October 9, 2018 4:58pm by kiwi in america

The Kavanaugh Confirmation

At around 4 pm EDT last Saturday October 6th, against a background of hysterical shrieks of activists in the gallery, the United States Senate voted to conform Brett Kavanaugh by a vote of 50 – 48. With the announcement that Justice Anthony Kennedy would be retiring from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) taking effect in the final session of 2018 commencing at the end of October, given he was appointed by a Republican President (Ford in 1975) and was often a swing vote on key issues (in favour of gay marriage in 2015 and against gun control in Heller in 2008), the opportunity for a Republican President to permanently give the court an almost guaranteed 5 – 4 vote in favour of conservative issues set the scene for an almighty confirmation battle for whoever Donald Trump nominated.

Background

The US Constitution grants the incumbent President the power to appoint Justices to the SCOTUS subject to the “advice and consent” of the US Senate. A politicised judiciary is a feature of the US judicial system at the Federal, State, County and City level since the inception of the Republic and there has been no notable movement to change this unlike the non-partisan method of appointment used in the Westminster style democracies of the Anglophile world. Prior to the 2016 Presidential election, primarily to allay conservative fears that Trump would be too liberal in office, he published a list of 25 conservative judges endorsed by the Federalist Society (a prominent conservative think tank) and promised to only nominate anyone to the SCOTUS from this list. Neil Gorsuch (who replaced the vacancy left by the February 2016 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia) was from this list and he was confirmed by the Senate on 7 April 2017. When the Kennedy vacancy arose, Trump was true to his word and nominated Brett Kavanaugh who was often considered in the top three of judges a Republican President ought to consider. As soon as Kavanaugh’s nomination was announced, he was denounced by liberals and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer announced that the Senate Democrats would do all within their power to ensure that Kavanaugh would fall short of the 51 votes needed to be confirmed. This statement is crucial to understanding what came next because the Democrats were true to their word.

A taste of liberal opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination came at the opening of the confirmation hearings in the Senate Judicial Committee room in the Hart Building on Capitol Hill. The public gallery was packed with progressive activists who took it in turns to interrupt and disrupt the proceedings until ejected from the room by Capitol Police. The Democrat members of the Judicial Committee themselves attempted to stymie the Chairman Chuck Grassley from commencing the hearings with a series of aggressive procedural attempts to delay or defer the hearings. An already ominous trend of left wing activists, urged on by hard left Congresswoman Maxine Waters, that saw conservative law makers or Trump Administration appointees harassed in restaurants and even at their homes, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao (who also happens to be Trump’s Transport Secretary) was heckled and assailed by protesters at their Washington DC home and Texas Senator Ted Cruz was driven from a DC area restaurant by aggressive activists aggrieved by the Kavanaugh nomination.

The hearings proceeded, and the questioning of Kavanaugh was on mostly predictable partisan lines; the GOP pushing his stellar record, the Democrats questioning whether he’d repeal Roe v Wade (the 1973 landmark ruling effectively legalising abortion nationwide) and his role in the Starr Special Counsel investigation of President Clinton. There was some notable grandstanding by potential Democrat candidates for President in 2020 (New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and his now in-famous Spartacus moment and former prosecutor California Senator Kamala Harris). The Democrats’ tactics soon became obvious: delay the hearings until past the mid-term elections (all of the House and a third of the Senate are up for re-election on November 6th, win the Senate (unlikely), deny Trump his ninth SCOTUS seat leaving the Court locked at 4 – 4  so unable to rule in favour of conservative issues and vote down more liberal Federal Appeal Courts rulings until a hopeful Democrat White House win in 2020 and then that new President could appoint a liberal judge thus tilting the Court to the left for a generation.

The Ranking Member (the title of the most senior Democrat member of the Minority) of the Judicial Committee Dianne Feinstein waited for the formal hearings to wrap up before dropping the Blasey – Ford (for simplicity’s sake hereafter referred to as Ford) sexual assault bombshell. Ford alleged that Kavanaugh sexually molested her with violence at a high school party sometime in the 1980’s. The accusation soon erupted into a vicious partisan street fight with Democrats and the MSM saying the victim must be believed and the GOP saying Kavanaugh was ambushed and a good man with a stellar record as a senior Judge was having his good name dragged through the mud. The Democrats key aim with this tactic was to get a delay in the vote. Given the explosive nature of the accusation, Chairman Grassley called a one week pause on the vote, so the Judicial Committee could arrange a time to hear both Ford and Kavanaugh. This of course gave the Democrats more time for new accusers to come forward thus creating what they hoped would be a narrative of a pattern of sexually abusive conduct hoping enough Republicans would get cold feet, abandon the Kavanaugh nomination forcing Trump to nominate another candidate thus preventing the current Senate from confirming his replacement for Kennedy.

The trouble was that the two additional accusers’ allegations proved to be even more shaky than the Ford allegation ended up being, so I will deal with these two least credible accusers first. Firstly, Deborah Ramirez said that Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party, but she cannot confirm if she was actually at the party because she says she was too drunk. Her story, as told to the New Yorker magazine, quickly falls apart when the New York Times (a newspaper that is very anti Trump) tried to corroborate the story with the supposed ten people at the party but could find none of them who could corroborate this allegation and they refused to run the story.

Also jumping into the vacuum left by the delayed hearings was Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who defended Trump’s former porn star mistress Stormy Daniels who himself is a Trump hater and who says he wants to run against Trump. His client, Julie Swetnick, claimed to have seen Kavanaugh waiting his turn in a line of young men waiting to gang rape a girl at a frat house party at Yale. Swetnick’s story fell apart on camera under intense questioning by NBC’s Megyn Kelly where Swetnick walked back the core of her claims and was unclear as to whether Kavanaugh was even there. These were supposedly parties at an undergraduate Fraternity house but by the time of the alleged gang rape incidents, Kavanaugh was already at Yale Law School away from the undergraduate frat scene.  Of the four people Swetnick cited as being at the party, NBC News couldn’t contact two of them, one denied ever being at the party and the last one denied ever knowing Kavanaugh. Swetnick said she called her parents from a cell phone two years before cell phones were commercially available and it turns out that Swetnick’s ex-boyfriend said she laid a false complaint of sexual harassment, engaged in credit card fraud and has a history of unstable and hysterical behaviour. Both accusations died a quick death despite the best efforts of the media to keep them alive meaning all eyes fell on Ford and whether she would testify.

Problems with Ford’s testimony

After many days of negotiations with Ford’s lawyers, she came to DC and testified before the Judicial Committee and seemed genuinely to be a victim of something. In Kavanaugh’s testimony he emphatically denied the charges and was visibly upset and went on the offensive against some of his Democrat questioners on the Committee. Over time various problems cast a pall over the veracity of Ford’s testimony including:

  1. She had no memory of the actual year, day and location of the alleged attack nor of how she got there or got home.
  2. She said she went to a Safeway nearby afterwards but the only Safeway now in the suburb of the alleged incident didn’t open until 1986, well after the range of dates given.
  3. The hearings were delayed for days to allow Ford enough time to drive to Washington DC due to her supposed fear of flying and yet evidence was presented that she flew frequently, did post-graduate studies in Hawaii and had made several overseas flights.
  4. Ford said she passed a lie detector test and yet would not offer to the Committee any transcript or video recording of the test nor would Ford confirm who paid for the test. Polygraphs are notoriously easy to beat and in order for results to be credible, the conditions surrounding the test, the manner in which it was administered and the types of questions asked must be known as they can all influence the veracity of the result. The Committee was deliberately prevented from any of this scrutiny.
  5. Questions over who paid for her travel and for her lawyers were never answered. It has been alleged that either Feinstein’s office or other Democrat operatives footed these bills.
  6. Ford’s lawyer never disclosed various prior partisan connections that compromised her neutrality and impartiality in terms of representations made. The conduct of Ford’s lawyers came under attack when it became obvious that Grassley had offered to fly the Committee to California whereas Ford claims no knowledge of this. When Grassley produced proof of the letter to her lawyers, this has opened the way to formal complaints of unprofessional conduct to be made to the DC Bar because not passing on a material offer to a client is unethical.
  7. Ford’s time frame as to the date of the alleged assault was loose and woolly back in July when Ford first made the allegation via her letter to Feinstein and then progressively the time frame got more and more precise the more she talked to the lawyers the Democrats introduced her to.
  8. Ford said the allegations against Kavanaugh were made in a therapy session years later and yet she wouldn’t authorise the release of the therapist notes to the Committee despite repeated requests but yet seemed happy to give seemingly the most damaging excerpts to the Washington Post.
  9. Ford named four witnesses to the incident and yet got the boy/girl mix wrong and all four either deny the allegation including her supposed lifelong friend Leland Keyser who denied she was even at the party whilst the other supposed witnesses denied they ever knew Kavanaugh. It emerged from the FBI investigation that Keyser felt she was pressured by a retired FBI agent friend of Ford’s to change her testimony.
  10. Ford claimed to have been so traumatised that she had to have a second door built to her Palo Alto, California home and yet it was revealed by former roommates and boyfriends that she lived in plenty of single front door apartments with no trauma and that the additional door build into the Palo Alto property was more to increase the rent obtainable or market price of the property as a second entrance straight into a room made the property more valuable in the white hot Bay Area real estate market and that it was built years before she first disclosed the assault in therapy.

I think the best summation of Ford’s weak, inconsistent and questionable testimony can be found in the memo Rachel Mitchell wrote to the GOP Senators summarising her findings after her questioning. She is the renowned sex crimes prosecutor from the Maricopa County District Attorney’s office who has prosecuted hundreds of sex crimes. Mitchell said she couldn’t even get a search warrant let alone an indictment (formal charge brought by prosecutors) on Ford’s testimony and that there was nothing that would stand up in any court.

How and why Republicans win this fight

  • Canny use of the Maricopa County prosecutor to question Ford. Rachel Mitchell used a gentle, careful questioning technique that was not aggressive and avoided the bad optics of old white men forcibly questioning a plausible looking/sounding female victim.
  • Chairman Chuck Grassley bent over backwards to accommodate Ford and her lawyers came across as petty and shifty.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell remained adamant throughout the circus that a vote would be taken despite the histrionics. He was unperturbed by the screaming and yelling of protesters.
  • Key GOP Senators, who have wavered in the past, almost all remained solid behind Kavanaugh including centrist Maine Senator Susan Collins (who was subjected to massive liberal abuse and gave a thorough and rousing speech debunking Ford and the other accusers) and Trump haters who are not standing for re-election and had nothing to lose (Bob Corker from Tennessee and Jeff Flake from Arizona).
  • The one defection (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) was cancelled out by the one Democrat defection (Joe Manchin from West Virginia).
  • Manchin’s defection gave the vote a patina of bipartisanship.
  • The Republican base is now furious and seems far more motivated than ever it was prior to the confirmation hearings.
  • The Democrats kept shifting the goal posts. When the Ford, Ramirez and Swetnick accusations were falling apart, they switched their attacks to Kavanaugh’s temperament during questioning of the Ford allegations (what man falsely accused of rape would not be testy under questioning in public) and then all focus switched to his teenage and early university student heavy drinking sessions. Their eventual retreat from the core sexual assault allegations was a sure sign of defeat.
  • Trump backed Kavanaugh in press conferences, campaign rallies and Tweets and never ever looked like backing down which is difficult to say for any other Republican that might have won in 2016. Can anyone image Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney withstanding the #MeToo frenzy? Maybe Ted Cruz but it’s doubtful.
  • Trump forced the media to focus on the holes in Ford’s testimony when he took specific shots at Ford’s inconsistencies at a campaign rally in Mississippi. The chattering classes (and some in his own party) denounced Trump’s comments but suddenly CNN, the NTY and WaPo were reporting on the testimony discrepancies because Trump highlighted them.
  • GOP candidates fighting for House and Senate seats now can nationalise the mid-term election over the Kavanaugh nomination.
  • Democrats in Congress (and their supporters and media water carriers) overplayed their hand with rhetorical excesses, shonky delay tactics, shrieking protests and paying astroturf protesters to intimidate Republican Senators in the halls all culminating in surreal almost unhinged scenes at the SCOTUS today of activists screaming and clawing at the huge copper doors.
  • The MSM went all in against Kavanaugh and supported his accusers until it was obvious all three stories were full of holes thus reinforcing Trump’s narrative that the mainstream media are his enemies and purveyors of “fake news”.
  • Feinstein’s hiding of the letter until after the hearings were finished showed this for what it really was – a planned political hit job.
  • Ford wanted anonymity but was denied it because a Feinstein staffer leaked the letter. Grassley rightly said that Ford’s claims could’ve confidentially been examined by the Committee (and even the FBI) earlier in the summer. This didn’t play into the Democrat’s strategy to create a media firestorm to sway centrist GOP Senators into backing away hence the need for the leak.
  • Jeff Flake’s last-minute compromise on the FBI investigation almost guaranteed the swing votes would fall to Kavanaugh. The FBI handle federal crimes whereas sexual assaults are handled by local District Attorneys (the Montgomery County DA said no complaint had ever been laid and the type of assault was subject to the statute of limitations so they couldn’t act on a complaint today). Knowing Kavanaugh had passed six prior FBI background checks meant the GOP could look magnanimous to the incessant Democrat demands for the FBI to investigate again and in essence they called their bluff knowing the seventh investigation would mirror the findings of the Judicial Committee’s questioning, that there was no corroborating evidence of any kind for any of the alleged sexual incidents.
  • Once the accuser’s stories start to fall apart, shifting the goal posts to Kavanaugh’s admitted youthful heavy drinking made them look plain stupid. As if drinking too much at high school and college parties made him unsuitable to be a senior judge. By that standard probably 75% of Congress and half the current Federal judiciary would have to resign if Kavanaugh was to be voted down on that ridiculous standard.
  • The whole legal system is built upon a presumption that anyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. The Democrats (and their apologists) in their #MeToo fervour, believe that any female accuser must be right and that centuries of legal precedent can now be turned on its head to a presumption of guilt. The negative consequences of such a change on wider society cannot be contemplated.
  • For many decades, the comity and collegiality of the Senate meant certain norms were adhered to and one of these was that when a President wins an election, it is his right to appoint his Supreme Court Justices. It was not just constitutional, but it was recognised as the ‘spoils of war’. When Republicans controlled the Senate (as they rarely have in the last 100 years) they have always acceded to the confirmation of the nominees of Democrat Presidents. Obama’s two nominees (Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) were confirmed by enough Republicans Senators to avoid filibusters. Democrats have not been so kind to Republican Presidents and the blocking of Robert Bork by Senator Edward Kennedy in 1987 and the accusations leveled at Clarence Thomas in 1991 were up until now, seen as black moments in Senate relations. What happened to Kavanaugh can be seen as a new low in the partisan tenor of the Senate and the rancour expressed during this process is as bad as any ever seen in this chamber.

Conclusion

Some of you may be wondering why Democrats (and the left in general) would go to such incredible lengths to defeat Trump’s nominee. Let’s be clear, whoever Trump nominated from the list of 25 would’ve been subjected to a version of what happened to Kavanaugh. Democrats know deep down that their left-wing liberal policy proscriptions (e.g. full gun control, high taxes) are not popular and if they were to run for Congress and the Senate on a platform of the kind of proper gun control they really want (essentially a version of repealing the 2nd Amendment), they would never get elected to office. So, the Democrats electoral strategy has been to disguise its candidates in swing seats and States as moderate centrists and then they toe the party line once in power. But you can only go so far with this tactic because you can only legislatively nibble at the edges of a progressive agenda. Progressive Democrats have long relied on the two other arms of government to achieve their policy objectives: that of the Presidential power of regulation by Executive Order and stacking the Federal Courts with progressive left leaning judges who will create new civil rights out of whole cloth and abrogate the interpretation of existing rights. An example is that, back in the 1970’s, abortion was only made legal in the very liberal states. There was no way Congress was going to ever have liberal enough Representatives and Senators back then to make abortion legal nationwide and so it was legal in places like Massachusetts and illegal in places like the deep South. Now this is not a debate about abortion, I am only using this to illustrate the point. Progressives got nationwide legal abortion only after Presidents Kennedy and Johnson stacked the SCOTUS with liberal judges who would eventually rule favourably on a case on abortion that made its way its way to SCOTUS (in this case Rose v Wade).

With the election of Trump and his aggressive rollback of many of Obama’s progressive policies by Executive fiat (e.g. trying to implement an effective carbon tax that Congress could never pass even when the Democrats controlled it in favour of using excessive regulations under the Clean Air Act to effectively regulate the coal industry out of existence and then stymie oil exploration via not granting any Federal permits) has outraged liberals. Trump has reversed all of Obama’s efforts. Progressives last hopes of advancing their agenda and checking Trump and a conservative Congress was a 5 – 4 liberal leaning SCOTUS and because it is easier for them to legislate from the bench than to try and get liberal policies enacted via the Legislature. This playbook has worked for the Democrats for decades and thus they were prepared to do almost anything to block a 5 – 4 split in favour of conservatives until such time as they hoped to regain the power of SCOTUS appointment and confirmation.

They did not bank on the resolve of Trump, McConnell, the GOP Senators and Kavanaugh weathering the media storm in favour of the allegations and so the tactic has blown up their faces. It is hard to measure the blow-back but some polling data on the enraged and invigorated Republican base is showing up in the evaporation of the lead in what is called the generic Congressional ballot, in the disappearance of the enthusiasm gap that for so many months favoured Democrats and the numbers of tight Congressional and Senate races that had Democrat candidates ahead and now some polls in crucial races show the Republican candidate inching ahead.

The media and pundits have been predicting a Democrat pickup of the House citing prior polls and history (the first mid-term elections after a party takes control of the White House normally sees reversals and in the case of Obama in 2010, he faced a massive wipe out in the House after the Obamacare debacle). Will the Kavanaugh effect save the House for the GOP? It’s too early to tell. Overblown commentary before this confirmation circus flirted with the Democrats taking control of the Senate – that was always highly unlikely given the number of vulnerable Democrat Senators from states Trump won in 2016 that were up for re-election. All but one of those vulnerable so-called red state Democrat Senators voted against Kavanaugh and various recent polls show a majority of this group now behind their challengers. Talk of a new Democrat controlled House moving to try and impeach Kavanaugh is the kind of awful optics that will have Republican strategists scrambling to get Democrat House candidates in Districts they must win to take the House to go on the record as to their views on a Kavanaugh impeachment.

Anecdotally, various anti Trumpers both those publicly known (e.g. Bret Stevens a conservative New York Times columnist and a founder ‘Never Trumper’ has come out in support of Trump and will vote Republican in November when before he planned to stay home) and in my own conservative community, apathy about voting in the mid-terms was a big issue but everyone I know who was ambivalent about voting are so fired up by the political hit job orchestrated by the Democrats on Kavanaugh that they will 100% be at the polls to ensure the Republicans hold both Houses of Congress. It’s too early to tell if this energising of the GOP base and its anger over the Kavanaugh slurs will last another month to the election. It is also not sure whether the booming economy and historically low unemployment rate will be more compelling factors ensuring sufficient Republicans win to retain control.

Many women I know are very worried that the careers of the respectful and well raised men in their lives could be undone after decades of moral rectitude by one high profile false rape allegation. As a friend of mine put it, an allegation of sexual assault is much worse than an allegation of murder or physical assault. There are a number of scenarios that people can envisage of a person lashing out and beating someone up or even killing someone in a fit of rage – a violent burglary or coming in on someone raping your daughter and in those few instances, many people would forgive or at least understand the homicide but there is literally no type or form of rape or sexual assault that is ever right and to accuse an upright man who has been faithful to his wife or partner for decades, was a known defender of her honour and having raised daughters with care and has never strayed in any way from marital vows of fidelity, to be accused of such a heinous crime as rape, even if you have been seen for decades for your upstanding and caring behaviour and attitudes to women, such a false allegation has the power to destroy any good man’s life. For millions of American women, they say “there but for the grace of God goes my husband, father, grandfather, brother, nephew, son or grandson” and the outrage at the damage that has been done to Brett Kavanaugh’s good name is real and palpable. I do not think that the Democrats have realised what punishment may be in store from the electorate by them going this far to achieve their partisan political ends.

Renown 30+ year veteran of the Washington DC press corps Fox News’ Brit Hume described the Kavanaugh hearings as the worse thing he has seen in all his years reporting on Beltway political issues. In 29 days, we’ll know what, if any, impact all this will have electorally.

October 9, 2018 4:00pm by David Farrar

Trackless trams the future?

Peter Newman writes:

I began my life as an activist academic in 1979 when the Western Australian government closed the Fremantle railway, saying buses would be better. Patronage immediately fell by 30% and I ran a four-year campaign to save the railway. We won. I have been writing books and running campaigns ever since on why trains and trams are better than buses. But I have changed my mind. The technology has changed, and I think it will end the need for new light rail.

So a light rail champion says it is a technology of the past, not the future.

“Trackless trams” are based on technology created in Europe and Chinaby taking innovations from high-speed rail and putting them in a bus.

I went to China to check out the CRRC trackless tram (they call it autonomous rail transit, or ART). I came back convinced it’s a transformative transit technology. …

Trackless trams are neither a tram nor a bus, though they have rubber wheels and run on streets. The high-speed rail innovations have transformed a bus into something with all the best features of light rail and none of its worst features.

Sounds great.

It replaces the noise and emissions of buses with electric traction from batteries recharged at stations in 30 seconds or at the end of the line in 10 minutes. That could just be an electric bus, but the ART is much more than that. It has all the speed (70kph), capacity and ride quality of light rail with its autonomous optical guidance system, train-like bogies with double axles and special hydraulics and tyres. …

Similar disruption has happened in the Gold Coast, Canberra and elsewhere, but ultimately light rail systems have been highly successful in attracting patronage and land development. This will happen in Sydney too when the project is complete.

However, the cost has been far beyond original expectations. Sydney is costing over $120 million per kilometre. The Gold Coast was similar. Canberra and Newcastle are over $80 million per kilometre, as was the cancelled light rail in Perth.

The trackless tram costs around $6-$8 million per kilometre. And it can be put into a road system over a weekend.

So 10% of the cost and can be installed in a weekend!

October 9, 2018 2:00pm by David Farrar

I got it wrong on Deborah Powell

A week ago I blogged:

So the National Secretary of the NZRDA gets paid almost $1 million a year for her services. Great work if you can get it.

Unions often rail against business chief executives being paid huge salaries. And government chief executives also get criticised for some of their salaries.

Now if the members of NZRDA think Deborah Powell is worth $927,000 a year then good on her for convincing them to pay it. It’s their money. But it is weird that the highest paid person in the public health system isn’t a DHB Chief Executive, or a consultant or specialist or the Director-General of Health. It is the National Secretary of the junior doctors’ association.

I assumed a job which pays $927,000 a year would be a full-time job. But it isn’t. The enterprising Ms Powell is also the National Secretary of the Apex Union. And they also pay the company 99.9% owned by Powell $608,000 for contract negotiation services.

So that’s a combined $1,535,000 for contract negotiation services. Now we don’t know if that is 100% salary for Powell, but even if you have a couple of staff to assist you, you’d be doing better than any other person in the public health system.

There was an interesting profile in 2001 in the Herald, showing this is not a recent development:

Radiation therapists walked away from treating cancer patients last night and, for the second time this year, went on strike. Surely a tough decision.

Throughout the dispute, one person is regularly quoted on behalf of “her” members as though she, too, feels the pain of being paid a pittance for a vital role in saving people’s lives. She is articulate, passionate and stroppy. She is Dr Deborah Powell. …

So to be, well, um, direct, the Weekend Herald would like to talk to her about “the impression that you and [husband and business partner] Terry have done extremely well financially out of your relationship with the medical unions”.

So even 18 years ago people had noticed.

“This isn’t silk,” she smiles, fingering the collar of her emerald-green shirt.

No, but the people who mutter disapprovingly about Deborah and Terry Powells’ asset-backing do point to their avocado farm near Whangarei, valued in 1998 at $1.2 million.

“We have an avocado orchard. So what?” she replies. “It’s where we live.”

The median house price in 1998 was $165,000 so the farm was valued at around eight times the median house. Today the median house value is $550,000 so I imagine the orchard is worth a lot more today.

Come the 1991 Employment Contracts Act, the entrepreneurial Powells saw the opportunity to sell their employment contract negotiation skills beyond the young doctors.

Among those they added to their stable was the Sales Representatives Guild. But that led to considerable trouble when, in 1993, they were both convicted of fraud for rigging the guild’s ballot in favour of compulsory membership.

Pair stood to gain $92,000 if compulsory unionism was carried and another $2500 for every 50 members beyond 1000. It would also be paid an annual $80,000 base payment.

The Powells continue to deny their guilt. Anecdotally there are doctors who remain unhappy about the Powells and refuse to join the RDA because of their presence. 

Yes and quite a few of those doctors have been e-mailing me. They have this old fashioned belief that a conviction for fraud for vote rigging in a union makes you a bad choice to run a union.

But anyway let’s not begrudge someone bringing capitalism to a union and making great money out of it. I’d say NBR should look at having a union category for their next NBR richlist!

October 9, 2018 12:00pm by David Farrar

North Dakota producing more than Venezuela

Got sent this news snippet:

The single state of North Dakota is now producing as much oil as Venezuela, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. While Venezuela continues to falter under its socialist regime, North Dakota continues its historic rise in crude oil production. The sparsely populated midwestern state churned out 1.27 million barrels a day in July, according to data reported by Bloomberg. This is approximately the same level of production seen in Venezuela during the same month. The numbers provide a snapshot of how much the industry landscape has evolved in the two places. Much like other regions in the United States, North Dakota has experienced a shale oil boom in recent years. The advent of hydraulic fracturing has allowed North Dakota — home of the Bakken shale play — to produce oil at rates four times greater than its previous peak set in the 1980s. The state is now second only to Texas in oil production and enjoys the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

Yet here our Government bans future exploration meaning we will be importing oil from North Dakota.

Interesting the comparison between Venezuela and North Dakota. Venezuela has a population of 32 million and North Dakota a population of 750,000 – smaller than Auckland.

Venezuela was producing 3.5 million barrels a day before the socialists took over and is now down to under 1.5 million barrels a day.

North Dakota has the lowest unemployment in the US, and per capita GDP 29% above the US average plus a billion dollar surplus.

 

October 9, 2018 10:18am by David Farrar

Guest Post: Don’t Veto the Veto

A guest post by New Conservative Leader Leighton Baker:

From the news we are fed by mainstream media and our leadership, the UN has been so emasculated by the use of Vetoes that it actually struggles to achieve any worthwhile goals, particularly when it comes to protecting citizens from their own authorities. Chemical warfare, mass executions, and suppressing political discord all seem to go unchallenged as various powers exercise their Right of Veto to stagnate the action of the UN, hence the reasoning behind removing the Right of Veto.

Here’s the flip side.

At the moment no figure or group controls more than 20% of the world’s population. This means  80% can resist, and give some hope to those suffering under a callous regime. What removing the Veto would do would be to empower the UN to such a degree that no one country could stand against this entity.

The UN’s power, authority, and rule would be unrivalled in all of the world.

True world control.

An all powerful UN would be an elixir without comparison to those individuals who have wreaked havoc and cruelty throughout history, often using state control.

Instead of control by the state, imagine control by the UN.…

For the sake of humanity all nations need to retain their sovereignty and their right to self determination, and we demand that our elected representatives recognise this patriotic duty to New Zealanders and New Zealand.

Yes the UN is often insipid and the Vetoes are occasionally frustrating, but the alternative is dark, Orwellian, and follows what is popular, not necessarily right.

“Herein lies the great irony of the United Nations: While it’s the Mos Eisley of international politics — a hive of scum and villainy — and it votes repeatedly to condemn the United States and Israel, the tyrannies that constitute the body continue to oppress their own peoples.”

Ben Shapiro
The veto is an anachronism. It would be nice to have a world where China and Russia can’t veto stuff. But that will also mean a world where the US, UK and France have no veto.  Democratic liberal countries are the minority at the UN and I’m not sure we’d enjoy a UN Security Council with no vetoes.

October 9, 2018 7:00am by David Farrar

Ardern blames fuel companies

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has launched a scathing attack on fuel companies, telling reporters she thinks “consumers are being fleeced” at the petrol pump.

“I am hugely disappointed in the level of price that consumers are currently paying at the pump for fuel,” she said at her weekly post-cabinet press conference today.

National Leader Simon Bridges has been critical of the Government and its fuel taxes which he said is pushing the price of petrol up.

“Unlike petrol, talk is cheap. And the Government is a big part of the reason why petrol prices are so high.”

Petrol prices are creeping up to $2.50 in some parts of the county.

Ardern came out swinging, pointing the finger at fuel importers – such as Z Energy, BP, Mobil and Gull – and their margins.

Margins have increased, but so have taxes. And taxes are under the control of the Government.

Here’s the various taxes the Government imposes:

  • National Land Transport Fund 63.02c
  • GST 32.61c (on a $2.50 retail price)
  • Regional Fuel Tax (in Auckland) 10.0c
  • ACC Levy 6.0c
  • Local Authorities Fuel Tax 0.66c
  • Engine Fuel Monitoring Levy 0.3c

That is a total of 112.6 cents on every litre (in Auckland) going to the Government in direct taxes.

And even worse the Government is going to spend less of it on actual roads.

October 8, 2018 5:00pm by iMP

#3. ANSWERS 5pm: Mon. Crossword 08 Oct. 2018

October 8, 2018 3:00pm by David Farrar

Massive Internet growth in NZ

The latest ISP survey from Stats NZ shows what huge changes there have been in the last seven years (when it started). Changes are:

  • Fibre connections – from 3,700 to 598,000
  • Monthly data use from 13 petabytes to 292 petebaytes
  • 29% now have download speeds of over 100 Mb/s and 48% of over 50 Mb/s
  • 28% have upload speeds of over 20 Mb/s and 77% of over 10 Mb/s
  • No of households with no data cap gone from 75,000 to 1,072,000 (over two thirds)
  • Dialup connections dropped from 208,000 to just 18,000

The fibre rollout has seen a huge increase in both download and upload speeds, which combined with data caps disappearing has made a huge difference to Internet use in NZ.

October 8, 2018 1:00pm by David Farrar

Guest Post: Response to Bryan Leyland’s Guest Post on 4 October

A guest post by Carl Hansen:

Bryan Leyland has long espoused for a single buyer regime for the NZ electricity market, and so it was no surprise to see him do so again on kiwiblog on 4 October.

Leyland is arguing for a market design that would put the Government in the middle of the supply and demand process. The Government would decide when new generation plant was needed, where they were needed, what type they would be and so on. It would do this by holding tenders and having ministers and government officials decide which offers win the tender.

Rather than focus on consumers, electricity generators would spend inordinate effort to convince ministers and officials of the value of their offer, and in fact they’ll work hard to convince them to hold tenders earlier than when they’re needed and for larger capacity than needed.

Ministers would face great political pressure to cave in to these arguments because the last thing they want to be accused of is running the risk of blackouts. And they’ll be very interested in the location of the plants, and will want to avoid annoying voters in marginal electorates.

In the real world these electricity regimes work very poorly. A single buyer scheme operates in Ontario, Canada. Political pressure during an election campaign in 2011 led the Premier cancelling contracts to build two power plants, which the Ontario Auditor General has calculated will cost taxpayers and electricity consumers $C950 million.

South Korea and South Africa both have single buyer regimes and they’ve both experienced electricity shortages over the last decade. This should be a big red flag as South Korean industry is normally considered very competent.

Leyland is arguing for a regime in which consumers pay prices based on the average cost of all generation rather than the cost of new generation to come onto the market (“marginal costs”). This is the equivalent of trying to defy gravity. We can defy gravity of course, but it requires very expensive rockets and it’s quite a mess when they crash. In simple terms, the average cost approach is very expensive and risky because it messes up crucial investment incentives.

Whatever merits people may once have thought the single buyer approach had, now would be exactly the wrong time to switch to such a regime. The cost of new generation is falling and can be expected to keep falling over the next decade due to reductions in the cost of small-scale generation, such as rooftop solar panels and batteries. If these cost reductions occur then NZ consumers will receive far larger price reductions than what could be achieved under an average cost approach. It is straight-forward in mathematics to show average costs exceed marginal costs when marginal costs are falling.

But the single buyer approach never had a great deal of merit. Leyland implies in his post that consumers have missed out because of the extra profits the large hydro generators earned when the cost of new generation rose. But this is untrue. Those hydro generators were 100% owned by the taxpayer when the wholesale market started in 1996, and they either paid their surplus profits to the Government in the form of dividends or reinvested them. Since then some have been fully privatised (Contact Energy) and some partially privatised. In both cases the government received sale prices reflecting the expected value of future dividends the new owners would receive.

Leyland also claims wholesale electricity prices have increased following partial privatisation, but this is untrue. For example the average price of long-dated futures contracts was $77.18 per MegaWatt-hour in early March 2014 around the time of the partial privatisations and is currently $77.38.

At the start of his post he refers to the 80% increase in residential electricity prices since 1990 but doesn’t mention that prices charged by the competitive component of the market (ie, generation and retailing) are basically at the same level – after adjusting for inflation – as they were seven years ago. The increases in prices for consumers over that time have almost entirely been due to increases in charges from distribution companies. This is a very important fact and is widely known among most other people commenting on the electricity industry.

Carl Hansen has been involved in electricity policy work for over 15 years and was CEO of the Electricity Authority for seven years. He is currently a private consultant at Capital Strategic Advisors Limited.

 

October 8, 2018 11:00am by David Farrar

Taxpayers paying for Clark hagiography VIP parties

Stuff reports:

Cocktail parties and wine-fuelled film screenings to promote a Helen Clark documentary to foreign VIPs have cost taxpayers more than $33,000.

Embassies around the world have been hosting events with the former PM to show off My Year With Helen, a fly-on-the-wall film about her failed bid for the top job at the United Nations.

The hospitality bill comes on top of the $870, 000 taxpayer-funded NZ on Air and the Film Commission contributed to make the film.

I don’t have an issue with the film subsidy. But I do have an issue with tens of thousands of dollars going on VIP parties for it.

And it’s understood the bill, and number of staff hours put into organising the events has raised eyebrows at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Fourteen NZ embassies have hosted, or were involved, in the events. Clark attended receptions in Turkey, Japan, Canada and Washington DC. Film-maker Gaylene Preston was also flown to Ankara and Istanbul for an appearance. 

The $33,000 won’t include staff time.

But embassies also had to pay a screening fee of just over $1000 to show the movie.

Outrageous. Taxpayers give $900,000 to fund the production of the movie, and then another $1,000 per embassy screening.

October 8, 2018 10:30am by iMP

#3 Monday Crossword. 08 OCT. 2018

by John Stringer. Answers at 5pm tonight.

 

October 8, 2018 7:00am by David Farrar

A preventable death toll

Damien Grant writes:

One of what I consider to be the most irresponsible pieces of journalism in this country occurred in 2014 when John Campbell led then Minister Peter Dunne around Naenae to witness the harm done by the sale of synthetic cannabis.

And indeed, Campbell was right. Some kids were getting very sick as a result of taking a commercially manufactured product made by competent and regulated providers.

Dunne, who now appears to support cannabis legislation, rushed through a legislative change to ban the manufacture of these products.

Well done to all concerned. The legitimate manufactures left the industry, and the back-yard cooks rushed to fill the vacuum. According to the coroner between 40 and 45 people died in the last year as a result.

Unintended consequences strikes again. And 45 people have died.

Meanwhile, our Prime Minister, basking in the glory of the international media, thumbed her nose at the American plan to expand the decades-long failure that is the War on Drugs, preferring a ‘health approach’ to the issue.

Excellent. Perhaps she can have a chat with her Health Minister David Clark who wants to re-classify synthetic cannabis as a class A drug.

The minister boldly declared; “These drugs are killing people. We have health, police, customs and corrections all working closely on this”.

Nice. Except it will fail because prohibition always fails.

Treating synthetic cannabis as the same as heroin is not a “health approach”.

If a drug is legal, someone like Pfizer will make it. Your children will take it. They will get sick, but in the morning you can collect them from the hospital rather than the morgue.

When they become illegal respectable firms leave the industry, and unscrupulous and incompetent cooks produce batches of illicit poison.

An astute analysis.

October 7, 2018 4:00pm by David Farrar

Kavanaugh confirmed

The US Senate voted 50 to 48 to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, giving the Supreme Court a clear conservative majority for potentially decades to come.

The brutal confirmation battle has been partisan politics at its worse. I’m glad the NZ judiciary isn’t politicized to this degree and that judicial appointments aren’t subject to parliamentary votes. Otherwise we might end up similar.

The ages of the nine Supreme Court Justices are:

  1. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85
  2. Stephen Breyer, 80
  3. Clarence Thomas, 70
  4. Samuel Alito, 68
  5. Sonia Sotomayor, 64
  6. John Roberts, 63
  7. Elena Kagan, 58
  8. Brett Kavanaugh, 53
  9. Neil Gorsuch, 51

The average age a Supreme Court Justice retires is 83, so on the conservative side Justice Thomas is the only likely retirement in the next 15 years.

 

October 7, 2018 2:00pm by David Farrar

US unemployment rate hits 49 year low!

The WSJ reports:

Unemployment in September hit the lowest level since the Vietnam War, with little indication it is going to shoot back up in the near term.

The jobless rate fell to 3.7%, the lowest since December 1969, the Labor Department said Friday. Employers added 134,000 jobs to payrolls, a record 96th straight month of gains. Wages rose 2.8% from a year earlier, a solid if still unspectacular rise.

“This is the best job market in a generation or more,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at recruiting site Glassdoor.

Unemployment rates below 4% are extremely rare in 70 years of modern record-keeping. The two longest sustained periods came during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, when the combination of strong growth and the enlistment of young men from the civilian labor force helped to largely wring unemployment out of the economy.

So the lowest rate in 49 years and if you exclude periods of major wars, the lowest rate in modern history.

The black unemployment rate is also a historically low 6.0%.

October 7, 2018 12:00pm by David Farrar

MP unfit to run a pub

Stuff reported:

The NZ First MP behind a “values” bill which could expel migrants was once judged unfit to run pubs because of his criminal record.

Clayton Mitchell wants new migrants to sign up to a cultural “code of conduct” that includes a commitment not to campaign against the legality of alcohol.

Mitchell is a former publican – but his licence to run a bar was cancelled after a series of incidents. They included a suspended prison sentence for assault – which a judge called an act of serious violence – and a dangerous driving conviction.

An assault which involves serious violence is not a good thing.

Two years later, Mitchell won back his certificate –  supported by a reference from former police officer Brad Shipton, who was subsequently disgraced over a rape conviction.

Brad Shipton as a character reference – yeah, nah.

The second term MP initially didn’t want to be interviewed by Stuff. “Is this one of your dirty little stories? You better get your facts right, because I tell you what, you better get your facts right or you’ll get yourself in a hell of a lot of trouble,” he said.

This is not the recommended response for MPs, when media ask them about their background.

In a subsequent response to emailed questions, however, he acknowledged:

* A conviction of assault with intent to injure in what a judge described as an “act of serious violence on your part.”
* A conviction for dangerous driving.
* A conviction for a “lock-in” at one of his bars – allowing customers to drink outside of the licensed hours.

A pattern?

Mitchell, 46, didn’t attend the 1998 hearing that saw his general manager’s certificate cancelled by the the Liquor Licensing Authority. He was in Australia – and his absence was heavily criticised by the authority.

He’d been running Straight Shooters bar, on Tauranga’s Wharf Street. Local police – unhappy after a string of late-night incidents – asked the authority to cancel his general manager’s certificate on the grounds: “That the conduct of the manager is such as to show that he is not a suitable person to hold the certificate.”

The bar sounded rather interesting. A previous story reported:

Before entering politics, Mitchell made local headlines in December 2009 when his Hamilton bar, the Bahama Hut, was forced to close for a week because of two promotions – Funtastic Fridays and Super Saturdays – that gave punters unlimited drinks for a six-hour period for as little as $39.

There was also some controversy over leprechaun-curling competitions at another of his pubs, the Mount Mellick, where a vegetable oil-covered dwarf would be propelled along a 6m polythene sheet.

Very insensitive of him to label a dwarf a leprechaun. They’re very different species.

October 7, 2018 10:00am by David Farrar

Council venues and politics

The Manawatu Standard editorial:

It would seem the Palmerston North City Council doesn’t really have a position on what sorts of events its venues should be associated with.

That might seem remiss, but it is also better than having a restrictive policy.

Councillors should be wary of imposing an unwelcome moral code on the city or smuggling political posturing into places where it does not belong.

Venues should be politically neutral.

Unless an event is going to break the law, it should be able to be held at a Government owned venue.

The way venues are used in the city is to be reviewed. That’s fine, but if councillors wish to politicise what venues are used for, we ought to know who wants to sneak in some control-freakery and who generally favours freedom.

I find that when people can’t win debates, they try to ban the other side from speaking.

There are also hints that the council should support censorship, for this is presumably what is meant by “respond appropriately” to allowing speakers “whose views are demonstrably incompatible with the Human Rights Act”.

If a speaker breaches the Human Rights Act, they can be prosecuted. But what some politicians want is for anyone whose views they dislike to be painted as ***ist and banned from holding public meetings.

Beware the slippery slope.

Should a city council venue host a Defence Force industry forum?

Should the Railway Land be used to host a gathering of trucks reliant on fossil fuels?

Should a chocolate fair be held at the Palmerston North Conference and Function Centre or should the city be clear about its opposition to sugary diets?

Is rugby non-violent enough to be staged at the Central Energy Trust Arena?

Yes ban the chocolate fair!

The threshold for turning away events should be set high. These are community facilities and we deserve better than to have our venues turned into the latest battleground for political points-scoring. 

The message from residents to councillors must be unequivocal – these venues are ours, not yours.

A good editorial.

October 7, 2018 7:00am by David Farrar

How to fix Venezuela

Andres Velasco writes:

In the last couple of years, the decline has accelerated to dizzying speeds. Now that the printing press is the only available financing tool, the International Monetary Fund is forecasting 1,000,000% inflation in 2018; the contraction in GDP  those of the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, and the recent Greek crisis; 87% of Venezuelans live in poverty; and untold millions have left their country.

A larger contraction that the Great Depression takes some effort.

Restoring property rights and reforming this web of controls and regulations will be a colossal legal and political task, more akin to the transitions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union than to previous episodes of Latin American stabilization-cum-reform. Yet one lesson of the region’s market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s seems relevant: privatization must be accompanied by genuine competition. Otherwise, the result may be economic stagnation (monopolies can make fat profits while failing to innovate) and political backlash (voters who see that happening get very upset, quickly).

Likewise, the crony capitalism typical of many post-communist economies must be avoided.

Best way to avoid crony capitalism is issue shares to every citizen.

Another priority for the leaders of post-Maduro Venezuela will be to ensure that the state does what it is supposed to do. The Venezuelan state has nearly three million employees and, by one count, more than 4,200 institutions, yet government fails miserably at its most basic tasks, such as providing education, health, and security.

Three million employees providing basically no public services,

Take health: public hospitals and clinics are crumbling and largely devoid of medicines (imports of which are barely one-third the level in 2012). One survey found that 79% of facilities did not even have running water. These precarious conditions have allowed the reemergence of long-dormant diseases such as malaria, diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis.

Or consider security, which has collapsed, placing Venezuela on the verge of becoming a failed state. Vast swaths of territory are so lawless that the police – and in some cases even the army – dare not enter. In large urban centers, the murder rate has shot up, putting Venezuela at the top of the world homicide tables, behind only El Salvador and Honduras and far ahead of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

In 1998 their murder rate was 19 per 100,000. Today it is 56. And that was in 2016. They may be top of the world by now.

A plan that enables Venezuela to import and function more or less as a normal economy again should have at least three components. First, the international community should recognize upfront the need for large debt reduction, rather than kicking the can down the road for years, as it did with Greece. Second, the International Monetary Fund will have to provide emergency balance-of-payments, through a program not too different in size from the one that Argentina just signed. And, third, a grant component, estimated by Venezuelan experts at around $20 billion, will be needed both to meet emergency humanitarian needs and to avoid Argentina’s mistake of allowing foreign debt to accumulate too quickly just after debt reduction.

Developed countries will have to bail them out with loans and grants. Otherwise they will become a failed state which destabilises the region. But this can only happen once there is a different Government with different policies.

Venezuela’s government has been waging war on its own people. The least the world can do is to stand generously on the victims’ side. In doing so, it would help prevent full-scale state failure, thereby minimizing the impact of the country’s humanitarian crisis and massive refugee outflows – not to mention rampant drug trafficking and money laundering – on regional and global stability.

NZ should help, once there is a Government capable of being helped.

October 6, 2018 2:00pm by David Farrar

Will petrol hit $2.50 a litre?

Stuff reports:

Another round of petrol price increases has motorists paying almost $2.50 in main centres, prompting calls for the Government to signal how it could intervene in the market.

Overnight on Thursday the major petrol companies added 4c a litre to petrol, taking 91 octane or “regular” petrol to $2.489 in many parts of the country.

In Auckland, where the Government has introduced a regional fuel tax, at least two stations are charging $2.499 a litre, according to crowd sourced price monitoring company Gaspy.

The Government has intervened in the market. It has introduced a new regional fuel tax and also increased the national fuel tax. That is part of the problem.

The MBIE data show how much prices have increased in the last year. They were at $1.85 and now have exceeded $2.40.

That extra 65 cents a litre hits families hard. The average medium size car does 1,250 litres a year so that’s a huge $800 more a year.

October 6, 2018 12:00pm by David Farrar

Long known King will get Australia

Stuff reports:

Former Rongotai MP and Labour deputy leader Dame Annette King has put her Hataitai home up for sale, amid expectations she is headed overseas for a top diplomatic posting.

King, who served as an MP for 10 Parliamentary terms, including holding the seat of Rongotai since 1996, stepped down at the 2017 election. In May she was made a Dame, after being named in the New Year’s honours.

Having recently announced she is stepping down as interim chair of EQC, the former health minister is expected to be named as the next High Commissioner to Australia, although there has been no official confirmation.

Speaking from Thailand, where she is holidaying with family, King said the house was simply larger than she needed. It should not be inferred that it was a step towards a move to Canberra.

I first heard around four years ago that Annette would be made High Commissioner to Australia once there was a Labour Government. So it will be absolutely no surprise once her appointment is confirmed.

She’ll be a good pick for the job as she has a direct line to the PM and will need to smooth things overs with the Aussies as several Ministers are peeved off with the current Government here.

October 6, 2018 10:00am by David Farrar

The stupidity of Australia’s GST

The Herald reports:

One of Australia’s most hated taxes is finally going to be scrapped.

At a pivotal meeting in Melbourne today, the states and territories backed Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s push to remove the 10 per cent GST from sanitary items — known colloquially as the “tampon tax” — from January 1 next year.

The move will lower the price of feminine hygiene products, news.com.au reports.

Mr Frydenberg said there was “strong agreement” among the states and territories, even though it will collectively cost them $30 million in lost revenue.

Many other health items are already exempt from the GST, including nicotine patches, sunscreen and even Viagra.

This is what happens when you exempt one thing – you end up having to exempt more and more. Once politicians suceed in saying “A is good so don’t tax it” or “B is bad, tax it more” you end up with a hideous system.

In NZ GST applies to almost every good and service. We are almost alone in the world with this.

In Australia food is exempt but not takeaways! Condoms but not tampons.

Flavoured yogurt is exempt but frozen yoghurt has GST.

Sashimi is exempt but beef jerky has GST

Vegetable seedlings pay GST but not pickled vegetables

Flavoured milk attracts GST but not soy milk

Pizzas and pizza rolls have different GST treatment

So if anyone you know ever proposes we should follow Australia and start exempting certain items from GST, you should get a very large baseball bat and use it to pound them into the same misshaped monstrosity that they want to turn our GST into.

October 6, 2018 7:00am by David Farrar

Hosking on what Jacinda doesn’t know

Mike Hosking writes:

If you ever want a lesson in the simple reality of spending other people’s money, have a listen to our interview with the Prime Minister yesterday over her hiring of an ad agency in New York to follow her around and film her and take photos.

A few things are at play here: One, this has not got the sort of coverage in wider media you would expect, why not? Is the media in general still enamoured with Jacinda Ardern and therefore failing to do their job as diligently as they might?

Two, she doesn’t know what the bill is. Why not? It’s being paid for by her budget, the leader’s budget.

So she claims not to know the cost.

Five, the advertising agency they hired might or might not have been a donor to the party. I say donor because it could be a straight out donation, or work done in lieu of a donation at a cut rate – Ardern didn’t know that either.

Knows nothing about their donation to her campaign.

Could this be another scenario, a Whaitiri, a Curran, a Handley whereby we are about to get, whether through further questioning on shows like this, questions in Parliament, a level of detail we should have got yesterday.

In other words yesterday was her chance to clear the decks, explain fully and come clean. Because what this looks like is self-aggrandisement at our expense.

It’s a political glamour shoot, it’s style over substance with us footing the bill. It’s electioneering, especially if it turns up in the election.

It’s a lot of questions, all of which could have been, should have been sorted but haven’t, why?

Watch this space.

There will be more to come out on this.