Stuff reports:
The Government’s top spending watchdog says it will pay close attention to the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) and has ordered an in-depth review into aspects such as managing, monitoring, and evaluating the fund.
Controller and Auditor-General John Ryan said the PGF would be a focus for his office for 2018/19 and beyond.
As it should be. It is a reelection slush fund, not an actual development fund.
The Press editorial:
Statistics Minister James Shaw’s claims that the gaps in the data are not a concern, and a chief statistician who was almost dragged kicking and screaming by politicians to present a fuller picture of a shambolic process and a poor result, are both worthy of greater scrutiny.
They seem to be the only ones who don’t think there is a problem.
Another expert, John McDermott, Executive Director of Motu Economic & Public Policy Research, agrees with National’s spokesman Nick Smith that serious thought must be given to going back to the drawing board and holding another census as soon as 2021. This would fit with the original timeframe as the 2011 census was knocked back by two years after the Christchurch earthquakes.
This is absolutely what should happen.
Spiked reports:
Last May, six years after the law got the green light in Holyrood, minimum unit pricing of alcohol was finally introduced in Scotland. After being held up by appeals from Scottish drinks manufacturers, campaigners and politicians could at last use the latest and greatest weapon against the scourge of inebriation. Alcohol can no longer be sold for less than 50 pence per unit in Scotland. Surely the imbibers of cheap cider and supermarket beer deals would now have to curb their habits?
Well, the first proper results are in – and the policy has been about as potent as a lager shandy. Nielsen, a data specialist company, found that 203.5million litres of alcohol were purchased from shops in Scotland over the 46 weeks to 29 March. Minimum pricing should have, according to Scottish government figures, raised the price of roughly half of all alcohol sold in shops. Yet the figures suggest an increase in sales of 1.8million litres on the same period in 2017/2018. That’s hardly what the anti-booze lobbyists would have expected.
Bravo the Scots.
The Herald reports:
Notre Dame cathedral will be rebuilt – “it is our destiny” – following today’s devastating inferno, says French President Emmanuel Macron.
The famous Paris cathedral has been virtually destroyed in a massive blaze – its roof and spire have collapsed and firefighters have been struggling to contain the flames.
Although much of the 850-year-old cathedral has been gutted, Paris’ fire chief says the main structure has been saved, with the flames stopped from spreading to the northern belfry.
Macron said the cathedral was part of France’s destiny – and would be rebuilt starting tomorrow. “We will rebuild because it is what French people expect, it is what our history deserves.”
This is so so sad. After 850 years Notre Dame falls. It is arguably the most famous cathedral in the world, perhaps after St Peter’s.
But at least enough survives that rebuilding is feasible. Impossible to think of Paris without Notre Dame.
The Institute of Directors released:
The Institute of Directors (IoD) is concerned by recommendations of the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce that would fundamentally change the nature of school boards, significantly reducing their role and responsibilities.
IoD Governance Leadership Centre General Manager Felicity Caird says “given the amount of change proposed and the importance of maintaining a well-functioning system, the IoD has significant concerns about the lack of robust evidence and analysis to justify the proposed changes.”
“Many of the IoD’s members serve (or have served) as trustees on school boards. It is clear from a recent survey of our members that the school board governance model is not fundamentally broken and many boards are operating effectively. Fifty-seven percent of respondents thought the current school governance model is effective or very effective, and 69% agreed or strongly agreed their school board of trustees has the right capability to govern effectively.
“We know there are some boards and schools that are not operating effectively and these situations need to be addressed promptly to ensure the school system promotes equity and excellence,” Caird says.
“Transferring core board responsibilities to Education Hubs is not the answer and 63% of our survey respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that hubs would improve the quality of school governance.
Around 15% of boards seem to struggle. The Government’s answer is to gut the other 85% whom are succeeding.
The worst aspect of the proposed reforms is that instead of parents electing school governors, the Minister of Education will appoint every school governor in New Zealand. Yes every director of every education hub would be a ministerial appointee.
David Seymour points out:
“If people weren’t allowed to make stupid and historically inaccurate statements, we’d have to close down Parliament,” says ACT Leader David Seymour, “but that is what Justice Minister Andrew Little seems to be suggesting in his response to a One Law for All pamphlet this weekend.”
“Mr Little is not claiming that the pamphlet incites or threatens violence, is defamatory, or is even a nuisance. Those would be legitimate reasons to curtail speech, but Mr Little is claiming the Government needs the power to shut down speech that is foolish.”
The Government is coming for you.
“We live in a world where the Reserve Bank Governor thinks the Bank is a Kauri tree, the Treasury is trying to measure your sun and moon feelings, and the Minister of Statistics says a census that missed 700,000 people is good work by the Chief Statistician. If this Government wants to ban foolish speech, it will have to seriously look at shutting itself down.”
Great analogies.
One News Colmar Brunton poll is here. As expected, a deserved boost for the Government and Ardern. When a Government shows competence it should go up in the polls. This is not a bad thing.
What is interesting is despite the timing being in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack, how it compares with the same poll at the same point in National’s first term – April 2010.
Here’s how the numbers look:
So definitely a great deserved result for Labour but still 6% below what National was at midway in 1st term. And National in opposition is 7% above what Labour were at.
They key question going forward is what direction does the Government go in. Do they consolidate or do they slip back. How they deal with CGT, Kiwibuild, the Budget etc will be the key.
Okay a positioning episode with little conflict. Key points are:
Continue reading »Radio NZ reports:
National MP Nuk Korako has announced his retirement after roughly five years in Parliament.
The list MP will be replaced by Paulo Garcia, who will become National’s first Filipino MP.
Mr Korako is the chair of National’s Māori caucus and was an unsuccessful contender in the Port Hills electorate for the past two elections.
He said he wanted to leave Parliament now to allow his successor time to get to know the issues and people of Port Hills ahead of next year’s vote.
Mr Korako will give his valedictory speech on 1 May, 2019.
I wish Nuk well in the future.
The new List MP will be, as stated, NZ’s first MP of Filipino ancestry. Paulo has a strong background in commercial law. He is also the former honorary consul general for the Filipino Embassy.
The NY Times reports:
For months, employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross have made weekly visits to a detention camp in northern Syria bearing a photograph of a petite woman in her early 60s.
They show the image to camp officials, comparing it with pictures of tens of thousands of other people in the camp’s database. All of them are escapees from the Islamic State’s last stretch of territory, which fellto American-backed forces last month.
The woman in the photo is Louisa Akavi, 62, a New Zealand nurse and midwife who was abducted in late 2013 in the northwest Syrian city of Idlib. She is one of the last links to the group of at least 23 Western hostages held by ISIS, a majority of whom were released for ransom while others were killed in widely publicized beheadings.
For more than five years, her employer and her government imposed an especially strict media blackout, warning that any mention not only of her identity, but even of her nationality, could endanger her. But now that ISIS’ caliphate has collapsed, the aid group has broken its silence in hopes that the public can help find her and two Red Cross drivers, both Syrians, kidnapped alongside her.
I know Louisa slightly – one of the nicest kindest people around. I worked in the 1990s for the head office of the NZ Red Cross. The absolute highlight of working there was meeting the delegates when they returned home, who had worked overseas in war zones and disaster areas. They did amazing things and make a huge difference helping those most in need. Nurses would save lives, sanitation engineers would provide safe drinking water to tens of thousands etc.
The delegates would live in rough conditions, often in risky areas, and for very modest pay. They did it because they were motivated to make a difference. Louisa was the recipient of the rare and prestigious Florence Nightingale award for her exceptional courage and devotion to victims.
The Red Cross is strictly neutral in all armed conflicts and most warring parties will never deliberately harm someone who is under the red cross (or red crescent). But the barbarians of ISIS are the sad exceptions.
Hopefully someone out there has some information on where Louisa is, or what has happened to her. Thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues who have had to endure her absence for the last five and a half years.
The ABC reports:
A major opinion polling company used by GetUp!, Greenpeace, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and some political candidates is co-owned by union heavyweights the CFMMEU and the ACTU, an ABC investigation has discovered.
Melbourne-based uComms, which uses the robo-polling technology of veteran pollster ReachTEL, is now facing a backlash from clients who say they had no idea the company was controlled by two of the most powerful forces on the left-side of politics.
Amazing it took so long for this to come out.
Polls by uComms have received widespread media coverage in the past 12 months, including a recent front-page splash commissioned by The Sydney Morning Herald predicting a Labor win in the New South Wales state election.
Whoops. In fact Labor got 12 fewer seats than the Coalition.
Group executive editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, James Chessell, said the paper was not aware of who owns the company and will no longer commission uComms in the future.
There is no suggestion the outcome of uComms polling is influenced by its ownership structure.
The ownership shouldn’t matter, however the ownership should be known.
MFE has published the latest greenhouse gas inventory and its inconvenient for the left.
The left claimed for nine years child poverty increased under National, when in fact it fell on seven out of nine measures.
They also claimed that greenhouse gas emissions skyrocketed under National, when in fact they fell.
Here’s gross emissions for 1999, 2008 and 2017:
Here’s the change from 2008 to 2017 by sector:
Now consider this against the fact James Shaw is promising emissions will rise under Labour/Greens for the next six years.
NB: I’ve used gross emissions as the offsets from forestry tend to be relatively short-lived.
The final season of Game of Thrones starts tomorrow. I will try to blog after each episode (with spoiler alerts) for those who share my addiction to both the books and the TV series.
Below are the unresolved questions that I hope will get answered over these final six episodes.
After each episode, I’m going to recap (with spoiler alerts) the main points and then repost these 20 questions with the answers as we get them.
The Washington Post reports:
House Democrats are giving the Trump administration a hard deadline of April 23 to turn over the president’s tax returns, pushing back against Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s skepticism over their request for the private records.
I’m a Never Trumper but on this issue the Democrats are the bad players.
Trump decided not to release his tax returns before the election. He was the first candidate for 40+ years not to do so. He got criticised for it, but got elected despite it.
Having politicians use an obscure power to force a political opponent’s tax returns to be published is appalling. Where will it end? Will the Democrats start to publish tax returns of journalists they don’t like?
Stuff reports:
Auckland mayoral challenger John Tamihere backs concerts being staged at Eden Park and a new covered sports venue adjacent to the stadium.
He made the announcement in his first major policy release, covering parks, open spaces and stadia, at Chamberlain Park on Saturday.
He said rugby league’s Warriors would eventually have to shift to Eden Park to avert a costly overhaul of their home at Mt Smart stadium.
Eden Park is losing money big time and costing ratepayers. It needs to be allowed to do more than the status quo.
Stuff reports:
A ban on women at a marae building site could deter young women from working in construction, according to a company which encourages Māori and Pasifika people to learn trades.
Mokau Marae in Helena Bay, 46km north-east of Whangārei, has banned women from its grounds while its wharekai (kitchen) and wharenui (main meeting room) are built. The work is expected to be finished in 2020.
A sign on the marae’s gate reads: “Please respect our tikanga. No women allowed by order of the Marae Committee.”
This could be an interesting legal issue.
A marae as a private body has the right to exclude women, just as some gentlemen’s clubs have in the past.
But does that right extend to employment? If they are saying that any contractors can’t allow female staff onto the site, then I suspect that does breach the law. You are not allowed to discriminate by gender in terms of employment.
The Herald reports:
Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck took to Twitter to slam the Tax Working Group’s capital gains tax proposals within hours of their announcement on February 21.
“Just saw the NZ capital gains tax recommendations. Taxing IP [intellectual property] and stock will decimate the already fragile NZ startup industry. NZ already has big problems around creating large valuable technology companies and this will not help,” Beck posted.
Now he’s had more time to digest the recommendations, has his opposition mellowed?
No. It’s hardened.
The more you get into the detail of it, the worse you realise it is.
Simon Bridges says start-ups and other companies will be inhibited from spending money on research and development if they know a third of any ultimate sale of their company will go to the Government in the form of a CGT.
The National leader has claimed the CGT is a way of clawing back the recently introduced 15 per cent R&D tax break.
Beck agrees with Bridges’ first point.
“It the last thing the [business] community needs,” he says.
“We have a real problem in New Zealand building high-value, entrepreneurial businesses and start-ups.
“Where are all the billion-dollar companies? There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have them
“New Zealand has fantastic entrepreneurs. There’s no shortage of good ideas
“It’s just the entrepreneurs are cocooned in an environment that’s just globally not competitive – and adding another layer on that [CGT] on the start-up community is just not sensible.”
The focus should be on becoming more competitive, not more taxed.
Newshub reports:
Shaw, co-leader of the Greens, recently said emissions are not likely to start falling significantly until the mid-2020s. It has left Professor Robert McLaughlin of Massey University and New Zealand Centre for Planetary Ecology feeling disappointed.
The Greens and Labour claim climate change is the most important issue of all time, and that emissions must be cut urgently. They say that by 2050 we must have zero emissions.
But then they say “Oh, but we won’t actually cut emissions ourselves for at least six years.” Hypocrites.
Sir Bob Jones writes:
Australian footballer Israel Folau, a devout Christian, quoting Corinthians, warned on social media that “drunks, homosexuals, adultery, liars and fornicators will end up in hell unless they repent. Jesus Christ loves you and is giving you time to turn away from your sin and come to him.” A number of questions arise.
First, these remarks are totally consistent with the Bible (and the Koran) so why the uproar?
Second, why did the critics, including the Prime Minister, solely complain about the reference to homosexuals? What about us drunks and fornicators? Doesn’t she care about our pain?
A few of us on Twitter have been comparing scores for how many of the eight criteria for entry to hell we meet. Folau’s tweet said that hell awaits drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters. I qualify on between five and a half and six and a half of them!
I can understand journalists concentration on homosexuals as few are whereas make no mistake, the vast majority I’ve known are drunks, adulterers, liars and fornicators to various degrees, so too heaps of MP’s. A double-standard here methinks.
Heh.
This whole episode is a classic pack-hunting media contrivance. I have difficulty believing a single drunk, fornicator, homosexual, adulterer or liar reading Israel’s remarks gave a damn. He’s entitled to express his religious beliefs as much as I for example am, to continue pursuing my life-long mockery of religion.
I think mockery is the best response, not outrage that a devout person believes various things are sinful and sins lead to hell.
Mind you Israel should be careful here for he could be in for a shock when he reaches heaven and meets Jesus, at least if Hugh Montefiore, the former Bishop of Birmingham is correct. In 1967 Hugh, a respected academic, in a lecture to churchmen at Oxford University, suggested Jesus was a homosexual. Subsequently, numerous theists and scholars have put forward the same proposition.</p>
So, when big strapping Israel finally meets Jesus in heaven, rather than the expected greeting it could be, “Ithwail, lovely to thee you.”
The argument by Bishop Montefiore is quite interesting. He says that Jesus did not know he was the Messiah until he was 30 years old. He was celibate all his life so Montefiore asks why was he celibate up until age 30? Back then men were celibate either because they could not afford to marry, or there are no girls to marry or because they were homosexual. So Montefiore thinks Jesus being homosexual is the most logicial answer, and explains why he identified so much with the poor and oppressed.
Israel deserves Christians’ admiration for his absolutism rather than picking and choosing what suits him. The downside is when he does finally bowl through the Pearly Gates, he might find heaven a rather lonely place. Far better to get stuck into a bit of fornicating and end up with the rest of us in Hell. It promises to be quite a fun place, putting aside the racket of non-stop screaming coming from Catholic clergy being boiled in vats.
Heh.