From the ABC:

So the ODT has the smallest drop in the last year and the Sunday News the largest. The Press has the biggest fall of the daily newspapers.

Since 2008 the Press and Dom Post have had their circulation drop by over half and the Herald by over 40%.

On the 5th ballot Jeremy Hunt beat Michael Gove by just two votes to make the membership vote vs Boris Johnson.

In the 4th ballot, the 27 votes from Stewart went 14 to Boris, five to Hunt, 10 to Gove and Javid lost four.

In the 5th ballot the 34 votes from Javid went three to Boris, 18 to Hunt and 14 to Gove.

It is possible some Boris voters voted for Hunt so he would make the final two instead of Gove.

Hunt voted for Remain and Camp Boris have nicknamed him “Theresa in trousers” or “Tit”. Hard to see the members voting for him.

The Herald reports:

National has committed to starting construction on the Melling Interchange roading project in its first term, if elected to power.
However, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said the Melling interchange still needs to go through a consent and designation process.
Opposition leader Simon Bridges made the announcement today alongside Hutt Valley mayors and MPs.
He said the project’s delay had been a sorry saga from the Government and the interchange needs to be prioritised.

“In our first term we’re committed to starting construction of this vital project in this area because we know that New Zealand shouldn’t be slowed down, it needs to get going.”
In April the NZTA announced the $140 million transport project, that would greatly ease congestion on State Highway 2, won’t be considered for funding until 2028.

This is a great project that will benefits motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. It means traffic across Melling won’t intersect SH2 traffic and will give pedestrians and cyclists separate lanes.

A great article by Henry Cooke on the rise and fall of Kiwibuild. Great long firm journalism.

A few things stood out to me that showed how from the very beginning it was really a policy based on how it sounds, rather than any serious policy work to see if it could work.

King, who declined to comment for this story, had been in a car on the way to an event with Salvation Army head Campbell Roberts and Housing Foundation head Brian Donnelly in the months before the conference, chatting about the emerging problems in housing. Donnelly’s agency had a scheme where affordable homes were built and sold, and the capital immediately recycled to build more. King liked the idea.
“We said there was a supply problem, and there was a need for there to be an increase of supply of affordable entry-level housing. But the emphasis was on the affordable,” Roberts told Stuff.
“To tell you the truth, I was a bit concerned with the speed at which they grabbed it. I don’t think there was pretty much more than our conversation – which was in the car going to something – it was a not a sitdown meeting, and the next thing they were introducing it,” Roberts said.

So the policy was based on a conversation in a car. This is how Labour makes policy!

King told a recent biography the original policy had been for 50,000 homes, but after taking a look at the huge amount of homes built in the 1970s it was decided it could be “cranked up” to 100,000  instead – in fact they even considered going higher. When the party was finally elected five years later, it would be happy it hadn’t.
Roberts said the 100,000 number immediately raised warning signs and he told Labour about it.

So they doubled the number on a whim because it sounded better.

Twyford says he will deliver a paper to Cabinet in “a few weeks” recalibrating the policy. It doesn’t appear that this has happened yet, almost six months later.

They really don’t know what to do.

Stats NZ reports:

Gross domestic product increased 0.6 percent in the March 2019 quarter, following a 0.6 percent rise in the December 2018 quarter, Stats NZ said today.
“Construction was the main contributor to GDP growth this quarter, rising 3.7 percent, on top of a 2.2 percent increase in the previous quarter,” national accounts senior manager Gary Dunnet said.
The increase in construction reflected higher investment in both residential and non-residential buildings.
The strong contribution from construction was tempered by subdued results in the service industries, which represent about two-thirds of the economy.  Service industries experienced their lowest quarterly growth since the September 2012 quarter, rising 0.2 percent this quarter.  …

GDP per capita was up 0.1 percent in the March 2019 quarter.

I guess it is better than declining, but only just.

Rory Stewart got eliminated on the 3rd ballot. The results were:

1. Boris Johnson 143, 46%
2. Jeremy Hunt 54, 17%
3. Michael Gove 51, 16%
4. Sajid Javid 38, 12%
5. Rory Stewart 27, 9%

The votes gained from the first round are:

1. Boris Johnson +17
2. Michael Gove +10
3. Jeremy Hunt +8
4. Sajid Javid +5
5. Rory Stewart -10

Interesting that Stewart lost 10 votes. It seems Team Boris have been crafty and some of his supporters voted for Stewart in the 2nd ballot to eliminate Raab and then went back to Boris in this ballot.

Likely Javid will be next to go, so the real contest seems to be between Hunt and Gove to make the membership vote vs Boris.

Stuff reports:

The woman convicted of a massive fraud against the Ministry of Transport (MoT) was previously convicted of a substantial fraud – but it was under a different name and that name was permanently suppressed, until now.
Joanne Harrison was sentenced to three years and seven months in jail for the misappropriation of $725,000 from MoT. She’s since been released and deported to the United Kingdom.
A Stuff Circuit investigation reveals Harrison had seriously offended under a previous name – Joanne Sharp – though the connection has never been able to be made public, because of the suppression. …

On 22 June 2007, Joanne Sharp pleaded guilty to five charges of forgery, using a forged document, altering a document, using an altered document, and obtaining by deception.
The charges related to her time as a senior manager at Tower Insurance.
A source told Stuff Circuit, “Joanne Sharp’s modus operandi when she defrauded the MoT was strikingly similar to her conduct when she defrauded Tower, particularly how she used her senior position to intimidate and bully anyone who stood in her way”.
She was convicted in July 2007 of all the charges, and sentenced to 300 hours’ community service.
At a subsequent hearing she was granted permanent name suppression, including details relating to her son and his identification.
In his decision at the time, Judge Roderick Joyce QC said: “I saw – and still see the present [offending] as involving a one-off situation”, and “…in my judgment the possibility of reoffending is in no way on any kind of cards”.

Well he got that one wrong.

If she had not got name suppression, then she wouldn’t have been able to commit these further frauds. Permanent name suppression where someone has been found guilty should only be used in exceedingly rare cases.

The Herald reports:

Opposition politicians have turned their sights on what they say is an embarrassingly small funding increase for the national drug-buying agency in a Government Budget that was meant to focus on health.
While the Budget this year featured significant increases in areas such as mental health, Pharmac got $10 million extra for the year – just over a 1 per cent bump in the context of a nearly $1 billion annual budget.
National MPs in Parliament on Tuesday were determined to try to jab what they see as a gap in the Government’s “Wellbeing Budget” armour.
“Why, when Budget 2019 allocated $15.2 billion of new operating spending over four years, couldn’t he find enough funding in the Budget to ensure Pharmac’s funding at least kept pace with inflation?” National’s Finance spokeswoman, Amy Adams, asked of the Finance Minister in the House.

She was keen to point to big-ticket items, such as fees-free tertiary education, while raising by name a series of recent high-profile case of New Zealanders pleading for Pharmac to fund medication that could save their lives or their loved ones.

They have heaps of money for free fees for lawyers and Shane’s re-election fund but couldn’t find enough money to had Pharmac funding even keep pace with inflation.

With population increase of 1.8% and inflation of 1.5%, a $33 million increase was needed just to keep real per capita funding constant. They got less than a third of that.

All about priorities.

Jon Stephenson writes at Stuff:

Two insurgent commanders hunted by the New Zealand SAS have admitted they were present in a village raided during Operation Burnham.
In the first public account of the insurgents’ movements, they have contradicted some of the locals’ claims about the 2010 raid, in which six civilians were killed and 15 injured. The raid is the subject of a current Government inquiry sparked by the book Hit & Run.
In interviews with Stuff, both Qari Miraj and Maulawi Naimatullah admitted to being in or around the village of Naik during the night raid, which was led by the SAS with US and Afghan allies. …

Miraj and Naimatullah’s admissions contradict the accounts of numerous residents from the village of Khak Khuday Dad, a few hundred metres from Naik. Those villagers have maintained for years that there were no insurgents in either their village or Naik when Operation Burnham took place.
Miraj told Stuff that he, Naimatullah and two of their bodyguards had been at Naik for “two nights and one day” and that “everybody knew that”.
“Everybody [in Naik and Khak Khuday Dad] knew that I was there because I was going to Naik village. I was going five times a day to pray in the mosque, and everybody knew that Qari Miraj and [one of his bodyguards] Maulawi Abdul Khaliq were guests at the house of Maulawi Naimatullah.”

This is a stunning revelation. Kudos to Jon Stephenson for reporting this new testimony, even though it contradicts a key claim in the book he co-authored with Nicky Hager.

It may not be a coincidence that the villagers have now pulled out of the inquiry into the claims.

It says something that it turns out the insurgents may be more truthful than the villagers!

Stuff reports:

Air New Zealand chief executive officer Christopher Luxon resigned on Wednesday evening, hinting at a possible future in politics. …

“I am now 48-years-old and my wife Amanda and I are at an interesting time in life. Our children will both have finished high school and so we will have a new degree of freedom, including career choices. Thus, I would like to think more about how I can best use my skills, abilities and experience to make a further contribution to the success of New Zealand whether that be through corporate life, politics or a not for profit.”

It has previously been speculated that Luxon has ambitions to join the National Party and “do a John Key”, starting with the 2020 election.
It’s understood the National Party is keen to get Luxon on board as an MP.
Jami-Lee Ross’ seat in Botany, considered a safe National seat by the party, will have a selection race running around the end of summer, when Luxon said he would make a decision about what to do next.

Luxon has been a very successful CEO of Air New Zealand. If he stood for National, that would be a huge coup.

During his seven years as CEO, Air NZ has not just been profitable, but had all time high customer satisfaction and won several best airline global awards.

News.com.au reports:

It’s been almost four months since Christine Thornton lay beside her husband and whispered into his ear as he died in a Swiss euthanasia clinic.
It was a good death, the kind the couple had so desperately wanted. Peaceful. Dignified. Full of love.
Christine, who has shared her story to coincide with the start of Victoria’s assisted dying laws today, knew that Troy would still be able to hear her for about two minutes after the drugs began flooding his body.
“To me, that was peace of mind and I just made sure I said everything I could possibly think of to say,” the Victorian office manager and mother-of-two told AAP this week.
“I told him how much I loved him, and how I would make sure the kids would never forget him, that they would know how special they were to him.”

Sounds like a dignified and humane death. What was the alternative?

Troy, a veteran Victorian firefighter, was just 54 when he opted to die quickly, by lethal injection, rather than slowly from multiple system atrophy, an incurable and untreatable disease.
If the disease is allowed to run its course, sufferers are reduced to a vegetative state, and can often die choking on their own mucous as crucial functions like swallowing become impossible.

It inhumane to force someone to suffer like that, to become a vegetable, choking on their own mucous. I want to live in a country that gives people like Troy a choice.

Stuff reports:

The boys in a school rugby team that has been told it will not get points if it fields its only girl player say they stand by her.
Briar Hales, 11, a Year 7 Havelock North Intermediate student, decided to pull out of her team following the disapproval of five school principals who opposed her playing with the boys.
The only girl in the team, she pulled out after the principals said that if she played in an upcoming tournament her team will not be awarded any points.

How stupid. If she is good enough to make the school first XV, she should be allowed to play.

The principals said she could play in the girl’s seven-a-side team. They said they weren’t opposed to making changes to the current status quo, but it was too late to make changes to the competition now.
A statement issued by the organisers said by having girls and boys teams playing separately more students could play in the tournament.
It said there was equality if the sexes were separate, and there were health and safety issues as “boys can be bigger, stronger, heavier and faster”.

So what. She is not being forced to play with the boys – she is choosing to. She’s aware she could be hurt – as is every rugby player.

Asher Emanuel writes at The Spinoff:

The lobbyist who served as the prime minister’s closest adviser during the early days of the coalition government appears to have failed to comply with commitments he made to disclose conflicts of interest on an ongoing basis, according to documents released to The Spinoff under the Official Information Act.
Gordon Jon (GJ) Thompson, who founded lobbying firm Thompson Lewis in 2016, was appointed interim chief of staff to the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, shortly after the formation of the government in late 2017 to help set up the new administration. Thompson’s appointment was short-term, to stand in for Mike Munro who was unwell at the time. After four months in the role — during which he had access to all Cabinet papers and was involved in the appointment of over 100 ministerial staff — Thompson returned to his firm to lobby the government on behalf of private clients.
The prime minister recently told parliament that the potential conflicts of interests were managed because Thompson was subject to codes of conduct and signed a declaration about conflicts of interest.
But documents show Thompson’s initial disclosure to Ministerial Services didn’t identify the firm’s clients and suggest that Thompson failed to comply with the undertakings he had made in the declaration to keep Ministerial Services informed on an ongoing basis about potential conflicts of interest, raising questions about a breach of government rules around conduct in the public service.

Now newspapers ran major headline stories when John Key’s Chief of Staff merely had a holiday with a lobbyist. Here you have a lobbyist as Chief of Staff, who apparently never notified Ministerial Services of any specific conflicts of interest.

Without having seen a list of the firm’s clients, and in the absence of Thompson alerting Ministerial Services to any real or potential conflicts related to clients as they arose, it is difficult to see how the prime minister’s office or Ministerial Services could identify or manage any conflict between the interests of his firm’s clients and the interests of the government.

This is the issue – how were the conflicts managed?

Companies Office records show that he did not resign his role as director. A company law expert told the Spinoff it is not possible to take a “leave of absence” from a directorship and that Thompson’s legal duty to act in the best interests of his company would have persisted during his employment as chief of staff.
“A directorship exists independently of an employment relationship. Of course a director might also be an employee and as an employee might take leave (paid, unpaid, whatever) from the employment role,” said Victoria Stace, a company law lecturer at Victoria University.
“But they remain a director and you cannot be a ‘sleeping director’. As a director you retain all the duties under the Companies Act until you resign as director.”

And this is the real problem. GJ should have stood down as a Director while serving as Acting Chief of Staff.

The prime minister recently defended her continuing relationship with Thompson after his work for Huawei became public, saying that New Zealand is a small country and “overlaps” are inevitable.
“The important thing,” she said on One News, “is that we manage those conflicts.”

But how were they managed? It is very opaque.

Again think if the situation was reversed. Say Simon Bridges became Prime Minister and appointed Matthew Hooton as his Acting Chief of Staff for six months, with Matthew remaining a Director of Exceltium while hiring all the Beehive staff and seeing all Cabinet papers. There would be non-stop media coverage.

Matt Hancock withdrew and Dominic Raab got eliminated on the 2nd ballot. The results were:

1. Boris Johnson 126, 40%
2. Jeremy Hunt 46, 15%
3. Michael Gove 41, 13%
4. Rory Stewart 37, 12%
5. Sajid Javid 33, 11%
6. Dominic Raab 30, 9.6%

The votes gained from the first round are:

1. Rory Stewart +18
2. Boris Johnson +12
3. Sajid Javid +10
4. Michael Gove +4
5. Jeremy Hunt +3
6. Dominic Raab +3

So Stewart has the largest momentum.

Each day they hold another ballot with the lowest polling candidate being eliminated. It is going to be fascinating to see who makes the final two with Boris, that goes to the membership vote. It could be any of the four remaining.

The Herald reports:

The Treasury’s website was tested for any security issues five days before the National Party released Budget 2019 information that it had gleaned from the website. …

In answers to written questions from National’s finance spokeswoman Amy Adams, Robertson said the Treasury website was given a “Technology Risk Management Internal Audit” by Ernst & Young in February 2018.

“As part of Treasury’s C+A (certification and accreditation) process, all public internet facing systems and websites are independently penetration tested before they are authorised to operate,” Robertson said.
Penetration testing was completed for all of the websites hosted by the Treasury during 2016 and 2017, and the Treasury’s public website was tested again in April 2018 and May 2019.

So the expensive fancy penetration testing didn’t include checking if the website’s own search engine was indexing hidden files.

Stats NZ has released the latest annual abortion statistics. Some extracts:

• 13,282 abortions in 2018 (down 3 from 2017)
• Abortion ratio per 1,000 pregnancies is 185 (was 181)
• No of teen abortions down from 1,444 to 1,311
• 72.4% of abortions occur by week 10 and 94% by week 13

While no big change from 2017 to 2018, there has been a downwards trend for the last ten years. The general abortion rate of 13.5 abortions per 1,000 fertile age woman is the lowest since 1989.

Liam Hehir writes in Stuff:

KiwiBuild has been widely recognised as a high-profile failure. According to the goals set by Labour when its policy was sold to voters, we should have 1000 homes built by the end of the month. At the time of writing, there are still almost 900 to go.
But although the programme may be a failure for the Government delivering on promises, it can still be a success as a lesson in the difficulties of economic planning. That is to say, it is a useful illustration of the problems with socialism.

There’s a word that gets thrown around rather loosely these days. In the minds of some, it has almost become a synonym for the idea of a social safety net, which overlooks the fact that in the modern era all serious political parties are broadly supportive of this to some level.
Although there is no conclusive definition of “socialism” as a concept, collective ownership of the means of production and distribution is at the heart of the idea.
For a policy to properly be called a socialist one then, according to one definition, two things really need to be present.
First, it needs to involve the state supplying goods or services otherwise or usually expected to be supplied through the private sector. What this means is when the state lays down roads, sets up street lighting and maintains a national defence force, it’s not engaging in socialism because those are things that can’t easily be provided through private business.
Secondly, for a policy to be considered socialist, it needs to involve an element of central planning. In a market economy, outcomes are the result of hundreds of thousands of daily transactions that balance people’s personal wants and needs against each other. Nobody is really in control, which is kind of the point. Socialism, on the other hand, is much more focused on controlled outcomes, which pre-supposes a controlling entity – usually the state.
Although it is a mild example, KiwiBuild fits the description.

We can add it to the other 8,179 examples of socialism not working.

Patrick Gower writes:

Our justice system helped kill Nicole Tuxford.
These are extreme and hurtful words to put next to Nicole’s name, but sadly they are true.

She was killed by Paul Wilson, who was on parole after his first killing in 1994.

This is where the Parole Board failed; the Schroder family repeatedly warned the Parole Board not to release Wilson because he would kill again. 
The Parole Board was told directly, formally, year after year, that Wilson was going to murder someone if released.
This is where we start to see Corrections at fault, too – its psychologists got it wrong, informing the Board that Wilson was reformed. 
Ultimately his release is on the Parole Board, which ignored the family and set Wilson free. 

With hindsight it was of course the wrong decision. But to be fair to the Parole Board, hindsight is 20/20. But other parts of the justice system share the blame:

In the 18 months leading up to Nicole’s murder, Corrections had at least three opportunities to go to the Parole Board to try and get him “recalled” to his life sentence – but it didn’t bother.  

So he broke his parole conditions.

Police failed badly, too; in 2015 there was a complaint Wilson had been offering women drugs and boasting about Kimberley Schroder’s murder, that led to a violent confrontation.

If this had been passed onto Corrections or the Parole Board, it would almost certainly have seen Wilson recalled to jail – but police did nothing about it.

That definitely was a huge warning sign.

There was a further failure when Wilson was pulled up at a drink-drive checkpoint on the way to kill Nicole. 

He was drunk, Police knew he was a convicted murderer on parole, who had used a “cutting weapon” – and they found two huge butcher’s knives in his car. 

Again, all of this is enough for a recall application. Under the Parole Act, you don’t even need an arrest, just a belief the parolee is an “undue risk to the community”. 
An application like this can be made by either Police or Corrections and is incredibly powerful as it would return Wilson to his life sentence and he would have to apply once a year for parole again. 
But they let him go.

Terrible decision.

The Government must order an independent review of Nicole Tuxford’s case so someone can look at the failings across the board. 
This could lead to specific and almost instant changes that improve our management of dangerous offenders and make the public safer – in others words “Safe and Effective Justice”.
The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Justice Minister Andrew Little are both in the position to do this.
They need to do this.
Because if it wasn’t for our justice system – Nicole Tuxford would be alive today.

Not all murders are preventable, but this one was. I agree with Gower.

Stuff reports:

Questions have been raised over whether the Government knew meningitis vaccines were available for every Northland child, despite an apparent state rationing. 
A community outbreak of a rare strain of Meningitis (W) has been confirmed in seven cases in Northland in 2018, resulting in three deaths of children under 20.  …

The documents show Clark was informed of all possible options, but Director General of Health Dr Ashley Blomfield recommended the response that was adopted. 
But it did not include advice that an extra 30,000 doses were available from Pfizer, which together with Sanofi, could have covered every young person in Northland. 
Clark said he was first informed there may have been enough vaccines late last month, through a direct approach from Pfizer noting the company had offered 30,000 doses to Pharmac and the Ministry of Health on November 8 last year.

So basically the Government said we won’t vaccinate all children in Northland because there are not enough vaccines available. But the truth is there were, they were just too cheap to buy them.

A very interesting post from Mark Mitchell about his time in Iraq, where he worked with Rory Stewart, one of the contenders for the UK Conservative Party leadership.

An extract:

Rory and I first met when we both served in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraq reconstruction programme back in 2003-2004. We were based in Nasiriyah, the 4th largest city in Iraq (approx. 370kms South East of Baghdad), situated on the Euphrates River. The CPA was responsible for delivering new central and local government elections, rehabilitating the courts, training and equipping the Iraqi Police Service, construction of critical infrastructure and developing new sports and cultural facilities to name a few.

Stuff most people would support.

Rory was the Deputy Governor, and I was part of two, four man close protection teams. We had a guard force of 30 ex-Filipino Rangers, three Guard Commanders – one being an ex-Delta Force Operator and two US Navy Seals. We also had a platoon of approx. 15 Italian soldiers and several journalists and project managers from the UK, Denmark, USA and Italy. There were roughly 80 CPA personnel on the compound at any given time.

The only personnel authorised to leave the compound were the close protection teams and that was either for reconnaissance purposes or to move Rory or other CPA personnel to and from meetings. Our job simply was to get these personnel there and back in one piece. I was relieved at the end of my time, leading a team that I hadn’t lost anyone and no one under our protection had been killed or captured. Sometimes I think this is a miracle when I consider the amount of tight situations we had to work our way out of. I want to pay tribute to friends and team members that never made it home and those that came home pretty banged up. They made the ultimate sacrifice protecting others and in my view, this is one of the greatest sacrifices one human can make for another. 

That sounds scary enough, but worse to come.

Where I really saw Rory’s Leadership credentials on display was when the Shia Cleric Muqtada Al Sadr called for an uprising of the Mahdi Militia across Iraq. The order was to attack the coalition and CPA compounds around the country – it felt like every terrorist in Iraq came for the party. 

Suddenly, we were stuck in a postage stamp sized compound, cut off from support, surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered. As the attack started it very quickly became intense. The Italian soldiers were posted on the roof of our only hard building. This was the only high point that a defence could be mounted. It was very exposed and had minimal cover or protection from fire
. 
Journalists and CPA staff were put in rooms in the centre of the hard building protected as well as we could with sandbags and windows covered with mattresses. Our job as the close protection teams was to protect the journalists and civilians as a last line of defence. If the military defence from the roof failed and the perimeter was breached by the Militia we were realistic about the outcome of a CQB fight with 8 of us against hundreds of pumped up insurgents. We would stick together and do our best.

Everything changed rapidly when two Italian soldiers were badly injured by an incoming mortar round with one having his spinal cord severed. The rest of the Italians abandoned the roof. There has been heavy criticism of the Italians and the fact posts were abandoned. I accept that but I also had some sympathy for them. They were barely out of their teens, many probably conscripts and the truth of the matter was their chain of command was often polarised in terms of decision making. On saying that, I saw many acts of bravery by Italian soldiers during my time in Iraq. We had to get a defence up quickly on the roof and so both close protection teams and Zac and Pete the two ex-US Navy seals headed for the roof. It was complete chaos with tracer fire lighting up the night sky, mortars being walked onto us, an RPG round flew straight over the top of my head as I ran across the roof. We quickly learned how to live in the prone position. We had a car bomb driven at speed towards our rear perimeter which would have created a massive breach that the insurgents could have swarmed through. One of our team, an ex-British SAS soldier bought one of the Italian 50 caliber rifle’s to bear and stopped the vehicle reaching us by taking out the engine block. It was a challenging time. 

While all this was going on Rory’s composure and leadership is what helped keep a sense of calm, organisation and focus in what was a situation completely out of control. He provided updates to Baghdad and Basra who in all fairness were dealing with an uprising around the whole country. He worked hard to get us air support. He monitored food, water and ammunition supply’s and kept us updated.

Says a lot about both Mitchell and Stewart that they kept calm during this. Stewart isn’t going to win the leadership contest, but he has impressed enough people that he would be a stronger contender in future.