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.

The Guardian reports:

The US on Friday hiked tariffs on $200bn worth of Chinese goods, prompting Beijing to promise retaliation and escalating the chances of a full-blown trade war between the world’s two economic superpowers.
At 12:01am on Friday in Washington, tariffs on Chinese goods were raised to 25% from 10%, after last-minute talks in Washington between Chinese vice premier Liu He and US trade representative Robert Lighthizer on Thursday failed to salvage months of talks on a deal.
China’s ministry of commerce said in a statement just after the scheduled tariffs went into effect: “The Chinese side deeply regrets that it will have to take necessary countermeasures”.

It might get settled in the next few weeks, but if not prepare for rough times ahead.

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!