Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s banks are calling for the Reserve Bank to rethink its plan to require them to hold more capital to help withstand financial shocks, claiming it risks putting “a handbrake” on the economy.
As well as setting the official cash rate (OCR), the Reserve Bank is tasked with maintaining a healthy banking sector. In December it proposed that retail banks should be required to hold enough capital to withstand a one in 200 year financial crisis in December.
Banks were expecting the Reserve Bank to propose some increase in capital levels, but not on the scale governor Adrian Orr proposed.

Such a move would require New Zealand’s banks to raise more than $20 billion to sit in reserve, a move which would make the banks safer, but also more expensive to run, which could ultimately impact customers.

Of course it will impact customers.

The NZBA has published a report by research organisation Sapere led by Scott which dismisses the Reserve Bank’s claims that the impact of the plan would be “minimal”.
Sapere warns the cost of the plan to the economy outweigh the benefits by $1.8 billion a year.

It will be interesting to see if the Reserve Bank modifies it plans.

The Herald reports:

Hospitals are falling behind last year’s performance with doctors likely to perform 10,000 fewer surgeries, claims Simon Bridges.
Ministry of Health figures showed district health boards were not on track to meet their planned annual elective surgery target — 200,895 according to the ministry — the Opposition leader said.
Just over 105,000 patients had been discharged from hospital after undergoing elective surgery in the first nine months of this financial year. For all of the previous year, there were 149,000 patients.
By that logic, Bridges argues the number of discharges by the end of March should have been just under 112,000.

It takes special genius to spend more on health, but have fewer operations as a result.

Stuff reports:

In public, Shane Jones plays the role of a populist, repeatedly railing against the use of migrant labour.
But it has emerged that in 2018, Jones privately lobbied a Cabinet colleague on behalf of an associate who was seeking accredited employer status from Immigration New Zealand.
The high profile NZ First MP appears to have done so after he had been briefed that the company, owned by former Whangārei Mayor Stan Semenoff, faced investigation by the safety regulator which could see it ordered off the road. Jones has also become involved in that case, raising accusations of interfering with a government prosecution.

Conferred by Immigration New Zealand, accredited employer statuswould have streamlined the process of hiring migrants for Stan Semenoff Logging, a large Northland log truck company, such as bypassing the need to check if Kiwi workers are available when hiring.

So Shane was not content with trying to interfere in the court action involving Semenoff, but he was also lobbying colleagues to allow them to import employees from overseas, even if locals were available.

Is anyone surprised?

Lees-Galloway checked with Immigration New Zealand and was told the application had been turned down four days before Jones met him.
“This decision was an operational one …[which] is not subject to Ministerial Discretion or other override.”

Just as well.

The Coalition has 74 confirmed seats, and needs 76 for a majority. There are five seats “in doubt”. Let’s look at those to see how they may go:

• Boothby – Libs ahead by 1,311 votes with 74.6% counted
• Chisholm – Labor ahead by 325 votes with 71.1% counted
• Lilley – Labor ahead by 1,323 votes with 74.3% counted
• Macquarie – Labor ahead by 620 votes with 82.1% counted
• Wentworth- Libs ahead by 1,053 votes with 73.0% counted

The two seats the Libs lead on look pretty good. They could even take Chisholm.

Bill Shorten may be regretting the letter he wrote on February asking for a smooth transition of power.

Newshub reports:

The Ministry of Transport business case examined the cost of upgrading the rail line between Auckland and Whangārei, reopening the mothballed tracks north to Moerewa and west to Dargaville, and constructing a new spur east to Northport.
It estimates the total cost at $1.3b over 40 years. Including $730m in the first four years during the construction phase and $3m for improvements and maintenance in the years after.

That’s a huge amount of money. So what would the benefits be?

However, the economics tread a fine line. In the best-case scenario, the report gives the investment a benefit-cost-ratio (BCR) of 1.19, meaning for every $1 spent there would be a $1.19 return.

So what assumptions are based on that best-case?

This would require a major expansion of Northport which would see it handling 400,000 containers, 100,000 from within Northland and 300,000 from Auckland. In the year to June 2019 Northport expects to handle 12,500 containers, up from 8000 last year.

So Northport would have to increase its volume of freight by a factor of 50, yes by 5000%, in order for the investment in rail to be positive.

That is a delusional assumption, rather than an optimistic one.

The Australian Federal election is bringing us very different results in different states. The final state of Western Australia may determine if there is a majority or minority Government.

At 10.20 pm, the state swings are:

• NSW: Labor down 2.3%
• Victoria: Coalition down 4.4%
• Queensland: Labor down 3.0%
• South Australia: Coalition up 5.5% and Labor up 3.1%
• Tasmania: Labor down 4.4%

So far the Coalition has gained five seats and Labor gained two seats and Tony Abbott lost his seat to an independent. Abbott became so destructive after he lost the leadership, few in the Liberal Party will mourn his sacking at the hand of the voters.

The only thing certain at this stage is the results are better for the Coalition than the exit polls, and worse for Labor. But a long way still to go.

UPDATE: Anthony Green has just said that Labor basically can’t form a Government. It is now simply a question of whether the Coalition will get a majority of at least 76 of 151 seats or need to do a deal with Independents to govern.

Bill Shorten has managed to lose the unloseable election. Pleased for Scott Morrison who is a good bloke. Hopefully the Libs can now unite behind him.

From news.com.au:

The pair were in Melbourne for the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, which brings together leaders from different sectors from both countries to improve the Australian-American bilateral relationship.
“We took the Americans along to the MCG. There were Congressmen there, a whole bunch of senior Americans,” Mr Cassidy said.
“On the way out, we’re walking through the car park and they had the buses lined up to take everybody back to the Hyatt Hotel.

“And (Mr Hawke) said to me, ‘Oh I hate these buses, you know? You sit there and you’ve got to wait for the last person to turn up and it takes forever’.”
As they were waiting with the American officials to board the bus, a group of young men in a car pulled up and yelled out to the former prime minister.
“(They) yelled out ‘Hey Hawkey! You’re a legend’,” the Insiders host said.
“And he said, ‘If I’m such a freakin’ legend give me a lift back to the pub’.”
The young men agreed and Mr Hawke got into their car and they drove off, leaving the American officials in shock.

“They said ‘This cannot be happening’,” Mr Cassidy said.
“They couldn’t believe that a former prime minister would do that.”
When Mr Cassidy spoke to him the following day, Mr Hawke told him they were “great blokes”.
He even spoke to their mums on the phone while they drove to the pub.

And this was when he was in his 80s! A true character.

I suspect Hawke’s death will have people recall the good times of his Labor Government, and help Labor in today’s poll.

My pick is Labor to have over 80 seats in the 150 seat House.

Stuff reports:

Mike Greer Homes has so far built seven KiwiBuild houses in Canterbury. None of have yet sold, while five have been on the market for more than 80 days.

So zero out of seven sold. Wow that Kiwibuild is transformative.

Rich Lowry writes:

The Joe Biden polling surge has raised the frightful specter of Democratic rationality.

What if Donald Trump hasn’t driven Democrats insane, sending them into a spiral of self-defeating radicalism, but instead made them shockingly pragmatic?

The hard core activists probably do not fit this diagnosis. But they are not a majority of all Democrats, who are showing indeed signs of sanity.

Biden’s early strength suggests it may be the latter, that the reaction to Trump is so intense that it has crossed some sort of event horizon from fevered fantasy of his leaving office early via resignation or impeachment to a cold-eyed, win-at-any-cost practicality.
If this is true, one of the exogenous factors that could appreciably increase Trump’s odds of reelection — a zany Democratic nomination contest leading to a nominee much too far left for the American electorate — may not materialize.

You can’t rule out the Democrats will go down this path, but early polls show surprisingly strong support for Biden.

Biden in primary polls is between 29% and 46%. A long way back is Sanders between 13% and 25% then Warren between 5% and 10%. On average we have Biden 37%, Sanders 17% and Warren 8%.

The latest Iowa poll is similiar with Biden 35%, Sanders 14%, Buttigieg 11% and Warren 10%.

The commonsense play for the Democrats has always been to nominate a nonsocialist with appeal to Obama-to-Trump voters in former Blue Wall states — if not necessarily Biden, then someone with a similar relatively moderate profile.
If hardly dispositive, Biden’s robust numbers at least suggest that this play is more likely than it seemed in the very early going, when candidates were stumbling over one another apologizing for sundry alleged offenses in the Woke Olympics.

The Woke Olympics – I like it.

Barry Soper reports:

The coalition lifeline that National will need if it’s to have a chance at the next election looks set to come in the form of a Christian party led by one of its own, former Cabinet Minister Alfred Ngaro.
Talk within the party’s been rife for weeks now with Ngaro’s plan being well received and with the possibility of National standing aside, possibly in the Botany seat, where it has the strongest party vote by far.

National got a whopping 61% of the party vote in Botany and Labour 29%. It would be a sensible seat to target. The 5th highest party vote in the country for National, percentage wise.

The seats is 46% European, 40% Asian and 12% Pasifika. Half the electorate were born outside New Zealand. It also has the highest proportion of two parent families in NZ.

Ngaro, in his third term, would slip comfortably into the electorate which saw National commanding more than 20,000 party votes at the last election, well ahead of Labour with less than half that number.
A father of four in his early 50s, he was the first MP of Cook Islands descent and began his working life as a self-employed electrician before studying for a theology degree and becoming a pastor.
National would have to agree to giving up the safe seat, like it’s done with Act in Epsom, and it would have to agree to allow Ngaro to stay on in Parliament, representing his new party rather than invoking the waka jumping legislation which is highly unlikely anyway.
Ngaro wasn’t returning calls last night but has confirmed privately he’s exploring the possibility. The party’s leadership is aware of it, realising that it will need an ally if it’s to have any chance of coming close to knocking the Labour, New Zealand First, Greens coalition off its perch.

I’m not a natural supporter of conservative or Christian parties, being socially liberal. But if there is to be in Parliament, I’d much rather someone like Alfred led it, than some of the previous contenders such as Capill, Tamaki and Craig.

This gives you a good insight into what the Government really thinks of people who like driving cars and think that the petrol tax they pay should go on roads.

Now people do tend to throw around terms such as fascists and nazis without meaning it literally. You hear references to health nazis sometimes. I’ve not heard the term car fascist before, but presume Genter means it like someone means health nazi – a zealot.

But here’s the thing. Genter is a Minister of the Crown and Associate Transport Minister. She is not some nobody on Twitter. Could you imagine say a National Minister of Health referring to public health activists as health nazis. There would be an outcry and calls for resignation. A Minister should not be using such terms to describe people who just have different views to herself.

Guest post by John Stringer.

CHRISTIAN POLITICS in NZ, National and 2020.

The conservative “family values” vote is the largest unrepresented block in NZ. It’s often bigger than the Maori roll vote results and has polled strongly (4.2-3.9%) and consistently (1996-2014) when viable leadership has been in place. The ‘Christian vote’ on occasions in the past achieved 4x that of combined smaller parties who were ‘elected’ to parliament on coat-tail arrangements but remained unrepresented. The system is worked and accommodated, but so far Christians have remained unrepresented at party level (although many MPs share these values inside other parties). One of the issues is the reticence of mainstream parties to accommodate the contentious issues such as abortion or gender-politics at party level.

I’ve been at the forefront of this for many decades while still a National supporter and even staffer. I was seconded by National to assist the Christian Coalition in 1996 (the first MMP election) and was one of the pioneers of the Christian Democrats party set up under National minister of Internal Affairs Hon Graeme Lee. His daughter is now a National MP and ex-president of the United party (an ostensible Christian entity) under Dunne who eventually absorbed the remnants and morphologies of the Christian Democrats (United, Family parties etc).

I was Campaign Director of the Coalition campaign in 1996, and a List candidate for the Conservatives in 2014, so I’ve seen up close and personal with the interface of Christian politics and progressive liberalism in NZ. In 1996 the Christian Coalition got 4.2% of the party vote in a high turnout election, which worked against them; as did Rev. Graham Capill’s undesirable co-leadership (eventually jailed for sex crimes).

In 2011 and 2014 the new Conservative party got 2.6% and 3.9% of the List vote, hindered by Colin Craig’s leadership. I finally blew the whistle on Craig, after much long suffering, in 2015 after trying to salvage the Conservative party and build a stronger team leadership model internally for 2017, to help offset some of Craig’s excesses and give him space to attend to his private life and family. He simply sued me, not once but twice, as Capill also tried to do.

As many political commentators and media have agreed, there remains a place for a Christian values type party in NZ, as there is in Germany and Israel (both of whom have MMP). But the 5% threshold in NZ is too high for our population base, as the Electoral Commission review noted, which has effectively kept a Christian voice out of party politics here. A seat accommodation is the only prospect, as sought quite strongly by the Conservatives in 2013-4 but mismanaged by them with John Key.

Of interest is the growing conservative movement against abortion amongst young people in America that transcends Republican or Democrat tribal affiliations. Millennials see abortion essentially as a human rights issues. Liberal legislative moves to effectively allow infanticide under the umbrella of abortion, has polarised opinion. Montana State’s legislative ban this week on abortion after eight weeks, is perhaps a milestone of that growing development in the US. It may spread inevitably here and to Australia. 

Like Dunne and Seymour, if National MP Alfred Ngaro was to be supported in Botany by National, and won that seat, then there is a 4-5% List vote block available in the spectrum for a party with perspectives on abortion, cannabis reform, gender politics, euthanasia, smacking bills, family politics and other issues of distinct interest to conservative, religious and values-minded NZers. The Israel Folau debacle in Australia, with obvious ties to us here, has added ‘freedom of religion’ to freedom of speech debates, so the spectrum of interest has only widened, enlarging the potential voter pool. In 1996, many voters, including Jews, Buddhists, Mormons and Muslims, joined the Christian Coalition as it was a political base they wanted and could support.

Watch this space.

John Stringer is a long-time advocate of a conservative/Christian model in NZ politics; was a National candidate in 1999 against NZ’s first openly gay MP; founded the widely supported special interest group Christian Voice inside National in 2000s; Campaign Director of the Christian Coalition in 1996 (seconded from National); and a ‘make-up-the-numbers’ Conservative list candidate in 2014.

The Herald reports:

State-owned Kiwibank will stop accepting cheques by February 28, 2020 and won’t issue new cheque or deposit books after September 28 this year.
Chief executive Steve Jurkovich said it was a tough decision to make but for the past five years the use of cheques had been steadily declining.
“With less than one per cent of Kiwibank payments now made by cheque, we’ve come to a tipping point.

I think it must be close to a decade since I wrote a cheque. And if people send me cheques I normally take around six months to bank them. They’re a pain which should be exterminated.

My reaction to Newshub labelling this breaking news.

Stuff reports:

A $6.4 billion plan to fix Wellington’s traffic congestion problems has been announced.

The media have fallen hook line and sinker for the spin. What they should do is ask questions like:

1. How much money has the Government allocated for the next financial year
2. How much money has the Government allocated for the rest of its term of office?
3. If the Government got a 2nd term, how much money have they allocated to spend then?
4. If the Government got a 3rd term, how much money have they allocated to spend then?

The answer to 1 is zero. The answer to 2 is zero. The answer to 3 appears to also be zero. The answer to 4 is $600 million.

So forget the $6.4 billion. 90% of that is for stuff that “We may do this in the future one day”.

Contrast that to National that actually made things happen. After 50 years of debate, they made Transmission Gully happen. They put in the Kapiti Expressway.

Labour is saying they will do some minor tinkering at best in the next seven years.

Most of what is in the announcement is stuff that at best will start in a decade or so, and not conclude for two decades.

Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke has died aged 89.

I regard Hawke as one of Australia’s best Prime Ministers, arguably their greatest Labor Prime Minister.

He served as Prime Minister for almost nine years, forced out of office effectively by Paul Keating in 1991. He won four elections in 1983, 1984, 1987 and 1990.

Hawke established APEC, floated the Australian dollar, deregulated their financial sector, abolished tariffs, sold off state owned companies, reformed the tax system and generally transformed the Australian economy. Today’s NZ Labour Party would probably regard Hawke as a neoliberal traitor.

His election majorities were significant. They were:

• 1983: 75 – 50
• 1984: 82 – 66
• 1987: 86 – 62
• 1990: 78 – 69

Hawke had very high approval ratings, reaching 75% approval in November 1984 – a record for any Australian PM.

Bob Hawke and John Howard are probably the two most consequential Australian Prime Ministers of the last 50 years. Hawke’s reforms made Australia a far better place.

This is not a prediction for the final episode. In fact I am 99% certain none of this will happen. This is merely how I’d like it to end, after last week’s episode.

Feel free to comment below how you would like it to end.

• Dany is unrepentant over her tactics in the battle. She again claims it was necessary to secure the future
• She proclaims Tyrion guilty of treason and prepares to execute him. Tyrion demands a trial.
• All the major characters gather for the trial. Then as in his earlier trial, he demands it be trial by combat. Dany chooses Grey Worm to fight for her. Bronn is there but refuses to fight for Tyrion this time as he hasn’t got his castle.
• Jon shocks everyone by offering to fight for Tyrion. He tells Dany that Tyrion was right and she was wrong.
• An epic battle between Jon and Grey Worm, which Jon finally wins
• He stands before Dany asking permission for him and Tyrion to depart, to leave Westeros.
• Dany refuses, saying she won’t let Jon become to her what she was to Robert Baratheon – a monarch in exile. She stuns everyone there by saying “Dracarys” with Drogon perched above her facing Jon.
• Drogon does nothing. She repeats the command twice more, but Drogon still won’t flame Jon. In fact Drogon lowers his head towards Jon. She then commands Drogon to flame Tyrion but he again does nothing.
• As this is happening, suddenly Bran leaps up from his wheelchair and stabs Dany from behind. It is a mortal wound. She stumbles into Jon’s arms and dies, asking for his forgiveness.
• Bran removes his face to reveal he is actually Arya. The Stark siblings planned for this.
• The real Bran comes forward and explains Tyrion is also a Targaryan which is why Drogon wouldn’t attack him. Dany tried to kill her own brother.
• Jon is proclaimed King Aegon VI by Sir Davos. But Jon declines. He says he has made too many bad decisions to be King, especially trusting Dany. He says that the King should be the person who has shown the best judgement, and proposes Sansa as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
• Sansa accepts so long as the High Council (all the great lords) supports her, and the High Council becomes the arbiter of future monarchs, which is the start of a transition to democracy.
• Sansa appoints Tyrion as Hand of the King and head of House Lancaster
• Arya is offered a place in the Kingsguard but declines and says she must go and serve the Many Faced God. As she leaves, she is joined by Jaqen
• Bran is appointed Grand Maester
• Jon decides to turn the Night’s Watch into a home guard that defends all borders against any and all invaders, and returns to them as the 1,000th Lord Commander
• Davos becomes head of the navy
• Sam returns home as head of House Tarly
• Bronn gets Highgarden and starts House Bronn
• Sir Brienne is appointed Head of the Kingsguard

The final ends with Sansa’s coronation on the Iron Throne and Jon flies off on Drogon.

Again I doubt any of this will happen, but for me that would be satisfying endings.

David Seymour writes:

Finally, Ghahraman says we should protect religion under the Human Rights Act.
But it isn’t obvious that religion should be treated in the same way as something like race. Race is an immutable characteristic, whereas religion is a set of ideas. Including religion in the Human Rights Act won’t reduce violence, but it could restrict debate about, and criticism of, religion.

I agree that religion is different to the other characteristics.

The HRA already makes unlawful speech that is likely to excite hostility against any group of persons on the ground of colour, race, ethnic or national origins.

You can’t choose your colour, race, ethnicity or nationality.

Golriz wants to include “gender, sexual orientation, religion, or disability.

You basically don’t choose your gender, sexual orientation or disability so I agree there may be a case for including those. I suspect if they do, the majority of complaints will be people alleging speech attacking white men should be prosecuted so be careful of what you ask for.

But religion is a choice. Billions of people around the world choose whether or not to follow a particular religion, or none at all. Sure in some countries there is great cultural pressure to be of a particular religion, but in NZ we have true freedom of religion.

A religion is just a belief system, just as political ideology is. Having a law that says you can’t incite hostility towards a religion is like having a law saying you can’t incite hostility towards National Party supporters.

The Human Rights Act is about protecting people from discrimination for characteristics they have no control over. It is not about protecting religions from criticism.

We sometimes forget some of our huge successes. Human Progress reports:

In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was founded to administer the vaccine worldwide. When the GPEI began its efforts, polio paralyzed 10 children for life every 15 minutes, across 125 countries. Since 1988, more than 2.5 billion children have been immunized and incidents of polio infections have fallen by more than 99.99 percent. That is, they fell from 350,000 annual cases, to just 22 new cases across 3 countries in 2017. Next year, Africa is due to be declared free of polio – that is, if no new cases are found in Nigeria, which is the last country in the region to report new polio infections.

Amazing stat. Basically a child being paralysed every minute and a half, to almost eradicated.

Stuff reports:

A couple who left the United States to live on the West Coast were told they were too old to become New Zealand residents. 

Lisa White, 58, and Dan Butler, 63, moved to Greymouth from Tennessee in 2015 for a slower pace of life. 

It is correct they are too old. Residency is a privilege and given to people who can make a net positive economic contribution to New Zealand. People near retirement age are unlikely to do so.

But their application for permanent residency was instantly rejected by Immigration New Zealand because they were both over 55.
The couple ticked all the boxes in terms of education, experience, character, health and time spent in New Zealand. They could have applied if they had $10 million to bring to New Zealand. 
“That to me is so absurd. You can buy your residency,” White said.

No you can’t buy residency. But having a large sum of money which you can invest in NZ increases your chances of qualifying. Likewise if you are broke, you have less chance of qualifying.

They believed New Zealand immigration policies were written for Auckland, and had no relevance to areas like the West Coast, which needed people to boost its economy. The Coast suffered huge job and population losses since the downturn in the mining industry. 

NZ does not require internal passports like South Africa used to. One immigrates to a country, not a region. People can move around once they are here.