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.

A plot critical episode.

Some court judgments leave you really sad. This one reads:

The complainant and two female friends who were drinking in a bar were approached by the applicant who introduced himself. He explained that he had just been released from prison after a five-year sentence for “bashing a nigger”. In context, this suggested that the applicant was associated with the Mongrel Mob and that the victim of his assault was associated with Black Power. There was initially some friendly interaction between the complainant and the applicant in the course of which they danced and kissed.

I really don’t understand how someone comes up to you in a bar and proudly boasts he has just got out of prison for “bashing a nigger” and this leads to you making out with him.

I’m in no way suggesting what later happened is her fault. It is not, as the court found. I’m just staggered that some people don’t recoil in disgust at someone who is proudly boasting they bashed a “nigger”.

Stuff reports:

The government is close to announcing a deal on its contentious climate change legislation, striking a deal over agricultural emissions.
Stuff understands Climate Change Minister James Shaw and NZ First have negotiated a “split gas” target, which would see methane treated differently from other long-lived gases, like carbon.
Farmers are worried about the legislation because agriculture accounts for about half our emissions, mostly methane from belching live stock.

Methane should be treated differently. It doesn’t stay in the atmosphere anywhere near as long as other greenhouse gases.

The atmospheric lifetimes of different greenhouse gases is:

1. Tetrafluoromethane 50,000 years
2. Hexafluoroethane 10,000 years
3. Sulfur hexafluoride 3,200 years
4. Nitrogen trifluoride 500 years
5. Nitrous oxide 121 years
6. CFC-12 100 years
7. Carbon dioxide 30 – 95 years (around 20% remains for hundreds of years)
8. HCFC-22 12 years
9. Methane 12 years

Roger Partridge at NZ Initiative writes:

In 1998, a beginning primary teacher earned $31,000, which was 15% more than the median worker. A teacher at the top of the primary teachers’ salary scale earned $47,100 (75% more). Today, a beginning primary teacher earns $49,600, which is a shade less than the median worker. And a primary teacher at the top of the salary scale now earns $75,949 (only 43% more).

Of course, there is a difference between how the median worker and a primary teacher are paid. The starting teacher salary is on par with many other professions (accountancy, engineering, law, among others). But unlike teachers, the best among other professions can go on to earn salaries several times those earned by graduates starting their careers.

For primary teachers, things are different. Their union-negotiated collective agreement links pay rises to years of service, rather than to ability or performance. And the pay scale tops out after just seven yearly increments.

Perhaps that is the rub for primary teachers. A union-negotiated pay scale requiring all to be paid alike, regardless of ability, with fixed service-based pay adjustments is bound to limit how much teachers can earn. Teachers’ salaries are not modest despite their union coverage and collective agreement, but because of it.

Spot on. The collective contract rewards teachers for long service, not ability.

Wouldn’t it be great of schools could pay teachers whatever they think they are worth. They might pay a third year inspirational teacher $15,000 more than the 15 year veteran who doesn’t connect to students.

Jack Shafer at Politico writes:

New Zealanders needn’t worry about their government censoring the press. On Wednesday, five of the country’s major news outlets proved themselves only too happy to censor themselves.
Representatives of Radio New Zealand, TVNZ, Mediaworks, Stuff and the owner of the New Zealand Herald signed a pact agreeing to limit their news coverage of Brenton Tarrant, the man charged in the March 15 Christchurch massacre of 50 worshipers at two mosques. Following the guidelines, the news organizations vow to limit coverage of statements “that actively champion white supremacist or terrorist ideology,” avoid quoting the accused killer’s “manifesto,” and suppress any “message, imagery, symbols” or hand signs like a Nazi salute made by the accused or his supporters in support of white supremacy. “Where the inclusion of such signals in any images is unavoidable, the relevant parts of the image shall be pixelated,” the guidelines add.

I had no problem initially with the guidelines, but Shafer makes a strong case against them:

So what possessed New Zealand’s pressies to join forces, voluntarily, to limit their rights to report the news? According to reports, New Zealand publications worry that Tarrant might use news accounts to spread his white supremacist views to a larger audience, the way Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik broadcast his anti-Islam ideology in his 2012 trial. Tarrant might very well use his defense to propagandize, but even if he does, so what? An editor doesn’t need to sign a pact with other editors to keep him from transcribing every word and gesture of a showboating defendant. Because he can take that path without cooperating with anybody, we can assume that the editors trust themselves to avoid sensationalistic reporting of the Tarrant story, but they don’t trust their competitors to do the same—hence the desire for a press cartel to reduce journalistic competition to the absolute basics.

Shafer argues no cartel is needed – just let editors use their judgement.

Both New Zealand’s chief censor and its leading news outlets seem to think that expressions of white supremacism are as irresistible to the general population as an open bag of potato chips. This kind of thinking is normally seen in an authoritarian state, where “dangerous” ideas are officially cloaked from view by leaders worried about the threat to their own power. But in a free society, people have a right to know about those who have murderous designs on them. Once a Nazi has marked you for death, averting your eyes isn’t going to save you.

One needs to understand the nature of certain evil, to defeat it.

Worst of all, the pact has given New Zealand’s news consumers every right to think that the press can’t be trusted to tell the whole story because a misguided notion of “safety” comes first. Where might New Zealand readers go to slake their curiosity about political extremism? If it’s places like 4chan and 8chan, won’t we be sorry?
Drop the blinders, New Zealand. You can’t stop a threat you have blinded yourself from seeing.

This is exactly what happens. People head off to the extremes.

Stuff reports:

Online voting, or a return to the polling booth, could be needed for local body elections as the postal voting system cannot be “guaranteed”, Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) says.
Mike Reid, policy director for the organisation, told the Justice Select Committee on Thursday that the slow fadeout of postal services meant that postal voting – the main method of voting in local government elections – was becoming very problematic, and it would be hard to guarantee every vote was counted.
“Our issue is effectively that the quality of postal elections can’t be guaranteed. We can’t guarantee that people who vote by post can get their vote counted, any more,” Reid said.

“We don’t believe that we can rely on the postal services for local elections in the long term.”

Postal voting is highly insecure, cumbersome and dying off. People simply don’t go into post offices any more.

If they don’t introduce an option to allow you to e-mail or upload your ballot paper, then they will need to bring back booths and have scores of them around each city.

The Daily Mail reports:

Jewish activists called on Jeremy Corbyn to consider his position after it emerged he had endorsed a book containing anti-Semitic ideas.
The Labour leader wrote the foreword for a new edition of JA Hobson’s 1902 book Imperialism: A Study while he was a backbencher in 2011.
He described it as a ‘great tome’ – even though it spread conspiracy theories about the Rothschild banking family and said finance was controlled ‘by men of a single and peculiar race’ who in turn controlled ‘the policy of nations’.
The Jewish Labour Movement slammed Mr Corbyn yesterday for endorsing ‘anti-Semitic propaganda’ and said he should consider quitting.

Example no 207 of Corbyn’s anti-Semitism.

David Parker announced:

Attorney-General David Parker has announced the appointment of a Supreme Court judge and a judge of the Court of Appeal.
Justice Joseph Victor Williams has been appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court.  
An appointment to the Supreme Court was required after current Supreme Court judge Justice Sir William Young was named to chair the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the attack on the Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019. 
Justice Williams graduated with an LLB from Victoria University in 1986 and joined the faculty as a junior lecturer in law.  He graduated with an LLM (Hons) from the University of British Columbia in 1988.  
In 1988 he joined Kensington Swan, establishing the first unit specialising in Māori issues in a major New Zealand law firm and developing a large environmental practice. He became a partner at Kensington Swan in 1992, leaving in 1994 to co‑found Walters Williams & Co in Auckland and Wellington. 
In 1999 Justice Williams was appointed Chief Judge of the Māori Land Court.  The following year, he was appointed acting Chairperson of the Waitangi Tribunal and was permanently appointed in 2004.   
He was appointed as a Judge of the High Court in 2008 and a Judge of the Court of Appeal in 2018. 

This is no big surprise. Williams was a possibility for Chief Justice also.

Williams will serve on the court for 16 years. The new Chief Justice for 13 years. So Parker is making his mark on the court.