I have been sent the following statement:

As a lecturer in the School of Humanities at Massey University, I wish to go on record in joining the call for the resignation of Professor Jan Thomas as Vice-Chancellor.

I believe that Professor Thomas’ handling of the Don Brash affair, as documented both in her public statements and in the newly released batch of e-mails, reveals three things about her leadership:

(a) She is a woman of strong political beliefs.

(b) In support of her core beliefs, she feels entitled to banish any potentially offensive speaker or idea from the university over which she presides.

(c) She is prepared to use any means necessary to achieve (b), in whatever way seems easiest to “spin” for PR purposes.

While I respect Professor Thomas for (a), I vehemently disagree with the attack on the freedom of academic speech and debate contained in (b). But for me as a lecturer, point (c) is the most troubling, since it means that I can no longer trust my own boss. If Professor Thomas decides one day that my teaching and research or even my personal opinions are not in harmony with “a Te Tiriti-led university”, will she take overt or covert steps to have me removed too, without being upfront about her reasons for doing so?

Effective teaching, research, and learning at a university are impossible under a regime of thinly veiled, ideologically driven censorship.

Dr Jonathan Tracy
Lecturer in Classical Studies, Massey University

The Sun reports:

A TRANSGENDER lag who carried out four sex attacks at a women’s prison was an “occasional crossdresser” who “played the system”, her ex girlfriend has claimed.

Karen White, 52, previously known as David Thompson, was sent to HMP New Hall despite not having gender reassignment surgery.

The former drag artist was a paedophile on remand for multiple rapes with a long list of sexual and violent offences against women.

But White claimed to be transgender to authorities and within days of moving to the female prison, she carried out the attacks.

This shows how barmy officials can be.

White is a convicted rapist. He has raped multiple women. He is sent to jail. He then says “I am now a woman” and they send him to a women’s prison where within days he starts sexually assaulting more women.

Of course the government should generally be considerate of prisoners and those who are genuinely transgender should be imprisoned in the safest environment for them.

But if the prisoner has been convicted of raping women, and hasn’t undergone surgery or hormone treatment, then you don’t stick then in a women’s prison.

Former neighbours at Elphin Court in Mytholmroyd, West Yorks, have also said White made little effort to transition.

One transgender neighbour told The Times: “Other than wear a wig and put on women’s clothing, she has made no more effort.

“I believe Karen is not a transgender, I believe she is more transvestite than transsexual with no real desire to be a woman.”

White’s interest appears to be assaulting women, not being one.

While at New Hall, West Yorks, White was also charged with a 2003 rape and has now pleaded guilty to four rapes.

Guilty of four rapes and White was put into a women’s prison. Madness.

Mike Hosking writes:

What a scandal eh? And if Massey values it’s reputation, Jan Thomas is gone.

I suspect most of us knew that when it came to the Don Brash fiasco the security excuse was bogus, given it never really got detailed and the police were never called.

But little did we know just how fundamentally dishonest Jan Thomas would appear to be in this matter. …

The campus, the university, the home of free speech, the exchange of ideas, the heated debate, the ability to learn through diversity, the welcoming of diversity, the open arms approach to expression. Well, that’s all been made a joke. The university of 2018 is a hijacked enclave of hand wringing and political correctness.

It’s where offence is guarded, if not policed against, where views held must adhere to hierarchies, where there is a gate keeper driven by the Treaty of Waitangi and its politically correct outworking.

It’s where what was once welcomed is now to be closed down at all costs. And, tragically, seemingly done so with dishonesty, subterfuge and underhand tactics.

I’m not sure what’s worse, the overarching agenda that it’s our view or no view, or what seems dishonesty keeping it in place.

Is a politically driven view of the world, a left-leaning one, of more danger to the community? Or the fact that morally these people will seemingly stop at nothing to drive it, and protect it?

There is nothing wrong with holding a view as clearly Thomas does. But to me the protection of that view at the expense of other views, especially on a place like a campus, is a crime, certainly morally.

And to go to such extent and effort to have your view, and your view alone, enforced smacks of an extraordinary level of paranoia.

A view well held is a view that can be defended and debated.

But so far this seems a basic abuse of power by dishonesty. I would have thought it is a sackable offence. You’d like to think she’d quit in humiliation. But I hope the university doesn’t give her the chance.

Thomas has a vision of the Treaty of Waitangi that made her think anyone who disagrees with that vision has no place being allowed to speak at Massey, let alone work there or possible even study there.

The OIA shows that she got the rules changed for events so event organisers had to agree that no event they ran could go against Massey being a Treaty led university, and that also applied to their guest speakers.

So if you disagree that the Treaty of Waitangi is a partnership (as Winston Peters does), she doesn’t want those views on campus as they may upset some staff.

Stuff reports:

Vaping may not be the gateway to cigarette smoking as was once feared, according to New Zealand’s largest smoking survey. 

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) canvassed more than 26,000 Year 10 students from across the country and found that only 2 per cent used electronic cigarettes, also known as vaporisers, daily. 

While that figure had risen from 1 per cent in 2015, the study’s manager said there was good reason for that.

“E-cigarette use by Year 10 students is increasing, but slowly and [it is] largely confined to students who already smoke,” said Boyd Broughton from ASH.

The research found less than 1 per cent of daily vapers were people who had never smoked cigarettes before.

That is useful and reassuring research. E-cigarettes are not without harm. They are far far less harmful that cigarettes. But if non-smokers were taking up e-cigarettes that would be concerning and if they were a gateway to smoking even more concerning.

But the ASH survey shows the opposite. That people transition from cigarettes to e-cigarettes (reducing harm) rather than vice-versa.

Whereas students who already smoked daily were more than 25 times more likely to use e-cigarettes every day than thier non-smoking peers. 

“There is a huge moral panic about young people taking up vaping, and even going on to smoke. These results don’t support that at all,” Broughton said.

“Never smokers might try a puff on a friend’s e-cigarette, but they are very unlikely to become a daily user.”

Good.

Meanwhile, the number of Year 10 pupils who said they were regular or daily cigarette smokers has dropped from about 25 percent in 2001, to about 5 per cent in 2017.

“Young people take risks, and whilst we can never stop experimentation altogether, trying an e-cigarette is a much better option that trying a cigarette, and one that appears less likely to lead to smoking.”

Good to see ASH taking a sensible approach on this.

Gwynn Compton has an op ed at Stuff against the name change and a group of graduates, staff and students have done a very detailed paper destroying the case for change.

Compton notes:

The agenda for the upcoming University Council meeting on the decision glosses over the significant issues raised about the name change, specifically concerns with how the consultation process was undertaken and with the deeply flawed business case.

However, the most crucial slight of hand in their recommendation was ignoring the fact an overwhelming 75 per cent of submissions received were in opposition to the name change.

It’s not explicitly mentioned once.

Instead, in their commentary they prefer to highlight 53 per cent of staff who made submissions were supportive, as well as the nebulous “stakeholder” category where 80 per cent of submissions were in favour.

Unsurprisingly, they chose to not highlight that 92 per cent of student submissions were opposed, as were 81 per cent of alumni. Those only appear in the summary table.

92% of student submissions against and 81% of alumni. How could the Council or the Minister possibly conclude a mandate for change.

And from the detailed document against:

The VC and Council do not appreciate that VUW would lose its current identity and all the established prestige, hard-earned quality reputation and recognition, let alone invaluable goodwill, which has been built up over the years. Likewise all the value within citations of academic records and papers would be lost, creating havoc and loss of recognition for actual staff and students with published research papers.

Further actual graduates would have degrees from a university that no longer exists in name, confusing potential employers, and lowering the value of those qualifications worked and paid for through thousands of
hours of effort and their cold hard cash. Fundamentally the university that has existed for 120 years would in one fell swoop be deleted: the only part of the name that has existed since day one is “Victoria”.

Yep a name change damages graduates massively.

Stats NZ reports:

Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 1.0 percent in the June 2018 quarter, up from 0.5 percent last quarter, Stats NZ said today. This is the largest quarterly rise in two years. …

Annual GDP growth for the year ended June 2018 was 2.7 percent.

That is an excellent quarterly growth figure, and above market expectations. Worth noting though it is for the period from April to June, so we’ll see next quarter if the weaker confidence of recent months has had an impact.

by John Stringer.

There are seismic civic rumblings in Christchurch as ideological tectonic plates grind and rub against eachother.

Christchurch -that brought you Big Norm Kirk, Jenny Shipley, John Key- has always been an engaged civic democracy, with hot feelings on both sides of the “People’s Republic of Christchurch.” It’s traditionally a Labour town, but National won Christchurch Central for the first time back in 2011 (by 47 votes) and again in 2014, but returned to the Red Flag fold 2017 (by 3000 votes). It had the first openly gay MP, and was responsible for the bill to make prostitution legal in New Zealand.  The City Council just this week gave $40,000 of taxpayers money to assist street sex-workers‘ “safety” and “well-being.” That’ll ill-please residents on Manchester St of this ever-so English city of Aotearoa.

The grinding and rumbling has most recently manifested around the “Eastgate” scandal (and here). It is further expressed in a very low public rating for its council in the Quality of Life Survey (only 36% confidence, down from 47% in 2006) and even lower in the City Council’s own Residents Survey (just 28% confidence).

Whichever way you cut it, voters are unhappy with Christchurch City Council which is led by former Labour minister and MP Lianne Dalziel (Chch Central/List 1990-1999 and Chch East 1999-2013). It can perhaps be understood to one extent, in the wrestling match of political ideology v civic application.

Cr Aaron Keown (Harewood) is dis-allusioned with democracy in Christchurch. He says there is none, and what’s left is strangled by process. Local MP Gerry Brownlee says the council simply isn’t making needed decisions.

That is most acute where the rubber hits the road over cycle-ways, inwhich city council spent gazillions putting in kerbed dedicated cycleways (sometimes on both sides of a road) when residents had not asked for them and in many cases have said loudly they don’t want them. There’s a strong feeling all future spending on more cycleways should be well and truly ‘flat-tired’ and cash spent on existing road surfaces.

Now there is a radical proposal for new dedicated bus and bike lanes through the heart of northern Christchurch suburb Papanui, one of the oldest suburbs in Christchurch (ca 1850).

It’s a case of proposals being put up by well-meaning professional experts on behalf of a Council who, via political application, are trying to “change mind sets” with ratepayers’ money, and forcing residents to cycle or use buses.  City councillor Keown again,

“Is it our role to facilitate the way people want to live their lives? Or is it our role to dictate to people the way we think they should live their lives?”

Many residents are reacting in Letters to Editors (and council surveys) to being ideologically ‘preached’ at; and their money used on projects they increasingly question: money-losing buskers’ festivals, twinkly lights in Hagley Park; cycling for health; Green Cities; swimming pools on every corner (because “well being”); and support mechanisms for commercial sex work. This week Council voted to dedicate $220 million of a taxpayers’ cash injection of $300 mill., on a new Christchurch sports stadium. (Bob Dylan has just played for the third time, at the perfectly useful Horncastle Arena in Sydenham; as did the All Blacks to a sold-out AMI stadium next door the same week).

The local body elections are in October next year, 13 months away. 2019 suggests itself as an election in Christchurch at least, over process, application, and emphasis.

I have now gone through and read in full the several hundred pages of e-mails to and from the VC and key staff, and have put them into a timeline below. This will clearly demonstrate how determined she was to cancel the event, and how the decision to cancel was made within a couple of hours of the open letter being published on Facebook. There are no references at all in the e-mails to and from the VC about actual threats or guns. This was used as justification later.

While the Politics Club had approached Massey operations staff a couple of days prior asking for security assistance, there is no evidence in these e-mails that this info was even known by the VC when she made the decision.

The VC defended her decision to Massey staff by citing the fear of gun violence. But again the comment about bring a gun on a Facebook post doesn’t appear in any of the e-mails to or from her before the cancellation (and it definitely would have if known). It may not even have been made at that time. It was a convenient excuse later.

Anyway look through the timeline yourself and see how it was the VC personally driving the mission to find a way to ban Brash and her staff who kept arguing that she shouldn’t do it.

The decision to cancel was made just 30 minutes after a staffer discovered they could use security as a reason to cancel. After weeks of trying to find a way within their policies to cancel it, she now had it.

The Herald reports:

Labour MP Meka Whaitiri has been sacked as a minister over allegations of a fracas with a staff member but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has left the door open for her to return to Cabinet.

Ardern said today she no longer had confidence in Whaitiri as a minister after receiving a report last night into an incident in Gisborne on August 27 between Whaitiri and a staff member.

Whaitiri was suspended as Customs Minister on August 30. The details of the incident have never been revealed but it is believed there was a physical altercation between Whaitiri and a press secretary who had been in the job for only a week.

“While the facts are in dispute, the report says an incident occurred. Meka Whaitiri continues to contest details of the incident, but there are elements which are agreed,” Ardern told reporters.

She would not reveal further details of the report by Ministerial Services because it was an employment matter and to protect the privacy of the staff member involved.

But she said a version of the report would be publicly released.

This is the right decision and kudos to Ardern for making it.

When facts are in dispute, you look at credibility and motive. Why would a brand new press secretary fabricate an alleged assault by their Minister?

So good to see Ardern make the right call on her remaining a Minister.

However I note she is saying she can remain as an MP despite allegedly assaulting her press secretary and she may even become a Minister again. Compare that to Aaron Gilmore who was basically forced to resign over merely big noting at a restaurant.

Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi, who took over the Customs portfolio when Whaitiri was stood down, would keep it, Ardern said.

Whaitiri’s associate minister responsibilities would revert to the lead ministers, and Ardern said there were no plans for a Cabinet reshuffle.

It’s good they are not being replaced as the Executive was far too large anyway. Not the best way to trim its size, but hey the end result is good.

But it does give Ardern a problem in terms of gender. Labour now has two fewer female Ministers than Bill English had. For some people, this would not be an issue. But Labour has said they think there should be equality of numbers and under 30% of the Ministry are female. And if you only include Labour Party Ministers they are at just 26% female.

Now compare that to National. Bill English had 25 National Party Ministers and 10 were female, which is 40%. So 40% vs 26%.

Andrea Vance writes:

MPs tell themselves it’s an important democratic institution, a check on accountability.  Last week, Question Time gave us a petulant display from Winston Peters as he sought to slip out of answering Paula Bennett’s questions. Curran’s career-ending confusion was a rare episode.

It now matters so little that leaders don’t bother to show up on Thursdays, and the Greens gave over their questions to National.

And it’s horribly expensive. Hours and hours of public servants, officials and advisors time is wasted prepping, ringing around and taking instruction for Question Time.  If your minister has a question, the hours 10am to 2pm will be a write-off as you script their answers and try to guess what follow-up questions could trip them up.

Opposition staffers and MPs grind away strategising for Question Time. Even backbench Government MPs – or their assistants – will devote at least an hour perfecting their rare patsy question. Three to five hours of sitting time is wasted on the archaic, unproductive ritual where MPs take turns to squabble over points of order or bait each other. For each of those hours, every MP is paid at least $80.

And to what end? The beltway obsessions and semantic gymnastics that consume Question Time are of little consequence to the average person.

Vance says question time should be reformed or scrapped.

Here’s the changes I would make.

1. Turn Monday into PM’s question time as the House of Commons has. No questions set down in advance. Just an opportunity for any MP to question the PM on issues of the week
2. Reduce the number of primary questions from 12 to 8. It is often a struggle to find enough worthwhile topics. And the media will never cover more than a couple of issues anyway
3. Have six of the eight questions reserved for the Opposition and just two for backbench Government MPs.
4. Allow more supplementary questions so MPs have a greater ability to keep questioning evasive Ministers

The Herald reports:

Emails exchanged between former minister Clare Curran and millionaire entrepreneur Derek Handley over the Government’s chief technology role via her private email account remain a mystery, despite attempts by Parliament’s Speaker to shed light on them.

Speaker Trevor Mallard yesterday directed State Services Minister Chris Hipkins to bring with him to the debating chamber today all previously undisclosed emails from Curran’s private Gmail account to and from Handley on the CTO role in order to satisfy questions from National’s Nick Smith.

Today Finance Minister Grant Robertson, standing in for Hipkins who has gone on parental leave, read out the dates and a description of the content of the emails.

Curran has handed over her emails to Archives New Zealand, which has in turn told Mallard that the Public Records Act overrides the Official Information Act and Curran retains ownership and control of them.

Robertson said he had been assured Curran would release them under the Official Information Act.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has told Parliament that in addition to a text message, she also received an unsolicited email to her private account from Handley on June 7 but did not open it or reply to it.

Her staff had told her it had informed her that he had applied for the CTO role.

Ardern yesterday said she had received a text message from Handley about the CTO role but said she never spoke to him.

It is of course quite normal for someone applying for a $400,000 a year Government job to text the Prime Minister and tell them they have applied.

It is also quite normal to be appointed despite (reportedly) applying after the deadline for applications.

Also quite normal to have a secret meeting with the Minister in charge of making the appointment.

Nothing at all out of the normal here.

Stuff reports:

Inland Revenue has slammed a claim by Oxfam that pharmaceutical companies are “cheating New Zealand” out of about $21 million of tax a year.

Oxfam based its estimate on an assumption that drug companies’ profit margins on their New Zealand revenues would match their global profit margins.

But Inland Revenue international revenue strategy manager John Nash said the methodology Oxfam used in its report “in our view, completely misrepresents the situation in New Zealand”.

“Taking a global profitability figure and applying it across the board does not and cannot illustrate what is happening in this country,” Nash said.

Yep it is arrant nonsense. With drug companies they lose $3 billion on producing the first pill and then make say $5 per pill thereafter. Different countries pay for research & development, marketing, production, distribution so there is no way you can compare any one country to the global profitability.

The main driver of profitability in the pharmaceutical industry was the creation and development of intellectual property but that did not generally happen in New Zealand, Nash said.

“It is important to examine what actually happens in a jurisdiction and how value is added before arriving at a conclusion that insufficient taxation has been paid by a multinational.

Exactly. But when do facts stop Oxfam. I miss the days they actually did useful stuff helping starving kids. Now they’re just a left wing lobby group.

Yes, good that NZHerald readers are now informed. But this has been known to researchers for decades, and is same pattern overseas. Zero fees is big middle class subsidy unfortunately. Better to fund low-decile schools and give more options in trades and tech, not just academia!

— Peter Byard Davis (@PeterByardDavis) September 15, 2018

This is about the research by the Herald showing very very few students in elite courses come from disadvantaged homes. Those from rich homes outnumber those from poor homes 10:1

And Peter Davis points out the zero fee policy doesn’t benefit those from poor homes, but is middle class welfare. It is $1.2 billion a year to those from the most well off families, and will in future be even more well off.

Johnston focused on students in law, medicine and engineering. Taxpayers will be paying all their fees in future so taxpayers pay 100% and students 0%. At present it is something like 40/60.

How much benefit will these elite students from wealthy families get from their taxpayer funded degrees? Well over their lifetime their extra earning will on average for a plain bachelors degree be:

• Law $2.84 million
• Engineering $1.86 million
• Medicine $3.58 million

Disgusting isn’t it. Not that they’ll earn that much more. Good on them. That this is where Labour is spending $1.2 billion a year.

A very sad read at Quillette about how a peer reviewed paper on the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ got retracted and blacklisted from publication after publication and the authors threatened.

None of this was related to the quality of the science. It was just that some academics didn’t like the results.

Basically the GMVH asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women.

I have no idea if this is true. But I think the proposition should be able to be researched and debated.

So read this article and remember that when people talk about making decisions based on science, that often means making decisions based on science we personally agree with.

538 has updated their House forecast to give the Democrats an 82% probability to take the House. The average gain projected is 39 seats. They only need 23.

They also have just released their Senate forecast. Here the Democrats are projected to only have a 32% chance to gain control. But that is much higher than it should be considering the Democrats are defending 10 seats where Trump won the popular vote. The Republicans should be looking to gain seats, not lose them.

I’d like the Republicans to hold the Senate so they can continue to confirm judges, and especially any further Supreme Court vacancies.

I’m more agnostic on the House. If the Democrats take it, then at least they can hold Trump to account through committee investigations. They might try to impeach him (which would be a mistake) but would never get a conviction. If the Republican House could actually pass legislation I’d want them to carry on in the majority. But they seem to do very little.

If Pelosi becomes Speaker again at least she makes a good bogey woman for the 2020 election.

Newshub reported:

Shane Jones’ $1 billion Provincial Growth Fund is under fire yet again.

The Government is pouring $2.4 million into a cultural centre in Kawakawa, Northland in a bid to create jobs and boost the local economy.

But Newshub can reveal that the centre’s only expected to create three jobs and officials warned that instead of stimulating the economy, it could jeopardise other local businesses.

Taxpayers are having $1 billion stolen from them, just to try and gain one man a job – Shane Jones as MP for Northland.

Every household could be $500 better off if they hadn’t embarked on the most wasteful spending programme in recent history.

The officials recommended Jones decline the funding, but he ignored them.

“You’ve got to take a few risks when you’re dealing with infrastructure,” he said.

Easy to take risks with our money. What if Shane had to personally pay even 1% of the money himself (in return for 1% of the economic growth it creates). Would he have spent $2.4 million on this if $24,000 had to come from his own pocket?

Mike Hosking writes:

It is one of the older tricks in the book, when you’re the government and you’re in trouble, dump the bad news on Friday.

This current Government is excellent at it. And this past Friday was Derek Handley.

The previous Friday was the Curran resignation, other Fridays have also involved the revelation of the Curran meeting and, of course, the Meka Whaitiri scandal.

All on Fridays. All designed to be lost in the Friday hubbub of people at the pub, going away for the weekend, watching the All Blacks, and generally by Monday putting it behind them.

The Friday bad news dumps are becoming so obvious I ran a poll on when they would release the Whaitiri inquiring findings:

On which day of the week will the PM announce the findings of the inquiry into Meta Whaitiri’s treatment of staff?

— David Farrar (@dpfdpf) September 17, 2018

As you can see Friday is winning.

What made the latest Friday dump so egregious is that Derek Handley, and I hadn’t realised this until the revelation, had moved his entire family home from New York for a job that got butchered.

And the best we got was Meghan Woods, the Prime Minister was missing in action again, Meghan Woods saying it could have been handled better.

No kidding, Sherlock.

A bloke moves his whole family halfway round the world to get shafted by incompetence, no wonder he’s ropeable.

Is very unfair on Handley.

Anyway the upshot is he’s been shafted, Curran is a disgrace, Ardern is, yet again, being shown to be a combination of weak and absent.

And it is yet another example of this lot, mainly Labour, doing everything possible to make themselves look inept.

Now, if there is a light at the end of this calamitous tunnel, it’s that my gut says it won’t hurt them in the polls.

Two years out from the next vote, most of us are getting on with life, rather than peering at Wellington with a microscope.

This is true. Polls tend to move over stuff like jobs, incomes, hospitals, schools.

The economy is the thing that really turns sentiment. And there is plenty in that particular storm still brewing, and I have no doubt it will bite them in the bum badly. 

And Trump has just imposed $200 billion of tariffs on China.

First the Stuff headline:

Sam Neill denounces Heather du Plessis-Allen for calling Pacific people ‘leeches’

Except of course she didn’t.

Hollywood heavyweight Sam Neill has chimed in to the general outrage surrounding broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan’s outspoken comments against Pacific people.

False slur repeated second time.

Heather du Plessis-Allan says Pacific people are ‘leeches’ on New Zealand

No 3.

The Kiwi actor was referring to du Plessis-Allan saying Pacific people are “leeches” on New Zealand, during a Wellington broadcast of Newstalk ZB.

No 4.

Buried deep down is this:

“I was not talking about people living in this country or the people themselves, I am talking about the Pacific Islands and the people who run it.”

It is clearly obvious she was referring to the governments or the countries. One can debate the merits or otherwise of her comments. But to repeat a false assertion four times as fact is awful journalism.

Here’s an analogy.

If someone in the EU said that Poland is a leech on the EU because they receive more from the EU than they pay, would people regard that as slurring Poles, as opposed to the Polish Government?

Donald Trump attacks fellow members of NATO as leeches for not spending 2% of GDP on defence. I don’t like his comments, but he is clearing attacking the countries, not every individual German, Italian or Spaniard.

The Herald editorial:

The Government – whether that’s Jacinda Ardern’s “Labour-led” one, Winston Peters’ “Coalition” one, a Green-tinged one, or any other label for that matter – clearly needs a win. …

The issues around Clare Curran and Meka Whaitiri have dented Labour’s credibility, and there is potential for further damage.

Labour has been stymied in the progress of its flagship employment law reform legislation and plans to establish a Crown-Maori relations agency – and has been made to look foolish to boot.

The unwanted headlines are now about a Deputy PM gone “rogue”, an absent PM, the tail wagging the dog and a Government in chaos and disunity.

The issue isn’t that the coalition partners don’t agree on everything. That is to be expected.

The issue is that their political management is so incompetent that they end up disagreeing in public where Ministers proceed to announce things without having checked first with their coalition partners.

It may be too much to ask to feel the love, but New Zealanders need to feel secure, see evidence of cohesion, and to know our Prime Minister is not one in name only. To silence its critics and reduce the feeling of unease, the Coalition needs to start translating its slick presentations, grand visions and inclusive rhetoric into meaningful actions with concrete results.

Results are what matter.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters… (please) get into a room and sort out your policy differences away from the daily news cycle.

The reason business has lost confidence is frankly due to the uncertainty coming out of the Beehive.

We now have a situation where every policy announced by a Minister is downgraded to a personal preference. This means that no one actually knows what the Government’s policies are. And business need certainty to invest.

Also the failure of the senior members of the Government to listen to feedback on crucial policies that affect business — including the Employment Relations Amendment bill — upsets those that hold the belief that a Government should act in the interests of all New Zealanders. Not just Labour’s paymaster and apparent ultimate controller — the union movement.

Are they a Government for all New Zealanders or just for their paymasters?

The NK Herald hails Dear Leader.