Stuff reports:

Activists and academics are not typical bedfellows, but Sue Bradford is making sure the two parties can learn from each other.

The well-known activist and former Green Party MP is the activist in residence at Massey University in Palmerston North for a week.

Bradford was asked about a month ago by professor Mohan Dutta​, who is the dean’s chair of communication for the new Centre for Culture-Centred Approach to Research and Evaluation, to take the position.

The two are producing a paper on the partnership between academics and activists in struggles of the oppressed.

This is an excellent idea to have an activist in residence. They should continue with it. Here’s some future activists which I am sure we will see in residence at Massey:

• Jordan Williams on behalf of oppressed taxpayers
• Don Brash on behalf of oppressed voters
• Simon Lusk on behalf of oppressed hunters
• Matthew Hooton on behalf of oppressed Iwi
• Garth McVicar on behalf of oppressed victims of crime

Stuff reports:

The Government has looked at ditching vehicle regos, and one option to replace it is another hike to the fuel tax.

While in opposition, MP Phil Twyford called the annual vehicle licensing system and its 235,000 fines each year a “giant revenue gathering device”.

Now the Minister of Transport, Twyford took official advice on other ways to raise the money, but doesn’t plan to pursue changes at the moment.

That’s a pity. He condemned it in opposition.

Twyford said he was concerned the current vehicle licensing system, which raised $469 million last year, cost taxpayers $50m to administer.

“I’m also concerned about the 235,000 people a year who don’t pay their rego fees on time and then end up getting dragged through the courts, clogging up our justice system and costing people a disproportionate amount of time and money for a minor offence.”

So scrap it. 10% of the revenue goes on admin and 235,000 people get hit with penalty fees plus some Councils use it as a huge revenue opportunity with their wardens giving you a $200 fine for being late.

Petrol tax is not perfect, but it has much lower compliance costs and is automatically paid.

Councils also issue $200 fines – and get to keep half the money collected.

Auckland dished out 54,644 warnings and 56,112 infringements for the 2017 financial year, with 20,188 of them going to court.

Christchurch issued 995 infringement notices in 2017. Wellington issued no infringements but gave out 353 warnings.

So Auckland Council have made $5.6 million from pinging late payers.

Danyl McL writes:

New Zealand First used to have this guy called Peter Brown as their deputy leader. Brown was (a) fiercely anti-immigration and (b) a migrant, having been born in the UK. It was useful for Winston Peters, I think, to have a white migrant deputy thundering that “the wrong sort of people were coming into the country”, spelling out to his elderly and easily bewildered constituency exactly what “the wrong sort” meant.

But here’s the thing about Peters’ perennial race-baiting – given airing most recently following a remit at the party’s 25th birthday over the weekend. He campaigns on the immigration issue every election, but Peters has been in the powerbroker position in government three times now, and each of those governments has seen very high levels of net migration of what his supporters and voters consider “the wrong sort” of people.

There are a few reasons for this. Most populist, anti-migrant politicians believe what they say about “our values” and “preserving our way of life”, and at least attempt to reduce migration when they get into office. Trump has his Muslim-ban; the conservatives have Brexit. But Peters’ statements about migrants appear to be as meaningful as so much else he says, ie nothing. It is useful for him to race-bait by grandstanding about immigration but never useful for him to ever do anything about the issue.

A very astute analysis. Winston doesn’t believe most of what he says. He says it to get support.

Another example was monetary policy. In 1996 he campaigned on radical change to monetary policy. He became Treasurer. The Reserve Bank said it could meet him to talk through the changes he had campaigned on. He told them not to bother, as that was just for the campaign.

We saw this also with the Maori seats. It was a “bottom line” in the 2017 campaign yet according to Labour he didn’t even raise it during the coalition negotiations.

There’s this theory that Winston Peters, despite his many terrible flaws, represents a lesser evil; that it’s better to have him out there grifting the elderly racists, using their votes as currency to gratify his own malevolent ego than having some genuine ethno-nationalist form a new party and rise to power. “You’ll miss him when he’s gone,” people warn me. They might be right. But I’m an optimist; I have faith in MMP’s 5% threshold (which I used to oppose as undemocratic, but now see the wisdom of) to wipe Peters out in the next election and to protect us from his successors. New Zealand First is 25 years old, but it would, I think, be a great shame for our country if it lives to 30.

It is a party that in the future historians will say achieved nothing except giving out money to various groups.

Stuff reports:

Veteran activist Penny Bright has died. She was 64 years old.

Bright died just before 10pm on Thursday night, her partner of 13 years, Julian said.

Her last word was: “Thanks.”

Her former nemesis, John Banks, also paid tribute to the woman who kept democracy “on the right track”.

“Her heart was always in the right place and she stood up with courage for what she believed in.”

While the pair had their battles while Banks was mayor of Auckland, he said he only has good memories of Bright and the pair had made peace.

“I visited her in hospital last month and she was pleased to see me. Today she deserves a lot of credit, we often did agree to disagree.”

Bright was often front and centre during the years Banks was in office.

“She was an interesting protester and she always cut a dash, always had her bright red lipstick on and some amazing hats. …

Bright campaigned against successive Auckland local bodies and said her first campaign was when she was at high school in the 7th form.

If there is an afterlife I suspect Penny is being a pain in the arse to the powers that be and demanding greater transparency from them. May she rest in peace.

Quillette reports:

For the past year scholars James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian have sent fake papers to various academic journals which they describe as specialising in activism or “grievance studies.” Their stated mission has been to expose how easy it is to get “absurdities and morally fashionable political ideas published as legitimate academic research.” 

To date, their project has been successful: seven papers have passed through peer review and have been published, including a 3000 word excerpt of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, rewritten in the language of Intersectionality theory and published in the Gender Studies journal Affilia.

This is superb. They got a feminist journal to publish Mein Kampf in the language of intersectionality theory.

The three academics (who describe themselves as left leaning liberals) are fighting back over the grievance studies takeover of academia. They wrote 20 hoax papers and got seven published. They include:

• a paper claiming dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture’ ” and issues “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on the basis of their gender and queering behaviors, and the chronic and perennial rape emergency dog parks pose to female dogs.”
• a paper in a fat studies journal that claimed bodybuilding is “fat-exclusionary”
• a paper for the Journal of Poetry Therapy describing monthly feminist spirituality meetings with a “womb room” and six poems, which Mr. Lindsay generated by algorithm and lightly edited

The WSJ further report:

One hoax paper, submitted to Hypatia, proposed a teaching method centered on “experiential reparations.” It suggested that professors rate students’ levels of oppression based on race, gender, class and other identity categories. Students deemed “privileged” would be kept from commenting in class, interrupted when they did speak, and “invited” to “sit on the floor” or “to wear (light) chains around their shoulders, wrists or ankles for the duration of the course.” Students who complained would be told that this “educational tool” helps them confront “privileged fragility.”

And what was the response to this insanity?

Hypatia’s two unnamed peer reviewers did not object that the proposed teaching method was abusive. “I like this project very much,” one commented. One wondered how to make privileged students “feel genuinely uncomfortable in ways that are humbling and productive,” but not “so uncomfortable (shame) that they resist with renewed vigor.” 

Yes they liked the idea of privileged students being unable to speak and wearing chains in class.

Mr. Boghossian doesn’t have tenure and expects the university will fire or otherwise punish him. Ms. Pluckrose predicts she’ll have a hard time getting accepted to a doctoral program. Mr. Lindsay said he expects to become “an academic pariah,” barred from professorships or publications.

Yet Mr. Lindsay says the project is worth it: “For us, the risk of letting biased research continue to influence education, media, policy and culture is far greater than anything that will happen to us for having done this.”

Brave people who have done us a service. You can read their own article on how and why they did it here.

An acquaintance did an OIA asking how many people have been deported for criminal offending over the last five years, and their nationality.

The top 10 nationalities are:

1. India 226
2. China 178
3. Samoa 146
4. Tonga 120
5. Fiji 114
6. UK 54
7. Vietnam 37
8. Malaysia 36
9. South Africa 28
10. US 24

In total 1,242 deported in five years. A lot less than Australia (and we have deported only 12 Aussies) but not an insignificant number.

The vast majority of migrants are law abiding. But it is interesting to look at which nationalities have been deported the most, compared to their share of the population.

The rates per 10,000 population are

1. Malaysia 75
2. Vietnam 56
3. South Africa 35
4. Fiji 45
5. Tonga 20
6. US 19
7. India 16
8. China 11
9. Samoa 10
10. UK 7

Interesting to have Malaysia so high for their share of the population.

Newshub reports:

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage dropped the word Kiwis think is the most offensive of all during an early-morning TV appearance on Thursday.

Ms Sage was talking to Breakfast host Daniel Faitaua about the controversial tahr cullwhen she appeared to use the slur in place of the word “hunters”.

“There will be control work done between now and mid-November. Further meetings of the tahr liaison group and the c**ters too have committed to doing a big educational effort so that they shoot the female tahr, not just the bulls, which have got this magnificent mane, which they like to hunt.”

Neither she nor Mr Faitaua reacted visibly to the phrase, but some hunters think it was no mistake.

“Wow! That was no slip of the tongue. Purposely said. Not acceptable,” one wrote on the forum at nzhuntingandshooting.co.nz.

“She [knew] what she was saying alright,” suggested another. “She pauses beforehand and afterwards.”

A Freudian slip or is she support her co-leader’s campaign to reclaim the C word?

To be fair she won’t be the first MP to use the word. Many years ago then Northland MP John Carter in the House meant to refer to Labour pulling a cunning stunt, but well he didn’t. It took several minutes for the House and even the Speaker to stop laughing.

The Herald reports:

The High Court has overturned the Human Rights Review Tribunal’s finding of a breach of privacy in the Dotcom case.

Kim Dotcom made a request in 2015 under the Privacy Act for “every record mentioning him by name held by every government agency and every then-government minister, plus each agency contracted to work with any of those entities”.

The internet mogul claimed the total of 52 requests should be dealt with under urgency because the information was necessary for his upcoming extradition eligibility hearing.

Most of the requests were transferred to the Attorney-General, and were declined on the basis they were “vexatious” and included “trivial” information. Dotcom filed a complaint with the Privacy Commissioner, which was rejected.

He then complained to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which found it was wrong for the Crown to transfer the requests to the Attorney-General and to refuse the requests.

It awarded Dotcom $90,000 damages, $60,000 for injury to feelings, and $30,000 for loss of a benefit – that being the information that he sought.

But the High Court has found the HRRT was completely wrong. They made several errors including basing the determination of vexatious on the subjective feelings of Dotcom rather than a objective test.

“We find that there was a proper and lawful purpose for the transfer of the requests and that, because of the insistence that all 52 requests were required to be responded to urgently, on the ground that the information sought was relevant to the eligibility proceedings, they were vexatious,” it states.

It also said it would not have upheld the awards of damages for lost benefit and loss of dignity or injury to feelings.

The HRRT decision seemed to be some form of activism. The Privacy Commissioner rejected the complaint, yet the HRRT upheld it and gave a staggering amount of money. Even worse it took them ten days of hearings!

The full judgement is a good read. The HRRT really got it wrong big time.

A guest post by Bryan Leland:

Why electricity prices have increased

The Electricity Price Review has revealed that residential electricity prices have increased by about 80% above inflation since 1990. Why did this happen? We were promised that privatisation and the electricity market would reduce power prices.

An objective examination of the whole electricity industry and the effect of the reforms leads to some interesting conclusions.

Cross subsidies

Before the reforms many power boards cross subsidised residential consumers by overcharging commercial and industrial consumers. The removal of these subsidies is a factor in the increased residential prices.

The market

The Wholesale Market Electricity Development Group made a mistake when they rejected the recommended market model and chose a market that pays all generators the price bid by the most expensive generator selected to run. This would have been a good choice if New Zealand relied entirely on fossil fuel generation. New fossil fuel power stations produce cheaper power than older ones so such a market encourages the construction of new and better stations.

In New Zealand, the cheapest generation comes from old, low cost, depreciated hydro stations. The choice of a fossil fuel market structure pays these stations the much higher price needed by the most expensive fossil fuel station. Hydro stations then rack up their asset values to camouflage the fact that they are making windfall profits

The recommended market model would have ensured that consumers would have continued to get low-cost electricity from the hydro stations that they had already paid for and built new stations that would give the lowest system costs in the long run.

The chosen market structure has led to wholesale prices increasing when they should have decreased to reflect the major reductions in operation and maintenance cost that followed on from privatisation.

Control of peak demand

Before the electricity reforms all electric water heaters in New Zealand were remotely controlled by the lines companies to reduce system peak demand by more than 10%. The reforms destroyed this world leading system. Most lines companies abandoned water heater control because the reforms did not allow them to fully recover of the costs of operating, maintaining and expanding the hot water control system.

As a result of abandoning hot water control, new power stations and a $960 million 400 kV line into Auckland were needed and millions more were spent on reinforcing transmission lines and distribution systems. All this to meet a peak demand that would not have existed with the recommended market.

Assets revalued

The reforms also allowed Transpower and lines companies to massively revalue their assets and use this increased value to justify charging consumers millions of dollars more for assets that consumers had largely paid for already. This is a major factor in the increased cost of electricity.

Traders and retailers

The electricity market also brought us traders and retailers who, it can be argued, serve no useful purpose whatsoever. The recommended market model did not need them.

In our market, traders often compete to get selected to generate. But when generation is in short supply competition is virtually non-existent and the price that they bid is “a trade-off between greed and guilt”. (On several occasions in the last few weeks wholesale prices have spiked to more than 10 times the normal price for no apparent reason.) As two retiring CEOs pointed out, the way to make money in the New Zealand market is to keep the system on the edge of a shortage. With the recommended market the system operator would have ensured that sufficient generating capacity was available and selected the generators that would give a reliable supply at the lowest cost.

Retailers increase consumer costs by spending millions of dollars trying to steal consumers from each other and pretending to compete in selling a commodity that is identical for everyone.

Conclusion

So what of the future? It does not look good. Transpower has warned that the risk of serious shortages and high prices in a dry year is rapidly increasing and no one has plans for new power stations that would mitigate this risk.

The government ignores dry year risk because it is hellbent on shutting Huntly down and limiting gas supplies and believes that exploiting wind and solar power will solve all the problems. Never mind that they are much more expensive, require backup when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine and don’t make any useful contribution to meeting peak demand.

The best and cheapest way of mitigating the risk of blackouts in dry years is to ensure that Huntly continues to provide dry year reserve with two or three generating sets and 1 million tons of coal available.

The government should be taking steps to make sure that we have an economical and reliable supply into the future. If it wants to reduce CO2 – a gas that promotes plant growth and benefits our agricultural industries – it should contemplate the construction of a major and very expensive hydro pumped storage power station in the hills above Roxburgh that would solve the dry year problem. Only then can it ditch Huntly.

The New Zealand electricity market is a classic example of what happens when the politicians and the decision-makers do not understand power systems and how difficult it is to provide a reliable and economic supply. Choosing the wrong market model has cost the customer dearly.

Bryan Leyland is an engineer with 60 years experience in the power industry worldwide. He and his wife are majority owners of a small hydropower scheme that profits from the shortcomings of the market.

The Herald reports:

Two Opposition MPs are proposing long-awaited changes to the law governing the $50 billion apartment sector, drafting an overhaul which they hope the Government will support.

Nikki Kaye, Auckland Central MP, and Judith Collins, National’s housing and urban development spokeswoman, have produced draft legislation to amend the Unit Titles Act which governs the management and running of thousands of apartments.

They aim to strike a balance between the benefits of more compliance requirements and any potential costs.

A statement said the MPs saw the opportunity to strengthen the existing regime in areas such as pre-contract disclosure, record keeping of body corporates, better management of conflicts of interests and proxy votes. 

“The driver for this change has been concerns around a lack of transparency and inadequate long-term maintenance plans, and a clearer understanding of the role of a body corporate manager,” Collins said.

The apartment sector is thought to be worth at least $50b. Under-investment in long-term maintenance plans could result in large unexpected bills for homeowners if defects occur, or sharp rises in body corporate fees, the MPs said.

“Places like Auckland have seen a huge increase in unit titles. The number of multi-unit housing developments in Auckland increased from just over 15 per cent of new houses in 2010 to over 40 per cent in 2017,” the statement said.

Phil Twyford, now Housing Minister, supported the push for change in Kaye’s ‘apartment blues’ report when he was in Opposition.

This is a good example that Opposition is more than just opposing.

Nikki and Judith have written draft legislation in an area that needs reform. It isn’t partisan. The Government could well support it.

Another example of this is around adoption laws. TVNZ reports:

Changes to adoption laws will take time, the Prime Minister said today, but she maintained the Government knows “it’s a problem”, after broadcaster Toni Street criticised the current legislation. …

Ms Ardern replied to Street’s Instagram post writing: “The adoption act is well over 50-years-old and definitely needs fixing. It’s on our work programme!”

During the last Government there was a bipartisan group of MPs working on adoption law reform. Kevin Hague from the Greens and Nikki Kaye spent scores of hours meetings experts and academics and eventually drafted a comprehensive reform bill Hague submitted in 2012.

Another MP, Jacinda Ardern, put up a rival bill which was arguably the worst members’ bill in recent years. It was voted down. The Ardern bill didn’t do any actual law reform. It merely asked the Law Commission to write a bill for her. It was virtue signalling rather than legislating.

So you don’t have to be in Government to be a constructive legislator. But you do have to be willing to do the hard work. Writing a bill in a complex area involves scores and scores of meetings, revisions, analysis etc.

I wish this was satire but no its snowflakes at work. Stuff reports:

Clapping has been replaced with “jazz hands” at an English university student union amid fears the noise of applause could trigger anxiety among some students.

Whooping is also discouraged at Manchester University student union events on the basis that the loud noise may be a problem for those with sensory issues.

The use of “jazz hands” – where students wave their hands in the air – is the British Sign Language (BSL) expression for applause and is deemed a more inclusive gesture.

Oh poor little students. Clapping could give them anxiety. God knows how they would quote with a job.

Why stop at banning clapping and whooping. They should ban all verbal speech and require all communications between students to be in writing.

“Jazz hands” were adopted by the National Union of Students (NUS)in 2015 on the basis that clapping “triggers anxiety”. Delegates at last year’s NUS conference said that students who whoop, cheer and clap should face “consequences”.

They’re such precious morons.

Newshub reports:

The AM Show host Duncan Garner has called on Marama Davidson to “get out of office”.

The Green Party co-leader appeared on the show on Monday morning to discuss her party’s commitment to raising benefits by 20 percent, but was unable to say how much it would cost.

Ms Davidson said if New Zealand can spend $100 million of taxpayer money on the America’s Cup, then it can pay its poorest a bit more.

She didn’t even do five minutes of homework, before going on TV.

If she had gone to Vote Social Development, she would have seen the cost of working age benefits is $4.35 billion so a 20% increase would cost $870 million a year.

If they include NZ Super in their policy, then it would cost almost $4 billion a year.

You would think a co-leader would know the cost of a policy they promote when it is in the hundreds of millions or billions.

“I am staggered by the lack of facts and detailed knowledge that she showed in her interview with me this morning,” Garner said after the interview.

“No detail at all. She’s exposed herself as being underdone at best, and completely incompetent at worst. It’s called flaky. I wonder how much longer [co-leader] James Shaw can actually put up with this.

“She knew how much it cost for the America’s Cup, but not about the welfare system which she wants to change. Honestly, get out of office. That’s what I say.”

There is a reason she wasn’t made a Minister despite being ranked higher by the Greens than Genter and Sage and Logie.

New Plymouth MP Jonathan Young writes:

In a beautiful sense of irony, Greenpeace is doing a victory lap around New Zealand with its flagship vessel Rainbow Warrior III, celebrating the ban on new offshore exploration. However, below the deck, the Rainbow Warrior can carry up to 90 tonnes of diesel to fuel the 1,850 horsepower Volvo Penta engine. It uses this for backup when the wind isn’t strong enough to fill its sails.

The irony is that if Greenpeace took their blinkers off, they’d see that firing up the high-emission Volvo Penta when the wind drops off, is no different to firing up a lower-emission gas peaker power station when the wind isn’t strong enough (or too strong) to turn a wind turbine.

New Zealanders have a healthy sense of cynicism, and here’s a good opportunity to show it.

Russell Norman, Chief Executive of Greenpeace NZ, is also mounting a new level of alarmism through the tour saying the hydrocarbon industry are enemies, likening them to the bombers of the first Rainbow Warrior.

So, ease up a bit Russell. The sector here in Taranaki are made up of hard-working, law-abiding citizens who contribute very positively to Taranaki’s and New Zealand’s economic success. They are our families, friends and neighbours. I’m all for new forms of energy – after all I’m a Treky from way back! Innovative ideas are delivering some exciting options for us … albeit little way to go before most are affordable. The great thing about Taranaki, we’ve got plenty of wind, so we might see you sailing past one day

Very good points.

John Armstrong writes:

The incumbent three-party governing arrangement was displaying all the coherence and co-ordination of the proverbial drunken sailor long before the Prime Minister left for the relative sanctuary of a Winston Peters-free New York.

The Herald’s annual mood of the boardroom rates the Ministers out of 5. Here’s the scores:

1. Grant Robertson 3.62
2. Jacinda Ardern 3.30
3. Winston Peters 3.20
4. David Parker 3.06
5. Andrew Little 2.88
6. Stuart Nash 2.82
7. Phil Twyford 2.77
8. Damien O’Connor 2.71
9. Shane Jones 2.55
10. David Clark 2.47
11. Megan Woods 2.43
12. Iain Lees-Galloway 2.42
13. Carmel Sepuloni 2.40
14. Jenny Salesa 2.39
15. Ron Mark 2.35
16. Nanaia Mahuta 2.28
17. Chris Hipkins 2.26
18. Tracey Martin 2.22
19. Kelvin Davis 1.84

A bit rough on Chippie having a lower rating than Nanaia Mahuta!

Kelvin Davis’ rating is no surprise but a reminder he is Labour’s Deputy Leader. He has the equivalent role to Don McKinnon, Wyatt Creech, Michael Cullen and Bill English in previous Governments. Those deputy leaders were all seen as one of the strongest Ministers. Labour’s Deputy Leader is seen as a train wreck.

For those interested, I was interviewed for the latest issue of the Research Association of NZ newsletter. It is on pages 12 to 15.

Stuff reports:

Professor Paul Hunt has been named new Chief Human Rights Commissioner following a sexual harassment scandal at the organisation.

Professor Hunt has an impeccable background in human rights as detailed by his wife in his Wikipedia article.

Happy #SocialistSunday to left Eastern #NPF slate @JoRust45 @PaulHuntSRights @RussellC2 @Owen_Hooper98 ✊? pic.twitter.com/EnNz1IhCgE

— Shelly Darwin? (@ShellyDarwin) August 5, 2018

But he is very political also. Just two months ago he was standing for the National Policy Forum of UK Labour as a pro-Corbyn socialist. It appears he was too left wing even for UK Labour, and wasn’t elected.

He argues for “social rights” to be on an equal footing as “human rights”. So the right to social welfare without sanctions to be on the same footing as free speech and freedom from torture.

We should expect a Human Rights Commission that will be even more activist, and campaigning for “social rights”.

Interest reports:

The Government’s been given yet another loud wake-up call from the business community, with the influential NZIER Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion showing another drop in business confidence.

The survey released on Tuesday revealed that a net 28% of businesses expect economic conditions to worsen. This is the lowest level since March 2009. The New Zealand dollar dropped after the survey results came out, from US66.15c to US65.95c.

The most watched measure in the survey is that for firms’ own domestic trading activity. This is bad too. The NZIER said firms’ own activity for the September quarter and expectations for the next quarter both fell, indicating a slowing in economic growth over the second half of 2018.

Meanwhile the Governments keeps saying there is no problem.

A former member of the NZ Resident Doctors’ Association alerted me to the very interesting financial statements of the NZRDA. Their 2017 statements show income of $1.18 million in membership fees, around $350 per member.

The vast majority of the income goes on “Contract Negotiation Services Fees”. Last year this came to $927,000.

That $927,000 gets paid to a company called Contract Negotiation Services Ltd. The majority shareholder (99.5%) is Deborah Powell, the NZRDA National Secretary.

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.

This might explain why some junior doctors have formed a breakaway union. Presumably their union doesn’t pay $927,000 a year to their union secretary.

The Herald reports:

National’s Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross will take a few months off from Parliament to deal with some “personal health issues”.

“There are times in life where you have to put your own health and family first. As a husband and a father I need to do that at this time,” he said in a statement today.

“That is why I have asked to have some time off on medical leave for a few months.”

In a separate statement, National leader Simon Bridges said the decision was “unrelated to the ongoing leak investigation” into his travel expenses.

Bridges told reporters that Ross’s health issue was a “very private and personal” matter.

The Botany MP had first raised the “serious” matter with Bridges last week.

“I am, and he is, focused on his wellbeing… on getting better and his young family,” the National leader said.

I hope Jami-Lee can resolve the health issue and return before too long.

Education Minister, and Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins said it was important for MPs to take time off every once in a while.

Hipkins himself was on Parliamentary leave, following the birth of his second child.

“Sometimes people do a better job as MPs if they take a bit of time out. If he needs to take a bit of time out in order to regroup and do a good job as an MP, he should do so.”

Well said from Hipkins.

A guest post by Helensville MP Chris Penk:

What to do when your government’s spinning out of control?  Spin, of course.

I take a close look at the peculiarly Ardernesque response to recent events that was her speech on Sunday, entitled “Our Plan”.

• Uniquely unique:

Ardern tries making a silk purse from a sow’s ear from the very outset, describing her administration as “the most pure form of MMP government New Zealand has ever had”.  The most interesting part of this statement is the phrase “most pure”.  This is because it’s followed immediately by the PM stating that “we have never had a government quite like ours”.  But is that a claim to fame or an admission of guilt?

The uniqueness of the current government is something that everyone can agree on – for better or worse – given the predominance of NZ First in relation to Labour and certainly the Greens.  But note the way that Ardern touts that uniqueness as a virtue rather than a vice.

She’s relying on the general rule that you highlight something as “unique” when it is uniquely good, rather than the opposite.  Consider how we use words such as “exceptional”, “incomparable”, “singular” and “trailblazing”.  The strict meanings of these words are neutral but they’re positive in tone by default.

If something represents an exception then, logically speaking, it can be either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad … and yet to say that something is “exceptional”, without further qualification, is to indicate that it’s more than good. (Counter-examples, such as “peculiar” are relatively rare.)

So while it’s theoretically risky for Ardern to highlight the unprecedented nature of the current government – where “most pure” really means “least stable” in practice – she’s piggybacking on traditional ways of employing exceptionalism.

• Absurd analogy:

Perhaps the most embarrassing bit of the PM’s speech was one particular analogy, used to describe what is apparently a traditional way for governments to operate: “It’s a bit like a road trip that tells you who’s in the car, where you’ll be stopping, but doesn’t tell you where you’re going”.

Because it’s impossible to argue that a driver should usually have some idea of her destination, audience agreement is automatic to this point.  While the comparison is a weak one, Ardern is trying to take us along for a ride of logical inevitability.

How often does it happen that you’re driving down the road and have absolutely no idea where you might end up, though?  Who cruises down State Highway 1 and thinks they have an equal chance of taking a turnoff to Te Awamutu or Timbuctoo?

But whereas typing a place name in the GPS works every time for a road trip, executing government policy in a mature democracy is so much more complex that the comparison is facile.  If the Prime Minister doesn’t realise that, either she’s a bit simple or thinks the rest of us are.  Take your pick.

• Cheap conjuring:

My personal favourite is the cheap conjuring trick where our attention is deliberately diverted.  Here’s the set-up:  “Other MMP governments have had coalition agreements and confidence and supply agreements that set out specific policies they will progress. But rarely does that capture the big picture.”

Ardern’s speechwriter is hoping we’ll overlook the fact that the 2017 coalition agreement (like all such documents) actually did contain some “big picture” content, as well as some specifics.  But the real point is that her government has already been devoting considerable time and energy to the kind of “big picture” discussion being wheeled out yet again on Sunday.  That was true from the very start, with the government’s Speech from the Throne (again, like all such set pieces) having been dominated by the “big picture”.

The purpose is to conceal the PM’s sleight of hand in two respects.

First, it creates an impression that until this point the government has been delivering on detail.  That must surely be the case, if higher level discussion is now needed by contrast, right?  Ironically, it’s actually been devilish detail that’s been tripping up the government lately.

Second, justifying the need for a blue sky blueprint is designed to distract from coalition blues.  Given the government’s recent difficulty in this regard (or “the Deputy Prime Minister”, to use his official title) the real point of the exercise is obvious.

• Trite truisms:

Then we see some classic spin is employed in this speech in the form of multiple truisms.  The trick is get heads nodding along to statements that are so utterly uncontroversial that logical points are easily scored.

You can take your pick from multiple examples but I particularly liked the “set of challenges on the horizon that we can’t ignore”, as if anyone would argue that challenges should be ignored.  Another good one was Ardern invoking the “whole new world we’re moving into”, as if the world has ever stood still.  In case you missed your cue to nod along, she actually added in the very same sentence: “everyone knows that”.  Yes, Prime Minister.

• Murky mandate:

Finally, check out the very subtle mandate creep:

“When you elected us, you didn’t just tell us to govern, you asked us to fix existing problems, anticipate emerging ones, and to make sure we weren’t caught off guard because we had done neither.”

Leaving aside the fact that those supposed extras are actually part of the standard definition of what it means “to govern”, this statement is reasonable enough if somewhat trite.

Then it gets interesting:  “But there are things that were also a bit unspoken. An undercurrent if you will.”

Immediately we’ve gone from what the electors decided to “tell” the governing parties to things that were apparently – by Ardern’s own admission here – never told at all.  An “unspoken” mandate is a very convenient thing.

The blank cheque is fully justified in the final analysis by this gem: “Perhaps I picked it up from the next generation of voters, or perhaps it was just the vibe of the thing. But we also decided that we would do things differently.”

See how the PM’s pivoted from electoral mandate to unilateral licence in just a few sentences?  They’ve heard the voters (apparently) but “also decided” to do things differently, separately to that, as well.  For linguistic purists, Ardern using “But” to start two sentences in quick succession is a dead giveaway of something tricky going on … in much the same way as you can only say “on the other hand” so many times before sounding evasive or indecisive.

Final thoughts

Incidentally, those points I’ve made only cover Ardern’s preamble, rather than the 12 (relatively) substantive points in the speech.  We could go on like this all day, with so much going on spin-wise.  I’ve got better things to do (mind you, so should the PM and her government) so will leave it there.  In any case, that kind of analysis really just confirms what anyone listening to the speech would have heard clearly enough for themselves: the predominance of spin over substance, as usual.

Chris sent this to me a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve been swamped with (paid) work so only just got around to blogging it.