Digital Services and gets a role in Housing
• Poto Williams goes from Assistant Speaker to Minister outside Cabinet for community sector
• Phil Twyford has housing portfolio split between him and Woods (Housing/Kiwibuild) and Faafoi (public housing). Twyford has urban development and gets Economic Development off Parker
• Ruth Dyson goes from Chief Whip to Assistant Speaker

Hard luck for Michael Wood who has been an effective Under-Secretary and on merit should have been made a Minister, but he was the wrong demographics.

UPDATE: Wood gets Chief Government Whip which is a reasonable consolation prize.

Small credit to the PM for not reappointing Whaitiri, considering she still denies she assaulted her press secretary.

Also Priyanca Radhakrishnan becomes the Parliamentary Private Secretary for Ethnic Affairs and Willow Jean Prime becomes Parliamentary Private Secretary for Local Government. These are not Executive roles.

Deborah Russell gives up Chair of the Environment Select Committee and becomes the Chair of the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee and Duncan Webb becomes the Chair of the Environment Select Committee. This suggests Russell is in line to become a Minister next.

Stats NZ reported:

A person’s sexual identity is how they think of their own sexuality and which terms they identify with. In the 2018 GSS, the majority of New Zealand adults identified as heterosexual or straight (96.5 percent), with 1.9 percent identifying as bisexual, and 1.1 percent as gay/lesbian. The remaining 0.5 percent identified as other identities, which includes terms such as takatāpui, asexual, and pansexual, among others. 

This is the first time Stats NZ has collected this data. If you break it down by gender, you have:

• Heterosexual 96.5%
• Bisexual female 1.3%
• Gay male 0.7%
• Bisexual male 0.6%
• Lesbian 0.4%
• Other 0.5%

This may change over time though. 5.4% of 18 to 24 year olds identified as bisexual.

The investigation by the SSC has found that Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf acted unreasonably in relation to the claimed Treasury hack.

In the press conference, Commissioner Peter Hughes was basically damning of Makhlouf. Some key takeaways were:

• Makhlouf refuses to accept he did anything wrong, and has not apologised. He rejects the findings of the SSC report.
• Hughes expects Makhlouf should have offered his resignation in response to the failure by Treasury to keep Budget information secure, and his unreasonable responses to it
• Hughes got legal advice on whether he could sack Makhlouf but this incident by itself was not enough to sack him, taking into account his eight years of service
• If Makhlouf wasn’t finishing today, he would have looked at some sort of formal disciplinary action such as a formal warning
• Hughes said that Makhlouf’s reputation was deservedly damaged by what he did, and that Hughes public comments are designed to put on the record that his behaviour was unreasonable and not of the standard expected
• Hughes referred to the international media interest in Makhlouf. It will be interesting to see what happens in Ireland now.
• Hughes said that short of putting Makhlouf in “public stocks” he is doing everything he can to make clear his dissatisfaction with what happened
• A key mantra from Hughes was mistakes will happen but he expects CEs to own it, fix it and learn from it. Makhlouf seems unwilling to accept ownership what happened and was too focused on the actions of those who accessed the information and not the actions of the agency he runs that made the information public by mistake.

What is also interesting is the report makes clear that Makhlouf told Robertson that the information came from searches on the Treasury website. This should have been enough information for Robertson to push back against the suggestion it was a criminal hack. Instead Robertson smeared National with his own press release.