His plan is here.

Separate the Ports of Auckland business operations from the land owned by the Auckland ratepayer

Sell the Ports operations through a Request for Proposal, and lease the current 77 hectares of prime land to the new port operators for 25 years. This will ensure a guaranteed financial return to Auckland and de-risk the Auckland ratepayer from the cost of relocating the port over time. At the end of the Ports lease, the land can be developed for public and other uses that make the best use of the prime waterfront real estate.

I like this idea. Free up the land for eventual public use, but remove the risk to ratepayers by selling the company.

The incoming Mayor to chair a Stakeholder Forum to agree on immediate solutions to chronic ports traffic congestion by encouraging trucks work off peak hours. If this forum cannot agree within 12 months, trucks will be congestion taxed out of the Central Business District between 9am-5pm

This part is nuts though. Trucks have to be able to get to the Port. A congestion charge for the CBD is a good idea, but on all vehicles, not just trucks.

The Herald reports:

Foreign Minister Winston Peters is making positive sounds about a long sought after free trade agreement between New Zealand and the world’s biggest economy, the United States.
New Zealand does not have a free trade agreement with the US, despite various attempts over the years to secure such a deal.
But speaking to RNZ this morning, Peters hinted that recent progress had been made.
He said there was still life in a US/NZ free trade deal.

This is arrant nonsense. The chances of a free trade deal with the US are somewhere between zero and nil.

Peters said he’s had conversations with US Vice-President Mike Pence about this very matter, who assured him work was being done to progress the deal.

The Vice-President has no say on trade policy. Neither for that matter does the Secretary of Commerce or the Trade Negotiator. The only policy setter is the President.

And the NZ Government failed miserably at even getting an exemption to Trump’s steel tariffs. This shows how out of favour we are.

The Herald reports:

Students will face more emphasis on exams and less on internal assessment in an overhaul of the NCEA system unveiled today.
There will also be a sharper focus on literacy and numeracy skills.
The changes, to be phased in over four years from next year, also remove the qualification’s $76.70-a-year fee and the $30 fee for each Scholarship subject.
The Government’s final decisions on reforming the National Certificate of Educational Assessment (NCEA) will increase external assessment for all achievement standards from 30 per cent now to a standardised 50 per cent across all subjects – even those that have traditionally been fully assessed internally such as Physical Education.

I’m pleasantly surprised. These changes look like a move in the right direction, away from low quality NCEA credits.

But they represent a sharp shift back to the rigid subject-based systems of School Certificate and University Entrance that existed before NCEA was introduced in 2002.
The system will still include the opportunity to take “unit standards” in vocational areas such as trades, which accounted for just under a fifth of all NCEA standards assessed in 2017.
But “achievement standards”, which made up the other four-fifths of the standards assessed in 2017, will be grouped into 20-credit subjects in which half of the standards will be internally assessed and the other half externally assessed.
The new structure appears to leave no room for extras, such as driver’s licences or first aid courses, which many schools encourage students to take on top of their main subjects to get them over the NCEA pass mark each year.

Again this is good. The focus should be on academic or trades skills, not getting your driver’s licence.

The changes, announced by Education Minister Chris Hipkins at Mana College in Porirua this morning, are a dramatic lurch in the opposite direction from proposals released a year ago by a ministerial advisory group, which proposed abolishing external exams at Level 1 and substituting 20 credits for literacy and numeracy and 20 credits for a project of the student’s choice.
The advisory group also wanted to allocate 20 credits out of 80 required for each of Levels 2 and 3 to “pathways opportunities” such as projects and internships.
Those proposals have been completely abandoned after an outcry from principals of traditional schools such as Auckland Grammar.
Hipkins quickly agreed to set up a “professional advisory group” of principals chaired by former Wellington College headmaster Roger Moses to “work alongside” the ministerial advisory group.

This is why the changes are such a pleasant surprise. They are what the traditional schools have been arguing for.

Hopefully Hipkins will also abandon the daft proposal to neuter boards of trustees and have ministerial hubs run all schools directly.

The Herald reports:

Families who have lost loved ones to drugged drivers came together at Parliament today to ask the Government to hurry up and introduce roadside saliva testing for drugs.
Among them were the families of Ian Porteous, 80, his wife Rosalie, 76, his sister Ora Keene, 84, and friend Brenda Williams, 79.
The four died in a head-on crash with Jeremy Thompson, 28, his 8-week-old daughter Shady and Nivek Madams, the 8-year-old daughter of Thompson’s partner Ani Nohinohi.
Nohinohi was the sole survivor of the crash at Waverley in Taranaki in June last year.
A coroner’s inquest last week into the Waverley crash, at the time one of the country’s worst, was told that Thompson and Nohinohi had been smoking synthetic cannabis before the crash.

The Porteous and Keene family members joined Christchurch mother Karen Dow at a meeting with National leader Simon Bridges and his MPs to push for the Government to take swifter action on its plan to tackle drugged drivers.
Dow’s 23-year-old son Matthew was killed in a crash with a woman who had been drinking and taking drugs before she got behind the wheel near Nelson on New Year’s Eve 2017.
Dow presented a petition calling for random roadside saliva testing to Nelson MP Nick Smith last week but the petition has been reopened for a week to seek more signatures.
The Government has prepared a discussion document but it has not yet been released for public consultation despite Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters telling Parliament last week it had been signed off by Cabinet last September.
National claims the Government sat on proposals from police and transport officials for 17 months.

I can’t work out why the Government is taking so long to move on this issue. A discussion document is merely the first step in the process, and if it was prepared last September, why on Earth is it not out?

Stuff has done an excellent analysis of the 1,000 or so homicides in the last 15 years. Some of the many stats:

• Half of the women killed are killed by their partner or ex-partner. Such a tragic stat.
• Half of intimate partner homicides have “overkill” where violence is inflicted beyond that necessary to kill the victim (think Clayton Weatherston). Evil bastards.
• Only two women a year are killed by strangers
• However one in four men who are killed, are killed by strangers
• Half of men killed by strangers die at the weekend
• One in eight homicides is of a child under 15
• Over half the children killed are by a parent or caregiver
• For 15 to 17 year olds, homicide by car crash is the most common form of homicide
• Alcohol is a factor in 31% of homicides and two thirds of homicides where the killer is a friend
• Around 25% of homicides occur in the decile of areas which are most deprived and 2% in the least deprived areas. On average just one homicide a year in the 10% least deprived areas
• Otahuhu West has the highest levels of homicide in Auckland
• Two thirds of gun homicides involve shotguns or 22s

The Herald reports:

Government aims for $1 billion cuts to ‘low priority’ spending, clip fees free scheme

That was the headline which got me excited. I thought the Government had finally seen sense that the massive spending on free tertiary fees was a waste of money that wasn’t increasing tertiary enrolments.

The Government has reallocated almost $200 million from the fees free policies as part of Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s push to cull $1 billion of low priority spending.
The money was cut as the enrolments were not as high as the Government was expecting.

That’s not a cut. The policy hasn’t changed. It is simply reflecting the reality that the policy has failed to boost enrolments, so hence hasn’t cost as much.

To portray this as some sort of sign of fiscal discipline is quite wrong.

Stuff reports:

It is meant to create 10,000 jobs and unlock the potential of the New Zealand’s regions. But after allocating hundreds of millions of dollars, halfway through the electoral term, the Provincial Growth Fund has not yet determined the measure of success.

Actual jobs created appears to be around 100. They’re giving away three billions dollars of our money and there are no criteria for how they measure if such grants are successful.

So far, when the PGF is attempting to measure success, it goes to the groups that it has awarded millions of dollars to, and asks them to tell it how they are doing.   
“As part of contractual arrangements we have with every successful applicant, they’re being asked to provide us with data, on a regular basis, about the benefits that they have seen or are directly attributable to their projects,” Pigou said.
Asked if the recipients, as the recipients of taxpayer funds may have an interest in providing positive feedback, Pigou agreed.
“Yes. We are getting very positive feedback.”

It’s almost an obscene joke at our expense. The companies and organisations that get the handouts of taxpayer cash get to arbitrate if giving them the cash has been successful and provided benefits.

Magic Talk reports:

Greenpeace Executive Director, Dr Russel Norman, says The Zero Carbon Amendment Bill has no ability to enforce its climate change targets. …

“The Bill sends some good signals, until you get to the section at the end that negates everything else you’ve just read. This section states there is no remedy or relief for failure to meet the 2050 target, meaning there’s no legal compulsion for anyone to take any notice.
When asked to what he thought of the bill Russle told Ryan that he would rate it a “zero out of ten.”

The former leader of the Green Party says the legislation held up by the current leader as world leading so so flawed it is a 0 out of 10.

I’m amazed this hasn’t had more publicity.

Human Progress writes:

Unwarranted panic about overpopulation is a big problem that has led to human rights abuses and much pointless suffering.
 
Consider the long history of overpopulation alarmism, and how the doomsayers’ fears have failed to materialize again and again. Two centuries ago, Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population warned that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources and bring about widespread famine. His preferred solution was to decrease the birth rate by delaying marriage, but if that didn’t work he endorsed some rather extreme measures to slash the population. To prevent famine, he thought it was morally permissible to “court the return of the plague” by making the poor live in swamps and even to ban “specific remedies for ravaging diseases.” After Malthus died, the Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented prosperity that funded the construction of safe water supplies and sewage systems at a scale never before achieved. Living standards were transformed and lifespans lengthened. As farms mechanized, food became more plentiful even as the population grew. Famine became rarer. Yet Malthus’s ideas proved enduringly popular.
 
By the 1970s, overpopulation hysteria came fully back into vogue. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, which opened with the lines, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Shortly thereafter, in 1972, the Club of Rome issued a report called The Limits to Growth. It bolstered the old argument that population growth would deplete resources and lead to a collapse of society with evidence from computer simulations based on dubious assumptions. Those jeremiads led to human rights abuses including millions of forced sterilizations in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India, as well as China’s draconian one-child (now two-child) policy. In 1975, officials sterilized 8 million men and women in India alone. Were these human rights abuses necessary? No. Instead of facing widespread starvation and resource shortages, humanity managed to make resources more plentiful by using them more efficiently, increasing the supply and developing substitutes.

Huge suffering has happened because people believed the prophets of doom.

Today the population is at a record high, and famines have all but vanished outside of war zones. Even in Sub Saharan Africa, the poorest area on the planet, the food supply now exceeds the recommended 2,000 calories per person per day. Yet overpopulation fears still exert a powerful hold on the public imagination. Earlier this year, a survey by Negative Population Growth found that “American high school students are very worried about overpopulation.” Many prominent environmentalists — from Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Travis Rieder to entertainer Bill Nye “The Science Guy” — support tax penalties or other state-imposed punishments for having “too many” children. Bowdoin College’s Sarah Conly published a book in 2016 through Oxford University Press advocating a “one-child” policy, claiming it is “morally permissible” for the government to limit family sizes through force to prevent overpopulation.
 
Even if overpopulation were to prove to be a problem, it is one with an expiration date: due to falling global birth rates, demographers estimate the world population will decrease in the long run, after peaking around the year 2070. It is now well-documented that as countries grow richer, and people escape poverty, they opt for smaller families — a phenomenon called the fertility transition. It is almost unheard of for a country to maintain a high fertility rate after it passes about $5,000 in per-person annual income. Alarmism and extreme measures to combat “overpopulation” are entirely unnecessary.

The Green Party used to have a population policy because they too believed that human beings needed to stop breeding so much.

Stuff reports:

A bill to give new mothers more support after giving birth will be put in the ballot this week.
National MP Louise Upston is proposing the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (3 Day Postnatal Stay) Amendment Bill, which would entitle new mums to a minimum of three days hospital care after the birth of each child.
New mothers are funded for two days of in patient care by DHBs, but Upston said they were often encouraged to leave as soon as possible which caused additional stress.
She said new mothers sometimes experienced the “baby blues”, had difficulty breastfeeding, were exhausted, or just needed a little extra help while they built confidence as a mother.

Sounds a good policy to me. The pressure to leave quickly can be quite overwhelming, especially when it is a first baby.

An epic episode.

The Herald reports:

The head of the UN, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, has challenged the Government to slap a tax on pollution by shifting taxes “from salaries to carbon”.
Speaking at a breakfast with high school leaders in Auckland, Guterres said he wanted to convey a message.
“Shift taxes from salaries, to carbon. We must tax pollution, not people,” he said.
This means reducing income tax as a tax on carbon is applied, Guterres said.

“We need to make sure that when we adopt measures that increase costs, that we reduce costs in other aspects of the economy.”

This is absolutely right. Any environmental taxes should not be used as a way to increase the tax burden overall on New Zealanders. Income tax should be cut as compensation when environmental taxes are imposed.

For once I will say I hope the Government listens to the UN.

Many Labour MPs and activists spent the best part of a decade under-estimating John Key. They thought his popularity was artificial, and that as a Prime Minister who had never been a Minister he wasn’t up to the job, and that he was basically a rich prick charlatan that the public would see through at some stage.

Their under-estimation of his very real political abilities, led to them making bad strategic decisions.

I have a worry that National may fall into the same trap with Jacinda Ardern. They some on the right may think Ardern is just popular because she is a young woman with a baby, and that she is really hopeless at the job of Prime Minister and that the public will one day realise this.

While I do not like many of Ardern’s policies, and do think there are areas where she is relatively weak (lack of action on non-performing Ministers), I also think there are some areas where she is very very good. If you are on the right and can’t see the areas where she performs well, then you are in danger of under-estimating her just as Labour did with John Key.

I was invited at the beginning of May by DPMC to a “dialogue” on the ” Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online” to be held at the offices of InternetNZ on Friday 10 May. The purpose was “engagement” and to ” to build a unified sense of purpose on constructive measures to address violent extremist content online”.

I agreed to give up three hours to go along, even though my expectations of it were relatively low. By low, I don’t mean negative. Just that I expected this to be traditional let’s make stakeholders feel they have been consulted, and hear their views. This is stuff Governments do all the time. I’ve been to a lot of these.

I was a bit surprised when I got the agenda 48 hours before the meeting and read that the PM was attending the second half of the meeting for around half an hour. That was pretty unusual for a PM to attend a consultation meeting. I figured it was mainly for optics – allow for a photo op (which was mentioned in the agenda) and allow us to hear what the Government wants to achieve directly.

As the meeting resumed after the tea break, Jacinda walked in and sat down in the circle of chairs with us. I looked around the room for her minders (as I know a few of them), and there were none there. This is pretty rare. Normally a press secretary will always be with the PM, making sure they record what is said, and also an advisor to field technical questions.

As the discussion from the first session was summarised, the PM grabbed a piece of paper and started taking notes. Not a staff member, but the PM. Then the facilitator handed the meeting over to the PM. She actually chaired or facilitated the next session herself after a brief outline of what they are trying to do. As each person made a contribution, she responded with comments or followups and kept making notes.

It dawned on me that rather than this being the PM telling us what she is doing, she was genuinely engaging with those in the room for their ideas about various issues and complexities. She was very much over the detail of what is a very complex landscape which is an intersection of Internet architecture, free speech issues, social media companies, behavioural incentives and issues of market dominance.

I’ve observed various Prime Ministers for over thirty years. The Prime Minister in that meeting was highly impressive – one of the best performances I have seen. I don’t mean just on empathy (always a strength) but on policy, on strategy, on tactics. She is obviously highly involved in the Christchurch Call, not just fronting it. She is driving it.

The combination of her mastery of detail, her actively seeking opinions and taking her own notes, her lack of staff in the room, and also the total lack of barriers between the PM and participants (all sitting around in a circle) made everyone in that room feel they were genuinely being useful, and this wasn’t just tick the box consultation. Her performance reminded me in fact of John Key at various events, as Key had a way of talking with an audience, rather than to an audience, that was first class.

A thought also occurred to me during the meeting that if an overseas visitor had been in the foyer of InternetNZ that day and saw the group in there, they probably would never have guessed that the Prime Minister of New Zeland was in there, and she was the one wearing jeans, taking notes next to the guy in a suit. They may have assumed she was the secretary! That’s not a reflection just on stereotypes because the PM is a young woman, but that she was so interactive in the session.

I remain an opponent of many of the policies of the Government of course. And Ardern has areas where I regard her performance as lacking. But she also has areas where she is very strong performer, and people will be making a mistake if they under-estimate her abilities. I certainly won’t be.

Henry Cooke writes:

Housing was the best issue the Labour opposition ever stumbled upon.
As house prices shot up in Auckland and other centres, the National government seemed almost cartoonishly unconcerned. There was no crisis. Kiwis could go on Trade Me and find plenty of affordable houses. A house making more money than most workers in a year – tax-free – was basically fine.
Against this, one of Labour’s most competent opposition MPs was armed with a very memorable plan: KiwiBuild.
KiwiBuild’s key strength was the specificity of its ambition. Labour was not going to build “more” affordables homes “at some point” – it was going to build 100,000 new homes in 10 years.

This was not a minor policy. This was at the heart of their election campaign. They repeated it time and time again – 100,000 affordable homes in 10 years.

At almost a year in they are at 8% of their one year target and 0.08% of their ten year target.

They have also realised that the cooling housing market – thanks in part to some of their other measures – has taken the housing issue off the boil somewhat, giving them a bit of room for this breather and “reset” that will involve completely de-emphasising KiwiBuild, putting it in the same league as any other piece of housing policy.
But to think they will get away without some level of punishment would be a mistake. House prices might have slowed their rise or even fallen somewhat but they remain well out of reach for many young people. With no real changes to tax settings or planning laws looking possible this term this is not just one promise broken – it’s a betrayal of the very foundation Labour built its election campaign on. 
Housing-conscious voters probably aren’t going to head over to National, who still have the baggage from last term stuck to them. But Labour can expect a whole lot more hostility, of distrust in their promises. Its best issue has gone from go-to to embarrassment. It’s hard to come back from that.

Voters will hopefully be very wary about trusting anything in Labour’s 2020 manifesto, after such a betrayal of their 2017 pledge.

UN Watch reports:

Despite Brunei’s notorious new penal code that provides for the stoning of gays, nation after nation lined up today at the UN Human Rights Council to laud the absolute monarchy’s track record on human rights, as the country underwent a mandatory review that all UN member states undergo every five years. (See quotes below.)
According to a count by UN Watch, 61 out of 91 countries that spoke praised the government for its human rights record. An additional 21 countries expressed some praise for Brunei’s alleged progress, in addition to applying genuine scrutiny. If one includes these statements, then 82 out of 91 countries, or 90%, expressed praise for the country.
While the UNHRC’s mandatory review exercise is meant to scrutinize all nations every five years in order to improve the lives of victims worldwide, the vast majority of countries who took the floor today chose not to address Brunei’s atrocious human rights record, which includes criminalization of same-sex sexual activity, the use of caning and stoning as punishment, and strict censorship.

They announce they are going to execute gays and two third of the UNHRC countries praise them for their human rights record.

Doriane Coleman is a professor of law at Duke Law School. She specialises in the differences between biological sex and gender identity. She is also a former champion runner.

In a very long and detailed article (worth taking the time to read it all) she makes some insightful points:

The female range for testosterone is categorically different from the male range. In general, males have 10 to 30 times more T than females. Most females, including most elite female athletes, have T levels in the range of 0.5 to 1.5 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L). For men, typical values are 10 to 35 nmol/L. The reason there is a gap, with no overlap between the ranges, is that beginning in puberty, the testes produce a lot more T than ovaries and adrenal glands combined. And so the IAAF maximum of 5 nmol/L for women has been set, generously, to reflect the upper bound of T levels that can be produced even by polycystic ovaries.

That is one key aspect. There is no overlap between the normal range for women and men. Not even close. This isn’t something like height where many women are taller than than many men. No biological adult woman has a testosterone level higher than the lowest level in a biological adult man. The top of the range for a woman is around one quarter the bottom of the range for a man.

For example, as my colleague Wickliffe Shreve and I have shown, just in the single year 2017, Olympic and World Champion Allyson Felix’s lifetime best in the 400 meters of 49.26 seconds was surpassed over 15,000 times by boys and by men.

Some people may think that having male levels of testosterone may just give you a slight advantage. But thousands of men and boys can beat a female world record shows the advantage is huge.

Even non-elite male-bodied athletes, including boys, can and do routinely surpass the very best female athletes.

This is why having male levels of testosterone is seen by many elite female athletes as giving them no chance at all.

To be clear, our claim is not that an identity-based eligibility rule would introduce this enormous sea of boys and men into women’s competition. Rather, it’s that biologically male athletes—however they identify—don’t have to be elite to surpass even the very best biologically female athletes. And it doesn’t take a sea of them to obliterate the females’ competitive chances at every level of competition. If only a very small sub-set turn out to identify as women, we will be overwhelmed. …

They say that testes and T levels in the male range should be treated like other special traits that sport properly celebrates. Accordingly, Ms. Semenya is special because she is a woman with testes, just like Missy Franklin is special because she is a woman with an unusually large wingspan. As an academic, I’m familiar with the game that is deconstructing established truths and then re-imagining the world differently. But this isn’t the academy and it isn’t a game. In the real world, the analogy has no merit.
Sport has never sought to celebrate testes as special in either the men’s or the women’s category. Precisely the opposite is true: Gonadal sex traits define the categories, and then each separate category sets out to isolate and celebrate other characteristics. In the men’s category, testes and male T levels are perfectly normal and not at all special. Every single male in the category has them, and so the category isolates and celebrates different traits, like height and wingspan. And the women’s category was developed to exclude competitors with testes and T levels outside of the female range, so that biological girls and women could have the chance—as biological boys and men do—to have their equally exceptional but non-gonadal traits isolated and celebrated. It is within the categories that a Usain Bolt and a Katy Ledecky are properly held out as indomitable superstars.

A nice debunking of that argument.

Ms. Semenya is an extraordinary person. She is courageous, resilient and dignified. And as my longtime colleague Edwin Moses wrote recently in Time magazine, which featured her as one of its 100 most influential people of the year, “Caster Semenya has taught us that sex isn’t always binary, and this has caused us to question the merits of distributing societal benefits according to ‘male’ and ‘female’ classifications…however [her case comes out], Semenya will have already made a singular historical contribution to our understanding of biological sex.”
It is beyond doubt that this road has been a difficult one for her to travel. It was difficult for me to bear witness to her process—even as she remained unbelievably gracious throughout. Still, we must recognize that the underlying issue also has caused extraordinary harm to the females in the field; to the women’s middle distances, including their commercial and developmental aspects; and to the IAAF, which has expended significant resources trying to protect the women’s category for its intended purposes.

Semenya is extraordinary. It is not her fault she was born intersexual and it is awful she has had to endure such publicity. But as the author makes clear the decisions affect all female elite athletes.

At the non elite level, participation based on gender identity is of course what should happen. But at the elite level, not having some sort of biological test makes different gender competitions potentially meaningless.

Mike Hosking writes:

Firstly, the Greens lost this battle. This is not what they wanted. They wanted a vote, and for that vote to be law on the spot. Their original win was to get a vote in the first place. That was part of their confidence and supply document. It was a sop that, with yesterday’s details, reveals the chances of us ending up in a government supplied pot café is slim indeed, thank goodness.
Because if a yes vote gets up, the proposed legislation goes to the house. What does the house do with it? Potentially scuttle it. If the Parliament is roughly the same as it is now, it should be scuttled. New Zealand First will see to it.
It is impossible to believe the two heaviest hitters in that party – who come from Northland, an area ravaged by drug abuse – are going to proactively promote more drug use, use taxpayer money to supply drugs, and then stand by writing the cheques required to mop up the social and economic harm of their actions.

It is hard to imagine Peters and Jones implementing the results of the referendum.

Of course, National will campaign against this sort of madness, and there are votes in that. Taking a strong stand against drugs is a path to popularity, as it connects with large swathes of middle New Zealand.
Which leaves Labour, who may or may not be for any of this, stuck in a quagmire of indecision, just like with the CGT. They want us to be smoke-free – Helen Clark’s idea – but not dope-free.
They rail against social ills and deprivation, yet support, if not encourage, our right to obliterate our brains. It’s a mixed message, and it’s the price you pay for hanging out with the wrong crowd.

I think this will become a major issue for next year’s election.

Stuff has a story looking at the 21 candidates from the Democratic nomination for 2020.

I thought it would be interesting to analyse them as a group. Here’s the breakdown.

• Gender – 15 men and six women
• Age – three in the 30s (35 is minimum age), six in 40s, six in 50s, four in 60s and two in 70s
• Area – Northeast eight, West seven, Midwest three, Southwest two and Southeast one
• Ethnicity – White 14, Black three, Asian one, Latino one, American Samoan one and Native American one
• Highest office held – one Vice-President, two Governors, one Cabinet Secretary, seven Senators, six House members, two Mayors and two others

Stacey Kirk writes:

In reality, all National has to do is be constructive in every other way but promise to reduce the methane target, in order to command a near total monopoly of the rural vote. 
But while many farmers may think this is par for the course from Labour and the Greens, there’s little doubt rural New Zealand will feel deeply betrayed by NZ First. 
NZ First has styled itself the regions’ champion – indeed, it’s picked up a decent vote in the past from farmers, sometimes with the express purpose of teaching National a lesson. 
This one won’t be forgotten come election time though. 

Nope. NZ First are in real trouble.

Not only does the rural sector clearly view the methane target as a death knell for a good many farmers, but there will be a palpable feeling of personal insult felt by those who have actively been turning their pasture to native planting in a concerted effort to offset pretty much everything except biological methane. 
There’s scientifically little to be done about that particular brand of emission produced by livestock  that hasn’t already been achieved – other than to reduce the source. 

The only way to meet the target agreed by NZ First is to kill cows, and reduce the number of dairy cows in NZ. This will of course mean hundreds or thousands of farmers will go under.

Audrey Young writes:

It is just as well there is a parliamentary recess next week.
It will give some much needed time-out for Speaker Trevor Mallard and the National Party.
Mallard’s performance as Speaker this week has not done the Government any favours.
He is seen as simply part of the Government and the Government is seen to be throwing out National MPs – leader Simon Bridges and Nick Smith – from Parliament.
It has been so bad, that if Ardern is casting around for a capable minister to add to her ranks for the June reshuffle, maybe she should consider bringing Mallard back into the ministry.
Mallard was one of the most highly valued and competent ministers in the Helen Clark Government.
If he became a minister again, he would immediately be among similar ranks in Ardern’s Cabinet.

The Cabinet is so short of high performing Ministers, this is a viable idea.

I have covered Parliament under seven Speakers and Mallard is both the best and worst of Speakers rolled into one. When he’s good, he’s brilliant but on a bad day he is a House-wrecker.

That is a fair analysis.

Questions Time can be brilliant. Because of rules Mallard instituted, the flow of questions and answers is seamless and his intervention is evident only when he insists that a minister give a fuller answer.
Mallard does not always wait for a National MP to object to an inadequate answer. He can and does step in on his own judgment. He listens to questions and answers very carefully. He does not give diatribes when explaining why he has made a decision.
With oversight over written parliamentary questions, he has also demanded a better standard from ministers and twice this year has awarded National an extra 12 questions because of sloppy written answers from ministers Shane Jones and David Clark.
He has shown a willingness to adjust at times. For example, he appears to have dropped the egregious practice of taking questions away from National – for what were often minor infringements of standing orders.

I’ve made this point. Mallard has done many good things. He wants to be an excellent Speaker.

Mallard at his worst is when he abuses the inherent power of the chair by insulting Opposition MPs and then punishes them for reacting under extreme provocation. …
What is happening is that Mallard is giving himself licence to insult MPs but as soon as they bite back, they are punished. Speaker and ordinary MP will always be an unequal relationship but Mallard is abusing it. …
However, Mallard was at his absolute worst this week when he refused to put leave on behalf of Nick Smith to give priority to a bill next members’ day that provided roadside drug testing of drivers.
Smith wanted to know why and Mallard said that he himself had objected. That is unprecedented for the so-called umpire. When Smith objected, not unfairly, Mallard ordered him to leave the House.
When Smith abused Mallard on the way out (“soft on drugs, like the Government”) Mallard ordered him back in and named him, suspending him from all parliamentary proceedings for a day and docking his pay.

The Speaker is allowed to object to an MP asking for leave, because he is an MP. and all MPs have the right to object. But he was acting as a Labour List MP by objecting, not as Speaker, yet when Nick Smith yelled “soft on drugs” at him, he took it to be in his role as Speaker and named him. You can’t have it both ways.

Duncan Garner also writes:

So, Trevor the Mallard is the king duck these days. Say “king duck” carefully and slowly, so as not to mince the pronunciations.
As king duck, or Speaker of the House of Ducks, he’s meant to be above the fray. Beyond reproach. A man or woman of considerable intellect and standing who’s respected for his or her considerable service to the land. …

He should be fair, balanced, respected, but also quick to show respect to others. That’s where this falls over. Mallard can’t be fair. He hates National. They hate him.

Possibly over-stating the case. I’d more say that Mallard viscerally dislikes a number (not all) National MPs and he lets is affect his judgement.

All Speakers get accused by the Opposition of favouring the Government. Even Lockwood Smith was accused by Labour of doing so (which was patently ridiculous). But what is different here is that it is impartial journalists saying there is a problem, not just Opposition MPs.