The Press editorial:

Is it time to tear up the plans and start again? Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered a masterclass in political sophistry and dissembling on Wednesday when she claimed, with a straight face, that the KiwiBuild goal of 100,000 homes built over 10 years remains in place. The line was repeated a few more times, as if we were watching one of those dry parodies of political interviews by Bryan Dawe and the late John Clarke. 

That is a great comparison.

Those “interim targets” were to have 1000 homes built by July, another 5000 by mid-2020 and another 10,000 by 2021. As it stands, only 47 have been completed and 236 more are being built according to the KiwiBuild website’s dismal “Follow our progress” page. That translates as 30 finished houses in Papakura, 10 in Otahuhu and seven in Wanaka. Rather than 1000 homes by July, KiwiBuild will be lucky to get to fewer than 300.  

It may be worse than that. Of the 236 “under construction” only 80 are known. 156 are “yet to be announced” which suggests they are not finalised.

Viewers of Netflix will be familiar with the Fyre Festival, at which some tech entrepreneurs promised to deliver the world’s most glamorous and exclusive music festival. The reality proved to be very different. It is not much of a stretch to say that KiwiBuild is turning into this Government’s Fyre Festival.

The Government’s flagship programme has just been compared to the world’s most well known global scam. Ouch.

I thought a couple of examples of how the stealth increases in income tax due to inflation make families worse off would be helpful.

Let’s assume inflation is 2% a year and to make it simple (won’t compound) is 6% over a three year term.

If you are on a wage of around $50,000 then you pay tax of $8,020 and have a net income of $41,980.

If your wages rise by 6% to compensate for inflation then your income is $53,000, your tax increases to $8,920 and you net income to $44,080.

What is the resulting change for each:

• Gross income up 6% (0% in real terms)
• Tax up 11.2% (4.0% in real terms)
• Net income up 5% (down 0.9% in real terms)

So over one term, you end up 1% worse off and paying 5% more tax in real terms.

And what about the change over three terms?

If your wages rise by 18% to compensate for inflation then your income is $59,000, your tax increases to $10,720 and you net income to $48,280.

What is the resulting change for each:

• Gross income up 18% (0% in real terms)
• Tax up 33.7% (13.3% in real terms)
• Net income up 15% (down 2.5% in real terms)

So over three terms term, you end up 2.5% worse off and paying 13% more tax in real terms.

This also means the higher inflation is, the more extra tax you end up paying, and the worse off you are in real terms.

There has been a vicious attack on gay men. Who is behind this vicious attack? Is it a religious conservative? No. It’s a member of the Auckland Pride Board.

Gay Express reports:

Haka’s comments come after Pride Board member Phylesha Brown-Acton has gone on an expletive-laden rant about “gay male privilege.”
Brown-Acton took to Facebook to denounce those who oppose the activist group People Against Prisons Aoteroa, who initiated the ban on uniformed police participating in the Pride Parade. Speaking about the opponents of the ban, she said, “your gay white male privilege has been disruptive, extremist and abusive to the lives of trans people’s way before PAPA came along and started addressing the inequities of your abuse.”
She went on to say that gay male opponents should, “take your moral compass and shove it up the hole that you can’t seem to keep closed.”

Could you imagine if anyone else had said this about a gay man, or gay men? There would be an Action Station petition demanding they be sacked, and multiple complaints to the Human Rights Commission.

And imagine if one referred to a woman as unable to keep something closed. You’d be tarred and feathered.

The irony is Brown-Action is on the board that is meant to be arranging an inclusive festival. Her hatred for white gay men who disagree with her seems rather against the inclusivity.

Brown Acton goes on to say that, “gay white men,” have excluded Maori and Pacific voices from previous festivals and that is the root cause of the currently divided LGBT community in Auckland.

Poor white gay men. Being gay doesn’t overcome their privilege of being white and male so they’re still evil oppressors.

That is being called into question however by Maori, who point out that the current festival does not include a single Maori event, something noted not only by Mika Haka but others online also, with community member John Kingi taking to Facebook to ask if Maori were even consulted, writing, “Did no Maori want to organise an event? Were Maori approached? If not, why? Did the organisers seek to engage throughout the Takataapui community to seek help in regards to this?”

So she is blaming white gay men for marginalising queer Maori, yet her own board hasn’t arranged a single Maori event, or even consulted Maori.

What a great example of identity politics as an excuse for incompetence.

Matthew Hooton writes:

Simon Bridges has set aside one of the standard rules of opposition politics.
Conventional wisdom says an opposition should hold back policy until just a few weeks before an election. The idea is to avoid scrutiny by interest groups, adoption by the government or boredom among voters.
Instead, with the next election as many as 94 weeks away, Bridges confirmed in his State of the Nation speech on Wednesday that National would repeal the Auckland petrol tax, freeze other petrol taxes, repeal any new capital gains tax (CGT) and not introduce any other new taxes.

Yeah good to see National actually coming up with policy early on. I hope it continues. I understand there will be a number of policy discussion drafts in major areas out in the first half of this year.

As a move to protect the real value of family incomes, the promise is almost impossible to oppose, although Finance Minister Grant Robertson tried valiantly, saying it was “reckless”, “empty” and would create a “fiscal hole” requiring cuts to social services.
Aside from making Robertson defend automatically increasing families’ real tax burden, the political value of Bridges’ very specific promise is that it contrasts with a Government certain to get on the wrong side of the tax debate and already trying to hide its lack of policy clarity with bureaucratic waffle.

There is a difference between a tax cut, and preventing stealth tax increases. Labour will look very bad if they campaign on continuing to increase tax takes by stealth. Why should hard working wage earners get taxed more just because of inflation?

The Prime Minister will soon regret declaring 2019 “the year of delivery”. …

Ardern’s problem is that on anything measurable, “delivery” is going backwards.
There will not be 30,000 new houses by the next election, nor 300 million trees, nor even $3 billion of handouts under Shane Jones’ Provincial Growth Fund.
Student numbers have fallen despite the $325m Education Minister Chris Hipkins calculated his fees-free tertiary education policy would cost in 2018/19.
The method by which inequality statistics are calculated means Ardern is unlikely to be able to report any material progress over the next 94 weeks.

I agree that labelling this the year of delivery will backfire. They will deliver change but not results or better outcomes.

Just as waffly is Ardern and Robertson’s promise to base this and future Budgets around “wellbeing” — a term doomed to be for this current regime what “innovation” and “sustainability” were for the previous two.
If Ardern and Robertson’s use of “wellbeing” is meant to imply previous governments were entirely preoccupied with headline economic growth over such things as social cohesion, strong families and individuals achieving their potential, then they are wrong.
Of the nearly $100b Parliament appropriates each year, almost all is spent on programmes originally intended to promote wellbeing rather than growth.

It is almost Orwellian nonsense. As Hooton says, almost all Government spending is already targeted at wellbeing, rather than economic growth. That is partly because it is business not government that creates economic growth. The Government can slow growth down, but generally not create it.

Clive Williams, a former director of security intelligence for the Australian Defence Force writes:

Much of the recent media reporting about the potential security threat posed by Huawei telecommunications and networking equipment, and Huawei consumer electronics products, is poorly informed and smacks of hysteria.

Fuelled by the US.

Huawei is now a multinational company and the world’s largest producer of electronic products. It has cooperative arrangements with 80 percent of the world’s telecom companies so it’s very common for its products to be integrated into all types of telecommunications systems.
Huawei invests more than any of its competitors on research and development – an estimated US$15 billion in 2018. It has research institutes in 21 countries – including the US, UK and Canada, and has international programs to identify and employ the best and brightest technical graduates from universities.
Huawei has a workforce of 170,000 and in 2017 its revenue was US$92.5 billion. 76,000 of its workforce are engaged in research and development.

Which is why they produce such good products used by almost every telco in the world.

In 2014 The New York Times reported (based on documents leaked by defector Edward Snowden) that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had since 2007 been operating a covert program against Huawei. This had involved breaking into Huawei’s internal networks, including its headquarters’ networks and founder Ren Zhengfei’s communications.

Good when NSA does it. Bad when Russia does it.

The main security concern is that Huawei could be used by the Chinese government to engage in espionage and information warfare. (There is no available evidence that it has done so to date.) This is unfortunate for Huawei because the company seems focussed on being commercially successful – not on espionage or cyber warfare.

The irony of what is happening, is it provides greater incentives to China to pressure Huawei to do bad things. Huawei is worth much more to China as a successful company, at present. But if the US manage to cripple Huawei, then that may change.

As long as advanced telecommunications products (including 5G) are installed in Australia by competent security-vetted Australian technicians who understand the technology, there should not be a security problem from using foreign products.
The likely alternative to adopting Huawei’s 5G technology is to use a lesser American or European product that may also be compromisable – and probably more expensive.

Banning Huawei means we all pay more.

Jo Black writes in The Listener:

New Zealand has no shortage of people ready to take offence at any hint of racism or gender bias, or able to detect any trace of political correctness or the nanny state. Former National Party leader Don Brash was “disinvited” to speak at Massey University by Vice-Chancellor Jan Thomas. She cited “security concerns” but an email trail showed that she didn’t like his anti-Treaty rhetoric.

But Haidt and Lukianoff say that in the US, the new morality has reached its apogee in prestigious universities, particularly in residential colleges.
In these institutions, they say, student demands have escalated for “safe spaces” where students can be protected from speakers, language or ideas that offend them – if they have been unsuccessful in getting invitations to such speakers withdrawn in the first place. Some students demand that lecturers give “trigger warnings” if a lecture might contain language or ideas that might upset them, and sometimes such language can be considered aggression, or even violence.
There are shame circles, denunciations and ritualised apologies as during the Cultural Revolution in Communist China. “We have data showing students are afraid, mostly of each other, and the professors are afraid, mostly of the students.”

Ironic that the biggest threat to students, is other students.

The great majority of students today want to learn and want to be exposed to different views. So I would never tell a story about a generation that has lost its mind; that has not happened. But what has happened is that we have a big increase in the small minority that embrace this call-out culture and their power to intimidate people has been multiplied at least tenfold by social media.

The social media lynch mob.

The Washington Post reports:

E-cigarettes are almost twice as effective at helping smokers quit as nicotine replacement therapies such as lozenges and patches, according to a new study that immediately stoked the debate over whether e-cigarettes are an important smoking-cessation tool or a health menace.
The study, published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first randomized trial to test the effectiveness of modern e-cigarettes vs. nicotine-replacement products, said Peter Hajek, a psychologist at Queen Mary University of London, who led the trial. The researchers found that 18 percent of the e-cigarette users were smoke-free after a year, compared with 9.9 percent of those in the nicotine-replacement group. The participants also received behavioral support to stop smoking.
For years, physicians have been reluctant to recommend e-cigarettes for smoking cessation because of a lack of clinical trial data, Hajek said. “This is now likely to change,” he added in a statement.

A randomised trial is very robust, and that is a huge finding.

Stuff reports:

A teenaged mother charged with killing her two-week-old baby has kept her name secret for now.

Why you ask?

He said his client was now pregnant with her third child, but the baby would be adopted out and her first child was in the care of others.

She has been charged with killing her second child, and already pregnant with her third. Poor kids. Those who survive will end up in state care and their chances of a happy life are pretty low.

She’s 19 and onto her third pregnancy. From what I can tell the first kid was at age 15. The 2nd at 17 and third will be at 19.

The majority of the “Fair Pay Agreements” Working Group have proposed a system that is terrific for unions and terrible for New Zealand. It is a de facto return to national awards and compulsory unionism, but even worse than in the 1970s.

Employers will be stripped of their ability to say no. If they don’t agree to union demands, then a Government appointed arbitrator will decide for an entire industry what their pay and conditions will be – binding on every employer from Bluff to Auckland.

The threshold for an industry wide agreement is so low, as to be non-existent. A union only needs the lower of 10% of workers in a sector or 1,000 workers.

So an industry may have 200,000 workers. Just 1,000 can demand an industry wide aware that will bind the other 199,000. It’s not a 10% threshold, or even a 1% threshold.

Now you can bet any industry wide agreement will have a requirement that every worker must pay a fee to the union, regardless of whether or not they are a member. It will be the greatest revenue gain for unions in their history.

And they will repay Labour by donating much more money to the, and running third party campaigns for them.

Business owners up and down New Zealand should be very worried. This proposal will see them forced into national awards against their will, and a small business in Gore will face the same demands as a multi-national in Auckland.

The Herald reports:

Any minister who wants more money to spend in their portfolio will have to prove it will improve intergenerational wellbeing.
That was the message Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered to her Cabinet from Davos last night (NZ Time.)
Speaking on a panel discussing the role of GDP as a measure of wellbeing at the World Economic Forum, Ardern challenged her ministers to put wellbeing at the heart of their budget bids.
“If you’re a minister and you want to spend money, you have to prove that you’re going to improve intergenerational wellbeing.”

Ardern spent much of her time explaining why her Government was introducing a wellbeing budget this year – a world first.

Doesn’t this sound a lot like social investment? Far from being something new, it is what National did for many years (and Labour was luke warm on). And the Living Standards Framework which sits behind the wellbeing budget was started by Treasury in 2011 under National.

Andrew Dickens writes:

So has anyone seen the Prime Minister lately? If anyone sees Jacinda Ardern in the flesh, could you please contact authorities so we can return her to the people.
This is an observation that has been brewing for a while. In fact Chris Trotter, a lefty, first wrote about it in the middle of December.
But it wasn’t until today that I finally thought this is getting weird.
Every Tuesday since Helen Clark’s day the Prime Minister has done the rounds of media in the morning. On ZB that means 7.35am for 10 minutes and we have a quick recap of the issues of the week and where the government is at.
But we haven’t had one this year. Firstly she was on holiday for ages, which I didn’t resent because she does have a child under one who hasn’t seen a lot of her Mum. Then last week the PM was in Davos Switzerland but apparently was unable to use a phone.
The suspicion is rising that Jacinda Ardern likes to be a spokesperson for a government and a figurehead for the world but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of being a leader the job is a little difficult.

Well 18 months in and they’re built 33 houses out of the 100,000 they’ve promised over 120 months.

Chris Trotter last December noted the number of times that Jacinda Ardern seemed to be sidelined by her ministers seemingly making decisions without her knowing. Phil Twyford in particular seemed to change policies at a whim and when the Prime Minister was asked she seemed often unaware.
Looking back at the last three Prime Ministers we’ve had; Clark, Key and English, none would ever tolerate finding out about policy from the news media. And if they did butts would be kicked.

None of them would be finding out major policy changes via the media. Clark would kill you her death stare. Key would just get that frozen look in his eyes and you’d crap yourself and English would bollock you.

One News reports:

Jacinda Ardern and Phil Twyford say that KiwiBuild is going through a “recalibration” and interim targets have been dropped.
The Prime Minister addressed media with the Housing Minister at a Labour retreat in Martinborough today, where MPs gathered to discuss the upcoming year.
When asked if the Government’s KiwiBuild targets were still tenable after the announcement that only 300 homes will be complete in the first year of the programme instead of the 1000 stated, Ms Ardern announced that all interim targets have now been dropped.
“Our 100,000 over 10 years hasn’t changed, our interim targets haven’t been a useful way to demonstrate our delivery programme that’s why the minister is looking at that again.

Wow they really think the public are stupid.

The policy is a disaster, but rather than dump the policy they’re dumping the targets!

Of course the public and media won’t buy it. We know what they were, and will still measure them against them.

Ardern seems to be saying their only target now is 100,000 in ten years and its unfair to count progress until the ten years is up. So she may want us to believe that they’ll do 300 houses a year for nine years and 97,000 in the final year!

Such a contrast for how the year is starting. National is announcing a bold new tax policy to prevent people being taxed for inflation, and Labour is dumping their Kiwibuild targets.

A major announcement by Simon Bridges:

A National Government would link income tax brackets to inflation, ensuring income taxes  are adjusted every three years in line with the cost of living and allowing New Zealanders to keep more of what they earn, National Leader Simon Bridges says.

“New Zealanders’ incomes are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living because this Government is imposing more red tape and taxes,” Mr Bridges said in his State of the Nation speech in Christchurch today.
 
“Over the next four years, New Zealanders will be paying almost $10,000 more per household in tax than they would have been under National. The Government is taking more than it needs, only to waste billions on bad spending.
 

“On top of that, by 2022 New Zealanders on the average wage will move into the top tax bracket. That’s not right or fair. So in our first term National will fix that by indexing tax thresholds to inflation.
 
“We will amend the Income Tax Act so tax thresholds are adjusted every three years in line with the cost of living. That will mean that within a year after every election, Treasury will advise the Government on how much the thresholds should be adjusted for inflation.

This is a huge and great announcement.

For decades Governments have benefited from bracket creep, where inflation pushes people into higher and higher tax brackets. It means the amount of tax you pay increases every year, even if your income is just keeping pace with inflation.

National’s pledge to prevent bracket creep via automatic threshold adjustments is huge, because if they get to implement it, no future Government would dare to reverse it.

“The changes would make a real difference. Assuming inflation of 2 per cent, someone on the average wage would be $430 a year better off after the first adjustment, $900 after the second and $1,400 after the third.
 
“A family with two earners – for example, one earning $80,000 and the other $40,000 – would be $600 better off a year after the first adjustment, about $1,300 after the second and $1,900 by the third.
 
“That’s more of their own money in their own bank accounts.
 
“The first adjustment would prevent Kiwis from paying an extra $650 million a year in tax based on today’s estimates. We can afford that by managing the books prudently and spending wisely.

This shouldn’t be thought of as a tax cut. It is more saying the Government will no longer do a stealth tax increase due to inflation.

An excellent announcement by National to start the year off. They’re talking how to stop New Zealanders being taxed more, while the Government is focused on how many new taxes can they introduce.

Chris Trotter writes:

WHAT’S HAPPENED to Jacinda? What’s become of the young woman who captivated the electorate sixteen short months ago? The Jacinda who promised New Zealanders a “transformational” government inspired by the politics of kindness. Where has she gone?


Surely the New Zealand Prime Minister who earlier this week pledged to stand by Britain: “Whatever you decide about your place in the global community”; cannot be the same woman who turned up to Buckingham Palace proudly wearing a Maori cloak? That Prime Minister would never have boasted (in the right-wing Daily Telegraph of all places!) that “around four in every five New Zealanders still claims British heritage”. She would have left that sort of racially-charged rhetoric to Donald Trump.


Except, of course, it was New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who said those things. The very same Jacinda Ardern who’s been guilessly decorating the “loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires” who gather every year at the exclusive ski resort of Davos in the Swiss Alps.


It would seem that we misunderstood the Labour leader when she promised us a transformational government. Our naïve assumption was that she intended to transform New Zealand society when, clearly, it was herself she was determined to transform.

Ouch. He seems disillusioned.

The Herald reports:

Massey University received multiple complaints about former journalism professor Grant Hannis in the months after his arrest for sexually assaulting an elderly woman but did not act on them.
Hannis was sentenced to eight months home detention on Friday for an indecent act against an 82-year-old dementia sufferer in her rest home.
After news of his offending broke, Massey initially said there had been no issues with his behaviour aside from an incident of ‘rudeness in the classroom’ in October.
But the Herald can reveal that several complaints were made by female students alleging intimidation, aggression and inappropriate jokes about sexual assault by Hannis.

Maybe if Massey University hadn’t been so focused on trying to protect students from hearing from Don Brash, they might have been more responsive to complaints about Mr Hannis.

It really is quite sickening when you think about it. The rationale in the e-mails between the senior leaders of Massey about Don Brash were all about how allowing students to hear from him could be a safety issue – that some staff and students would feel unsafe, if he was allowed to speak.

So Massey claimed to be so focused ion safety of staff and students that they did everything they could to stop Brash speaking, while ignoring actual complaints from female students about one their senior staff members.

It seems the complaints were just ignored. There was no system to record them, pass them on, detect a pattern etc. Just ignored them – and then claimed there had been no complaints.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s tax brackets don’t accurately reflect what counts as “high earning” in this country, critics say.
Since 2008, the highest personal income tax rate has kicked in on earnings over $70,000 a year.  …

In 2008, there were 335,000 people paying the top tax rate. By the 2016-2017 tax year, that number had risen to 665,000 people. People earning over $70,000 pay 63 per cent of all income tax.

The average (mean) FT salary is now $63,000 so we have a top tax rate that is barely above the average wage.

Craig Howarth tax partner Craig Macalister said there should be a mechanism that triggered a review when inflation reached a certain level.
“If you hold tax brackets in place, every year you increase your tax take as people’s incomes creep up with inflation. But the Government knows if it’s holding them in place they’re getting an increase without telling anyone.”
The Tax Working Group has acknowledged concerns about “bracket creep” and the suggestion they should be indexed to inflation but said that would increase compliance costs
“The group believes that bracket creep is best dealt with through the periodic review of the rates and thresholds of income tax to ensure they remain appropriate rather than some form of indexation assessment.”

With respect to the TWG, but that is naive crap. It simply doesn’t happen as Government’s like getting the extra tax revenue through bracket creep.

How often has the threshold for the top tax rate been changed since 2000?

In 2008 it went from $60,000 to $70,000. That’s it. In 19 years it has increased $10,000.

If the threshold for the top rate was keeping pace with inflation, it should be $90,000 by now – not $70,000

Stuff reports:

A pair of dusty villages in the Syrian desert are all that remain of the vast expanse of territory the Islamic State once called its caliphate, and the complete territorial defeat of the militant group appears to be imminent, according to US and Kurdish officials.
A few hundred of some of the most die-hard Islamic State fighters are making their last stand in the villages of Marashida and Baghuz Fawqani on the banks of the Euphrates River, a few kilometres from the Iraqi border in southeastern Syria.
With the Syrian Army on the other side of the river, a group that once controlled an area the size of Britain is pinned down by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in a dot of land measuring 15 square kilometres.

This is a significant victory. Their territory has shrunk from 250,000 square kms to just 15.

Of course the defeat of ISIL does not mean the end of Islamist terrorism. Absolutely not. But perfect is the enemy of good.

ISIS was a dangerous rogue state that was barbaric and run along 9th century theocratic lines. It had its own Government, and oil, and army and was a major beacon and safe haven for terrorists. It is now basically gone.

Terrorists will still hide in caves, and plan and plot via the Internet. But they won’t have 250,000 square kms of territory to give them impunity to hide behind any more.

Stuff reports:

Wellington City councillor Chris Calvi-Freeman wants drivers to stop tooting in the Mt Victoria tunnel because it annoys pedestrians.
He is writing to the New Zealand Transport Agency asking for signs to be put at the ends of the tunnel, which is part of State Highway 1, suggesting people don’t sound their horns while driving through, NZME reported.
“Most people don’t realise when they are driving through that it is not really one of these victimless things,” said Calvi-Freeman, who holds the council’s transport strategy and operations portfolio.

Oh no, I was walking through a tunnel and someone hooted. Quick call the fun police. I’m a victim of tooting!

If you are a fan of mocking humour, then the roast of Chris Finlayson on the 5th of March should be an event not to be missed, especially for fans of politics or the law.

If you don’t know what a roast is, the dictionary definition is “to humorously criticize and make jokes about a famous person at a public event honouring that person, as a part of the event“.

The most vicious roasts you can see on Comedy Central. The one of Pamela Anderson is probably the most searing. William Shatner’s was also very good.

What should make this a great night is that Chris gets a right of reply. So the more Key, Brownlee and Willis mock Chris, the more cutting his response may be. And Chris can be very cutting.

I have the best job as MC. I get to mock all the speakers while introducing them! And I have plenty of material!

Should be a great fun night. I’m hugely looking forward to it.