The Herald editorial:

Reasonable candour with the public — or “transparency” as she likes to call it — is another of the qualities we should be able to expect from a Prime Minister. At 8am yesterday morning, a few hours before Curran’s resignation was to be announced, Ardern was asked by Newstalk ZB’s Chris Lynch in a recorded interview whether she had considered firing Curran over her recent performances.

“No,” the Prime Minister replied, “because I think she has paid her price”. She went on to say she had high expectations of her ministers, “but I also accept from time to time they will have bad days”.

A few hours later she announced she had accepted Curran’s resignation the previous night.

Curran had offered the resignation and Ardern had accepted it, so strictly speaking her answer to Lynch was not false. She had not fired Curran and was not about to. But she must have known her answer to him was giving a completely false impression.

The statement was designed to mislead. And it was totally unnecessary. Why have the PM go on radio and deceive listeners as opposed to the far better option of announcing the resignation a few hours earlier than you planned.

The Prime Minister’s answer was needlessly misleading. It was a small lapse in the life of this Government so far, as is the loss of a low-ranking minister, but too many such lapses and its life could be short.

It’s not the first time the PM has done this. Remember her insistence that Labour knew they had the numbers to elect Mallard Speaker, and that the deal they did with National on select committee numbers was out of the goodness of their heart. It was blatantly and transparently untrue.

A very astute piece by Steven Joyce:

Low business confidence in New Zealand is definitely a thing. Lots of people are debating how real it is, but surely the important question is what is causing it.

The argument of those seeking to play down business confidence surveys goes something like, “the world is growing strongly, the fiscal parameters are good, monetary policy is good, so businesses need to get over themselves.”

The first point is correct. While there is lots of foreboding going on about bad things that could happen in the world, almost none of it has happened to date, and the world is growing faster than it was predicted to back when New Zealand was expected to be now growing at 3-4%. 

Given we were growing at that rate from late 2014 to mid 2017 when the world was growing much more slowly, all things being equal we should if anything be growing faster now, not more slowly.

The second and third points about fiscal and monetary policy are also mostly correct, but it is the constant focus on them as if they were the whole economic story and sufficient on their own that reveals the true elephant in the room.

Economic policy is in fact a three-legged stool, fiscal policy, monetary policy, and microeconomic policy. You can’t successfully operate an economy, especially a small one like New Zealand, without all three working together.

So what is microeconomic policy?

Microeconomics is everything that operates at the firm level in the economy – all the regulations and policy settings that impact directly on businesses. These are things like employment law, immigration settings, competition law, resource allocation, innovation settings, tax policy and the government’s investment in infrastructure.

It is microeconomics that drives much of firms’ actual operating conditions. Along with interest rates and exchanges rates, it is access to capital, skilled people, resources, markets, the necessary infrastructure and importantly the consistency of those settings, that tell the owners of businesses that it is a good time to invest and grow their business.

If you start playing with those settings in an arbitrary way while ignoring the economic consequences of those changes, then firms will simply stop investing. They’ll either wait until there is more certainty, or not invest at all.

And for the first time in a long time, most firms have negative investment plans.

Politicians as a species are often quite poor at handling microeconomic policy. It’s complicated, and it is prone to populist soundbite decisions that don’t achieve their objectives and have bad economic consequences (think of the oil and gas ban). There are also plenty of strong single interest lobby groups in favour of changes that ignore or play down any negative consequences.

Yet microeconomic policy arguably has a bigger effect in New Zealand than in larger countries. We are a small country far away from the rest of the world. Our businesses are smaller and margins here are much tighter than in the US or Europe, so policy changes that get shrugged off in bigger countries really hurt our nation of small businesses.

Our government is currently rearranging, often negatively, not one or two but nearly every aspect of microeconomic policy. Employment law, resource law, company taxes, innovation settings, immigration settings, the infrastructure plan, it’s all being thrown up in the air at once, and not surprisingly kiwi firms are taking fright.

And the only certainty is that every change is likely to mean increased costs for employers.

The Herald reports:

Auckland Transport has plans costing between $23 million and $35 million to fix a controversial cycleway through Grey Lynn and Westmere that hardly anyone uses.

Preliminary designs for the 3.2km cycleway were unveiled to a community liaison group on Wednesday, described by one participant, Gael Baldock, as “utterly ridiculous” for a few cyclists.

A Herald time-lapse video outside the West Lynn shopping village on Richmond Rd two months ago showed six cyclists using the cycleway between 7am and 8am on a fine weekday. A further two cyclists ignored the cycleway and rode on the street.

Now we should be cautious about data which is just one data point. But if that day was representative, then daily use of the cycleway could be just a dozen or so per day, as 7 am to 8 am would be peak time.

Now $35 million for six cyclists is around $6 million per cyclist.

An almost new beautiful Cabri helicopter costs around $500,000.

Even if there were 70 cyclists a day, it would be cheaper to buy each of the 70 cyclists a helicopter.

I’m all for cycleways that are affordable and get used. But $35 million for a cycleway used by a handful of people is mad.

Stuff reports:

Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has met with the Reserve Bank and asked it to consider rules that would compel this country’s big banks to keep branches in the regions.

Jones raised his concerns about big profits and retreating regional service with Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr in a meeting on Wednesday.

“He’s taken on board my concerns, he has undertaken to go away and do some further work and establish what, if anything, he might be able to within his statutory responsibilities,” Jones said.

“He didn’t boost my hopes but, I have to say, that he gave me a very fair hearing.”

Thank goodness the Governor is independent as he will of course do nothing to implement this.

Bank branches are going the way of post offices. They are closing down because no one uses them. To insist that a bank branch must be kept open for the 1% of New Zealanders who are luddites is ridiculous.

You can do 99% of your banking online now. And for big stuff like mortgages, the banks have their staff come out to your home.

I avoid bank branches like the plague. Only when a client insists on paying by cheque (around once every two years) will I go into a bank branch.

Marty Sharpe writes at Stuff:

There are a few things you get used to when you spend a lot of time in court. First, Māori make up the vast majority of defendants; second, it’s dominated by the same surnames and families coming up year after year; third, alcohol and/or drugs are almost always involved; and four; gang influence, specifically from the Mongrel Mob is insidious.

There is a problem, but if you ask me it’s not the justice system, it’s the system that allows these kids to become victims and consequently offenders.

I agree. The justice system is not perfect and can always be improved. But the real issue is kids growing up abused, illiterate, surrounded by drugs and alcohol. They become criminals in turn and the cycle carries on. Breaking that cycle when they are age 25 is near impossible. Getting them into a safe home at 1 year old might make the difference.

If there was one thing I’d want to impress on anyone who was interested, it’s that prison sentences are not given out lightly. Listening to some commentators and critics, you would think the judiciary was stacked with men and women itching to send defendants to prison.

In fact, judges and others in the justice system are at pains not to send people to jail. Community-based sentences, fines, community work are commonplace. A jail sentence is a rarity and usually only handed down when the argument for a custodial sentence is overwhelmingly persuasive. Often as a means of protecting others.

Judges are actually required by law not to send people to prison, unless there is no suitable alternative taking into account the gravity of their offending and need to protect the community.

John Armstrong writes:

The trip had already met all the requirements to be classified as a public relations disaster even before her Air Force Boeing 757 had cleared the runway in Auckland en route to arguably the South Pacific’s prime economic basket-case.

Stuff reports:

Seven becomes three as New Zealand takes a step towards adding another Great Walk.

The Department of Conservation announced on Thursday that the Queen Charlotte Track, in the Marlborough Sounds, Te Paki Coastal Track, in Northland, and Hump Ridge Track, in Southland, had made it through to the final round.

All great walks.

If you were deciding purely on scenery I’d say you’d go for Queen Charlotte. Amazing views of water and bush. Would also be a real boon for Picton.

Hump Ridge is a loop track which makes it easier for people to do. It is in Fiordland though which already has three great walks.

Don’t know much about Te Paki but if you want geographical balance will be a contender as North Island has so few Great Walks.

The Herald reports:

The stressed prison network has had a Great Escape – a string of innovations allowing inmates and those charged with crimes better access to justice services has seen a huge fall in inmate numbers.

Our prisons now have 1000 fewer inmates than official projections and the prison population – around 10,200 – has fallen by 600 people in the past six months.

The changes haven’t involved keeping out of prison any people who should have been locked up.

Excellent. Everyone wants fewer people in prison, but not if it creates more victims by letting recidivist criminals out early.

Instead, it has seen “embarrassingly simple” wrinkles ironed out of the system which appear to have improved people’s access to justice.

A number of smaller projects had been underway for about 18 months but Corrections minister Kelvin Davis signed off on a permanent programme in January 2018.

So started under National.

The programme of change has been led by Corrections deputy national commissioner Leigh Marsh.

He said he had relied on experience earned on the prison frontline and worked with courts and police staff with similar real-world experience.

Marsh said innovations included trying to understand why so many on electronic bail were “failing and clogging up the system”.

When the process was studied, it was found those arrested with literacy issues were being handed complex forms to fill in that they couldn’t understand.

About 70 per cent of those currently in prison have literacy level considered insufficient for modern life.

Others couldn’t supply phone numbers so addresses could be checked as suitable bail addresses because the number was saved on the phone which was removed after they were arrested.

When prisoners were asked how they intended getting the phone numbers to arrange bail, they had reportedly planned writing letters to family.

Marsh said his reaction was: “This is madness. We can do better than this.”

There were now advisers who were available to talk to those who were freshly remanded to better understand why they had been refused bail – and to help obtain details such as phone numbers.

Great work. If people are eligible for bail, they shouldn’t be in prison because they didn’t fill in a form properly.

A smartphone app had also been developed meaning those on bail had their conditions at hand, would receive reminders of court dates and could ask for exceptions if needed rather than deal with the previous complicated telephone-based system.

What a great idea.

HDPA writes:

This whole episode has done massive damage to this government – the Prime Minister especially.

What’s become obvious today is that our Prime Minister can dance around the truth when she wants to.

This morning on Chris Lynch’s show she did a little bit of that tricky stuff

When asked: “Are you considering cutting ties with her though? Firing her?”, the Prime Minister answered: “Ah no because I think she’s paid her price.”

That was this morning, but she’d already accepted Curran’s resignation last night.

To be fair, she was asked if she would fire Curran. She said no. And that is true, she didn’t fire her, Curran resigned

 But she also said: ”I think she’s paid her price”, which was probably designed to make it sound like Curran’s job was safe.

Probably just to buy time. Just to be able to release the information when it suited her – late on a Friday afternoon when everybody’s started thinking about the weekend already.

So much for Ardern saying her Government was going to be the most open and transparent the country’s ever seen.

Hard to expect your government to do it when you can’t even, right?

It’s also made the Prime Minister look weak.

Duncan Garner agrees:

So, does Jacinda Ardern have the fear factor?

You’ve got to be kidding. She’s very different to those who have gone before. She doesn’t carry their baggage, experience or ego. She’s learning to lead. But others are less kind.

Shambolic and weak is what she is, according to National. Of course they would say that, but this time it’s hard to disagree.

Even Clare Curran got sick of waiting to be sacked and called the PM on Thursday night to pull the plug.

Doesn’t that tell you everything? Curran has been a walking and wounded target for weeks and needed to be put out of her own self-inflicted misery. That the PM couldn’t see that is worrying.

Her lack of decisiveness in dealing with Curran actually made things worse for Curran in the end. It was a lose-lose.

Who is the running the show? Well, the PM is but she defers and delegates and runs things by committee, it seems. She also looks unwilling to target NZ First MPs.

She had her chance to intervene and help gravely ill Kiwi Abby Hartley get home from Bali, she stayed hands-off.

She had her chance to be caring and compassionate but looked cold and agnostic and said Winston this is yours

She had her chance to meet the Nauru refugees, she backed away.

She had her chance to say yes, we’ll take more refugees, but she allowed Winston to win by saying over my dead body. She deferred to him. Why?

Winston won the crime debate too, by keeping the three strikes law.

He’s running the show at 7 per cent. Good bang for their buck for his voters.

It’s pretty obvious Winston has all the power and his Ministers are untouchable by Ardern.

But Jacinda Ardern needs to be more than a figurehead.

She needs to stand for something, or not stand at all.

Stand against low standards and poor performance.

But don’t stand by and be walked all over, because that’s what it looks like for our Prime Minister right now.

She needs to remind Winston her party got 37% and his party only got 7%.

Ardern must take back control. If the country wanted Winston and Shane to run things they would have voted for them. 

But the infamous lads from the North couldn’t win in their own backyard, beaten by two no-name Nats.

We’re being effectively governed by a party 93% didn’t vote for.

The Herald reports:

A British diver who helped in the rescue of the trapped boys from a Thai cave is to sue Elon Musk for branding him a child rapist.

Vernon Unsworth said he was preparing to start legal action against the Tesla billionaire imminently, the Daily Mail reports.

The 63-year-old is considering using Thai courts because they could hand Musk a jail sentence. 

Wow, he must be seriously pissed off. But he has every right to be.

The diver from St Albans in Hertfordshire described Musk’s allegations that he had a child bride and had moved to an area notorious for child sex trafficking as ‘100 per cent untrue’.

“I’ve been told to be very careful because this guy may do anything to make my life difficult,” he said.

Musk had accused Unsworth of being ‘a paedo’ during the rescue of 12 schoolboys from the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex.

Earlier this week he renewed his baseless attack by telling a reporter to stop defending “child rapists” and claimed Unsworth had moved to Thailand for a “child bride who was about 12 years old at the time”.

Unsworth’s girlfriend, Woranan Ratrawiphukkun, 40, yesterday said she was “no child bride”. She met him seven years ago, when she would have been at least 32.

I can’t believe he was stupid enough to repeat the defamation plus add on some false facts. There is a world of difference between a 32 year old and a 12 year old.

This could be a huge amount of damages.

Damien Grant writes:

Our Prime Minister has a nice way with words. The fall in business confidence wasn’t an elephant in the room, she declared recently, but a big neon flashing light with fireworks going off behind it.

Ok. Nice imagery. But then she wheeled in the CEO of Air New Zealand, Christopher Luxon, as the head of a new advisory group to help deal with the flashing lights.

Now, I’m sure Luxon is a fine fellow and, to be sure, if you put me in charge of our national carrier it would need a new bail-out by the time we got to afternoon tea.

But the overlooked pachyderm is still sitting in the corner wondering how on earth Ardern and Robertson think that the head of a billion dollar quasi-monopoly under majority crown ownership in any way represents New Zealand business.

He doesn’t. I heard him speak at a breakfast event recently and nearly choked on my muesli as he waffled on about ‘sustainability’ and ‘culture’.

The entire revenue of my business would be a rounding error in Air New Zealand’s lost luggage department. Sustainability for me is paying the wages this week and knowing I can do so next week. I don’t care about ‘NZ Inc’, ‘bringing New Zealand to the World’ or any of the other nauseating corporate-speak of those who live in gilded cages.

I have staffing issues and shareholder disputes. The photocopier is on the fritz and for some reason the IRD likes to audit me (they probably read these columns). I spend half my life worrying about the fact that I spend too much time worrying and not enough time making sales.

If my business fails I’d be unable to pay my mortgage and we’d have to move. Probably to Kingsland.

There is nothing unique about me. There are about three hundred thousand other small business owners facing the same pressures. Farmers, lawyers, plumbers, mechanics, debt collectors, musicians and PR flunkies all live this twilight existence.

Grant hits the nail on the head here. For most small business owners, it is about can I pay the bills on time. It is about having the business guaranteed by you personally. About standing to lose your house, if your business fails.

Air NZ is a great company, and we need big businesses to do well. Luxon is an excellent CEO.

But Labour shows their fundamental disconnect with the private sector if they think a Council of big business leaders will make small businesses feel better about the future.

As I said in the update to my previous post, the transcript sent to me by the PMs Office was not a transcript. It missed out key words.

The actual e-mail to me said:

Here’s the transcript from the IV with Chris Lynch, Newstalk ZB this morning.

Have you considered cutting ties with Clare Curran? Some would say she’s a liability. Keep him mind that she didn’t put a meeting in the diary and she lost her position in cabinet for it.

Are you considering firing her? No, because I think she’s paid a price. I have huge expectations of my ministers and those in the ministry but I also accept that from time to time they will also have bad days. I have to kind in mind that we do want to make sure that we don’t set the bar so high that you have the situation that if you show a bit of human frailty you lose your job over it.

The actual transcript is:

CL: Have you considered – have you considered as prime minister cutting ties with Clare Curran, because some would suggest she’s becoming a liability to your government.

JA: Keep in mind that she didn’t put a meeting in the diary and she lost her position in cabinet over it.

CL: Are you considering cutting ties with her, though, firing her?

JA: No, because I think she’s paid her price. See, I have huge expectations of my ministers and those in the ministry, but I also accept that from time to time they will also have bad days. So, you know, I have to keep in mind that, you know, that we do want to make sure that we — don’t set the bar so high that you don’t, can’t have, you know, the situation where if you show a bit of human frailty you lose your job over it.

That is a very significant difference. It is an omission that is material and should not have occurred.

I wonder if the faulty transcript was sent to others in the media?

This just shows again that the political management is so lacking. They’ve turned a story about Curran resigning into a story about the PM.

I just can’t comprehend why they didn’t announce the resignation last night or at 7 am this morning. Surely no one would really advise the PM “Hey lets hold off the announcement until midday even though you have a media interview at 8 am and will be asked about this”.

Wayne Mapp made a very astute comment regarding Jacinda Ardern saying the inquiry into Meka Whaitiri will take weeks.

It doesn’t make sense that it will take weeks.

It is not an normal employment dispute, it is about a Ministers conduct. Normal procedures in employment disputes don’t apply here. No lawyers or anything like that.

There is a reasonably well understood procedure that has been applied by successive Prime Ministers. The PM should be able to recall it from her time in PM Clarks office.

I would expect the Chief of Staff of the PM’s office to get Meka in and ask her about what happened. That is about a half hour discussion. I would also expect the Chief of Staff to ask the press sec what happened. Then report to the PM within a day.

The PM would then get Meka in, lay out what she has been told. Meka would either fess up or deny it.

At that point the PM makes a decision, along with her key Ministers (Davis and Robertson). The minister either stays or goes, depending on that decision.

It is about two or three days in total. In short the PM should be able to deal with this issue by the end of this week.

Wayne is spot on about this is how it normally works. Basically the Chief of Staff quickly establishes the facts, and a political judgement is made.

It is very poor judgement to drag it out so long. It just keeps it in the news.

There has been some suggestion that it is a difficult issue because there were no witnesses to the alleged physical altercation.

Either the Minister will agree or disagree that she had a physical altercation. If she disagrees, then she is saying her press secretary is lying and invented it.

Now considering the job of a press secretary is to make their Minister look good, why would a press secretary invent something like this?

If the press secretary had worked for the Minister for a long period of time, you might have reason to doubt them. Sometimes Ministers and staff fall out, and staff then start bad mouthing their Minister. But the press secretary was in their first week on the job. Surely it defies credibility that they would be making this up.

Again all that is need is the PM’s Chief of Staff to talk to both parties, and make a recommendation to the PM.

NB: See final update at the bottom over the incorrect transcript sent by the PMs Office to me.

The Herald reports:

Jacinda Ardern insisted in an interview today that Clare Curran’s job as a minister was safe – despite the Prime Minister accepting the errant MP’s resignation the night before.

The under-fire Curran has quit as a minister, saying the pressure on her had become “intolerable”. She becomes the first casualty in the Ardern administration.

Ardern said in a radio interview with Newstalk ZB’s Chris Lynch recorded at 8am this morning that Curran’s job was safe.

But it has now emerged the errant minister told Ardern last night that she would quit – and Ardern accepted her resignation.

“Clare Curran contacted me last night to confirm her wish to resign as a minister and I accepted that resignation,” Ardern said today.

The Prime Minister told a blatant lie to Chris Lynch. She said Curran’s job was safe despite having accepted Curran’s resignation the night before.

This is a different situation to the more general one where a PM will always say they have confidence in a Minister until they don’t. That doesn’t apply once you have actually received or accepted a resignation.

Ardern knew when she spoke to Lynch, that she would be announcing Curran’s resignation later today. She misled him and listeners by saying Curran’s job was safe.

Not only is it a bad look for the PM to deliberately lie, but it also exposes the poor political management. They should have announced the resignation last night or first thing this morning, before the PM had to do any media.

UPDATE: The PM’s Office have contacted me to say that the Herald story summarised the PMs comments on radio incorrectly. The PM never explicitly said Curran was safe, just that she was not sacking her. I will post the transcript once I have it. So have updated the headline

If correct it is a deception, not a lie. Still very bad political management to split hairs and say on radio you are not sacking your Minister when you have already accepted their resignation. But not the same as saying they are safe.

Ironically what this confirms is that the PM doesn’t think anything Curran did was sackable and that she still had confidence in her as a Minister, if Curran wanted to continue.

The transcript is:

CL: Have you considered cutting ties with Clare Curran? Some would say she’s a liability.

JA: Keep him mind that she didn’t put a meeting in the diary and she lost her position in cabinet for it.

CL: Are you considering firing her?

JA: No, because I think she’s paid a price. I have huge expectations of my ministers and those in the ministry but I also accept that from time to time they will also have bad days. I have to kind in mind that we do want to make sure that we don’t set the bar so high that you have the situation that if you show a bit of human frailty you lose your job over it.

Again pretty bad judgement to say no I’m not considering firing her, when you have already accepted the resignation. It’s deceptive and misleading, but not a blatant lie.

If the PM really stood by what she said on the radio, she would have refused the resignation.

UPDATE2: I am now going back to my original conclusion. The transcript sent through from the PMs Office missed out key words. I just assumed the transcript was correct.

Below is the transcript sent to me by the PMs Office, and in bold are the words missed out.

Have you considered, have you considered as Prime Minister cutting ties with Clare Curran? because Some would say she’s become a liability to your Government. Keep him in mind that she didn’t put a meeting in the diary and she lost her position in cabinet over for it.

Are you considering cutting ties with her, firing her? No, because I think she’s paid a price. Right. I have huge expectations of my ministers and those in the ministry but I also accept that from time to time they will also have bad days. I have to kind in mind that we do want to make sure that we don’t set the bar so high that you have the situation that if you show a bit of human frailty you lose your job over it.

You can check this out at the audio here.

Now the words left out in the second paragraph change things significantly. Ardern was not simply asked are you firing her. She was also asked are you cutting ties with her. And when you have already accepted their resignation, the only accurate answer is yes.

I am very unhappy that the PMs Office sent me a transcript that was inaccurate. I didn’t verify it. I will be very very generous and assume they didn’t think the editing was significant (I note there were some other minor variations)  but leaving out the second “cutting ties with her” was a critical omission.

Clare Curran has resigned as a Minister just hours after the PM was backing her.

It seems to be a genuine decision on her part, rather than Ardern sacking her. I guess she just decided that she was too politically damaged to be effective in her portfolios.

A tough day for Clare. As I blogged earlier today, she is a good person who is passionate about ICT/Comms and worked hard to make a difference. But her judgement did let her down repeatedly.

Kris Faafoi picks up Broadcasting and ICT which is sensible. Has been a good Minister to date.

However he remains outside Cabinet. I guess they are waiting to see if Whaitiri is sacked before doing a wider reshuffle.

Richard Harman writes at Politik:

In a week which has already seen Winston Peters and New Zealand First go it alone on refugee policy, Peters surprised western diplomats in Wellington yesterday with a low key response to the naming of the Russian agents responsible for poisoning the former KGB agent.

His response did not accuse Russia of the poisoning nor did he make any reference to joining international efforts to take reprisals against the country because of the poisoning.

It stood in marked contrast to a much stronger statement from Canberra.

And once again it raised questions as to why he so frequently appears soft on Russia. …

The issue is about a former KGB agent, Sergey,  and his daughter Yulia, Skripal who were poisoned with a toxic nerve agent, Novichok earlier this year.

More recently another woman died and her partner was hospitalised after contact with the nerve agent.

The incidents happened in the English town of Salisbury.

British Prime Minister Theresa May told the UK House of Commons on Wednesday that a forensic investigation had now produced sufficient evidence for the independent Director of Public Prosecutions to bring charges against two Russian nationals, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov for conspiracy to murder Sergei Skripal and the attempted murder of him and his daughter.

“The Security and Intelligence Agencies have carried out their own investigations into the organisation behind this attack,” said May.

Based on this work, I can today tell the House that, based on a body of intelligence, the Government has concluded that the two individuals named by the police and CPS are officers from the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU.

The GRU is a highly disciplined organisation with a well-established chain of command.

So this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state.

Despite that assertion by May, Peters made only a veiled reference to the role of the Russian state in being responsible for the attack in his statement on the matter issued yesterday morning.

 “Prime Minister May has indicated that the UK authorities have undertaken a careful and systematic inquiry,” he said.

“The UK announced that after a thorough criminal inquiry the independent Crown Prosecution Service has sufficient evidence to bring charges against two Russian nationals.

“We said from the outset of Prime Minister May announcing this investigation that we should wait for it to be completed to draw our conclusions, and we have.”

The rest of the statement reiterated New Zealand’s support for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons.

This contrasted with Australia’s response which came in a joint statement from Prime Minister, Scott Morrison and Foreign Affairs Minister, Marise Payne.

They said that the (British) investigation had found that two Russian military intelligence officers were responsible for this attack.

“The investigation also concluded that the Russian leadership authorised the attack,” they said.

“The results of the UK Police investigation confirm Russia’s culpability for this heinous attack, in clear and direct violation of international law.

“Australia shares the UK’s anger and outrage at this dangerous and deliberate act by Russia, which also puts at risk the British public, police and other first responders.

“We are in lock step with the UK on the importance of holding Russia to account and reaffirm our support for calls on Russia to fully disclose the extent of its chemical weapons programme.

“The Australian Government is in close consultation with the UK Government and other partners. We are committed to acting with our allies and partners to deter further Russian violations of international security.”

POLITIK understands that the British noticed the difference between the Australian and New Zealand statements and were, to quote one source, “pissed” at Peters’ response.

This is part of a long standing pattern where Peters defends Russia, or minimises what they do.

France, Canada, the US and Germany have all strongly backed the UK conclusion. They did a joint statement saying:

Their statement said they had full confidence in Britain’s assessment that the two suspects were members of Russia’s GRU, and agreed that their operation was “almost certainly” approved at a senior level of the Russian government.

These are the words Winston can’t bring himself to say. That the poisoning was almost certainly approved by the Russian Government.

So Donald Trump takes a much harder line on Russia, than Winston does.

The question one has to ask is why?

And I’m not the only one wondering what the answer is. I’m sure the UK Government is, as well as many others.

The Herald reports:

When Penny Bright rang to say she had been dying and might yet continue to do so, her voice was weak and she struggled at times.

“David Bloody Fisher,” she said, her usual greeting, but it was faint. Her Warship – as she likes to call herself – usually bellowed down the phone.

She was about to turn 64. The day of her birthday was the day she was supposed to die, according to doctors when she turned up at Auckland City Hospital on August 31.

As if Penny Bright ever listened to anyone with authority.

But here was Penny fighting a battle that everyone loses eventually and she knew it.
“I’ve never felt less energy or more tired in all my life,” she says.

But who’s going to do our democracy now, I asked her. For years I had watched with bafflement and some wonder at Penny’s determined fight against infringements on citizens’ rights.

Penny is delightfully mad. I will miss her.

She has been a long-time commenter on Kiwiblog. She has made over 6,000 comments from 2010 to August 2018. Always fought her corner and stayed calm, even when others yelled at her to pay her rates.

One can disagree with her tactics, but still welcome her unrelenting focus on fighting for better transparency at Auckland Council.

Her political battles have been her life, and as they both come to an end, may she go well into the night.

The Herald further reports:

Former Auckland City Mayor John Banks has expressed his admiration for activist Penny Bright, who is gravely ill in Auckland Hospital.

Banks told Herald he is thinking only kindly of Bright at this time and very sad to learn she is so unwell. …

Banks said he had no animosity towards Bright, but “admiration for her braveness in her stand for the matters she cared deeply about”.

“It will never be said she didn’t keep us on our toes and made us have second thoughts about the things she stood for and stood against. With all her many crusades she never left us in any doubt,” said Banks.

Nicely said John.

Newshub reports:

Clare Curran has no credibility left as an MP and the Prime Minister should take appropriate action, says The AM Show host Duncan Garner.  …

“What more does the Prime Minister need to sack embattled, flustered minister Clare Curran?” Garner said. 

“What are you trying to hide Clare? Who knows?”

“Curran no longer passes the test as a minister, does she? Her credibility, crucially, has gone. She can’t be trusted and she’s a liability for the Government,” said Garner, before labelling Ms Curran a “walking wounded target”. 

As Duncan says, a test of leadership.

And in another Newshub story:

Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien says it was a “catastrophic” performance from the Minister, who has already been stripped of two portfolios and removed from Cabinetafter failing to record private meetings.

“Clare Curran stumbled and fumbled over questions she couldn’t answer, simple questions she couldn’t understand,” O’Brien told The AM Show.

“She had to have them repeated for her. At one point the Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard had to swoop in and rescue her and buy her time so she could catch her breath.”

He later had to force her to answer a question, which she again stumbled over. O’Brien says her response was an “appalling display” from an MP.

She says Ms Curran’s continued role in Government after her many scandals isn’t a good look for Labour.

“This is a woman who was the Minister for Open Government and she got busted twice having secret meetings with people. She’s still the Minister of Communications and she can’t even communicate simple answers to the Parliament about her communications.

Again it’s the PMs call.

Has been made worse by the fact the embattled Minister skipped question time on Thursday, which aggravated the press gallery.

I actually feel sorry for Clare Curran. Having a shocker day in the House is hard on you, and does knock the confidence. And I worked quite a bit with Clare when she was in opposition. She did take a genuine interest in the ICT portfolio, worked hard to get on top of the issues, and is passionate about the importance of the sector. I’ve always found her well intentioned, nice on a personal level, and it must be horrible going through all this.

But Parliament is a tough environment and Labour never held back when a National MP was in trouble. As someone pointed out on Twitter, Labour tried to crucify Todd Barclay (also a really nice guy) for a stupid mistake, and even get him arrested.

A senior Trump administration official (which means someone personally appointed by Trump) has written an op-ed confirming how bad things are. They write:

Newshub reports:

The Prime Minister appears to have caved into Winston Peters over the Government’s pledge to increase the refugee quota – putting the plan to take an extra 500 every year in jeopardy.

That’s despite the government already funding two new accommodation blocks to house them.

Ms Ardern arrived in Nauru to an environment of confusion over her Government’s refugee policy, courtesy of Winston Peters.

“We’ve always been very clear that the things that both NZ First party, Greens and Labour have formed commitment around sit within the confidence and supply agreement, the Coalition agreement, everything else – we go through a process of elimination,” Ardern told reporters.

Since being elected, the Immigration Minister has consistently said he’ll raise the quota in this term of Government.

The Government even made a cash commitment to the quota, spending $14 million in this year’s budget to support two new accommodation blocks at the Mangere Refugee Centre to support the increase in the refugee quota to 1500 a year.

But on Monday, Mr Peters turned that on its head.

“We never made a commitment to double the refugee quota,” he said.  

The Prime Minister appears to have caved to Winston Peters, throwing her immigration minister Iain Lees Galloway under the bus.

“He’s always expressed a personal commitment to increasing the refugee quota, and that’s something that was a Labour policy – but we’re in a coalition government, everything sits outside those agreements. We use Cabinet process for that,” Ms Ardern said.

So Mickey Mouse. The Minister announces it. The Budget provides funding for it. But then Winston says he’s against it, and the PM gives in to him.

When Labour and NZ First signed their coalition agreement, it was reported that the understanding was that NZ First would support the pre-election Labour manifesto or policy programme, unless the coalition agreement said otherwise.

Alex Tarrant (now a senior press secretary to Grant Robertson) wrote in October 2017:

Interest.co.nz was told that, if there was no mention of a Labour Party election policy in either document (ie that it would or wouldn’t go ahead), then the inference is that the policy would go ahead.

This makes sense. Labour is the party that got 37% and NZ First got 7%. You expect the major party to get to implement its policy programme, except where you have negotiated a different outcome in the coalition agreement.

Winston has upended this. He has now said that Labour can’t implement any of their policies, if he disagrees with them. This means that no Minister can speak for the Government, unless Winston has pre-approved it.

This is a different case to Three Strikes. Labour did not have clear pre-election policy to repeal Three Strikes. So there was no expectation that NZ First would support it.

But increasing the refugee quota was a very clear policy by Labour. NZ First didn’t seek a change in the coalition agreement. Labour quite rightly assumed they had a mandate to implement it. They even provided funding for the extra accommodation. But Winston has now changed the rules of the game, and Ardern is too weak to play his bluff.

A guest post by David Garrett:

A week or so ago  a fellow sufferer of long term mental illness made the papers. Due to her personal circumstances – amplified as is always the case by her illness – she was suicidal and sought help at an Emergency Department. She was “assessed” – if one can call her apparently cursory examination an assessment – by a nurse who apparently had little or no experience dealing with the mentally ill. This nurse decided the woman  did not warrant hospitalization, and sent the her away. I only hope that the lack of follow up to the initial story means she is still with us.

Suicide, particularly by those with mental health problems, is a massive problem in this country. In 2015, apparently the most recent year for which  figures are available, 527 people took their own lives in New Zealand. That same year, 319 people lost their lives on the roads. In other words, our suicide rate is getting close to twice the rate of road deaths.  But while we hear constantly about “road carnage”, and individual tragic  crashes lead the news, by comparison very little is heard about suicides, until a prominent person like Greg Boyed dies, apparently by his own hand. In my view, this is a national tragedy, and one that cries out for government attention.

And suicide arguably affects far more people than road deaths. I read this morning of a young woman whose father killed himself six years ago. She now suffers from depression and anxiety, and is plagued by suicidal thoughts herself. This is very common – the children of suicides are three or four times more  likely to also end their lives this way. Put another way, while roads deaths are a tragedy leaving pain and loss in their wake, suicide can be seen as  a form of intergenerational mental illness in which one tragic death frequently leads to others among those in the next generation who are left behind.

In my own situation, things were pretty well controlled for 30 years by successively better anti-depressant drugs. I was able to keep my malady from all but my family and very close friends. That changed dramatically in September 2010, and since that time, I have contemplated ending my life a number of times. It has never gone any further than contemplation, in large part because of my awareness of the probable effects of my actions on my much loved children. They already have a hefty  dose of Garrett genes – that is more than enough for anyone to cope with.

I am lucky – I have never had to put myself in the hands of an unqualified ED nurse. I have a number of people I can call upon who would drop things at a moment’s notice and come to my aid and give comfort if I asked them. But I have certainly felt the very same distress as the young woman I read about.

If this government really wanted to make a difference, instead of setting themselves the ludicrous goal of freeing 30% of  prisoners – all of whom absolutely deserve to be in jail –   they could aim to reduce deaths by suicide by 30% over the  same 15 year  time period. They wouldn’t even need to set up yet another working group. Mental health professionals would  tell them that there aren’t enough acute mental health beds, there aren’t enough trained psychiatric nurses, and there aren’t enough psychiatrists. There is both the problem and the solution,  without spending a dollar on consultants.

Yes, reducing suicides by 30% would be expensive, probably very expensive.  New buildings and trained staff cost money. Hiring trained psychiatrists from overseas would not be easy or cheap. Neither would persuading  medical students now in training, or GP’s at the beginning of their careers to train as psychiatrists. But in terms of public benefit, and “bang for buck” of taxpayers’ money, the return on investment in more people and more beds in the mental health system would be massively better than releasing dangerous prisoners into the community in the pursuit of an ideologically driven fantasy. A fantasy  that would put 30% of prisoners back in the community, where they can create more victims.

Rather than eventually being known as the government that caused a  huge  jump in criminal victimizations, it could become the government that faced up to a massive public health problem that has only got worse since the ill fated drive to close institutions and put the mentally ill into largely non-existent  “community care” began in the early 1990’s. The First Labour Government introduced a health system in which everyone, regardless of their income or station in life, was entitled to free hospital treatment. For all its creaks and strains, that system is now accepted as being part of our birthright by all political parties right across the spectrum.

The Sixth Labour Government could become as notable as the first, by recognizing the massive unmet need for mental health facilities and  treatment  in this country, and for beginning  to fix it. Unlike many of their other schemes – most notably the aim to reduce the prison population – putting money and resources into mental health is guaranteed to  have a huge and measurable  positive benefit, both  for those presently suffering mental illness and for  their children.