Stuff reports:

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

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

The Guardian reports:

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

If Corbyn likes it, well …

Duncan Garner writes:

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

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

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

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

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

Heh.

The Herald reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuff reports:

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what Nicky Hager said in 2017:

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

This week Stuff reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real insurgents don’t eat quiche.

The Herald reports:

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

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

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

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

HDPA writes:

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

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

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

Yep.

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

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

Kirsty Johnston reports:

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

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

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

A dog with fleas – great analogy.

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

Some key changes:

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

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

Stuff reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweden has 349 MPs for 10 million people.

The changes announced by PM Jacinda Ardern are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stats NZ reported:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Herald reports:

Education Minister Chris Hipkins says the pay offer put to teachers and principals this week was “the final deal” – apparently quashing school principals’ hopes that they might get more.
Primary school principals have voted to reject the deal they were offered, even though primary teachers have accepted their deal.

The final deal? Hipkins said that a month ago and then blinked and offered $250 million more.

Some principals have said the deal would give their deputy principals higher pay packages than the principals themselves.

Which is daft.

The End of Life Choice Bill has passed its 2nd reading by 70 votes to 50, which is a healthy margin. I’m very pleased to see it progress. The debate was excellent, as conscience issues often are.

Some of the key speeches. David Seymour:

Finally, I ask what does this House say to the small minority of people who find themselves suffering at the end of their life? Do we require them to suffer on for the morality of others, or do we give them compassion and choice?

Amy Adams:

All of us are affected by our own experiences in this issue. For me, it was watching my mother die a gruesome, painful, and dehumanising death, and it wasn’t because there was a lack of palliative care. It wasn’t because there wasn’t every opportunity and every drug available, and if she’d wanted to spend her last days drugged to the eyeballs, feeling nothing, I’m sure that was possible, but that isn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was to be able to choose exactly when that end would come in the last few days, and that’s really all we were talking about. This was a woman who was proud, independent, intelligent, who knew what she wanted, and the last thing she wanted was to be able to have the ability to choose the time of her death. Instead, we watched her literally get eaten alive from a vicious melanoma and suffer, as I say, in immeasurable ways. There should be the opportunity to work out if we can devise a scheme in which that sort of suffering doesn’t need to happen.

Gerry Brownlee:

I can only think about my own mother, who died a difficult death with her brain cancer. I had to go and tell her what the specialist had discovered when she had the scan, and her options were at that stage no treatment and death perhaps within a month, or to undergo some treatment and life could be extended perhaps as far as 18 months. There was no in-between. It was: choose to live on or choose to go very, very quickly. When I told her that, it was very distressing for me, I have to say, but she just sort of sat up and said, “What, a month?”, and I said “Yep, Mum, it could be a month.” And she said, “Well, bugger that. I’ll have the treatment.” It wasn’t easy; it was awful. But she did it as much from her desire for us to have a farewell, if you like—the last time that we would have with her, the last weeks or months or whatever it was. The treatment that she got, I think, didn’t alleviate all of her pain by any manner or means, but it did give her a degree of comfort, and in the last hours of her life she was not able to experience or was not experiencing that particular pain. I only say that because it is in itself the start of a confusion, because that was her choice.
In this case I don’t think we should have a bill passed into an Act that makes that choice to end a life so much easier than it is at the moment.

Judith Collins:

I’ve talked to many people about this issue. It’s troubled me for a long time, and this year I have been very troubled by it because I’ve felt that, having been opposed to it, I was on the wrong side. I am on the wrong side of it in opposing it. I’m on the right side now, saying that everybody deserves some dignity in their lives.
And I talked to Amy Adams about her mother dying—it is awful to think that people are eaten away by something, losing their face, told that one day they could die when the cancer breaks through to their brain. What a dreadful thing to do, and there are options. Somebody shouldn’t have to say, like my dad did, “I have so much pain, I need morphine.” and to have his children saying, “Please give my father more morphine.” because that’s what he wanted. I would do it again. It’s the right thing to do, and it preserved his dignity, and I am very shocked and saddened to hear that so many people don’t have that.

Greg O’Connor:

Now, we all will have an incredible number of pressures on us. I myself am a practising Catholic. You don’t think I get a bit of pressure from my mother when I go home? My father spent six years in the seminary. You don’t think that memory doesn’t fit long? However, what I have been elected to do here is to do the absolute right thing. So, in sitting through the submissions that we did—the thousands of them—as we went around the country, we had everyone who stood before us, who spoke before us, came from a very considered position. They all came from an emotional position. But what they all didn’t have the advantage of is doing what we as a select committee did: to hear the different sides.
I have spent my life before this place as a detective, and one thing you learn as a police officer and as a detective is that there are always two sides. And I implore those who have made up their mind to actually have a look at the other side of the argument, because there has been much disinformation about this out there

Chris Bishop:

I believe the law should allow for a dignified death. I believe palliative care is a wonderful thing, but it cannot end all pain and suffering. The status quo actively denies terminally ill people the choice of dying at a time of their choosing with their autonomy recognised and dignity affirmed, and instead gives them an invidious choice: take their own life—often dangerously—or suffer needlessly. I believe we can and must do better.

Andrew Little:

This debate about this bill is not about alternatives to or substitutes for palliative care. I think we have to be very careful in this debate that we don’t set up these false alternatives. Of course palliative care has a place and will continue to have a place in the healthcare of those who are suffering and dying in this country. So it is not about an alternative to or a substitute for palliative care. This is not a debate about suicide, in the sense that we understand that those who are in a state of despair or depression or who have just given up because of circumstances of their life and who can see no further way forward—that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about those people whose health condition is such that they have no future. They are terminal, but, more than that, the quality of their life has gone. They have their faculties, they are capable of making up their mind, they are capable of making a decision, and the question is whether we should allow the law as it is at the moment to stand in their way to make a decision of their choice about how they wish to meet their inevitable end.

Nikki Kaye:

But the fundamental reasons why I support this bill are around compassion. Ultimately, what this is about is that the overwhelming evidence shows there are a group of people who suffer. There are, fundamentally, a group of people for which they suffer, they’re in pain. The overwhelming evidence shows there are also a group of people who commit suicide in a very violent way because they do not believe in the current law and the process that is in front of them.

David Clark:

My personal experiences, like I think everyone in this House, have shaped my view. During my childhood, my grandmother attempted to take her own life many times because she felt a burden on society as someone who struggled at times with a mental illness. My most fundamental concern with this legislation is that sanctioning euthanasia makes it easier for vulnerable people to feel that the most appropriate option is to take their own life, and that it is very difficult to ensure protection sufficient to preclude this ever happening. 

I’ve included speeches for and against to show what the debate was like. Again it was one of the better debates you get in the House.

The vote was a conscience vote, but the split by party was:

• National 18 for, 37 against
• Labour 33 for, 13 against
• NZ First 9 for
• Greens 8 for
• ACT 1 for

The committee stage will commence on Wednesday 31 July. I suspect it will take two sitting days so continue on Wednesday 21 August. They key challenge will be considering amendments which will see a final law which will get at least 61 votes at third reading. This will mean including a referendum and narrowing eligibility to those with a terminal illness.

News.com.au reports:

Israel Folau says he has no ill will towards his critics, who have “every right” to express their own beliefs and opinions.
Folau’s new fundraiser has raised more than $1.7 million, putting him more than halfway to his goal to build a multi-million war chest to fund his unfair dismissal case.
The appeal hosted by the Australian Christian Lobby has now amassed more than Folau’s successful GoFundMe campaign raised in four days, before the fundraising website shut it down on Monday.

I’m not surprised.

Folau’s social media post was stupid, but the reaction has been excessive. Even his poor wife has been hounded for daring to support her husband.

Stuff reports:

The mothers of the victims of double murderer Paul Tainui are pleading with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for an independent review into the handling of the cases. 
Tainui, born Paul Russell Wilson, was on parole for the 1994 murder of his girlfriend, 21-year-old Kimberley Schroder, when he raped and killed 27-year-old Nicole Tuxford in her Christchurch home on April 7, 2018.

As I’ve blogged before there were multiple failings in multiple agencies. There should be an inquiry into this.

A guest post by Richard Prosser:

So the great gun buy-back is underway. It isn’t going to work. Let me tell you why.
 
To make it easier for some people to understand, I will attempt to use words to paint a picture. I know that many anti-gun types are probably more au fait with crayons, but bear with me.
 
Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re not talking about firearms.
 
Let’s imagine that some deranged individual in a non-specified country commits a heinous crime using a bicycle. And let’s imagine that the bicycle is a cross bike.
 
In response, the country’s outraged Government decides that such bicycles are unsafe in the hands of the general public, and announces that they are going to ban most of them.
 
Mountain bikes draw particular ire, because they look a lot like cross bikes. Black mountain bikes with big knobbly tyres are especially demonised, because they look aggressive and scary. Also, they have lots of gears, just like cross bikes.
 
Seriously, some of these machines have as many as 27 gears! Outrageous.
 
There’s no need for such bicycles in society. No-one needs to have more than, say, three speeds on their bike. Why, in the old days, bikes only had one speed, and that worked perfectly well. Our fathers and grandfathers grew up with single speed bikes. And solid tyres, come to that. They knew how to ride properly, of course. Too many modern bike owners are just wanna-be terrorists. The only reason for wanting to own a bike with more than three gears is to commit crime, or for some reason to do with compensating for having a small penis. If you need more than three gears you shouldn’t be riding. 
 
There is lots more dumb banal commentary along the same lines from the uniformed and the self-righteous, but you get what I mean.
 
Furthermore, it’s too difficult to keep them safe. Most bicycles in the hands of criminals have been sourced by way of thefts from law-abiding bike owners. In fact they’re not, but that’s according to the President of the Police Association of the country in question.
 
They must be banned.
 
So the Government announces that all bikes with more than three gears are now illegal. 250,000 law-abiding bike owners, people who have always kept their bicycles safe, and never used them to break the law, are now effectively criminals. 
 
The Government will therefore “buy-back” specified bicycles from their current owners. It isn’t a buy-back, of course, because the Government never owned them in the first place, but this Government has neither the wit nor the honesty to be able to either acknowledge or admit that. It is a confiscation. A Government with even a shred of moral decency would simply own up to that.
 
Compensation will be paid. How this will be calculated, and what level it will be set at, are yet to be decided. In the meantime, bike owners are instructed to keep their bikes locked up safely, not to use them, and to register their bikes with the Police, ahead of further instructions on how they are to be handed in.
 
In the future, it is advised, all bicycles will need to be registered. This is because Government insists that registering bikes will somehow magically prevent them from falling into the hands of criminals.
 
Government insists that this is so in spite of all the experience from overseas showing very clearly that such registers simply don’t work. Indeed, the country where the crime happened used to have such a register, which was done away with some thirty years ago, entirely because the Police at the time recognised its ineffectiveness in terms of solving or preventing bicycle crimes, and because the time and resources it tied up were hampering the Police in carrying out their other duties.
 
All this is decided and enacted in less than a week, because the Government in question is very keen to signal virtue to other progressive Governments around the world, and most importantly, to get it done quicker than the Australians did.
 
There is no due process or proper consultation, and the advice of actually knowledgeable people from respectable bicycle owners’ groups is completely ignored. This Government is on a crusade. Facts and logic are not going to be allowed to get in the way of virtue signalling.
 
It is announced that the Police will be tasked with coordinating the hand-in scheme. Police of course have nowhere near the time, personnel, or resources needed to carry out this undertaking, but the Government boxes on regardless. Police simply do not have the people or facilities needed to accept, safely store, or dispose of an influx of a million or so bicycles from 250,000 owners, in six years, never mind the six months slated for the operation.
 
Government says that the Defence Force will be available to assist Police. It appears to not matter at all to the Government, that decades of running the military down means that they are in precisely the same boat.
 
After a few weeks, Government announces it’s preferred option for the process of handing in now-illegal bicycles.
 
A series of “swap meet” type events will be held at various venues around the country, at places such as local halls, schools, and the like. Bicycle-riding Police will guard these venues while the process of bicycle surrender is carried out.
 
At the swap meets, unqualified contractors who have received a week’s training from the Police will assess each bicycle as it comes in, and determine a value for it. The determined value will start at somewhere between 70% and 95% of the bicycle’s actual market value. Why those numbers? Apparently, just because. However, it will automatically go down from there, because of course all the bicycles will have been ridden.
 
Once handed over, the bicycles will be disassembled, and the parts placed in a suitable container. Only then will the owner be given a chit confirming the determined value for compensation. It may well be as low as 25% of the investment that the owner has tied up in his or her bicycle. By then it will be too late to protest, of course, because the bike is now in bits in a container, and in any case, it has become illegal for the surrendering owner to possess it anymore.
 
Dissatisfied owners can appeal; but the appeal process will cost anything up to half the value of the bike in question, and if the appeal is not upheld, the compensation offer will be forfeited.
 
Furthermore, costly accessories that the owner has purchased for his or her bike, which are now not of use and thus cannot be sold to anyone else, such as lights, up-rated tyres, shock absorbers, speedometers, padded seats, etc, are not covered by the compensation scheme at all.
 
Neither are stocks held by businesses. Bike shops are closing, staff are being made redundant, business owners are going broke; but this is apparently just tough.
 
Businesses are told they can simply return their stocks to their overseas suppliers. The Government seems to genuinely not be aware that globally, commerce doesn’t work that way. You buy something, it’s yours. Change your mind? No, they don’t want it back, and no, they’re not refunding the money you’ve paid for it. This is perhaps not surprising given that not one member of the Cabinet of this non-specified country has any experience in business, or, indeed, in the real world of real work or real life.
 
Back at the swap meet, a trickle of people are arriving to hand in their bicycles. The Bike-equipped Police guarding the venues are all looking very smart with their neatly pressed uniforms and lots of shiny equipment. All of them are riding brand-new bicycles that have lots of gears, big chunky tyres, and plenty of menacing-looking sticky-outy accessory bits and pieces on them.
 
The swap meets naturally require lots of Police to be present. This is only sensible. However, it means that Police resources elsewhere in the town in question, for any given swap meet, are rather thin.
 
On the other side of town, a naughty but clever group of criminals have decided to stage a diversion. A few of them get on their bikes, which are black mountain bikes with knobbly tyres and really loud bells, and ride right into a Bank. A few more of them start pulling wheelies in the car park, and running into pedestrians.
 
In response, Police are forced to divert some of their people away from the swap meet and send them to the Bank.
 
As soon as they have gone, the majority of the naughty-but-clever criminal group duck out of hiding, and sneak into the swap meet venue through the back door. This is easy for them, because Police incompetence means the door has been left wide open. They clean out the containers of bike parts, and disappear into the back streets.
 
Why do I think the above will happen? Because if I can think of it I’m damned sure the Hell’s Angels can too, and the rest is merely a product of the facts and numbers of Police resources. Oh, and the example of their level of competence that they’ve already shown us, of course.
 
Most bike owners choose not to attend the swap meets. Instead, they decide to bury their bikes in moisture-proof containers behind the shed, or wall them up inside the gib in the garage. The bikes won’t pose a risk to the general public when so concealed, but then they never did when they were locked up in the bike safe of a law-abiding, Police-vetted, licence-holding bike owner either. They are however more likely to be accessible to the naughty-but-clever criminals, because if Fred the Baddie knows that Joe the Good Guy Bike Rider had a bike that is now illegal, all he has to do is go digging behind Joe’s shed when Joe is out, and there’s a good chance he’ll find it. It would have been much safer if it stayed locked up in Joe’s steel bike safe. Joe had never committed a crime with his bike and was never going to.
 
You might suggest that Joe should have handed his bike in as required by the new law. Maybe he should; but knowing he’s only going to receive a fraction of what it’s worth, do you really expect him to? To be effective, laws have to take account of human nature and national character. If they don’t, then people will simply ignore them.
 
The lack of ability to comprehend the above blunt reality is a defining feature of idealists. There’s so much air in their heads that there’s no room for facts. Sadly our current political leaders appear to fall entirely into this category.
 
Some people will be allowed to continue owning bikes with more than three gears. Professional riders will be able to apply for a licence to own a 10-speed. The licence will cost them, of course. It will be a fee to continue owning and riding a bike that they already own and have already been approved for. 18, 21, and 27-speed bikes will be completely illegal for anyone to own – apart from the Police themselves.
 
Seriously, you couldn’t make this shit up. Unfortunately I didn’t have to. What I have just described is exactly and precisely the situation that is being applied to licensed owners of lawfully-held firearms in New Zealand. All I have done is change firearms for bicycles. The rest is the same, down to the letter.
 
See this is what I think the crayon-eaters don’t get.
 
What if we weren’t talking about firearms – what if we really were talking about bicycles? Would that make it different? If so, how, and more importantly, why?
 
The issue here isn’t about firearms or bikes. It’s about Government confiscation of private property without adequate compensation. It’s about a complete disregard for due process and respect for democracy. If this really was about bicycles, the crayon-eaters of the anti-gun lobby probably would understand it. The crayon-eaters of the media might even get it. I don’t actually hold any real expectation that the crayon-eating Ministers of the New Zealand Government Cabinet would get it; but I live in hope.
 
But it is what’s pissing off a quarter of a million law-abiding firearms licence holders.
 
We don’t like it. That much is a given. We can’t see the justification for it. In truth there isn’t any. I’m not about to argue that point any further, however. It’s done and it will stay done until we have a change of Government.
 
I personally have no time whatsoever for the current Government. In fairness I didn’t have much for the last one either, or the one before that; but I accept, as I have to, that it is a product of the democratic choice of a majority of New Zealanders. That’s the thing about democracy – if you embrace it, you have to accept what it delivers, even if you don’t like it.
 
I don’t know who or what that changed Government might be, or when it might come about; National are completely on board with Labour, the Greens, and Winston First on this. None of them would do anything differently in Government.
 
What pisses us off most of all is the lack of adequate compensation. As a comparison, when land is compulsorily acquired under the Public Works Act, the baseline for compo is set at twice the market value.
 
So it should be for any Governmental confiscation. You don’t agree? Why not? Would you feel differently if this was something that affected you personally? If so, bloody shame on you. That’s a disgusting attitude to hold. It’s the kind of attitude that engenders a ‘f**k you’ response in those who are affected.
 
It is actually encumbent upon you, crayon-eaters, to recognise right from wrong here. That is your duty as citizens. Everyone must be equal before the law. That is what sets us apart from less advanced societies.
 
There is a very thin boundary between civilisation and anarchy. It rests on people acknowledging the rights of their fellow citizens. People who have lawfully owned firearms are entitled to such recognition, even if you yourselves don’t have any interest in shooting sports. If you don’t feel the need to respect our rights, why on earth would you expect us to respect yours? My property is mine, you know; I have obtained it legally, and paid good money for it.
 
Ponder this – if the Government decided to ban microwave ovens, would it be OK, in your mind, for them to come and take your own nearly new one away, giving you half what you paid for it in return, with no effective right of appeal? What about if they’re building a new motorway, and they come and take half your house and section? Would it be OK for that to be confiscated, against your will, and for them to give you 25% of the value of it, and threaten to lock you up if you didn’t like that?
 
You might be a member of, say, an outdoor group. You might own an expensive backpack, tent, alpine parka, and binoculars. The whole rig might be worth $1,000. If I’m the Government, and I come along and ban them, and confiscate them, and give you $250 and tell you to bugger off, would you expect me to share your outrage? If so, why are you not prepared to share mine?
 
What needs to happen, if this thing is going to work, is this. 
 
Compensation needs to be set at twice market value, as determined by the experienced people in the trade. No quibbling. Just pay it.
 
That includes accessories like telescopic sights. Some advanced optics can run to $10,000. Did you know that? If not, why not? Surely you’re not making something your business without understanding it first?
 
Reloading supplies. Gun safes. Carry cases. Ammo boxes, range finders, laser sights, cleaning kits, etc ad infinitum. All of them expensive and none of them any use any longer. Pay them out. All of them, at twice the market value. Don’t question, don’t argue, just hand over the money.
 
Compensation also needs to include businesses and all their costs. That means stock on hand and in transit. It includes freight costs. It includes compensation for loss of earnings on business that cannot now be conducted.
 
You will probably need to set a special levy on all taxpayers. That’s what Australia did. It took them 12 years to pay for the Port Arthur confiscations. 
 
It is going to be expensive. Very expensive. No one knows exactly how many firearms are involved; but in my very well informed opinion the oft-quoted guestimate of 1.2 million long guns in private hands, of which maybe 500,000 are now illegal, is woefully off the mark.
 
In truth the number is probably closer to 2.5 million with at least a million now being persona non grata. At an average $2,000 a pop, that’s $2 billion straight off the bat.
 
Add in trade losses and you can stick another billion on that. Then there’s the cost of setting up a register, which stung Canada $2 billion in NZ dollars before they abandoned it. I’ll be generous and say, because of relative population size, that’s another $500 million down the pipes. Make no mistake – gun registers don’t work. They have never worked, anywhere. New Zealand will not be the first to make one work. We had one, and it didn’t work. It won’t work again. It will fail. I know I’m hammering this point, but that’s so you’ll take notice. You have been told, over and over, by people who know what they’re talking about, that a gun register is doomed to fail before it even starts. Even the Police agree. So you’ve been told, OK?
 
This. Is. Because. Only. The. Law. Abiding. Will. Register. Their. Guns.
 
Criminals. Won’t.
 
And yes, all taxpayers will have to put their hands in their pockets. Why?
 
Because, my dear crayon eaters, this is an action initiated by the Government that you support, and it is an action that you condone. As such you do have to take responsibility for paying for it. If you’re not prepared to pay for it, what makes you think you have any kind of right to insist that it happens? Who do you think should be paying for your personal preferences and choices? The example of the proposed register above is a case in point. You have been told it isn’t going to work. If you insist on pursuing it, that cost is on you.
 
So prepare yourselves for a final bill somewhere north of three-and-a-half-billion dollars. And while you’re at it, prepare yourselves for the reality that it will achieve absolutely nothing at all in terms of preventing crime or increasing public safety or stopping another massacre. You’re about to flush $3.5 billion down the dunny just so Jacinda Ardern can look good to the progressive lefty twats of the UN. And don’t smirk about that, National, because you have been 100% complicit.
 
Three and a half billion is a lot of pay rises for nurses. It’s a lot of special needs teachers. It’s a lot of hip operations. It’s a good few kilometres of new roading.
 
So know, those of you who support the Government’s changes to the gun laws, know that you also support these changes in funding priorities. Know that and accept responsibility for them. Know at the same time that all these changes will have no effect whatsoever on crime or public safety. You are agreeing to spending this money in this way, knowing that it is destined to achieve nothing at all.
 
And we all know that the Government doesn’t have three and a half billion in spare cash sitting a piggy bank, so sorry, but more tax it is, for everyone.
 
See this is all part of growing up. Getting all petulant and saying things like “why should I pay for the shooters’ choices” and “well they’re illegal now so they just need to do as they’re told and if they lose out financially then that’s just hard cheese” is fairly primary school stuff. Because you see it isn’t the shooters’ choices that have led to this – it’s yours, you the anti-gun folk. Your choices – your political choices, I mean by that – have brought this situation about. 
 
If of course you’re part of the MSM or social media commentariat that’s maybe understandable, because you’re probably not long out of primary school, or perhaps even still there. But in the adult world, taking responsibility for the costs and consequences of your choices is something that’s required. It’s what we teach our kids. You’re not special or different in that regard.
 
 
Let me recap. The changes to New Zealand’s gun laws following the Christchurch massacre are pissing off a great many law-abiding New Zealand gun owners.
 
We’re pissed off because we are being penalised for something we didn’t do.
 
We’re pissed off because we are being blamed and demonised for something for which we’re not responsible.
 
We’re pissed off because the approach being taken by the Government does not and will not address the problem, nor will it do anything to improve public safety or prevent a repeat of the Christchurch massacre. The problem is criminals. We are not criminals. Criminals are not addressed by these changes. These changes only affect people who have not and will not ever commit crime in the first place.
 
We’re pissed off because both the Government and the media continue to believe the statements being told by the President of the Police Association.
 
We’re pissed off because the only reason Brendan Tarrant (and yes, I am going to speak his name) was able to get a firearms licence in the first place was because Jacinda Ardern signed off on changes to the law that allowed him to slip through the cracks, and because Police incompetence didn’t pick him up on the other side of those cracks.
 
We’re pissed off because democracy and due process have been sidelined. This is what we expect from the likes of North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, and other totalitarian states. It is not what we expect from New Zealand.
 
But most of all we’re pissed off because you are confiscating our expensive and legally owned property and not paying us what it is worth. That is called stealing.
 
So you have 250,000 pissed off people, who are not going to hand in their guns unless and until you pay a fair price for them. One way or another you are going to have to grow up and realise that – either before the fact, or because of it.
 
Either way, respect for the Police has been irrevocably damaged and greatly diminished in the eyes of a quarter of a million law-abiding New Zealanders. And they’re the ones with the guns.
 
You could choose to just dismiss this as yet other rednecked rant from Prosser, who is pissed off because he’s had his precious guns taken away. Well, yes, I am pissed off, and yes, I have had to hand in one of my guns. The rest of the affected ones can all be made legal.
 
The one rifle that can’t be made legal, cost me about $2,200 in today’s dollars. It’s probably still worth about $1,700. I’ve taken the scope off it, bringing it down to about $1,400, and handed it in. The list published by the Police indicates that I will get $1,050 back for it. Maybe. Sometime.
 
But beyond that, no, it doesn’t affect me. I’m living in Britain now, and don’t currently have any plans to come back. New Zealand has changed for the worse, and I can’t see it getting better anytime soon. I do wish you all the best, but I’ve given it my best shot (no pun intended) and my days of trying to improve things via political means are over.
 
I might humbly suggest you take the things I’ve said on board, because I’m right about them. Being right is what I do.
 
Or you could just go back to eating crayons, which seems to be about the limit of your intellectual capacity.
 
Richard Prosser
 
As a footnote; I’m asking DPF to post this here under my own name, because in fact I think it’s about time that Boris Piscina retired.
 
I created him as a character to spy on the Nats, back when I was a NZ First MP, before it began to properly dawn on me that I was probably more like them than not.
 
I’ve actually grown to quite like the grumpy old prick over the years, but keeping him consistent has become difficult, and nowadays he still says a few things that I don’t really think anymore.
 
So it’s RIP Boris Piscina……which is kind of funny in itself in 
a way, because those are my initials 🙂