Stuff reports:

The rare native birds placed on Parliament’s steps during an anti-1080 protest were “almost certainly” bludgeoned to death, the Speaker says.

He has referred the matter to police.

The birds were definitely killed by blunt force trauma, and Massey University is now performing post-mortems on them to ascertain exactly whether or not they were bludgeoned.

About a dozen birds were placed on Parliament’s steps, including five native birds who have protected status, meaning it is illegal to kill or possess them.

If they did, I hope they are prosecuted. What a terrible thing to do.

They now claim they were road kill. That is possible. But as they had already claimed there were poisoned by 1080 they are liars so you can’t trust what they say.

Since the backlash over Vice-Chancellor Jan Thomas cancelling Don Brash’s speech to the Politics Society, Massey University has tried to claim it had nothing to do with his views, and it was purely because of concerns over security.

Documents released under the OIA show this to be a blatant lie.

On the 9th of July at 10.37 am the Massey Manawatu Politics Club informed the VC of events with Don Brash, Simon Bridges and Chris Bishop. She was invited to attend as an observer. The invite said the structure is informal, more a one to one chat over the experiences and future aspirations of the politicians.

That same day at 4.05 pm the VC’s assistant tells the VC she isn’t free on any of those dates/times.

Jan Thomas replied:

She labels Brash as racist and asks what restrictions they have to stop him. She regards using university facilities as being tactic endorsement of his views (which is ridiculous) and states that a te tiriti led university can’t be seen to be endorsing racist behaviours.

She asks for advise on what they can do to manage or minimise.

The next day she again e-mails:

Here she asks for options on now allowing the event on campus. Again she labels Brash racist (for opposing race based seats!) and says she wants to cut it off at the pass somehow.

She ironically worries about media coverage if they ban Brash, which she did.

On the 11th of July a staffer says there are no grounds to say no:

So the staffer tells the VC that there are no grounds to decline the event and doing so would be seen as restricting free speech. She knew this and did it anyway!

The VC responds:

Here the VC ask for mechanisms that can be used to stop the event such as financial agreements with clubs and societies.

We also get an insight into their views in this e-mail from a staffer:

So this staffer thinks free speech is just a shield used by “colonial racists” and “conservative commentators”. Hunt that fascists down. They must be silenced.

And here we have the smoking bullet on 13 July:

Here the VC says allow Brash to speak will clash with the te Tiriti led ambition and affect their Maori colleagues. She asks if funding can be used to pressure the student associations. And she concludes:

She says explicitly she wants it stopped.

There is no doubt that Massey University is lying and treating us as fools when they now try and claim it was purely about security. They have become a university without integrity and without free speech.

And here she talks about refusing entry:

And all this is before any security issues were raised.

The OIA release shows that Massey University has leadership that is hostile to free speech and believes that anyone who has a view different to them on the Treaty of Waitangi has no place at Massey University.

Is this a university you want to study at?

Is this a university you want to donate money to?

Most of all the OIA release shows how dishonest they have been. It was always clear that the security concerns were a trojan horse. But these e-mails shows that the VC was determined to cancel the events weeks before any security issues were raised.

The Council of Massey University should be very concerned about the reputation of Massey.

UPDATE1: I can’t see any way out of this for Massey while the VC continues. She appears to have lied to the chair of her own academic board. This is what the academic board chair e-mailed colleagues:

Distinguished Professor Sally Morgan Chair of Academic Board Meeting with the Vice-Chancellor. In light of the public accusations that Massey University is not committed to the Principle of Free Speech, I asked to meet with the Vice-Chancellor in my capacity as Chair of Academic Board, to gain reassurances that this is not the case, and to discuss the recent controversy caused by the cancellation of the Don Brash lecture which was to be hosted by the Students Political Club. I did this because I wanted to fully understand the facts of the case and what, if any, impact it might have on the business of the Board. I was not finding the public debate and the emotional speculation on social media and in the press very helpful and needed to know more before I could happily form an opinion.

The Vice-Chancellor agreed to meet me and to answer my questions. She began by assuring me that she was committed to free speech and the notion of the University as well-informed and scholarly, Conscience and Critic of Society.

I asked the Vice-Chancellor how long she had been aware of Dr Brash’s proposed lecture before she took the decision to cancel the lease of the room to the students. She told me that she had been aware of the event for many weeks and had been invited to attend. The students had also informed her that their planned programme of talks would include politicians from all New Zealand’s major political parties.

My understanding from what Professor Thomas told me, is that she had not considered cancelling the event at any point during that period, because she had no pressing reason to do so. She did not deny that she does not agree with Dr Brash’s views, but she pointed out that she had not at any stage banned him from campus nor insisted that the students disinvite him.

Professor Thomas told me that the situation changed when she was shown a thread on social media where there was a discussion of a plan to violently disrupt the talk, making mention of bringing a gun. I can confirm that I have seen a screen-capture of the comments. A gun was indeed mentioned. It was not something that I, if I found myself in her position, would be able to take lightly. The Vice-Chancellor told me that, in the light of the concern for the physical well-being of the community, her office arranged a meeting with the Police. The Police were not able to respond as quickly as the Vice-Chancellor had hoped and so she took the decision to cancel the lease on the room in order to ensure the safety of students and staff, and indeed Dr Brash himself. At the end of my discussion with the Vice-Chancellor I felt reassured that the Brash talk was cancelled for legitimate safety reasons, not as a deliberate suppression of free speech, and Professor Thomas’s decisions were made with integrity, based on the information she had to hand at the time. I came away thinking that Professor Thomas did not find herself in an easy situation, and that her decision was not an unequivocal assault on free speech as it has been characterised. I felt that the worst that might be levelled at her was that she had been over-cautious in the face of threats of violence. This seems to me to be an operational matter, not an academic one.

The parts in bold are clearly shown to be false by the e-mails released under the OIA. The Vice-Chancellor has lied to the Chair of Massey’s own Academic Board. She said she had not considered cancelling the event at any point during that period when in fact she started to look at ways to cancel it within hours of being told about it.

John Armstrong writes:

It is anything but.

Were there a handbook covering the mechanics of forming and running a coalition government, the New Zealand First leader would currently be writing a new chapter—one which would be without a happy ending for Jacinda Ardern, her coalition managers and the rest of the Labour Party.

A very useful report from the NZ Initiative:

The report’s focus on value for money is not ideological. Who would not want to see government doing the best possible job for New Zealanders?

How well is government spending our tax money?
The quality of much government spending is poor. The Productivity Commission’s inquiry into public sector productivity showed why. Public sector agencies are not focused on productivity. Measures are too often lacking or neglected.

A 2013 report published by a Canadian think tank, the Fraser Institute, assessed outcomes compared to spending in 192 countries. South Korea came out on top. Its government was spending 27% of GDP to achieve a performance score of 7.5. In New Zealand, government was spending 38% of GDP for a score of 5.5.

Spending more to achieve less.

Perhaps, one-third of New Zealand government spending is wasteful. That represents around 13% of GDP, or $20,000 per household, annually.

A 2009 OECD report similarly assessed spending efficiency in school education. The indicated level of waste in New Zealand spending on education was one dollar in six.

Less waste would mean more money to improve outcomes. Currently, around 17% of 15-year-olds can barely read. The government has likely spent more than $130,000 on each of their schooling. Few would regard this as an acceptable outcome.

If we spend $130,000 on educating someone and they can’t read or write, then that is a failure.

Were the state to do a better job, it could use the savings to raise wellbeing by:
• maintaining government outputs, while cutting tax revenues; and/or
• increasing government outputs from unchanged government spending.

A combination of the two would be good. Increased outputs and people get to save more of their own money.

Newshub reports:

The Prime Minister has corrected the record after saying in an interview this morning that she was “pretty pleased” in response to a question about unreleased GDP numbers.

When asked by Newstalk ZB if she’d seen them she replied: “We’ll be putting out the audited and final results soon”.

When asked again if she’d seen them she said “I had a hint yes”, despite the latest GDP figures not due to be released by Statistics New Zealand until Thursday.

Asked if the figures were good Ms Ardern said “I’m pretty pleased”.

Later in the morning Ms Ardern told Newshub she wasn’t referring to the upcoming second-quarter GDP figures in the interview, but the unaudited financial accounts that she does have sight of.

“I accept he was talking about one thing, I was talking about another,” she said.

“Of course a Prime Minister does not get the GDP figures, nor should they, those are held by Statistics. I could not comment on them because I had not seen them,” Ms Ardern said.

“I of course was referencing something I had sight of rather than something I did not.”

But Ms Ardern’s office described her comments as “a mistake”.

“She has not seen, because we do not receive, the GDP numbers.”

The New Zealand Dollar gained off the back of her comments, which she said “absolutely should not be the case”.

So the Deputy Prime Minister got confused between the GDP figures and the Crown Accounts.

To be fair that is a mistake any DJ could make. We shouldn’t expect them to know as much as a first year economics student.

Sadly thought the DJ’s comments actually had a real world impact. Companies lost and made money because they thought what she said was trustworthy.

The highlight is the PM suggesting she wasn’t confused, but Mike Hosking was:

Ardern told reporters later this morning she had been “obviously” referring to unaudited financial accounts.

“I accept I was talking about one thing and he was talking about another.”

She denied she was confused.

“I know what I was talking about. Unfortunately the question I was being asked was something else.”

So Ardern says that she knew what she was talking about but the problem is that Hosking asked the wrong question!

I guess this is to be expected after Sunday’s performance where she knew all the questions in advance!

Just so there is no confusion, here’s the transcript (done by me, so you can trust it) of what Hosking and Ardern said:

MH: The GDP numbers on Thursday, have you seen them or got a hint?

JA: Sorry the, sorry the

MH: GDP numbers, Thursday

JA: We’ll be putting out the audited final numbers soon

MH: So you have seen them?

JA: I had a hint, yes

MH: Are they good?

JA: I’m pretty pleased

MH: Because you need at least 0.8 or 0.9 to rectify the 0.5 don’t you

JA: Setting expectations already

MH: No because what we need is, you had 0.5 in the first quarter, and if you start annualising at 0.5 you’re running at two and anything at two is not acceptable you need to be in threes

JA: You’re going to understand why I’m going to leave that to the Minister of Finance to do that job

What is amazing is that the PM claims she wasn’t confused yet Hosking made it clear four times he was talking about GDP not Crown Accounts. Even if she misheard him the first two times, the reference to 0.5 in first quarter etc should have made it very clear he wasn’t talking crown accounts.

The only part that made sense was Ardern saying she should leave it to the Minister of Finance.

Tova O’Brien reports:

The Labour-led Government is extending New Zealand’s deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan despite promising in Opposition to pull troops out.

It’s the right thing to do, but it shows their hypocrisy in opposition. They politicised the deployment and attacked it undermining those serving. And that would be okay if they genuinely thought it was the wrong decision, but they clearly were just using it to score political points.

And Winston does not like the hypocrisy being pointed out:

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has lashed out at the media for pointing to hypocrisy over the coalition Government’s decision to extend the Iraq troop deployment to June 2019. 

New Zealand troops were initially deployed to Iraq in May 2015 by John Key’s Government in a decision that did not go through Parliament, which Mr Peters’ said at the time was undemocratic. He said the decision was made by “an arrogant Government making a minority decision”.  

But the current Labour-led Government – of which Mr Peters’ New Zealand First party is a coalition partner – did not put its decision to extend New Zealand troops in Iraq to Parliament, either. Mr Peters was asked by RadioLIVE’s Mark Sainsbury if he was contradicting his previous stance. 

He has adamantly defended the Government’s decision, telling Sainsbury on Tuesday the “kind of mindless consideration of present day events won’t wash any longer,” in response to the radio host’s comment that the media only sees things from an outside perspective. 

“Don’t tell me you guys are on the outside when you know full well that the circumstances in which National engaged was not a consultative matter… we have to maintain our country’s honour as we consider where we go in the future,” Mr Peters said. 

“We are talking about engagements that we inherited… managing those and looking to what we should do in the future with commitments that a former Government made to Australia… you’ve got to honour those things,” he said, referring to New Zealand’s joint training programme with Australia. 

The Deputy Prime Minister said the former Government and the current Government’s decisions are not comparable, because the current Government “consulted across Parliament… to try and show them what’s happening there [Iraq] now.”

This is a lie. I have made some inquiries and it seems neither the National nor ACT parties were consulted on this decision.

The Greens are at least consistent in remaining opposed. But they are consistently wrong. They said that the NZ troops have achieved nothing there. In fact the Iraqi Army has taken almost every square km of ISIS held territory back from ISIS. And this is partly because of the training from countries such as NZ.

I’d love to know how the Greens think territory from ISIS can be reclaimed with conflict.

Also worth remembering what the Defence Minister Ron Mark said in 2015:

NZ First MP Ron Mark has labelled the Iraqi Army “cowards” and questioned why New Zealand forces were being put at risk trying to train an army that did not want to fight. …

Mr Mark said Mr Key now had the evidence to show that New Zealand’s efforts were pointless. “If Iraq hasn’t got the will to defend itself, then it is not worth one Kiwi soldier’s life.”

So our Defence Minister said the Iraqi Army which lost thousands of men retaking territory from ISIS were cowards.

The Herald reports:

An investigation into the burglary of a professor whose work exposed China’s influence in New Zealand has led detectives offshore with inquiries raising questions over a possible intelligence operation.

Five police staff have worked over the past seven months investigating the February burglary of the home of University of Canterbury Professor Anne-Marie Brady, as well as other break-ins at her office on campus.

After months of silence this week police revealed progress had been made on the case, and Interpol – the international police co-operation agency – were also involved.

When this first happened I thought it was just a random burglary. But if the Police are working with Interpol, that strongly suggests they believe there is an international connection to this, and China is the logical suspect.

The developments raise the prospects of diplomatic clash with China after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in February if Brady’s complaints about being targeted for her work were borne out her government would “be taking stock and taking action”.

The Prime Minister was more reserved yesterday, with a spokesperson for her office saying: “It would not be appropriate for her to comment on an active police investigation.”

The PM is right not to comment at this stage. But if the evidence points to a conclusion that the burglary was done at the behest of a foreign government, then the NZ Government has to respond strongly.

Richard Griffin writes:

It had been obvious for some time that eventually she would have no option but to relinquish her portfolio responsibilities given her capricious approach to her role from week one of her appointment to Cabinet last December.

The last few weeks of her apparent struggle to recognise the concept of open government, let alone administer it, was politically inept and her ‘possum in the head lights’ response to valid challenges was clearly going to end in tears no matter how determined the Prime Minister was to rescue her from complete political disaster when Jacinda Ardern returned to the House following her maternity leave.

It may be that senior Ministers, in light of the Prime Minister’s absence from the political arena, were not aware of how the junior Minister was conducting her portfolio responsibilities.

However, it seems more likely that, in a political environment of ‘sink or swim’, none of her colleagues were interested in throwing her a life-line.

Or it may be the floundering Minister didn’t recognise she was going under for the third time and did not need any assistance to get back to political terra firma.

Either way, attempts by her staff to rationalise her below the radar activities were apparently ignored.

Griffin was of course a first hand witness to some of what happened. It must be galling as a Board Chair to find out that the Minister has been secretly meeting staff behind your back, and that the nature of the meeting was lied about.

A valid point he raises is why Curran wasn’t given assistance when it become clear that her political instincts weren’t very good.

It is not rare for new Ministers to struggle with their new role.

When this has happened in the past, the PM and/or their office often intervene to make sure the Minister is better supported. Examples have been:

1. A senior experienced Minister mentors the junior Minister, showing them how their office operates
2. One of the old time professional Senior Private Secretaries is parachuted into an office for a month or two to make sure systems are set up to protect the Minister (diary management system, meeting procedures etc)
3. A roving Press Secretary or Political Advisor is seconded to the office for a month or two to make sure political risk is managed well

As far as I can tell none of this happened with Curran.

This has some parallels to the Whaitiri fiasco. Again if a Minister is in trouble, going through lots of staff, you don’t just do nothing. You send someone in.

Liam Hehir writes:

Nigel Farage, former leader of Britain’s UKIP, came to this country recently. His presence was, unsurprisingly, the subject of protests. One of the protestors was Golriz Ghahraman, a Green Party MP.

According to Newstalk ZB, her reason for speaking out was that “it’s really important that we stand here and say: we are against race hate, we are against religious division, and we stand with minorities.”

So the Greens think speakers who pick on minorities and do religious division should be deplatformed. Well Liam gives an example of someone they have missed:

• In 2003 put out a flyer called “Whose Country Is it Anyway?
• In 2004 said  New Zealand was “being dragged into the status of an Asian colony
• In 2005 did a press release  entitled “New Zealand – the Last Asian Colony”
• Demanded a referendum on same sex marriage in 2012, a stance Tony Abbott was condemned for
• Had a colleague blaming a “sorry pack of misogynist troglodytes from Wogistan”
• Launched his 2014 election campaign saying “As they say in Beijing, two Wongs don’t make a white,”
• Signed a poster of alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog
• Attacked a NZ herald story as it was written by “two Asian immigrant reporters”.

So will Green MPs be picketing the next time this MP is invited to speak?

Mike Hosking writes:

Is Winston Peters the political genius of our time?

It was with the comment that the Labour Party’s workplace reforms were a “work in progress” that the penny dropped.

He is lining himself up to be the voice of middle New Zealand. He is lining himself up to be our saviour from the madness and extremism.

Most of us assumed he picked Labour because he hated National, and I am sure that, in part, played a role.

But there are two things.

One, Labour were willing to give up more than National. And two, with Labour, especially this version of Labour, you look, if you’re Peters, like a centrist.

If you’re with National you look like trouble. You look like a handbrake. You look like a killjoy.

With Labour you look experienced, settled, and professional. With National, you lose those attributes.

In other words, he’s picked the weak link and run with it.

That’s an interesting analysis. You deliberately pick the weaker party for Government, so you’ll look good in comparison to them.

It looks increasingly that if he’s not Prime Minister, he’s a co-Prime Minster.

All he needs now is traction in the polls.

Ardern, of course, is going to have to deal with this. From Labour’s point of view, they’re being undermined, right in front of their eyes.

And that another card in the Peters’ pack.

Given what we have seen of Ardern of late, when it comes to leadership, who would you back to blink first? Exactly.

We have a Deputy PM who is more powerful than the PM.

16Stuff reports:

When British investigators first identified two Russian suspects as suspected nerve agent attackers, Kremlin officials said the names meant nothing to them.

Then, days later, President Vladimir Putin vouched for them as just ordinary guys and anything but would-be hit men.

Now, the two men have appeared on Russian TV in an bizarre interview that included their denials – but also indirect questions about their sexual preferences, awkward stares and accounts of the weather in the quaint English town of Salisbury in early March 2017. …

In Thursday’s interview (Friday NZ time) with the Kremlin-funded RT channel, the suspects, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, said they were simply tourists catching the sights in Salisbury about the same time as the attack.

This is so laughable. Putin doesn’t even care if it is plausible.

Yeah two Russian men fly into the UK, to go sightseeing in Salisbury – a tiny city with a population of 40,000. And despite coming from Russia they found the weather too cold in Salisbury so they only spent an hour there, despite having traveled there specifically.

This story does a good job at pointing out the numerous flaws in the pitiful cover story. It’s so implausible that not even Winston would believe it.

The Beehive website is an important site. It hosts all press releases and speeches from Ministers since 1996.

Or at least it used to.

On Friday evening I went looking for the release from Megan Woods announcing the CTO position was not going ahead.

I browsed everything from her, and it wasn’t there.

Many other releases from Friday were there. But not this one. It was on Scoop, so had definitely gone out. So maybe just bad luck.

I then went looking for the release from the PM on 24 August announcing Curran had been sacked from Cabinet. I found it on Scoop. But browsing on Beehive for Ardern found nothing. Three other releases on the 24th but not that one.

So maybe it isn’t error. Maybe the Government is deciding only “good” announcements go on the official Beehive website.

I don’t know if it is incompetence or deliberate, but people should be concerned. The Beehive website should be trusted as a comprehensive website which details all Ministerial statements. At the moment it isn’t.

So the major initiative by the Government was a speech devoid of substance by the Prime Minister to a hand picked audience, with a question and answer session where the questions were vetted in advance.

Audrey Young reports:

Peters provided the preamble to Ardern’s speech.

In it, he uttered the words we have not heard from him in a long time – “Labour.” He did not refer to the Labour-led Government, a term which he now finds offensive given it subjugates the role of New Zealand First.

But he did refer to the Labour-New Zealand First Coalition. He said the Coalition was “unified”.

But it was not unified enough for Peters to share the stage with James Shaw after Ardern’s speech to take questions on the Government.

So they’re really unified. So unified one party leader won’t share a stage with the other.

In a rare exception for Peters, he later allowed himself to share a platform with both Shaw and Ardern at the press conference after the speech.

But Ardern ended it when Peters started getting belligerent with the media.

And finally when he did get coaxed onto the stage with them, he spoils it.

Ardern delivered her speech in Ted-talk-style, like the gifted communicator she can be.

And while it was important in terms of setting out priorities, nothing in it was new.

The 12 priorities are mainly apple pie sentiments that any political party would say they wish to achieve.

She revealed the plan with the enthusiasm of someone who believes she has done something remarkably new – which of course she hasn’t.

And it took them a year to work them out.

But the notion that this is the first time a Government has set objectives and will measure them every six months is nonsense, as is the claim that this is first Government of compassion.

She is reinventing the wheel, as anyone who followed Bill English’s work in the Better Public Service programme, Social Investment knows.

In fact her plan appears to be a hybrid of the thematic approach to policy honed by former prime minister Helen Clark and the very specific measures demanded by English’s social investment and Better Public Service Targets approach.

And the major difference in the former Government set hard targets which they could be measured against. This Government has basically abolished any outcome based targets in health, education etc. They think spending money is a substitute for results.

Even The Spinoff was unimpressed. Toby Manhire writes:

There was nothing discernibly new there. If it was a road map, it was a pretty vague and well-thumbed map. At best you might use that word returned to fashion by Anon of the White House, that it was a lodestar, a kind of navigational beacon for the ship of cabinet.

A pretty dim lodestar at that.

The lectern was swept away and Jacinda Ardern walked the stage as if at a product launch, in front of two large screens detailing wins and goals, underlined in red, green and black, and happy people in stock photos. If the backdrop had been doused in truth serum it would have shown something else: headlines about Ardern’s government coming under a new kind of pressure, with images of a Clare Curran resigning, Meka Whaitiri under a cloud, a coalition partner apparently bent upon repeated public displays of disaffection, and a prime minister pulling out of television interviews over “diary issues”.

Let’s forget all those and look at the pretty pictures.

The Trump comparisons are facile, of course they are. But it is nevertheless true that the prime minister has withdrawn from interviews on programmes where interviewers would be asking a host of difficult questions on the same weekend that she appeared before an audience of adoring supporters, who proffered a bunch of preordained, softball questions at the end.

Meanwhile it has been 19 days since the PM learnt of the Whaitiri allegations and still no action.

The sense that Ardern is shying away from sustained interrogation is palpably pissing off local media, a sense exacerbated by a parade of fawning profiles in foreign media, some of which seem anachronistic at best and at worst from a parallel universe. 

Most transparent and open government ever they promised!

It was a reboot, a reset, an attempted rebuke of the idea that the three parties aren’t getting on: this was, Peters assured media, “not dysfunction junction”. It was an attempt to recapture and reignite some of the energy of the campaign, an effort to put some fresh air in tyres that had started to feel kind of flat. It was a rally. But that’s all it was.

Rah rah rally.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is keeping close tabs on the uproar into the upgrade of the Mt Albert town centre that has left a sour taste in the community. …

Turnover at many Mt Albert shops has not recovered after tumbling 50 per cent during the construction period.

“It’s a ghost town,” said Bhaidas Bhula, who has been forced to lay off two of four staff at the New North Pharmacy in the town centre.

Bhula said takings dropped 50 per cent during construction and had been tracking at those levels since the Prime Minister, Auckland Mayor Phil Goff and Dr Levy opened the $6.5 million upgrade in May.

We’ve seen in Wellington also how decisions by Councils can destroy businesses that have been operating for decades, sending their owners from being employers to unemployed.

In a recent posting on Morris’ blog, Mt Albert Business Association communications co-ordinator Dalline Leng said the upgrade is a failure and bringing some businesses close to collapse.

She spoke of tenants barely surviving, sales not meeting the costs of rent, power and wages and one business owner who revealed his total takings in one day were $10.

The community was promised great things out of the upgrade but all they got were wider footpaths, which, at the expense of parking, were not worth it, Leng said.

Some Councils deem determined to wipe out parking, as part of their anti-car bias. In doing so they wipe out businesses who rely on people being able to park near them.

Danyl McL writes:

Back in June the justice minister, Andrew Little, announced plans to repeal the Three Strikes legislation, only have to have Winston Peters publically humiliate him by pulling support for the bill at the last minute, informing his coalition partners of this via the media. The past few months have seen an intensification of this same trick, with Peters pulling support for Labour’s campaign promise to increase the number of refugees and the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, one of Labour’s flagship policies. And yesterday Peters pulled support for the government’s new Crown-Māori Relations Agency, again at the last minute, again in a manner calculated to humiliate a senior member of Cabinet – this time deputy Labour leader Kelvin Davis.

It’s incredibly destabilising for the government – and Peters is deputy prime minister of the government!

This is why I was so relieved that Winston choose Labour over National.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Peters has been a source of instability and chaos in every government of which he’s been a member, but when this one was formed there was a genuine belief among his coalition partners that things would be different. “He’s learned from the mistakes of the past,” new ministers assured themselves.

He has learnt – how to use his power even more effectively.

And then there was the tripartite nature of the Labour-New Zealand First-Green government. “A pure MMP government,” as Ardern puts it. Because the votes of all three parties are required for passage through the house, the theory went, good faith and constructive relationships are baked into the nature of the arrangement. If you blocked your partners’ bills then you wouldn’t be able to progress your own legislative agenda.

And there’s the problem: New Zealand First doesn’t really have a legislative agenda. Its substantive wins are either front-loaded, in the form of ministerial portfolios, or delivered via the budget process, which all three parties have to support. And most of the items in the New Zealand First coalition agreement are things Labour and the Greens want to do anyway, so if they block them they’ll be blocking their own policy agenda.

This is very astute analysis. This means there is not much pressure they can place back on Winston. The only legislation he really cares about is his waka jumping bill as that makes him even more powerful. And the suckers in Labour and Greens have already pledged their support for it.

Peters’ other point of leverage is his famous volatility. There’s no relationship Ardern or anyone in her party can build with the New Zealand First leader that establishes goodwill, or ensures that any assurances or commitments he gives them have any validity or meaning – Peters just doesn’t work that way. But she can easily upset him, by publicly rebuking him, or pulling support for, say, the Waka-Jumping Bill, and this will damage his ego and earn his undying enmity and very possibly see him collapse her government in a fit of rage. Her ability to retaliate is incredibly limited. There are nuclear options or nothing.

It’s a bit like negotiating with terrorists!

This is a horrible position for Ardern and the rest of her Cabinet. There’s this notion out there that the prime minister has to be “tough”, and that this will solve her problems, somehow, but it’s hard to be tough when you have no leverage and no agency. Helen Clark is currently touring the country congratulating herself on her own toughness in power, but she too was equally helpless to control Peters when he was her coalition partner and foreign minister. Clark spent her last year in power feebly defending him in the teeth of an ever deepening corruption scandal, destroying any shreds of the possibility of her government winning re-election in the process.

Stuff reports:

Parking warden Ken Anderson had just given Rawiri Emery a parking ticket when a single massive blow to his head left him needing reconstructive surgery.

He had a broken nose and fractured eye socket and needed part of his face peeled off to allow surgeons access to the damaged area.

A horrendous assault. So how many years in prison did the assailant get?

Davidson said Emery had an extensive list of violence convictions over 10 years from 2006 including injuring and robbery.

A long history of violence. Taking that into account he must have got put away for a very long period to keep the community safe.

The judge on Thursday sentenced Emery to four months community detention, 80 hours community work, nine months supervision and to pay $2500 in reparation to Anderson.

Community work. Wow. That will teach him. And I’m sure there is no way he’ll ever offend again.

He said Emery was a self-employed builder, in a stable relationship and had now done a 10 week non-violence programme.

A non-violence programme. That will do the job I’m sure.

One good thing in all this though. His assault of the parking warden got him a second strike. Now it won’t affect this sentence as he didn’t even get prison time so parole doesn’t come into it.

But if he now bashes someone again he won’t be doing 80 hours community service. He won’t be getting a small fine. He’ll be getting the maximum sentence for the assault. And his criminal offending will be halted for a few years.

A guest post by Professor Emeritus Geoff Duffy:

The recent statement from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Right Hon Simon Upton, regarding methane emissions from livestock, conflicts with experimental data.

Computer climate models are accurate only if all significant variables are incorporated simultaneously. Leave one out or miscalculate its effects and the model predictions will be inaccurate—no better than a guess and inadequate for policy.

The major elements of the global weather system are fairly well identified, but the magnitudes of many effects are poorly understood. For example, the IPCC doesn’t know whether increased cloud cover, predicted to be caused by warming, would result in further warming or cooling. Global cloud cover has been studied for many years, but their latest report (AR5, 2013), admits they don’t know whether it is expanding or shrinking, which means they can’t say what warming—if any—our emissions might cause.

The factors involved in the weather are numerous and their interactions chaotic. Nearly three-quarters of the surface of our planet is covered in oceans and lakes, and two-thirds of land and sea at any moment is covered in clouds. Just over half the sun’s energy actually reaches the earth’s surface, with its re-radiation back from land and water very important in heating the atmosphere, and there are many more mechanisms in play. The massive mixing effects of winds, storms and rain, ocean waves and currents and the creation and dissipation of clouds must be included in climate models. If they are not, predictions will be erroneous.

Evaporation at sea level and condensation of water vapour into clouds are important. Clouds can precipitate rain or snow, further cooling the atmosphere, land and ocean. Gaps in these areas of knowledge caused all 102 CMIP-5 climate models relied on by the IPCC to fail to predict recent global temperatures, which have been essentially constant for two decades, despite carbon dioxide rising 9% in that time.

Conduction is another energy transfer mechanism between atmospheric molecules, water and land. Radiant energy absorbed by greenhouse gases (GHG) increases their speed (they get warmer), so when they collide with other molecules, even non-GHGs (nitrogen, oxygen, argon), they transfer heat to them and the atmosphere warms.

Two factors stand out in the calculation of atmospheric energy transfer: a GHG’s level in the air and how much electromagnetic energy it absorbs at different frequencies.

The electromagnetic energy spectrum has been studied for over 200 years. Atmospheric physicists have long known that the most plentiful and effective greenhouse gas is water vapour (WV), which absorbs energy over 80% of the entire energy spectrum, whereas carbon dioxide absorbs over less than 10% of the spectrum. Methane is even weaker, absorbing under 1% of the spectrum.

So the Commissioner is incorrect when he says: “The three main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.” Neither carbon dioxide, at 406 ppm, nor methane, at 1.8 ppm, can dominate, because their concentrations are insignificant. At 10,000 ppm, water vapour overwhelms them both. Comparing methane with WV is like putting a mouse up against an elephant. WV is 25 times more abundant than carbon dioxide and 5,000 times more abundant than methane.

Examining methane alone doesn’t reveal what’s happening in the atmosphere. The following statements from the Commissioner’s Report are quoted and in bold; my comments follow.

“[methane] is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide”– p. 8 This is only true when the gases are at the same concentration, but they’re not. Carbon dioxide is always and everywhere 220 times more plentiful and accesses a wider range of the energy spectrum. It is also much more potent than methane.

“methane traps … heat”– p. 8 Absolutely no heat is ‘trapped’. A GHG molecule absorbs electromagnetic energy, which energises it to move faster until it collides with another molecule (oxygen, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide and all), and gives up some energy in making the other molecule move faster. The authors of the report do not understand heat transfer, as the ‘trapping’ concept was debunked years ago. There is no ‘blanket’, there is no greenhouse. If the modelling does not include all the effects other than radiation the predictions will be wrong.

“A constant flow of methane emissions results in a constant methane concentration after 50 years, but its impact on temperature continues to increase for several centuries.” – p. 8 The claim that methane continues to increase temperatures over centuries is wrong, because we don’t observe it—there has been virtually no temperature change for 20 years or more, even as methane rose by 5% and carbon dioxide by 9%, and we do not have centuries of methane data.

“However, the warming effect of that methane would continue to increase, at a gradually declining rate, for more than a century. In the year 2050, holding New Zealand’s livestock methane steady at 2016 levels would cause additional warming of 10-20 per cent above current levels”. – p. 11 With carbon dioxide concentration 220 times greater than methane and rising for two decades without much increasing the temperature, it is wrong to reason that methane—the weaker, less numerous species—has more influence.

We should not use rudimentary mathematical models for simulation or prediction, without strong and consistent experimental data to support the claimed effects. Such models will produce inaccurate predictions unless they include all the energy mechanisms (radiation, convection, conduction, molecular collision) and mass transfer effects (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, phase-change, storms, etc.) involved in the climate system.

At crucial points this report mischaracterises the science and lacks proper scientific understanding. It should be withdrawn until verified by independent scrutiny.

Dr Geoff Duffy FRSNZ, DEng, PhD, BSc, ASTC Dip., FRSNZ, FIChemE, CEng is Professor Emeritus – Chemical Engineering, University of Auckland

Stuff reports:

A Government select committee will look into Wellington’s troubled new bus network, which the Green Party has called an “omnishambles”.

The transport and Infrastructure committee will open a briefing in the next couple of weeks, requesting “key players” to explain what is going wrong.

The Greens, who called for the briefing, said it was important the committee understood what the problems were and what was being done to fix them.

“Frankly, it’s an omnishambles, and it’s no surprise there’s been a huge public outcry,” a spokesman said.

Yes it is an omnishambles. So let’s look at who is on Wellington Regional Council with political affiliations?

1. Penny Gaylor – sought Labour nomination for Kapiti
2. Ken Laban, Labour affiliated, brother of former Labour MP
3. Paul Swain, former Labour MP
4. Sue Kedgley, former Green MP
5. Chris Laidlaw, former Labour MP
6. Daran Ponter, Labour candidate

That’s six out of 13.

Tracy Watkins writes:

The criticism of Ardern’s government has started to look like a pile-on as it reels from one blow to the next – the war with business, one minister gone, a second minister under a huge cloud, the Abby Hartley controversy, and an emboldened NZ First looking like it’s running rings around Labour and Ardern.

Even the entirely predictable admonishment of a back bench MP,  Greg O’Connor, for publicly criticising her handling of the Clare Curran affair turned into a bizarre headline about Ardern bullying her MPs.

All Governments have bad patches and that is what Labour has been consoling itself with as the relentless pressure on its ministers and Ardern shows no sign of abating.

But whether it’s a sign of the modern media and the plethora of commentary and opinion these days, or whether it’s a sign that things really are that shambolic at Labour HQ, the pressure being heaped on Ardern to make things right seems to be immense.

What is interesting is none of these mismanaged issues are particularly hard ones. Imagine a real crisis such as the GFC or the Canterbury earthquakes.

But something has changed since then and there is a growing perception that Peters is at the very least reining Labour in, or at worst, ruling the roost.

Ardern needs to push back before that perception becomes entrenched.  

How? She can’t sack Winston but he can sack her.

Newshub reports:

The head of Greenpeace says oil companies are as big an enemy today of the environmental group as the French government was when it sunk the Rainbow Warrior.

Russell Norman fears oil companies are capable of going just as far. …

Mr Norman says the oil and gas exploration companies are today’s enemies, and could go just as far.

“When you look at the history of the campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific and the steps the French government was willing to go to stop Greenpeace and others winning that battle, it gives you a sense of what the oil companies are capable of as well,” he says.

That is a disgusting smear.

Norman is saying oil companies are capable of murder, of planting bombs on boats.

Is there no depth Greenpeace won’t stoop to?

The Prime Minister’s partner Clarke Gayford rushes to her defence after she cancels her interview on @NewshubNationNZ for the 3rd time this year. Says the interviews weren’t in her diary when we were told by her office they were. I’m terribly confused by this govt atm. https://t.co/s3OIQaT1xk

— Tova O’Brien (@TovaOBrien) September 15, 2018

Tim Watkin (formerly producer of The Nation, not with Radio NZ) tweeted that it was good of Simon Bridges to front on The Nation after Jacinda Ardern wouldn’t.

Clarke Gayford responded saying:

Tim this is incorrect. The interviews were never in her dairy it was a genuine misscomunication. She’s doing a stand up tomorrow she did media yesterday. To infer she’s avoiding anyone is wrong.

Newshub Political Editor Tova O’Brien responded pointing out:

Says the interviews weren’t in her diary when we were told by her office they were.

This is of course very unhelpful for the Government.

You have the PMs partner saying one thing, and the PMs office saying another. So whom do media believe?

I can understand Clarke wanting to defend his partner. Its a natural instinct. But she is the Prime Minister of NZ. She has shown herself to be a very good communicator. She also has a staff of 30 including several press secretaries. What makes anyone think she can’t defend herself?

Family members of politicians are generally off limits for very good reasons. But if you enter the political game yourself, then you become fair game.

As for the wider issue, some people seem to conflate the difference between a Prime Minister (or Minister) not agreeing to do an interview, and agreeing to do one and then cancelling at the last minute.

No Prime Minister ever agrees to every interview request. It is absolutely normal for a PM to not agree to go on shows such as The Nation and Q+A as often as they are asked.

What is much more unusual is agreeing to go on, and cancelling at the last minute. And it seems Ardern has done this not once, but three times this year to the weekend political TV shows.

This implies there is some sort of systemic problem. Either incompetent scheduling (staff over commit the PM to events) or the PM often changes her mind about the desirability of going on.

And with this particular instance, we still don’t know what is the truth of the situation. Was she double booked? Was it an error and not in her diary as Gayford says? Did she just not have time to prepare so decided not to do it? Or did she not want to do in depth interviews about the CTO fiasco and the Whaitiri investigation?

It’s not a big deal by itself. But it’s sloppy to accept and cancel. And its sloppier to have your partner and your office saying different things to media about why.