A very sad read at Quillette about how a peer reviewed paper on the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ got retracted and blacklisted from publication after publication and the authors threatened.

None of this was related to the quality of the science. It was just that some academics didn’t like the results.

Basically the GMVH asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women.

I have no idea if this is true. But I think the proposition should be able to be researched and debated.

So read this article and remember that when people talk about making decisions based on science, that often means making decisions based on science we personally agree with.

538 has updated their House forecast to give the Democrats an 82% probability to take the House. The average gain projected is 39 seats. They only need 23.

They also have just released their Senate forecast. Here the Democrats are projected to only have a 32% chance to gain control. But that is much higher than it should be considering the Democrats are defending 10 seats where Trump won the popular vote. The Republicans should be looking to gain seats, not lose them.

I’d like the Republicans to hold the Senate so they can continue to confirm judges, and especially any further Supreme Court vacancies.

I’m more agnostic on the House. If the Democrats take it, then at least they can hold Trump to account through committee investigations. They might try to impeach him (which would be a mistake) but would never get a conviction. If the Republican House could actually pass legislation I’d want them to carry on in the majority. But they seem to do very little.

If Pelosi becomes Speaker again at least she makes a good bogey woman for the 2020 election.

Newshub reported:

Shane Jones’ $1 billion Provincial Growth Fund is under fire yet again.

The Government is pouring $2.4 million into a cultural centre in Kawakawa, Northland in a bid to create jobs and boost the local economy.

But Newshub can reveal that the centre’s only expected to create three jobs and officials warned that instead of stimulating the economy, it could jeopardise other local businesses.

Taxpayers are having $1 billion stolen from them, just to try and gain one man a job – Shane Jones as MP for Northland.

Every household could be $500 better off if they hadn’t embarked on the most wasteful spending programme in recent history.

The officials recommended Jones decline the funding, but he ignored them.

“You’ve got to take a few risks when you’re dealing with infrastructure,” he said.

Easy to take risks with our money. What if Shane had to personally pay even 1% of the money himself (in return for 1% of the economic growth it creates). Would he have spent $2.4 million on this if $24,000 had to come from his own pocket?

Mike Hosking writes:

It is one of the older tricks in the book, when you’re the government and you’re in trouble, dump the bad news on Friday.

This current Government is excellent at it. And this past Friday was Derek Handley.

The previous Friday was the Curran resignation, other Fridays have also involved the revelation of the Curran meeting and, of course, the Meka Whaitiri scandal.

All on Fridays. All designed to be lost in the Friday hubbub of people at the pub, going away for the weekend, watching the All Blacks, and generally by Monday putting it behind them.

The Friday bad news dumps are becoming so obvious I ran a poll on when they would release the Whaitiri inquiring findings:

On which day of the week will the PM announce the findings of the inquiry into Meta Whaitiri’s treatment of staff?

— David Farrar (@dpfdpf) September 17, 2018

As you can see Friday is winning.

What made the latest Friday dump so egregious is that Derek Handley, and I hadn’t realised this until the revelation, had moved his entire family home from New York for a job that got butchered.

And the best we got was Meghan Woods, the Prime Minister was missing in action again, Meghan Woods saying it could have been handled better.

No kidding, Sherlock.

A bloke moves his whole family halfway round the world to get shafted by incompetence, no wonder he’s ropeable.

Is very unfair on Handley.

Anyway the upshot is he’s been shafted, Curran is a disgrace, Ardern is, yet again, being shown to be a combination of weak and absent.

And it is yet another example of this lot, mainly Labour, doing everything possible to make themselves look inept.

Now, if there is a light at the end of this calamitous tunnel, it’s that my gut says it won’t hurt them in the polls.

Two years out from the next vote, most of us are getting on with life, rather than peering at Wellington with a microscope.

This is true. Polls tend to move over stuff like jobs, incomes, hospitals, schools.

The economy is the thing that really turns sentiment. And there is plenty in that particular storm still brewing, and I have no doubt it will bite them in the bum badly. 

And Trump has just imposed $200 billion of tariffs on China.

First the Stuff headline:

Sam Neill denounces Heather du Plessis-Allen for calling Pacific people ‘leeches’

Except of course she didn’t.

Hollywood heavyweight Sam Neill has chimed in to the general outrage surrounding broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan’s outspoken comments against Pacific people.

False slur repeated second time.

Heather du Plessis-Allan says Pacific people are ‘leeches’ on New Zealand

No 3.

The Kiwi actor was referring to du Plessis-Allan saying Pacific people are “leeches” on New Zealand, during a Wellington broadcast of Newstalk ZB.

No 4.

Buried deep down is this:

“I was not talking about people living in this country or the people themselves, I am talking about the Pacific Islands and the people who run it.”

It is clearly obvious she was referring to the governments or the countries. One can debate the merits or otherwise of her comments. But to repeat a false assertion four times as fact is awful journalism.

Here’s an analogy.

If someone in the EU said that Poland is a leech on the EU because they receive more from the EU than they pay, would people regard that as slurring Poles, as opposed to the Polish Government?

Donald Trump attacks fellow members of NATO as leeches for not spending 2% of GDP on defence. I don’t like his comments, but he is clearing attacking the countries, not every individual German, Italian or Spaniard.

The Herald editorial:

The Government – whether that’s Jacinda Ardern’s “Labour-led” one, Winston Peters’ “Coalition” one, a Green-tinged one, or any other label for that matter – clearly needs a win. …

The issues around Clare Curran and Meka Whaitiri have dented Labour’s credibility, and there is potential for further damage.

Labour has been stymied in the progress of its flagship employment law reform legislation and plans to establish a Crown-Maori relations agency – and has been made to look foolish to boot.

The unwanted headlines are now about a Deputy PM gone “rogue”, an absent PM, the tail wagging the dog and a Government in chaos and disunity.

The issue isn’t that the coalition partners don’t agree on everything. That is to be expected.

The issue is that their political management is so incompetent that they end up disagreeing in public where Ministers proceed to announce things without having checked first with their coalition partners.

It may be too much to ask to feel the love, but New Zealanders need to feel secure, see evidence of cohesion, and to know our Prime Minister is not one in name only. To silence its critics and reduce the feeling of unease, the Coalition needs to start translating its slick presentations, grand visions and inclusive rhetoric into meaningful actions with concrete results.

Results are what matter.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters… (please) get into a room and sort out your policy differences away from the daily news cycle.

The reason business has lost confidence is frankly due to the uncertainty coming out of the Beehive.

We now have a situation where every policy announced by a Minister is downgraded to a personal preference. This means that no one actually knows what the Government’s policies are. And business need certainty to invest.

Also the failure of the senior members of the Government to listen to feedback on crucial policies that affect business — including the Employment Relations Amendment bill — upsets those that hold the belief that a Government should act in the interests of all New Zealanders. Not just Labour’s paymaster and apparent ultimate controller — the union movement.

Are they a Government for all New Zealanders or just for their paymasters?

The NK Herald hails Dear Leader.

Stuff reports:

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

He has referred the matter to police.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jan Thomas replied:

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

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

The next day she again e-mails:

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

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

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

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

The VC responds:

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

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

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

And here we have the smoking bullet on 13 July:

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

She says explicitly she wants it stopped.

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

And here she talks about refusing entry:

And all this is before any security issues were raised.

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

Is this a university you want to study at?

Is this a university you want to donate money to?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Armstrong writes:

It is anything but.

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

A very useful report from the NZ Initiative:

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

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

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

Spending more to achieve less.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newshub reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She denied she was confused.

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

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

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

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

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

JA: Sorry the, sorry the

MH: GDP numbers, Thursday

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

MH: So you have seen them?

JA: I had a hint, yes

MH: Are they good?

JA: I’m pretty pleased

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

JA: Setting expectations already

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

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

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

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

Tova O’Brien reports:

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

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

And Winston does not like the hypocrisy being pointed out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Herald reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard Griffin writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liam Hehir writes:

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Hosking writes:

Is Winston Peters the political genius of our time?

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

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

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

But there are two things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All he needs now is traction in the polls.

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

And that another card in the Peters’ pack.

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

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

16Stuff reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or at least it used to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Audrey Young reports:

Peters provided the preamble to Ardern’s speech.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it took them a year to work them out.

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

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

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

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

Even The Spinoff was unimpressed. Toby Manhire writes:

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

A pretty dim lodestar at that.

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

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

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

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

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

Most transparent and open government ever they promised!

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

Rah rah rally.