Spiked reports:

A new study claims that a health tax on red and processed meat could prevent more than 220,000 deaths and save over $40 billion in healthcare costs worldwide every year. These bold figures have unsurprisingly generated headlines, but the study is merely part of an ongoing processed panic about red meat.

The tax it brigade never stop. Tobacco, alcohol, sugar, soda drinks, and now meat.

The study proposes taxing countries in line with national income, how much meat they consume and how much they spend on healthcare. It recommends taxing sausages in Germany and bacon in the US at a rate that would increase prices by a whopping 160 per cent. 

I await this to be adopted as Green Party policy.

The latest from Venezuela:

• Inflation of 834,000 per cent
• Inflation projected by IMF to reach 10,000,000 percent in 2019
• Private business numbers gone from 650,000 to 140,000
• $150 billion of debt which is 163% of GDP
• Has just missed a debt interest payment
• Three million Venezuelans have fled to other countries
• Oil production down from 2.5 million barrels a day to below 1.0 million

That whole seize the means of production has worked well.

A reader writes in:

Greenpeace has always been against BIG whatever but recently it has started using very bitter and angry language.  

                The oil and gas industry is  “a death cult”

                “OMV makes profit from a business that’s systematically destroying our environment, killing and displacing millions of people. It’s knowingly causing climate change, which is morally corrupt. OMV must be stopped,” she says

                Amanda Larsson‏ @ecomanda Oct 17

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                To all the good, strong, wonderful people I met in Dunedin over the weekend, thank you. You give me hope that NZ will not stand by while oil companies like OMV wilfully wreck our chance at a future.

Russel Norman‏ @RusselNorman Oct 15

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Russel Norman Retweeted PM Breaking News

Hey @PEPANZ1 what were you saying about the cost of reducing our emissions from your industry? The cost of letting fossil fuel companies continue to profit from misery is this kind of thing:

There is an article by a political scientist about why climate change campaigners have changed tactics from a technocratic, fear of consequences campaign to a morality and hate based campaign.  it’s because it’s more successful in recruiting and motivating supporters. https://theconversation.com/keep-it-in-the-ground-what-we-can-learn-from-anti-fossil-fuel-campaigns-100005

“Third, targeting fossil fuels helps to personalize the causes of climate change. One of the reasons climate change is not psychologically salient to most people is that it is typically perceived to be an unintentional side-effect of the everyday actions of billions of people. This makes it hard for us to attribute blame.

But the fossil fuel industry is disproportionately responsible for our dependence on emissions-intensive energy. Targeting the industry helps to concentrate moral pressure on these more culpable agents and stokes the indignation that fuels climate activism.”  

I’d argue that creating the ‘Other’ as an evil and morally reprehensible group responsible for the wrongs of the world is a tactic used by extremist groups throughout history, from ISIS through to Russian anti-semites.   

A good point by the reader that Greenpeace’s language has become more extreme and vitriolic.

Amy Adams announced:

“Officials at a Stats NZ technical workshop today spent an hour having participants singing, hand-clapping and playing ‘Check Your Privilege bingo’.

“Yet at the same time New Zealand continues to wait for the 2018 Census results after a shambolic process that resulted in significant data gaps and we’re yet to see anything on the last two years of child poverty statistics.

“According to the Government agency’s bingo card, it seems if you are a ‘native English speaker, Cis, white, thin, have no speech impediment, heterosexual, able-bodied, standard accent, have no criminal record, human, tall, mentally healthy, support a mainstream political party, adult, born in your country of residence, wealthy, employed or just not a red-head’, then you are privileged.

My God, this is so PC.

On the plus side I can announce I am officially a multiple victim of privilege.

I’m not thin, I have a speech impediment, I have a hearing disability, I’m short and I’ve had mental health issues. So I’m a victim five-fold over.

So I’m coming for all you oppressors out there.

Feel free to count up your own score of oppression in the comments and see if we can work out who is the most oppressed.

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will review the penalties applied to KiwiBuild buyers who sell their home within three years if there is any hint of abuse.

Housing Minister Phil Twyford backed down on KiwiBuild rule breakers, lessening the penalty they face for flipping homes.

It was a big call to secretly change the penalty for selling before living in the home for three years from giving up 100 percent of a house sale profit to just 30 percent.

Newshub can reveal he didn’t even run that past the Prime Minister, and understands she only found out about it while watching our TV story. 

This is a very telling admission.

The change from 100% penalty to just 30% was a major policy change and the Prime Minister found out about it while watching TV!

Could you imagine this happening when Helen Clark or John Key was Prime Minister?

A policy change like this would normally go to Cabinet or a Cabinet Committee. Even if there was delegated authority to Ministers, you would expect the Prime Minister to be in the loop on such a significant change.

Even worse not only wasn’t she consulted, she wasn’t even informed in advance. How dysfunctional most the offices be, for the PM to not even be give a heads up?

“Myself, Grant Robertson and Shane Jones,” was Mr Twyford’s response to who made the call.

Ms Ardern is unimpressed and ready to review it.

“If we find that there are cases where breaches are happening, then we will review whether or not that’s an appropriate penalty,” she told Newshub.

Mr Twyford backed his boss, saying: “If it was happening a lot, then we might re-look at it – and I think that’s a pretty reasonable approach.”

But it won’t need to happen “a lot” for Ms Ardern to take action.

“Even a small number we’d want to go and have a look,” she says.

So who is actually running the Government?

The Herald reports:

Keeping New Zealand Superannuation in its current form may mean more money is transferred from the working poor to the rich in the future, a researcher is warning.

Jenesa Jeram, a research fellow at think-tank the New Zealand Initiative, said the biggest surprise in undertaking research on New Zealand’s superannuation system was that it was affordable.

“The report has been a bit of a surprise. I went into it believing New Zealand Superannuation was not going to be affordable in the future.”

But she said just because New Zealand could afford it did not mean it was the best use of public money and warned that continuing to fund superannuation at the current rate may be at the expense of more needy groups.

“Our tax and welfare system is generally progressive: money is transferred from the rich to the poor.

“This could be reversed as the population ages and fewer people work, so that more money is transferred from the working poor to the relatively rich.”

And Labour refuses to raise the age of eligibility, which will mean more of a transfer from working poor to well off people.

Jeram said the age of eligibility should be linked to health expectancy – a measure for how long people live for without any major health complications.

She said health expectancy rather than life expectancy was a good measure to use because it indicated what age a person may be able to work until.

The health expectancy is currently 71.8 years for New Zealand women and just under 70 years for men.

Some have suggested having a different retirement age for men and women and for different ethnicities to match their health expectancy would make superannuation fairer.

But Jeram said it should be the same for everyone to fit with the universal system New Zealand has.

She said linking the pension to health expectancy would also give flexibility for future adjustments rather than a one off rise with a long lead in which was likely to be out of step with labour force trends by the time it comes into force.

Jeram said super should also be indexed to inflation growth rather than wages and inflation.

“Decoupling NZS from rises in wages is way of ensuring productivity gains reduce the costs of NZS.

“The real purchasing power of NZS should remain the same while the real purchasing power of wages would increase.”

I think they key change is linking NZS to inflation rather than wages. As the proportion of over 65s increases, it will become very expensive to have the status quo.

The Guardian reports:

A Dutch court has rejected the request of a self-styled “positivity guru” to shave 20 years off his age, in a case that drew worldwide attention.

Last month Emile Ratelband asked the court in Arnhem to formally change his date of birth to make him 49. He said his official age did not reflect his emotional state and it was causing him to struggle to find work and love.

He claimed he did not feel 69 and said his request was consistent with other forms of personal transformation gaining acceptance around the world, such as the right to change name or gender.

In a written ruling on Monday, the court said Dutch law assigned rights and obligations based on age “such as the right to vote and the duty to attend school. If Mr Ratelband’s request was allowed, those age requirements would become meaningless.”

That is an interesting rationale for turning him down.

Because you see we also have some laws which differentiate on gender. Common assault is a maximum one year sentence while a male assaulting a female is a maximum two year sentence. So does allowing people to change gender make these laws meaningless?

The Herald reports:

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says if petrol companies don’t start acting responsibly, the Government could pass a law preventing them from “ripping off New Zealanders”.

And he has taken aim at the banking sector, which the Government has told to get its act together, and even the menswear industry for fleecing consumers.

Winston has said stuff like this for 30 years. But note he never ever comes out with solutions to what he claims is a problem.

He’s teh effing Deputy Prime Minister. He is in Government. Time for him to stop crying wolf. If he thinks prices are too high for mens clothing what is he going to do about it?

Where is his legislative change that will being in more competition?

There is none of course. Peters is skilled at picking at scabs but incompetent or disinterested in anything resembling a solution. What legislative achievements has he ever had? The only law I can recall is the one to help him manage his caucus.

Reuters reports:

Workmen cleared away burned hulks of cars, scrubbed the defaced Arc de Triomphe monument and replaced the shattered windows of luxury boutiques in Paris on Sunday after the worst riots in the center of the capital in half a century.

So what has caused these?

Authorities were caught off-guard by the escalation in violence after two weeks of nationwide unrest against fuel taxes and high living costs, known as the “yellow vest” movement after the fluorescent jackets worn by the protesters.

The fuel tax is designed to push people away from motor cars, to lower greenhouse gas emissions. It seems to be rather unpopular.

This graph from Wikipedia shows how unpopular Macron has become. He started with a +20% net approval rating and he now is at -40%.

Audrey Young writes:

It wasn’t the fact that Jacinda Ardern did not seal a visit to China in her first year as Prime Minister that raises questions about the state of New Zealand’s relationship with the rising superpower.

It is the way she was treated by China, left dangling, not knowing through most of November whether or not the nod would come for an end-of-year visit.

A “no” would have sufficed, with a commitment to do it next year. A trip had been on the cards for October but she was understandably shuffled aside by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

That the New Zealand Prime Minister was left hanging for so long may well have been due to a misunderstanding.

But National leader Simon Bridges has seized on it as a snub and a sign of a deteriorating relationship.

And not without cause: almost everything China does is deliberate and that is the lens through which it sees others.

They left the PM hanging for months and months and then finally said no. Of course it was deliberate.

The new Government inherited a surprisingly good relationship with China, developed by National during complex times for both countries.

John Key managed to develop excellent personal relationships with both the US President and the Chinese President. And good relationships at the head of government level count for a lot.

HDPA also writes:

And, quite clearly, New Zealand is choosing the US over China. Don’t believe it? Look at what we’ve done in the last year — or even the last week.

So it looks like we’re taking instruction from the Trump White House. Nice. And it looks like we’re giving China the middle finger.

Quite unusual to have a Labour-led Government do this.

But, annoying China is a high-risk move. That country is our biggest trading partner. Two-way trade between the pair of us was worth $26 billion last year.

And we need them to like us. Our exporters especially need that. We’re trying to renegotiate a better FTA right now. How’s that going to work if we’re snubbing them?

Plus, is it worth it to cosy up to the US this much? That country is the worst fair-weather friend — it kicked us out of ANZUS, put us in the cold for decades and now won’t lift steel and aluminium tariffs even though it’s given Australia a break.

I think the issue is more complicated than just choosing sides.

For many years China was moving in the right direction – a more liberal economy and a more open society. They were still an authoritarian country but one heading in the right direction.

There seems to be growing evidence that this has halted and even reversed. The President now can serve for life, and they have become more repressive with internal dissent. So it is fair enough to have a more distant relationship with them until such time as they start heading in the right direction again.

One News reports:

Simon Bridges has backing from the public to remove MP Jami-Lee Ross from Parliament using the new waka jumping law, according to the latest 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton poll. 

Mr Ross was expelled from the National Party after going rogue, but will be back in Parliament next year as an independent MP for Botany. 

However, the new waka jumping law means Mr Ross could be forced out, sparking a by-election. Under the law, if a MP decided to leave their political party, or was forced out by the leader, they now also lose their seat. 

“National won’t use it while [Mr Ross] is unwell,” Mr Bridges said.

“Further than that we haven’t decided.”

In the latest 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton Poll, 44 per cent of those asked said Mr Bridges should remove Mr Ross from Parliament using the new law. 

The Herald reported:

The total cost of repairs and security upgrades to the Prime Minister’s official Wellington residence will reach almost $3 million over five years – triple the cost originally given by officials.

The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) had previously said an upgrade to Premier House would cost $1m – but documents obtained under the Official Information Act (OIA) show the full cost will be almost three times that, with much of the extra due to new security provisions.

I’ve got no problem with us spending money on upgrading Premier House. It is a histroic building that is both home to the Prime Minister but also used for many functions and official entertaining.

The current minister responsible for Ministerial Services, Chris Hipkins, approved the continuation of the upgrade programme on December 21 last year, the documents showed.

Which is the right decision. And note no Opposition MP has criticised this. But a much smaller renovation programme in the past was criticised by an Opposition MP – a Chris Hipkins.

Here’s what he said in 2011:

Prime Minister John Key has batted away criticism over a $275,000 makeover for his Wellington residence – the latest in a string of taxpayer-funded government activities being questioned. 

The renovations for Premier House included a $215,000 painting bill, $55,366 on re-carpeting and more than $3000 on new blinds. 

Labour MP Chris Hipkins said the Premier House makeover reeked of hypocrisy. 

“Every Kiwi family struggling to pay the bills knows that if you can’t afford to pay for dinner, new carpet and curtains for the lounge get pushed a long way down the list,” Mr Hipkins said. 

“Struggling Kiwis simply don’t live in John Key’s world where you can afford to be splashing out on heated seats in brand new BMWs and to jet around the world in military planes. 

It was a nasty little attack in 2011 trying to generate hatred for Key because he was wealthy. I’m glad National in opposition is demonstrating much higher standards than Labour didm when they were in opposition.

Stuff reports:

The estranged wife of drug smuggler Karel Sroubek feels vulnerable and afraid for her life, the House has been told.

National Party justice spokesman Mark Mitchell said she gave him a six-page letter that contained permission to speak on her behalf.  He said she had been threatened by gangs and was “genuinely scared”.

She was taking a massive risk speaking out and said she was forced to write the letter of support so her convicted smuggler husband did not get deported from New Zealand.

She is the real victim in this. She will be more fearful with the Deputy Prime Minister lashing out at her and calling her an informant as if she has done something wrong.

National leader Simon Bridges told the House the first person contacted by Sroubek’s wife was a former Labour Party Cabinet minister who suggested contacting the Opposition.

Her family also called the Government’s statements “beyond appalling”, saying they had caused immense stress and feelings of hopelessness, Bridges said.

All caused by the Government.

After Question Time, Mitchell said the prime minister needed to tell the public whether she backed Peters’ attempt to discredit the real concerns of the woman.

Peters was obsessed that she was a National Party informant, he said.

“Rather than front up to a bad decision to let a convicted criminal remain in New Zealand, Peters went on the attack …

“She’s not [an informant]. She is a victim who is the subject of a police safety plan. She was was directly affected by a bad decision, fears for her safety and has been repeatedly let down by the Government. But the deputy prime minister attacked her anyway.”

This is how this kind caring Government works. They attack you for being a victim who speaks out.

Stuff reports:

Sitting on the shore of a huge swimmable lake and surrounded by mountains which sustain a significant ski industry, the town of just under 9000 people – outside of the seasonal booms – has tripled in population over 20 years, and is likely to continue to grow for as long as planners allow it to. Locals think it is paradise.

So how could the Government’s move to help people shut out of the housing market struggle to find demand in a place where so many people obviously want to live?

Wanaka is beautiful. So a good question on how Kiwibuild flopped there.

In the end, three of the ten houses offered went unsold, a grim start for the Government’s plans to sell more than 200 KiwiBuild houses there in the coming years.

Northlake, the home of the new KiwiBuild houses, is on land which only a generation ago seemed to have no better use than rabbit hunting. It is one of several residential developments underway in Wanaka, with more lined up.

Hundreds of houses are being squeezed in and sold for more than $600,000 for a three bedroom home, largely indistinguishable from the KiwiBuild homes.

The problem facing KiwiBuild Wanaka is summed up by promotional material, which to certain eyes, looks like a cruel joke.

An artist’s impression of a two-bedroom, 70 square metre KiwiBuild duplex (a house joined to the one next door) home, costing $565,000, has a late-model SUV sitting in the driveway.

Who exactly does Housing Minister Phil Twyford think will buy these houses, that are somehow locked out? These houses look like they were designed for yuppies on ski holidays, not struggling families.

This may be deliberate. Kiwibuild does seemed to be aimed at yuppies, not struggling families.

But the issue in Wanaka is that apart from building, there is virtually no industry to speak of other than tourism, with its relatively modest salaries. What holds up the house prices is, in large part, retirement, not high paying jobs.

Salaries of $100,000 are few and far between for those who do not bring their jobs with them when they move there. 

“We don’t have jobs in IT here. There’s hardly any lawyers or accountants,” a local businessman said this week. “For someone working in tourism, $600,000 just is not affordable.” …

Rebranding a bunch of houses and selling them at a similar price to what is available anyway nearby will not fix the problem.

Kiwibuild has become Kiwibrand!

Simon Bridges announced:

National would pull New Zealand out of the UN’s Global Compact on Migration because of its potential to restrict New Zealand’s ability to set its own migration and foreign policy, National Leader Simon Bridges says.

“National is supportive of global action on major issues and of migration into New Zealand because it brings skills, capital and connections and makes New Zealand a better, more diverse place. And we support the ability for New Zealanders to travel and live and work overseas should they choose.

“But immigration policy is solely a matter for individual countries and must take account of their individual circumstances – and New Zealand’s policies are already held up as international best practice. There is no automatic right to migrate to another country without that country’s full agreement, a view which the United Nation’s Global Compact on Migration, set to be signed next week, seeks to counter.

I am very pro-immigration. Managed well, as NZ generally does, it benefits the country both economically and culturally. But it is vital that a country can determine its own immigration policy and have secure borders. A country has the right to determine who can join them.

The UN conference on adopting the compact starts on the 10th of December. It is not formally binding, but a government that signs up to it would be expected to abide by it.

Countries which have stated they will not sign include Austria, Australia, Italy, Israel, Switzerland and the US.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s carbon emissions totalled 0.17 per cent, but when grouped with other small nations with similar emissions the total rose to 30 per cent globally, larger than the three biggest – United States, China and India.  

On the assumption they mean greenhouse gas emissions (not just CO2) this is way off the mark.

NZ is 0.17% of total emissions. If you include all countries with emissions of 0.20% or less they total 7.5% of global emissions, not 30%.

Even if you go up to all countries with emissions of 0.50% (three times the NZ level) and less, they only comprise 13.5% of global emissions.

It is very misleading to suggest the minnows combined are the largest source of emissions. They are not even close.

Here’s the percentage of total emissions by the top few countries:

• Top 5: 54.9%
• Top 10: 62.4%
• Top 20: 74.8%
• Top 30: 82.0%

And for the bottom countries:

• Bottom 100: 2.9%
• Bottom 150: 12.5%

Stuff reports:

Roslyn Metcalfe keeps a constant tally of her diminishing life.

It hurts to spend more than a few seconds on her feet, so she manoeuvres on her knees. The purring kitchen fan sounds a piercing screech, so she wears earmuffs. Bright daylight sears the eyes, so dark sunglasses are needed.

Her precarious balancing act between an enjoyed life and degenerative pain is not the worst, however. What Metcalfe fears most is that she will continue to live longer than her tolerance for suffering permits. 

Why would we keep a law that requires her to suffer?

Diagnosed with a rare connective tissue disorder that has taken her voice, but promises to take much more, she has made a desperate plea to politicians: let me die. 

But will the End of Life Choice Bill, currently being considered by Parliament, pass into law and allow it? Or will she die as her sister did, at her own hands in an act of desperation?

For some poor people the choice is between suicide and assisted suicide.

Metcalfe has maybe a decade of decline ahead until she can’t see, hear, move, or eat without overwhelming pain.

And this won’t be something that palliative care can help with.

Metcalfe knows her future because she’s seen it in her sister, Gina, who was diagnosed in her 30s with the same rare, little-understood genetic condition.

“When Gina first showed symptoms, we had no idea what it was. Doctors said it was nothing to worry about. Then, treatment was to gently push through the pain and carry on. Which Gina did, but she deteriorated rapidly.

“Gina told me she won’t have a choice when she dies; pain will decide when she can’t bear another moment.”

For almost a decade, Gina was bedridden and wore an eye mask taped to her face to prevent the slightest light causing the sharpest pain. Tinnitus was a constant siren in her ears; she wore earplugs always to dampen all noise. She could swallow only thin liquids, and the pain of pressure caused by her protruding bones couldn’t be alleviated, even by morphine. 

Yet there was no end to dream of. Doctors couldn’t help, and palliative care offered Gina hand massages, which were enjoyable but did little to erase the pain. 

In a way, Gina has served as a scout for her sister, cutting a rough path through a wilderness of pain and deterioration that now helps preserve her from what Gina described as a “tortured existence”.

It’s the final part of her sister’s journey that Metcalfe so desperately doesn’t want to follow. Gina took her life earlier this year. No-one was told beforehand, for fear of implicating them in the death. 

You can only imagine how terrible her suffering was.

This is where the End of Life Choice Bill would allow Metcalfe, facing decades of torment, to seek death.

Of illnesses likely to meet the “grievous and irremediable medical condition” threshold – Huntington’s, multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease – her condition is seen by some as a pure example of where that choice over death would be valuable.

“If the bill passes … I can live my life without the stress of planning my own demise.

“Without the option … my choice will be to either endure extreme suffering for many decades until old age, or to end my life alone and in secret.”

How can we deny her a better choice?

Troy Bowker writes in Stuff:

Sir Michael Cullen is trying to calm fears about a capital gains tax, but in doing so he makes it sound like the tax could be voluntary, or easy to manipulate.

And if you believe that, there is a bridge for sale.

Last week I warned the TWG’s preferred method of bringing in the new tax which would force every asset to be valued, as at a certain “valuation date”, adding billions of dollars in compliance costs across hundreds of thousands of New Zealand’s small businesses.

Cullen, the TWG’s chairman, accused me of “blatant scaremongering”but I stand by the reasoning. So does the TWG’s own report, the only one the public is able to work from.

So blatant scaremongering means quoting the TWG’s own report.

Cullen’s response was to insist that no one was suggesting all businesses would have to be valued on a single day, revealing that the TWG may give businesses years to get the valuation. But this would simply spread the cost, not mitigate it.

But Cullen also claimed the costs would be lower than I believed, for astonishing reasons.

He said it didn’t matter if business valuations were not accurate and that business valuations could be “rough and ready” and would be accepted if they were “close enough”. If they are artificially too high or too low, that was not as important to him than getting CGT into law.

The IRD is of course known for taking a “close enough” approach to tax law – NOT!

Imagine a tax system where a “rough and ready” and “close enough” test replaces a sworn accuracy test.   

The reason why valuations are absolutely critical to CGT is that there are only two components in the simple formula to work out how much tax you pay when you sell an asset.  The price you sell it for minus the valuation of the asset on valuation day.

This creates a massive incentive to inflate the value of your business on day one, because it will mean you pay less tax, or even no tax, when you sell it.

Cullen seems to think it does not matter much, but it could determine how much revenue a tax earns for decades to come. If businesses are allowed to inflate the value of their businesses, it will effectively make the tax voluntary for a generation of ownership.

And if the aim is to produce extra revenue for the Government, then obviously that will be unacceptable.

What should bother us most is Cullen’s dismissive reaction to any form of criticism. The TWG’s very existence is at the behest of the Labour government. He is no longer a politician.  He is a civil servant doing a job that we as taxpayers are paying him to do.

Alas it is very clear Dr Cullen is acting as a politician, not a civil servant.

The Economist reports:

When James Cook landed in Australia in 1770, Aboriginals had been there for about 60,000 years. Their 500 or so separate nations lacked kingpins or settled agriculture, so colonisers deemed the land terra nullius, free for the taking. Aboriginals were butchered or displaced, and later their children were stolen and placed in foster care under a cultural assimilation programme that lasted for six decades. They got the vote only in 1962. After a referendum five years later, they were included in the census.

In NZ it was somewhat better. Maori got the vote in 1867, 95 years ahead of Aboriginals in Australia. And in NZ there was a Maori census in 1857 and regularly there after (but not merged with the main census until 1951).

Even well-intentioned policies brought in more recently have failed them. When the law said they must be paid the same wage as other Australians for the same job, many were sacked. Billions of dollars are poured into programmes to help indigenous peoples every year, with mixed results. The decade-wide gap in life expectancy is getting wider. Though only 3% of the population, Aboriginals fill a quarter of Australia’s prison cells. Their young men have one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Their children are almost ten times more likely to be in state care.

I had no idea a quarter of the prison population in Australia is Aboriginal. That is an imprisonment rate nine times the overall imprisonment rate. It is twice the imprisonment rate in NZ for Maori New Zealanders.

Aboriginals hold title over 31% of the country, with rights to hunt and fish, and to negotiate over economic developments such as mining.

Note title is now the same as ownership.

Many Aboriginals therefore look with envy across the Tasman Sea, to the Maori. They remain at the bottom of New Zealand’s pile, but still live longer and healthier lives than Aboriginals. New Zealanders who identify as Maori are 15% of the population of 5m. Their median weekly income of NZ$900 ($610) is almost double that of their Aboriginal counterparts. Although more than half of New Zealand’s inmates are Maori, they are less likely to go to prison than Aboriginals.

This relative success is partly a reflection of colonial history. British settlers reached New Zealand much later than Australia, found what they saw as a more civilised society, and signed a treaty with the Maori in 1843. It was routinely flouted but a tribunal established in 1975 has allowed the Maori to seek redress for historical abuses.

But it also reflects the Maori themselves. They are a tight-knit group compared with Australia’s distinct indigenous “nations”. They formed a monarchy in order to unify against colonialists, and almost all speak the same language. Once near extinction, it is now taught in schools and spoken in Parliament (where the Maori have reserved seats). An illustrious list of leaders includes Winston Peters, the current deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Three Maori have become archbishops and two governors-general.

Some 87 agreements have been struck between various tribes and the state in the past 30 years, helping them to lay the past to rest. Financial reimbursements can be stingy, but some have won large enough settlements to develop successful companies. The largest belongs to the Ngai Tahu, a people spanning most of the South Island, who own farms, fisheries and tourism ventures. tdb Advisory, a consultancy, values the assets of Maori “post-settlement entities” at NZ$7.8bn, far more than Australia’s entire indigenous economy.

Definitely things better on the NZ side.

The two countries’ attitudes towards their indigenes could scarcely be more different. Mainstream Australians are still largely segregated from Aboriginals. New Zealanders tend to take more pride in their mixed heritage. Maori tattoos are ubiquitous in mainly white suburbs. Citizens of every hue glory in their country’s domination of rugby (both the men’s and women’s teams are ranked top of the world). All purr with pride at the haka, a Maori war dance that precedes international matches.

I think the integration in New Zealand has been a major part of why outcomes have been better than in Australia.

Karl du Fresne writes:

Today’s Dominion Post reproduces part of an editorial from the Sydney Morning Heraldcommenting on an Australian philanthropist’s pledge of $100 million “to strengthen Australian journalism and help restore faith in its central role in a healthy democracy”. The editorial comments: “The challenge is not just to produce information but to package it and focus it so it has an impact on society and brings about concrete change.”

Right there, in one sentence, the left-leaning SMH demonstrates two of the besetting faults of modern journalism and the reason why public confidence in the media continues to decline. The first is the assumption that the mission of journalists is to change things – a mindset encouraged by journalism courses taught by leftist ideologues. The second is the conceit that journalists know what’s best for us.

One of the best definitions of journalism that I’ve read comes from The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. It defines the purpose of journalism as “to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies and their governments”.

I like journalism that is about providing citizens with information to make decisions.