Stuff reports:

A mother, whose teenage son was killed in a hit and run believes New Zealand’s justice system is broken.
Charlene Kraatskow wants a complete review of the system, and to appeal the sentence 19-year-old Rouxle Le Roux received.
Le Roux had drunk alcohol and smoked marijuana on the night she hit and killed 15-year-old Nathan Kraatskow on an Auckland motorway. She was sentenced to 11 months home detention, 250 hours community work and disqualified from driving for two-and-a-half years.

I wouldn’t say that all deaths from careless driving should get a jail sentence for the at fault driver. But when the driver was both pissed and stoned, I’d expect them to serve some jail time to recognise the loss of life that was easily avoidable.

Also she fled the scene of the crime and was on a learners licence.

Nathan’s mother Charlene Kraatskow has since launched a petition to the Crown to appeal the sentence. At 10pm on Saturday more than 50,000 people had signed the petition.

Sign up.

The judge, Nicola Mathers, took into account when sentencing La Roux an early guilty plea, because she believed the young woman was remorseful.
However, the Kraatskows disagreed.
While on bail Le Roux posted a photo to Instagram of her wearing an orange jumpsuit. She captioned the image “hide your children”.

This is the appalling part. How could she get leniency after that?

And this wasn’t a one off. She did several posts making light of it all

Peter Williams writes:

Then there’s the matter of the Prime Minister’s comments.
Has a New Zealand political leader ever made such an emotional comment about a homicide victim before? More pertinently, why would the Prime Minister think it appropriate to comment on one homicide victim in a week when there were at least three other homicides in the country?
Yes, the death of Grace Millane is truly shocking. We have a young woman, in the year of the MeToo movement, being killed. But why the outpouring of grief for her and not for Rima Sikei, a 21-year-old who died in Mt Albert on Friday night. Where was the Prime Minister’s sympathy for him?
Or for Frank Tyson, whose decapitated body had been found in Lower Hutt the same weekend that Grace went missing?
Politicising a homicide case is not appropriate. Do it for one, and you really should do it for all.

The PM was reacting, as many have – from a place of horror and sorrow. It was a genuine emotional response.

But when you are PM, you do have to be careful. As Williams says, the same weekend a Petone man was decapitated.

Amidst some way-too-emotional comments by people who should know better, the most principled stance has been taken by Kelvin Davis, the often embattled Labour deputy leader.
In his role as Minister of Tourism, he said he would not comment because the case was an ongoing police investigation.
Thank you for your sanity, Kelvin. We needed more of it this week.

That is the best response from a Minister. 

Stuff has done their year end ratings for Ministers and front benchers. Here’s the full list from top to bottom:

1. 9.5/10 – Jacinda Ardern
2. 8.5/10 – Winston Peters, Grant Robertson
3. 8.0/10 – David Parker, Judith Collins, Mark Mitchell, Michael Woodhouse
4. 7.5/10 – Paul Goldsmith, overall National frontbench
5. 7.0/10 – Andrew Little, James Shaw, Paula Bennett
6. 6.5/10 – Phil Twyford, Simon Bridges
7. 6.0/10 – Amy Adams, overall Labour frontbench
8. 5.0/10 – Kelvin Davis
9. 1.0/10 – Jami-Lee Ross

They note:

Too many of Labour’s front bench are yet to shine and they are leaning heavily on Ardern, Peters and Robertson. National’s front bench, in contrast, has been a machine, picking up in Opposition where they left off in government. They have consistently scored hits against the Government, have run hard on issues and scandals, and have made question time a ‘must watch’ again after years of irrelevance.
In short, National is fielding the best Opposition front bench we have seen in years and if it wasn’t for the Jami-Lee Ross train wreck, would get a near perfect score. But it’s hard to look past the fact that Ross was a key member of the front bench. The only reason National hasn’t been docked more points is because of the speed with which the caucus has recovered and moved on.

I’ve bolded the key points. National has been highly successful at holding the Government to account.

NewstalkZB reports:

Police officers are worried the Government is asking them to essentially spearhead drug decriminalisation, saying its announcement on synthetic drugs has an air of “drug reform on the fly”.
Police Association president Chris Cahill said while he was pleased two synthetic drugs would be reclassified as Class A and a new drug classification would be created giving police greater powers, there was concern over some aspects of the Government’s announcement.
Health Minister David Clark and Police Minister Stuart Nash today said there would be a crackdown on people who made and supplied the deadly drugs but police would be told to use more discretion when deciding to prosecute people using any illegal drugs, not just synthetics.
“The association supports a greater focus on treatment of drug addiction rather than prosecution. However, there is concern about some aspects of the government announcement,” Cahill said.
“It has an air of drug reform on the fly, rather than a more considered debate and informed legislation. I am worried that by codifying police discretion the Government is potentially asking officers to be the spearhead of decriminalisation. If decriminalisation is what Parliament wants, then that’s what the law should say,” he said in a statement.

The Police Association is quite correct. The Government is trying to shift responsibility for drug law to The Police. This is so they can avoid any accountability as they can see it is all about how Police use their discretion.

Once again we see lazy law making from Labour. What they should so is either pass a law decriminalising or legalising cannabis (as in several US states) or at least have a clear framework for criminalisation such as you only get a criminal record on your third offence, and the first two offences just result in drug counselling.

But just saying “we’ll leave it to Police to decide” is a cop out.

Stuff reports:

The continued threat of incomplete data has Statistics New Zealand again pushing the deadline for Census 2018 results.
Documents released under the Official Information Act show the department is planning for an August 2019 deadline, and continues to stare down a high risk it may not produce viable results.
A low turnout during Census 2018 has caused considerable pain for Stats NZ, which last week announced it would not make the third deadline it set – July 2019 – and promised to announce a release date in April.
Experts are concerned the repeatedly slipping deadlines will have a detrimental impact on planning and funding decisions to come in 2019, and the data might already be “stale”. 

The data will be somewhat stale by then and we are told what they do release my not even be viable.

I can’t work out why Stats NZ didn’t just hire a thousand students and get them to door knock the addresses with low or nil response rates. They’ll know who they are from existing data, NZ Post, Electoral roll etc.

Stuff reports:

A judge has asked for an “informal undertaking” that a councillor convicted of indecent assault will not contact his victim or her family.
It comes as it is revealed five other staff complained about Kāpiti Coast councillor David Scott’s behaviour before he indecently assaulted his victim.

Most people would not need to be told by a judge to stop doing this.

Last month Scott denied having a Facebook page, access to a computer, messaging the victim’s son and said he did not contact her ex-husband.
However, in the affidavit opposing his victim’s application, he said he did send a Facebook message to the son and approached the ex-husband.

So he lied about the Facebook page, messaging the son and contacting the ex-husband. That’s three proven lies.

He denied the original crime and claimed he was no longer a councillor.
On Thursday, he claimed he was no longer paid a council salary. Kāpiti Coast District Council confirmed he was still receiving his annual $35,342 salary.

And that’s two more lies.

He should stop lying and resign.

The Herald reports:

It wasn’t the cheeriest of pre-Christmas speeches but David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was clearly not in a festive mood.
His message was clear.
History suggests we are due for another financial crisis and right now the world is no shape to cope with one.

We have had a global crisis in 1973, 1987, 1998 and 2008 so there is a fair chance of one before 2021.

With interest rates still low, central banks simply don’t have the firepower they did in 2008 to deal with a deep recession, he argued.
Trillions of dollars worth of quantitative easing cash (which central banks effectively printed to get though the GFC) has yet to be reabsorbed – limiting that option as an emergency response.
Meanwhile, public debt has been building in many countries – including the US – seriously limiting the option of using fiscal stimulus to deal with a crisis.

John Key has made this point also. Most economies have near zero cash rates and much higher public debt. This is one reason it is important NZ protects itself by keeping debt lower.

Lipton criticised China, the US and Europe for economic policies and politics that were not addressing risk.
The US was running up debt to stimulate its economy at a time when it did not need it

China’s household debt is 900% higher than in 2008. If there is a global correction, it is likely to be far more damaging that the GFC.

Andrew Little announced:

The SOP proposes two new offences to be added to the Crimes Act. The offences are:
* theft of livestock or other animal, carrying a maximum penalty of 7 years imprisonment.
* unlawful entry to land used for agricultural purposes, where the offender intends to steal livestock or act unlawfully against specified things, such as buildings or machinery, on that land. That offence carries up to 10 years imprisonment.
“This particular SOP requires agreement of every MP to be considered at Committee Stage. I am grateful that every party has indicated they will support that procedural motion.
“I also want to acknowledge and thank the Primary Production Committee – and particularly National’s Ian McKelvie and Labour’s Kieran McAnulty – for their bipartisan assistance to the Government in addressing the issue of livestock rustling,” said Andrew Little.

Rather unusual to have this added in at the last minute. I presume they need unanimous consent as it is outside the purpose of the current bill (which is dealing with spousal immunity).

The proposed offences look fine to me, but I do worry about making changes to the criminal code that have not been the subject of select committee deliberations.

However there is a members’ bill on a similar issue, so I presume that bill will now be dropped, in exchange for the changes to this bill.

Newshub reports:

An autopsy of the dead birds dumped at Parliament by 1080 protesters in September shows that one was shot, likely with a rifle.
The cause of death of the adult male weka is ruled to be “trauma consistent with ballistic injury”.
“Entry wound would indicate a ballistic calibre of .22 should be considered.”
Weka are a protected species. 
Under the Wildlife Act, it is a crime to shoot a protected species.
Forest and Bird is calling for the 1080 protesters who dumped the birds on the steps of Parliament to tell the truth about how the bird died.

So they claim to be against 1080 because it kills birds (in fact it saves millions of birds by killing their predators) and it turns out one of the birds they claimed was killed by 1080 was actually shot.

The Herald reports:

British Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to “listen” and work across parties to deliver Brexit after dramatically surviving a no-confidence vote.
The Prime Minister admitted that she had suffered a “significant” rebellion after being backed by a margin of 200 to 117 in a no-confidence ballot
The win staved off what would have been an ignominious end to her time as leader – and means she cannot be challenged by her own party again for 12 months.
But with more than a third of Conservative MPs refusing to support her and a civil war raging over Brexit, the outcome still underlines the scale of the problems she faces.

Speaking at Downing Street after the vote result, a clearly shaken May admitted that she must get an improved deal from the EU.

The issue seems to be the customs backstop. If she can get some sort of limitation to the possibility it could carry on indefinitely, she might be able to win the vote in Parliament.

That would be the ideal, so she gets the UK through Brexit and then the Conservatives elect someone who can beat Jeremy Corbyn in 2020.

Skybet has the odds for the next leader as:

1. Boris Johnson 4/1
2. Dominic Raab 5/1
3. Sajid Jacid 11/2
4. Michael Gove 7/1
5. Jeremy Hunt 8/1
6. David Davis 12/1
7. Jacob Rees-Mogg 14/1
8. Amber Rudd 16/1

The fact that no one has better than 4/1 odds shows that there is no clear successor.

Stuff reports:

The Government has knocked back a proposed increase in ACC motoring levies.
It has also decided to do away with the current rules that mean it is cheaper to register cars that have a higher safety rating, and more expensive to register cars that are deemed less safe.

So if you have a more modern safer car, your levies will go up and if you have an older more dangerous car, your levies will go down!!!

Rachel Stewart writes:

The biggest cultural shift this year is around free speech and tribalism. The never-ending stories about the no-platforming of speakers has been quite something to watch.
Universities – those last bastions of ideas and intellectual rigour – have swallowed the rat poison of the easily triggered and led the way in anti-democratic moves to “protect” their students from “emotional harm”.
Who gets to decide hate speech versus alternative views? Isn’t it just another version of authoritarianism for the purposes of limiting free speech? Are we now so fragile that even hearing mere words can send us into a tailspin?
My view? It’s far more dangerous to suppress free speech than it is to hear what people are thinking – unpalatable as it may, or may not, be. That place of censorship is where festering political movements are born. I prefer to know roughly what’s coming down the pipe.
Tribalism and intersectionality are the new black. Following the herd appears to be de rigueur once again but, to my eye, it’s just another form of hell. It usually goes from healthy to unhealthy in times of societal breakdown. It’s the human default position when we’re feeling threatened.
By God, it’s boring, annoying and ultimately stupid. Why? Because you don’t have to think too much. Plus, there’s the added bonus of feeling so sure of your position you can be as hateful as possible to anyone who dares to think outside the prescribed mob box.

A great summary of the threat posed by the “offence brigade”

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was sent a text message commending the decision to grant Karel Sroubek residency by someone who is both a friend of the Czech drug-smuggler and an acquaintance of hers.
That man was Richie Hardcore, whose Instagram’s account shows him posing with Ardern in multiple photos and referring to her as “a friend” and “the people’s champ”.
National has slammed the Prime Minister after the revelation, with leader Simon Bridges saying Ardern had not been upfront about the message from Hardcore and it was time she told the whole story.
“She’s only told us this much because of our relentless questioning. It beggars belief to say that this would be the first contact that she has had with Richie Hardcore about this case.”

Hardcore is a mate of the PM, like Derek Handley was also. He has her personal phone number.

He texted her commending the decision to give Sroubek residency.

Why would he text her, unless he had already communicated with her about Sroubek?

Why has the PM evaded disclosure of this text for over a month? why did she not reveal it when questioned on it early on?

It will be interesting to see exactly what the text said. Does it refer to other communications?

Newshub reports:

Newshub can reveal Shane Jones signed off on millions of dollars of funding – despite his officials explicitly warning him not to support the projects.
Treasury was even concerned one of the projects may have been overfunded by more than a million dollars. …

It told the Government not to give $5.5 million for the Gisborne Airport revamp, as well as another $6 million for a tourism project at Mt Titirangi.
“I think it’s fair to say that Treasury are paid to be doubting Thomases,” Mr Jones told Newshub. 
At the time he bragged about how many jobs would be created

“Scores and scores of people are gonna be required.”

But Treasury said the Mt Titirangi initiative was unlikely to boost employment.

Not only that – Treasury couldn’t figure out why it needed $6 million.

Emails between Treasury officials raise concerns of “double or even triple dipping going on”.

The emailed response: “They only need $4.75 [million] based on my back of the envelope, not six [million]”.

So Treasury said the project was double and triple dipping, and didn’t even need the six million requested.

Yet they got it anyway.

Karl du Fresne writes at Stuff:

Whenever I read something about Donald Trump, my eyes go straight to the credit line at the bottom of the story to see where it came from.
If it’s sourced from the Washington Post or the New York Times, I read it with a degree of scepticism. These once-great newspapers have dangerously compromised their credibility by allowing their almost obsessive dislike of the American president to contaminate their reportage.
This is made worse by their tendency to allow fact and opinion to become so entangled that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other starts. It’s open season on Trump, and many American journalists make it clear that they despise him. 
And actually, I understand why they feel that way. I despise Trump too, and worry about the damage his presidency might do to America and to the world. He’s a man who appears to have no moral compass and no respect for the truth.

I don’t  think it is the damage he might do, but has done.

Trump plays this political card more blatantly and unscrupulously than even Muldoon did, repeatedly branding the American media as the enemy of the people. 
Sadly, by buying into the adversarial relationship and adopting an openly hostile stance toward the White House, the media have perversely enhanced Trump’s political capital. 

He can point to their antagonistic coverage as proof that the liberal media can’t be trusted to report things fairly and accurately. This played well to his supporters on the campaign trail in 2016 and it continues to play well for Trump now, because there will always be an element of the public that is prepared to believe the worst of supposedly elitist, out-of-touch reporters.
And it has to be said that many journalists are elitist and out-of-touch – especially in the United States, where the big media organisations are headquartered far from the neglected heartland where Trump’s support base is located. That helps explain why the media so dismally failed to foresee Trump’s victory in the presidential election. 
The best counter to Trump’s game, surely, is to do what reputable newspapers used to do as a matter of course: play it straight.
News columns are not the place for editorial opinion. They should be concerned only with detached, factual accounts of what Trump has said or done. 

That would be nice.

All of this leads me, in a roundabout way, to last month’s Stuff editorial from editor in chief Patrick Crewdson that his organisation will no longer give space to the views of people classified as climate change sceptics and “denialists”.

OK, the parallel with Trump isn’t obvious, but Stuff’s stance does raise a serious question relating to trust in the media. 

When a news organisation decides to shut down comment on an issue as important as climate change on the basis that the debate is “settled”, it assumes a position of omniscience that will rankle with many readers. But far more importantly, it raises doubts in readers’ minds about its commitment to free and open debate. 

I thought this new editorial policy from Stuff was quite dangerous. First note their clarification:

Editor’s note: Stuff has not shut down discussion on climate change, but we will not provide a forum for its factual existence to be countered with fictions and call it “balance”.

I wonder how much further Stuff will take this policy of now allowing “fictions” in the name of balance.

Genetic modification has been proven to be safe for three decades now. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. Will Stuff ban people who claim GE is unsafe?

Will Stuff ban people who claim fluoride at the levels in NZ water supplies is unsafe? 

Will Stuff ban people who claim that (for example) tripling the minimum wage won’t effect employment levels, as the scientific evidence is overwhelming it will?

It is a slippery slope Stuff has embarked on.

Also how will they distinguish between legitimate uncertainty and outright denial?

I would agree that there are two facts which are scientifically proven.

1. The global average temperature is much hotter than 50 years ago, and rising
2. Greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are a major factor in the increase

But there is very strong and legitimate debate on the following:

• What the future temperature increases will be
• What the associated sea level increase will be
• Whether reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the best response
• Whether methane should be included due to its short duration in the atmosphere
• Whether the international agreements will make any significant difference
• Whether NZ policy on this is sensible and appropriate

So the danger is that Stuff will end up banning views where there is legitimate disagreement, not just views which seek to deny a simple fact such as global temperatures has been rising.

Also what will Stuff do should circumstances change? If say the years 2019 to 2022 all saw global average temperatures drop to well below 2018, will it be forbidden to point this out?

The Herald reports:

Ministers have been ordered to review their portfolios in preparation for the next Budget and identify at least 1 per cent of expenditure which is not in line with the Government’s objectives, a leaked document reveals.

The document, leaked to the National Party, also shows what the priority areas for next year’s budget will be.

These include supporting mental wellbeing for all New Zealanders, with a special focus on under 24s, and lifting Maori and Pacific incomes, skills and opportunities.

The instructions to ministers said: “Each portfolio minister will be required to undertake a review within their portfolio(s) to identify at least one per cent of expenditure within each portfolio’s baseline that is not in line with the Government’s objectives, or is of the lowest priority.”

Although it’s not unusual for spending to be reprioritised – $1.4 billion was reprioritised over five years in this year’s Budget – National Finance Spokeswoman Amy Adams said the instructions read as if ministers were being asked to cut spending in their portfolios.

They are being asked to find spending cuts, and that is an excellent thing, if the cuts go from areas where the benefits are small if any.

National was very good at cutting spending in some areas, so they could spend more in higher priority areas. Good to see Labour trying to do the same.

But what you want to avoid is taking money from a high worth area. For example Labour took money from Pharmac’s budget to pay for pay rises for nurses. Those who rely on subsidised drugs probably didn’t appreciate that.

Of course the best areas you could cut spending from is free tertiary fees. They will be spending $1.2 billion a year and to date it has seen tertiary numbers decline!

Thomas Sowell writes:

A Success Academy charter elementary school in Harlem had a higher proportion of the children in one of its classes pass the statewide math exam than in any other class at the same grade level, anywhere in the state of New York.

Think about that. The best achieving school in the state of New York was in Harlem.

As a result of the charter schools’ educational achievements, it is not uncommon for thousands of children to be on waiting lists to get into such schools — in New York City, tens of thousands.

This represents a huge opportunity for many low-income, minority youngsters who have very few other opportunities for a better life. But, to politicians dependent on teachers’ unions for money and votes, charter schools are expendable.

In various communities around the country, charter schools are already being prevented from moving into empty school buildings, which would allow them to admit more children from waiting lists.

Denying these children what can be their one chance in life is a new low, even for politicians.

Sadly it is exactly what the Government in New Zealand is also doing.

Peter Dunne writes:

Parliamentary Questions, carefully crafted and camouflaged to disguise their true intent, coupled with a judicious use of the Official Information Act, are the primary weapons of an Opposition to get the answers it needs to do its day to day job of holding the Government to account, as well as the information it needs in the development of its next election policy.

Yes, the process is time consuming for the public servants who have to prepare the answers for Ministers’ consideration, and it is tedious for Ministers to have to spend several hours each week poring over the replies before approving them and signing them off. But, by definition, it is not the Opposition’s job to be helpful to the Government.
Besides, every now and then Parliamentary Questions strike gold.
This year, it was the Questions process that brought Clare Curran’s Ministerial career to a close. Discrepancies in Written Questions replies caught out Shane Jones and his failure to disclose 61 meetings, and the ongoing skewering of Iain Lees- Galloway is largely because of the inadequacy of his answers to Parliamentary Questions.

Dunne is spot on that if you use PQs well, they are an invaluable tool for transparency.