Dr Patrick Carvalho at the NZ Initiative writes:

Under our fuel tax regime, a driver basically pays the same amount of petrol duties regardless of when and where the car is used – thus adding to the congestion in already overcrowded roads.
Moreover, fuel taxes are blatantly regressive, which means low-income families tend to bear a disproportionate share of road funding costs.
To understand the regressive feature of petrol taxes, it is necessary to look at the relationship between fuel economy and road usage.
The rationale for petrol taxes lies in the user-pays principle. In this sense, the fuel excise duty would be a proxy for road usage: the longer the distance travelled, the higher the tax dues.
Petrol tax receipts are, however, proportionate to fuel consumption patterns. This is in contrast to road user charges on diesel-powered vehicles, which charge drivers based on the exact mileage travelled.

Petrol tax, when introduced, was the best form of user pays available. It was an indirect form of user pays.

New Zealand should look at well-tested road pricing experiences worldwide to implement a comprehensive user-pays system based on three elements: distance, time and location.

Sounds the ideal to aim for.

Singapore, which started with a paper-based scheme in 1975, will implement a new network-wide, satellite-based road pricing system as early as next year.
Several other countries – including the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Japan, Sweden and Norway – have also implemented different versions of road pricing arrangements and technologies. These are useful test cases, providing both success stories as well as lessons.
It is time New Zealand joined global best-practice in managing and funding its roads and highways.
First, outdated fuel taxes must go. Petrol-powered cars should be migrated to existing distance-based road user charge scheme in line with diesel-fuelled vehicles.

Easy to do now. Most cars drive with a GPS device in the car.

Second, without fuel taxes, the carbon footprint of cars should be consistently priced using the Emissions Trading Scheme. Further regulatory and explicit subsidy arrangements may also follow, helping address any remaining environmental concerns.
Third, congestion charges based on time and location would ensure a more reliable, faster and safer traffic flow. Evidence shows that even small but flexible charges can have a significant positive impact on road demand management.
As Professor Vickery once said, “You’re not reducing traffic flow, you’re increasing it, because traffic is spread more evenly over time. Even some proponents of congestion pricing don’t understand that.”
Fourth, while distance-based road charges should be the main source of road funding, congestion charges based on time and location should be used to reduce car queuing in busy roads. Hence, any additional net revenue from congestion charges should be ring-fenced to ease respective local traffic conditions.

Always been a fan of congestion charges. You should pay more at peak time than at 5 am.

Bret Stephens writes at the NY Times:

As prejudices go, anti-Semitism can sometimes be hard to pin down, but on Thursday the opinion pages of The New York Times international editionprovided a textbook illustration of it.
Except that The Times wasn’t explaining anti-Semitism. It was purveying it.
It did so in the form of a cartoon, provided to the newspaper by a wire service and published directly above an unrelated column by Tom Friedman, in which a guide dog with a prideful countenance and the face of Benjamin Netanyahu leads a blind, fat Donald Trump wearing dark glasses and a black yarmulke. Lest there be any doubt as to the identity of the dog-man, it wears a collar from which hangs a Star of David.

Stephens continues:

Here was an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Stürmer. The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized with a skullcap. The nominal servant acting as the true master. The cartoon checked so many anti-Semitic boxes that the only thing missing was a dollar sign.
The image also had an obvious political message: Namely, that in the current administration, the United States follows wherever Israel wants to go. This is false — consider Israel’s horrified reaction to Trump’s announcement last year that he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria — but it’s beside the point. There are legitimate ways to criticize Trump’s approach to Israel, in pictures as well as words. But there was nothing legitimate about this cartoon.

So what was it doing in The Times?
For some Times readers — or, as often, former readers — the answer is clear: The Times has a longstanding Jewish problem, dating back to World War II, when it mostly buried news about the Holocaust, and continuing into the present day in the form of intensely adversarial coverage of Israel. The criticism goes double when it comes to the editorial pages, whose overall approach toward the Jewish state tends to range, with some notable exceptions, from tut-tutting disappointment to thunderous condemnation.

We get this in NZ also, where some MPs accuse Israel of genocide and condemn it regularly while ignoring far far worse human rights abuses in the region.

The problem with the cartoon isn’t that its publication was a willful act of anti-Semitism. It wasn’t. The problem is that its publication was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism — and that, at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice, from mansplaining to racial microaggressions to transphobia.
Imagine, for instance, if the dog on a leash in the image hadn’t been the Israeli prime minister but instead a prominent woman such as Nancy Pelosi, a person of color such as John Lewis, or a Muslim such as Ilhan Omar. Would that have gone unnoticed by either the wire service that provides the Times with images or the editor who, even if he were working in haste, selected it?

Of course it would have never appeared.

The so called Welfare Expert Advisory Group has reported and their main recommendations are:

• Remove obligations and sanctions such as work assessments or naming the other parent
• Sole parent support recipients no longer need to look for work until the youngest child is six (instead of three)
• Increase main benefits by up to 47%
• Increase abatement thresholds to $150 a week or $250 a week for supported living
• Index benefits to average wage instead of inflation
• Increase family tax credit to $170 a week
• Allow people to claim welfare even if married or in a relationship to someone who is working

They have conservatively estimated the cost of this to be $5.2 billion a year. Now current spending on benefits are $4.4 billion a year so basically doubling the cost.

An extra $5.2 billion a year on welfare would equate to $3,500 more spending and hence tax per households. So if implemented you’ll pay $70 a week more tax on average (if working) to fund this welfare wishlist (for people not working).

I’m surprised the working group didn’t also recommend free cars under every seat.

The Electoral Commission has published the 2018 donation returns for political parties.

The returns only include donations over $1,500 so this doesn’t include the thousands or tens of thousands of party members that might donate $100 and can total over a million dollars. So it is an incomplete picture. But how much did each party get from donations over $1,500?

1. National $741,915
2. Greens $603,731
3. Labour $173,343
4. ACT $145,072
5. NZ First $87,870 (plus loan of $76,622)
6. TOP $87,843
7. New Conservative $20,028
8. Maori $2,000

And who were the largest individual disclosed donors (over $15,000):

1. Greens: Betty Harris $350,280
2. NZ First: NZ First Foundation $76,622 (loan)
3. ACT: Christopher Reeve $60,000
4. ACT: Dame Jenny Gibbs $56,000
5. TOP: Gareth Morgan $50,000
6. Labour: Robert Smellie $50,000
7. Greens: Julie-Anne Genter $28,427
8. Greens: James Shaw $28,387
9. Greens: Eugenie Sage $28,257
10. National: Graham Drummond $25,500
11. National: RCL Henley Downs Ltd $25,000
12. National: Owen Glenn $25,000
13. Greens: Jan Logie $23,327
14. Greens: Marama Davidson $20,548
15. Greens: Gareth Hughes $20,028
16. Greens: Philip Mills $20,000
17. National: Anurag Rasela $19,909
18. Labour: Jacinda Ardern $18,790
19. Greens: Chloe Swarbrick $18,066
20. Greens: Golriz Ghahraman $17,986

Once again NZ First are hiding their funders. Off memory in 20 years of electoral donation returns they have never ever disclosed the identity of a party donor (at least not in the original returns).

The Herald reports:

A deal has been struck over paid breaks for bus drivers that will avoid the previously anticipated enormous disruption of public transport – and loss of wages for drivers.
It had been predicted that thousands of bus services a day would have been cancelled, but in Auckland that is now understood to be in the low hundreds and mainly off-peak services.
Bus companies, unions, regional councils and the Government have reached a temporary agreement “to achieve the smoothest possible transition” in the first year after changes to the Employment Relations Act come into effect next Monday.
Under the Act bus drivers will become entitled to paid 10-minute rest breaks in the middle of each work period. But a new regulation will temporarily override part of that entitlement.

The Government was warned that legislating “tea” breaks would lead to massive problems because of the lack of flexibility. They just don’t get it that you can’t treat pilots and bus drivers the same as office workers.

Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today the Cabinet had agreed to a new land transport rule that aims to avert thousands of bus services being cancelled and give bus drivers the rest breaks they need to keep passengers safe.
Twyford’s office said in a statement: “The changes to the Employment Relations Act require employers and employees to reach agreement on rest and meal breaks together. If agreement can’t be reached rest breaks are to be taken in the middle of a work period.”
He said the new rule gave flexibility to bus operators when scheduling rest breaks for drivers.

A daft law with no flexibility. Imagine every train and bus stopping for ten minutes halfway through a journey.

He said that without the new rule 25 to 30 per cent of bus services would have been cancelled.

A problem caused by Labour.

Radio NZ reports:

The credibility of the Housing Minister is on the line after a week of shifting stories about a key element of KiwiBuild.

Well the credibility is pretty low already as the promised 1,000 homes by 30 June is currently sitting at just 80.

Ms Collins cited the ministry’s response in Parliament on Wednesday – that the required test was “done verbally with builders and no written record existed”, prompting her to question if officials were playing “fast and loose” and it was all done with a handshake.
Surprised by that, Mr Twyford tried to clarify the situation and said the request had been misinterpreted by the ministry. He gave assurances the process was robust and there were “a number of communications and documents” officials would provide to back that up.
“While there is no specific single assessment document as requested by the National Party research unit, there are other documents and communications that set out the negotiations and record the ministry’s work in this area”, he told Parliament.
In the next hour he was repeating those assurances to reporters.
“I’m satisfied that they [ministry officials] are subjecting these contract negotiations to the kind of scrutiny they need and there is a trail of documentation to support that,” he said.

So the Ministry said there was no written record of a test for whether a development would increase the number of houses, but Twyford said there was.

But that was not the case.
Housing Ministry chief executive Andrew Crisp declined to speak to media, but issued a written statement saying “no such documentation exists as there is not a standalone additionality test”.
The story then shifted to a statement there was written evidence developers had to prove their case for a Crown underwrite, but that was buried in commercially sensitive contracts the ministry is refusing to make public – even in redacted form.
‘Additionality’ is the officials’ way of describing the criteria for the underwrite. The ministry said “additionality is assessed as core part of the business case for a KiwiBuild underwrite”, rather than by a standalone test.
Again, this is contrary to past statements by the minister, who speaking in Parliament in March referred repeatedly to the additionality “test”.
As recently as Wednesday, Mr Twyford talked about the ministry advising him “they apply an additionality test”.

So it is a non existent test.

NewstalkZB reports:

National’s deputy leader Paula Bennett says she found comments made by a minister in the House yesterday, questioning her Māori heritage, racist. …

Jackson’s comments were slammed by Bennett who today called them “without a doubt” racist.
“It’s kind of like saying if we’re not like you, and fully entrenched and able to speak the language, then in your mind, we’re lesser Māori – I don’t think that’s necessary,” she told media after question time.

And not just Willie:

MP for Tāmaki Makaurau and Whānau Ora and Youth Minister Peeni Henare backed Jackson this afternoon.
In his view “blood quantum simply isn’t enough” when it comes to being Māori.
“I’ve always felt that you have to reach a threshold of need, participation and contribution in Māori Kūpapa. If you don’t, of course, questions are going to be raised.”
He said he was “more than happy” for those questions to be raised of anybody who claims to be Māori who does not meet that threshold.
Henare said he had not seen Bennett’s contribution to the community or to Māori Kūpapa.
“I haven’t seen her [Bennett] on the marae; I haven’t seen her dry dishes, I haven’t seen her do a karanga – therefore, it should be raised as a question.”

I don’t think those Labour MPs realise the own goal they are setting themselves up for.

If they are claiming merely having some Maori ancestry is not enough to qualify to be a proper Maori, then the number of Maori on the electoral roll would have to dramatically reduce, and hence the number of Maori seats.

One News reports:

While the specifics are not yet known, 1 NEWS understands the referendum will be broadly in-line with what the Green Party campaigned on at the 2017 election.
It campaigned on legalising possession and cultivation, or growing of plants, for personal use of cannabis and introducing a legal age limit for personal use.

If this is what is proposed in the referendum, that is untidy. It is saying it is legal to possess cannabis but presumably still illegal to buy it or sell it. It won’t get rid of the black market, but make it worse.

It is also understood the Government will not pass legislation before the referendum – but will instead prepare a Bill that could be introduced to Parliament afterwards if people do vote to legalise marijuana.  

Also unhelpful as if the bill has gone through select committee process etc, it will be more likely to be acceptable.

I’m in favour of legalisation, but am worried the referendum could end up being a no vote, because not enough thought has gone into how legalisation would work.

Peter Dunne writes:

MMP is a system ready-made for effective local representation, and it is hard to understand why so many electorate MPs often overlook that. There are exceptions – but they are few and far between. Those who come readily to mind are Damian O’Connor and his staunch advocacy for the West Coast, regardless of his party’s position on an issue, and Nick Smith and Nikki Kaye who are always seen to be working assiduously in their electorates. For most of the rest, however, the electorate seat they hold is but the vehicle that gives them a seat in Parliament.

Every now and then, an issue arises which is critical to a particular electorate or group of electorates, and cries out for effective advocacy by the local MP. NZTA’s recent decisions to effectively can the proposed Petone to Grenada link road and delay almost indefinitely the development of the Melling Interchange are two such examples. Both affect the Hutt Valley and northern Wellington electorates, particularly, and the Wellington region generally.

The Petone to Grenada link road (effectively linking the Hutt Valley directly to State Highway One north of Wellington) has been on the books for over a decade, and has always rated highly in terms of the cost benefit analysis. While there have been issues regarding the constantly shifting designated route of the road and its likely impact on affected property owners, and some of the engineering issues arising from some of NZTA’s earlier indicative designs for the road, none of these were insoluble, and progress was being made towards the development of what most people regarded as a necessary road link. Lives had already been disrupted with properties already purchased and people compensated, but now it seems all that counts for nothing, as it is back to square one.

The Melling Interchange idea has been around for almost as long, and is seen as a necessary solution to a significant and unsafe bottleneck on State Highway Two. Even NZTA agrees that the Interchange is worthwhile, but it is now saying it will be at least ten years before any funding can be set aside for it.

Both decisions have come as a major surprise to people in the Wellington region, but what is perhaps more surprising is the complete silence of the region’s Labour MPs and Labour aligned Mayor of Wellington on the issue. The Mayor of Lower Hutt and the local National MPs, and even the Speaker of the House from whom one would normally a measure of impartiality, have weighed in opposing these decisions, but to date, they have been lone voices. Yet, if ever there was an occasion where local MPs, regardless of party, could come together to advocate for their region and its infrastructural interests, this is it.

Wellington is constantly concerned about its future focus and development, always with a rival’s eye to its competitive sister of the North, the rapidly growing power-house of Auckland. The concern is understandable, although Wellington will never compete effectively with a properly governed and organised Auckland nearly five times its size. But for it to have any sort of worthwhile future, Wellington needs effective leaders and representatives, committed to getting the best sustainable, social and physical infrastructure for the region. For Wellington now, all politics has to be local, across the five cities comprising the region, the six electorate MPs, and the list MPs living in the area, with everyone equally committed to pushing the region’s future.

So, the local Labour MPs need to take Sir John’s advice to heart, and put the needs and wishes of their local constituents front and centre of their considerations, rather than just continue their focus on being loyal, unquestioning servants of their party.

The local Labour MPs and Councillors are not serving Wellington well. Basically every significant road improvement planned has been cancelled or delayed indefinitely.

And to make matters worse the Labour/Green dominated Regional Council has crippled the previously reliable public transport system.

Stuff reported:

The biggest names in flat earth circles have flown across the globe to speak at the Flat Earth Expo in Auckland.
The stars of Netflix’s 2018 flat earth documentary Behind the Curve, YouTubers Mark Sargent and Patricia Steere, were in New Zealand this weekend to speak to local Flat Earthers.
Flat earth believers think the earth, rather than being the planetary sphere we have come to know, is actually a flat plane. Different factions within the flat earth community have competing ideas as to what the earth looks like and who controls it.

I believe Britney Spears is sane and stable. Which shows beliefs often clash with reality.

Some flat earth theories reckon huge ice walls, up to 45-metres high, surround the earth. The walls, located in what we know as Antarctica, are likely patrolled by an army to stop people climbing over and falling off the edge of the world.

Cool – the Game of Thrones version.

I may be wrong but I’d guess 75% of those who attended are not vaccinated and hate fluoride also.

The NZ Initiative report:

A comprehensive and year-long econometric analysis of data for 400,000 students undertaken by The New Zealand Initiative reveals there are no significant differences in school performance between schools of different deciles.
 
Adjusted for the different student populations they serve, the vast majority of New Zealand’s secondary schools create the education outcomes we would expect from them.
 
This finding calls into question the assertion of the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce, led by Bali Haque, which claimed that “quality of our schools varies significantly”. There is no evidence for this statement in the data provided by Statistics New Zealand’s via its Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI).
 
Commenting on the research, the Initiative’s Executive Director Dr Oliver Hartwich said: “The Tomorrow’s Schools taskforce has recommended broad-sweeping changes to our schools. But such changes need to be based on solid analysis, not just anecdotal evidence.

If the Government proceeds, it will be clear ideology is driving this, not student performance.

The Initiative research is quite ground breaking. They find the difference in outcomes between different schools is due to family background, not what the school does.

Stuff reports:

A leading Māori organisation says the lobby group Hobson’s Pledge is inciting racism and violence.
The New Zealand Māori Council said on Wednesday it had asked the Human Rights Commission (HRC) to investigate the group, which is led by former National Party and Act leader Don Brash.

What a dreadful thing to do. Because Hobson’s Pledge successfully campaign against race based laws, the Maori Council wants the state to investigate them.

And the slur that HP incites violence is defamatory and nasty. Note they don’t point to any actual statement made by an HP spokesperson to justify their smear.

He hoped the HRC would censure the group.

Imagine if Andrew Little gets his way and we get new hate speech laws. They’ll be used by organisations like the Maori Council to try and censure groups that disagree with them.

Tukaki also said Hobson’s Pledge was “nothing more than a divisive group of haters who would do nothing more than send us all back to the dark ages”.
“They may wear suits and drive around in late model expensive European cars … but they are nothing more than a gang of misfits that seek to incite hate and divide the country. 

Tukaki seems unable to actually engage on substantive issues, so he name calls. How embarrassing.

Tukaki said the Māori Council was concerned that comments Hobson’s Pledge leaders had made in public constituted “incitement to both violence and racism, hate and the segregation of New Zealand society”

Again he can’t cite any actual comment. Regardless I’m sure he’ll be given an honorary doctorate from Massey University.

Audrey Young at the Herald scores all the Ministers.

Her average rating is 6.5. Top scores were Jacinda Ardern and Kris Faafoi both 9/10.

Who was down the bottom?

• 4/10 – Phil Twyford, David Clark, Shane Jones
• 5/10 – Iain Lees-Galloway, Jenny Salesa, Peeni Henare, Aupito William Sio

It is rare to have three of the most important portfolios (housing, health and economic development) held by the three worst performing ministers.

Today is May Day. It was chosen by communists and socialists to commemorate the Haymarket affair where 11 people were killed after a dynamite bomb was thrown at Police.

It seems an appropriate day to commemorate all those killed by communism. The numbers below exclude war dead. This is deaths by government.

1. China 73.2 million, mainly famine
2. USSR 58.6 million, famine and executions
3. Russia (1918 – 1922) 3.3 million
4. North Korea 3.1 million, mainly famine
5. Cambodia 2.6 million, genocide
6. Afghanistan 1.8 million
7. Vietnam 1.7 million
8. Ethiopa 1.3 million
9. Yugoslavia 1.1 million
10. Chinese Soviet Republic 700k
11. Mozambique 700k
12. Romania 435k
13. Bulgaria 222k
14. Angola 125k
15. Mongolia 100k
16. Albania 100k
17. Cuba 73k
18. East Germany 70k
19. Czechoslovakia 65k
20. Laos 56k

That’s a total of almost 150 million dead due to communism. We should remember all those dead, especially when we see people proclaim they are a Marxist or communist. They will insist all those other countries just did it wrong, of course.

Stuff reports:

Rangitata MP Andrew Falloon claims he has been “shut out” of conversations with the NZ Transport Agency but Transport Minister Phil Twyford says Falloon is “playing politics”.
Falloon says he has been trying to arrange meetings with the agency regarding several issues – including upcoming roading projects in the Mid-South Canterbury area – but his requests have been declined. …

Falloon said previously organising meetings had been pretty informal and done via phone but he could understand, in some cases, why approval was required.
“Under the previous National Government, authorisation was needed when MPs wanted to visit sensitive and hazardous sites like research organisations undertaking chemical testing. Even then they were approved.
“This was a request for a meeting in an office, hardly anything that could be deemed hazardous. Instead I’ve been sent a letter outlining some points quite irrelevant to the issues I wanted to raise.”
Transport Minister Phil Twyford said Falloon was “playing politics”.
“He received a full update from the Transport Agency including on the feedback they received from the local community.
‘”No-one wants NZTA officials tied up in meetings when they have important work to get on with,” Twyford said.

So this Government, which pledged to be the most open and transparent ever, has banned NZTA from meeting local MPs over local roading issues.

Twyford arrogantly proclaims meeting a local MP is an unimportant meeting of no value.

Just another reason why a Government of equal measures incompetence and arrogance should go.

The Guardian reports:

Migrant communities must be compelled to do more to integrate to help combat the rise of “far-right bigotry”, Tony Blair has warned.
The former prime minister said that successive governments had “failed to find the right balance between diversity and integration”, while the concept of multiculturalism has been misused as a way to justify a “refusal to integrate”.

This is spot on.

I’m pro-immigration and pro-multiculturalism. But both are contingent on the migrants and cultures being able to integrate with existing populations. Integration is not assimilation. It is critical to harmonious society.

If Europe didn’t have such a problem with non-integration with some (not most) immigrants, then the populists and nationalists would not have gained so much support. When mainstream parties fail to deliver, it is the extremes that prosper.

“Without the right to, for example, practise one’s faith, diversity would have no content; but without the duty to integrate, ‘culture’ or ‘faith’ can be used as a way of upsetting that basic social contract that binds us together.
“Government cannot and should not be neutral on this question. It has to be a passionate advocate and, where necessary, an enforcer of the duty to integrate while protecting the proper space for diversity. Integration is not a choice; it is a necessity.”

Hear hear.

The Herald reports:

Controversial church leader Bishop Brian Tamaki has warned of revolts in prisons if the Government continues to deny access to Destiny Church’s Man Up anti-violence programme.
Despite his claims, the Government and Corrections have repeatedly said Destiny Church has never made an application to run the course in Corrections’ facilities.
Today in a series of tweets, Tamaki warned of prisoner uprisings, he and his wife Hannah traded insults with Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Tamaki called Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis a liar.

Tamaki shows again he is a charlatan. Threatening violence if his anti-violence programme isn’t funded is very stupid.

News.com.au reports:

The US Commerce Department’s first-quarter report puts GDP growth at 3.2 per cent, well above the 2.3 per cent mark economists predicted and the strongest first-quarter print in four years.

That’s very decent growth.

Mr Trump’s good news is reportedly stoking fears among Democrats as they continue to grapple with producing an economic message of their own.
Celinda Lake, a leading Democratic strategist and pollster, told Politico this could prove “disastrous” for the party next year.
“We don’t really have a robust national message right now,” she said. “We will tend to talk about things like paid leave and equal pay — and those things are all very popular policies. But they don’t add up to an economic message that is robust enough to win the presidency and beat Donald Trump who talks about a very robust economic policy.”
She added: “You may agree or not with it, but you know what (Trump’s message) is. And Democrats, you don’t know what it is. And that’s a recipe for disaster in 2020.”
Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt said the 2020 election “isn’t going to be close”, citing the GDP figures as evidence the Trump economy is getting “stronger and stronger”.

As Bill Clinton said “It’s the economy, stupid”

The latest Newspoll had the Coalition improving to 49% TPP to Labor’s 51%.

In March it was 46% to 54%.

Most pundits are saying Morrison is campaigning well and Shorten not so well.

Still have to favour Labor to win at this stage, but these results show campaigns do matter.

The Herald reports:

Top journalist and commentator Heather du Plessis-Allan is the new host of Newstalk ZB’s Drive show.
The current presenter of the station’s Wellington Mornings show, du Plessis-Allan has been at the forefront of New Zealand’s news for 15 years.
The Herald on Sunday columnist has hosted prime-time TV shows, grilled politicians in her role as a press gallery journalist, broken many stories including the Saudi Sheep Farm saga and an investigation that showed up flaws in our firearms laws.
Du Plessis-Allan will step into the Drive slot on May 13. She replaces host Larry Williams, who has departed after 27 years in the job.

A great choice for the role. Following on from Larry means you have huge shoes to fill, but Heather is the best person for the job.