UN Watch reports:

A human rights watchdog organization today condemned the UN’s election of Yemen, the worst-ranking country in the world on gender equality, to be vice-president of the Executive Board of UN Women, which is the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
“Electing Yemen to protect women’s rights is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental human rights group.
“We’re calling on UN chief Antonio Guterres and high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet to speak out against this absurd and morally repugnant decision, which sends absolutely the wrong message from the very organization that is supposed to be protecting women from discrimination.”
Yemen was ranked 149th out of 149 in last year’s Global Gender Gap Report, produced by the World Economic Forum.
“How could the UN choose Yemen, a country that tolerates female genital mutilation, denies women hospital treatment without the permission of a male relative, and counts a woman’s testimony as worth half that of a man?” asked Neuer.
“We remind the UN that women in Yemen cannot marry without permission of their male guardians, and face deeply entrenched discrimination in both law and practice, in all aspects of their lives, including employment, education and housing.”
“The election of Yemen as vice-president at UN Women is an insult to women’s rights activists worldwide who struggle against the persecution exemplified by Yemen’s misogynistic laws and practices,” added Neuer.

If Nazi Germany had survived WWII, they would probably be sitting around the table at the UN getting elected vice-president of some human rights body.

Martin van Beynen writes:

we are now seeing the rise of another form of repressive politics called identity politics.
This is a creed which holds that society is structured to disadvantage certain groups defined by ethnicity, race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. Identity has always been part of the political landscape but it has taken a more pernicious form.
Now your identification with a certain group has little positive about it. For instance, you rarely hear about the advantages of being a woman or Māori. You tend to hear only about the wrongs, grievances and slights. In this way we have all become victims, including white males. You are defined not by the opportunities society has given you but by how much the unfairness of life exerts its pull on you.

And it encourages a mentality of blame others, and no individual responsibility.

One of my main beefs with identity politics is that it encourages the formation of artificial and pretentious alliances.
So you get professional, middle class women communing with women from poor and abusive backgrounds on the basis they have all been victims of male oppression. In this environment a sexist remark at the water-cooler is placed on the same plane as gross childhood sexual abuse. Their solidarity is founded on an emotional empathy that tends to overlook all of their economic and social differences.
In truth, a middle class professional women has much more in common with a middle class professional male than she does with women who have survived or are still living an underclass lifestyle.
In the same way, a middle class Māori man has a great deal more in common with a similarly-placed Pākehā person than he does with a single Māori mother living in a state house with four children and a violent boyfriend.
This alignment with identity rather than with more genuine common interests means people choose the wrong enemy. So the patriarchy is the enemy rather than the education system. Institutional racism is the adversary rather than entrenched welfare dependency and drug and alcohol addictions.

Spot on.

One of the most troubling aspects of identity politics is its tendency to repression. The intolerance and vitriol that greets any dissent from the orthodoxies of a particular identity allegiance stifles discussion and free speech.

Which is why so many try to stop Jordan Petersen from speaking. He dares to challenge the orthodoxy.

Jeremy Leibler writes in The Spectator:

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once famously wrote ‘what hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.’
New Zealand’s actions at the UN General Assembly in December were those of a stand-for-nothing bystander, choosing to have a bet each way rather than follow the moral imperative to unequivocally condemn terrorism in all its forms.
Despite 87 countries, including Australia, supporting a US-backed resolution condemning the terrorist tactics waged by Hamas against Israel, the resolution was sabotaged by an earlier vote instigated by the Arab League that required a two-thirds majority for it to pass.
Although New Zealand voted to condemn Hamas for what it is – an extremist terrorist organisation committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and Western values – it abstained from the Kuwait-driven vote to impose the two-thirds majority hurdle.

New Zealand’s shameful abstention allowed the motion to pass with 75 countries in favour, 72 countries against and 26 countries abstaining. Had New Zealand exercised moral clarity like its other Western allies and voted against the motion, the result could have been very different.

So we tried to have it both ways – voting for the motion, but abstaining on the resolution that would have allowed the motion to pass.

Since its inception, the UN has passed over 500 resolutions that condemn Israel. Not one resolution has been passed to condemn Hamas, whose official covenant states that ‘Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ Article 13 of the Hamas Covenant states that ‘[t]here is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.’ Let’s be clear: this Covenant, or Charter, openly and explicitly advocates for a violent and bloody resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the UN has the audacity to ignore this.

Sadly no surprise.

Stuff reports:

Jim Yong Kim’s surprise resignation from the World Bank this week could lead the way for a battle of succession.
In a tradition that began at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the leaders of two of the main bodies of global governance, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are always respectively American and European.
But this tradition has been the source of the occasional political flare up as developing nations have grown in economic influence. The World Bank has well over 100 member states, so why should the leadership always fall to an American?

Because they are the largest shareholder is the brutal realpolitik.

So could a New Zealander ever be a candidate? 

Former prime minister Sir John Key was at one point rumoured to be tipped as IMF head, and Helen Clark was widely thought to be a strong contender for the UN secretary general role, before former Portuguese prime minister António Guterres got the job. 
Christine Lagarde at the IMF may be the exception but women have not traditionally been given these roles, either. Clark’s defeat was seen by many as a glass ceiling situation. 
Thirkell-White said “[John Key] wouldn’t be my choice because its a development role more than a finance role. Helen Clark would be a better fit, but traditionally the bank has liked people more economist than Helen Clark. I would pretty surprised if either of them were nominated.”
Stuff asked both Key and Clark if they were considering a run at the role, if nominated. Key said that he was very happy with his current roles and will not be putting his name forward. Clark has not responded.

Key would have no interest in the job. Clark would love it I suspect. It is basically a development agency, like UNDP was.

Will Jacinda write to Donald Trump asking him to consider Helen?

A guest post by Alwyn Poole:

I have had a read of the Bali Haque led report on Tomorrows Schools by the “INDEPENDENT” taskforce (led by someone who is a former head of PPTA [DPF: Haque was on the executive of the PPTA but never its head)] and held a high NZQA position). I have also read his defence of it published here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/109818999/our-schooling-system-needs-changing–and-heres-why
 
I have never read a document on the NZ education system to has more potential to cause irreparable harm to NZ children and their families. It doesn’t take long for their massively ideological pre-supposition to be made clear.
 
“Because schools are self-governing, agencies have lost the capacity and capability to deeply influence [i.e. control] schools in their core business of teaching and learning.” (p9 of their summary document).
 
Their work clearly was trying to find a whole lot of problems that their “solutions” fit and failing miserably. It is all about control – of Boards, Principals, teachers, resources, etc. Adding another layer of bureaucracy to the NZ system and removing parental influence is the VERY, VERY last thing needed.
 
Their proposals aim to hugely reduce the democratic influence of the NZ people in the education of their children.
 
Some of the problems they have identified need attention but that needs to be well directed. Their approach is like finding that 10 cars in a fleet of 1000 have bald tyres so ordering the replacements for all (as well as painting them dull grey and having State selected and controlled drivers). The vast majority of the recommendations they propose would set NZ education back decades. They appear to have no understanding of where the actual teaching/learning interface is.
 
New Zealand’s education problems are in a narrow but significant band. Our students are increasing competing in an international education and career market and need to be prepared superbly to do so. Our upper levels – predominantly higher socio-economic, Asian and European students still do well on international measures. This reports more than edges towards restricting the ability of higher decile schools to keep developing and extending their students. The attitude reminds me of one of my first representative rugby practices as a 20 year old. We started with laps as a warm-up and I was away running. One of the old clunkers crossed the middle of the field and pretended to do up his shoe laces, grabbed me as I went past and said; “Slow down you little prick – you are making us all look bad.” The schools that are flying in NZ should be given more freedom – not less. That other schools are faltering is not their fault or problem.
 
But it is a problem! The cumulative effect of 13 years NZ education results in  comparative UE pass rates of 67% for Asians, European 44%, Pasifika 22% and Māori 19%. This is a national disgrace and we have given up on believing it can be different. It is also a problem that Haque’s report will do nothing to change (although more “equity” may be achieved by slowing down the thriving schools). I would expect Labour Maori caucus will see this and stand against the proposals. The principles of tomorrows schools are far more valid and workable that what the new proposals provide but the Decile 1 – 3 schools need much more help and some of these are obvious:
– provide a qualified business manager alongside the Principal and Trust Board struggling school (30% of schools fail to stay within budget – which means 70% do and don’t need Haque’s governance interventions. This allows a much more significant concentration on academics.
– resource all Decile 1 – 3 schools to have class size of 15:1 and have highly specialised assistance to do all of the things that research shows to work if you differentiate the learning and the model with those ratios.
– massively alter the structure of the Collective Agreement to allow Decile 1 – 3 Principals to incentivise working at these schools. Also provide significant Professional Development in these schools to enhance teacher quality and best practice environments.
– have specialist roles in Decile 1 – 3 schools to have families engaged in the education of their children from Year 1 through to UE and on into tertiary education.
– actually trust the Principals and support them to do an excellent job – don’t take opportunities away from them and thus put in place a massive disincentive for mavericks and change agents.
 
The NZ curriculum is generally very good in that it contains enough content and an understanding of skill but also had a remarkable amount of freedom for staff and schools to work with. The current NZ teaching profession is in grave need of improvement but I would argue it is more qualitative than quantitative. The bar to entry for Primary training if far too low, university graduates are not tolerating another year without income therefore not considering secondary training and the main incentive to get more income is to teacher another year. Haque’s report – in the main – ignores most of this. Too offensive to the unions?
The Ministry of Education have 3000 staff already. What on earth do they do? How much does that cost? When were all schools asked for an evaluation of their performance? How much of what they do has any kind of impact on the day to day success – or otherwise of our children? As a Trust we have had the misfortune of having to work closely with the Ministry for the last 6 years – while there are some good people each time we are interacting with them I am unsure whether I am a character in 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Catch 22 or a Monty Python Film. We have wasted so much time in these processes and the mode is an anathema to good educational practices. The very last thing that schools in New Zealand need is another layer of bureaucracy and control. Haque states that the “Hubs” would select the Principal for State schools (for a 5 year period) but the schools could provide up to half of the interview panel and have the right to veto. Would they also be able to view all CV’s or will the short list be vetted for those who are ideologically pure and will toe the line?
 
The education sector and NZ public are being told they will be able to submit and comment on the proposals. This reminds me of Eddie Izard’s “Cake or Death” skit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZVjKlBCvhg). There needs to be a third option – i.e. completely reject the report, put a much less ideologically disposed and far more creative group to the task, address the real problems getting in the way of high quality education for our young people … and get on with it.

The Guardian reports:

The most extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least about science but believe they know the most, researchers have found.

This explains the success of the Green Party.

The results from more than 2,500 respondents revealed the curious trend. “What we found is that as the extremity of opposition increased, objective knowledge went down, but self-assessed knowledge went up,” Fernbach said.

Can we get MPs to do this test?

The finding has echoes of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the observation from social psychology that incompetence prevents the incompetent from recognising their incompetence.

It’s the environmental equivalent.

The Herald reports:

From the moment Nine and Fairfax announced their merger, it was clear that Stuff wasn’t part of the plans for the future of the joint enterprise.
Speculation that the company would slice off the New Zealand arm has been confirmed by Nine chief executive Hugh Marks, who told the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday that a formal sale process for Stuff would begin in the next few months.
Marks did not specify who the business would be sold to, but did say there had been interest from a “broad group of companies”.
An independent adviser report by Grant Samuel at the end of last year estimated that Nine may be able to get around $115-$135 million from the sale of Stuff. The finance firm also noted that the Kiwi unit’s operating performance is expected to keep declining in the short- to medium-term until its transformation beds in, providing it’s successful.

$100 million isn’t a huge amount of money. Should Kiwiblog try to crowdfund a takeover bid?

Liam Hehir writes:

Veteran New Zealand journalist Gordon Campbell penned a glowing obituary of Chavez, which proclaimed him “an example of how much a third-world nation can achieve when it takes control of its natural resources from the US and its corporate allies, and uses them to benefit its own people and the region”. He went on to say: “The main beneficiaries of Chavez’ 14 years in power were the ordinary people of Venezuela.”
Chris Trotter, clearly an admirer of “El Presidente”, mused wistfully about what the Kiwi analogue of Chavez would look like. “Imagine Hone Harawira blended into Willie Apiata, with the ideological fervour of Jane Kelsey and Annette Sykes,” he suggested. He dreamed of such a composite being sent “into South and west Auckland on a mission to build a movement capable of smashing the neoliberal order in New Zealand”, and spreading “his revolutionary Aotearoan socialist ‘circles’ across the entire country”.
Keith Locke, the Green MP with a good heart, but a history of questionable judgments, slated John Key for not attending Chavez’s state funeral.

All three gentleman should travel together to Venezuela to interview the locals about how well off they now are thanks to these socialist policies.

Stuff reports:

A Massey University professor is concerned the fallout from the cancellation of a Don Brash speaking event at the institution is damaging its reputation.
Former National Party leader Brash was meant to speak at the university in August, but vice-chancellor Jan Thomas cancelled the venue booking, citing security and other concerns. It was later revealed Thomas didn’t want the university to be seen endorsing racist behaviours. Brash was later allowed on campus.
Associate professor Grant Duncan, who teaches political theory and New Zealand politics, says the actions of the vice-chancellor and the university council have made the university, as well as academic and non-academic staff, look bad, even though it had nothing to do with them.
“From my point of view, the cancellation of Brash’s speech was an embarrassment to me and to the university,” Duncan said. “What surprises me is there has been no public apology, because I think New Zealanders and the academic community are owed an apology.

An apology would be an excellent thing to do.

David McNab is the co-president of the Massey University Extramural Students’ Society and he had two years on the university council, finishing in September.
He said he had spoken with some staff and there was a “chill in the air”, with people worried they needed to keep their mouths shut or risk jeopardising their career.
“People are concerned the brand of Massey University is being weakened by [it] being seen as a place where opinions can’t be fairly pursued and expressed. I am aware of a number of students transferring to other institutions.”

It is very apparent that if you have a view of the Treaty of Waitangi which differs from the university’s hierarchy, Massey is a very dangerous place to teach or study at.

It was obvious it would not pass, but the margin is staggering. Only 202 MPs voted for it and 432 against. Over a third of Conservative MPs voted no.

The next step is a no confidence vote in Theresa May. It is expected she will survive it as there is a difference between rejecting her deal and voting for a snap election which could see Corbyn become PM.

Options going forward are:

• No Brexit. Very unlikely as Parliament has voted to Brexit and to vote to cancel Brexit in the face of a referendum result would be suicidal
• 2nd Brexit referendum – the hope of the Remain lobby. Almost impossible to occur before 29 March so only a possiblity if Brexit is delayed
• Brexit no deal – the default option and now more likely
• A Brexit delay – possible but opposed by May and many pro-Brexit MPs.
• New negotiations with the EU – May needs to work out what sort of deal could get a majority in Parliament and then see if EU can accept it as better than no deal. Likely to need a delay.

But really no-one knows how this will play out. Fascinating times.

Stuff reports:

The Chinese edition of the NZ Herald edited translated articles from the NZ Herald to put a better light on the Chinese government.
It has also omitted articles entirely that discuss the Chinese Government in a negative way, in one case taking a much more sanitised version from a Chinese wire service.
The Chinese NZ Herald is the result of a 2016 joint venture between NZME, which own the NZ Herald, and long-running Chinese publication The Chinese Herald. The website and WeChat channel, which use the NZ Herald branding, feature both translated pieces from the English-language Herald, articles from the Chinese Herald, and stories from other Chinese news sources.

This is hugely embarrassing for the NZ Herald. Their Chinese edition has been turned into a sanitized pro-Beijing propaganda outlet.

Some of their journalists will be aghast. Matt Nippert has written some excellent stories about Chinese influence, and the burglary of Anne-Marie Brady. The English version of the Herald has been reporting that the Chinese Government tries to influence Chinese language media in foreign countries, and the Herald’s own Chinese version turns out to be doing exactly that.

Graham Adams writes:

The Government voted for the first UN global agreement on a common approach to international migration on December 19 
– amid a flurry of mostly negative commentary. Bridges said National would withdraw from the pact if elected because it “could restrict the ability of future governments to set immigration and foreign policy, and to decide on which migrants are welcome and which aren’t”.

Coverage of the issue died down over the Christmas and New Year holiday period but it’s hard to believe that the matter has blown over or the damage to Peters and NZ First will not continue.
NZ First’s Facebook page shows just how much some of Peters’ supporters (including those who declare themselves now to be former supporters) are outraged by his support for the compact. The words “traitor”, “deceiver”, “turncoat”, “quisling”, “sellout” and “Judas” appear frequently among hundreds of hostile comments, alongside predictions of the annihilation of NZ First at the next election.

What’s fascinating on their Facebook page is the anger isn’t just on the post about the UN migration pact. Even Winston’s Xmas message has scores of former supporters denouncing him as a UN puppet etc.

Voting for the compact wouldn’t matter nearly as much, of course, if the Government had already cut immigration substantially – as both Labour and NZ First promised individually on the campaign trail – but it hasn’t.

It’s a clear breach of a campaign pledge and Peters can’t even palm off the blame to Labour as the dominant partner since he has previously asserted that the coalition is not “Labour-led” but rather the meeting of two more-or-less equals. Certainly, his success in persuading Labour and the Greens to pass the waka-jumping law alone indicates just how much clout he has.

Few would believe therefore that he wouldn’t get his way if he wanted immigration numbers to be slashed by 20,000-30,000 – which Ardern said was the Government’s aim after coalition talks were concluded. 

While Peters has been quick to point out that net immigration numbers have indeed fallen, the reduction of 8900 in the year from October 2017 – the month when Peters pledged his troth to Jacinda Ardern – is less than half the lower range of these figures. And a net figure of 61,800 migrants for the year ended October 2018 is still extremely high for a small nation. 

The small reduction is even smaller when you look at what makes it up. Here’s the data for Oct 17 year vs Oct 18 year.

• Migrants gone from 99,650 to 96,760 (a 2.9% reduction)
• NZers returning home from dropped from 32,140 to 31,300 (a 2.6% reduction)
• Citizens or residents leaving NZ gone from 61,060 to 66,430 (a 8.8% increase)

So the vast bulk of the already modest drop in net migration is because more people are leaving NZ, rather than fewer people are migrating here. The drop in actual migration was fewer than 3,000.

In this regard, it’s worth noting that Peters campaigned on cutting the net figure to 10,000

Labour said they would reduce it be a third to a half. Winston said he would reduce it by over 80%. The reality is they have done next to nothing.

The Herald reports:

A 26-year-old woman connected to the troublesome English tourists who have left a trail of destruction in Auckland has been arrested and charged with theft in Hamilton.
A police spokeswoman said the woman will be appearing in Hamilton District Court tomorrow.
The group were pulled over by police in Hamilton and warned about inappropriate child restraints just hours after being served a deportation notice.

What the “arsehole” tourists should do is claim that the English Police are corrupt and they fear for their lives if they are deported and no doubt the Minister of Immigration will grant them all permanent residency.

Then they can join the lottery for a Kiwibuild house.

Farah Hancock at Newsroom reports:

The red-fleshed apples developed by Plant and Food Research’s scientist Professor Andrew Allan and his team are so contentious they’re not allowed to eat them in New Zealand.
“In the end we had to take them to America.”
The cores were removed from the apples so no seeds were present. They were triple-bagged and sealed. Phytosanitary certificates were gained to get approval to move the apples from their glasshouse in Auckland’s Mount Albert to the airport, and then on to the United States. Allan and the science team flew the precious cargo to San Francisco where a taste-testing panel of 50 people waited.
Plant and Food Research’s Mount Albert glasshouse is a contained facility, with regulatory and logistical hurdles, because Allan’s apples are genetically modified.

After six years of working on the apple he was keen to understand whether the apple was a winner or a fizzer.
“We had measured everything on a machine. We measured volatiles, we measured compounds and we measured vitamin C levels. We measured everything we could.”
Eating is banned within the glasshouse – even sipping a cup of coffee is a no-no. So taking a bite of the apples within the greenhouse was out of the question. Two years spent trying to gain approval to taste-test them outside the glasshouse were unsuccessful. The only solution was to take the apples to a country where eating fresh genetically modified foods was permissible.
The apples have high levels of anthocyanin in them which causes the red-flesh, and Allan wanted to know if this might make the apples bitter.
“The best way to test that is to eat it.”
The apples tasted like winners, according to Allan. The blind-folded taste-testers identified them as Royal Gala apples and rated them favourably on flavour.
“They took the blindfold off and they went, ‘Wow, that’s amazing’. They were absolutely shocked by how wonderful it looked.
“One of them said, ‘You must be rich’, and one said, ‘Where can we get these from? We want them.’”

The Government goes on about trusting the science on climate change (which I do) but when it comes to the science on genetic engineering we have such an anti-science framework that you can’t even taste a GE apple within New Zealand.

In New Zealand, Sir Peter Gluckman, the former chief science advisor to the Prime Minister, finished his term with a discussion about genetic modification onTVNZ’s Q+A show. “The science is as settled as it will be. That is, it’s safe, that there are no significant ecological or health concerns associated with the use of advanced genetic technologies.”

Note the phase the science is settled. The Greens use that phrase as holy mantra with climate change yet refuse to accept it with genetic modification.

The Herald reports:

A $350,000 donation to the Greens in December is the largest single donation to a major political party in almost a decade.
It was also the largest to the Green Party in its 30-year history.

Now I think this is a good thing. I think it is good when people who support a political party donate to it. I have no problems with large donations from people, living or estates, so long as they donor is disclosed.

But there is one party that does have a problem with large donations. They want to ban them. They say that such donations are potentially corrupt and you can’t trust the motives of donors or parties.

Here’s their policy from the last election:

place an annual limit of $35,000 on total donations from any single person or entity

So will this political party condemn the Greens for accepting a donation of $350,000 from this estate. That is ten times the limit they say should be possible.

Of course they won’t, as the said political party is also the Greens in a classic case of do what we say, not what we do. When other parties get large donations is is corruption, but when the Greens get them it is democracy in action!

Stuff reports:

The Ministry for the Environment spent $45,000 a month to jet its staffers around the globe.
Policy experts were sent on 116 individual international trips – to countries including Korea, Jamaica, Germany, France, Africa, Canada, the United States and China.
An Official Information Act request by the Taxpayer’s Union has revealed the ministry spent $769,955 on international travel between July 2017 and December 10, 2018.

No doubt most of these meetings were to discuss climate change.

Williams said sending policy analysts on first class trips to international conferences was an “insane use of money for a ministry who tells Kiwis not to fly”.

The ministry’s website offered advice to New Zealanders looking to reduce their carbon footprint, including flying less, working remotely and using video conferencing. 

Do what we say, not what we do.

Stuff reports:

A US woman accused of stalking a man met on a dating site and sending him more than 65,000 text messages apparently sent more than twice that many.
Jacqueline Ades sent a man more than 159,000 text messages – some of which were threatening – over the course of nearly 10 months, according to police records the Arizona Republic obtained via a public records request.
The two went on a single date.

159,000 messages over 10 months is on average one every three minutes which is admirable dedication. If you take into account sleeping time, it is probably one every two minutes.

I do hope she was on an unlimited text plan.

This was on Reddit, and worth sharing as it is equally piss taking of all sides.

The Herald reports:

People with previous cannabis convictions should be able to supply legal medicinal cannabis and, if recreational use became legal, be offered a clean slate, Green MP Chloe Swarbrick says.
But the National Party say only “fit and proper persons” should manufacture legal cannabis.
Swarbrick’s comments follow an email exchange – released to the National Party under the Official Information Act – showing that the Greens had asked Ministry of Health officials to look at proposals for the medicinal cannabis legislation, including one that would “allow individuals with previous drug convictions to manufacture cannabis”.
The Greens’ proposal never came before the House, but that door has not closed.

Who should be eligible to supply medicinal cannabis will be a key aspect of the Government’s new regulatory framework, which will be in place by the end of the year following public consultation.
National’s associate health spokesman Shane Reti said medicinal cannabis manufacturers and employees should be “fit and proper persons”.
National has proposed clean slate legislation requiring no terms of imprisonment and no convictions for seven years for employees, and even tougher standards for licence holders including no associations with gangs.

I have to say that a requirement to have no convictions within the last seven years seems sensible to me.

A guest post by Lewis Holden:

Pending a miracle, the UK will leave the European Union on 29^th March. Whether Brexit is a no-deal “hard” Brexit or under the auspices of Theresa May’s transitional Brexit deal will be determined when the deal goes to a vote in the UK’s parliament as soon as next week. There’s a myriad of issues to be dealt with, but either way, Brexit creates an immediate opportunity for New Zealand’s exporters. For New Zealanders who remember or at least have studied the effects of the UK’s 1973 membership of the then European Economic Community (EEC), it’s an opportunity with more than a hint of historical irony and for that reason alone one we ought to leverage to our maximum benefit. We have the best chance in almost half a century to get a deal with the UK that is very much in our favour – and we should grab that chance.

After all, when the former Brexiteer UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson stated that New Zealand was “stabbed in the back” along with other Commonwealth members in 1973, he wasn’t wrong. The immediacy of Brexit means a New Zealand – UK Free Trade Agreement is now a priority. While the transitional period deal that the House of Commons will shortly vote on could mean a drawn-out negotiation of an FTA with a clear timeframe, New Zealand would be one of many players trying to secure our trade with the United Kingdom. A no-deal scenario would be best for New Zealand to get maximum leverage in FTA negotiations. The UK’s government will be desperate to get new agreements in place and fast – in their own words “from exit day or as soon as possible.”

Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has recently launched a dialogue on the proposed FTA as part of public consultation. Asking such apparently non-rhetorical questions as what we want to see included in the deal, the consultation comes with positive comments from the Prime Minister about our “deep” relationship with the United Kingdom. This is an odd way of describing our former coloniser – with whom trade has always been a major issue. It’s clear though that simply ensuring trade as it stands carries on post-Brexit is the priority. We could aim a bit higher.

Leaving the EU means that Britain’s farmers will no longer be a part of the Common Agricultural Policy. This agricultural subsidy program is described as not achieving any of its stated objections and being the most environmentally destructive policies in the northern hemisphere. The EU spends about 40% of its annual budget on CAP. Incidentally, one of its biggest supporters in the UK is Prince Charles, the man who would be our King. Prince Charles’ support for CAP is partially self-serving, his estate receives millions of pounds in support from the EU annually. However, his stated reason for supporting the subsidies is that they prevent intensive farming. In other words, they keep smaller inefficient farmers in the UK in business while locking our more efficient farmers out.

Again, this is an opportunity for New Zealand to grab in the FTA negotiations: no farming subsidies to UK farmers. Kiwi farmers should compete on the same basis as the UK farmers. While we are at it, there should be a ban on food miles, that clunky mechanism for climate change that does not consider the carbon efficiency of our farmers. A “grandfathering” of the Overseas Experience visa perhaps. Or maybe we’ll get those things post-Brexit anyway.

This isn’t about getting back at the UK for 1973. It is, though, acting in our national interests at a time when it is opportune to do so. It’s been my view for some time that New Zealand’s free trade priority post the successful initiation of the (CP)TPPA is India. Aside from a common language, legal system and a lot of synergies in our booming tech sectors, a deal with India is geopolitically smart. It would provide an excellent counter-balance to our dependence on our two largest trading partners – Australia and China. Economically, the OECD expects India’s GDP to grow 7.5% this year. That is on top of a similar performance in 2018. At that rate, India will overtake the United Kingdom as the world’s 5^th biggest economy sometime this year. Despite this, since John Key’s October 2016 visit to India there hasn’t been much progress. Our path to an agreement with India is not that clear.

Focusing on an FTA with the UK right now makes perfect sense. It’s our chance to grab changes we want to see.