The Herald reports:

High-tech security cameras powered by artificial intelligence gadgets that detect active shooters are being installed at Christchurch’s Al Noor Masjid where 44 Muslim worshippers were gunned down in March.
The state-of-the-art surveillance system is designed to detect an active shooter and alert police and other emergency services before shots are even fired.
The New Zealand mosque is understood to be the first place of worship in the world to be protected by the technology.
It’s already been installed at several schools and public spaces in the United States. 
Shagaf Khan, president of the Muslim Association of Canterbury which runs Al Noor, welcomed the move to give his congregation extra safety measures.

“I wasn’t aware of this technology, it’s amazing,” he said.
“If somebody comes with a weapon, it will give a notification within three seconds to authorities and police.

That is indeed amazing technology, if it works as described.It could save lots of lives in future.

The Herald reports:

Police are introducing a new phone number people can call for non-emergency incidents they want to report to the authorities.
From today, Kiwis can call 105 for issues that aren’t emergencies, but still want to report them to police.
For example, if someone discovers their car is missing, they would be encouraged to call 105 instead of 111.
Likewise, if someone finds a broken window, or some new graffiti, from now on they should call 105.

The 111 number will still be in service – but police are asking for it to be reserved for instances where there is immediate danger.
The new number aims to take the pressure off the 111 phone number and to help provide better services for the public.
Police receive more than 2 million calls a year, according to Police Minister Stuart Nash.
Almost 900,000 calls are made to the 111 service. There are around 1.2 million non-emergency calls to other police numbers.
“Just 20 per cent of 111 calls result in an emergency response, known as priority one,” Nash said.

This is long overdue. People shouldn’t have to try and look up the number of the local police station to report not urgent issues. One easy to remember number for non emergency calls to the Police is just common sense.

I would have personally gone for something like 333, but 105 is easy enough to remember.

The Herald reports:

Former MP Peter Dunne has weighed in to the parliamentary rancour swirling around Speaker Trevor Mallard’s rulings, accusing him of “compromising the presumed impartiality” of his role.
Dunne, who was a minister in Labour and National governments, said Labour member Mallard seemed “hell-bent” on changing the role of Speaker from its traditional independence from political bias.
Expressing his opinions in a political column, Dunne notes National has labelled Mallard a bully following the Speaker’s ejection of Opposition Leader Simon Bridges from the Housethis week and the sanctions imposed on National MP Nick Smith.
“Mr Mallard revelled in being Parliament’s resident bully boy when he was in Opposition. And he was good at it.

“But trying to reprise the role from the Speaker’s chair to protect the Prime Minister and batter the Opposition is not acceptable. If he carries on this way, he will achieve the dubious honour of being remembered as the Speaker who brought Parliament into disrepute.”

I think Trevor Mallard has done some good things as Speaker. He has helped make Parliament more family friendly, has encouraged Parliamentary Service to stop gagging former staff with NDAs etc. And some of the changes he has made in the House have been good. He has also been excellent at forcing Ministers to do proper and timely replies to written questions

But I do think he has a visceral dislike of certain MPs, and despite his best efforts, he lets his that dislike affect his judgement in the House.

Dunne also criticised Mallard for seemingly having assumed the role of the protector of Jacinda Ardern.
“Faced with a new government and a totally inexperienced Prime Minister he seems to have taken on the role of her protector in the cut and thrust of Parliamentary debate, Question Time in particular.
“While his paternalistic approach towards the Prime Minister may be understandable in the circumstances, it is, at the same time, not only utterly patronising, but, worse, it is completely inappropriate and totally compromising of the presumed impartiality of the Speaker.”

Peter Dunne is no longer in politics. His views may be coloured by his past, but he actually served in two Labour and two National Governments so I think his views on this carry some weight.

Stuff reports that NCEA pass rates for Level 1 and 2 have dropped for the first time since 2010. The changes are:

• Level 1 from 74.9% to 71.8%
• Level 2 from 78.3% to 77.4%
• Level 1 Maori pass rate dropped from 62.7% to 57.9%
• Level 1 Pasifika pass rate dropped from 66.9% to 62.1%

A considerable concern that the disparity between Maori/Pasifika pass rates and other students is growing, after many years of reducing.

Newshub reports:

Successive New Zealand governments have been “deaf to developing science” says The Opportunities Party (TOP) leader Geoff Simmons.

TOP is calling for deregulation of a form of gene editing called CRISPR, a technique that can be used to remove undesirable traits from an organism or add desirable ones.
Gene editing (GE) could be used for things like removing the genetic trigger for cystic fibrosis in a person, making manuka more resilient to myrtle rust or helping kauri trees fight dieback.
Simmons says since the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in 2001, it has been all but impossible to use genetic modification (GM) technology in New Zealand.
“That was 18 years ago – pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, and pre-smartphone. A lot has changed since that time, except for our regulations on genetics.”
New Zealand’s current legislation puts restrictions on any form of GM. Research can be conducted here, but any edited organism must be cleared by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) before it can be released.
Only two organisms have been approved since 2003, and they were both vaccines for horses.
Simmons’ proposal differs from other forms of GM – it doesn’t add any new genetic material to an organism, just rearranges what’s already there.
Research already underway in New Zealand includes a gene-edited form of ryegrass developed by AgResearch which grows 50 percent faster, requires less water and causes cattle to produce 23 percent less methane.
The company estimates the grass could result in up to $5 billion in additional revenue but due to current restrictions, it cannot be grown here.

The current law has us stuck in the past. The Government should embrace science and change the law.

Labour promised they would deliver 192 affordable houses a week for ten years. That’s their 100,000 over ten years.

The reality is they have delivered 80 houses over 80 weeks. That is one per week, instead of the 192 a week they promised.

Has there ever been a bigger failure to deliver?

Radio NZ reports:

Visiting Australian transport consultant Marie Verschuer from Curtin University thinks trackless trams would be perfect for Wellington.
At up to three carriages long, they can carry 300 people, and look a lot like a really long bendy bus. But unlike a tram these are fitted with tyres and can run on existing roads.
They cost as little as a tenth of the price of light rail.

Might be worth looking at, if correct. Light rail has a benefit to cost ratio of 0.05 which means ever $1,000 of spending generates a measly $50 of benefits.

“The advantage of this vehicle is that it can actually deviate from the track if there’s a need to do so,” she said.
“If there’s an accident ahead, it can be re-routed.”

Much better than something whose route is unmovable.

The Herald reports:

Criticism of the Government’s “ambitious” zero carbon bill has come in thick and fast from groups on both sides of the argument.
While farming groups have slammed the legislation as “cruel,” environmental organisations have labelled it as “toothless”.

Can it be both?

Biogenic methane – the emissions created from livestock such as sheep and cattle – is not completely exempt, as the bill commits to reducing it to 10 per cent below the 2017 levels by 2030.
The bill also commits to reducing gross emissions of biogenic methane to between 24-47 per cent below the 2017 levels, by 2050. 

It is these final two points that have alarmed Federated Farmers.
Its climate change spokesman Andrew Hoggard said these targets would send a message to farmers that New Zealand is prepared to give up on pastoral farming.
“This decision is frustratingly cruel, because there is nothing I can do on my farm today that will give me confidence I can ever achieve these targets.”
He said the Government was “arbitrarily” targeting businesses based on a “random selection of report” and incomplete data.
He said the 10 per cent target, over a 10-year timeframe, was “unheard of anywhere else on the planet”.

We’re world leading!!

Greenpeace executive director, and former Green Party leader Russel Norman, called the bill “toothless,” and said it had “bark, but no bite”.
Although the bill would help bring, and keep, New Zealand in line with the Paris Climate agreement, to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees by 2050, Norman says the Bill will have little direct effect.
This is, he said, because it has specifically written out any mechanism that would hold any person or body to account for not adhering to it.
“What we’ve got here is a reasonably ambitious piece of legislation that’s then had the teeth ripped out of it. There’s bark, but there’s no bite,” he says.

It’s aspirational!

The Herald reports:

Nelson MP Nick Smith has been suspended from Parliament for 24 hours and will have his pay docked after Trevor Mallard “named” Smith, prompting the senior National MP Gerry Brownlee to suggest Mallard was a “bully”.
The dispute happened in the last question of the day in Question Time when Smith accused Mallard of being ” soft on drugs, like the Government.”
Smith had been questioning Police Minister Stuart Nash in relation to the death of Matthew Dow, 23, who was killed at Appleby near Nelson on New Years Eve in 2017 by a driver high on meth and cannabis.
Smith asked Nash if he stood by his statement to TVNZ last December when he had said a discussion document on roadside drug testing had been approved by cabinet and would be made public early in 2019.

And it seems no such document yet exists.

Smith then sought leave of the House to give priority next members’ day to a bill that would have introduced drug-testing for drivers.

But Mallard, in a highly unusual move, did not put the leave motion (in which the objection of any MP can block a move).

When asked why by Smith, Mallard said that he himself would not grant leave for it.
Smith accused Mallard of opposing moves to keep drug-drivers off the road. Mallard said he was very unhappy with Smith’s approach.

The Speaker can constitutionally object to leave, like any other MP. But it is very unwise to do so, as the Speaker is becoming a participant, rather than the referee.

Mallard ordered him out of the House and when Smith yelled out “soft on drugs like the Government, Mallard ordered him to return and moved a motion naming Smith.

It is against the rules to abuse the Speaker, so some sanction against Smith is not unexpected. But again it is unwise for the Speaker to personally object to leave against an MP’s request for leave.

Once Smith had left the chamber, Brownlee asked if he could make a late submission on the Speaker’s inquiry into bullying in Parliament. No, was the answer.

Heh.

Outside the House, Smith said he was gob-smacked at what had happened.
He was incensed that Mallard had refused to put leave on his bill.
“I’ve been in Parliament for nearly 30 years. It’s for the Speaker to put it to the House to make a decision to object to that Bill being introduced, not for him to override it.”
Smith later accepted Karen Dow’s petition to Parliament seeking urgent legislation to introduce random roadside drug testing “to reduce the escalating road toll from drugged drivers, which resulted in 79 fatal crashes in 2017 and exceeds the number caused by those impaired by alcohol”.

That’s a stunning statistic.

The suspension of Smith follows Mallard kicking out National Party leader Simon Bridges from the House in Question Time yesterday.
Bridges had moaned in response to an answer from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and Mallard accused him of making barnyard-like noises.
Last week Mallard compared Hamilton East MP David Bennett to a primate he had recently seen in Rwanda (a gorilla).

Again unwise for the Speaker to compare MPs to primates.

The Herald reports:

The Government appears to be reviewing its flagship KiwiBuild policy’s commitment to building 100,000 homes over 10 years.
Neither Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, nor Housing Minister Phil Twyford would confirm that the 100,000 was still the Government’s target.
The Government has publicly said in January it would be “recalibrating” the KiwiBuild short targets.
The policy had promised to deliver 5000 KiwiBuild homes in 2020, 10,000 the year after, and 12,000 every year after that until 2028.

Those targets, however, were scrapped but Ardern and Twyford were both at pains to point out in January that although the interim targets were gone, it was still targeting 100,000 homes in 10 years.
That, however, no longer appears to be the case.
Twyford created confusion this morning by refusing to confirm the 100,000 target.
“It’s like American nuclear ships in the 1980s. It’s a neither confirm nor deny situation,” he told Interest.co.nz.
In the House, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was grilled by National Leader Simon Bridges over the KiwiBuild issue and Twyford’s comment.
She would not directly answer a question, asking if the Government was still committed to the 100,000 target.

As this was arguably their largest and most specific policy, can we sue for election fraud if they renege on it?

Of course it is possible that despite managing just 80 in one year, they’ll increase their completion rate by 10,000% and churn out over 11,000 a year for the next nine years.

A premium article at the Herald “reveals” Jacinda’s inner circle.

I’m more interested in roles, than names. The roles are:

• Her electorate agent
• A former Young Labour activist now in the PM’s Office
• Her Chief of Staff
• Her Deputy Chief of Staff (about to become CoS)
• Her Chief Press Secretary
• Helen’s Chief of Staff (H2)
• Labour’s former Deputy Leader (Annette)
• Her former Chief of Staff
• Her pollster
• Three Ministers

Key’s inner circle was somewhat different as he had quite a few people in the business community that he would talk to regularly also. And I believe he would also often chat at length to some bank economists to get their read on where the economy is going.

Stuff reports:

Things don’t look good for the Wellington Central Library with demolition on the cards.
Multiple sources have told Stuff the library has an NBS rating of 15 per cent, putting it well below code and leaving demolition “the only [cost-effective] option.”

So they’re going to save the Town Hall, used by a small minority of the city, generally the wealthy elite. But they’re not going to save the Library, which is used non stop by every day families. Great priorities.

“Technically its earthquake rating under current code is 63 per cent but when you apply the lessons that we’ve learned from the Statistics Building it is almost 15 to 20 per cent which means it needs significant work.”

I’m not an engineer but I don’t understand how a building can go from 63% to 15% just on the basis of what happened elsewhere. How many other buildings might face the same change?

Stuff reports:

A woman and man were kicked off an Air New Zealand flight in Wellington after they reportedly refused to pay attention to an airline safety briefing. 

If you just read that part, you might have sympathy for them. I don’t always pay attention, especially if it is my second flight of the day.

But there’s more to it:

“The video started playing and the flight attendant held up the card, but the woman started looking down at her book.”
She soon picked up her phone, and both she and her male travel companion were looking at their phones, she said. 
“A flight attendant said very patiently ‘Can you please watch what’s happening because this is the exit row’.

If you are in the exit row, you have agreed to help in an emergency and you do need to pay attention. I’m often in the front row, and I will always put my device or book down and pay attention to the briefing – especially when it isn’t the video, but an actual flight attendant.

“The flight attendant was super kind and kept asking her, but the woman put her fingers in her ears.”  

Wow, that is super rude. What twats.

It was shockingly arrogant behaviour, the passenger said. 
They didn’t seem to care that they’d delayed the plane for other passengers by 25 minutes, she said. 
“You’d think they’d be embarrassed or mortified, but they seemed quite chuffed about the whole thing.”  
When they were told that police were waiting for them, the woman pulled out her phone and loudly tried to make a booking with Jetstar, she said. 
Air New Zealand did really well in how they handled the situation, she said. 
“I just felt for the flight attendants, because they got abused.” 
​A police spokeswoman said police were requested to meet one passenger at the airport on Tuesday morning.
“The passenger will receive an infringement notice under Civil Aviation Authority rules relating to the use of a cellphone,” the spokeswoman said.

Good.

A lovely story from Radio NZ:

In the Te Rapa district of Hamilton, Fonterra tanker drivers know that every evening their biggest fan will be waiting for them on a dairy farm on Reid Road.

Fonterra’s milk tankers are Andrew Oliver’s favourite thing in the world and local tanker drivers have long known that Andrew won’t go to bed until they’ve been on the farm.
But when it became unmanageable for his 65-year-old parents, the world’s biggest dairy exporter stepped in to help.
They changed their milk tanker schedule in the entire district so that Andrew would go to bed on time.
Andrew Oliver is one of about eight people in the world living with Fryns-Aftimos syndrome – he’s the oldest known to have it and the only one in New Zealand with the condition.
The extremely rare syndrome is the result of a mutation in one of his chromosomes which means that, at 35 years old, he has the mental age of a 6-year-old and suffers many other symptoms.
For the past 15 years he’s had a special relationship with Fonterra tanker drivers.
Ken Oliver, his father, said Andy discovered the tanker when the farm went onto the night shift for milk pick up.
“[He] learned what it was, came out to see it occasionally and once in awhile would talk to a driver. But then with Andy, the normal thing is with something like this – it would become a habit. And so he had to be out to see the tanker. That became part of his nightly routine.”
Andy’s nightly routine consists of a list of things he has to tick off.
Every night he draws a picture to give to the tanker driver, he has to watch the weather report on the 6pm news, then he has dinner and a bath.
But the last thing to tick off – is the tanker.

As the parent of a toddler, I know it is all about the routine. Our current routine is dinner, bath, jumping (off the couch onto a crashpad of all the cushions), supper, tunneling (in our bed), teeth, potty, two books, sleeping bag, final book, cuddle, milk then sleep. It takes around two hours! And Ben won’t let us miss any aspect of it.

Ken said that if the tanker hadn’t come, Andy wouldn’t go to bed. For him, waking up at 5am to tend the farm, it became a struggle.
“We simply didn’t know when the tanker was coming. You might get 2am in the morning or something like that and he wouldn’t go to bed until the tanker had come.”
For over a decade, Andrew’s parents managed his tanker visits until one day Ken says he came to a breaking point.
“Deirdre had just been diagnosed with having had a minor stroke, I was absolutely out on my feet trying to keep the farm going. Surviving on three or four hours sleep and I’d just run out. I’d hit the wall and so I phoned the call centre and actually started crying on the phone, I was just so shot.
“I just said look, my life has just become impossible and just explained what was going on. I need sleep and I can’t get sleep until this boy’s in bed.”

Amazing they lasted so long.

After hearing about Ken’s call, the company decided to change their entire milk tanker schedule in the Te Rapa district to make sure Andy could get to bed on time.
Ken is now guaranteed a pick up anywhere between 6:30pm and 8pm.
Tanker driver Kevin said Andy draws them a picture each night and they put them up on the wall at work.
“It’s not something we encounter everyday, we can tell you that… It’s a special relationship.”
On top of Andy’s rare syndrome, he also has five types of epilepsy.
So the Te Rapa district tanker drivers have been briefed on health and safety procedures and what to do if Andy had a seizure during a tanker visit.
“A lot of us guys that have been here before, we know what to expect and we have an in cab screen which has a warning along the bottom to make sure drivers are reminded to be careful going down the track just in case Andy’s floating about,” Kevin said.
“That’s programmed into the screen and would come up every time that vehicle comes into this farm, it would come up before we go.”
These drivers mean a lot to Andy, but Kevin says Andy means a lot to them too.
“We had one of our drivers come out and he noticed that Andy’s bike was looking a little bit dilapidated and he came back and sort of ran past the idea at a team brief meeting and we all thought that was a very good idea.”
So the district’s tanker drivers held a sausage sizzle fundraiser to buy Andy a new bike and company staff from all around the world pitched in to help.
Ken said riding his bike is one of the few things Andy can do independently, which makes visiting the tanker a huge part of his life.

The power of human connections.

Video below

Newshub reports:

There will be a “full and independent review” of Auckland Council’s council-controlled organisations if Phil Goff is re-elected Mayor.
“In 2020 it will be a decade since the Super City was established. It’s the right time to do a stock take on what’s working for our city and our people, and what’s not.”
It’s the first policy Goff has announced in his re-election campaign.

Yawn. A non-policy. A review means nothing. What Goff should have done is review them this term and then seek a mandate for any proposed changes at this election.

Stuff reports:

Waikato District Health Board members have been sacked after ongoing performance issues and “continual adverse publicity”.
Just over two weeks ago, Health Minister David Clark warned board members he was thinking of replacing them with a commissioner.
When the board responded, all but two members offered to resign.
On Tuesday, Clark announced his decision to get rid of the board members and replace them with a commissioner, Dr Karen Poutasi.

Almost inevitable.

Poutasi can appoint up to three deputy commissioners, and they will have until 2022 to deal with the DHB’s issues – Clark plans to cancel this year’s local health board elections.
Having a commissioner oversee health services in the Waikato until 2020 felt like about the right length of time, Clark told reporters at Parliament.
“We need to address the serious challenges and provide the stability so the DHB can get on track,” he said.

The fact he is not allowing elections in October suggests the problems are more than the current board members.

Personally I think it shows the model of elected boards of DHBs is flawed. The Government should appoint all DHBs, so then we can hold the Government fully accountable for them.

Gallup has Trump at 46% approval for the first time ever. The booming economy and end of the Mueller investigation will be the major factors. Still under 50% though. So how does this compare with other Presidents at the same stage?

1. Bush GHW 73%
2. Eisenhower 70%
3. Kennedy 65%
4. Bush GW 66%
5. Truman 59%
6. Johnson 56%
7. Nixon 53%
8. Clinton 52%
9. Obama 50%
10. Trump 46%
11. Ford 44%
12. Reagan 43%
13. Carter 40%

To some degree these comparisons are not chicken and eggs as pre 1970 was less partisan and a good President could get huge approval ratings from the other side. The two Bushes are inflated by wars so the real comparison is Trump is doing better than Reagan, Ford and Carter and a bit below Obama, Clinton and Nixon.

I think if nothing else changes it comes down to who the Democrats select. Biden (if he doesn’t implode) looks formidable. Sanders and Warren unelectable. The others, too early to tell.

Stuff reports:

Vaping is about to become a Government-recommended way for smokers to quit cigarettes.
Despite being increasingly banned in public places, the use of e-cigarettes will soon be promoted as a safer alternative to smoking by the Ministry of Health.
A campaign encouraging smokers, and particularly young Māori women, to make the switch will be launched in August and a New Zealand-specific website offering vaping information and tips will go live this month. 

While the campaign pushes vaping as a way to quit, it will also aim to stop non-smokers, particularly those under the age of 18, from picking up the electronic devices.

Good to see the Government following the science and recognising that a product which is 95% less harmful than smoking should be promoted to current smokers (but not none smokers).

Ash spokesman Ben Youden said there was still a lot of confusion about vaping and many people still thought it was as bad as smoking.
“The scientific consensus is vaping is 95 per cent less harmful that smoking cigarettes.”

While the initial outlay for equipment could vary from $50 to $100, the financial benefits quickly made up for the starting cost.
“Over a year, vaping will cost about 10 per cent of what that person would have spent on cigarettes.”

Huge saving.

Andrew Little released:

“There will be a clear choice for New Zealanders in a referendum at the 2020 General Election. Cabinet has agreed there will be a simple Yes/No question on the basis of a draft piece of legislation.
“That draft legislation will include:
A minimum age of 20 to use and purchase recreational cannabis,
Regulations and commercial supply controls,
Limited home-growing options,
A public education programme,
Stakeholder engagement.
“Officials are now empowered to draft the legislation with stakeholder input, and the Electoral Commission will draft the referendum question to appear on the ballot.

My preference is to have the legislation actually passed and triggered by the referendum but this is a second best option.

“The voters’ choice will be binding because all of the parties that make up the current Government have committed to abide by the outcome.

That is not binding. Look at Brexit where they promised the same.

“We hope and expect the National Party will also commit to respecting the voters’ decision.

I hope they do also but as the legislation is only draft, it means significant changes may end up occurring which could mean it doesn’t reflect what people voted for. This is why it is preferable to pass the legislation first.

The key will be how they deal with the sale side. The proposed details look quite good:

• A minimum age for use and purchase
• A limit to the potency of legal cannabis
• Limiting consumption to private homes and premises licensed for it
• Permit sale only through physical stores, not online or postal
• Require health messaging warning of ill effects
• Allow sharing of cannabis for small amounts but penalties for sharing with under age or in large quantities

This looks much better than the status quo. I would vote yes.

NewstalkZB reports:

Victoria University has decided it won’t legally challenge the Education Minister’s decision to reject its name change proposal, but it will be adopting a new branding strategy.
The branding refresh will see the university emphasise the word ‘Wellington’ in its name.
It’s hoped that will firmly link the university’s identity to its location in the Wellington region.
The university’s council has unanimously agreed on the move.

Finally sense prevails.