Asa Bennett writes in The Telegraph:

Philip Hammond relied on analysis drawn up by Treasury officials in warning of “large fiscal consequences” for Britain of leaving the EU without a deal. Their analysis, he said, indicated that Britain would take a 7.7 per cent hit to GDP over the next 15 years if it were to leave under such circumstances.

The Chancellor’s sombre assessment brought a stinging response from Eurosceptics, with Jacob Rees-Mogg lamenting: “As a dog returneth to its vomit, so a fool returneth to its folly. The Treasury is desperate to stop Brexit. Everything [it] does has to be read in this light.”

Despite his faith in what officials are saying, Mr Hammond has previously said that “forecasts are there to be broken”. But a look at what the Treasury previously forecast about Brexit, which Eurosceptics saw as “Project Fear”, suggests he should not forget that.

So let’s look at the Brexit predictions:

Fear: Recession by Christmas 2016

The Treasury envisaged that merely voting to leave the EU would cause an immediate “shock”, that would see the economy “fall into recession with four quarters of negative growth”.

“Does Britain really want this DIY recession?” said George Osborne, the chancellor at the time. “Because that’s what the evidence shows we’ll get if we vote to leave the EU.”

Reality: The United Kingdom has not had a single quarter of negative growth after the referendum, with no recession materialising.

So no recession.

Fear: Tens of billions in extra borrowing

The Treasury expected that ministers would have to borrow tens of billions of pounds further amid the economic shock after a Leave vote. It estimated the bill after a year would be around £24 billion, or as high as £39 billion.

Reality: The battle against the budget deficit is almost over, with the latest official figures showing government borrowing has fallen to its lowest level in 16 years. Last month was the biggest surplus for any July since 2000 as receipts outstripped spending by £2 billion.

Books are finally back in surplus.

Fear: Lower productivity

The Treasury used what it called “many cautious assumptions” to warn of “lower future productivity” after a vote to leave.

Reality: Official figures confirm that output per hour worked is higher than where it was at the time of the referendum, with the last update from the Office for National Statistics revealing that it had grown by 0.9 per cent compared with the three months before. This marked its first rise since late 2016 and the biggest increase since the second quarter of 2011.

Productivity up.

Fear: House prices falling by nearly a fifth

Mr Osborne was blunt during the referendum about what would happen to property prices in the two years after the referendum: “The country and the people in the country are going to be poorer. That affects the value of people’s homes and the Treasury analysis shows that there would be a hit to the value of people’s homes by at least 10 per cent and up to 18 per cent.”

Reality: The average UK house price has risen over the last two years, the Office for National Statistics has confirmed, with it now at £228,384. That represents a rise of around 7 per cent.

No housing market crash.

Fear: At least half a million more people out of work

The Treasury thought “unemployment would increase by around 500,000” after a Brexit vote. This was a conservative estimate, as officials thought the number could be as high as 820,000. The unemployment rate would increase by as much as 2.4 per cent.

Reality: The number of people out of work has fallen markedly since the referendum, from around 1.63 million to 1.36 million. Such a low level has not been seen in over 40 years. The unemployment rate fell over the same period from 4.9 to 4 per cent.

This is probably the biggest fear reversal. A 40 year low for unemployment.

Stuff reports:

Small businesses have little faith in the Government’s new Business Advisory Council as it tries to win the confidence of business.

Bryn Thompson of  Metalcraft Engineering runs a metal fabrication company employing 24 staff in Christchurch.

He said the new business council would do “zero” for business confidence.

What businesses want is some certainty over the policy and legal environment they will have to operate under. Another working group isn’t what they need.

A Whangarei booking keeping business owner Di Crawford-Errington said the business council announcement did little to bolster her confidence.

“In my industry compliance costs have been going through the roof, with new regulations around money laundering. It feels like we’re bombarded by extra regulation and that can really knock your confidence down,” Crawford-Errington said.

Every new regulation is an extra cost on business.

David Spieghalter from the Winton Centre writes:

A recent paper published by the Lancet demonstrating the global impact of alcohol consumption was a huge exercise from the Gates Foundation-funded Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle. They built a large and complex statistical model from a vast range of data sources, and conclude that while moderate alcohol consumption may be preventive for some conditions such as ischaemic heart disease and diabetes, when combined with increasing risk of cancers and other outcomes there is a steadily increasing harm from alcohol consumption, as shown in Figure 5 from the paper reproduced below. This leads them to argue that there is ‘no safe level’ of alcohol.

Which contrasts with the bulk of scientific evidence to date that moderate drinkers have better health outcomes than non drinkers.

But in spite of the Lancet’s own guidelines for meta-analyses saying

“For risk changes or effect sizes, give absolute values rather than relative changes”

the paper did not report any absolute risks, meaning that readers couldn’t tell how dangerous drinking alcohol really was for them. 

Almost everything we do has some risk or danger – working, skiing, drinking, chocolate etc. The important thing is how big is the risk. Smoking is a huge risk, chocolate less so.

Specifically, comparing no drinks with one drink a day the risk of developing one of the 23 alcohol-related health problems was 0.5% higher — meaning 914 in 100,000 15–95 year olds would develop a condition in one year if they did not drink, but 918 people in 100,000 who drank one alcoholic drink a day would develop an alcohol-related health problem in a year. 

So the increase in risk is four people in every 100,000 will develop an alcohol related health problem if they have a drink a day.

I’d have a drink to those odds.

Let’s consider one drink a day (10g, 1.25 UK units) compared to none, for which the authors estimated an extra 4 (918–914) in 100,000 people would experience a (serious) alcohol-related condition.

That means, to experience one extra problem, 25,000 people need to drink 10g alcohol a day for a year, that’s 3,650g a year each.

To put this in perspective, a standard 70cl bottle of gin contains 224 g of alcohol, so 3,650g a year is equivalent to around 16 bottles of gin per person. That’s a total of 400,000 bottles of gin among 25,000 people, being associated with one extra health problem. Which indicates a rather low level of harm in these occasional drinkers.

A nice fact check.

Next look at 2 drinks a day, that’s 20g, or 2.5 units, slightly above the current UK guidelines of 14 units a week for both men and women.

In this case, compared to non-drinkers an extra 63 (977–914) in 100,000 people experience a health problem each year. That means, to experience one extra problem, 1,600 people need to drink 20g alcohol a day for a year, in which case we would expect 16 instead of 15 problems between them. That’s 7.3 kg a year each, equivalent to around 32 bottles of gin per person. So a total of 50,000 bottles of gin among these 1,600 people is associated with one extra health problem. Which still indicates a very low level of harm in drinkers drinking just more than the UK guidelines.

This analysis supports the current UK guidelines as being low-risk, but perhaps would better be described as ‘very low-risk’.

So the current guidelines are pretty good.

The paper argues that their conclusions should lead public health bodies “to consider recommendations for abstention”.

But claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention. There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving.

Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.

Presumably people who choose to drink alcohol moderately get some pleasure from it, and any risk needs to be traded off against this enjoyment.

Exactly.

A reader has compared Sunday TV’s full interview with Stephan Molyneux and Lauren Southern with what they edited to screen. In bold is what screened.

SM Stephan Molyneux

LS Lauren Southern

Video of full interview is here https://youtu.be/DzZyKsLj4ao

Interviewer   Stephan the science around the claims that race is linked to IQ is something that you have promoted

SM  No no this is not accurate

Interviewer   Explain?

SM  This is not something  I have promoted. This is not my research. I have had a wide variety of experts on the show who have talked about the fact that IQ ‘s do differentiate between the races. So it is not my perspective or my belief or something I have promoted. This is a bit of like don’t shoot the messenger. It is very well understood.

Interviewer  You have provided a platform by talking to those people

SM  Yes of course becauseI think that facts are very important when it comes to talking about things like ethnicity. And so this is very well understood, very well studied and is one of the most certain things in the field of phycology and the field of neurology and neuro biology. This is one of the most certain things in the field

And it t is tragic to me that the really essential information that helps clarify and inform our discussion about races, it is not the be all and end all and you never judge individuals by aggregate characteristics, but we need to talk about this because otherwise the only explanation to different outcomes of races is to blame white racism and that’s racist because there are lots of other explanations that can help more deeply inform our discussion about these issues.

Interviewer Isn’t it the case that it is undisputed, it is disputed that race is connected to IQ. I mean the person that came up with IQ testing accepted that environmental factors played a huge role

SM I have never denied environmental factors. The latest research I have, and I had the editor of the magazine called Intelligence on the show and he said at about the age of 18 years IQ is about 80% genetic. There are environmental factors and I have promoted this throughout my show, peaceful parenting, breast feeding, don’t yell at your kids, reason with your children, give them great language skills, education can be very important. Whether or not that is going to fundamentally change your IQ remains a pretty dicey question but it helps people use in essence what they have to their best advantage.

Interviewer  Have you had people on your show to dispute the science

SM  Yes absolutely  in fact one of them is a NZer. Dr James Flynn, I had him on for an hour and he talks about some of this stuff and Dr Eric Turkheimer  came in, he talked about the environmental issues, so yes I have tried to have a very robust debate on the show regarding this. I hope, you know my hope is that it is as much environmental as possible because otherwise we have much more limited a tool set to work with but these are questions we need to talk about.

Interviewer Lauren where do you stand on that?

Lauren Southern gave her views generally in support of Stephan and concludes saying

LS I am not an expert on this so I have not delved in to this but the fact that there is such a big suppression of this conversation is very very scary

Interviewer It isn’t suppressed though because it is on the internet

LS Its absolutely suppressed

SM If there wasn’t an internet there would be far less discussion and if you look at the controversy in 94  that came out with ….  Murray’s The Bell Curve. He was viciously attacked. The information has been repeatedly attacked. Anybody who talks about this gets the inevitable label of racist

Interviewer  maybe that’s because the majority of science doesn’t support it

SM  The majority of science does not support what?

Interviewer What you are talking about that race is connected to IQ

 LS Do you have evidence for this?

SM The majority of science does support it.

Interviewer  Well I am just suggesting why maybe it subconscious……

SM  Well lets just say…., I don’t believe what you say is correct, I have cast my net pretty wide getting people on and on this there is fairly unanimous agreement, but let’s say you are absolutely correct that there is this big controversy then we should have a very robust debate about it and not suppress the  information 

You get a very different impression from the full transcript.

Stuff reports:

National is calling on the Government to bar ex-US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning from visiting the country next month.

Former Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse said the “convicted felon” should not be allowed to earn money talking about her crimes, and it would “not enhance” New Zealand’s relationship with the US. …

Woodhouse said if an application from Manning had landed on his desk while he was Immigration Minister, he would have denied it, and called on the Government to do the same.

“This is a convicted felon, sentenced to 35 years in jail, coming in here for money,” Woodhouse said.

“She is wanting to be hailed as a hero for stealing military secrets and state secrets. She was convicted of very serious crimes. …

Green Party foreign affairs spokeswoman Golriz Ghahraman said Manning should definitely be let into New Zealand.

“She got her criminal convictions for acts that were in fact in the public interest. She doesn’t pose a risk for New Zealand in relation to anything that dates back to those convictions…It’s not like she was a drug or sex offender,” Ghahraman said.

I’m actually agreeing with Ghahraman on this one.

I dislike what Manning did and think it was right she went to jail. But she is now free, and if people in NZ want to hear what she has to say then they should be able to.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has sought to ease concerns about a new type of collective bargaining, saying there will be “no more than one or two” fair pay agreements in the current electoral term.

If anyone thinks this is a concession, they’re falling for spin.

The working group is to report back by December 2018.

There would then be consultation on their report, taking you through to say March 2019. Then draft a law which takes you to say June 2019.

A law takes around nine months to get through Parliament which takes you to March 2020 – just a few months before the next election.

So when the PM says there will be only one or two in the current electoral term, this is not a concession or reassurance. It is merely recognition that there won’t be time for more.

But then how many in the second term? Will any industry be exempt? Of course not.

The Government is consulting on changes to residential tenancies, specifically these six changes:

substituting the ability for landlords to terminate tenancies for any reason with specific and justifiable criteria for ending a tenancy

This change means that property owners may effectively lose control of their property. Once you have a tenant in, you may never be able to get rid of them without going to the Tenancy Tribunal and spending heaps on lawyers fees.

setting the amount of notice a landlord needs to give to terminate a tenancy to 90 days under all circumstances

90 days seems reasonable to me. But tenants only have to give 21 days. Is this fair?

limiting rent increases to once a year

That is worthwhile. There is no reason in times of low inflation for rents to be increasing more often.

better equipping tenants and landlords to reach agreement about pets and minor alterations to the home

Seems to be about mainly saying landlords must give a reason why a pet is not allowed.

The Herald reports:

RNZ revealed at 6 am on Friday that the text had been sent the week before, Bridges had a standup at about 9.30 am and revealed he had referred the text to the police, Ardern made her comments about the National Party at about 10 am, Mallard spoke to Simon Bridges at 11.30 am, Mallard spoke to the Prime Minister at 11.45 am, and he issued his statement cancelling the inquiry about 12.45 pm.

Why did Trevor Mallard even talk to the Prime Minister about the inquiry? It has nothing to do with her. It is an inquiry into the leaking of parliamentary information against the leader of the opposition.

Brownlee did not believe there would resistance among the caucus to National conducting its own investigation about the leak with a forensic specialist.

“Most MPs are pretty incensed that the Speaker has gone out and effectively pointed the finger at our caucus and made a couple of pretty serious accusations – one of extreme disloyalty and another of a problematic mental illness.”

Unless the Speaker knows for sure who the leaker is, why has he concluded it is someone within National?

Stuff reports:

It is now an “open secret” that entrepreneur Derek Handley was about to be announced as the country’s first chief technology officer last week.

After his secret meeting with the Minister which was hidden from staff and officials, and not even disclosed to written parliamentary questions.

It may be unfair to Handley, but appointing him after that will be a very very bad look for the Government.

As CTO, Handley would have a potentially highly influential role in charting a digital future for the country which could touch on a wide range of government initiatives.

Creating the role – which comes with a salary of up to $400,000 and a $100,000 travel budget – was the flagship of Labour’s ICT policy before the election.

But it is one that is still vaguely defined and there are different views as to what the job should be or whether it should even exist.

$400,000 for a vaguely defined job, that you get after a secret meeting with the Minister.

Stuff reports:

Bureaucrats faced the wrath of some Wellington bus users at a meeting to discuss the city’s new, and problematic, bus network.

About 300 people were at the public meeting of the city’s southern and eastern suburbs on Sunday afternoon, at which officials were jeered at and abused by frustrated bus users. 

The new bus system has caused an outcry from those using it since it was implemented in July; driver shortages, a lack of route knowledge, no-show ‘ghost buses, overcrowding, IT malfunctions, and poorly planned timetables have seen the overhaul labelled a disaster.

The bus system before the “upgrade” was actually pretty good. Wellington has always been a public transport friendly city (as it is so compact). The WRC has managed to take a good system and turn it into a disaster.

GWRC chairman Chris Laidlaw and public transport general manager Wayne Hastie faced heckling from the crowd as they tried to state their case. Perhaps one of the biggest jeers of the afternoon came when Hastie suggested the service had improved overall during the past week.

But Laidlaw took the brunt of criticism. He was jeered at, shut down and abused as he addressed a number of issues.

Good on him for facing up, but elections next year could be pretty ugly for incumbents.

Former IT boss and Miramar bus user Joe Stewart told the officals the new network was a disaster and slammed GWRC’s excuses over malfunctions with its new computer system.

“If you’re putting in a new computer system there’s this great concept called testing,” Stewart said to loud applause. 

Not a new concept either.

Stuff reports:

The Department of Corrections has set up a paedophile village – outside the wire and a short walk from multiple schools – at Rimutaka Prison.

While the move has shocked a nearby parent who only found out after it was a done deal, a prison expert says Corrections is dealing with the tricky situation of housing child-sex offenders in the most-realistic way. 

Mike Williams, head of penal reform organisation the Howard League, said prisoners had to be released eventually under supervision and nobody wanted them to move into their community so housing them on prison land was a solid compromise.

Sounds pretty sensible to me. A sort of halfway house.

So is it really “near schools and childcare centres” as the headline claims?

The prison grounds are 1.5 kilometres from Hutt International Boys’ School, 1.8km from St Brendan’s School, and Silverstream School is 2.8km away.

That is not near a school. I suspect there is no location in urban New Zealand that is not within 1.5 kms of a school. We have 2,500 schools in NZ.

As an example, there are 64 schools in Wellington City. Let’s assume they are equally spaced out. If each school has a circle around it with a 1.5 km radius then each schools takes up 7 square kms. 64 schools would take up 448 square kms.

The urban area of Wellington City is 442 square kms.

Being within 1.5 km of a school is not close to a school. That is fear mongering. Being 100 metres from a school is close. Being 1.5 km from a school just means you live in a city.

Local mother Gina Roberts on Thursday received an email from her daughter’s school and was immediately concerned as there were four schools or early childcare centres within 4km of the site. 

If you say nothing can be within 4 km of a school or early chilldhood centre you are saying nothing can be within 50 square kms of a school or early child centre.

There are 8,000 schools and ECEs in NZ. So the exclusion zone for them would need to be 400,000 square kms. The total area of NZ is 268,000 square kms.

So this really is hysterical nonsense.

The Herald reports:

Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis has spoken in favour of prisoners having the right to vote, saying it is an important part of reducing reoffending.

Interesting that Labour is campaigning to give Clayton Weatherston the vote.

If there was evidence that allowing prisoners to vote reduces reoffending, I’d be interested to see it.

Is there any such evidence?

What happened to the reoffending rate of prisoners sentenced to less than three years jail after they lost the vote around 2011? Does Kelvin have data showing that their reoffending rate has increased since then.

BBC reports:

A windfall tax could be levied on tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook to pay for public interest journalism, Jeremy Corbyn is to say.

Tax every Internet user in the UK to fund left wing journalism. Yay.

There are a series of proposals for the BBC, including publishing the social class of “all creators of BBC content, whether in-house or external”.

So class obsessed.

As all will have heard by now, John McCain has died of brain cancer aged 81.

I think nothing reflects his character more than his decision during captivity in the Vietnam War. He had been tortured on multiple occasions and was offered early repatriation once they realised his father was a senior Admiral. He refused to be released until everyone who had arrived before him was also released. There is a great article detailing what happened to him here.

He had two chances of becoming President but lost the Republican nomination in 2000 to George W Bush and the general election in 2008 to Barack Obama.

We will never know, but I think he would have been a better President than both Bush and Obama. I think he would have pursued a more successful path in the Middle East than Bush.

It speaks volumes to his characters that his two opponents will be the main speakers at his funeral.

He was a good friend of New Zealand and one of the most reliable pro-free trade voices in the Senate. Off memory he once said his ideal free trade agreement would be a single piece of paper saying “You can sell us anything and we can sell you anything”.

The US Senate will seem empty without John McCain. He has been a Senator for over 30 years and would easily be the most well known Republican Senator of his generation.

Tracy Watkins writes:

Unfinished business can be toxic in politics. Which is why Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern should have ripped off the plaster and stripped her beleaguered minister Clare Curran of all her portfolios, rather than allow her to limp on with her authority undermined.

Curran already had form for doing the very same thing she was demoted over: failing to be upfront about dealings with people related to her portfolios.

Ardern will keep facing questions about why she failed to cut her loose.

The risk for Ardern is if Curran stuffs up again, the PM will be the one whose judgement will be in doubt.

Speaker Trevor Mallard has also created a vacuum that would only be filled by conspiracy theories and unanswered questions.

Having announced a full-scale inquiry into “limogate” leaking of Opposition leader Simon Bridges’s expenses just this week, he pulled the rug out from under it, creating bad blood between himself and National.

It is a decision seemingly based on an assumption that the texter is telling the truth. I don’t know who the texter and leaker is, but within National there is huge skepticism that the texter is as MP, as they claim. They may well be a National staffer, but the language used in the text (such referring to themselves as a member of caucus rather than just as an MP) just doesn’t sound like an MP. One person who has seen the text told me it sounded like a millennial.

Now they may be wrong. But canning the inquiry based on an assumption the texter is telling the truth was premature by the Speaker.

But having now been informed by police that the person concerned has mental health issues, Bridges has no way of knowing for sure whether that might be one of his MPs, a staff member, or even someone from the Speaker’s office.

An inquiry might have allowed Parliament to find that person and put support around them if necessary. Alternatively, it might have found that the text was a smokescreen.

But we may never know. Worse for Bridges, the finger of suspicion is now pointed at an internal leak, suggesting cracks in National’s unity. Mallard may not have done Labour many favours either. National’s response will be to blow smoke about the Speaker’s motives.

I’d say confidence in the Speaker from National MPs is rock bottom. Worse than when Margaret Wilson was Speaker.

The Herald reports:

Auckland Council is contacting hundreds of churches that received rates bills for the first time, telling them not to pay until councillors have had a chance to discuss the matter.

A review of non-rateable properties by council staff identified 402 churches requiring changes to their rating. This resulted in rates bills, some of them large, going out earlier this month.

The review found a lot of church property was not being used for religious purposes, which is not subject to rates, but instead was being used for business purposes, which is.

After complaints to councillors, it was discovered the finance and performance committee had been briefed on progress of the review, but no political decisions had been taken to approve a new rating policy for churches.

Pastor Rob Markley, of the Birkenhead Baptist Church, was surprised to receive a rates bill for $1080 after the church had previously only received a waste management charge of about $150.

There’s two issues here. The first is communication. Auckland Council should have individually contacted the churches and said we believe this is the correct level of rates, and giving them a chance to respond.

But on the substance churches should pay rates on facilities if they are using them commercially.

I’d go further and say there should be no exemption for facilities used for religious purposes.

I would support there being a lower level of rating for all charities, and churches would qualify as a charity. But why should a church not pay rates, but Red Cross does?

Stuff reports:

Kiwibank’s shareholders could be headed for court, with the Super Fund and ACC filing legal notices to NZ Post over  troubles in the state-owned bank’s IT systems.

The Guardians of NZ Super and ACC and understood to have filed a notice of claim with NZ Post, alleging NZ Post breached its obligations by failing to make available information which would have disclosed risks with a major upgrade of Kiwibank’s core IT systems, known as CoreMod.

By bringing in NZSF and ACC as shareholders, it has meant the company now has obligation disclosures. This is a good thing, as problems can’t be swept under the carpet.

Problems with the Kiwibank IT upgrade have been slowly unfolding, however the scale of the issues were made clearer in September 2017 when it wrote $90m off the value of its investment in the project.

At the time Kiwibank’s then chief executive, Paul Brock, appeared to blame changing customer preferences, as he announced a strategic review of the project.

Blaming the customers is rarely a good strategy.

An article in The Spinoff on whitebait gets it wrong almost every time.

Whitebait season is here, and Forest and Bird is steaming mad about it. Why are we serving endangered fish in home kitchens and cafes alike?

They are not endangered. That is the 2nd most threatened category. They are declining, which is not even one of the three threatened categories.

Set the nets and get out your gummies – it’s whitebait season, and nothing tastes better than an endangered fish.

Again they are not endangered.

Whitebait stocks are at critical levels.

They are not critical either. That is the highest threat level (nationally critical). They are not in any of the threatened categories.

Of the kōaro, giant kōkopu, banded kōkopu, shortjaw kōkopu and the īnanga, four species are in danger of extinction. 

They are not assessed as being in danger of extinction.  The categories at risk of extinction are critical (immediate high risk), endangered (high risk short term) and vulnerable (medium term risk).

The four species are declining which is at risk, but not threatened. At best you can say they might be at risk in the future.

We’re “sleepwalking towards a collapse”, freshwater ecologist Mike Joy told NZGeo last year.

Whitebait is the only endangered species you see on the average menu, something Forest and Bird’s Cohen says is morally and practically wrong.

They are not endangered. That is a specific category which they are not in.

“We can’t expect to profit off of these fish in a sustainable way. Profiting from an endangered species is just not sustainable.”

Again they are not endangered. That is not my view. That is DOC’s official classification.

I’m not actually against greater protection for whitebait. It just annoys me when terms are used incorrectly that have a specific meaning in conservation circles.

Russell Brown writes:

It also seems lost on those involved that all this crowing comes off the back of the same ratings numbers Lee’s bill presumes are being witheld. It is, frankly, a piffling use of Parliament’s time to pass a law requiring a minor change to the reporting of information that almost every stakeholder has anyway. 

Every stakeholder, except those that pay the bills – taxpayers.

It is a minor change. But a worthwhile one. If NZ on Air proactively wants to release the information without a law change, that would be great also. I am sure they could negotiate a licence with Neilsen to do so.

The law change isn’t about requiring every episode of every show to have the ratings released. It’s about the public being able to see how many people are viewing a show they fund.

And the public aren’t stupid. Take the example:

Indeed, programmes like the long-running disability TV show Attitude are funded precisely because in a wholly commercial system they would not be made. 

And no one would expect a show like Attitude to have the same ratings as say Q+A. Let’s now assume the public can’t be trusted with data.

Stuff reports:

The mother of a murdered three-year-old girl said she could not hold back the tears after hearing about a Māori woman saying Europeans could not know what it was like to be victims of crime at the Government’s criminal justice summit.

In 1997 Luke Frederick Sibley – then 18 – suffocated and strangled Brittany Crothall, 3, while she slept at her home in New Brighton, Christchurch.

He then entered the bedroom of the toddler’s mother, Jayne Crothall, and attacked her with a hammer and a knife.

Crothall said Brittany, who was part Māori, would have turned 25 on Wednesday making the underlying prejudice all the more painful to hear. 

She said another victim – whose sister was murdered – was told she was “white and privileged”  – both messages leaving Crothall in tears and her blood boiling on day one of the summit in Porirua on Tuesday.

“This is a horrendous summit for victims – we’ve been re-victimised. There’s been a lot of racist comments,” she told the 500-odd gathered experts, academics and advocates, victims, ex-prisoners and frontline justice workers.

The talkfest appears to have been even more dismal than expected.